Filmmaker Steven Soderbergh says he's retiring
http://entertainment.msn.com/news/article.aspx?news=635461&silentchk=1&wa=wsignin1.0 (http://entertainment.msn.com/news/article.aspx?news=635461&silentchk=1&wa=wsignin1.0)
what a wuss. guy's always whining about filmmaking. says he's gonna pull mini malicks then does back to back movies the following year. stfu, soberbergh.
Wow, I guess that's not a surprise he's seemed to just be busy for busy's sake the past couple 5 years. I've been losing interest in him for awhile now but I have to say The Informant! was, is really funny. I'll have to watch it again soon, but my favorite of all was Bubble. If he wants to quit then fine, it's one less director I have to hear blab about their next movie project unenthusiastically in the latest movie magazine, and to end on a high note he's doing a Liberace biopic? :ponder:
He's just looking for attention. He's easily one of the most narcissistic and pretentious filmmakers working today. Aronofsky is going to be the new Soderbergh. Just not as active (or good).
Still, nobody can deny that Soderbergh has been pretty much the most interesting director the last 10-15 years. His output has been ridiculous. Maybe he just needs a break.
Yes he's awesome, but wouldn't you like to see him quit? I think there's only room for one SteveBerg in Hollywood.
It's not surprising in the slightest; the whole past decade has basically been Soderbergh fucking around and experimenting in any way he can think of to stave off boredom. He's gotten some interesting results out of it for sure, but eventually he was bound to run out of ways to keep himself interested.
Quote from: Reelist on March 14, 2011, 08:59:41 PM
I think there's only room for one SteveBerg in Hollywood.
you're right.. that means the next to go will be that other director who also is always "busy for busy's sake" .. Steven Spielberg!
leaving lazy old Steven Shainberg to be crowned the winner by default.
It's my time!
UPDATE: Hold Off On The Retirement Party! Steven Soderbergh Takes On New Pic Inspired by Channing Tatum's Stripper Days
BY MIKE FLEMING | Deadline
UPDATE: If Steven Soderbergh really is determined to retire from filmmaking, he's not doing a very good job of it. He's been so prolific lately that he's like the Natalie Portman of directors. Now, he has just committed to direct Channing Tatum in Magic Mike, a story of friendship set in the world of male strippers. Tatum plays the title character, who schools a young dancer in how to hustle on and off the stage. It's a wild summer of dancing, partying and women. The inspiration for the film is Channing's own experiences as a stripper when he was 19. Nick Wechsler is producing with Gregory Jacobs, Tatum and Reid Carolin. Carolin is writing the script. "When Channing talked to me about this, I thought it was one of the best ideas I'd ever heard for a movie," Soderbergh said in a statement. "I said I wanted in immediately. It's sexy, funny and shocking. We're using Saturday Night Fever as our model, so hopefully we're on the right track." Said Tatum: "This was a wild and pivotal time in my life and I couldn't be more thrilled to go down the rabbit hole with Steven." Tatum is currently shooting 21 Jump Street and will next be seen starring in The Vow with Rachel McAdams and in Ten Year. This new project comes after Soderbergh completed Haywire, his attempt to make an action star out of mixed martial arts fighter Gina Carano by putting her in an espionage drama and surrounding her with proven pros like Tatum, Michael Douglas, Michael Fassbender and Ewan McGregor in a film Relativity Media releases in August. Soderbergh followed that by shooting Contagion, a drama about the outbreak of a deadly virus that has Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Jude Law and Marion Cotillard starring, and Warner Bros releasing in October. Soderbergh will be squeezing this in between his plans to direct Douglas and Damon in Liberace, and then The Man From U.N.C.L.E. with his former partner and frequent onscreen collaborator George Clooney. Even though he runs the risk of being moviedom's Brett Favre, I hope Soderbergh continues finding talent and scripts that keep him coming back for more. I can still remember being at Sundance years ago and watching how his film sex, lies & videotape changed the landscape of independent cinema by showing how an intelligent indie could play beyond a tiny arthouse theater circuit. Then I saw how Soderbergh ended a run of mostly crappy adaptations of books by one of my favorite authors, Elmore Leonard, when he and Scott Frank transformed Out of Sight into the mature, sexy thriller it was on the page. Throw in Traffic, Erin Brockovich and King of the Hill, and how many working directors have a better list of credits? Soderbergh has said he feels exhausted by the process and seems to think he'll run out of things to say. Favre should certainly stay retired, but Soderbergh should keep making films but maybe work in a vacation here and there. Making them back to back like he has been doing is enough to have any director pondering the rest home.
It's like I've always said, Soderbergh's retirement from film would only last until Channing Tatum approached him with a pitch for a male stripper movie loosely based on Saturday Night Fever. I've always said that.
Or he could make more movies like Full Frontal and Schizopolis.
This is what happens when you do 1-2 movies a year. you get burnt out. so he doesn't want to do location scouts anymore... fair enough if that's all you're doing. go get laid, pop out a couple kids and then remember how good you had it.
I'm more excited about Kevin Smith's retirement because when he says he's done he actually means it.
