Universal craved a sequel to Angelina Jolie's assassination tango/loom tutorial Wanted. Unfortunately for the studio, Jolie is leaving them...wanting. We've just heard the actress has pulled out of the planned Timur Bekmambetov-directed sequel at Universal, and the studio has pulled the plug rather than recast the film. As for Jolie, we hear she is now intent on starring in Warner Bros.' Gravity, a space thriller to be directed by Children of Men's Alfonso Cuarón from a script he wrote with his 28-year-old son, Jonás.
Like Wanted 2, Gravity had previously been set up at Universal, with Jolie set to star. But a few weeks ago, the studio put Gravity into turnaround, possibly because it's such an artistically challenging project: Jolie would be alone on-screen for much of the movie, playing the sole surviving human member of a space mission, desperately trying to return home to Earth and her daughter. (In that way it's reminiscent of the brilliant, little-seen Moon with Sam Rockwell. Seriously, why won't you see it?) Now Warners has snapped it up, and it will be produced by Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows producer David Heyman and Legendary Pictures.
Read more: Angelina Jolie Says No to Wanted 2, Killing the Sequel -- Vulture http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/02/angelina_jolie_wanted_2_out.html#ixzz0gaw0I0gp
Downey Orbits Cuaron's 3D Gravity
By MIKE FLEMING; Deadline Hollywood
EXCLUSIVE: Robert Downey Jr. is negotiating a deal to star in Gravity, the 3D space film directed by Alfonso Cuaron. Warner Bros and Legendary Pictures will co-finance.
Cuaron wrote the script with his son, Jonas.
Downey will play the leader of a team posted at a remote space station. While he and a female colleague are traveling outside the space station, the other team members are decimated by debris from an exploded satellite.
The script had been developed originally at Universal with the intention of having Angelina Jolie play the female role. Much of the film is devoted to her struggle to get back to Earth and her daughter. Jolie passed around the time Universal cut it loose. Downey was drawn to the chance to work wtih Cuaron, the director of Children of Men and Y tu mama tambien. The actor's starpower gives Warners execs a confidence boost because right now, how many actresses can carry a big sci-fi film themselves, outside of Jolie?
Downey will shoot the film in London this summer, finishing in time to re-team with director Guy Ritchie and Jude Law in the Sherlock Holmes sequel that will shoot early fall, also in London.
Scarlett Johansson To Team Up With Robert Downey Jr. Again For Alfonso Cuaron's 'Gravity'
Source: ThePlaylist
Around The Playlist water cooler we had been wondering, with Alfonso Cuaron's sci-fi epic "Gravity" moving forward, just who would have the star power to take on the leading female role previously attached to Angelina Jolie. Well, the NY Daily News reports (via Bleeding Cool) that Robert Downey Jr's "Iron Man 2" co-star Scarlett Johansson has "verbally agreed" to star in the film.
"Gravity" has been gearing up, with a call out by the special effects team for animators for the project. In June, it was reported that Downey Jr. would juggle his filming on the project, starting later this summer, with his commitment to "Sherlock Holmes 2"' shooting this fall. Basically, RDJ will be part of the bookends of the film's production.
"Gravity" centers on a team of astronauts — including the lead medical engineer and a talkative "mile-a-minute" veteran astronaut — who are asked to abandon their fix-it Hubble telescope mission and quickly reboard their ship after a sudden implosion of Russian satellites triggers a debris avalanche in orbit that threatens their immediate safety. It's basically a very high concept sci-fi thriller and a nonstop race for our protagonists to get back to earth.
The film will be hugely-CGI heavy, with the FX company drawing comparisons to "Avatar" in terms of the workload, calling it "60% CG feature animation." Furthermore, the film will be shot in Cuaron's trademark fluid style, with an opening shot intended to last at least 20 minutes. However, Bleeding Cool reports that Warner Bros. are still not comfortable with the minimal dialogue in the film, but hopefully the studio and the director can iron out whatever differences they have. And certainly in the wake of the massive success of "Inception" the studio might be willing to take a chance on another ambitious, creative film. That said, given the amount of FX involved, the fact that most of the running time requires the cast to be weightless, and that it was written to be shot in 3D, this is also a very expensive film in a genre that typically doesn't perform very well.
We loved the script and are excited that it's inching closer to production but aren't quite sold on Johansson playing the lead of Ryan Stone, the young, brainy medical engineer. Frankly, she wasn't all that exciting as Black Widow in "Iron Man 2" and we're concerned if she will be able to have the presence and strength to own the screen for most of the film's roughly 90 minute run time (script we read is 99 pages -- 1 minute per page of script, do the math).
All this said, a "verbal agreement" is not a done deal as we're sure both sides are ironing out the finer points of any contract before making an official announcement. But with the summer quickly drawing to a close, production should be starting soon to keep everyone's schedules locked in, so we do expect more official word on the status and stars of this project shortly.
ScarJo is like a reverse Reese Witherspoon.
Reese is more talented (just barely) than the wide appealing forgettable projects and rom-coms she chooses to make, whereas ScarJo is less talented than the big and interesting roles she takes.
You kind of gotta respect ScarJo for trying, but I think she's been the worst part of some of the movies she's chosen that were good (Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Prestige, Match Point)
Natalie Portman offered lead in Alfonso Cuaron's 'Gravity' (exclusive)
Source: THR
TELLURIDE, Colo. -- Natalie Portman's highly praised, tortured turn in "Black Swan" could send her career into a new galaxy. Literally.
As Darren Aronofsky's psychological thriller rallied audiences at the Venice and Telluride film festivals last week, Portman has fielded an offer from Warner Bros. to star in the drama "Gravity." The lead in the epic survival story, co-written by Alfonso and Jonas Cuaron, has been a highly sought role for months, with Angelina Jolie pulling out of it recently.
The $80 million 3D survival story, which Alfonso Cuaron will direct, centers on a woman stranded on a space station after satellite debris slams into it and wipes out the rest of the crew. Robert Downey Jr. already has committed to a supporting role, but much of the picture is devoted to the female character, who must survive a solitary ordeal much in the way Tom Hanks did in "Cast Away" or James Franco does in "127 Hours," another Telluride sneak screening.
In the wake of "Swan" notices, Cuaron finally got the green light from the studio to relay the offer to Portman without requiring a screen test. Portman, who couldn't make it to Telluride's "Swan" screenings Sunday, is expected to read the latest version of the script this week and make her decision shortly.
Although Cuaron, Downey and the studio have juggled multiple potential stars, including Scarlett Johansson and Blake Lively, none has come up all cherries. But the role now is Portman's if she feels up for it. As an added benefit to the studio, even with a nice raise, her salary would only come in at about half of Jolie's.
"Gravity" is slated to shoot at the end of January, before Downey goes off to other engagements.
Repped by CAA and Brillstein Entertainment Partners, Portman already has three projects on their way to theaters: the Paramount romantic comedy "No Strings" in January, the Universal comedy "Your Highness" in April and the Marvel/Paramount comic book actioner "Thor" in May.
But it is her turn as the ambitious but psychologically fragile ballet dancer in "Swan," a role she developed with Aronofsky for years, that has wowed studios and filmmakers scrambling to cast her.
Scuttlebutt at Telluride after its first screenings is that, based solely on "Swan" reviews during the previous few days, Terrence Malick wants Portman for a Jerry Lee Lewis-related project he's developing with Brad Pitt, and Tom Stoppard ("Shakespeare in Love") also apparently is writing something for her. This is in addition to widespread opinion that Portman will be fielding major awards attention at year's end.
Fox Searchlight will release "Swan" on Dec. 1.
Quote from: MacGuffin on September 09, 2010, 03:13:39 PMTELLURIDE, Colo. -- Natalie Portman's highly praised, tortured turn in "Black Swan" could send her career into a new galaxy. Literally.
no.
Sandra Bullock in talks for 'Gravity'
Warner Bros. negotiating with thesp for Cuaron pic
Source: Variety
Has Alfonso Cuaron finally found his astronaut?
Warner Bros. is in negotiations with Sandra Bullock for the lead role opposite Robert Downey Jr. in Cuaron's 3D space pic "Gravity," after Natalie Portman passed on the project.
Portman had shown strong interest in the project but was unable to find time in her schedule to squeeze and ultimately had to pass.
The pic revolves around two astronauts fighting to survive on a remote space station after satellite debris wipes out the rest of the crew and destroys most of the station.
