The Science Of Sleep

[modage]

lesher is determined to land all the hot directors and make paramount the new focus.

[takitani]

Warner Independent got it

Warner Independent Gets Gondry For $6 Million
Warner Independent Pictures has announced its acquisition of Michel Gondry's latest film, "The Science of Sleep," which debuted last night here at the Sundance Film Festival. U.S., Canadian, and U.K. rights to the movie, starring Gael Garcia Bernal and Charlotte Gainsbourg, were acquired for $6 million, according to Warner Independent. [Eugene Hernandez]

http://www.indiewire.com/buzz/060122.html#002203

[modage]

warner independant is the new paramount classics.  now they had better not make me wait a fucking year to see the thing. 

[takitani]

warner independant is the new paramount classics. now they had better not make me wait a fucking year to see the thing.

Warner Indepedent Pres Mark Gill said he is eyeing for a summer or fall release.

[takitani]

The Science of Sleep is a movie that demands to be seen more than once, but it's something of a miracle that a movie this complex and this beautiful—not to mention, damn funny—can resonate so strongly on first viewing. It invites comparisons to Gilliam's Brazil as well as the aforementioned Eternal Sunshine, but that's to be taken as the highest compliment rather than critic's shorthand. No single review can do this movie justice, just like no single dream can sum up your whole life. It can take more time than you have to sift through it. The more you think about it, the deeper it goes.

http://efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=13581

[squints]

wow..i'm stoked

[Pozer]

I hate the word stoked, but me too

[squints]

how bout instead of stoked i'd say I'm...
aflame, aroused, awakened, beside oneself, charged, delighted, eager, enthusiastic, feverish, fired up, frantic, high, hopped up, horny, hot, hyper, hysterical, inflamed, inspired, juiced up, jumpy, keyed up, moved, on fire, overwrought, passionate, piqued, roused, ruffled, steamed up, stimulated, stirred, thrilled, tumultuous, worked up?

[modage]

i'm relieved.  though i was looking forward to it bigtime i was worried about post-eternalsunshine nothing-can-live-up-to-that-film-in-my-mind-ness and it might've been a big letdown.  but things are looking up.

[JG]

Review: 

http://www.variety.com/index.asp?layout=features2006&content=jump&jump=review&head=sundance&nav=RSundance&articleid=VE1117929332

Technically, the film is immaculate in an intimate, precious way. Extensive animation done at Gondry's studio provides a crucial element of the film's appeal, to which Jean-Louis Bompont's ultra-nimble lensing, Juliette Welfling's fleet editing and Jean-Michel Bernard's score add dimension

.

At pic's best, Gondry generates a sense of youthful camaraderie based on spontaneously prankish creativity that recalls the Godard of "Band of Outsiders"; there's a freewheeling exhilaration to some of the scenes augmented by the (admittedly little-used) Parisian setting and a sense of no limits.

http://www.timeout.com/film/news/872.html

Gondry is a storyteller with a language that is very much his own; a language characterised by his background in music videos and a very personal, uncynical and honest approach to love and romance.

Confusing? Yes, and brilliantly so. Gondry infuses the same sense of ensemble chaos that he achieved in 'Eternal Sunshine' with romance, imagination and comedy. His inventiveness is intoxicating, bewildering and inspiring.

these articles haven't been posted yet right? 

[Pubrick]

i'm relieved.  though i was looking forward to it bigtime i was worried about post-eternalsunshine nothing-can-live-up-to-that-film-in-my-mind-ness and it might've been a big letdown.  but things are looking up.

you must never have seen any of gondry's previous work in music videos. u know how david lynch is always talking about ideas coming out of some ocean like fish and you just have to wait for them to pop up? well two-thirds of gondry's body mass is that ocean.. when it gets hot, he secretes it from his pores.

[modage]

guess you didn't hear current EW/RollingStone coverboy Kanye West's thoughts on that...

''What did you think of the 'Heard 'Em Say' videos?'' Kanye asks. Tell him that Michel Gondry's original version, in which the rapper and a couple of cutie-pie kids frolic in Macy's, was an oversentimental disappointment and he nods his head. ''For real? You thought it was bad? Yeah, that's what I thought too.''

