Tideland

[Ghostboy]

Check out Gilliam's charming intro to this new site for his current project: http://www.tidelandthemovie.com

I'm far more excited about this film than Brothers Grimm.

[grand theft sparrow]

Me too.  Not that I have reason to believe that Brothers Grimm will be bad.

I wasn't even aware that Gilliam got the greenlight on Tideland.  It just got pushed to the front of my list of books to read.

[MacGuffin]

Described by Terry Gilliam as Alice in Wonderland meets Psycho, Tideland is a story that explores the resilience of a child and how she survives in bizarre circumstances.

Jeliza-Rose is a young child in a very unusual situation – both parents are junkies. When her mother dies, she embarks on a strange journey with her father, Noah, a rock'n roll musician well past his time.

The film drifts between reality and fantasy as Jeliza-Rose escapes the vast loneliness of her new home into the fantasy world that exists in her imagination. In this world fireflies have names, bog-men awaken at dusk, and squirrels talk. The heads of four dolls, long since separated from their bodies, keep her company: Mustique, Baby Blonde, Glitter Gal and Sateen Lips, until she meets Dickens, a mentally damaged young man with the mind of a ten-year-old. Dressed in a wet suit and speedo, he spends his days hiding out in junk heaped wig-wam turned submarine, waiting to catch the monster shark that inhabits the railway tracks. Then there's his older sister Dell, a tall ghost-like figure dressed in black who hides behind a beekeeper's mesh hood.


Photo #1

Photo #2

Photo #3

Photo #4

[matt35mm]

Beautiful.

There's a few more pictures and lots of behind the scenes videos on the website (link up at the top of the page).

[72teeth]

Kant wait fer dem donkey shows...

[edison]

"film drifts between reality and fantasy"

Makes me think of Northfork.

[ono]

Makes me think of Songs from the Second Floor.

[Pubrick]

makes me think of senile dementia.

[Pozer]

Kant wait fer dem donkey shows...

here, here!

[The Perineum Falcon]

TIFF Report: Tideland Review



After a long absence Terry Gilliam made a not-so-triumphant return just a few weeks ago with the middling – if you listen to the critics – Brothers Grimm, a film that bore the marks of heavy handed studio meddling from the cast to the script and right on down to the principal crew. While it was nice to simply see Gilliam working again it would have been far, far better to see him allowed to shoot his own film his own way. Well, wait no longer. With Tideland Gilliam is well and truly back.

Based on the novel by Mitch Cullin, Tideland tells the story of Jeliza-Rose, a young girl who has retreated into a vigorous fantasy life to compensate for, to put it bluntly, the extreme shittiness of her family life. Her father is a washed up musician, burned out on drugs, still using heavily, with an absolutely inexplicable fixation with Vikings in general and Jutland in particular. Jeff Bridges plays him as an utter madman and while he's fascinating to watch, and Bridge's best character in years, and much loved by his young daughter you absolutely would not want this man for a father, particularly not after watching him have his little girl prepare a hit of heroin for him. Jeliza-Rose's mother, as played by Jennifer Tilly, is even worse. Also a major drug user and massively bi-polar good ol' mom can be screaming at you one moment and kissing you the next. She is completely volatile and unpredictable. Tilly dives into this white trash role with such abandon that it should completely cure any Tilly fetishists out there of your lusts. The woman has never been so unattractive. With a family like this is it any wonder that Jeliza-Rose's best friends in the world are a quartet of doll heads that she wears on her fingers to engage in lengthy conversations? I think not.

Life takes a difficult turn when Jeliza's mother dies of a drug overdose and dad, who is talked out of burning mom in a proper Viking funeral pyre right there in the bedroom only when Jeliza-Rose points out that doing so would likely burn the entire building down, takes the girl on the road heading for his childhood home in the prairies. They arrive to find the house neglected, abandoned, a much vandalized but settle in anyway and when dad, too, dies of a drug overdose Jeliza-Rose is left with only his decomposing corpse, her doll heads, the wild haired one eyed madwoman down the way and her brain damaged brother for company.

With Tideland Gilliam has returned to one of his favorite topics, the fluid relationship between fantasy and reality. But where the power of fantasy has always been presented as a positive in his films until now – see Baron Munchausen or Time Bandits for that – this time out he delves into the negative aspects. Jeliza'Rose's retreat into fantasy is certainly understandable but it produces some terribly tragic consequences.

As tempting as it will be for people to focus on the big names in this film – Bridges and Tilly – the fact is that they are secondary characters at best, removed in the early going. The only three that matter are Janet Macteer as the crazed neighbor, Brendan Fletcher as her brother and Jodelle Ferland, a very young actress who drives every single scene, as Jeliza-Rose. Macteer teeters on the edge of camp from time to time but never crosses over and Fletcher and Ferland are both absolutely stunning. As much as Gilliam drives studio executives insane, actors have always loved working with him and he consistently draws out fantastic performances and this is no exception. Ferland is not only immensely talented but her talent is also surprisingly polished. She's a natural in front of the camera, with an enormous range.

