Trailer here. (http://www.smokinacesmovie.net/teaser/)
Release Date: March 2, 2007
Cast: Ben Affleck, Andy Garcia, Alicia Keys, Ray Liotta, Jeremy Piven, Ryan Reynolds, Peter Berg, Martin Henderson, Taraji Henson, Common
Director: Joe Carnahan (Narc)
Premise: When a Las Vegas performer-turned-snitch named Buddy Israel decides to turn state's evidence and testify against the mob, it seems that a whole lot of people would like to make sure he's no longer breathing.
wow, that looks like what Guy Ritchie's 3rd movie should've been (if he never made Swept Away and Revolver) and it looks AWESOME!
Quote from: modage on August 10, 2006, 08:44:14 PM
wow, that looks like what Guy Ritchie's 3rd movie should've been
as in "this shit shouldn't be allowed to be made"? I agree.
and how can you say the movie looks awesome? You could do this with any old piece of shit.
You can't really tell anything about the movie from this trailer except who's in it and that it may or may not have been edited by a coked up 13 year old.
regardless of whether it's any good, that was a pretty cool trailer
Quote from: Lucid on August 10, 2006, 11:09:11 PMAnd Alicia Keys, in the five seconds she appears in the trailer, looks beyond cool.
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New Trailer here. (http://playlist.yahoo.com/makeplaylist.dll?id=1500872&sdm=web&qtw=480&qth=300)
Can't tell if this is going to be the next True Romance or the next... I don't know... Knockaround Guys, maybe?
I say if it has to be one of those then next True Romance. This trailer is pretty hot.
I heard Carnahan describe it as Fellini making an action movie which might be a very pretentious thing to say but I'll be damned if it doesn't get me excited.
Just saw the trailer. Staying away from total judgement, I don't see the appeal. Every action movie is getting more flamboyant and this seems like another example. I want to say the Fellini comparision is uncalled for, but maybe Carnahan understands Fellini from the point of view of featuring only wild camera movements and exotic characters.
When I see that trailer, I think "written and produced by Luc Besson" more than I think "Fellini". But Narc earned Joe Carnahan the benefit of the doubt, so I'll hold off judgement for now.
it reminds me more of those japanese cartoons where the assassins all look funny and stuff.
yeah it definitely looks like it belongs in the Snatch/Domino genre. but i am SO THERE.
wow so this friend of mine actually edited the trailer--wait, is it normal for just one guy to edit the trailer? anyways, that what he said, and I guess now I have to say "dude the trailer looks awesome and I totally wanna see that testosterone ride!"
Quote from: pete on October 27, 2006, 03:22:08 AM
this friend of mine actually edited the trailer
Quote from: RegularKarate on August 11, 2006, 12:02:11 AM
You can't really tell anything about the movie from this trailer except who's in it and that it may or may not have been edited by a coked up 13 year old.
so... is he?
'Aces' Director Says Alicia Keys, Common Give Him The Upper Hand
'I said, 'Yeah, so, do you want to shake things up?' ' Joe Carnahan recalls telling Keys.
Source: MTV
LAKE TAHOE, Nevada — These days, it seems like a director can't even go and make a movie about gun-toting hookers, drug-dealing gangsters and pop-culture-riffing hitmen without being branded a Quentin Tarantino rip-off. But in-demand writer/director Joe Carnahan wants to make one thing abundantly clear: "Smokin' Aces" is not a Tarantino film.
"Ya know what, it's funny," the jovial-but-intense filmmaker remarked recently, looking toward the March release of his buzz-heavy flick. "My biggest beef right now is that we've oversimplified film description to the point where everything with a gun or a hitman is the intellectual property of Tarantino. We bitch about things being derivative, but then we act like there's no film history pre-1992 [when Tarantino's 'Reservoir Dogs' hit theaters]."
If Carnahan has his way, people might be choosing him over Tarantino. The recent debut of the "Aces" trailer set off a wave of downloads, postings and forwards that put it on an equal level with "300" and "Grindhouse," two ultra-violent flicks that are among next year's most anticipated releases (the latter is a Tarantino co-creation).
"I'm not influenced really by Tarantino," insisted the director, whose gritty flick "Narc" put him on the map in 2002. "The two biggest influences on this film were 'Raising Arizona' and 'Barton Fink,' both by the Coen brothers."
Neither the Coens, nor Tarantino, however, has ever told a story quite like "Aces." The bullet-fast, louder-than-a-Metallica-concert flick follows an unsympathetic magician (Jeremy Piven) who uses a casino penthouse hideaway to engage in a full-on Tony Montana death spiral filled with drugs, hookers, F-bombs and various weaponry. After the mob places a $1 million bounty on the magician's head, the movie turns into "American Idol" for professional killers, with dozens of gun-toting contestants taking their shot at the big prize — killing the magician before he offs himself.
Carnahan says the movie's massive central scene is a shootout between dozens of characters navigating several floors of the casino. "There's all this chaos and all these radio transmissions, with people yelling back and forth ... I want you in the immediacy of that moment."
Carnahan also wanted a who's-who of Hollywood superstars, and he got 'em. Inhabiting various floors of this homicide-heavy hotel are Ryan Reynolds, Ben Affleck, Andy Garcia, Ray Liotta, Taraji P. Henson and — in their movie debuts — Common and Alicia Keys.
"Alicia is a 26-year-old kid; we forget how young she is," Carnahan said, admitting that he took a bit of a risk in casting her as a world-weary assassin. "You can see in her eyes that she's an old soul. You look at her and you can tell that she's been here before."
"She was playing at the Paramount in Oakland [California], and I drove up there to see her," Carnahan remembered of his pitch, which he made after her representatives put out the word that the Grammy winner was looking to explore an acting career. "I watched her show, which was fantastic, and I went backstage ... I sat down and talked to her, and I said, 'They are going to come to you with some jerk-off romantic comedy. Don't do it. Read this instead!' Well, she had read it at that point, and said, 'Wow, it's really intense,' and I said, 'Yeah, so, do you want to shake things up?' "
Shaking it up would be one way to describe Keys' performance, as soulful as any song she's ever sung — but spiced up with an undercover hooker outfit, lesbian love affair (with Henson's character) and one very, very enormous gun.
