Xixax Film Forum

Gibson's "Apocalypto" Is Nigh
Source: E! Online (Repost from July 22, 2005)

In The Passion of the Christ, Mel Gibson revived the Aramaic language. For his next movie, he'll give new life to an ancient Greek term.

Apocalypto is the title of Gibson's next self-financed epic, Daily Variety reported Friday. Shooting is scheduled to begin in October, and a summer 2006 release is planned.

The film is described as an action picture, set 3,000 years in the past. Details otherwise are sketchy, and that's the way Gibson apparently wants it. According to Variety, the star requested studio execs read the script at his offices, less any pages get leaked.

As Gibson did on Passion, the Oscar-winning multihyphenate is directing, writing and producing, but not starring. Also as was done on Passion, his Icon Productions is footing the bill. While Hollywood studios were reluctant to distribute the religious epic that ended up grossing more than $611 million worldwide--the independent company Newmarket Films handled the honors--Disney beat out rivals for dibs on Apocalypto, the trade paper said.

Apocalypto is a Greek term meaning unveiling. It is not to be confused with Apocalypso, the 2003 album by vocalist Rita Calypso, or apparently even apocalyptic, the adjective of biblical doom. In fact, according to Variety, Gibson's Apocalypto is "not religious in theme."

In Passion, Gibson retold the final hours of Jesus' life, often in excruciating detail. Though movies dealing with religious figures hadn't been welcomed by the masses since the 1950s, Gibson's was, and found itself credited with bringing AWOL audiences back to theaters.

One group Passion didn't click with was Oscar voters. The film, accused sight unseen by some as a work that would fuel anti-Semitism, took home zero awards. Overall, the film earned three nominations, not one of which was for Gibson, who'd won two Oscars for directing and producing Braveheart.

Since the passions over Passion died down, Gibson has focused on television--he produced two short-lived shows last season, Clubhouse and Complete Savages--and fending off a stalker. Outside of a cameo on Complete Savages, and some supporting work in independent films, Gibson, the actor, hasn't starred in a Hollywood movie since 2002's Signs.


Mel Gibson to shoot epic movie in Mayan language

Actor Mel Gibson, who turned a Latin script on the crucifixion of Christ into box office gold last year, is in Mexico to shoot his latest film: an action movie shot entirely in an ancient Mayan tongue.

The star turned independent director was in the eastern state of Veracruz this week where he is to film "Apocalypto," a thriller set in an ancient Mayan settlement and shot in the Yucatec dialect.

"It's set before the Conquest, so there are no European faces, and we are using mostly indigenous people and actors from Mexico City," Gibson, sporting a long beard, said at a news conference in the port city of Veracruz.

"There's still a lot of mystery to the Mayan culture, but when all is said and done, it's just the backdrop to what I'm doing -- creating an action adventure of mythic proportions," he said, blinking before a bank of flash lights.

Gibson achieved fame with lucrative movies like the epic "Revolution," the sci-fi thriller "Signs" and the "Lethal Weapon" series and has become one of the most bankable stars in Hollywood, commanding a fee of $25 million a film.

A devout Roman Catholic, he had the greatest hit of his career with last year's "The Passion of the Christ," which became the most successful independent film ever made despite its impenetrable Latin and Aramaic dialogue and stomach churning flogging sequences.

The 49-year-old star is making "Apocalypto" through his Los Angeles-based Icon production company with an undisclosed budget. It will be distributed by Disney, although the shooting script remains under wraps. Filming starts in November.

MAYAN VILLAGE

The runaway success of "The Passion of the Christ," which grossed more than $600 million worldwide, has given Gibson the financial freedom and industry clout to pursue projects like "Apocalypto."

"Above all, film is a business ...Independence is a really cool thing as you can be a bit more bold, and take a few more chances with what you do," he said.

Gibson said the story would be told through the eyes of a Mayan man, his family and village, and would touch on universal themes about "civilizations and what undermines them," but he declined to go into details about the plot.

He said Mayan myths from the Popol Vuh sacred texts formed part of his research for the film, which also drew on input from indigenous groups and Spanish mission texts from the 1700s and Mayan language translators.

"A lot of it I just made up, and when I checked it out with historians and archeologists, it wasn't that far wrong," he said.

After visiting Guatemala, the Yucatan Peninsula and Costa Rica to scope out locations, he settled on unspoiled jungle in Veracruz to frame the story.

Residents in the rain-swept streets of Veracruz, near where Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes first made landfall in 1519, gave their support to the project.

"It's just great that he's making a film about Mayan culture," marimba player Manuel Guerrera said as he prepared to play with a local street band in the city's colonial square.

"It's a neglected part of our heritage, and it makes us feel really proud," he added.

Gibson's popularity in Mexico has been boosted by his recent donation of $1 million to the victims of hurricanes that hit southern Mexico, including heavily Mayan areas.

sigh, i was reading about it on the newspaper.  i've never ever seen a mel gibson movie but i hope he makes something good.   he better not fuck this source material, it's too good and relevant to screw it up hollywood style. besides, i wanted to adapt it first. fuck you mel gibson, i will do the good movie about the popol vuh one day.

I really hope he can pull it off with a little more skill than he did with Passion.

I'll be pissed if I have to sit through another Hallmark grade film with white guys wearing nose prosthetics pretending to be Middle Eastern, or in this case Mayan.

Quote from: Pastor ParsleyI'll be pissed if I have to sit through another Hallmark grade film with white guys wearing nose prosthetics pretending to be Middle Eastern, or in this case Mayan.

Quote from: MacGuffin"It's set before the Conquest, so there are no European faces, and we are using mostly indigenous people and actors from Mexico City,"

gibson will be my hero if he pulls this off properly.

he's doing what pta should be doing.. what malick and aronofsky ARE doing.

he's getting it done.

Quote from: Pastor ParsleyI'll be pissed if I have to sit through another Hallmark grade film with white guys wearing nose prosthetics pretending to be Middle Eastern, or in this case Mayan.

Yeah, what's up with pretending in movies?  I hate all this pretending.  It's like, what the fuck is so wrong with your life that you have to pretend everything?  Y'know?

New Trailer here (http://www.apple.com/trailers/touchstone/apocalypto)

Check out this flash of Mel Gibson during the super duper fast ending:
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.student.gsu.edu%2F%7Ejgaar1%2Fmelgibsonisinsane.jpeg&hash=2a1a6c4c43dd575d10901167b5af07fdbb8b13a9)

Release Date: 2006

Starring: Natives

Wow, you found that single frame pretty quickly.

Anyway, I think this looks interesting.  Many of the shots are very beautiful.  Some of it seems a bit silly, but it seems like it could be a pretty decent movie.  I just don't think it'll be a match for The New World, with which it seems to share a few similar ideas and probably story.

How bout an "insert your own caption" thing for whatever Mel's thinking in that picture.

I don't think he could be thinking anything but "I got it MADE, nigga!"

I guess you could try to make things up and try to be all cute and funny... but what I just stated was undoubtably what he was thinking in that one moment in time.

Gibson does Lynch:
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi11.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fa175%2FLeven321%2Fapco3.jpg&hash=dc248948ceac813fc967b1d5a3939749bf9b9f50)
=
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Quote from: Ultrahip on December 21, 2005, 01:33:21 PM
How bout an "insert your own caption" thing for whatever Mel's thinking in that picture.

Mel Gibson?  More like Mel Grizzled!

Quote from: Ultrahip on December 21, 2005, 01:33:21 PM
How bout an "insert your own caption" thing for whatever Mel's thinking in that picture.

You mean, besides Angelina?

bad ass. that last shot is bad ass. 2006, you better not dissapoint!

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi11.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fa175%2FLeven321%2Fapco3.jpg&hash=dc248948ceac813fc967b1d5a3939749bf9b9f50)

What is the guy on the far right thinking?

Quote from: meatball on December 21, 2005, 04:58:30 PM
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi11.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fa175%2FLeven321%2Fapco3.jpg&hash=dc248948ceac813fc967b1d5a3939749bf9b9f50)

What is the guy on the far right thinking?

"Pastrami? Again?"

Quote from: Ultrahip on December 21, 2005, 05:04:14 PM

Quote from: meatball on December 21, 2005, 04:58:30 PM
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi11.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fa175%2FLeven321%2Fapco3.jpg&hash=dc248948ceac813fc967b1d5a3939749bf9b9f50)

What is the guy on the far right thinking?

"Pastrami? Again?"

didn't want that to get left in the dust.

Quote from: cronopio on December 21, 2005, 04:27:52 PM
2006, you better not dissapoint!

don't worry, it (INLANDEMPIRETHEFOUNTAINASCANNDERDARKLYVFORVENDETTA) won't.

Im not sure about the last one you mentioned...

Anyways... this does look nice visually... but no actors? all natives extras? What is this really about?

Quote from: andyk on December 21, 2005, 06:16:57 PM
Im not sure about the last one you mentioned...

Anyways... this does look nice visually... but no actors? all natives extras? What is this really about?

It's Baraka meets The Gods Must Be Crazy!

Quote from: Gamblour on December 21, 2005, 11:40:56 AM
Check out this flash of Mel Gibson during the super duper fast ending:
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.student.gsu.edu%2F%7Ejgaar1%2Fmelgibsonisinsane.jpeg&hash=2a1a6c4c43dd575d10901167b5af07fdbb8b13a9)

does this seem completely bizarre to anyone else? i mean, everyone is like "oh, that's just mel posing like a madman in a subliminal frame from the teaser of his highly anticipated follow-up to the beating of christ. duh!"

not to make Herzog my Wes Anderson of 2005, but man, how awesome would this film have been if Herzog was the director?  it's like a movie screaming for Herzog.

