Posted on December 1, 2012 at 3:59 pm
Tomorrow at 9:30 (eastern) on OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network, Oprah interviews the people behind “Lincoln:” Academy Award winners Steven Spielberg, Daniel Day-Lews and Sally Field talk about the making of the film and the history behind it.
Posted on November 21, 2012 at 3:48 pm
Director Ang Lee and star Suraj Sharma met with a group of journalists to talk about “Life of Pi.”
Lee said the biggest challenge was to “make a big mainstream movie out of a philosophical book that’s beloved.” And it was a challenge to create an illusion that mixed the action and themes so seamlessly that it wouldn’t take people out of the movie. “It’s adventure story, and it is a movie about faith and hope, so we keep a balance, but that’s very, very challenging for the film-maker. Of course, there’s a kid, there’s water, there’s a tiger,” not to mention his first time with 3D and all the CGI.
He was asked whether his vision for this film could have been made a few years ago. “No, I don’t think so. My vision? No. some other vision, probably. You can have a lot more restraint. I think, actually, the use of 3D actually helped to set you out by the water, and also the realism of the animal, and the scope of God’s vision and it provides a lot of new visions, so to speak, tools to visions. I think visual effects-wise, it would be very challenging. It’s not impossible, but it’s hard to believe. I’m still a novice in 3D. Very carefully, I learned very diligently, but after all, we’re just discovering another new cinematic language to enhance not only effects but dramatically where you put things and how you take in the images, soak it in, and take that as the new grand illusion…I think five years ago those elements wouldn’t be there for me. We could still make the movie, but it’s different.”
The water is almost a character in the film. Lee spoke about it. “On the surface, I think, because this is a movie about faith, a young boy, soaking all his innocence with organized religions and society, that he throws into the ocean. So in some ways, water is like the desert; it’s a test of his faith, of his strength and everything, he goes through the journey. And as a film-maker, I like to see the water that carries life, it’s a representation of nature and emotions, and anything that has with water, even rain or mist or cloud formations, that represents some kind of mood that Pi’s going through, so I’d have liked to us the mood, the transparency or semi-transparency for the blocking and the reflection, this is a nightmare for 3D, (by the way, we overcome that obstacle) we use all of that as a way of explaining life, where he looks at the sky, the air, that’s heaven, God and death (to me.) Sometimes they blur, you don’t see the horizon, they blur together. Sometimes they separate, sometimes they reflect each other. I think it’s just a wonderful tool to externalize, to visualize internal key things. I like to use them to express my internal feeling and Pi’s.
He likes to feel that he is scared by his projects, “doing something that will put me on the edge, it’s like Pi facing the tiger, keeping me alert, putting me in the God-zone I need, I need total attention, focusing, and therefore I get the thrill that I’m living life fully, and that’s how I choose to express myself and be seen by people.” He sometimes asks himself, “Why am I doing this? Why, why why?” but he loves the challenge. “I get to learn all these new things about film-making; I’m an avid film-student, I would like to see my career as an extension of film-school. Now I get to learn 3D, how good is that? Somebody’s paying for it….I got these naïve, double-negative thoughts, like ‘if I add one more obstacle, maybe it’s possible,’ and more dimension, maybe I can take that leap of faith. At least, I think, by giving new cinematic language, people might open up, just bring back, just naturally, that innocence of watching a movie, and theatrical experience; maybe that will happen…There’s no way I could do what I did there with 2D. The wave has to be so much bigger, 10 times bigger, to get a feeling. Still, you don’t get that you’re floating there with Pi. I think animal, the animation is more believable, because it has real dimension and depth, and the excitement of finding new ways of expression and putting things in different places, giving the depth and manipulating the depth and your point-of-view, actually that adds a lot to, help you expend a lot of your imagination and exploration, so, all of that is pretty good for the unusual project. You know, I’m a film-maker, I live for that kind of thing.”