But Henson's weapon — an arm cannon she uses to protect her cohort — is even more formidable. "When that thing went off, it created such an acoustic shockwave that it sucked all the energy out of your body," Carnahan laughed. "One day, [Henson] shot 30 rounds off that thing ... she was glassy; she just wasn't with it. ... That gun was designed to kill human beings hiding behind buildings!"
Over the last few months, as the director has put the finishing touches on the film and screened it around the Tahoe area in which it was filmed, Carnahan has come to realize that "Smokin' Aces" also unveils a more subtle — but equally powerful — secondary weapon.
"Common is arguably the most noble character in the whole film," the director said of the rapper's unusually pensive performance as a seemingly unimportant bodyguard who becomes much more. "This guy, it's all in his eyes. Whereas [with] other guys it's just a performance, he gets it ... he starts out as this kind of background player, and then suddenly, he's the guy."
"It's funny, I made him audition like three times," Carnahan laughed, shaking his head. "[He's] such a class act, and such a beautiful soul, he didn't even tell me that he had blown off some gig in Paris to fly to L.A. to audition the second time. Sure, there are a lot more actors with more experience, but you immediately believe that this guy is who he says he is."
Common is also contributing the original song "Play Your Cards Right," which plays over the end credits and will be included on the diverse soundtrack, which features everyone from Outkast to the Velvet Underground to Motörhead.
The music fuels Affleck's turn as a booze-swilling bounty hunter, Liotta's blood-tastic elevator shootout and the breakout appearances of Mohawked killers the Tremor Brothers. Then there's the two comedic stars of "Smokin' Aces," Piven and Reynolds, who were happy to check their funny bones at the door. "Jeremy is seldom given the shot to really show how talented he is as an actor," Carnahan said of the former, who gives an over-the-top performance that's something between Gary Oldman in "The Professional" and Dennis Hopper in "Blue Velvet." "Your heart breaks for him ... he was staying up all night, showing up bleary-eyed."
Carnahan said Reynolds also plays against the grain with his naive FBI agent, the closest thing to a "main character" that the smorgasbord of eccentrics has to offer. "Ryan is not allowed to be the funny guy. Instead, he's kind of like the hero. He is this very heroic, very noble, vulnerable, confused guy. The ultimate gift to an actor is ... the opportunity to go 180 degrees the other way. And they got it, and they acquitted themselves beautifully."
Five months from now, moviegoers will get to see Reynolds and Piven do drama, Keys put her piano-tinkling fingers on a trigger, and Common establish himself as far more than a rapper who wants to act. There'll be bullets, there'll be a lot of noise, and Joe Carnahan will be with you in spirit — laughing and grinning after having orchestrated all the madness.
"What I wanted to do was put something very organic, like the conversation you and me are having right now, against this canvas," Carnahan explained. "The biggest question for me is: Can an audience make these gear changes? I think so."
Quote from: MacGuffin on November 03, 2006, 12:07:22 PM
"I'm not influenced really by Tarantino," insisted the director, whose gritty flick "Narc" put him on the map in 2002. "The two biggest influences on this film were 'Raising Arizona' and 'Barton Fink,' both by the Coen brothers."
awesome. even the movie doesnt look anything like those, thats still awesome.
IGN Interview: Joe Carnahan
An exclusive chat with the director of Smokin' Aces.
IGN got the chance to spend part of this past weekend in Lake Tahoe hanging out with Narc director Joe Carnahan, who screened his upcoming film Smokin' Aces for journalists. During our exclusive one-on-one, Carnahan spoke at length about the origin of the project, the making of the film and its all-star cast, which includes Ben Affleck, Andy Garcia, Ray Liotta, Jeremy Piven, Ryan Reynolds, Peter Berg, Martin Henderson, Jason Bateman and, in their film debuts, Alicia Keys and Common.
In these interlocking tales of high stakes and low-lifes, Mob boss Primo Sparazza has taken out a hefty contract on Buddy "Aces" Israel (Piven) – a sleazy magician who has agreed to turn state's evidence against the Vegas mob. The FBI, sensing a chance to use this small-time con to bring down big-target Sparazza, places Aces into protective custody-under the supervision of two agents (Reynolds and Liotta) dispatched to Aces' Lake Tahoe hideout.
When word of the price on Aces' head spreads into the community of ex-cons and cons-to-be, it entices bounty hunters, thugs-for-hire, smokin' hot vixens and double-crossing mobsters to join in the hunt. With all eyes on Tahoe, this rogues' gallery collides in a comic race to hit the jackpot and rub out Aces.
IGN: What was the impetus for this project? Did it start with an idea you'd been kicking around?
Joe Carnahan: Yeah, I had this idea. Yeah, I was real big into Sinatra. Early '90s, I was big, big into Sinatra. I was in college. I was fascinated. I was reading these articles about: "Did Frank run the bag for Luciano to Cuba?" I was so into it. I started dicking around with this idea about again, what if Sinatra decided at the height of his power as an entertainer to parley that into being a legitimate criminal, like a crime boss? I thought, "What would happen? He'd wind up tracking mud all over the place. He'd [expletive] a lot of people up." So that was like the point of departure. And then I wrote, God, like 10 or 15 pages at the time. It was like anything else. You backburner it. You're doing this, you're doing that. So it just stuck with me and then I'd kind of gotten reinvigorated by it in some way right after Narc was at Sundance. There's a moment where you're kind of on everyone's radar. They asked me, "What else do you have?" And that point I'd worked up like 30 pages and had to rework it a lot because, obviously, over time styles change, notions, creative ideas shift and so on. I told them I have 30 pages of this thing called Smokin' Aces and Liza Chasen – God love her – from Working Title said, "Well, let me read 'em." She read them and flipped out. And she went to Stacey Snider [then chief of Universal Pictures] and said, "Can we buy these 30 pages?" And they bought it.
