The Young and Prodigious Spivet

[MacGuffin]

Release date: October 16, 2013

Starring: Helena Bonham Carter, Niamh Wilson, Robert Maillet, Judy Davis

Directed by: Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Premise: A 12-year-old cartographer secretly leaves his family's ranch in Montana where he lives with his cowboy father and scientist mother and travels across the country on board a freight train to receive an award at the Smithsonian Institute.

[Mel]

Quiz: How many crane shots you can find in a trailer?

Was a bit worried how 3D could affect the movie. Looks like all characteristics of JPJ are in place.

[MacGuffin]

New Trailer

[Mel]

Holdback by Weinstein (only parts of whole article)
via http://www.jpjeunet.fr/GB/news-about-spivet/

Sold worldwide, TS will only be on the screens in other countries as of May. This is due to the fact that a contract was signed with the famous American distributor Harvey Weinstein, which prohibits other countries from releasing the film before the USA. This is called a "holdback". And this is why Spivet could not participate in all the international festivals it was invited to. Fortunately, this "holdback" ends in May.

As for the American release, no date has been set yet. Of course Mr. Weinstein would like to 'Americanize' it. If I made Spivet a Franco -Canadian film it was exactly so that I could keep the final cut. What would we say if a gallery owner said to a painter "I will give your painting to a framer so that he can change the colors, because Americans don't like red"?

DVD and Bluray

Because of this "holdback" the DVD and Bluray versions will be released in June instead of January as originally planned, to prevent English-speaking spectators from buying it on the Internet before the cinema release in their own country.

[Ghostboy]

I saw this last year and could scarcely sit through it. Give me Alien 4 any day.

[Mel]

I saw this last year and could scarcely sit through it. Give me Alien 4 any day.

After seeing it, I must agree. Amount of unmotivated shots is staggering. Unmotivated is wrong word, since it can be explained by 3D, but you get my point. You can't deny that production is nice, but it is so often reduced to 3D related gimmick it hurts: "look truck is closing-in, look truck is going away". I believe that at least 30 minutes could be left out and film would stay almost the same for this particular reason. Most of intended jokes didn't translate for me and that didn't help with boredom either.

[Pubrick]

I'm gonna go ahead and call it:

Jean-Pierre Jeunet is DONE.

[Alexandro]

haven't seen that trailer, but last week I started watching amelie for the first time in 12 years or something and I had to turn it off. it was almost unbearably mellow. every shot screamed a winky winky cuteness, every camera movement felt slow and predictable, every attempt at humor was stale. this is a film I remembered as a masterpiece, but this time i couldn't even finish it. It hasn't aged well at all. Also, this time around the character of Amelie reminded me of so many girls who used her as a model to liberate their inner "weird/unique/original" persona with horrible results and I feel that had something to do with it.

[03]

delicatessen and city of lost children are two movies that have been very special to me since childhood. amelie is also pretty significant in my life, but at a different time. something happened to him after amelie, i think it was the films insane popularity and the time it was made had a lot of high quality quirky movies that quickly reached cult status, the royal tenenbaums, donnie darko, etc, so i think that created his 'point' in which he decided to make something overtly different from his usual, and while being a good movie, its the most forgettable of everything he's done. i think he felt this, and took 5 years to make his next flick, which returned him to his tex avery style kind of shamelessly. you could tell he was in his comfort zone and he didnt give a shit. that's what makes me somewhat hopeful for this, just because itll be fun. he's not gilliam done, but he's definitely done, like 10 years ago. this still looks pretty cool to me.