Sharma told us about what it was like to make his first film. “I think that if you work with someone as great as , it’s not intimidation, it’s comfort, you know? You feel that if someone can trust you like the way he is, then you just give it everything you have and you trust him back, and in that, everything will be okay. That’s how I saw it, and you know, before we started shooting, there was three months in which I learned a lot of things, there were a lot of things that took place, I met a lot of the crew—and you know, when you get so familiarized with people who are so nice, who become like your family, then you lose that pressure. That pressure is lost, you just become part of the whole process, it becomes something that you do for yourself and you do for everybody who is putting your faith in you for you to do it. I didn’t know how hard it is to make a movie, ever. I thought it was all, honestly, I thought it was all glitz and glamor and stuff, I didn’t have much of an opinion, but just being on set, in itself, taught me so much. You learn about how there are so many things that go into making movies, so many people with all of these different things from all these different places coming together, all who are different at what they do, at what they specialize in, they’re all kind of working together like a machine, just for even, just for maybe three seconds of film. It’s the most inspirational feeling I get, just being on set, that I don’t know—that intensity with which people work, the passion, the fire, it really gets to me. I start feeling like, maybe starting to work, I want to do this so badly. It makes me feel driven. There were moments when I thought,’How am I going to survive this?’ there were moments where I was so dire and so exhausted but everything just seemed to come together. I really like the fact that they put so much faith in me, to make me go on, and that’s what kept me going.
Lee listened and smiled. He said that Sharma was a spiritual leader for the entire crew “because he didn’t know. If he’d known, we would act differently, and he wouldn’t be a leader. We’ve been in the business for a long time. A lot of us can be jaded, can be cynical, we’re still doing what we do best, with passion and everything, but we can really get cynical, get tired, and then when we see something like that, a person who doesn’t know that he’s leading the thing, he’s carrying everything on his shoulder, he still thinks that everybody tells him what to do…there’s a beauty to that, there’s certainly innocence that remind us why we want to make movie in the first place. He doesn’t know, he doesn’t have any comparison. He probably didn’t know what bad acting is, it’s just the way you do it. He didn’t realize that’s the best thing you can do for acting. So that’s treasurable. So we don’t tell him until the last day.
Posted on November 14, 2012 at 8:00 am
I spoke to one of my favorite directors, Joe Wright (“Pride and Prejudice,” “Atonement,” “Hanna”) about his sumptuous new film, “Anna Karenina,” starring Keira Knightley.
One of my favorite scenes in the film reminded me very much of one of my favorite scenes in “Pride and Prejudice,” using intricate choreography of dance and camera movement to tell the story. So tell me a little bit about how you put that together.
I really loved doing the dance in “Pride and Prejudice” and I haven’t had an opportunity to do it again and perhaps, further what I did in “Pride”—so I really took this film on as an opportunity to kind of create a ballet with words. And the dance in the ball especially, I wanted to push further than I had. With “Pride,” some things happened by accident, the moment where everyone disappears in the dance and Elizabeth and Darcy dancing by themselves was an accident. So there were lots of things that happened there that I kind of had touched upon that I wanted to return to and explore more fully. I like dance a lot and I go and see a lot of dance in London, and one of the choreographers I most admire is a guy called Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, who’s a Belgian/Moroccan choreographer. I’m a huge fan of his work, and so I asked him to come and collaborate on this movie, and really handed certain sections of the film over to him.
We had a three week rehearsal period and probably a good week of that (if not two) were spent doing physical workshops and thinking about the performance and the characters and the physical context. So all of that I found fascinating and then Labi and I worked on—well, he worked on the choreography for a long period and I’d go and visit him in Antwerp and we’d discuss. One had to be kind of telling that story. One couldn’t just kind of go off into pure formalism, it had to be at the service of the story. So I was always keeping an eye that were were telling a story, and he was coming up with his gorgeous ideas.