They were unbelievably patient while I went out and dicked around with a bunch of other stuff. And I came back to them and I said, "I think I'm gonna write this up." My first draft of that screenplay was like 171 pages. Hidin' stuff in there, man. Like the whole Swedish hitman thing. Like there was another Swedish hitman that they knew of who, over the course of three days, had beaten himself to death with his own broken arms. They couldn't figure out how, why. That he hated himself that much that he'd sit there for three days beating himself. That he broke his own arms beating himself! There was so much stuff in there I was like, "Okay, we're going to take that out." And it just evolved from there. To me, the bones of Smokin' Aces is in the Coen brothers. Barton Fink and Raising Arizona. Those two movies if you look at them that's where a lot of that comes from. Raising Arizona is maybe my favorite comedy of all time. What's great about it is that as slapstick as it gets, it has great moments of emotion and caring. Them bringing the baby back and Trey Wilson's character. I love that, man. And Barton Fink with the claustrophobia and John Goodman's Munt. The halls catching fire and him [going] "Heil Hitler!" as he puts the shotgun to the cops. Dude, Tex Cobb's character. That's the Tremor brothers' dad, know what I mean?
It was all those things but it was also my desire to make this – I love this genre so much but it's like the Tarantino specter hangs so heavily over these types of things. But at the same time it's like, "What? Am I gonna never make a movie about [expletive] that I like again because it's invariably going to be compared [to Tarantino's films]?" Listen, what I was really gunning for, what I wanted is that you cared about these people and that you have to go in caring and you have to think in this film. You can't just turn it off and be, "Whatever, just entertain me." The movie won't function. You'll be bored stiff if you're not trying to keep up with it. And I don't know what happened to those movies where we did that. We've just dumbed this audience down to the point where they're like, "Oh, I don't give a [expletive]." I hope it's not that way, know what I mean? I hope it's not that way. I'm digressing...
IGN: I wanted to talk about casting because it's such an amazing cast. I know you knew Ray Liotta before but were you calling in buddies? How did you get them?
Carnahan: Know what it was? That script really got responses. Listen, you're writing for a reader. I don't know when the [expletive] it became fashionable or we just got lazy as screenwriters or we just stopped considering that someone's taking two hours or three hours out of their life to [expletive] read your [expletive]. Make it interesting. Make it engaging. You know? And I felt like I really wrote it to entertain and to be fun. It got a lot of really good reception, a lot of fans and then it just became, like a lot of great things, the process begins to grow and begins to get organic and assimilates this person, that person, this person and brings them in. Even at the point where I thought we should just cast a great character as Bill the security guard, then Matt Fox wants to play Bill. Then Nestor Carbonell. I knew him from that Brooke Shields TV show. He's [expletive] insanely good as Acosta. I think, too, this is the response to it being – and again that differentiates it from being just a shoot 'em-up to whatever the [expletive] that people want to characterize it. ... There's nothing glib and there's nothing flip about it. I hate movies where it's just like sociopathic behavior because it just gets a rise out of people. If there's one true sociopath in the movie it's the kid. It's the boner kid. It's Warren. He's a sociopath, OK? The 10-year-old Tasmanian Devil freakshow. That's him. I think it's kind of interesting that there's no adult sociopaths, only this kid. Yeah, but the cast, really, I think was a gravitational thing. I think they all felt like it was worth doing and they were gonna have some fun and it wasn't going to compromise months of their life.
IGN: What was the shooting schedule?
Carnahan: 40 days. And $21 million.
IGN: So does that speed... ?
Carnahan: Oh, brother. That's the best. That's propulsion, man. I don't even wanna do a movie in 80 days. It's like, "Christ, c'mon, man." What wound up happening, which is so great, is that nobody wanted that process to end. I had the best professional experience I ever had and the best people on the planet. If I did not have the breadth of qualified, brilliant, phenomenally talented people working on that movie, it'd be [expletive]. I had just the [expletive] best crew and they were real decent and we worked as this great unit, man. There was no yelling and screaming. I deejay on my sets, man! I play music. One of the grips comes up and says, "Man, you got 'Stranglehold' by Ted Nugent?" "Dude, I'll get it for you." I go on iTunes. I got that [expletive]. I play it for this cat. I believe in – you treat people right and you treat people the way you'd like to be treated and you're kind and decent and generous and showing gratitude, you can do a movie like this in 40 days because people will open veins for you. So that was what kind of powered us through. Everybody was into it at every level. They were really proud to be working on the movie because I think they knew it'd be a lot of fun and it could potentially be really good.
IGN: I also wanted to ask about setting it in Lake Tahoe. Is that just a nod to the Kennedy-Rat Pack era?
Carnahan: Absolutely. And also I always loved Mamet's film Things Change and it's in Tahoe. And I grew up in Sacramento so I used to come here all time. It was great because I always looked at Tahoe like the gaming industry took a dump in God's country. It's stunning out there; it's gorgeous. It's like this underused, misunderstood place, but also to the entertainment community it kind of represents the end of the line. For Buddy Israel to be in Tahoe, it's like, "Dude, how the mighty have fallen." So it was kind of like a double-edged sword. But I just love this area, man, and we had a great time shooting it here. We really did. The people were really extraordinary.
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Yet Another Trailer here. (http://www.apple.com/trailers/universal/smokinaces/)
That's a pretty crappy trailer but this is still one of my most anticipated films of the moment. Carnahan citing the Coen Brothers can't be a bad thing.
yeah as a trailer, thats terrible. it has none of the spark of the two teasers. but it hasn't diminished my excitement for the film any.
Well, it was better than i thought it was going to be. I would probably even see it again (if I didn't have to pay).
It definitely has a little Coen influence, but still a bit too heavy on the Guy Ritchie/Tony Scott-wannabe side in some scenes for my taste.
and the script is pretty weak... the characters are very mildly motivated and it's hard to attach to any of them so you don't really give a shit in the end where it tries to convince you that what's happening is very emotional when it's just... happening... I couldn't have cared less what happened to who since no one was really all that developed.
I think some will like this movie because of the "cool" factor...there are definitely some "cool" scenes that worked for me (though nothing that hasn't been done before) and some scenes that made me laugh, but it doesn't change that it's nothing special.