I had been cautioned going in to this that Tideland is Gilliam's least commercial film to date and that caution is a fair one. Though the film is quite plot based there is no firm target driving the narrative. A great many things happen but they are not necessarily aiming for any particular end. The goal is not so much to enlighten as it is to experience the world through the eyes of this very unusual girl. Some will find that lack of drive frustrating, others liberating. This is much more the Gilliam that made Fear and Loathing than it is the Gilliam that made 12 Monkeys, either way I say it's vintage stuff and proof positive that the man's still got it.

[Pozer]

yessss.

[MacGuffin]

Gilliam Moves on to Wonders of 'Tideland'

Terry Gilliam has finally gone through the looking glass. Weeks after the debut of his long-delayed fantasy "The Brothers Grimm," the director was back with another otherworldly tale at the Toronto International Film Festival.

"Tideland" is a profoundly unnerving twist on Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and its follow-up "Through the Looking Glass." Gilliam spins an alternately blissful and hellish story of a girl in denial of reality, who concocts a rich make-believe world to escape an unbearable upbringing.

From "Grimm's Fairy Tales" to "Alice" to "Don Quixote," the basis for a notorious unfinished film by the former Monty Python, Gilliam always has been fascinated by stories that warp the world around us.

"They all sort of get mixed up in my head, to be quite honest," Gilliam told The Associated Press. "They're all dealing with similar things. It's about how you deal with reality, by ignoring it sometimes, reinventing it other times, and that's how you get through it."

Adapted by Gilliam and co-writer Tony Grisoni from Mitch Cullin's novel, "Tideland" is the story of Jeliza-Rose, played in a virtuoso performance by 10-year-old Canadian actress Jodelle Ferland.

Living at the beck and call of her heroin-addict father (Jeff Bridges, co-star of Gilliam's "The Fisher King"), for whom she matter-of-factly prepares syringes, and her chocolate-hoarding mother (Jennifer Tilly), Jeliza-Rose exists in a vivid inner world of intrigue, her adventures shared with her only friends, four small doll heads removed from their bodies.

Her mother's death sends her paranoid father into hiding at his ramshackle boyhood home on the prairies, where Jeliza-Rose's fantasy land expands to include an ominous, witchlike neighbor (Janet McTeer) and her brain-damaged brother (Brendan Fletcher).

"Tideland" is packed with the sort of surreal imagery characterizing such Gilliam films as "Brazil," "Time Bandits" and "Twelve Monkeys." Gilliam liberally applies the "Alice in Wonderland" references, including a tumble down a rabbit hole and a fanciful meal reminiscent of the Mad Hatter's tea party.

"`Alice' is still one of the great tales. The two books, they've always astonished me. But I was actually more influenced by `Grimm's' originally, because that's what I grew up reading. Those are the stories that really stuck," Gilliam said. "`Alice' is like the next stage up. It's more intellectual. `Grimm's' is more primal."

Gilliam, 64, has had many moments of absurdity in a film career marked by epic battles with studios and financial backers that did not share his vision on "Brazil," "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen" and "The Brothers Grimm," starring Matt Damon and Heath Ledger as the 19th century fairy-tale siblings.

Delayed a year amid feuding between Gilliam and Bob Weinstein, who co-founded Miramax with brother Harvey, "The Brothers Grimm" finally came out in August to unenthusiastic reviews and modest box-office results.

Gilliam figured he may have gotten less interference from the Weinsteins than other directors because after Miramax fired his cinematographer, Nicola Pecorini, early in the shoot, "I said, `I'm not speaking with these guys ever again,' and I didn't. There were a lot of the Miramax minions floating around, but you swat them away. They're like flies."

The director talks candidly about his "Grimm" experiences because he feels it's a safe bet he will not be working with the Weinsteins again.

"I think a once in a lifetime experience is what we call these things," Gilliam said, chortling. "I said at the beginning of this one to Bob, `We've both made it independently. We're both outspoken. We're both arrogant. We both think we know what we're doing. We're both used to getting our own way.' I said, `This could be a bad marriage,'" Gilliam said, cackling again with laughter.

Gilliam now is focused on getting four long-standing projects into production, including "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote," starring Johnny Depp as a modern advertising man hurled back to the 17th century, where madman Quixote mistakes him for his squire, Sancho Panza.

The film shut down after six days of shooting in 2000, stung by a freak storm that ravaged equipment, an ailment to co-star Jean Rochefort and other misfortunes.

"He's constantly threatening to bring it back to life, resuscitate it," said Depp, who starred in Gilliam's "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." "Yeah, if he wants to go back there, of course, I'd be interested. It was really going to be a good film had it not been cursed."

On "Tideland," which was at the Toronto festival in search of a distributor, Gilliam said he had a charmed production that came together quickly and flowed effortlessly, with no meddling by his British and Canadian financers.

"Actually, I began to think that maybe there is a god, after all," Gilliam said. "Or maybe it's a different one. The old one got fired."

[modage]

TRAILER at the site: http://www.tidelandthemovie.com/

click Access Map, then Trailer.

[brockly]

fuck. can't wait  for this. whats not to love about that trailer?

[Pubrick]

whats not to love about that trailer?

how bout that it seems to have been shot by this guy..