A lot of the music was composed prior to shooting, music that is involved in the dances but also what would be called the score, and so it allows the performers and the camera operators a sense of the rhythm, and I particularly asked Dario Marianelli, also, to reference Stravinsky and the composers who were more influenced by Eastern atonal harmonies and stuff, partly because I have a love of that music, but also to give a sense of the breadth of the nation, of something not entirely what we think of as being European.
The costumes are not just beautiful and very striking and distinctive. They help to define the characters.
You know, the first thing that Jacqueline Durran and I decided was that we weren’t particularly interested in creating historically accurate costumes. I like the silhouette of the 1870’s dresses, the big bums at the back and all of that stuff, but I didn’t like the detailing of them. They’re very fussy and prissy, lots and lots of lace and lace and lace and ribbons and all of that stuff—which I find I don’t like very much. So we took the silhouette but we also looked at, in particular, some Christian Dior dresses from the 1950s and noticed that the silhouette was very similar. So we really kind of created a style of dress that was somehow working with both of those influences. And obviously with Anna, you wanted a sense of her wealth and her sophistication. Keira is a little bit younger than Anna is described as being in the book, here, I think, 26 or 27, Anna is 28 and Anna is a mother so we wanted to kind of give her a status in the costumes as well, a little bit of age. And also this sense of—I like the kind of drapery of it, the dresses are quite draped, they feel like they could kind of almost fall off on any moment. And you also work with what an actor has got, and Keira’s got this exquisite back, and so the green dress in “Atonement” and the dresses here show off her back.
We wanted to avoid the scarlet woman so we didn’t use too much red in her costumes. She becomes more flamboyant as the affair goes on, and so do her clothes. It’s almost like she gets involved—I kind of think of Princess Betsy, Vronsky’s cousin, as being like the Kate Moss of the period. So although she’s been moving in this very kind of high society prior to her affair, it’s the society that’s almost like a political society, it’s quite a conservative society that she’s been moving in. So it’s almost like she’s been hanging out in Washington and suddenly discovers New York club scene or something. And so she becomes more kind of flamboyant and risky in her costume. So, you know…I also really love in the film what Jacqueline did with the costumes of the lower-class characters. A lot of those are influenced by quite Eastern design, sort of even as far as India, and that, to me, we did that to suggest the breadth of the country as well, of Russia at the time, so you had the Parisian influence with the high-society dresses but also the Eastern influence with some of the peasants.
I liked your more nuanced portrayal of Vronsky, who is often seen as just callous and superficial.
Vronsky’s one of the only characters in the book whose age isn’t specified, but he’s described as being a kind of boy soldier. He’s described as a kind of golden youth, and the way in which he falls in love is a very young kind of way. It’s very kind of, sort of puppy-doggish almost and reckless and open. He declares his feelings straight off. He’s never been hurt by love. And so it seemed appropriate to me to cast him younger than Anna, so that he’s, you know, 20, 21, and everything is fine until it’s not, and when Anna becomes frayed, he gets out his depth, you know? He doesn’t know how to handle this situation, it’s beyond his experience and his abilities and so he can’t really help much. Needless to say, though, he does love her, and he is honorable and he doesn’t leave her, you know? He sticks with her and personally, my opinion, he’s not having an affair with the princess. I think he probably thinks about it, but doesn’t, which is probably more honorable than not even thinking about it. And so I think he’s a good man, I just think he’s out of his depth.
The theatricality of the film is so well handled, illuminating, not distracting.
Thank you. The theater concept gave me a limitation and I find limitations quite liberating, creatively. At the end of the day, this, as much if not more than any other film, relied on the close-ups of the actor’s faces, and when you’re in close-up, it doesn’t matter where you are, you know? The background is soft focus, and you’re engaged directly with the emotions of the characters…and I think probably 50 percent of the film is told in close-ups. It feels to me like we’re in a period of new romanticism, where emotion is prized above all else. Sometimes I like to have my critical faculties engaged when I’m watching a film, and people kind of, often studios, really, think that if you take the audience out of the emotion, then that’s some great taboo that you’re not allowed to do, that they have to have their suspension of disbelief there at all times. And I’m not sure that’s true, I think that’s underestimating an audience. I think an audience enjoys something perhaps a little bit more playful.