Apocalypto Now
EXCLUSIVE: You'd think Mel Gibson was all done with violent movies about the past told in a foreign tongue, right? Think again
By TIM PADGETT; Time Magazine

"I need to see the blood!" shouts Mel Gibson. "Your character is going to die soon!" He picks up a bullhorn: "Attention! We are all dying here! We are all dying!" The Oscar-winning director is standing in a rock quarry near Veracruz, Mexico, shooting a hellish scene for Apocalypto, his action epic about the ancient Maya. Hundreds of local extras--many of whom have never seen a movie, let alone acted in one--are pounding fake limestone to build a temple used for human sacrifices. Gibson wants one of the extras, covered in white lime dust, to visibly cough up a glob of fake blood. But something keeps getting lost in translation. Take after take, the young man, who speaks only Spanish, politely covers his mouth as he hacks. A second candidate for the role does the same. Gibson finally lets out a tortured howl, digs vainly for a cigarette in his empty pack of Camels and turns the set into his own Thunderdome. The translator does his best to convey the passion of the Mel.

The blasts turn to laughs soon after when, to lighten the mood, Gibson has the crew bring out a stuffed jaguar and leads the extras running away in mock terror. But later he admits to TIME, which this month was given the first look at Apocalypto's production, that the utter inexperience of most of the cast is a price he's paying for the authentic feel he wants in the film, in which dialogue is spoken solely in Yucatec Maya. If people were imagining that Gibson, 50, might coast a little after his 2004 movie, The Passion of the Christ, inspired not only months of controversy but also nearly $1 billion worth of ticket sales, the director has given his answer: Nope. If anything, this film is a more ambitious project than The Passion--although success does make some things a mite easier. Gibson had to walk a via dolorosa to find a distributor for The Passion and ended up distributing it more or less himself, but Disney's Touchstone Pictures needed only to read Apocalypto's script before signing on to release it in early August.

The Passion experience--especially the part in which critics hurled anti-Semitism charges at Gibson, an ultraconservative Roman Catholic whose father has questioned whether the Holocaust happened--thickened Gibson's hide along with his wallet. So if there are complaints about Apocalypto's portrayal of human sacrifice by the Maya, whose mostly impoverished descendants today are a cause célèbre for liberals, Gibson says he won't care. "After what I experienced with The Passion, I frankly don't give a flying f___ about much of what those critics think."

Still, he likes to confound expectations--he wears a cross containing relics of martyred saints, but he can swear like a Quentin Tarantino character--and those who peg him as a reactionary may be surprised to learn that his new film sounds warnings straight out of liberal Hollywood's bible. Apocalypto, which Gibson loosely translates from the Greek as "a new beginning," was inspired in large part by his work with the Mirador Basin Project, an effort to preserve a large swath of the Guatemalan rain forest and its Maya ruins. Gibson and his rookie cowriter on Apocalypto, Farhad Safinia, were captivated by the ancient Maya, one of the hemisphere's first great civilizations, which reached its zenith about A.D. 600 in southern Mexico and northern Guatemala. The two began poring over Maya myths of creation and destruction, including the Popol Vuh, and research suggesting that ecological abuse and war-mongering were major contributors to the Maya's sudden collapse, some 500 years before Europeans arrived in the Americas.

Those apocalyptic strains haunt Apocalypto, which takes place in an opulent but decaying Maya kingdom, whose leaders insist that if the gods are not appeased by more temples and human sacrifices, the crops will die. But the writers hope that the larger themes of decline will be a wake-up call. "The parallels between the environmental imbalance and corruption of values that doomed the Maya and what's happening to our own civilization are eerie," says Safinia. Gibson, who insists ideology matters less to him than stories of "penitential hardship" like his Oscar-winning Braveheart, puts it more bluntly: "The fearmongering we depict in this film reminds me a little of President Bush and his guys."

But the project also fulfills Gibson's need for speed. The hunk who played Mad Max 27 years ago wants to "shake up the stale action-adventure genre," which he feels has been taken hostage by computer-generated imagery (CGI), stock stories and shallow characters. To rattle the cage, he says, "we had to think of something utterly different." The Mad Maya hero in Apocalypto is Jaguar Paw. His escape through the Mexican rain forest will "feel like a car chase that just keeps turning the screws," says Gibson, flashing one of his patented bug-eyed expressions. True to the no-pain, no-gain credo of his other films, Apocalypto seeks to deliver enough pre-Columbian punishment--like the decidedly non-CGI mauling of a character by an animal--to rival the medieval gore of Braveheart. "I get pretty banged up in some pretty awful ways," says film newcomer Rudy Youngblood, 25, the Comanche and Cree Indian from Texas who plays Jaguar Paw.

Gibson is betting the chase will feel even hairier thanks to a new digital camera system, Panavision's Genesis, that yields a "tremendous sensation of velocity," says cinematographer Dean Semler, who won an Oscar for Dances with Wolves. All the doom and zoom sound fun, but the ancient Maya are also called the Greeks of the New World--they invented the concept of zero, built astonishing cities and used a more complex calendar than ours. Gibson insists the glory gets its close-ups too. Says Richard Hansen, a Maya scholar at Idaho State University, head of the Mirador Basin Project and a consultant for Apocalypto: "This is by far the best treatment--the first treatment really--of the Maya any film has ever done. I'm amazed at the detail Mel's shooting for."

In fact, says veteran production designer Tom Sanders, Apocalypto "is the hardest show I've ever worked on." Stacks of archaeology books and magazines are strewn about a massive warehouse in Veracruz, where an army of costume and makeup artisans from Mexico and Italy are painstakingly re-creating feathers of the nearly extinct quetzal for royal headdresses and long, looping earlobe extensions for warriors. (Because those prostheses are difficult to apply, the actors must wear them for days on end, which rather spooks fellow guests at the Fiesta Americana Hotel.) This month Gibson starts filming at a sprawling and meticulously appointed city of Maya pyramids and markets that Sanders' crew spent six months building outside Veracruz. It all suggests a Titanic-size budget, but Gibson will say only that his production company, Icon, is spending less than $50 million. (The Passion cost $30 million.)

Given that controversy hit his last film months before it even finished production, Gibson has been careful to build Mesoamerican goodwill for Apocalypto: two-thirds of the cast and crew are Mexican, and Gibson has donated $1 million to communities in Veracruz state affected by Hurricane Stan last year. Mexican cast members like Mayra Sérbulo, 30, a Zapotec Indian who plays a villager, say they expect some criticism of the film from Mexican nationalists (who also tore into Salma Hayek's Frida), especially since it touches on the raw issue of human sacrifice, which scholars don't believe was a prevalent Maya practice until the post-classic period, after A.D. 900, when fiercer influences like the Toltecs and Aztecs arrived. It is in that period, not coincidentally, that Apocalypto is set. "But I'm frankly surprised and excited that someone is making a film about an indigenous Mexican culture that most Mexicans don't even know all that well," says Sérbulo. "I feel valued by this movie."

Gibson nonetheless is a lightning rod--pro-Mel and anti-Mel blogs abound on the Internet--and he knows that even non-Mexican detractors will ask why, if he's so morbidly fascinated with the bloody deeds of Jewish Pharisees and Maya priests, he doesn't hold a mirror to his own church and film the Spanish Inquisition. Gibson won't say that's a future plan, but he nods and agrees that "there are monsters in every culture."

The more immediate question is whether Apocalypto can repeat The Passion's success. After all, devout Christians willing to sit through Latin and Aramaic dialogue to see Christ crucified vastly outnumber Maya scholars. Gibson seems certain that the film's "kinetic energy" will make Maya language and culture "cool" enough to attract a crowd. Maya prophecy says the current world, which began 5,000 years ago, will end in 2012. So, even if Apocalypto flops, Gibson will at least have given the Maya one last chance to get the word out.

any respect I had left for Gibson is gone. what a douche.

um what? how? he seems absolutely crazed and impassioned, and he's not siding with any one ideology. what's your problem?

Quote from: RedVines on March 22, 2006, 06:57:57 PM
any respect I had left for Gibson is gone. what a douche.

are you gonna back that up with a reason or what? talk about a douche..

he's the fucking man as far as i'm concerned. i think everyone is watching him from a distance with a raised eyebrow, like "that wacky mel". most ppl, if they care at all, fail to realise the precision with which he's calculating his career right now. or maybe it's completely obvious but either way it's exciting. i'd rather successful actor/directors use their clout to redefine the boundaries of what is deemed commercially acceptable, than make another Zathura or sumthing.

if this movie achieves maximum awesomeness it may generate interest in other sorts of historically-aware productions, making The New World not so much a blip on the collective radar but a precursor to this golden age of historical revival, to be continued with Apocalypto, The Fountain, The Golden Age, etc. that's damn respectable to me.

to summarize:

Quote from: RedVines on March 22, 2006, 06:57:57 PM
any respect I had left for Gibson is gone. what a douche.

Quote from: MacGuffin on March 22, 2006, 06:24:22 PM
flashing one of his patented bug-eyed expressions.