International Trailer here. (http://www.workingtitlefilms.com/media/Trailers/smokinaces/SAcesTrailerB_large.mov)
so is there gonna be a new trailer for this every week until it comes out?
It is getting rather silly. You had me ready to see it after the first couple Mr. Marketing Man, now don't push your luck.
Joe Carnahan is having a hard time getting the MPAA to approve of some of Aces' marketing materials. He has been keeping a personal blog for Smokin' Aces and sharing with us all the groovy stuff we Americans won't get to see on the side of a passing bus or during a commercial break for Grey's Anatomy. The director has also posted a UK TV spot that was banned in the US. Why was it banned? Well, apparently it's a little too violent ... but there's no foul language or nudity, and the thing moves so fast you barely have a chance to catch your breath, let alone point out which parts the MPAA had a beef with. In his blog post, even Carnahan seems to be a bit baffled by the MPAA's decision. He says, "Our censors would never allow this content on the air here, but I defy you to identify just exactly what that content is and why it wouldn't be airable." You be the judge.
TV Spot here. (http://www.workingtitlefilms.com/media/Trailers/smokinaces/smokin_uktvSpot_medium.mov)
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Interview : Joe Carnahan
Moviehole talks to Joe Carnahan about Frank Sinatra, Using pop singers in movies and most notably, his latest film "Smokin' Aces".
What was the history of Smokin' Aces? When did you first come up with the idea?
JC: I wrote the first seeds of it in 1993. I was still in college and was fascinated by Frank Sinatra. There were all these rumors about Sinatra and ties to the mob, so I started thinking 'What if Sinatra had decided one day to use his power as an entertainer to become a mob boss?' That was how I constructed Jeremy Piven's character, Buddy Israel, who was one of those hybrid Vegas-style magician-comedians.
Is it true that you only gave the first 30 pages of the Smokin' Aces to the producers at Working Title as a bit of a tease?
JC: Absolutely. It was 2002 straight after the Sundance Film Festival where I had Narc and I was considered a bit of a hot property, or whatever. For most of my career I had been cash-strapped. So, that's what I did. Working Title purchased the first 30 pages right after Sundance and then they patiently waited for the rest.
To write a great script is one thing, but to then recruit such a star-studded cast must have been a dream come true.
JC: It really was. The great thing was the cast was attracted by the script. The script spoke to people enough that they agreed to come on and do so for almost no money. Nobody got paid. This is a $25 million movie and almost all of it is on the screen. If you had to pay each actor their usual rates, forget about it. You couldn't do it. It was their willingness to go for the ride. It wasn't a massive time commitment for them. We shot it over 40 days.
So, when you were pursuing actors to be in Smokin' Aces, what was your pitch?
JC: The way I always went at everybody, knowing they had a fondness for the script, I said 'Why don't you play a role that is totally opposite to what you normally do as an actor?' Piven and Reynolds are usually very funny, so I said I'd deprive them of that. Alicia is this angelic woman, and I said 'You're not going to be like that in this.' They got it.
Some people might say you took a risk with that approach.
JC: My philosophy is I'd rather die falling and reaching, than go right down the middle and hand cotton candy to everyone.
You must have a great relationship with Ray Liotta after Narc.
JC: Absolutely. Ray read the script and was in. I could have told Ray 'You play Janitor Number Three' and he would have agreed to play it.
So Ray was the first actor attached to the project?
JC: Yeah. I was able to build around him. I knew he would have great chemistry with Ryan Reynolds. Then Andy Garcia came onboard and he's another heavyweight.
Visually, Smokin' Aces was interesting to watch. How did you come up with the visual look?
JC: I tried to shoot each character in a way that was most befitting them. The Tremor Bros had seen The Matrix 50 times and watched Sergio Leone movies their whole lives, so I shot them in big wide angles, slow motion and people burning. It was big and operatic. Then with Ryan Reynolds, in the scene where he's trying to revive his partner, it is very still. Every character has a moment in the movie when they show a side to them that's human. Nobody is this sarcastic apathetic asshole who kills just for the sake of killing.
You said Frank Sinatra influenced you in writing Smokin' Aces and you also mentioned The Matrix and Sergio Leone. What else inspired you?
JC: Music is such a huge part of my life. It's a focal point. When I watch Smokin' Aces, when I see Alicia, I see my love of old R&B, when I see Common it reflects my love of hip hop. I see my love of punk rock in the Tremor Bros and I see my love of Bruce Springsteen in the FBI agents. The most direct ancestor of Smokin' Aces is the Coen Bros film, Raising Arizona. If you look at the structure of that film, the baby in that movie is Jeremy Piven's character in mine.
You said you are a big fan of music so it must be nice for you to launch the acting careers of two great musicians in Alicia Keys and Common.
JC: I'm thrilled. The thing that excites me the most and gives me the greatest sense of accomplishment is everyone in the film fits into Smokin' Aces seamlessly. I don't think going from music to acting is too big of a transition. They are still songwriters and storytellers so it's another facet of them being
artists. For them to go out and do well and turn in performances so good, it will be an endless joy for me.
And Jeremy Piven, he really bared it all with his performance.
JC: People ask me what my favorite scene is and they expect it to be one of the gun battle scenes, but for me it is when Piven is looking at himself in the mirror and loses a contact lense. He has that moment in the mirror. He has a complete crisis of identity. Jeremy's ability to have so many gears is amazing. He goes from over the top, mania, to introspective and dour. It was great to cut him off from his considerable gifts as a comedic actor.
How about Andy Garcia? What was it like to have an actor of his caliber who has been in some of the great gangster films like Godfather III and The Untouchables?
JC: Andy is someone who I have never seen have a better relationship with the camera and the way it moves and where he places himself in the frame. It's not an egotistical thing at all. It's Andy knowing where to put himself in the frame. You are not aware of it until you see it in dailies. You go 'Wow, this guy is amazing.' Andy also had the unenviable task of being the one stiff straight guy in a galaxy of freaks in this film. He was the ballast that kept it together.
Was Andy always happy to play the straight guy?
JC: He knew the importance of it. To get someone like him and Ray in the same movie was amazing.