Posted on November 1, 2012 at 8:00 am
After documentary filmmaker Arnon Goldfinger’s grandmother died at age 97 in Israel, he brought a film crew to her apartment where she and his grandfather lived from the time they immigrated to what was then called Palestine just before World War II. He was fascinated by their home, which seventy years later looked as though it had been transplanted from their birthplace in Germany. The books on the shelves were in German. They always spoke German in their home. Most of their lives were lived in Israel, but they lived as though they were still in Berlin.
Goldfinger thought he would learn something about his grandparents as the family sorted through their belongings. But he could never have imagined what he would find or where it would take him. His grandmother had saved issues of one of the most virulently anti-Semitic newspapers distributed in Nazi Germany. This discovery led to a journey that illuminated one of the strangest friendships imaginable, represented by an artifact that is almost unthinkable — a coin with a Jewish star on one side and a Nazi swastika on the other. The movie also focuses on the strain this inquiry put on Goldfinger’s relationship with his mother, who was almost as passionate about not finding out the answers to his questions as Goldfinger was about seeking them.
I spoke to Goldfinger when he was in Washington, D.C. to show the film, which opens tomorrow.
What did you think you were going to film?
To be honest, I just wanted to be there with the camera and document the world I knew was going to disappear very quickly. I thought it would be an even quicker process. I knew this flat all my life and I had an ambivalent feeling toward it. On the one hand, I had an attraction to this world, to this culture, to those books, to the secrets, the mystery. On the other hand, as an Israeli it was so foreign, so German, so connected to the tragic happenings in the Holocaust. It was only later I had an idea to make a film, but even then the idea was just something very short. People would ask, “What can you learn about someone from what they leave behind?” This shows you can learn a lot.
What does your mother think about the movie?
I was very afraid of course. Our relationship was close before and if it would stay like that, it would be fine. But I was surprised. It brought us closer. She was very supportive of the film. After the first screening, when she first saw it, she said she saw it was important for her, too. When her friends saw the film, they said to her, “We didn’t know, either. We didn’t ask.” She felt that she was not alone.
Why was your mother reluctant to know more?
She was really raised in a German house. I remember as a kid, hearing her argue with her parents in German. But when she went out of the flat, she was in Tel Aviv, the Mediterranean combined with bohemian, a place of vibrance. She lived two lives. But like all of the people of her age, she wanted to leave the past behind her, as you see when you look at her flat, not even any dust from the past. Your house is the place you want to live in. And she wanted to live with with barriers to all the historical items. Before I made the film I thought it was her character. But now I understand it’s a barrier from all the pain and sorrow.
You met with Edda, the daughter of the Nazi couple who were your grandparents’ friends. Tell me something about your impressions.
They were lovely people, very friendly, welcoming, warm. That made it harder. If they were nasty it would have been easier for me. During my research I would think, “Maybe it’s not possible, maybe it’s not right” that this friendship existed between my grandparents and the Nazis. If I called someone out of the blue and said “My grandparents knew your parents, I would not recognize one name.” But the way she recognized it so immediately, the way she knew and was so glad to hear from me in such an open way and with such memories — I don’t remember even one gift my parents’ friends gave me — but for her, she remembered so much.
What about her father, the man who was your grandparents’ friend while having an important role in the Nazi party?