Scripted by Cuaron and his son, Jonas, film was originally set up at Universal but moved to Warner Bros., after which Downey became attached.
Cuaron's challenge has been to find a femme lead who can carry much of the film a la Tom Hanks in "Castaway" and began looking at a wide range of thesps for the role.
Angelina Jolie had been courted but couldn't work it into her sked between the Bosnian war film that she plans to direct and her commitment to lense a "Salt" sequel.
Once Jolie passed, there were doubts that the pic, said to be budgeted at around $80 million, would get off the ground.
But Bullock, riding high on her Oscar win for "The Blind Side," is seen as a strong candidate to topline.
David Heyman is producing "Gravity" through his Heyday Films along with Legendary Pictures.
Besides "Gravity," Bullock has been considering several projects including "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" with Hanks.
Guillermo Del Toro Says Alfonso Cuarón's Plans For 'Gravity' Are 5 Years Ahead Of Its Time
Filmmaker Also Says Cuaron Has Consulted James Cameron & David Fincher
Source" Playlist
We're not going to recount the long journey Alfonso Cuarón has taken to get "Gravity" made, but needless to say after original lead actress Angelina Jolie bailed, the film seemed on the verge of collapsing before Sandra Bullock stepped in. The picture then looked like it might be dashed against the rocks when co-star Robert Downey Jr. had to exit the project to film "The Avengers," but then George Clooney came aboard to rescue it in late 2010. Well, with the film now in production with a release date set for late next year, it's now a matter of seeing if the all the drama and waiting will be worth the hype, and according to Guillermo Del Toro, it will be.
The director/producer recently sat down with MTV during rounds for "Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark" and teased about the epic scope of his friend's film. Revealing that he put Cuarón in touch with James Cameron regarding some of the technical aspects of the film, he said, "Jim said, well you know, look, you're about five years into the future. When Jim said that it's too early to try anything that crazy, they did it [anyway]." Del Toro goes to hint that Cuarón and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki have come up with their own tools and equipment to facilitate the shoot, but of course he can't quite talk about what the filmmakers are doing that will push envelope—though he does hint we'll soon find out.
Of course, the ambitious scope of the project is nothing new. Last summer it was revealed the film will be hugely-CGI heavy, with comparisons from a technical standpoint being made to "Avatar," with reports saying that "Gravity" will be a 60% CG feature animation with a 20-minute opening shot. We presume that has something to do with the limits Del Toro says Cuarón and company are pushing.
"[They're] absolutely pushing a new boundary in filmmaking, completely mindblowing. And the way they're making that movie will, I think, forever change certain types of productions," Del Toro enthused. "I'm amazed at Alfonso the past few movies because he's completely transformed himself. ['Gravity' is] incredibly well-calculated. Very human, if you know the story," he also added. So then, here's the plot: The film is an ambitious, mostly one-character piece set on a remote space station. During an expedition outside the station, only the team leader (Clooney) and his female colleague (Bullock) are left alive after an exploding satellite kills the other members of the crew, setting off a desperate race home for the latter to get to her child.
As simple and straightforward as it seems on paper, in execution is appears it will be anything but. Despite production already being underway, it seems the set is under some serious lock and key as nothing at all has leaked (yet). And there are certainly big plans for the movie as it's already set for a prime November 21, 2012 release date.
The most ambitious, mindblowing part is getting Sandra Bullock to star in a good movie.
I suspect the 60% CGI will go a long way in achieving that.
TEASER POSTER:
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I've heard about this project for so long that I kinda forgot about it, but wow, October isn't too far off. I'm excited. Think we'll see a teaser trailer attached to these summer blockbusters (superman, etc)?
This better be quite good or better because I like Cuaron and have waited a long time for this.
Gravity trailer being released tomorrow mate.
I have complete faith in this film, Children of Men is a masterpiece, and just behind CMBB as the greatest film made in the 21st Century. Cuaron doing space, post-children of men, and Del Toro saying "What Alfonso is doing with this film is Kubrickian" have had my cinematic juices flowing for a while now. This is going to deliver, mark my words, it will be the most immersive cinematic endeavor of a film set in space.
But until then, here's a bit of cocktease footage on an ET promo
HOLY SHIT.
"Aaaahhhhhhhh!" - Sandra Bullock
Me likey.
See that's how you do a trailer. Cannot wait.
I had completely forgotten about this. I'm fucking psyched now.
Geez Louise, that trailer was intense.
Roll on October indeed.
New still courtesy of Empire (http://www.empireonline.com/news/story.asp?NID=38041):
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SB has never looked hotter.
Except for whatever the hell is going on with her face.
Wow. No words. This is something new.
first thought the camera moved as if the camera operator was in space like the other people, but then i stopped thinking that. i'm curious about their walls. suspect it was easy to give a wall the image of earth. i'm curious about the set, did it rotate. did the props rotate. how did the crane move. how do the cuts happen. you know, the effects. what did digital technology do here. $80million and that's not space, no. arizona and shepperton
i don't call it kubrick because he can figure out how to pretend space, but i like that he can. there will be videos. wanna see those videos, maybe more than i wanna see the movie. i'll see the movie too
So far these trailers have done nothing for me but cool my expectations, which can be a good thing. I don't know, but the first paragraph of what trashculturemutantjunkie wrote makes sense to me. I will watch this, but I won't be expecting greatness anymore.
really mad that it's now obvious that Spiegel im spiegel will be the soundtrack to this movie, and I won't be able to use it for whatever the fuck I'm working on now :(
Quote from: wilderesque on July 24, 2013, 12:24:05 AM
This is something new.
the teasers are certainly original, but i still have very little idea of what this movie will be like in the the long form.
i am worried about bullock's involvement. she's a mark of a bad script (apart from her breakout role). if she's involved you know there must be something wrong with the story or logic of the film, it's like when halle berry signs up to a film, it's a red flag. i still don't know how the hell the latter got attached to Cloud Atlas. my guess is the film made no sense to her so she just went along with it, because that's usually what gets her attention, an incomprehensible script, but that time it was hard to understand cos it was GOOD.. not cos it was Catwoman.
i digress. clooney + cuaron is interesting to me.
Quote from: pete on July 24, 2013, 11:31:31 AM
really mad that it's now obvious that Spiegel im spiegel will be the soundtrack to this movie, and I won't be able to use it for whatever the fuck I'm working on now :(
Don't let that stop you! It was also used in the Zero Theorem trailer last week, and has been in pretty constant rotation amongst music supervisors ever since Gerry.
These trailers don't blow my mind either, but they've got me on the hook and I'm really excited to be overwhelmed by the experience of actually seeing the movie.
this is going to be the best thing ever even if it's terrible.
and yeah arvo part is like the new beethoven. expect to hear him in every movie for the next 100 years.
I think this film is going to make all of us shit our pants. Lubezki said last year that the opening long take is 17 minutes long, I believe that what we've just seen is the final 2 minutes of that 17.
17 minutes -- the alexa, digital. space, digital. effects, digital. it's a lot of digital thought. i don't think i'll shit myself but i'll be excited
I'll be looking for the inevitable meatspin reference in the film.
Crying Game in space?
SOLD
Yet another small trailer, looks like a follow up to "Detached":
^teaser of the year.
fucking hell.
"anyone?..... anyone?" and earth's lights beneath.
yep, this is good.
is it official the new 2OO1 now?
Quote from: picolas on July 24, 2013, 12:55:14 PM
.
and yeah arvo part is like the new beethoven. expect to hear him in every movie for the next 100 years.
I saw this trio play it live in an antique piano shop. those fuckers knew nothing about movies. I thought they were pure.
Speechless.
I'll be at the theater on day 1.
Quote from: Brett Ratner on July 24, 2013, 02:07:46 PM
is it official the new 2OO1 now?
With a runtime of 88 minutes, I think it is what it is, an explosive visceral story of survival in space.
What I find really amazing about this trailer is that the shot is moving around constantly but not arbitrarily, the camera is moving as if from an unseen, additional astronaut's POV (the audience), and is giving us the same experience that Clooney and Bullock are having -- moving to mimic the feeling, the weight, the speed of being in space ourselves.
OK, now that new teaser is something else. I seriously didn't like the CGI extravaganza look of that long take but if the rest of the movie is on a quieter tone it might not be that distracting.
I'm scared by the "attraction" side of Gravity...But I look forward to it.
Quote from: Drenka on July 25, 2013, 11:08:05 AM
I'm scared by the "attraction" side of Gravity...But I look forward to it.
wow, it looks incredible.
only 88min? I hope all 88 minutes are as tense as these teasers.