Quote from: Reelist on April 30, 2011, 08:34:17 PM
I'm more excited about Kevin Smith's retirement because when he says he's done he actually means it.
Uhh you should be more excited about Smith's retirement because he makes consistently terrible movies. You should hope that Soderbergh changes his mind/was lying before Man From U.N.C.L.E. is done because he's awesome.
I think saying excited means he agrees. why would you be excited for something that you don't want to end?
I'm actually looking forward to Smith's last two. If he plays his cards right he could seal his legacy pretty well, but Soderbergh shows no signs of stopping, none of these projects seems remotely personal. He's gotta go back to his roots and do something as good as his 90's stuff if he thinks he's gonna slide outta this one unscathed. Which means we can expect to be seeing films from him for the next twenty years.
Let's just take a second to acknowledge that you think Kevin Smith might actually make a good movie and you're upset that Soderbergh might not retire like he says he will.
In 5 years you will look back at this post and laugh. :yabbse-grin:
Yeah, I was going to say, I'm not sure "Kevin Smith" and "legacy" should be used in the same sentence.
I guess I have a pretty bad track record for predicting good movies, but I'm really excited about Red State. I already know it will end up being my favorite of his. That's not to say it will stand up next to Soderbergh's most minor efforts, but at least it has drawing power for me. The Bergh has been boring the shit out of me lately. He's still great, but I'm bored of being bored by him. It's just like "get it over with, already," and he can't even think of good movie to go out on so he's just like "meh, I guess I'm not done yet."
The Informant! is such a good movie in my opinion, filled with so many gags and details and riches. I don't expect most of you to jump in to agree, but in real life few of my friends agreed with me and I was eventually able to turn the majority of them onto the movie. I wish I could sit you all down and shuffle through the movie, but we're on the internet. One friend who absolutely hates the movie on the grounds of it being a movie about people talking in offices I couldn't convince, because that is basically the movie and I can't change what it is, but it's really worth watching a second time and paying attention to.
And Che was a great theater experience, even with a man suffering from Tourettes in the audience with me, which no personal offense but was obviously pretty annoying and my first time experiencing this specific handicap within a theater experience (one time an old lady was hooked into some kind of breathing apparatus that made sucking noises, that was pretty rough). He tried to hide his outbursts in bursts of loud noises, like gun fire, but sometimes sadly his one burst would last longer than the movie's burst, so a single gunshot would often be followed by a round of "shit fuck poop"s. All of this description is secondary to the virtues of Che that's my bad. Point is, I'd say something like Carlos > Che > Baader Meinhof Complex > Mesrine.
The Ocean movies are fun enough that I bet a lot of you saw all three, while say let's compare that to the Fast and Furious series which I bet most of you aren't following or very interest in anymore.
And he pretty much began the 00's at the top of his game.
As to say, I don't agree with this Decline of Soderbergh stuff. His movies aren't personal in the sense that they're soul revealing, but they're personal in the sense that he continues to investigate the potential of cinematic form and continues to be adventurous beyond acclaim that makes some other complacent. I appreciate so much a filmmaker who obviously loves cinema more than he loves himself, and don't know why others don't too.
Damn good post. And i like theater experiences stories, the tourette deal is pretty funny/sad
Steven Soderbergh Reiterates Retirement Plans And Desire For "A Smallish Farewell Parade"
BY MIKE FLEMING | Deadline
While I have been on record expressing the sentiment that there are many filmmakers who should retire before Steven Soderbergh, I just got off the phone with the filmmaker. And damn it, he still wants to punch out by the time he hits 50. "I'm still following my plan," he told me. "I've been stupid about it, I should have kept my mouth shut, but at the same time, I don't think there's anything that unusual about it. By the time I finish with the series of projects I'm planning, it will be 26 or 27 films. That's plenty and if you take volume over quality, I'm twice as good as Kubrick." Forecasting his exit also didn't help in terms of preparing the industry to make a fuss over him. "I figured by giving them two years lead time, they would line up those lifetime achievement awards, but there have been no calls or anything," Soderbergh joked. Asked what he would like, he said, tongue firmly in cheek, "The Oprah thing. A year-long daily celebration of my fabulousness would be nice. Or maybe just a smallish parade." Soderbergh and I were speaking about Relativity Media's decision to release Haywire, which it financed but set distribution originally through Lionsgate. Though that picture was shot before Contagion--the thriller about the outbreak of a deadly virus that stars Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Marion Cotillard and Jude Law--Haywire will be released January 20, 2012, three months after Contagion. Soderbergh will talk the picture up while promoting Contagion, which he feels will help an action film that leans heavily on Gina Carano, known only to mixed martial arts fans who've seen her fight on the circuit. Soderbergh also liked the Relativity move because it reunites him with Relativity's new marketing chief Terry Curtin, with whom Soderbergh worked at Universal on Erin Brockovich. "I think it might be best for Haywire to follow Contagion, which is the kind of film people like to see me make," Soderbergh