A Good Year

[MacGuffin]

Trailer here.

Release Date: November 10th, 2006

Starring: Russell Crowe, Albert Finney, Marion Cotillard, Freddie Highmore

Directed By: Ridley Scott

Premise: London-based Investment expert Max Skinner moves to Provence to tend a small vineyard he inherited from his late uncle. As Max settles into this new chapter in his life, he encounters a beautiful California woman who also lays claim to the property.

[Gold Trumpet]

I've been anticipating this movie. Everyone will get the opportunity to see Marion Cotillard finally in a major film. She was the most memorable thing in movies like Love Me if You Dare.

(and by memorable, yes, i mean by hotness)

[NEON MERCURY]

i like crowe and ridley,
i like looking forward to this, film
russell looks genuinely happy in that poster, that good

[RegularKarate]

Sweet Home Alabama?

[modage]

watching this trailer a few times over the weekend i really cannot believe this is a ridley scott movie.  (it looks like a rental i guess).

[JG]

(it looks like a rental i guess).

haha you seriously need to stop. 

[MacGuffin]

Ridley Scott's French Invasion
Source: ComingSoon

Ridley Scott may be one of the most respected filmmakers of the last thirty years due to his incredibly diverse collection of movies, many of which have defined their respective genres. He's gained many fans from his body of work, which includes everything from Alien and Blade Runner to his more recent epics Gladiator and Black Hawk Down. Scott may be making a huge sprawling war movie like Kingdom of Heaven one minute, but then he'll often do something smaller and more character-driven the next. His latest movie A Good Year leans more towards the latter, but it reunites him with Russell Crowe, the actor with whom Scott has shared one of his greatest successes and whom he is becoming increasingly more linked to as they continue to work together.

Crowe plays Maximillian Skinner, a British investment broker who inherits a French chateau and vineyard from his late uncle and discovers a new more laid-back lifestyle as he tries to renovate the place to sell for a lot of money. It's part The Money Pit, part Under the Tuscan Sun and a mix of French and Italian classics, but it's a far lighter comedy than you might expect from the duo responsible for a bloody Roman gladiator epic.

ComingSoon.net spoke to Scott during a break from shooting next year's American Gangster, also starring Crowe, joined by Denzel Washington.

ComingSoon.net: Can you talk about how French and Italian films influenced "A Good Year"?
Ridley Scott: Everything. I live in Provence part of the time, and I've been there fifteen years. That's kind of what started to make an impression. I thought a contemporary film should be made about this beautiful place, and how it has attracted foreign visitors to visit on holiday who then decide to stay there, because it is so special. Inevitably, my experiences there have been, to a certain extent xenophobic, you know, fear of strangers. Them to me, not me to them, because I just want to go there and ignore everything, schlep around in my flip flops and get drunk. You can't. It's a bit like a city boy goes to buy somewhere in the country and fundamentally, you're the enemy. Notwithstanding, the film is still about France because France is so beautiful and has so much to offer. It just sank in after fifteen years. I thought, "I must do something about this." And my old buddy Peter Mayle lives less than eight kilometers over the hill, so I met with him one New Year's Eve. We were, of course, drinking at his house and we were swapping stories about our experiences there. I was there partly by design, my design at the end of that would be to call the next day and say, "What we were talking about would be a good book," and he said, "Yes, it would." So I said, "You write the book and I'll do the movie." It was quick, only about four years ago.

CS: Did Peter base any parts of Max and his situation on you?
Scott: No, not that I'm aware of. I mean, he might have done so secretly and sneakily. I don't think so, other than we're both advertising men, so banking and advertising are not far distanced in terms of the kind of people involved in both worlds.

CS: This film was done in record time, so how did you do it?
Scott: Sure was. From the onset, from me talking to Peter Mayle who said he supposed this film will happen in 16 years time. When I called him and said, "By the way, here's the screenplay. We're going to shoot next autumn," he was flabbergasted because I think the turnaround was two and a half years. In two and a half years, he had written the book, it became successful, so now you have a reissue, three weeks ahead of our release, coming out everywhere. I hadn't really gotten a leading man and I figured to drive this, it better be someone important. I've got a pretty good relationship with Russell. Apart from "Gladiator," we talk on a fairly regularly, on the basis of, "What have you got?" "I've got this." "I've got that." "What do you think about this?" With the views of working again. We'd been doing one of those big meetings in Hollywood, where we talked about everything he'd got and everything I'd got and I spouted on about this [film] and he called me and said, "You know, that stuck with me. It might be quite a nice thing to explore." Once I had that, they were on-board, flying. Needless to say, Fox, that's the company I'm with, I do well with them. They weren't really sure about me and him doing a comedy. They call it comedy. I don't call it a comedy. I call it a "romantic dramedy," if you like. The word comedy implies slapstick. It's not that at all. I think comedy is usually driven by really good characters in situations that they get put into that for the most part, are amusing. They're usually driven by bad news, not good news.