I found much more about him than what is in the film. It was important to say that he did not live the Nazi party. He was involved in anti-Semitic propaganda. But he wanted to stay in contact with Jews. I found all kinds of other things about him, nothing that would change your mind, no smoking gun, but you could ask yourself, “Did he have an alternative?” The way to describe what happened was this. Nobody knew what Hitler wanted, but everybody knew if they did something Hitler did not want, it’s the end. It was a classic regime of terror. There’s a book called Alone in Berlin
One of the most shocking moments for me was when Edda told me that she knew my family had lost someone in the concentration camps. She did not have the details right. She thought it was my grandfather’s mother, not my grandmother’s mother. She’s a little mistaken with the details but it shows that she and therefore her parents knew some of what happened. That means my grandparents were sitting over there in the garden where we were, discussing the death of someone from their family with a man who was a Nazi. Did they ask him if he received their letter asking for help? Did he tell them he could not help them? There were a lot of lies over there.
My favorite character in the movie was your grandmother’s friend. What a beautiful face. I felt I knew your grandmother by seeing her friend.
She was my grandmother’s closest friend and like an aunt to me. When I first approached her, she did not want to be filmed. She was the only one, and I could not understand why. It took me almost a year to persuade her. But she said, “I will give you half an hour, but you come alone.” I told her I had to bring a cameraman and a sound man, and she said, “No, no, no.” In the end, it was only me and the cameraman. I figured she would see it is not threatening and she would let me stay longer. The cameraman said, “Be careful. Remember who you are dealing with. Ask the questions you want in the beginning not as usual at the end.” After 32 minutes she told me it is enough. Three months later she passed away. Her daughter was so happy that I captured her in her beauty. There’s such elegance in those characters.
Why did your grandmother keep the Der Angriff
There was something emotional about it, a memory from a very, very important event in their life. The idea was to keep an eye on the Nazi and push him to include more Zionist material in his story. There may be a possibility my grandfather even edited the article. It was something very vivid at the time and maybe she forgot about it. She never opened it again. Maybe she forgot about it.
What are you going to do with them?
I think maybe give them to the Zionist archive in Jerusalem or to Yad Vashem.
Why does this movie touch people so deeply?
The film is telling an amazing story about a Nazi and a Jew, but really it is a movie about family, what you know about your family, what you want to know, what you can know. Those questions anyone can identify with, especially in America, a place of immigrants. Some people who see the movie tell me, “I want to ask my parents more about our history.” And some say, “I need to get rid of a lot of the things in my house!”
Posted on October 19, 2012 at 5:23 pm
Michael Damian played heartthrob Danny Romalotti on “The Young and the Restless” for 18 years, returning for the show’s 35th anniversary. He is an award-winning singer and songwriter and more recently he has been a writer and director. He and his wife co-wrote the charming modern fairy tale A Princess for Christmas
How does your experience as an actor help you in casting your films?
I know what the actors are going through when they go into the casting room, and I do understand that it’s very important to have a director who gives, off-camera, really good readings to actors. I think it helps tremendously, and we were very fortunate that our casting director London did a great job; she gives fabulous off-camera reads to the actors and really helps to get in on the character. I’ve been in casting rooms where the person reading with you is so terrible that it’s just like… “So what do you need?” and like, oh my gosh, please tell me they’re not going to read every line like that (in my head, of course, I’m saying it.)
You have to find a way to rise above that, but fortunately, we have really good casting people that worked with us out of London and when Sam came in, you know, he was amazing. Right away when we saw him we’re like, “Okay, there’s Prince Ashton. There’s our prince.” He was dynamic, he was charming; he had a sensitive side you could see, there was warmth in his eyes—it wasn’t very difficult to make up our minds once we saw his recorded audition. I wasn’t in London when it happened, I was in Romania in per-production, but I got the feed over the internet of the casting session and we were like “Wow, he’s fantastic!” And he’s even better in person and did an amazing job getting him on camera.
Tell me about working with Roger Moore.