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi5.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fy154%2Fpubrick%2Frodneyd.jpg&hash=a905f5139783df6cc067635256f5c34b379a9f5c)

the problem with Gibson is that.....well, he's full of shit. phony from top to bottom. ever since "Braveheart" he seems to be very aware of his audience and how much money he can bring in. it seems to be the only reason he keeps making them. "The Passion" was total exploitation (hardly a movie) and it made millions upon millions. and he thinks he can attract a crowd with this next movie cuz the foreign language "sounds really cool".

he's not the worst filmmaker out there, far from it. but I don't care for him or his movies.

Quote from: RedVines on March 23, 2006, 10:50:21 AM
the problem with Gibson is that.....well, he's full of shit. phony from top to bottom. ever since "Braveheart" he seems to be very aware of his audience and how much money he can bring in. it seems to be the only reason he keeps making them. "The Passion" was total exploitation (hardly a movie) and it made millions upon millions. and he thinks he can attract a crowd with this next movie cuz the foreign language "sounds really cool".

he's not the worst filmmaker out there, far from it. but I don't care for him or his movies.

so you hate him b/c

1. his films make money
2. he's aware of his audience
3. he makes foreign films b/c they sound cool

riiiiiiight.

exactly.............wait, what?

bottom line: your argument is shit. think of a better one.

first off, I don't hate Gibson. he's not the first guy to make movies for the simple reason of making millions of dollars. but that's what he does. and that's why I don't have a lot of respect for him. perhaps I didn't spell that out enough in my previous posts.

but I gotta hand it to him - he's great at marketing. but I have yet to see a decent movie from him.

Redvines, I can respect that you don't like The Passion, but to say that he made that film for the simple reason of making a million dollars seems like a stretch. The guy put up all of his own money, made it with relative unknowns (Caviezel wasn't exactly a household name at the time), used a foreign language that isn't used anymore, and went through distributing hell to get it to the public. Those are risks that are not usually commensurate with simply wanting to rake in the dough. Also, I have to give him the benefit of the doubt from the standpoint of his religious beliefs. I could never make a judgment about them, but if someone is a Christian and they make a film about the passion, nothing could be more personal. If he did do it just to make money, the guy is scum. I happen to think otherwise.

As far as Apocalypto...the jury is obviously still out. He seems to be using a lot of same formulas, but he is much more sure of himself. That might not be a good thing, though.

Quote from: Sunrise on March 23, 2006, 04:21:08 PM
Redvines, I can respect that you don't like The Passion, but to say that he made that film for the simple reason of making a million dollars seems like a stretch.

yeah don't worry, its a lost cause. redvines is an idiot.

Quote from: Cinephile on March 23, 2006, 04:45:09 PM

Quote from: Sunrise on March 23, 2006, 04:21:08 PM
Redvines, I can respect that you don't like The Passion, but to say that he made that film for the simple reason of making a million dollars seems like a stretch.

yeah don't worry, its a lost cause. redvines is an idiot.

now we've resorted to name calling. nice.

what? oh, right, yeah your gibson theory is brilliant. and everyone but me agrees with you on it.

yeah, sorry, my mistake.

you're a smartie, filmcritic.

Quote from: Cinephile on March 23, 2006, 05:04:36 PM
what? oh, right, yeah your gibson theory is brilliant. and everyone but me agrees with you on it.

yeah, sorry, my mistake.

you're a smartie, filmcritic.

it's called a discussion. people might not agree with me and that's fine. but I haven't had anything against you in the past and I don't wanna start now.

yeah, that's cool. you're being an idiot about your discussion though. that's why everyone's so quick to call you out on it.

and no need to play the innocent card. we all remember this as apart of your classic filmcritic/Quoyle/Finn/Sydney/Insomniac/Small Town Loner/RedVines highlight reel: http://xixax.com/index.php?topic=353.msg209545#msg209545

best of luck with the rest of your discussion. i've said all i wanted to say about it.

red vines, i took up for you in the kids/gummo/harmony korine is a hack piece of shit thread...but i dont agree w/a thing you is saying about gibson....The Passion of the Christ was not intended as a money making machine...can you imagine then pain of dealing w/distribution of this film and the flak you're gonna get in the Jewish controlled hollywood machine?  but my boy stood his ground and made an important film in my opinion..and all those idiots who didnt wanna deal w/the distribution of this film are wishing they did...

red vines, to put it in persepctive for you...imagine fox news having two gay male news anchors who spread strawberry jelly on each others dicks and licking it off while bashing george bush....do you see what i'm getting at...?

this film will be incredible.

Quote from: pyramid machine on March 23, 2006, 09:48:02 PM
imagine fox news having two gay male news anchors who spread strawberry jelly on each others dicks and licking it off while bashing george bush....

I'm listening...

Quote from: pyramid machine on March 23, 2006, 09:48:02 PM
red vines, i took up for you in the kids/gummo/harmony korine is a hack piece of shit thread...but i dont agree w/a thing you is saying about gibson....The Passion of the Christ was not intended as a money making machine...can you imagine then pain of dealing w/distribution of this film and the flak you're gonna get in the Jewish controlled hollywood machine?  but my boy stood his ground and made an important film in my opinion..and all those idiots who didnt wanna deal w/the distribution of this film are wishing they did...

red vines, to put it in persepctive for you...imagine fox news having two gay male news anchors who spread strawberry jelly on each others dicks and licking it off while bashing george bush....do you see what i'm getting at...?

neon, to put it in perspective for you....imagine a xixax-member posting in a thread without attempting to hijack it as his own platform for spreading deranged, ignorant views..... do you see what i'm getting at....?

nobody said anything about Christianity and frankly, your reasons for loving The Passion are totally irrelevant at this point. in case you didn't know, this is a thread about Mel Gibson's upcoming film Apocalypto, a movie that has nothing to do with Christianity. it's as if you were reading a totally different thread before posting. either that or i guess it just looked like a sweet opportunity to rail against them goddamn jew hollywood bastards and their evil oppression of the good, god-lovin' christians. that pyramid machine, always fightin' the good fight.

Hey, at least we got this wonderful quote out of it:

Quote from: pyramid machine on March 23, 2006, 09:48:02 PM
red vines, to put it in persepctive for you...imagine fox news having two gay male news anchors who spread strawberry jelly on each others dicks and licking it off while bashing george bush....do you see what i'm getting at...?

Quote from: Hedwig on March 23, 2006, 10:36:09 PM

Quote from: pyramid machine on March 23, 2006, 09:48:02 PM
red vines, i took up for you in the kids/gummo/harmony korine is a hack piece of shit thread...but i dont agree w/a thing you is saying about gibson....The Passion of the Christ was not intended as a money making machine...can you imagine then pain of dealing w/distribution of this film and the flak you're gonna get in the Jewish controlled hollywood machine?  but my boy stood his ground and made an important film in my opinion..and all those idiots who didnt wanna deal w/the distribution of this film are wishing they did...

red vines, to put it in persepctive for you...imagine fox news having two gay male news anchors who spread strawberry jelly on each others dicks and licking it off while bashing george bush....do you see what i'm getting at...?

neon, to put it in perspective for you....imagine a xixax-member posting in a thread without attempting to hijack it as his own platform for spreading deranged, ignorant views..... do you see what i'm getting at....?

nobody said anything about Christianity and frankly, your reasons for loving The Passion are totally irrelevant at this point. in case you didn't know, this is a thread about Mel Gibson's upcoming film Apocalypto, a movie that has nothing to do with Christianity. it's as if you were reading a totally different thread before posting. either that or i guess it just looked like a sweet opportunity to rail against them goddamn jew hollywood bastards and their evil oppression of the good, god-lovin' christians. that pyramid machine, always fightin' the good fight.

red vines, dont worry i am hated here more than you :ponder:

cant  a brother have a lil tongue and cheek humor?  i know this mayan flick doesn thave anything to do w/ Chrisitanity...my points:

1.) gibson deserves everyones respect for making the ultimate inde film
2.) most people besides religious zealots were against this film and wanted nothing to do w/it..but yet it became an incredible artistic and profitable hit
3.)  i am super cool!

god, it's everyone jumping on redvines all over again.  I still don't understand what the thrill behind it all is.  Gibson does sound a bit phony in this new movie.  the concept of an American director yelling at these native actors as they re-enact their ancestors' colossal mistake to teach the world a lesson about our green Earth sounds a tadbit superficial to me.  Isn't this a Herzog and Malick-love board?  How can you dig this kind of crap concept when there are giants like herzog and malick around?

Quote from: pete on March 24, 2006, 12:41:21 AM
god, it's everyone jumping on redvines all over again.  I still don't understand what the thrill behind it all is.

its about just as much a 'thrill' as everyone on the board (including you) jumping on neon. both of them have been on the forum the same length of time so please don't make this an issue of 'newb hazing', if thats what you're doing.

did you just equate neo-conservative propaganda to hating mel gibson?

Quote from: pete on March 26, 2006, 06:48:04 PM
did you just equate neo-conservative propaganda to hating mel gibson?

i equated idiocy to idiocy..  :yabbse-undecided:

APOCALYPTO Now Delayed
Perhaps looking to capitalize on next year's awards season, Disney decides to push Gibson's Apocalypto back until Dec. 8.
Source: FilmStew.com

Trailers have already hit theatres across the country, but now The Walt Disney Co. has announced that it's pushing back the release date for Mel Gibson's next directing effort, Apocalypto. The film was originally slated to bow in late summer, but it will now be positioned during the holiday season and, maybe unintentionally, right in the heart of awards season.