I'm already sick of hearing Sandra Bullock freak-out-breathing, but I still can't wait to see this.
Okay, these last two clips hooked me.
if this pulls an only god forgives i'm going to be really really genuinely upset.
spiegel em speigel, nice
so lets talk about why this is going to be good and why it might not, because i think thats a pretty fertile conversation.
Reasons it will be good, point #1: Alfonso Cuarón makes good movies, why should he stop now?
good point but i think that logic could be applied to many movies that failed. next
Quote from: HeywoodRFloyd on July 24, 2013, 05:58:05 PM
Quote from: Brett Ratner on July 24, 2013, 02:07:46 PM
is it official the new 2OO1 now?
With a runtime of 88 minutes, I think it is what it is, an explosive visceral story of survival in space.
still think HeywoodRFloyd nailed this
a certain determination of some art is to confront the mystery. if i could answer in a single way what the mystery is, i'd abolish the entire enterprise of art, philosophy, psychology, etc. in summary, watch 2001. can't be topped, or at least no other movie has topped that. no other movie has so well laced together the progresses of art and science and technology, and so well depicted that you still got the human mystery. 2001 is so compelling because kubrick knew that, demonstrated that
another determination is to tell a story really well and present clarity. i think cuarón will do this. remind the audience -- no matter what the mystery thingaling is, you have to fight life. it's hard. we (humans) have been at it for thousands of years. this movie will be a good fight, and i don't think people will even use swords of rocket launchers or anything like that. i'll probably cry and feel terrible, and i suspect i'll know exactly why. if i don't, i hope cuarón follows a good path. what i mean is i hope he doesn't near the end and throw everything up in the air. i don't think he'll do that. he might. it happens
i know he'll help expand the technology of the art he's using. i don't even think it's arguable that creators from mexico have been doing a better job of expanding the digital form
you can indeed combine the two types. who taught it? kafka of course. here's david foster wallace describing kafka:
QuoteNo wonder we cannot appreciate the really central Kafka joke: that the horrific struggle to establish a human self results in a self whose humanity is inseparable from the horrific struggle. That our endless and impossible journey toward home is in fact our home.
IMAX Poster
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Positive review from Variety - CONTAINS SPOILERS (http://variety.com/2013/film/reviews/gravity-review-venice-film-festival-1200589689/)
Damn I want to read this script.
shit, this isn't the canyons so i can't hear the spoiler, but all you needed to say was you want to read the script. which is what you said(!!)
xixax is most hyping me about this movie. you hyping me
All Is Lost In Space.
Guardian gives 4/5 stars - MORE SPOILS (http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/aug/28/gravity-review-venice-film-festival)
Quote from: 03 on July 26, 2013, 12:01:41 AM
if this pulls an only god forgives i'm going to be really really genuinely upset.
Pulling an OGF was a good thing for me personally, so I wouldn't mind.
The Variety review had something about the ghosts of Ophuls and Kubrick smiling on Cuaron or something.
Alfonso Cuaron Returns to the Bigscreen After Seven Years With 'Gravity'
Source: Variety
When Alfonso Cuaron was first planning his marooned-in-space drama "Gravity," the filmmaker imagined an action-drama set in orbit, most of it with just a single character who would be weightless for the entire picture. It would be filmed using his signature long, continuous shots.
But there was one big problem: As fellow director David Fincher warned Cuaron and his cinematographer, Emmanuel "Chivo" Lubezki, the technology to make that movie simply didn't exist yet. He advised them to wait five years.
"We were stubborn, (and) said we're going to make it work," Cuaron tells Variety. "But you know what? David was right. It took us 4½ years."
"Gravity," which opened the Venice Film Festival to great fanfare — and early Oscar buzz — and will screen at Telluride and Toronto on its way to an Oct. 4 release, is as much of a game-changer, in its way, as "Avatar" was. Perhaps that's fitting, since "Avatar" director James Cameron, whose pal Cuaron screened the fi lm for him four weeks ago, is among the picture's most ardent champions.
"I was stunned, absolutely floored," he says. "I think it's the best space photography ever done, I think it's the best space film ever done, and it's the movie I've been hungry to see for an awful long time."
Cameron, surprisingly, said it wasn't the cutting edge technology that impressed him; it was Cuaron's uncompromising vision and tenacity in getting the picture made as he wanted it, and star Sandra Bullock's preparation for and performance of a highly challenging role. "What is interesting is the human dimension," Cameron says. "Alfonso and Sandra working together to create an absolutely seamless portrayal of a woman fighting for her life in zero gravity."
The 91-minute picture — unusually short in today's world of two-hour-plus tentpoles — follows two spacewalking astronauts, commander Matt Kowalsky (George Clooney) and mission specialist Ryan Stone (Bullock), whose journey becomes a fight for survival when a fusillade of debris cripples their shuttle, kills a shipmate and leaves them stranded in space. As they make their way to the Intl. Space Station and beyond, searching for a lifeboat, it falls to Stone, on her first space expedition, to find a way back to Earth despite a terrifying series of setbacks.
A lot is riding on "Gravity" for Bullock, the filmmakers and their studio backer, Warner Bros., which bankrolled the risky mission at approximately $100 million. For producer David Heyman, it is the first picture he's steered since the blockbuster "Harry Potter" series. For Cuaron, it's his first since 2006's sci-fi thriller "Children of Men," and by far his most challenging outing. For Bullock, it's the first time the Oscar winner has toplined a CG-heavy sci-fier, let alone carried an entire picture on her own for most of its length.
Even with so much at stake, though, Cuaron stayed true to form, eschewing a tried-and-true approach to filmmaking in favor of breaking creative and technological barriers to bring a highly emotional story to the fore.
"Alfonso does not play it safe," says Heyman, who worked with the director on the third "Harry Potter" film, "Prisoner of Azkaban," the darkest, and according to many the most daring, of the series. In "Gravity," Cuaron and his team tackled unproven techniques and digital technologies aimed at transporting audiences into weightless space.
"There was no way to rely on anything we knew before this film," Bullock says. "No character was like Stone, no film set was ever like these sets, not one member of this crew had ever done this before. We all were doing something that had never been done before."
"Gravity" began to tug at Cuaron after his screenwriter son Jonas asked him for notes on a struggle-for-survival script he was writing, "Desierto." The elder Cuaron had a few notes, but liked the script's stripped-down narrative.
"What I really wanted to do is something in which, in a single through -line, you can play and juggle with different things and motifs and serious subject matter without stopping the action," Cuaron says. "I said (to Jonas), 'I would love you to help me do something like that,' and he got excited (and said), 'OK, let's do something together.' "
They soon settled on a theme they wanted to explore: "Adversity and the possibility of rebirth as an outcome of adversities," explains the director.
Cuaron, a space buff from the days of the Apollo moon shots, proposed they set the story in space, in the present day. They focused on one of NASA's real-life nightmare scenarios: the Kessler Syndrome.
In 1978, NASA scientist Donald J. Kessler theorized that there are enough objects in low-Earth orbit that a collision between objects could have a cascade effect, with the debris from the first crash causing more crashes, which shoot off more debris, which cause more crashes, and so on. Once the Kessler Syndrome starts, anything or anyone in orbit would be subject to a lethal bombardment by shrapnel moving at tremendous speeds. "We decided to take that as a metaphor for adversity," Cuaron says.
The Cuarons developed the script at Universal, where Alfonso had directed "Children of Men" in 2006. Universal was hoping to attach Angelina Jolie to the project, but decided the picture would be too expensive, and put "Gravity" into turnaround. Warners picked it up, and Cuaron cast Bullock and Robert Downey Jr. in late 2010 for the leads. Downey subsequently dropped out and was replaced by Clooney at the end of the year.
Meanwhile, the director and his team worked on developing a new way of shooting to go with their script.
There had been realistic space pictures before, notably Ron Howard's 1995 hit "Apollo 13," but they'd used a combination of actors on wires in front of bluescreens and short takes of weightlessness shot on NASA's Reduced Gravity Aircraft, a.k.a. the "Vomit Comet." That wouldn't work for Cuaron's style, with its extended takes.
Early in development, Cuaron contacted his longtime friend and cinematographer Lubezki. The pair had evolved their long-take technique, which sometimes covers an entire scene in a single shot, starting on "Y tu mama tambien," released in 2001.