CS: Was it always going to be a funny movie?
Scott: The whole reason to do anything that could easily have a serious undertone is to make it amusing. You have to do that. My experiences, for the most part, in France, have been spectacular. I bought down there because I was so fed up with the English weather. English weather is not a cliché; it is fundamentally awful. England is an absolutely spectacular place, but it always bloody rains. Once you get done hacking your horse, cleaning it down, you go in and have your lunch... there's nothing to do. In France, I thought anywhere below Leon would have a definitive spring, a definitive autumn, a definitive winter. You tend to try to avoid going between November and March, unless you want seriously cold weather with dazzling blue sky or serious thunderstorms. Either way, it's kind of attractive.

CS: Can you talk about the tension between the French and the American and British tourists in the movie?
Scott: Churchill said that we're two nations divided only by the same island or something like that. I've worked here and lived here, I function in Los Angeles even though I live in London, but business is here for me. Sometimes I find I'm wearing a divided split brain in terms of drama and humor. There's a marked difference. I think [the British] may be drier, and I'm talking broad strokes. I'm not talking about New Yorkers. New Yorkers are a different ball game, New York is right in the middle. If you're talking about the rest of the United States and certainly Los Angeles, the East Coast is a very different part of the United States. Since I've been here, I've been filming for the last three months, I'm feeling very much at home here. But you've got to think carefully. When I'm planning and prepping and even functioning with the writers--again a writer is not necessarily the best judge because some of the best writers are sometimes too sophisiticated for their own good--I'm not saying you gotta dumb-down, but you gotta communicate. This business is too expensive not to pay attention to that.

CS: Since Russell hadn't done comedy in so long, how did you get him to go back to doing it?
Scott: He loved the idea. Anything that's new, that's different, is attractive and the same for me. Anything I haven't done is very interesting, providing that it's well-thought, well-designed, a good idea, good story, has its own truth, and has a great character, he'll definitely pay attention to that. Or anything original. It's original in context.

CS: Did you have to get him to work on his comedic skills?
Scott: Well, Russell's done about thirty movies and you've only seen "Mystery, Alaska," "A Beautiful Mind," "Gladiator," "The Insider," "L.A. Confidential." He's done about another twenty-five movies which are, for the most part, Australian. I'd seen a lot of them, so I know Russell's order and I've seen everything. He doesn't know I've seen everything, but I can get anything. I saw "Romper Stomper" and I went, "This is the guy for 'Gladiator.'" "Romper Stomper" really brought attention to Russell in the States. Everything else before that you probably didn't even know.

CS: What is it about the two of you that makes you such a strong team?
Scott: I think we both speak our minds, so that's a good starting point for him. You can never bullsh*t Russell. You have to come right out with it and say what you mean and then you get a reply back, which is surprisingly crystally, clearly distilled and understood. You have to get used to that over the period. I think people sometimes find that a little bit intimidating. And then going through something like "Gladiator" was pretty rough, pretty challenging. It looked smooth but it was murderous because we went in really with only the first act written.

CS: What can we expect to see from Russell in "American Gangster?"
Scott: The great attraction for me to "American Gangster" is those two great characters who are absolute paradoxes within their own sphere. You've got Ritchie Roberts who is alive and well today, still lifts weights, is a very fit in his mid-60's, a man who is a successful prosecutor, and he visits me about three times a week on set.

CS: Way back when the film was first being developed, it seemed like Frank Lucas (played by Denzel Washington) was the main character, so how did that change?
Scott: I think that was what was wrong; it needed to be balanced out. I know Steve Zallian well, and he's done two things for me. Steve had sent me the script about three years ago and asked "What do you think?" I said, "As usual, it's really good writing."--I think he's almost the best out there--"but the problem is the Ritchie Roberts character is out of balance with Denzel's character, Frank Lucas." It really should be both, there should be one with the other, because Ritchie, at the end of the day, finally cornered Lucas and brought him down. In that process, when Frank did seventeen years in prison, the first person to meet him coming out was Ritchie Roberts with a jacket and clothing, saying "I won't let you starve." Because Frank Lucas had actually turned in state's evidence. Instead of giving him 135 years, where Ritchie could have brought in everything from statutory crime, first-degree murder, etc. etc. they kept that in exchange for information about the corrupt police department. So everyone that Frank Lucas had been dealing with on that level of corruption was pretty substantial. They made, I think, about 75 serious arrests in the police department in New York City alone, that's a lot. Out of that, he got only 17 years. Now if you go into jail when you're closing in on 50, and you're coming out when you're 65, 67 with no money, that's a serious condition. Frank Lucas visits me about three times a week as well.