Had it rolled out on August 4 as planned, the Mayan-language drama faced competition from the Will Ferrell comedy Talladega Nights as well as the animated comedy Ant Bully. With the move to December 8, however, it will go up against the latest Nancy Meyers comedy, The Holiday, and the McG football drama We Are Marshall, from Warner Bros.

While Apocalypto was facing some production delays, Disney is more than likely betting that the epic drama will fare better against the December competition. The Mouse House hasn't totally given up on August, however. It will now be dropping the dance romancer Step Up on August 11 and will be moving the Mark Wahlberg-starring football drama Invincible from January up to August 25.

Gibson's Apocalypto centers on the fall of the once great Mayan Empire. Gibson wrote the script with Farhad Safinia and also produced under his Icon Productions banner.

will ferrell > disney > mel gibson > mcg

Hoping to replicate some of that New World business, Disney has moved their historical epic to a prime 'can be forgotten about in the end of the year glut' slot.

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fffmedia.ign.com%2Ffilmforce%2Fimage%2Farticle%2F710%2F710570%2Fapocalypto_onesheet_1149023338-000.jpg&hash=09b459fccf4551dc3b6b4bd62a2aee96839e7fcc)

Mel Gibson's New Movie 'Being Shopped'
Source: Fox News

Disney once again finds itself in the position of having a movie it no longer wants.

Mel Gibson's movie "Apocalypto," which Disney was supposed to release on Dec. 8, is "being shopped" to other potential distributors, sources tell me.

One potential distributor for "Apocalypto" is Lions Gate, an independent company with a history of rescuing distressed projects. In the past they've picked up Kevin Smith's "Dogma" and Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" when Miramax was prevented from putting them out by their own agreements with Disney.

This column was the first to speculate more than a week ago that since Gibson's arrest for drunk driving and the scandal involving his anti-Semitic tirade, Disney would not want to invest any money into "Apocalypto," which already was an iffy project at best.

A spokesperson for Lions Gate declined to comment on whether the company had talked to Disney or Gibson. At the same time, a reliable insider who knew the players in this game assured me that Disney was quietly shopping the film and that Lions Gate was first on its list of hopeful buyers.

Disney confirms distribution of Gibson film

The Walt Disney Co. will distribute "Apocalypto," a Mayan-language film by actor-director Mel Gibson, as planned on December 8, a Walt Disney Studios spokeswoman said on Friday.

That confirmation refutes recent media and Internet reports that family-oriented Disney wanted to sell distribution rights to the film to another studio to distance itself from the controversy over anti-Semitic remarks Gibson made when he was arrested on suspicion of drunken driving last month in Malibu, California.

"It's not true," Disney spokeswoman Heidi Trotta said of the reports. Disney had no role in producing the film, a thriller with a cast of unknowns that is set in an ancient Mayan settlement and told in the Yucatec dialect with subtitles. Hollywood experts said that until his arrest, it was expected that Gibson would lead the publicity campaign for the film.

Gibson has said the story would be told through the eyes of a Mayan man, his family and village, and would touch on universal themes about "civilizations and what undermines them."

Shortly after Gibson's arrest, Disney-owned ABC television network opted not to produce a miniseries about the Holocaust with his Icon Productions company.

Gibson, 50, has been charged with drunken driving and having an open container of alcohol in his car in connection with the traffic stop, during which he told a sheriff's deputy that Jews "were responsible for all the wars in the world."

The rant prompted some Jewish leaders to call on Hollywood to shun the actor, who holds strong conservative Catholic religious and political views and whose father is a Holocaust denier.

Gibson has apologized and entered an alcohol rehabilitation program.

Gibson's 1994 film "The Passion of the Christ" provoked an outcry from the Jewish community, which saw it as an attempt to inflame anti-Semitic sentiments among Christians.

Quote from: MacGuffin on August 11, 2006, 10:58:25 PMGibson's 1994 film "The Passion of the Christ" provoked an outcry from the Jewish community, which saw it as an attempt to inflame anti-Semitic sentiments among Christians.

haha Wow. 

New Trailer here. (http://www.apple.com/trailers/touchstone/apocalypto/)

that looked pretty stupid.

Quote from: pete on April 17, 2006, 07:01:48 PM
will ferrell > disney > mel gibson > mcg

pete>thecowgoesmoo


this film looks incredible..!!

It looks more promising than the first trailer, which I thought was pretty lame. I'm impressed that they're marketing it without any voice over narration and minimal title cards.

according to yahoo news, this premiered in Goldsby, Oklahoma at a Casino? wtf? I'm from OK and i've never even heard of Goldsby

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060924/ap_en_mo/people_gibson;_ylt=AmYFhqu1ZVsVwSsdALXwpdBxFb8C;_ylu=X3oDMTA2Z2szazkxBHNlYwN0bQ

Quote from: squints on September 25, 2006, 10:20:05 AM
according to yahoo news, this premiered in Goldsby, Oklahoma at a Casino? wtf? I'm from OK and i've never even heard of Goldsby

You clearly don't know enough about Oklahoma and it's rich history of Indian Casinos. 
Goldsby is about three minutes out of Norman, my hometown.. how strange because it actually showed here in Austin too...

Quote from: Matt Dentler
Wow. Harry Knowles and Tim League both told me that Saturday night of Fantastic Fest would deliver a helluva surprise sneak screening. Guesses went wild, between The Prestige or The Departed, as contenders. No one ever expected that tonight, audiences at Fantastic Fest would be treated to the first public screening of Mel Gibson's latest release, Apocalypto. The film, due for release by Disney in December, recently screened to community organizations but just wrapped up an enthusiastic reception here in Austin. The film's screening was followed by a Q&A with director Mel Gibson, and star Rudy Youngblood.

It's no secret that Gibson has been under the microscope this year for comments he made during an arrest in Malibu. Immediately following the arrest, rumors ran wild about the fate of this new film. The 200+ audience members at tonight's screening seemed to shrug off any politics or scandal, in favor of simply experiencing Gibson's latest work. That's right, no crazy war of words to report, just a recap of a film that played very well (though still not complete), and will easily serve Braveheart fans as the proper follow-up of that Oscar-winning work. Especially for those who didn't grab hold of his last film, The Passion of the Christ (which Harry Knowles previewed in Austin, in December 2003). In other words, scandal or no, Mel Gibson has delivered a highly entertaining and suspenseful action film. Properly positioned, it could be a big success.

The film follows a Mayan tribe in the 16th Century, as they go about their everyday lives built around hunting, mating, and surviving. The focus of the tribe is Jaguar Paw (Youngblood), a warrior with a son and pregnant wife. Times are happy at the tribe, until a warring faction invades, and lays waste to many of the inhabitants. Jaguar Paw, along with a few comrades, is taken prisoner and carted off to a Mayan city. His wife and son, though, find refuge in a cave, as they await rescue. With the disturbing invasion of the camp, Gibson returns to his thrilling action setpieces, and fight scenes. And yes, there is a lot of blood. It will be fascinating to see how much of the violence will remain, since much of what we saw tonight is very, very, very (very) graphic. This includes a human-sacrifice scene, once the prisoners make it to the city, and the blood never really lets up from there.

So, without spoiling much, the rest of the narrative stems from Jaguar Paw's need to escape his captors and recuse his family from an uncertain future. Meanwhile, omens and natural oddities spark concern that the heavens are unhappy, and that the civilization may be in danger. And, this is where Apocalytpo breaks beyond just normal, action-adventure fare (but there is plenty of that to behold). Gibson clearly adds an accent or two of modern-day relevance to what unfolds at the end of Mayan civilization, marked by the fact that the Mayans are depleting their own resources, while greed and violence spell doom for the future.

During the Q&A, Gibson shared "I just wanna draw the parallels. I just looked at it, and thought, we display that stuff here. I don't wanna be a doomsayer, but the Mayan calendar ends in 2012," he said, musing with a grin, "So have fun!" It's quite clear that certain characters in the film could be compared to various world leaders, as the Mayan city is run by self-righteous men convinced they are doing the will of the gods. There's even a parallel to the grizzly sacrifice scene, Gibson shared Saturday night, "What's human sacrifice if not sending a bunch of kids off to Iraq for no reason?"

When chatting about his casting choices, Gibson noted that all of the actors were first-timers from the around the globe. In finding his Jaguar Paw, the selection process was down to about six folks and he liked Youngblood, particularly because he wasn't "too pretty," and resembled a normal person. But, in addition, Gibson requested that each finalist run around the coference room in which he was casting. And, it was quite clear that Youngblood had the physical chops for such a demanding role. Youngblood, who was charming if not seemingly nervous at the screening, manages a great presence in the film.

Apocalypto is not perfect. It's also not complete (in fact, some of the finished effects will greatly improve some of the Mayan city scenes). What it is though, no matter what, is a fine adventure film with a charismatic lead character and some wonderfully choreographed action sequences. It's Bravheart, with subtitles. Some of the social and political commentary may get lost beneath the massive amounts of blood and body parts, but that echoed throughout the entire evening: At the end of the day, audiences want to be entertained, and Apocalypto does the trick. It's tough, but I was able to separate the Mel Gibson scandal from my viewing of the film, as disgusting as his statements during his arrest were. Was I able to block it from my mind during the Q&A? Not at all. It's an interesting situation for an artist and for the audience. I'll be curious to see other reactions from the 200 others sitting around me tonight.