"When (Cuaron) called and said, 'I want to do a movie in space,' immediately I started seeing the movie with all these very long shots I've never seen before, especially in a science-fiction movie," Lubezki says. "But I got a chill because I realized how hard it was going to be to do something like that, when you have an actor in zero gravity and you're not cutting."
For some scenes where they'd be seated inside space capsules, the actors playing Stone and Kowalsky could be shot in real, physical sets. But most of the movie had one or both of them floating free, either in a spacewalk or inside a space station. How to shoot such scenes? And on top of all that, Cuaron wanted the picture to be in 3D.
The director and cinematographer met with a number of friends and tech-savvy directors, including Fincher and Cameron. "I read the script, and I thought it was tremendously challenging to shoot with a high degree of veracity to get the real look of zero gravity," Cameron says. He recommended some performance-capture techniques he'd used on "Avatar," but Cuaron opted for a different route.
Adds Cameron: "I'm sure Alfonso had a real uphill battle with the studio, with everyone involved, to get it the way it needed to look. But he knew in his mind how it needed to look, and he went after it."
Cuaron enlisted visual effects supervisor Tim Webber, with whom he had also collaborated on "Children of Men." "We said if somebody can do it, it's Tim," Lubezki recalls. The trio of Cuaron, Lubezki and Webber soon concluded they couldn't make "Gravity" as they wanted to by simply using traditional methods. So for the spacewalk scenes, says Webber, "We decided to shoot (the actors') faces and create everything else digitally. Which was quite a difficult decision."
To do that, Lubezki reasoned, he would need to light the faces to match the all-digital environment they'd be put into. Whether the characters were floating gently, changing direction or tumbling in space, the facial light would have to be a perfect match for the Earth, sun and stars in the background. "That can break easily," explains Lubezki, "if the light is not moving at the speed that it has to move, if the position of the light is not right, if the contrast or density on the faces is wrong, et cetera."
Lubezki suggested folding an LED screen into a box, putting the actor inside, and using the light from the screen to light the actor. That way, instead of moving either Bullock or Clooney in the middle of static lights, the projected image could move while they stayed still and safe. This "light box" became the key to the spacewalk scenes. But it was only a nine-foot cube, just big enough for one actor, not an actor and a camera crew.
Another puzzle remained. Some scenes would show Bullock's Stone floating weightless inside the space station. If she appeared to be straining, that would break the illusion of weightlessness. So the filmmakers turned to industrial robots: specifically, robots designed for automobile manufacturing. They could carry heavy loads — the full weight of an actor — and move as quickly or slowly as required. Importantly, they could operate in less space than a cameraman or grip, and are incredibly precise.
However, they must be programmed well in advance. So the entire picture would have to be pre-planned and pre-visualized in fine detail: all of the blocking for the actors and the camera, every angle, every zoom, all the digital sets and backgrounds, the color and position of every light source.
"Pretty much we had to finish post-production before we could even start pre-production, because of all the programming," Cuaron says.
For interiors where Bullock would be out of her space suit, the filmmakers designed rigs to support her and move her around. She'd appear to be pushing herself along, but the robot would do all the work. "Luckily," Webber says, "Sandra was incredibly physically adept and very good at doing perfectly timed graceful movements while hitting complicated marks in 3D space and giving a great performance at the same time."
With so much new technology in play, the filmmakers redoubled their efforts to make sure the whole project didn't devolve into a technical exercise. Cuaron insisted Lubezki light the entire picture, not turn the lighting over to the vfx team. Lubezki spent months working with animators and digital lighting directors (he calls them his gaffers) at Framestore in London.
"I would wake up at 4 a.m., turn on my computer, I'd say good morning to my gaffer and start working on a scene," Lubezki says. "I would say, 'Move the sun 60,000 kilometers to the north.' That way I could put the lighting anywhere I wanted."
Sound design and the score, too, would play a critical role. There is no sound in space, so much of the action, even the debris storms, plays out against eerie silence, broken only by the score. The silence is more startling after the score builds to deafening crescendos, then stops abruptly. But during the interior scenes, the rumbles and groans of failing space gear are as frightening as the roars of any classic movie monster — even more so because their source is unseen.
The most human part of the process couldn't begin without the cast, though. Jolie and Natalie Portman were each offered the role of Stone before Bullock came onboard after winning the Oscar for "The Blind Side" earlier that year. The actress spent six months in physical training to prepare for shooting while reviewing the script with Cuaron in meticulous detail.
Says Cuaron, "More than anything else, we were just talking about the thematic element of the film, the possibility of rebirth after adversity." They worked out how she would perform each scene, and her notes were included the pre-vis animation and programming for the robots.
Cuaron and Bullock zeroed in on one crucial aspect of the performance: Stone's breath, "and how that breath was going to dictate her emotions," he says. "That breath that is connected with stress in some instances, but also the breath that is dictated by lack of oxygen."
Their conversations covered every detail of the script and Bullock's character. "She was involved so closely in every single decision throughout the whole thing," Cuaron says. "And it was a good thing, because once we started prepping for the shoot, it was almost more like a dance routine, where it was one-two-three left, left, four-five-six then on the right. She was amazing about the blocking and the rehearsal of that. So when we were shooting, everything was just about truthfulness and emotion."
Cameron says Bullock's work is more impressive than the technology that supported it. "She's the one that had to take on this unbelievable challenge to perform it. (It was) probably no less demanding than a Cirque du Soleil performer, from what I can see." And of the result, he says, "There's an art to that, to creating moments that seem spontaneous but are very highly rehearsed and choreographed. Not too many people can do it. ... I think it's really important for people in Hollywood to understand what was accomplished here."
The set Bullock walked onto didn't resemble a normal movie shoot. At one end of the stage was the light box, with a small hole in one side. Outside that hole was a track extending away from the box, and on that track, the robot holding the camera. Inside the box was a rig Bullock would be strapped into. In the wings were rows of computer workstations with technicians controlling the light box, lighting, camera and the robots.
"In the end, all the homework we did had to be let go once I stepped into the apparatus," Bullock says. "You had to trust you knew who the character was at that point and just mentally wrap your head around a most unnatural setting for an actor ... and make it natural."
Because it was laborious to get in and out of her rig, Bullock chose to stay inside the light box alone for nine or 10 hours at a time, communicating only through a headset. Though she calls those hours isolating and silent, she adds, "It also gave me the opportunity to dig as deeply as I needed to for whatever was required, in privacy. ... To me it felt as though there was nothing but the thoughts in my head to give me company."
With such an odd shooting space, and with only one actor on set much of the time, Cuaron says his biggest challenge was how to keep a warm, friendly set, "a place that is fun to play in," he says. "Not to (have it) become a technical game, but all the time to keep the creative aspect in the forefront of everything."
When Bullock arrived each day, there would be a mass celebration, including a "Rocky"-like fanfare and a big lighted sign atop the light box that read "Sandy's Cage."
Once in the box, Bullock knew what parts of her performance she could and could not change, while Lubezki and Webber were careful to give her some lattitude. "(Lubezki) being an amazing cinematographer," Cuaron says, "he's always very concerned about the atmosphere on the set and the atmosphere for the actors."
Lubezki remembers many days on the shoot being "scary," because some of the bits of gear simply wouldn't work sometimes. Adds Cuaron, "You don't know if it's just a simple cable or if it's something that has to do with software."
Lubezki often worried that the gear would break down and shooting would have to stop for days or weeks.
"He's always scared to death," says Cuaron with a laugh, but the director concedes his cinematographer had a legitimate concern. The day-cost for the shoot was on par with a typical tentpole, around $150,000, but that didn't include planning and programming costs.
Worse, Cuaron says, the pipeline for the picture, from previsualization to shooting to visual effects, was delicate. "If something fundamental in the technology that we were doing had collapsed, it would mean that the film would collapse. That was the spookiest thing. Any collapse in the pipeline would have huge ripple effects. So there were moments in which we felt the whole film had collapsed." In those moments, Clooney and Bullock worked hard to keep spirits up. But in the end, Cuaron says, their rigs were never down for more than about six hours at a time.
In the end, those behind the scenes agreed that the technology and prep succeeded in one crucial respect: It let the filmmakers — and the movie — zero in on Bullock's performance, which is already being buzzed about.
"The shoot for me was those Eureka moments," says Cuaron, recalling one particularly absorbing closeup of Bullock as Stone when the character is talking about her daughter. "You're cool that the light actually worked this time?" he asked Lubezki. "Was everything in sync?" he queried Webber.