How did Ryan Reynolds handle playing opposite two greats like Ray Liotta and Andy Garcia? He really seemed to hold his own.
JC: He did so in the most amazing way. Again, it's like taking the actor out of his comfort zone. I have always thought the funniest guys are also some of the best dramatic actors. Look at Jim Carrey. I think comedy comes from a source of pain. Ryan went for it. He didn't have any fear. He was going up against Ray Liotta and Andy Garcia so he had to bring his 'A' game and he did.
And Ben Affleck. We see him in Smokin' Aces in a role that we have never seen him in.
JC: Ben understood the gag. Playing this hagged, world-weary guy, he understood the intrinsic humor. Honest to God, I wish I had one person to complain about while making this film, but their support of the film was unconditional.
Why set the film among the casinos of Lake Tahoe? It was an interesting choice.
JC: I grew up near there so I also used to visit it. It has never really been shot before, but it is a really interesting place. You have these giant glass towers of the casino industry built in the beautiful pristine environment. To do it there I thought it hit the right freak strain to do the movie. Lake Tahoe really embraced it too. They got a big kick out of hosting a Hollywood film.
With all of the action scenes in the movie, your crew must have virtually taken over Lake Tahoe for weeks.
JC: The windows you see shattering in the film are actually the casino's windows shattering. It was great to basically go back to the place to blow it up.
What did you tell the locals and vacationers staying in the hotels and casinos? Did you warn them about the explosions?
JC: We said 'You're going to hear loud sounds and gunshots because we're filming so don't be alarmed.'
What about the huge, 50-calibre sniper rifle Taraji Henson has to shoot? What kind of sound did it make?
JC: That gun was a monster. When we fired in a hotel room out a window, the sheet rock dust from the roof above on us fell down. We shot fully-loaded blanks and I'm telling you, it unleashed such force you felt it go through your entire body. Taraji shot about 40 rounds and at the end of the day, to say she was punchy, was an understatement. It exerts so much acoustic and sonic force coming off it, it feels like you have been in a fist fight. It was the real deal. That gun is designed to shoot people through tanks and has a range of two miles.
Quote from: MacGuffin on December 29, 2006, 04:13:55 PM
"Our censors would never allow this content on the air here, but I defy you to identify just exactly what that content is and why it wouldn't be airable." You be the judge.
it's those damn zionists.
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The fine art of making a room go boom
A posh hotel's penthouse gets a painstaking makeover in director Joe Carnahan's film.
Source: Los Angeles Times
HOW do you light a man on fire, blow seven others to bits, choreograph a gun battle with 20 shooters, discharge 400 special-effects squibs, shatter a panoramic hotel window, separate an FBI agent's torso from his waist, then show a neo-Nazi to his seat — which happens to be a chain saw — all in mere minutes?
The secret lies with writer-director Joe Carnahan and the team of specialists he brought in to handle the wet works in his new movie, "Smokin' Aces," opening Jan. 26.
Carnahan calls the final sequence "Doomsday on the Penthouse Level," in which he tempts a ruthless cast of assassins and law enforcement officers to the top floor lobby of a casino hotel then pulls the pin.
"I wanted to make something so wild," Carnahan says. "And I like tons of stuff going off at the same time, all in the same frame."
Imagine a deus ex machina moment in which God is reincarnated as the most hyped-up film fan in the universe. As if 50 times over he's studied the high-octane ending of "Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior," the gunfight at the end of "Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia," the helicopter invasion in "Apocalypse Now."
Carnahan's angels of death on this mission were cinematographer Mauro Fiore ("Training Day"), production designer Martin Whist ("The Island"), stunt coordinator and second unit director Ben Bray ("I {heart} Huckabees"), and special-effects coordinator Larz Anderson ("Hostage").
Reading the sequence for the first time was like a fantasy come true for Bray. "I heard beautiful music in my head," he says. "Every [stunt] coordinator's dream is a sequence with weapons, a number of people, blood, fire, debris."
With his A-team signed on, Carnahan set up the "Smokin' Aces" production offices and posted the storyboards for the elaborate lobby sequence.
"It was almost like osmosis," Carnahan says. "You had to walk right past those boards. That way people had a working knowledge of what we were doing. As you walk past, it's like, 'Oh, yeah! That guy's got to sit on a chain saw. How we gonna do that?' "
First, they had to conceive of a space for the combat to unfold. Carnahan asked tactical weapons consultant Paul Maresse to identify a worst-case scenario. He described a situation with little room to maneuver amid a barrage of crossfire.
With that in mind, Whist designed a lobby set to accentuate the feeling of being pinned down. Characters unload on each other while clinging only to hallway walls. An M-50 is fired into the set through a large window directly across from two elevators that successively offload assassins and law enforcement into the melee. Given the 360 degrees of action, Fiore had to figure out a way to intelligibly light and cover the helter-skelter panorama.
"We came up with a specific lighting design with a fixture hanging in the center of the room so we could light all the characters and keep the light off the walls," Fiore says.
The whole sequence is shot as if seen through the eyes of the Tremor Bros. characters, three neo-Nazi psychopathic assassins, who Carnahan claims are huge action-movie fans. As a result, Carnahan and Fiore wanted to make the scene feel like the Tremors' deranged yet lucid dream. To achieve this, they over-cranked the cameras, shooting the scene at 120 frames per second, which to the eye appears to slow down the motion five times from the normal 24 frames.
"Visually it's beautiful, it has such great attitude," Carnahan says. "But it's really tough to coordinate when you're looking at 120 fps; you open yourself to scrutiny ad infinitum. People say, 'Aw, that didn't hit there.' "
The only way to avoid such criticisms was to time shots perfectly. Bray's stuntmen and crew ran through the blocking six times, videotaping it once for dissection, over five rehearsal days. When they were ready to roll film, Fiore set up a dolly track so he could capture the action sequentially.
"We thought it would be more interesting to see things move through the frame than us moving to capture everything," he explains.
Every department had a safety zone. Fire extinguishers were nearby. Anyone on the frontline near the camera was issued a pair of goggles and a shield, Bray says.