Sir Roger Moore is phenomenal. He is so funny, you know? He’s got an incredible sense of humor, and that’s really wonderful because you’ve got to have that when you’re not shooting, because otherwise it can be very, very uncomfortable on a set when you have a star of his stature to be just not having a good time—and Roger Moore just really enjoys the process. He gave 110%, he was there for all the off-camera line reads, he was present, he was just a total joy. All the actors loved working with him and he treated them with great respect and kindness. And I’m such a fan of Roger Moore, I mean, The Spy Who Loved Me
Tell me about Romania.
Well, Romania was an amazing experience. First of all, to find a castle like Peles Castle up in the mountains with this beautiful, I mean, just stunning. And to have the natural snow falling and the setting was so inspiring…it was a bit cold, 14 below zero, but besides that, it was a thrill.
Sam also did mention the cold.
Did he tell you how cold it was?
Yes, he did—and I thought, “well, if an English guy is cold, it’s probably pretty cold.”
It was cold, it was a crazy cold. But they were brilliant, nobody complained, Sam never complained and I hope he had a good experience, I mean, we had a great experience.
What were you going for in the costume designs to strike a balance between modern day and fairy tale?
First of all we’ve got this castle with all the staff and I wanted to keep them proper and dressed proper as staff, like “Remains of the Day” or one of those great films, you know? You keep everybody pretty formal. Katie’s dress, we had the costume designer, Oana Draghici, make several things for her and sometimes Katie McGrath would come in with something and she’d say, “What do you think of this?” and I’m like, “Great. Where did you get that?” And she’d go, “Oh, it’s mine, I brought it,” and sure enough, she wore it in several scenes and I’ve had so many people asking where they could buy it. I think it’s in some of the artwork or the press photos, it’s kind of a knit, sweatery dress or something that she wears and everybody keeps asking about it. I go, “well, it’s Katie’s personal dress, so I can’t help you with that, you’re going to have to call her.” You mix and match, it depends on which character. The great thing about Castlebury is that it’s our own—we created this small country that’s kind of like a Monte Carlo, so we were able to have a little more free reign with certain styles and things that people wore, you know, and the family starts in Buffalo so it’s pretty straightforward, there. I pretty much know how they dress in Buffalo and have a lot of friends that live there, so just try to keep it real…really each character define them and make sure they have their own style and that you just don’t, “Oh, yeah, put that on him, who cares?” I want to really make sure that it works with the character and that it works with the scene. Unfortunately, sometimes, it could be freezing cold but you’ve got to make it work. You put too many jackets on and it’s really unattractive, do you know what I mean?
What is it that we love about fairy tales?
Well I think, first of all, there are a couple of things here. You’ve got one of the most beloved holiday seasons, Christmas, and it’s my favorite. My wife and I love Christmas movies, and so we thought, “okay, what if we made a Christmas story/fairytale?” and it started with just a line. We were sitting in our office and and you know, “Once upon a time in a land called Buffalo,” and then we just started, “okay, let’s start from there, okay…” and we want to make it modern day, so we take a modern-day family—and what would happen if they found out that half of them were royal and didn’t know it? And went on this journey to this magical place, this beautiful castle and found the rest of their family that they didn’t know? What would that be like during Christmas? Could they come together and resolve all their differences and find love and find romance (I’m talking about Jules and Ashton.) So there are several different kind of stories running simultaneously. You’ve got Jules and her journey just to be a good adoptive mother. She’s young and she really hasn’t experienced love. There are a lot things in her life that she, I’m sure, was hoping to do and life sort of threw a curve at her and she now has to adapt and make it work. Without giving away too much of the story, you’ve got that and then you’ve got a lot of the things that unfold at Castlebury and one, being, of course romance. Which hey, come on, who doesn’t like that? You’ve got a Christmas movie, you’ve got a fantasy, you have the prince kind of story, you’ve got the family story and you’ve got the snowy white Christmas setting, so…there’s are all the big things that we talked about. Those are all the things we love, can we put them into a script? And shoot it and have people enjoy it and enjoy the journey, because you know really, as a journey, it’s about family coming together, resolving differences, it’s about forgiveness, which is very important.