"The two of them said, 'Of course. Forget about that. Do you see what just happened?' Suddenly, with all that weight of technology, we were capturing a great performance. ... It was those moments in which everything came together for what was the point of this film, the experience of a human up there."
Even while juggling "Gravity," Cuaron has made his first foray into TV series production in partnership with Warner Bros. and J. J. Abrams' Bad Robot banner. "Believe," a fantasy drama about an orphaned girl with supernatural powers, is set for a midseason bow on NBC. Cuaron co-created the series and directed the pilot last fall in New York. He will continue to have a hand in the show's creative direction through his role as exec producer.
Nice long article. I want to read it but first I need to know:
Does it contain many spoilers?
And more importantly, is it wilderesque-approved?
It's good but it describes the events which sets up th entire film (which could be considered a spoiler in a 90 minute film).
Take home points:
- David Fincher said they'd need to wait 5 years for movie space tech
- Came from an idea Cuaron's son had, Cuaron said lets put it in space
- Very unconventional filming
- Technology is astounding, difficult
- Cuaron is awesome, never comprises vision, the last best hope for cinema
- Sandra Bullock is way better than anyone ever thought
- James Cameron fucking loves it
- Lubezki was scared of the project but is also a genius
- Gravity is difficult
- Long takes
chills pt. 5
Just put this movie in front of my face already.
like P said somewhere, this is the year of teasers and trailers, Gravity alone could take two spots in the xixawards.
All right, forgive me but I'm just gonna repost my Facebook thoughts:
GRAVITY is great sight to behold. It's rare to see such a bold and ambitious vision so uncompromisingly put up onto the screen. The sound design is just as marvelous as the eye-popping visuals. It's a movie that really makes you want to drink in every frame of it.
But. I'd say a good third of the dialogue really distracted me, making it difficult to totally sink into the experience. The attempts to bring more depth to the characters (particularly the Ryan Stone character played by Sandra Bullock) actually end up doing the opposite, making them feel written. I feel like everything was already there to get us to care about everything that was going on; the backstory, exposition, and actual statement of themes and lessons learned only took away from its power.
Bullock's performance is to be greatly admired, though. She's put through hell and asked to do most of it alone, and having to do a lot of interacting with a world that's not actually there, as probably 95% of the movie is CGI. I read up on how they made the movie, and it sounds like it was really, really grueling. But it all ends up good in the movie, so good job Sandy.
Still an amazing movie, despite my disappointment with a third of the dialogue. Particularly if you're interested in special effects being used to stretch the visual language of cinema by testing the limits of where a camera can be, how it can move, and how it can look at things, in which case this movie is a must-see.
One of the most brilliant and effective things about GRAVITY is how it solves the problem of "but there's nothing to carry sound in outer space." The trailers are misleading; the sound effects of things crashing and exploding were made just for the commercials.
All you can hear are what the two leads can hear, which is each other's voices and Houston Mission Control (via radio communication) and the muffled sounds of whatever they're physically in contact with. It induces such a claustrophobic feeling that is very effective.
As is per usual, the things that bothered me about the movie fade in my memory while the effective moments stick. It's no A LITTLE PRINCESS but it's still got that Cuaron touch--a mix of easy charm and bold yet sensitive filmmaking.
I once saw him do a twirl as he was taking the last step off an escalator because he thought no one was watching. Then he saw me and The Perineum Falcon from this board and waved at us. This was in London. Y'all should see GRAVITY though. It's good.
P.S. So, I am very interested in 48fps. I don't think that THE HOBBIT was the best movie for it... it was possibly the worst movie for it (though it was still very fascinating to watch). What would have been the best movie for it? GRAVITY!
The positive aspect of 48fps is that 3D is more effectively rendered--things appear more solid and rounded whereas in 24fps, 3D looks like a hologram pop-up book.
The negative aspect of 48fps is things like hobbit/dwarf makeup look stupid it in, and regular rooms with regular camera movements look video gamey. Even the people who hated how THE HOBBIT looked generally appreciated the wide shots of scenery.
I suspect that the visual style of GRAVITY would have worked perfectly in 48fps, and the hyper-realism would have been really really cool and effective. There was no silly makeup so that wouldn't be a problem. Man, it would have been AWESOME.
Great experience, definitely a lot of shivers. But it's not a masterpiece, because the story, the Ryan Stone journey, is really conventional. One scene with her is great, and I thought : "Oh, it's not that bad. I feel something." I thought and I almost cried. And yet, Gravity is still great...Because it's unique.
Cuaròn was there, and he talked about how "Un condamné à mort s'est échappé" (A Man Escaped) from Bresson was an influence (but he said "it's a masterpiece, I just did a space movie"), and not video games. He only knows Pac-Man and Space Invader. And is not very good at them.
an impressive feat of technical bravura, sure, but there's next to nothing else here. it's as tepid and cliched a story of human perseverance as, say, apollo 13. that this is being lauded as unique or "like nothing you've ever seen before" is beyond me. almost as confounding as cuaron citing bresson as an influence. i enjoyed it more than children of men. i do think it's worth seeing purely for the spectacle of it. it's intermittently breathtaking.
edit - didn't realize that Cuaròn dvd pick was in another section
I thought this was a beautiful film to look at but there wasn't much else going on. Sandra Bullock was okay, I really didn't care for George Clooney's character all that much though maybe it was some of the dialogue that got to me: like when he says: "I know I'm devastatingly handsome" it just felt out of place I mean your crew members are dead, and she's running out of oxygen. Maybe I'm looking into it wrong and he was just trying to calm her down because she was freaking out.
Lots of technical details, just look out for spoiler in the 27th minute.
Quote from: samsong on October 04, 2013, 06:28:48 AM
an impressive feat of technical bravura, sure, but there's next to nothing else here. it's as tepid and cliched a story of human perseverance as, say, apollo 13. that this is being lauded as unique or "like nothing you've ever seen before" is beyond me. almost as confounding as cuaron citing bresson as an influence. i enjoyed it more than children of men. i do think it's worth seeing purely for the spectacle of it. it's intermittently breathtaking.
Completely disagree about the idea this is another Apollo 13. If it was, Bullock's traumatic situation would also be connected to a family and crew at home worrying about her situation to amplify the degree of emotional drama to her situation. Howard's film did it because the Apollo 13 story is famous for its effect on American culture so it was trying to represent how people felt when it happened almost live on television at the time. Howard probably also did it because he realized the lack of ability to communicate an investing drama if he just kept it to a crew only story. Gravity has more effects on hand, but it impressively isolates the human story to a few characters. Yes, Bullock is going to be capsized by emotions and reflect on feelings when she feels she is doomed to die, but I'm not sure the film could have avoided that.
my letterboxd review:
****/*****
all of my problems with this movie are overwhelmed by the visual experience, which is totally awe-inspiring and made me feel as though i was witnessing a new era of filmmaking. anything is possible. for this, gravity nearly transcends a rating, but if i must give one i am minusing a star (letting it off easy) for the following reasons:
- the score. about three minutes in, bullock says "i could get used to the silence". at precisely this moment cuaron decides to begin the score. so bullock is telling us one thing and the filmmaking is doing the exact opposite, robbing us of the silence, and padding the idea for no reason. every piece of music is only there to underline something incredibly obvious. 'this is peaceful!', 'this is scary!' etc. it holds your hand and detracts from the brutality and indifference of space. i think gravity would've taken a quantum leap forward without any score, or at the very least a score that wasn't so tonally obvious and unnecessary.
- the writing is touch and go. sometimes it lends the story a perfect degree of levity, and actually turns humour into a survival mechanism which is pretty cool. there are a lot of moments where the characters are describing things that are happening in front of them, and the movie properly justifies this early on, but as things unfold it becomes less and less believable that bullock would keep making little speeches the way she does. there's also a lot of heartstring-pulling expository stuff that doesn't really make sense in the context of what's going on as well. ultimately i wasn't nearly as moved by the story or characters as i was the visuals, which is unfortunate.
- casting bullock and clooney is generally a good idea for any movie, and they both do a great job. i really liked bullock especially. HOWEVER, casting movie stars inherently detracts from the realism of a movie, and this movie is ALL ABOUT how real everything is. i just know in my heart that no astronaut is that charming or sexy, and if cuaron had cast unknowns i would have believed what i was seeing that much more.
that's about it. i kind of want to go see this again right away.
OH--fuck 3D. it still isn't a good idea. everything's always a little darker, some objects look like floating cutouts, depending on where you sit things go in and out of 3D, and my eyes hurt. i will see this again in 2D for sure.