said. "It's in the vein of Traffic, an entertaining multi-layered story about something timely right now. Because Gina has never been in a movie before, being able to draft off Contagion will be very good. We knew she could do the right stuff, but she really delivers as a screen presence. She looks comfortable, and then she tears these guys in half." Soderbergh said he'll start work in September on Magic Mike, the film that will star Channing Tatum and Alex Pettyfer as male strippers in a coming of age story reminiscent of Saturday Night Fever. He'll follow by directing George Clooney in The Man From U.N.C.L.E. in February. After that, Liberace with Michael Douglas and Damon will likely be Soderbergh's swan song. While I remind him that he's walking away at a time when he has plenty to say and the wisdom to know how to solve problems that maturity brings. He disagreed. "I'm not better at things that I've been trying to get at and I find it frustrating," he said. Asked what he's trying to discover, he said, "A new grammar, maybe. I haven't quite figured out what it is. In lieu of some gigantic epiphany I might feel when I see this new thing I imagine is out there, I feel like I am out of ideas. I find myself saying, I've done this shot before. Or, I've solved this problem before by doing the same thing I'm doing now. I don't like that feeling of, 'I've done this.' If you are dealing within the confines of traditional narrative filmmaking, it's hard not to feel like you're in a box after awhile." What will he do instead? "Probably something visual, and I wouldn't be surprised if I'm still making things, but they will be under the radar and I won't be asking other people to pay for them," he said. "When I turn 50 around January, 2013, I would like to think I will have blown a kiss goodbye to the industry." Soderbergh admits this could be altered, saying he's made plans before and changed them. "Maybe this turns out to be an extended sabbatical, where I recharge myself, but I need an extended break." He's repped by Anonymous Content.
Steven Soderbergh says talk of his retirement 'got blown out of proportion', blames Matt Damon (http://insidemovies.ew.com/2011/07/22/steven-soderbergh-retirement-matt-damon/)
Quote from: ew.comAt the Hall H presentation for Steven Soderbergh's butt-kicking thriller Haywire, director Steven Soderbergh addressed those reports about his supposed retirement — and where they came from. "Matt Damon is about as discrete as a fourteen-year-old girl," the director told EW's own Anthony Breznican, who was moderating. "I had this drunken conversation with him in Chicago shooting Contagion," he said, adding then he read the reports in the paper a few days later. While he praised the actor's good memory ("he remembered it almost verbatim"), he said that he wasn't as serious as he had implied. "I was just sort of going off," he said. In this economy, "No one wants to hear about someone quitting a good job. It got blown out of proportion. That's Matt's fault!"
Fuckin' Matt Damon.
Steven Soderbergh Now Denying Retirement From Filmmaking
Source: THR
It's just a sabbatical," the "Contagion" director insists, a few days after saying he was leaving Hollywood to become a painter. Steven Soderbergh isn't ready to leave filmmaking for good after all. A few days after saying he was planning to retire from directing to become a painter, Soderbergh is now insisting that he isn't ready to completely leave Hollywood just yet.
"It's less dramatic that it sounds; it's just a sabbatical," the director said at the Venice Film Festival, where his latest movie, Contagion, premiered Saturday. "I feel I need to recalibrate, so I can discover something new," he told the Observer, as picked up by BBC News. "I'm out of ways of telling art."
Just last week, he told the New York Times his retirement was going to become a reality. "I'm interested in exploring another art form while I have the time and ability to do so," he said. "I'll be the first person to say if I can't be any good at it and run out of money I'll be back making another Ocean's movie."
Soderbergh's retirement talk is nothing new: The director has been hinting about it since 2009, but he fueled the flames of speculation when he said in March that he had two more movies to make --Liberace, starring Matt Damon and Michael Douglas, and Man From U.N.C.L.E., starring George Clooney, who has since bowed out --and then he was done with directing.
Meanwhile, Soderbergh did direct another film, the spy thriller Haywire, and is in preproduction on the Channing Tatum male stripper drama Magic Mike. Contagion, which is competing at the Venice festival, is a thriller about a global pandemic that features an A-list ensemble including Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, Laurence Fishburne and Kate Winslet.
Why doesn't he just give one interview where he tells us one clear version of this story... you know, the one that's actually true?
Perhaps this was a publicity strategy.
Quote from: Jeremy Blackman on September 05, 2011, 11:39:33 AM
Why doesn't he just give one interview where he tells us one clear version of this story... you know, the one that's actually true?
Perhaps this was a publicity strategy.
How about no interviews at all and instead just keep his dumb ass behind the camera where he belongs?
Every time Soderbergh opens his mouth he just makes himself look like a grade-a pretentious asshole who thinks way too highly of himself. Fuck outta here, Soderbergh!
He needs to know his role and stick behind the camera, not in front of it. Every time he gives an interview or announces/unannounces his retirement, someone from xixax should smack him upside the head and tell him to knock it off. Little hoe.
Quote from: S.R. on September 05, 2011, 09:02:25 PMHe needs to know his role and stick behind the camera, not in front of it.
um, no. more being in front. (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v135/Kingdom_royal/schizopolis-mirror.jpg)