I'm not a fan of Mel Gibson as a filmmaker (or as anything to be honest) but I'll probably check this out. It's got potential.

Plus the Bearded subliminal appearance in the first trailer put him up a notch in my books.

Mel Gibson Reveals His Apocalypto
Source: ComingSoon

Although his latest film Apocalypto doesn't hit theatres until December, ComingSoon.net had a rare and amazing opportunity to sit down for an interview with Mel Gibson at his Icon production company in Santa Monica to talk him about his new project. The story takes place in the jungles during the 16th century near Mayan cities and follows a man named Jaguar Paw, who has been chosen for human sacrifice by the declining Maya kingdom in hopes of regaining prosperity. As he attempts to flee the kingdom, weak and weaponless, Gibson engages you with incredible and intense chase scenes that will leave you guessing as to what happens until the very end.

ComingSoon.net: Were you influenced at all by "The Naked Prey?"
Mel Gibson: Man that's a cool little movie. I remember seeing that when I was a kid and I always felt like how could that guy get away from those guys? He was an old guy and these guys were like it was their environment and they were young and healthy and it always bugged me that he got away from them. So I think we're all influenced by whatever we've seen, but I think with that film, it didn't have the sort of social and civilization aspect. This had almost a Biblical kind of feel to it. You know.

CS: So why after doing "Passion of The Christ" would you decide to take on something so unambitious and apparently easy to make?
Gibson: I don't know. It's just a story that kind of appealed to me. I've been wanting to do a chase movie forever. You look at the mechanics of it, and that's how it started, just a chase. And I thought, well there's all kinds of chases, there's train chases, car chases, horse chases, I thought, a foot chase! That's a good idea, that's as minimum and as primal as it gets, it's just feet, just running. So of course then you start searching for an environment in which that could have happened. I don't think they'd managed to put a harness on a tapir yet. But, even with that, he probably wouldn't have gone anywhere. So it was important to find the right place, the right time in history. Actually trying to hook it on to a real place and it was pre-European, like Honduras or in there some place.

CS: "Passion of The Christ" was spoken in Aramaic and Hebrew and in this one you use an unspoken dialect, how difficult is that for you to direct, to follow dialogue?
Gibson: It's not difficult because there's not that much dialogue and you kind of have an ear for what they are saying. I mean you don't know what every word means and the structure of that language is backwards to the language that I am most familiar with but like romance languages, you know, they put the adjective after the verb and that kind of stuff so, it wasn't difficult and it wasn't difficult for the actors to sort of get a handle on it. They were able to, I don't know, it just wasn't difficult, it isn't an obstacle for me. It just wasn't any difficulty at all.

CS: What about shooting in the jungle?
Gibson: That's difficult. Really, very tough. It's not just the physical nature of it, well that is it of course, but not what it does to you. I mean, you're being bitten and sweating and it's the whole deal and it's tough on all the performers and the crew and it's unwieldy. Especially when you have to move at a speed because you see how fast this kid could run. He was going like an express train this guy. He is a supreme athlete, this kid. The thing that's exciting, well to me, is that we had to come up with a lot of different ways of doing things. You know, we were using different, we were really like test pilots for a different system now. I think "Superman [Returns]" and "Click," I think they shot on Genesis so this was really the place where Genesis got put to the test. It's not inside a studio all nice and friendly. It was actually out there in the woods and we were treating it like a camera should be treated.

CS: Where was the film shot?
Gibson: In the jungles in Catemaco in Veracruz, in the state of Veracruz. And then the rest of the film was shot closer to the city of Veracruz. We found a farm with some jungle in case we needed to catch up on any foliage moments and we were able to build the city there on some guy's farm.

CS: Can you talk about the casting, how you found everyone, the lead actors?
Gibson: I consider this a major motion picture alright. It is independent yes. Farhad [Safinia] and I wrote it and we just went out and found the people, but it was important in my mind that the people that we found be in some way immediately identifiable as some kind of archetypal types from mythic, from a mythic perspective, you know. So that if you had the hero guy you wanted that guy. When I met him [Rudy Youngblood] he said that to me, I mean, that's what I got from him. Or the guy that played his father, you know, that gets his throat cut, or the guy that played his big friend, you know, lovable but tough. So you are sort of looking at those archetypes of myth and it was important if you are gonna do a film that has themes in another language and involving an indigenous culture, that everybody is able to identify with them, immediately, otherwise it's just too alienating. So that the casting process. You had to find people who had those qualities already. Who just look like you imagine they should. In a predictable way sometimes and yet didn't betray the kind of people, the feeling of real people back in the 16th century in the jungles or in some of those Mayan cities. And I think it's the first film ever where you've got, you know, it didn't have somebody like me or, you know, it had just indigenous Native American guys in the four biggest parts and then all the rest were Hispanic guys. And big parts there too like the guy that played the real wacky guy, the Middle Eye guy [Gerardo Taracena], who gets clubbed, he's just from Mexico City but, and when I went to Mexico I did a lot of casting down there and we have Zapotecas from Indians, you know, there's two, like the woman who says that prayer across the stream, she's Zapotec and lives in the city of Oaxaca [pronounced Wa-ha-ka] and the guy that gets bit by the snake. None of these people had acted much before, ever. So it was, that was challenge, for them and for me and it was kind of like, since it's going to be out there, it's kind of like having the Super Bowl and picking a guy who looks kind of able from the crowd and saying, "you be the quarterback." Because that's what you are asking, they have never been in that position before. So it took a little give and take but they were amazing how they picked up. I think they did a brilliant job. I mean, they all look pretty natural and stuff. But, a very long process of finding the right people. Right up to the day before we shot one scene we hadn't found the right guy. They kept bringing fine looking fellas, you know, they'd been in the gym and they looked tough and all this kind of stuff and I'd look at the guy and just say, "well, he just looks like a guy from the gym." I mean, why would that guy be the king of this whole city? Why would that guy be the king? I said, I don't get it. I want to look at this guy one time and know he killed all his brothers for the position. That he's probably really sick in some way, that he's powerful and he's all those things, but that guy, that Farhad found working at the docks (laughing). But when you look at him, you go whoa! He's kind of frightening, he sort of had this kind of Egyptian Pharaoh kind of like, he looked like a king. You knew why that guy was the king when you looked at him, for me. I don't know if it said it to you. But, he just looked like, yeah I'm the big cheese for a reason. He looked dangerous and he was oddly handsome and it was like, you know, he just kind of had it all going on. So those things are difficult.

[Co-writer and co-producer] Farhad Safinia: That was a strange day.

Gibson: It was a strange day for him walking around the docks looking at guys. (laughter) He almost got punched.

CS: The docks where?
Safinia: The public docks in Veracruz port city. We couldn't tell anybody why you were checking him out.

Gibson: You know, he even got a few takers. (laughter) But some people wanted to hit him and some people wanted to hug him. He didn't know what to do. So it was odd assignment. But, we did that a lot. We would just see people and go whoa! Like that little girl that played the Mayan, you know. I've revoiced her since because it sounded a little sing-song-y and it's truly frightening you know, but what an amazing child. Seven years old, never saw a floor before. She's really from a village where she lives on the dirt in a hut in a village smaller than the one you saw here [in the film], where those people lived and it's not that different.

CS: Is that something you really wanted to capture? Bringing people that really did live this way and try to express that on the big screen easier?
Gibson: Yes, yes because there is something that you cannot counterfeit and that is a kind of, when you look at the face of the young pregnant woman, right? Did you notice how uncomplicated it was? And how, it just wasn't complicated, it was childlike. And that little girl was really childlike although she had to say some really nasty things to those guys and so many of the people that you got from, they just had that quality. And whether or not they were, they appeared to be. So, that brings a lot to it I think. You are more apt to believe it somehow.

CS: Were there any injuries on set?
Gibson: Oh yeah, one day it was very cold and it was the only one cold day. It was like a snap weird, freak day and it was when all those people were walking through with all the cuts and bleeding and stuff and somebody said, "hey, come over here for a minute we have a problem." There was a four year boy with a ferdelance [snake] wrapped around his leg trying to keep warm. A ferdelance is the thing you saw jump up and bite that guy in the neck, extremely poisonous, dangerous serpent and big. It was trying to be warm, it was like, "ahh I'll wrap around this 4-year old kid's leg" and he's going, "mom what's this?" We had to send the snake wrangler in to pry it off so I am really glad it didn't bite him. But injuries? Pulled muscles, ripped ligaments, what else? What else was there [to Farhad]?

Safinia: A lot of that kind of stuff, but also obviously the weather conditions. We had the camera crew on the ground in some of those city shots in 127 degrees Fahrenheit, it broke the thermometer. We had extras passing out. We had Red Cross there to revive them.