Such measures helped prepare the crew for one of the most difficult shots in terms of both timing and safety. It's a gag known in the stunt world as a "full firebird."
All set, open fire
PERFORMED by Frank Torres, a veteran stuntman and Bray's assistant coordinator, Torres runs through the frame fully ablaze while firing a 9-millimeter. Along the way he takes four squib hits then burns on the ground for four seconds.
"What I love about Joe is he does long shots," Bray says. "There's no break in the action, so we get to see his burn long and drawn-out."
Slightly less lyrical is a shot in which an FBI agent is bisected across the stomach with a Tremor Bros. chain saw. Stuntman Frank Lloyd sells the moment with facial expressions and body spasms. An air pump with a funnel tube spews blood and chunks of gore into the frame for good measure.
Throw in a few hundred spent squibs, fake blood, shards of glass, smoke, water from an overhead sprinkler system, balsa wood detritus from special-effects explosions, and you've got one heck of a sloppy set.
"The walls were torn up, the elevators were bent and the floor was soaking wet with water and blood," Bray says. "When we were halfway through filming, visitors asked why we were already breaking down the set."
Carnahan says going into such demolition mode for the scene comes down to wanting to bring his own brand of action to "Smokin' Aces."
"We didn't want to do the lame dives as the explosions go off in the background," Carnahan says. "We went as deep as you can get with a sequence like that. We broke it down to almost a binary code then infused it with its own kind of beauty."
There's a lot of things about the film I love. But something's missing. The performances are all good (surprisingly Ryan Reynolds and Alicia Keys, a movie star in the making), there are moments of great comedy - Jason Bateman is particularly fantastic and the action in places slaps you around the face, drags you down the corridor and then slaps you again. Visually it's pretty flawless and the soundtrack, for the most part, is quality. It delivers on some levels but it just dosen't seem to sit quite right. I really love films that are brave enough to mix tones (Boogie Nights being the best example I can think of) but I don't think there's quite enough of either the comedy or drama for it to quite click here. Also, I think the film overcooks the exposition, the audience don't need as much as there is, we can figure some stuff out for ourselves. Having said that, I still think it has brilliant moments, some potentially classic; but ultimately having been hyped for this film for months I think I was expecting too much from it. I'll probably go see it again while it's still on as there's a lot packed into it and bits I want to see again but I'll have to wait for the brutal action comedy masterpiece I was hoping for from someone else. Still, nice try Monsieur Carnahan and I look forward to your movies to follow.
Smokin' Aces Writer/Director Joe Carnahan
Source: ComingSoon
It's been a while since innovative writer and director Joe Carnahan has showcased his talent and after a long effort of working on projects that almost happened, but never did, he's finally returning to the big screen with his new dark action comedy Smokin' Aces. The high energy mob thriller follows a sleazy Las Vegas magician (Jeremy Piven) who has decided to tell the FBI everything he knows about the Vegas organized crime ring he once ran with. He's sent to Lake Tahoe and put in protective custody. However, once word gets out about how much he's worth dead, there's a slew of hit men and women racing to be the first to take him out.
ComingSoon.net talked Carnahan about his new film.
ComingSoon.net: Tell us why it's been so hard for you to connect with something and what came together for this?
Joe Carnahan: Well, people in this town don't like me. No I'm kidding there! Somebody's going to take that literally and be like, "This a**hole actually said no one likes him." I had the fifteen months on "Mission: Impossible III," which was a blast really, it was. I did that and then before that I had kind of this abortive process. You know, irony doesn't translate into print. That's what I realized. Jeremy Piven said that. It's the truth man. When I came off of "Mission," which is obviously a real incredible, kind of learning experience, the things that you pick up - things to do and then more importantly the things you don't do. I went out of that, I adapted immediately to Mark Bowden's book, "Killing Pablo," which I was obsessed with and remain obsessed with. And it was a series. When I left "Mission: Impossible," I thought, that's it, man. I'll be directing like, straight-to-video with like, the guy who played Potsy. Which there's nothing wrong with that. Potsy if you're out there? We're down. So I think there was kind of a period of just re-ramping and you feel like, you know, when you're in a situation like that, that long, it feels like this kind of straight jacket. And I think the first thing you want to do when you get out of a straight jacket is just stretch and move, and "Smokin' Aces" is kind of my response to kind of being in a cellar, not being able to move for a long period of time. But it's great because now it feels like things are really rolling and I'm actually glad to be working. And I'm sure my children are glad that I'm working as they have a roof over their head.
CS: How did you go about assembling this incredible ensemble of actors?
Carnahan: This is the other thing I learned really, from "Mission: Impossible," because I don't think we had a good experience in the scripting stage. I thought we had a great script that Dan Gilroy, who's the brother of Tony Gilroy, he and I had written. But I realized, what that really taught me is like, you know, that's the first brick in the building. And it's so important and so kind of tantamount to making this thing - making it doable. I also write for a reader. I write so that you're enjoying it while you're reading it, and it's engaging. I think screenplays too often are just this kind of bastard form of literature and you just toss it off and who gives a damn. But I didn't approach it that way, and that's what ultimately hooked a lot of the actors who didn't do it for a lot of money. I think that they were doing it at some point for like, a case of beer. That was what they were being paid, and Doritos. They came to this thing because of the script, and also the ability. I told Jeremy [Piven], "this is like a shot for you to really go deep and to completely do a 180 on Ari Gold and the stuff that you've done in the past." And I told Ryan [Reynolds] who is a brilliantly funny guy, both of them are, but, I'm going to strip you of your ability to be that guy, to be the comic relief and really hinge it on him dramatically, and I think he's a fantastic dramatic actor. And both he and Jeremy's funny. I have this theory about guys who are really funny, they understand drama and anger and violence in this really unique way and I think that both of them are certainly like that. And then you get somebody like, you know, [Alicia Keys] who just comes in and just kills it. But everybody responded to the script, and that was how we pulled people in. Because you know, the movie was made for under $25 million, that's like almost nothing.
CS: Working with Ben Affleck, was that character originally conceived as sort of a Janet Leigh in 'Psycho"? And where was he in this comeback trial that he'd been on while he was making the film.