[Pubrick]

guess you didn't hear current EW/RollingStone coverboy Kanye West's thoughts on that...

guess you didn't hear my thoughts on it either, we all know it sucked..

http://xixax.com/index.php?topic=6006.msg212058#msg212058

[takitani]

New stills from Science of Sleep

[MacGuffin]

French director Gondry returns to subconscious

French director Michel Gondry, who won an Oscar for co-writing "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," has returned to the theme of the subconscious with his latest film.

In "The Science of Sleep," which was screened at the Berlin Film Festival on Saturday, "Motorcycle Diaries" star Gael Garcia Bernal plays a shy misfit called Stephane.

The character moves from Mexico to Paris after his father's death and takes up employment as a graphic designer, but quickly loses interest in a job that involves little more than sticking labels on advertising calendars in a basement.

His only bright spot is neighbor Stephanie, played by Charlotte Gainsbourg, who joins him in childish games that blur the boundaries between dream and reality.

"I always had disturbing dreams from when I was a child," Gondry told reporters after a press viewing. "Seeing that they disturb me, I might as well make money from it."

Asked whether he saw similarities between himself and the lead character, he replied: "It's very very close."

He added that he spent a year talking to Bernal about the part before making the film.

"What is important for me is to meet an actor and to find a common ground where we are both comfortable."

While many of the visions in the film were from his own dreams, Gondry also drew on the garish visual world of Eastern European children's program from the 1960s and 1970s.

"It is not pretentious. It just gives you the feeling you could do it yourself," said Gondry, who worked on the script for eight years.

The film drew warm applause from Berlin's famously fussy press audience.

Featuring a time machine, recurring dreams, a mix of animation and real footage and actors speaking to each other in English to French and Spanish, The Science of Sleep thrives on keeping the audience guessing.

For Bernal, it was the journey between Stephane's inner and outer world that challenged him most.

"This film was an exercise on how to handle the demons I meet in my sleep, and Michel put even more wood on that fire," said Bernal.

"Films are often about reality and nothing but reality. But reality can be an inhibition that can be really bothering."
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French director ponders weird dreams in 'The Science of Sleep'

Oscar-winning French director Michel Gondry's latest film about the troubles of the heart and mind, "The Science of Sleep," had its first European screening at the Berlinale festival.

Gondry cast Mexican heart throb Gael Garcia Bernal, of the "Motorcycle Diaries" and Pedro Almodovar's "The Bad Education," as a Latin American named Stephane who soars in his wild dreams but fumbles in real life.

He arrives in Paris after his father's death, takes up a dull job and finds his soulmate in his equally dreamy, artsy-craftsy neighbour, played by Charlotte Gainsbourg.

But he is too shy and childish to seduce her, and loses her even as he loses control over his dreams, which start interfering with his life.

Or does he really? The dreams -- shot in rough animation style -- and their strange power intercede with reality until the viewer shares the bewilderment of Bernal's character.

The film suggests that the two sweethearts can always find each other in their sleep again.

Said Bernal after the screening: "I think people can relate to each in their dreams but in everyday life it is very hard."

Gondry said he drew inspiration from his own troubled sleep and, at Bernal's persuasion, allowed the dreams sequences in "The Science of Sleep" to become more and more autobiographic towards the end.

"I have always had disturbing dreams from when I was a kid and I thought if I am disturbed by them I might as well earn a living with it," he joked to reporters.

"The main character was very, very close to myself," he added, and hinted that he suffered that character's sentimental rejection in real life.

His understanding of dreams owe little to Sigmund Freud, he said, and much more to his reading of neurobiology, adding that he believed most artists "do what they do to make up for some form of imbalance."

Gondry made music videos for Beck and the Chemical Brothers before winning an Oscar for best script in 2005 with his second film, "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," about lovers who wipe out their memories to forget each other only to then realize what they had lost.

"The Science of Sleep" is a home-coming for Gondry not only because of his return to French cinema, he said, but also because he shot the film in the apartment building in Paris where he lived 15 years ago.

"In the beginning I did not feel very accepted in the French industry but now it is getting better," he said.

"But the French cinema community is finding it hard to get away from the Nouvelle Vague and that was 40 years ago. I do not feel compelled to represent France."

The characters in "The Science of Sleep" switch between English and French as they do between waking and dreaming, with Gainsbourg not only looking but sounding like her sweet-voiced mother Jane Birkin.

The film premiered at the Sundance Festival in the United States in January and will open in France in October.

It is showing out of competition at the Berlinale, which runs until February 19.