CS: What kind of challenges did you have while making "A Good Year?"
Scott: Not to eat too much at lunch and dinner. Not to drink too much in the evening, make sure I could get up in the morning and drive from my house without feeling too guilty, that was about it. But if any of you know anything about actual movie making, it's all hard. But it's why we love the chase, we love the challenge. You get up at 5:45, you do a twelve, thirteen hour day, go straight to the editing room, see my rushes from the day before, probably edit a bit and then go back to bed about 10:30, 11 o'clock. Right now I'm up at 5:45 and I might not get in until 1 AM.

CS: Is it nice for you to take a break from the more grandiose films after making "Kingdom of Heaven?"
Scott: "Kingdom of Heaven" was like going to war. It was massive, but what you want to see is the three-hour edition that is now on digital. There is no comparison. The silliness that somehow got us into...and I say "us" persuading ourselves that maybe it should be two hours and twenty-three minutes long is absolutely wrong. The film should have been sold boldly on the basis that it is about religion and politics.

CS: Is it sad when you're talked out of doing something and then out you were right in the end?
Scott: Yep, and I think it shows you've got to listen to the voice in your head, or not. I've learned to listen to my own intuition. Usually it's based on heavy experience and therefore, usually that first notion is the best one. I try and stick with that. So this on, the enemy is previews. Previewing is the enemy. To begin with a whole group of people who were never asked to answer these questions at all, and you're going to take what they say as sacrosanct, are you crazy? To actually ask them to be Siskel and Ebert is silly.

CS: Right now, you seem to be going back and forth between genres, so do you have a personal preference?
Scott: No, I think the key, if you can do it, is to have an evolution of big one, small one, big one, small one, because it's taxing. It takes its toll. "Kingdom of Heaven" was massive. You walk on set and there's two and a half thousand people for breakfast. You say, wow, everyone's on set by 8:45, we're going to be turning at 9:15 so moving the army, there's eleven cameras going. You get there, and the war is a thousand feet long. That will be the main backdrop on the Jerusalem side of it, to then a lot of digital, CGI work that will go on top of it which is pretty formidable.

CS: So why do you still do the big movies, if you can do movies like this one and get as much satisfaction?
Scott: Well, have you ever addressed two thousand people in the morning? It's fantastic.

CS: Having made so many war movies, have you ever thought of writing a book about it?
Scott: The actual movement of evolution, of hopefully making things better, is usually not bloodless, it's usually blood-ridden, and we don't learn by it. Here, we are making the same mistakes over again. Talk about idiot politicians who somehow get the job of looking after us and they're not qualified in any shape or form whatsoever.

CS: Where does your television production work come into play in terms of the work you do?
Scott: I come out of live television, BBC drama, that's where I started both as a production designer, then a director. Then I went independent TV then television advertising. I want to go back to it because you can explore things in high-end television that might not be considered commercial enough for a feature film. For instance, my show that runs on Friday nights called "Numb3rs," it's pretty good. We're in our third season now, some great characters. I'm doing a really great thing for TNT with a director called Mikael Salomon. We're doing a project called "The Company." It's the anthology of the CIA from 1957 through the fall of the Berlin Wall. It's a 5-month shoot with Michael Keaton, Chris O'Donnell, Alfred Molina, I mean a really great cast. The challenge is that these characters age thirty odd years throughout the whole series so it's a tremendous challenge to them and the production.

CS: Are there any other previous films of yours that you'd like to release as a Director's Cut?
Scott: "Alien" was right on the money. I put two shots in "Alien"; I did that because they asked me to. I thought "Alien" was kind of perfect. I think "Legend" was great. I would have had "Legend" almost 20 minutes longer. That was completely not right for the time. Now we're doing all these magical children's movies along that genre and actually, all I was doing was a live-action cartoon. Actually, "Legend" might be one. It would be very good now, because it is a very big website thing in Japan.

A Good Year opens everywhere on November 10.

[A Matter Of Chance]

This movie looks bad. Russel Crowe looks like this:

[Kal]

I saw this and enjoyed it... its strange considering its a Ridley Scott movie... but Russell Crowe was good and overall it was good.