Gibson: The other thing was, I was very aware, I hadn't done this kind of stuff myself, and how easy it is to injure yourself. And it was important that these guys be safe. So ground was often prepared, they had footwear on that would support them, air splints, all sorts of stuff. If you need to take it out afterwards [in post] you do it. Take it off and make them look like they're barefoot. But the main guy there, I mean, this film was eight months of shooting and it was scheduled for four months of shooting. But with the weather, we had rain when it was supposed to be the dry season. We got animals, we had children, we had jungle, we had incredibly difficult set-ups and long set-ups and makeup and wardrobe and all that stuff and a huge team of people. When you are dealing with 800 extras you are getting them in stages through the day and they all had to be, their teeth, everything, had to be so a very intricate, very complicated process. That's why it took twice as long. Plus the fact that nobody was really seasoned as an actor on film, they didn't know how to do it. They didn't know about marks or cameras so I was teaching the whole time and of course that's gonna take longer. Now once they started to hear it and understand it and acting lessons as well, it was like uhh, I had to delve into my bag of tricks to remember what the hell I learned over whatever period it was. It was mostly about breathing, it was an interesting thing.

CS: This movie is less graphic than "Passion of The Christ," is that a product of, sort of, the reaction to "Passion of The Christ" because it was extremely intense?
Gibson: Well, that was intended to be extremely intense. I just wanted to zone in on that, that was the nature of that film was to be in fact, almost as graphic as you could stand and not have anybody run out screaming. With this, that wasn't it. That wasn't the main point of the exercise. So I did come back and pull away from stuff and you never saw in anyone with a hand inside anybody's chest cavity or anything. I don't need to see that, it's bad enough seeing the thing [the heart] beating. Like for instance, when that guy's son gets killed it's way downfield. I don't want to see it you know. Wherever I could do that I did it, but some things were necessary.

CS: Certainly not to respond to individual critics but do you find that as you move from one project to the next that you do sort of respond to whatever might be the sort of consensus reaction to the film?
Gibson: Well it depends on whether it's a fair criticism or not. And some of them are. And some of them you can learn from. But, I think, I have a meter that tells me whether it's bologna or not, you know.

CS: Is there something in particular that has been what you consider to be a fair criticism?
Gibson: Oh God, over the years, oh lots of times, from fair minded critics who really have a point of view and they say, "you know..." And they actually do have a point sometimes. I don't totally dismiss all critics. I've either had people say things and I think, "well, what the hell would he know?" And then you start thinking about it later and you go, "you know, he's right about that." And you have to admit that if you are trying to be honest, you know, and learn from that. So, all those bits and pieces, you have a filter, some of it just bounces off when you know that it's more about their ego than about artistic exchange. Some of it gets through and you understand that they are actually saying something that's pretty good and it's giving you a clue as to how sort of make something better maybe. Or maybe an area that you could look at because that's what feedback is, it just happens to be public feedback. Feedback in a situation like this for example is far different from somebody who has to put out in a newspaper. He's obligated to do other things as well not only feedback but he has to be entertaining and there's a certain level of snotiness he has to have, you now what I mean, it's a game. So, you know, you have to be able to separate all those other factors and look at the heart of what's coming out and take something from it if it is real and honest.

CS: You are dealing with a lost civilization in this film so I am wondering how you researched it to make things authentic.
Gibson: There's a lot of books around. There's a lot of evidence being unearthed as we worked. They were digging out murals going, "look at this!" In fact, we even changed the murals that we drew on the walls when those guys were walking down the tunnel to emulate the murals that they just found. I mean, they were a whole different color scheme and we changed it and tried to match up with the latest stuff they found. Where were those found [to Farhad]?

Safinia: Remember the ones in the teaser?

Gibson: Yeah, they were blue and yellow.

Safinia: The ones that they discover at Bartolome were more...

Gibson: ...sort of more browns and reds...

Safinia: Those are the ones that made it to the film.

Gibson: But we did keep some of the blue part of it going too.

Safinia: We did.

Gibson: It was sort of a hybrid mural. But, you know...

Safinia: We had advisors too.

Gibson: Oh absolutely, and some of the stuff was so cryptic when you looked at it, you think, "Well, what is that? Oh, that's snake!" But you couldn't quite make it out so we had to make things a little bit more readable. Because one's eyes don't adjust to that unless you lived in that culture and you were familiar with the signs, hieroglyphs and all that stuff, then it made perfect sense to you but for us we're looking at it going, "What is that?" You have to turn it upside down, "Oh right, ok, that's a jaguar's foot."

CS: So the human sacrifice ceremony was that pretty close as to what it was it that time period?
Gibson: I would think so.

CS: It was based off your research?
Gibson: Yeah, there was cardiectomies. There's a lot of hypothetical dialogue as to what's addressed and, but, I am sure that's what it was about. It was an appeasement of God's wrath, the hearts and bloodletting, I mean that's what it was about. So we just put words to it, I don't know if they used those words but they used something like them. But the cardiectomy part, it used to take them less than a minute to get a guy's heart out. That's if you didn't go through the ribcage, if you went under, through the diaphragm, less than a minute. There's a recorded, and this is in our history because Europeans were there, and they watched an Aztec festival and in a course of four days they performed 20,000 cardiectomies on people in one of their things, you know, a bloodbath. That's a lot of people. 20,000 people in four days? I think they must have had more than one temple going. Must have been like a three-ring circus. But even in four days you'd be hard pressed to get 20,000 hearts out of people. But apparently they did. And it was far more violent, the stuff that they would do to one another, than anything I showed. Believe me. We studied up on this, didn't we [to Farhad]?

Safinia: Oh yeah.

Gibson: Oh man, it's just awful what they did to one another you know, chewing their fingers off, cutting your eyelids off and your lips, ripping your tongue out, hanging you up and stabbing you in the genitals. I mean just horrific. Putting you up as a living target in the field like a firing range, firing arrows at you. At least we had our guys running when they were doing that. They used to just tie them up on boards and like, "hey, I think I can hit him right in the heart!" So they'd be doing target practice on real targets.

Safinia: It was all about humiliating them really.

Gibson: Oh, it was so much about humiliation. It was awful. If they captured you as a queen of another city? Oh God, it's a fate much worse than death or king, they kept this guy alive for nine years cutting pieces off and they were experts at it. They could open you up take out all your entrails, cauterize you and keep you alive, without your insides for quite a while. That's the really fascinating thing about the culture is that you have this incredibly sophisticated civilization on one hand and then there are such acts of barbarism in there. I mean they knew about the stars and the constellations and all kinds of things. They had buildings, libraries, books and a language, they were cultured. They were like the Greeks you know, but they also had this other thing with the human sacrifice, which I think came actually from the north and traveled from the Aztecs because there was commercial intercourse and stuff like that. They would have picked up a lot of the customs and there were conquests also. Sometimes you get an Aztec regime come in and sort of rule or conquer and rule so that it changed gradually.

CS: You talk about all the civilization and culture, what was the key would you say it was in the writing or the directing or acting that you were able to humanize these people and render their culture as not purely barbaric?
Gibson: It's all to do with the human story. It's the universal mythic kind of tale brought down to a level that hopefully we can all understand. I mean, who amongst us hasn't played a practical joke. I remember as a 16-year old, me and my friends were together and we actually pretended that we were eating these things that were like cookies or something but they were actually dog biscuits, and the guy ate them in front of us all. He ate these dog biscuits with a cup of tea and he was like, and then when we said, "hey, they're dog biscuits!" He was so embarrassed that he was eating dog biscuits and that he'd been had he said, "I like them." He kept going and it was just hilarious.

CS: Like eating a testicle?
Gibson: Yeah, the tapir's balls, yeah (laughing). Same kind of thing. There's something in there. When I was 15-years-old, it was a really interesting thing. You are just growing up at that point and you're like, you're not complete at all at 15, my God, guys aren't complete at all. In fact I'm not complete yet. But it's like, at 15 you are really incomplete, and I just remember some older guy really sort of putting the jab into the middle of me by calling me, really the most insulting thing I could think of. He could have called me a horse's ass or a whore or anything else. It would have been fine, like I would have told him to go and get knotted but what he did was to call me "almost." "Hey almost," like that. And I was just so offended by that. And so that's where that came from in the thing [the film]. I mean [Jaguar Paw] he's almost, he really is almost and then he becomes, you know. So it's like an interesting thing. Those human experiences we have sort of get put into it but it's the heart stories. The guy's family and his wife, his father and the words he says. His father's giving him advice about fear and stuff, which is good advice, I mean it's solid advice, don't live with fear. The film is about fear. We've explored every primal fear we could fit into two hours and five minutes. It was 2:09 that one (laughter). I'm just messin' with you. No, I've got it shorter already. I got another version already that I've been cutting, so, that's not even it, it's not even finished yet, it's much smoother now.

CS: The waterfall sequence is one of the most amazing that I've ever seen, can you talk about the challenges of shooting that?
Gibson: Well, it was a real waterfall. The camera rig was the interesting thing. We used a spider cam with the Genesis on it. I think it was the first time Genesis has gotten really hooked onto a spider cam rig. So we had to span the waterfall and the river with cranes and put the cables up and anchor them in place so it was quite an elaborate setup to enable us to go from over the guys shoulder - down on the water - over the edge - spin around and then pull back in one shot. Then of course, you're not going to make a real guy jump off something like that, he'll kill himself. A cow fell over it one day. We were there, the cow was trying to swim across and I could see it on the B camera up top, the cow, getting toward the edge, you know. "Moo, help me!" And then it was just overtaken by the depth of water and just fell over the waterfall, it was like, "wow!" So I got to see how long it took. It hit the water and I thought, its toast, 'cause it was about 170 feet, this waterfall. It came up, somewhere on the other side and it was all like busted up and messed up and somebody said, "We better shoot it." You know, then the waves got it and it was upside down and bouncing off the rocks and it got into this deep water and one of the guys, one of the local guys, the cow, this is the weirdest things of all, the cow's in the water going, "Ahhh!" You don't know whether it's injured or what it is and it's just swimming. But this Mexican guy just goes up to the thing and he goes, and he dives in, right? And he goes up to the cow and it's like he said something to it. It was the weirdest I've ever seen. He's like, "You know the bank's right over there and you could just walk out of the water and up on that bank." And the cow went, "Oh, okay." And he just went whoosh and walked up and starting eating grass! (laughter) Alright? So it was like the weirdest, did you see that? [to Farhad]

Safinia: Yeah, I did.