^Completely 100% agree with this. Very well said. Can't wait to see it again.
Along with those problems you brought up, I thought some of the POV shots felt too similar to video games. I feel like some directors are just more at ease with POV shots than others. They take a delicate hand to really do well. Usually when a director gets the opportunity make a film at this scale, these exact detriments are pretty much going to be a given. As much as he cites "A Man Escaped" as inspiration, everything Picolas just stated are things that are consciously NOT done in a Bresson film. This is the guy that did Harry Potter, as much as a filmmaker's filmmaker he seems to be, he definitely still has his mainstream sentimental impulses all over the place as well. I just tried to ignore them, bc of how miraculous the rest was.
I sometimes wish it would be easier to talk about a films strengths rather than it's weaknesses bc god damn was that an experience. The images I got to take home and dream about from this film changes your perception of life a bit. So much perspective, as well as the way Cuaron used the concept of perspective in camera work. Like Picolas said, it really felt like watching film history in the making. The actions going on sometimes just felt so unimportant compared to the scale of everything behind it or out the window, which added such a melancholy to the whole thing.
*this would be the third film I was cool with 3D for. Avatar, Prometheus and this. "To watch this non-3D would be watching 20% of the film" -Cuaron. And I believe him. Purely bc the compositions are reliant on this tool, and use it well.
Quote from: Gold Trumpet on October 06, 2013, 06:20:53 PM
Quote from: samsong on October 04, 2013, 06:28:48 AM
an impressive feat of technical bravura, sure, but there's next to nothing else here. it's as tepid and cliched a story of human perseverance as, say, apollo 13. that this is being lauded as unique or "like nothing you've ever seen before" is beyond me. almost as confounding as cuaron citing bresson as an influence. i enjoyed it more than children of men. i do think it's worth seeing purely for the spectacle of it. it's intermittently breathtaking.
Completely disagree about the idea this is another Apollo 13. If it was, Bullock's traumatic situation would also be connected to a family and crew at home worrying about her situation to amplify the degree of emotional drama to her situation. Howard's film did it because the Apollo 13 story is famous for its effect on American culture so it was trying to represent how people felt when it happened almost live on television at the time. Howard probably also did it because he realized the lack of ability to communicate an investing drama if he just kept it to a crew only story. Gravity has more effects on hand, but it impressively isolates the human story to a few characters. Yes, Bullock is going to be capsized by emotions and reflect on feelings when she feels she is doomed to die, but I'm not sure the film could have avoided that.
I don't see how it being more minimal makes it any less hackneyed, except maybe that there's literally less schlock present. it's a convenient comparison, admittedly reductive, but I genuinely think that, technical advances aside, they're of equal uselessness. everything in Gravity that isn't visual is bad, to the point that I found indulging purely in the audiovisual experience impossible.
Obvious reference to birth: Bullock getting rid of that spacesuit and floating around like she was in a womb
So then when she gets reborn coming out of that watery womb at the end of the flick and ends up wobbling on land, like any person would do who just came down from a week in space, she is learning to walk again. We just got an experiential movie about survival death and rebirth disguised as an FX spectacle handed to us people.
Quote from: AntiDumbFrogQuestion on October 09, 2013, 12:45:43 AM
Obvious reference to birth: Bullock getting rid of that spacesuit and floating around like she was in a womb
So then when she gets reborn coming out of that watery womb at the end of the flick and ends up wobbling on land, like any person would do who just came down from a week in space, she is learning to walk again. We just got an experiential movie about survival death and rebirth disguised as an FX spectacle handed to us people.
Yes. It was obvious -2001 baby. We all need Clooney to save our souls.
I like the movie, I can't wait to see it again, and the womb space shot was amazing, but it always seems simple to me...But she changes her mind so fast...
Children of Men is far more impressive for me because the filmaking embodies a genuine emotional story.
SPOILERS
Alternate title:
Everything That Can Go Wrong Will Go Wrong
starring Kris Jenner
I finally got a movie that I figured would be good to see in a BigD theatre and in 3D.
Nice use of space/size, sound and CGI.
Read through the thread. Interesting that the press was saying she wanted to get back to her daughter. I wonder if that was what the script originally had or was put out as a red herring.
After a while it just seemed too much kept going wrong, really again, no, dead daughter, no, parachute stuck right when debris just happens to cycle around, no no no.
To get something straight - when she turns the oxygen knobs, was it her deciding to commit suicide? Then we have the Clooney dream, which she wakes out of and turns the knobs back. It looked like the oxygen almost was completely full again. I must not have been paying attention to the meters. Maybe it was showing that some was out - or maybe she simply turned it off, which means no air would be lost.
Didn't quite understand why Clooney would have to be let go. In zero gravity I would think a slight tug from Bullock would bring him back.
All in all, I enjoyed it. I usually really hate CGI, and this had a ton and it didn't take me out of it too much. The debris 'hitting the screen' in 3D made me flinch.
I'm just a fan of when a movie is seen by people who are in it for the 'oohs' and 'aaahs' of everything, thinking very little about subtext, and yet they love it. There are a lot of dumb people out there who will see this and never think about that stuff.
"Children of Men" remains my favorite. The story and look were enhanced by long takes and effects that were often used subtly (outside of CGI baby)
an aspect of creative writing that gets beaten into the heads of anyone to undertakes the task -- and for good reason -- is the idea of showing versus telling. what i find most underwhelming and egregious about gravity is that it essentially does the cinematic equivalent of telling instead of showing, most obviously in the dialogue but also the imagery (in a vacuum, the fetus shot is gorgeous but in the context of the movie, it's a sore thumb attempt at profundity). survival, death, and rebirth are all present but the idea that any of it is "disguised", i find misguided; it's pretty damn blatant what it's "about", and yet it goes about it in such a way that it might as well not be about anything.
SPOILERS sort of
enjoyed the ed harris cameo. it's like cuaron knew...
Quote from: samsong on October 08, 2013, 03:50:47 AM
Quote from: Gold Trumpet on October 06, 2013, 06:20:53 PM
Quote from: samsong on October 04, 2013, 06:28:48 AM
an impressive feat of technical bravura, sure, but there's next to nothing else here. it's as tepid and cliched a story of human perseverance as, say, apollo 13. that this is being lauded as unique or "like nothing you've ever seen before" is beyond me. almost as confounding as cuaron citing bresson as an influence. i enjoyed it more than children of men. i do think it's worth seeing purely for the spectacle of it. it's intermittently breathtaking.
Completely disagree about the idea this is another Apollo 13. If it was, Bullock's traumatic situation would also be connected to a family and crew at home worrying about her situation to amplify the degree of emotional drama to her situation. Howard's film did it because the Apollo 13 story is famous for its effect on American culture so it was trying to represent how people felt when it happened almost live on television at the time. Howard probably also did it because he realized the lack of ability to communicate an investing drama if he just kept it to a crew only story. Gravity has more effects on hand, but it impressively isolates the human story to a few characters. Yes, Bullock is going to be capsized by emotions and reflect on feelings when she feels she is doomed to die, but I'm not sure the film could have avoided that.
I don't see how it being more minimal makes it any less hackneyed, except maybe that there's literally less schlock present. it's a convenient comparison, admittedly reductive, but I genuinely think that, technical advances aside, they're of equal uselessness. everything in Gravity that isn't visual is bad, to the point that I found indulging purely in the audiovisual experience impossible.
I really don't think I read much there besides a continued belief it comes off as simple and forced dramatics. I definitely disagree with that but since the conversation isn't going to go very far, agree to disagree.
SPOILS!!
My 2 cents about it. The first half of the movie is clearly one of the best visual experiences around. Space looks fascinating, dangerous, depressing and beautiful all at once, and when the action kicks in, sometimes I felt like I couldn't breathe. I liked all the interaction between Clooney and Bullock, how they didn't really know each other that well even though they were working together but had to rely on each other to survive.