Carnahan: Ben, just having spent time with him, he's one of the funniest, brightest, he really is. Just got this incredibly, kind of acerbic wit... He just got it. He got that he was going to be counted on to kind of narrate it, and you're thinking, oh man, okay, whatever your feelings are about Ben, see, I love Ben, and I think he acquits himself so beautifully because there is that world weary thing to him. And this idea of like the comeback. I wasn't aware that he was ever - beyond being disparaged at different turns and who isn't that he was on, that he needed to come back, because I think the guy is as vital and as viable now as an actor as he ever was. In fact I think even more so because he's now a father and a husband and [he] just wrote and shot his own directorial debut. So I think that if anything, he's even more kind of energized, I think. And I think that getting the nod in Venice was huge. The guy's a great actor. I just don't think he's been really given his due. And I'd work with him again, obviously, in a split second.
CS: We've seen so much gun violence on film, how did you conceive of different ways to portray that?
Carnahan: This idea of the characters influencing the way that the film was shot and the way the violence that you depict. I think that it has been done so much, so I think doing it in a way that was appropriate for each section. To me it's like having a thesis statement. I can be a pretty dim bulb, man. I mean, I'm not the smartest person walking the earth. So if I don't have a clear mandate, or I don't create something for myself, to let me guide the film by, then it gets very confusing and muddled. So when I went out I thought, well, for Alicia and Taraji [Henson] that is a very real situation as it is for Ryan [Reynolds]. I wanted it to be really raw and nasty and have the sense of just absolute chaos, kind of exploding. And in the same way that there's a suddenness and a very violent, vicious thing between Ray [Liotta] and Nestor Carbonell in the elevator, and then you know, you get the Tremor Brothers and that spectacle in the hallway with them and the security guys. And then you have the Tremor Brothers early in the film with Ben [Affleck] and those guys. I've been lucky in my life that I haven't really been involved in a tremendous amount of violence. I can count the fistfights I've been in on one hand. So I'll never pretend it's like some hardass that went into bars looking for fights. But of those moments, there's been two of them that have been pretty extreme. Violence for me has this suddenness, and this immediacy, and then it's gone. Very rarely is it something you linger on, or whatever. So, I just wanted the depiction of it to be that way. And it's not, in a lot of ways it's not dissimilar from the stuff in "Narc," this very sudden kind of, you know, eruptions of that. And this is the first time I think I've actually consciously stylized a gunfight, or gun, you know, which I normally wouldn't do because there's part of it that I think can border on irresponsibility because we do have such a love affair with firearms. I think it can lead to bad things if it's done with this overly glamorous-you know. But well, you say that, you say that you're immediately a hypocrite. Well, I'm fully aware of that, you know. So, that's a hell of a way to end a question. I'm a hypocrite. Next question!
CS: Can you talk about how the concept of the ADD crazy karate kid came about?
Carnahan: It's funny; my brother is a screenwriter now. He's actually becoming very successful. He wrote this film called "The Kingdom" which Jamie Fox just did for Universal and wrote a movie called "Lions for Lambs" which oddly enough Tom Cruise is going to be in. My younger brother. That was really based on a kid that we grew up with. I'm not going to name him for fear that I'll get sued. But, no a kid that I grew up with and then my brother. My brother was an admitted freak when he was a kid. Listen, did he get an erection throwing punches at people, no. Was he on Ritalin? No. It was my need to kind of insert some desperate comic relief in there. Also, I was like what if this kid is throwing punches and he literally became aroused. That would be either really disturbing or really funny or both. When he's walking away from Martin Henderson at the end doing that robot s**t, that was my brother when we were kids. That's the kind of annoying stuff he would do when we were kids. I knew people would either go with it or really think it was funny as hell or it would bother the hell out of them and completely polarize people. That's where that came from. When she calls him Boogie, that was actually the nickname of this kid that we grew up with that we knew was just a freak. I just remember him being a kid and always having nunchucks and his mother was nuts. I remember her running out one time, I'll never forget, running out when we were playing street football and she yells to him to come inside and watch his brother because she's playing Burger Time. Burger Time was the old video game. She's playin Burger Time. "Get in here and watch you're brother. I'm playing Burger Time." It was mind blowing. They always encouraged him to get foam nunchucks. He never did. He always had wooden nunchucks and the kid had bruises all over his head. He never got it. You'd see him out there and he'd bust himself in the head. He'd have a moment where he'd kind of stumbled around and then he'd just go back into it. So I thought that was my way of honoring this freak show of a kid.
CS: This is the first movie for Alicia Keys and Common. How did you get them to take the part and were they fast learners?
Carnahan: They were really fast learners and really, really available and open to the process. I was a fan of Alicia's obviously musically and I went to see her in Oakland at the Paramount Theatre. I remember going backstage and you know you see Alicia onstage and she's completely self-possessed [and] beautiful. But, then you see her backstage and she's this kid. I remember being struck like, "God she's young." We were sitting down with her and I said something along the lines of "don't let people put you in some chicken s**t romantic comedy. Let's go do something really interesting. Don't do that for your first role." And same thing, she really loved the written material. She loved this idea of this utter kind of deviation and departure from Alicia Keys, the Grammy winning hugely famous rock star. And Common, being such a fan of his going way back. Here's a guy who held his ground in the face of every major kind of hip hop movement or gangster rap, where through all these different variations on hip hop, here's a guy who held his own and remained true to himself throughout all of that. That's why you talk to people about who they have great admiration for, especially in that world, Common is always at the top of everyone's list because he's such an incredible gentleman first and foremost. But, he came in like three or four times to audition and one time he flew back from Paris to audition. He never said anything. Never said anything about the trouble we were putting him through. Nothing. That's how kind of beautiful his spirit is. That's why I love him so much and that's why he was able to take that stuff. What's great about Common is that it's all in his eyes. You watch him and he has something that actors who had come in and read didn't have. He's seen s**t. He's seen stuff in his life and he's experienced things. It just comes out through his eyes, he can just turn it on and I think both of them are kind of revelations for me. They held their own with some really, really strong really top notch actors. Alicia had the benefit of working across from someone like Taraji [Henson]. She's going to make anybody better. She just is and the same with Piven. That Jeremy and Rashid had become friends before we were shooting so they were really working off this idea, this fractured kind of betrayal and this idea that this friendship was coming to an end. I let them riff and let them ad- lib and do their thing. They came to completely embody those characters and I couldn't be more proud of both of them. It's like a great treat and a gift tie into something so beautifully.