Gibson: It was the weirdest thing ever! The cow was like, "AHH!" And the guy went up to him and [said] "it's okay just go up over there and oh, yeah, yeah." It was like the cow and him were talking, it was really weird. He did say something to it I swear. He didn't even grab it or anything. He just swam out to it, "Hey you know, uh, if you went over there you could..." (laughter)

Safinia: The cow was munching grass, it had short term memory loss or something because it felt like it didn't remember a thing.

Gibson: It was like [eating] and looking around going, 'What are all you people doing staring at me?" It was like really, it lived!

CS: Did you guys get any footage of that at all?
Gibson: I kept telling him to turn the camera on, there's a cow coming over the waterfall! (laughter) And it's really loud you know? And the guy [DP] is saying, 'There's a towel coming over waterfall? Why would I turn the camera on?" He didn't turn it on. A lot of people wouldn't turn the camera on when I told them to. (laughter) It used to make me crazy. With the jumps for instance, the guy jumping off the waterfall. We found a 15 story building in Veracruz and we hooked Rudy [Youngblood] up to it on a wire and a harness and said, "Jump off kid!" He was like, "Ahh, Ahh." His knees banged together for a little while but he did it like ten times. He just kept jumping off 175 feet like, "Whee!" Then I'm watching him, and I'm giving him a hard time, I'm going, "You big sissy!" He's saying, "Shut up!" As they are dragging him away up on the wire because as they drag you away you turn into a dot going up 15 stories. I gave him such a bad time that afterwards all the stunt guys came up to me, and he [Rudy Youngblood] put them up to it, and they all just looked at me and said, "I don't suppose you would like to have a jump?" And I said, because I had to instill fear in the rest of the crew and I couldn't look bad I just said, "Hook me up." And they hooked me up and I went off but and I would have had presumed they would have turned the cameras on...(laughter)...but they didn't, and I'm like, "What?!" So it was another one of those moments. "Why didn't you turn the cameras on?" 'Cause I could have slipped in a subliminal frame...(laughter).

CS: I heard that after production was done you had a little village built or contributed to build some homes?
Gibson: Yeah, they had a lot of floods down there. It was like Louisiana down there in the southern regions. They had severe flooding and something like a million people were displaced and washed out. I've always been of the opinion that if you go into someone else's country to make a film you don't just go in there and stomp all over the place. You bring a gift. It's like going to somebody's house. You bring them a bottle of wine or a bunch of flowers or a box of chocolates and it's the same sort of thing on a big scale when you're going in to somebody's country and they are going to help you make your film. You help them first somehow or you give them a gift or you help in what way you can. So we sort of assisted with the flood relief stuff down there.

CS: So getting back to the message of the film that you were talking about earlier, fear being part of the message, the quote in the beginning that, "A great civilization is not conquered from without, until it has destroyed itself from within." Was that more of an analogy of fear overtaking society?
Gibson: Well, that's part of it I think. Fear makes one react in ways you wouldn't normally do because of fear. It makes the imbalance on the other side come out. You overreact or whatever it is and it underlies a lot of things. It drives, fear can drive. But, I think it's pretty true to say it in analyzing any civilization that has ended it's kind of crumbling from the inside out first before it was eventually engulfed by the outside. So it was sick, it's like, when sharks go for the sick ones first. Lions go for the young weak members or the old members of the herd. You know it's like they're overtaken by the outside because they are failing from inside in one way or another you know.

CS: Are you looking at continuing to do movies in other languages?
Gibson: No, I'm gonna do one in English. I'm sick of this s**t (laughter). It's like try one in English for a change.

CS: Mad Max, is that ever possible?
Gibson: They were talking about making one. I think you just watched it (laughter) but, you know, I don't know. I'm gettin' a little long in the tooth for that one.

CS: How about Lethal Weapon?
Gibson: Oh no, I don't want to go there again. Oh boy was that done to death. I just want to do things that really give me a kick. This gave me a real kick. It's pure somehow. I'm hoping that it fulfills on a number of levels. That it's not just a great action picture but, that it's got a lot of levels to it that mean something. I tried to have it be multilevel in the stories it was telling and the meanings you could extract from it but if you didn't want to extract those meanings you could always watch a damn good foot chase.

CS: Suffice to say, you are going to have an uphill battle selling this film. A two plus hour period epic that is not in English. What is it you hope to convey or message you are trying to present?
Gibson: Well entertain, educate and lift to a higher plane of awareness in some way. That's what I tried with this. I think I hit it but it's up to whoever views it. I mean it's really their call as to what it did to them. It's just two hours so it's not three hours. It's in another language, I know.

CS: As brutal as it was, did Disney/Touchstone ever come down to you and say lighten it up a little bit?
Gibson: No, they would've had to supplied the budget to have that right (laughter). But, they were concerned, of course, as they should be. But then when they saw it they were cool. They were like, "Well that's an R. I don't think there's any way out of it." And it is, it's an R-rated picture. After the cardiectomies it's an "aerated" picture. But, it's an R and it should be. It's graphic, I mean, there's a jaguar eating a guy. And that's what they do, they crush the skull first. I just found that out (laughter). Who knew? Interesting. As you said I think it's less graphic than the last film I put out.

Apocalypto hits theatres on December 8th.

I'm convinced that there are two separate Mel Gibsons.  The one who made all the Lethal Weapon movies and Payback, who seems like a really cool, funny guy who would be fun to hang out with, and the left, or "sinister", twin, who's a crazy religious fundamentalist who believes that Jews are the reason your bread gets torn up when you try to spread peanut butter on it.  Some psychologist would have a field day trying to sort the two out.

so this was interesting, given how it's being marketed.  Apocalypto is a mayan Braveheart, complete with gibson's overconfidence and narrow focus.  it's completely independent of the period in which he sets it in, so that the mayan culture is nothing more than a painted backdrop for him to display his nonexistent narrative bravura in front of.  this is the reconiliation of mel gibson, entertainer to the lowest common denominator and mel gibson, the self proclaimed artiste.  the result is exactly what you would expect, in that it fucking blows.  there are the makings of what could be a good action-adventure film but it's so intensely gratuitous and flippant in its violence, as well as irrelevant to what it poses to be that whatever can be said about the few good elements are invalidated.

i'm glad though that wes studi and august schellenberg's legacy as the token actors for films about people indigenous to the americas will be carried on by raoul trujillo.

First, the Jews; Now Gibson Angers the Maya

Some descendants of the Maya tribes depicted in Mel Gibson's Apocalypto have denounced the movie as racist and not representative of their ancient culture. In an interview with Reuters, Ignacio Ochoa, director of the Nahual Foundation, said, "Gibson replays, in glorious big budget Technicolor, an offensive and racist notion that Maya people were brutal to one another long before the arrival of Europeans and thus they deserved, in fact, needed, rescue." Lucio Yaxon, described by Reuters as a 23-year-old Mayan human rights activist, added, "Basically, the director is saying the Mayans are savages." Today's (Thursday) Los Angeles Times noted that archaeologist Richard Hansen was on hand throughout the shooting of the film, lending his advice to the production team. Production designer Tom Sanders told the newspaper, "It was really fun to say [to Hansen], 'Is there any proof they didn't do this?' When he said, 'There is no proof they didn't do that, ' that gives you some license to play."

This was boring and ridiculous.

No redeeming qualities, either.

I agree, but at least the last 40 minutes of action was kinda interesting.

Quote from: Slightly Green on December 10, 2006, 08:40:37 PM
This was boring and ridiculous.

Yeah, till they reached the sacrifice on the temple, then I started to wake up.

Quote from: Gamblour le fountain on December 10, 2006, 08:53:05 PM
I agree, but at least the last 40 minutes of action was kinda interesting.

True that. I would have been asleep had there not been such an exciting chase.

I really really liked this movie. What I find interesting now is that if you go back and watch the teaser trailer, none of that footage is used. It seems it was all just test footage, maybe seeing how all the make-up etc. would look on camera; they even had a different lead actor. For being test footage, it's pretty good looking stuff.

Which explains why the trailer is better than the movie: it's completely not the same.

I didn't care too much for the story, and although it bothered me that there was no way of knowing if anything closely tied to this story was true or not. But at the end, the action was entertaining enough. I could tell much of the audience were displeased by it and some even walked out of the theater so early into the movie though. I would agree with what Mel was saying about it being a chase movie, and that's all I took it as. Not bad.

I'm rooting for Mel Gibson as a filmmaker, but I'm still waiting for him to do good work. My experience of watching Apocalypto was enjoyable. The storyline hooked me and when I realized I had little idea about where the film was going by the time the prisoners were brought to that city, I felt good the film could have been worthwhile. Even if it didn't pan out, I'm glad I saw this.