Then, when the movie leaves Bullock alone, that's when I started to roll my eyes at various points. Seemed like Cuaron didn't trust his material, his characters and mostly his audience and had to have Ryan narrate everything that she was doing. We could say she kept talking in case people on earth could listen. We can say it was her way of keeping her shit together. I say it's lazy filmmaking and for a movie that keeps emphasizing the silence and solitude of space, there was a lot of intrusive sound and dialogue. Visually, the movie starts to lose it as well. What seemed like the most realistic representation of space ever turned out to be very flashy-look at this-type of filmmaking. As soon as she got inside the space station, fake-like CGI objects were floating around unnecessarily (not that they would't realistically be floating around, but there are shots where its presence is totally distracting, being there just so they can pass by us in 3D) and when we got to the point of having CGI bubbles of liquid clash with the camera lens, or a tear so obviously in focus, I really started to lose my interest in the character. Why? Because it seemed obvious to me that Cuaron didn't have that much more to say, and kept using shit like that to distract the viewer. Finally, all the obvious symbolism, the close ups of christian or buddhist figures, the death-rebirth, Clooney as a guardian angel-like presence was handled as unsubtle as possible.
It's a very interesting ride and I would recommend anyone to take it. I could even see it again one more time to enjoy those first 40 minutes or so. But in the long run, I don't think I'll be coming back to it much more.
After reading some of these comments, I was expecting a cheesy cringe worthy sentimental distracting mess in between visual awesomeness. I felt the dialogue was fine. It wasn't forced. It's a woman lost in space in a hopeless situation, she talks at herself.
The "visual realism". I think we're getting lost in expectations here. This is basically Jaws, Alien, and all the other haunted house movies ever made. The fact that the situation is portrayed with such attention to detail and closeness to reality doesn't change that. However, I don't see where the point of the film is to be realistic as in "this is how astronauts deal with a situation". It's a show. Cuarón is putting on a show. The characters act accordingly. I guess I understand some comments like: "if he had cast someone who looks like an astronaut, it would be more realistic", "if only she didn't start saying monologues, it wouldn't be so hollywood", "if we didn't know anything about anyone here, it would be a masterpiece", but this isn't that kind of movie. I heard early comparisons to 2001 and knew it wasn't possible. That's a film with a philosophical statement, and Cuarón is smart to keep things simple here. This is an experience to be enjoyed on that very basic level. Many, really many films try this and fail. Simplicity is a tricky thing.
Films like Gravity may not be anything new in terms of narrative or content, but sometimes the form is the content. To see something like this and say is no big deal just seems wrong to me.
Yes, it's modest. Cuaron said : "It's just a space movie." Weird statement, but, yes, it's an experience in space. A great one. You need the bigger screen you can find. But it's not a big thing in the sense that I don't have an Imax at home. I won't buy the Blu-Ray. I will stop thinking about it. I don't know...That's why I think, sometimes, that Gravity is more a roller coaster than a movie, but Cuaron is a great director and what he does with Gravity is insane. But when the roller coaster is over, it's over. And I wouldn't care if it wasn't Cuaron, because roller coasters movies aren't as fantastic as Gravity. But I love Children of Men so much...Yes, it's just a space movie, Cuaron. Do you really care?
Anyway, that's why I don't get the "MASTERPIECE!" "BEST MOVIE I'VE SEEN SINCE I'M A CRITIC", because, really, if you just want a spectacle...Lawrence of Arabia isn't only epic shots. I find myself underwhelmed by a overwhelming experience. But maybe I'm spoiled.
I love the scene where she talks to herself and barks, i find it emotional. I hate that she needs George Clooney to realize that she wants to live. So faaast. Ok, it's not George Clooney, it's her...She is Georges Clooney's ghost. But : "Tell her in heaven that I love her." :doh: I understand what it's saying, that, through adversity, you can find the will to live. But it's so artificial that I don't care...
Once again, I loved watching it, but I'm not watching it now, I don't feel the chills and, yes, they were just chills....I can't be haunted by chills. The story isn't just simple, it doesn't work. The chills aren't incarnated. But it's all about yourself, you in space, scared to let go...the same way you're scared in a roller coaster.
I feel weird about Gravity because the directing is amazing but, when it's over, I feel cold...
i really, really don't get this insistence that gravity is offering something new or revelatory in the way of form. in what way is the form the content in this movie? (what movie can you really say that about since, like, last year at marienbad?!) cuaron's already flaunted his bravura for tech-savvy long takes in children of men. i think the original imax documentary on the hubble telescope is more memorable/valuable than gravity. it really didn't look at that much better than a cut scene in a video game, and i personally found the adventures of tintin or the hobbit to be just as visually stimulating. speaking of which, this seemed like a great movie to use 48 fps for.
also there's a pretty overt sexism at play that i don't normally care about as i think it's something people are normally too sensitive about, but it's so glaringly present in this movie that it's hard not to be bothered by it. the movie makes no qualms about making use of archetypes to set up conflict -- the experienced astronaut is SO experienced that he's on his last mission, and the newby is SO green she's NEVER been to space before -- so why make bullock's character a woman at all? and since she is a woman why did she need to be so clueless/useless to begin with? i don't think the movie's any less thrilling if they're astronauts of the same skill level, or if the inexperienced astronaut were a male. how can you NOT read it as a movie about a woman's need for a man's guidance? literally every step she takes towards positive change is a result of clooney's talk radio verbal coaching. and for fuck's sake a woman having lost a child should never be allowed as a ploy for sympathy ever again. for whatever technical advances this movie supposedly makes, it's negated by how awful the writing is. it's all so clearly contrived to crank stakes up to 11 that it's entirely disingenuous and in this case, misguided and pretty bluntly chauvinistic.
It's not a masterpiece, just an entertaining and efficient film. It's an impressive sensory experience, I totally got caught up in the moment-to-moment thrills. The symbolism is obvious and doesn't ultimately mean that much to the story, which doesn't go beyond the inherent suspense of trying to get back to Earth from outer space. But does it really need to? While I'm curious to see what this film would have been like if the idea of Bullock not really having anything on Earth to live for was more developed as a theme, I was fine with it simply being about the suspense of her mission.
SOME SPOILERS!!
samsong: for me the writing works. as I said before, I never felt it forced. The risky moments, the monologues, were pulled off and I never rolled my eyes. Sorry. I was more interested in the story and how the character would deal wit her situation than wether the dialogue was contrived or not, because I was into it. You were not, fine.
The film is called 'Gravity', it is about the idea of floating in endless space with no apparent control of your movements and destiny, of course it's a metaphor for everyday life, and of course the only way to break that cycle is by taking control of your destiny and therefore "gravity" becomes another force to reckon with. I know it's a very "in your face concept", but that's what the movie is. The form of the film, the way it is presented to us, it's a constant illustration of this principle. The camera moves as if randomly, floating according to gravity until the character does something that changes it's trajectory. So, the film is about the way it is shot. And the way is shot it's on a class unto itself. I'm not saying the film is doing anything new in the way of form. I'm just saying that's the way it is.
about the sexism: I wasn't thinking about that while seeing it and I don't really think the film is concerned at all with any of that...too bad you read something like that into it...
Drenka (and Samsong to some extent): This is a roller coaster movie, and it's a great one. So can we enjoy it for what it is? I can.
Who cares what anyone else thinks? I don't get this concern. It seems as if critics weren't saying this film is a masterpiece, you would be able to enjoy it more.
And the use of the children as a dramatic device. Wasn't this also used in Children of Men, not only universally but specifically in the main characters? Cuarón seems obsessed with this subject, and to be honest I understand him. I don't know if you have kids, but for me as a father, the way Bullock tells the story of her daughter and her lost shoe and how she misses her, rang true. This is the shit you remember after some years. So, it's valid to me, as a dramatic resource.
This doesn't change anything on my view that the film is basically Jaws in space. that one is pretty obvious too in every dramatic motivation and arch being completed, and has never bothered me one bit there also.
'Gravity' Spinoff: Watch the Other Side of Sandra Bullock's Distress Call
QuoteDuring a pivotal scene in Gravity, Sandra Bullock's character Ryan Stone, trapped inside a Russian space capsule with little hope of survival, makes contact with a male voice speaking via radio in a foreign language. What unfolds on the other end of that fractured conversation, complete with a barking dog and a crying baby, is the subject of a short film by Jonas Cuaron, son of director Alfonso Cuaron, who co-wrote the screenplay for Warner Bros.' $500 million-grossing awards contender with his father. That seven-minute companion piece, titled Aningaaq, was financed by Warner Home Video, which initially envisioned it as a unique extra feature for Gravity's Blu-ray edition. But the stark, contemplative Aningaaq has developed a life of its own via festival screenings at Venice and Telluride. Now Warners has submitted it for Oscar consideration in the live-action short category; should it snag a nomination alongside its sure-bet blockbuster companion, they are poised to make Academy Awards history as the first feature and spinoff short drawn from the same material to be nominated together in the same year.
The idea for Aningaaq, which follows an Inuit fisherman stationed on a remote fjord in Greenland, occurred to the Cuarons as they were working out the beats for the Gravity screenplay. "It's this moment where the audience and the character get this hope that Ryan is finally going to be OK," Jonas, 31, tells THR. "Then you realize that everything gets lost in translation." Both Cuarons spent time in the glacial region (Alfonso once toyed with setting a movie there) and fell in love with the barren vastness of its frozen wilderness. During one of those visits, Alfonso met a drunken native who would become the basis for the title character, played by Greenland's Orto Ignatiussen. But it wasn't until Jonas, on a two-week trek gathering elements for his film, was inspired by the local inhabitants' profound attachment to their sled dogs that he decided to incorporate that element into the plot.
The short was filmed "guerrilla style" on location on a budget of about $100,000 -- most of which went toward the 10-person crew's travel costs -- and Cuaron completed it in time to meld the dialogue into Gravity's final sound mix. The result is a seamless conversation between Aningaaq and Ryan, stranded 200 miles above him, the twin stories of isolated human survival providing thematic cohesion. Still, Jonas says he was careful "to make it a piece that could stand on its own." Should both get Oscar noms, an interesting dynamic would emerge: Two films potentially could win for representing different sides of one conversation, to say nothing of having come from father and son.
One Academy member who likely will vote for Aningaaq if it scores a nomination is Bullock: At a Los Angeles press conference, the star called the short an "absolutely beautiful piece of loneliness. ... I get goose bumps thinking about it."
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/gravity-spinoff-watch-side-sandra-657919
Jonas Cuaron (Alfonso's son) Made a Short Companion Film For Gravity:
http://www.salon.com/2013/11/20/watch_aningaaq_the_short_companion_film_for_gravity/
Probably one of the best short's I've seen.
Quote from: Cloudy on November 20, 2013, 10:37:55 PM
Jonas Cuaron (Alfonso's son) Made a Short Companion Film For Gravity:
http://www.salon.com/2013/11/20/watch_aningaaq_the_short_companion_film_for_gravity/
Probably one of the best short's I've seen.
well. i agree that that's the best way to share news. there's a parallel here
Well he did have 100 grand and a fully professional crew at his disposal. That's much more than most short films have.
And when they kept saying son I thought this was a child like when Gondry and his kid were writing that movie, or at least a young dude in his early 20s, not a 31 year old man.
Anyway, gravity is a brilliant movie, haters can suck an Oscar which it will probably win. (A rare deserved win)
Quote from: Pubrick on November 20, 2013, 11:41:29 PM
Well he did have 100 grand and a fully professional crew at his disposal. That's much more than most short films have.
I was rating the short itself without the asterisks. Another you could give it is how the short would lose a huge percent(maybe most) of it's power if Gravity was never made.
today i was reading something else about robots and i accidentally discovered the background to gravity:
http://www.botndolly.com/robots
http://www.botndolly.com/gravity
Quote"It can't be done." This is what Alfonso Cuarón heard when speaking of his vision of weightlessness for the film Gravity. While these words discourage some, they kindle others. The making of Cuarón's Gravity was a formative project for Bot & Dolly. The film pushed us to evolve our robot platform to the specific needs of cinematographers and visual effects artists. By leveraging our IRIS platform, including four robots and Bot & Dolly's engineering team, we were able to make that impossible vision a reality.
Our work on Gravity began mid-2011 after the Head of Visual Effects at Warner Brothers heard about IRIS and reached out to Bot & Dolly. He and his team were looking for the technology needed to bring Cuarón's ambitious film to life, and after an initial test shoot in San Francisco our robots boarded a cargo plane headed to London.
Bot & Dolly provided Cuarón and Framestore with the tools necessary to execute complex cinematography based on computer previsualizations, in live action with industrial robots and other onset hardware. Because our tools integrate tightly with industry standard software Maya, Framestore was given control of camera, lighting and other set elements from within their established animation environment. The entire story of Gravity was animated in CG prior to filming. Through the use of BDMove and our four IRIS robots, we were able to reproduce the zero-gravity motion created by Framestore's team of animators.
Cuarón and Webber took a unique approach to simulating weightlessness. Instead of moving an actor through a set using traditional wire rigs, they achieved the illusion of zero-gravity by moving the world around the subject. This could only be done by synchronizing lighting, LED backgrounds and actor pose with frame accurate camera positioning. Bot & Dolly enabled this approach by unifying technology on set with a single common timeline. Beyond camera control, we were responsible for driving LED graphics, cueing actors and technicians, real-time compositing, and implementing an interactive playback system. Each day, the challenges on set inspired us to expand the functionality of our tools and bring new levels of a technology to film production.
Gravity was an important milestone and unforgettable experience for Bot & Dolly. We would like to thank Alfonso Cuarón, Warner Brothers and Framestore for this amazing opportunity.
that's intense robotics. i learned about this while reading about the tech field's developing interest in robots, purchases made by google and amazon. the digital camera use alone represents developing cinema tech, but there's an element to this that represents another development
bullock was good in this, but clooney was so distracting. the only thing I could think of watching this was "look! it's a space movie with danny ocean. how cool!"
i liked the visuals, but I was expecting more of the story and characters. they where quite plain and boring.
I liked the technical side of Gravity, but the rest feels way too incoherent for me, to love this film. I feel that story is used to excuse epic calamity upon calamity and not the other way around, as it should be.
It isn't about human resilience for me: there is too much luck involved, she is saved more than once by other crew member (including supernatural intervention). Metaphor for taking control in your live? I see how it could work, but 10 minutes after she makes that decision, we get "eeny, meeny, miny, moe" scene. Great ending that represent evolution is undermined by religious symbols that were thrown through the whole film at audience and St. George occurrence. Am I nitpicking here? Probably yes, guess those details are used to appeal to larger audience. It makes me uncomfortable, which is a weird thing for a film without hard subject to talk about.
Still I don't mind if Gravity wins some hefty awards - maybe this will influence other commercial films, when it comes to editing and cinematography: long takes, slow cutting (shaky cam with fast, abrupt cutting drives me sick).
Finally got around to this. One of the most overrated films I've ever seen. I think it's actually kind of a bad movie. Caveats: I acknowledge there can be separate value in the theatrical experience, especially for this one, which I missed out on. And it's technically amazing.
But wow. What a terrible script. Nearly every line of dialogue made me cringe, and the acting (even Ed Harris's!) did not do much to salvage it. From the start, it was an extremely cold experience. The metaphors really reached a breaking point (spoiler) when Sandra Bullock curled up in a fetal position for her rebirth, complete with umbilical cord, and they held the shot soooo long. Yikes.
So basically I felt nothing. Waited patiently for the movie to end so I could watch behind the scenes features.
Quote from: Jeremy Blackman on October 27, 2018, 11:49:32 PM
Finally got around to this. One of the most overrated films I've ever seen. I think it's actually kind of a bad movie. Caveats: I acknowledge there can be separate value in the theatrical experience, especially for this one, which I missed out on. And it's technically amazing.
Yeah, I paid Top Dollar to see this in it's opening days in Mega-Laser-IMAX at the Chinese Theater (whatever it was called at the time) and was rolling my eyes pretty hard pretty early. (I have some Neil Degrasse Tyson/Space Nerd tendencies, and some of the Clooney space caroming early on looked completely unrealistic to me. Took me completely out of the movie.) Audibly groaned at the 'fetus' scene, too. Yeesh.
SPOILER
Clooney floating into space, to his death: "You should see the sun shining on the Ganges."
So funny.
SPOILERSQuote from: Just Withnail on October 28, 2018, 07:27:27 AM
Clooney floating into space, to his death: "You should see the sun shining on the Ganges."
So funny.
Honestly when I heard that line I hoped I'd misheard it.
And yeah, wilberfan, I did notice some suspicious physics and some plot holes. When Sandra's foot is barely holding onto the ropes and Clooney is about to be pulled away, the physics just do not make sense. One tug would have pulled him back. They clearly wanted to make a "hanging from the cliff" scene (complete with "let me go so that you may live" dialogue).
And it reaaaally makes no sense that Sandra Bullock, a medical doctor, is there. From what I understand, the premise is this: She invented this imaging device for medical use, and since she invented it, she gets to install it on the Hubble. Um, what? So in order to abide by this bizarre "inventor must install their invention" rule, NASA trained a doctor to be an astronaut.