There just are so many problems with the film. First, Gibson is still too much of a filmmaker based on impulse. The Passion of the Christ had intense filmmaking, but the camera never truly had a motivation or greater track. The only consistency it had is that it wanted to be as brutally honest with the most horrific images as possible. Braveheart had brutal imagery, but was classical filmmaking comparitvely.

Apocalypto is in betweem both of those films. Gibson can have utilize subtletly in this film, but I think he only did so because the storyline forced it. When Gibson had to handle both action and story at the same time, he introduced camera tricks that both felt forced and without any rythm. I wished Gibson would have had a better filmmaking plan. At the beginning, it felt like he was utilizing different cameras only because it was easier to capture still beauty with one camera (which looked like film) and action with another (which looked like video). The differences were appalling and reflective of Gibson going for reality at any cost. Aguirre, the Wrath of God, made for a purpose of total reality atleast understood the filmic capabilities of shooting in a foreign wild. It honed in a story that could make on such an attempt. Apocalypto goes for the impossible and while filmmaking is much greater these days than in the 1970s, Apocalypto cannot achieve visual perfection for even simple scenes.

Another major problem is that Gibson had a ridiculous budget. There was no end to the carnage in the city where the prisoners are suppose to meet their death. For any film the greatness of this scene would be the finale. Even Apocalypse Now settled for this. But, the story not only goes end after this scene, but turns itself into something completely different. The film develops a plot greater than the basic one from the beginning and a greater theme starts to take place in the film. I welcomed this but began to realize that the scene of the great city of carnage was really unnecessary. The film should have written around that scene and focused on the themes it began to acquire. Its just Gibson was able to get away with this and like every filmmaker, he rejoiced at beging able to do so. I still believe every filmmaker is turned on the by the idea of filming an epic to outdue every other epic. Its our height of a visual opus. Gibson makes his contribution with Apocalypto.

Then the matter of the story. When the film does pick up, the story develops themes that relate to beliefs of the people and their fears. The warriors sent out to chase the man feel they are under a curse due to bad omens they pick up through out the film. Their end, as a cursed child warns, awaits them. The idea reminds me of Macbeth and the action element reminds me of Kurosawa's adaptation. The difference is that Kurosawa delves into the myths of his story while Gibson utilizes it as a tool only surrounding the visuals and simple human story. Gibson barely develops any greater ideas, but bases the interest on the film in the simple desire for the kidnapped man to rescue his family. While the last thing Gibson should due is rip off Kurosawa, Gibson could understand the idea of adaptation as Kurosawa did.

When Kurosawa adapted King Lear into Ran, he constructed a story that wasn't trying to replicate Shakespeare, but find a way to equate Shakespeare to Japanese standard. He utilized the filmmaking to delve into the nature of God as Shintoism, the Japanese national religion, defined it. Shintoism believes in the presence of God everywhere and Kurosawa graced the film with a scope to encompass the clouds and sky around the characters. This was the only way to symbolize God without spelling it out. The purpose for Gibson would have been to delve into themes and ideas equivalent to the people in Apocalypto. Gibson seems well studied in history to get the decor of the world correct, but he needed to search out the ideas and humane element anymore.

In many ways, I like Mel Gibson as a filmmaker. The Passion of the Christ has a pulse unlike any other, but the sad fact is that I think he is a filmmaker years beyond his use. Gibson is a filmmaker of brutal imagery in search of the greater honesty. In every way I do believe this is a simpflication to storytelling, but try to imagine him making films in the 1960s. Robert Bresson was making the first attempt to challenge the visual force of The Passion of Joan of Arc with his version, The Trial of Joan of Arc. Other filmmakers were making visual attempts to distance themselves from the white washing of truth that Hollywood had done for years from the 1930s through the 50s. Gibson is acting in the same accord. He routinely criticized the legitimacy of The Last Temptation of Christ when making his version. It is just that he only challenged the legitimacy of Scorsese with an appropriate language and the appropriate brutality. Scorsese still had greater depth in ideas.

But, to imagine this purpose in the 1960s is to imagine films that had greater relevancy and a better chance of surviving through the years. Gibson is making films in an age of ultra violence and doing little by combating that with a violence that is "truthful". When Gibson understands the next step he can take in filmmaking is to delve into the story, he'll make better films. Considering Apocalypto was a financial failure, his future should be bright in more reasonable storytelling.

...

Gibson, woman trade words at screening

Mel Gibson exchanged angry words with a university professor who challenged the accuracy of his film "Apocalypto" at an on-campus screening. Gibson was answering questions from the crowd at California State University, Northridge, Thursday night when Alicia Estrada, an assistant professor of Central American studies, accused the actor-director of misrepresenting the Mayan culture in the movie. Gibson directed an expletive at the woman, who was removed from the crowd.

"In no way was my question aggressive in the way that he responded to it," Estrada said. "These are questions that my peers, my colleagues, ask me every time I make a presentation. These are questions I pose to my students in the classroom."

Gibson's publicist, Alan Nierob, characterized the professor as "a heckler."

"The woman ... was rude and disruptive inasmuch as the event organizers had to escort her out," Nierob said.

Lauren Robeson, editor-in-chief of the campus newspaper, the Daily Sundial, said Gibson denounced Estrada as a troublemaker.

"It was a brief disruption to an otherwise interesting, stimulating event from our students' perspectives," said university spokesman John Chandler. "The students were very appreciative of Mr. Gibson being there. He spent a lot of time answering questioernational headlines. The R-rated epic about the decline of Mayan civilization shows Mayan rulers slitting throats and beheading and ripping the beating hearts from the chests of their enemies.

Human sacrifice among the Mayans has been well-documented in recent years and is accepted as fact by most anthropologists, knocking down a previous theory that the culture did not take part in such bloody rituals.

However, there are some scholars and Indian activists who still believe the human sacrifice accounts are false or overblown, and an attempt by racist scientists to paint the culture as violent.

"This isn't the Mayan culture," Juan Tiney, leader of the National Indian and Farmer Committee, Guatemala's biggest Mayan organization, told the AP. "Although it might be part of it, there was also culture, economics, astronomical wealth and language. ... It discredits a people to present them in this manner."

Gibson "did his homework and consulted with world authorities on this matter," Nierob said.

"Apocalypto" has grossed more than $100 million worldwide, and it earned three Academy Award nominations.

Yeah, I liked it. I bought into the journey and the characters as an action film, and was rooting for the villians to get their comeuppance, and was bloody well rewarded.


But don't take my word for it; listen to my man, Kanye West:


Kanye West Says MTV Movie Awards Snubbed Mel Gibson's 'Apocalypto'
'I'm a movie buff,' says opinionated rapper, who just dropped single, mixtape.

Kanye West almost always has something to say about awards ceremonies — specifically, trophies he believes he deserves. Now, with the MTV Movie Awards coming up Sunday, West is speaking out in a very unlikely person's defense, claiming that the best film of the year was snubbed.

"My favorite movie this year was 'Apocalypto,' and I love Mel Gibson," West said. "Sometimes I feel a little like Mel Gibson. [People say to him,] 'OK, Mel Gibson, we know [your movie is] the best, but if you shut up, maybe we can give you an award.' I think that's how people feel about me sometimes: 'OK, [your album] was the best.'

" 'Apocalypto' was the best movie," West continued. "It's probably some complete bullsh-- that got nominated over it. Around the time of the awards, if you want to ask me what's the bullsh-- that got nominated, I will tell you. It's my opinion; it doesn't mean it's good or bad. I'm a movie buff."



Word, Mr. West. Word to your mother. I'm a movie buff too.  :yabbse-thumbup:

this movie sucked

Quote from: Chest Rockwell on December 08, 2006, 01:07:03 AM
Production designer Tom Sanders told the newspaper, "It was really fun to say [to Hansen], 'Is there any proof they didn't do this?' When he said, 'There is no proof they didn't do that, ' that gives you some license to play."

and if theres no proof that mr. sanders never got it up the ass weekly by a hooker named bob i guess i can play with that in my movie about him

kanye's always like that when he's drunk. take my word for it. word.

stop saying word

I thought this movie was quite good. I think it gets a bad rap because it doesn't have guns or swords n it. People love guns and swords. Poisonous darts and mallets? Not so much.

i didnt like it because its a faux-art mediocre action film

Just recently revisited this film last night and really enjoyed it.  Most of the complaints presented by others on the board don't really seem to apply to my viewing, and I've yet to see, "the new world," so other than the fact that they both came out a year apart and deal with pre colonized societies, i don't get the comparison. Plus, is it really fair to compare mel to terry? 

I had just graduated high school when this film came out and didn't really realize how much of a feat mel undertook in making this. Wow.

Anyways, I think this is a great film and despite his lack of visual storytelling , the story is strong enough to work without any of that. Not to say that someone with a more visual style of storytelling couldn't have added to this. But in my opinion most ballpark swings like this end in a strikeout. This on the contrary works well from start to finish.  Boy do I love that scene on the beach in the end too.  Anyways, it's aging well for me.

Anyone else watched this recently?

i haven't watched it in a while but it did come up in conversation recently and i spoke of it favourably. so..

this is hilarious:

Quote from: Ultrahip on December 21, 2005, 05:04:14 PM

Quote from: meatball on December 21, 2005, 04:58:30 PM
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi11.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fa175%2FLeven321%2Fapco3.jpg&hash=dc248948ceac813fc967b1d5a3939749bf9b9f50)

What is the guy on the far right thinking?

"Pastrami? Again?"