CS: The cinematography was great. Were the card tricks your idea?
Carnahan: Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's also the kind of the idea that when they're in that bathroom, Common and Jeremy, when those characters are in that bathroom having that kind of heart to heart. It's the idea of this illusion and slide of hand and of what's real. I always wanted to create this kind of impression that maybe what Jeremy's character, what Buddy Israel, has to offer isn't really that much. But, he tells him that, "but I can make it real." I can kind of make it manifest. It's long enough for me to make this deal and disappear into the horizon. I'm fine with that. There's an overhead shot of Jeremy where he's doing that thing where he drops all of those aces. That was him. He went through decks of cards like people go through chewing gum. He was killing every time. I'd always hear him anywhere on set (makes the sound a deck of cards make when their shuffled). I mean all the time. He really got proficient. It was a joy and I'd tell him, "the reason you have to be proficient is because I'm not going to cut this. You have to do this because I don't want to fake it." It's a really elaborate con job. I definitely wanted to showcase that stuff.
Really anticipating this and will try and see it the first day it comes out.
Quote from: Mikey B on January 19, 2007, 11:48:21 AM
Really anticipating this and will try and see it the first day it comes out.
YOU will love it
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: JOE CARNAHAN PART 1 (SMOKIN' ACES)
Source: Devin Faraci; CHUD
In October I went to Lake Tahoe, Nevada, to see Smokin' Aces, Joe Carnahan's follow-up to the great crime film Narc. I stayed in the hotel where the movie was shot, and after the screening I, along with a couple of other journalists, had dinner and then went gambling with Joe. We played blackjack until well into the night; Joe started weak, but ended up gaining back all his losses as the night wore on.
The next morning it was up and at 'em early – everybody had a chance to get some one on one time with Joe. I was feeling a little groggy – there had been plenty of beers the night before – but Joe, who had still been in the casino when I finally packed it in, was brimming with energy. That seems to be the natural state for Joe Carnahan – the guy's just bursting with friendliness and laughter, and he has more hilarious and unprintable stories than just about anyone I have met.
This is the first of two interviews that we'll run this week. The follow-up was conducted in January, during the Smokin' Aces junket.
I said to you that this was like the bloodiest episode of the Love Boat. But the more I think about it, it's like all your favorite movie genres showed up at a casino for a shootout.
It is. Absolutely, brother. The thing that will piss me off more than anything... I love Quentin [Tarantino], but I'm not influenced by him. If there are two movies that influenced it, the bones beneath the surface, they're Barton Fink and Raising Arizona.
I see Raising Arizona. Where does Barton Fink come in?
The claustrophobia of the hotel. John Goodman as Mundt, the sociopath with the head in the box next door. Running up the hallway that's on fire. Then with Raising Arizona, you have Tex Cobb – he's the fucking father of the Tremor Brothers. Then you have everybody after the baby, everybody wants the baby.
But it was my attempt – and however it turns out, it turns out – to see how the individual personas of these characters could affect the way it was shot. The Tremor Brothers, when you first see the Tremor Brothers, when Lester stands up, that's the shot from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly when the guy stands up in the beginning. They believe themselves to be bigger than life, they watched The Matrix a shitload of times, so everything has to be in slow motion, they're impervious to bullets. But you're asked to go from that fantastical freak show to a guy trying to give mouth to mouth to his dying partner.
It is, dude – it's all those things colliding. All I was worried about is that you care for these people, I don't give a shit who they were. And I didn't want it to be glib. When Nestor Carbonell kills Matthew Fox, what he says to him – 'Don't look at my face, heaven may hold it against you.' – that's real, man. He's not being flip. He's saying, 'I wish I didn't have to do this, but you forced it. You're going to asphyxiate, you shouldn't be feeling any pain right now.' Fuck man, to me that's what I want it to be. Then you can have the boner kid, and the grandma with the hysterectomy and the sodomy-torture-bad-check-writing deadbeat dad...
It was really my attempt to... it's a drive-in movie, man. But I want this to be a refined drive-in movie, an action film where the wires are used to yank guys across the room and not float them. We were doing deadman pulls in that. Denny Pierce, the guy who took that hit from the .50 cal went from standing still, dude, to fucking 20 yards in the other direction in a second and a half. If you slow the film down, his body does a horse shoe.
You mention Tarantino, and I don't think it's the same thing that he does. The only thing that this film has in common with Tarantino is that this film is aware there have been previous films.
We're cinephiles. Guys like you, like me – guys who really love movies. There's as many homages to Bergman in that fucking movie – in Hour of the Wolf, there's a shot of Max von Sydow talking to Liv Ullman, and you know he's going fucking nuts. She's just hung laundry, sheets, and it's this two shot and the sheet just starts to rattle more and more. The shot of Common in the bathroom is my favorite shot in [Smokin' Aces] – the shot of Common talking to Jeremy Piven's reflection in the mirror. You're not there, dude – you're duplicitous, you're gone. The gunfight between Nestor and Ray [Liotta] in the elevator – it's Citizen Kane, the minute he knows you're full of shit, it's all reflections.
So yeah, absolutely aware. But to say that, 'It's exactly this' or 'It's exactly that' you cheapen the whole experience. That's my biggest bitch with the critical establishment right now: stop bitching about derivative films, what about derivative criticism? How about having a frame of reference pre-92. I love Quentin, but sliced white bread and the internal combustion engine did not spring from Reservoir Dogs. I love that guy, I love his movies, but my Tarantino movie – the one I love, that I adore – is Jackie Brown, his least successful film.
What's funny is that when Jackie Brown came out I didn't like it, then I got it on DVD, and I watched it again... and again... and again. I think that's the Tarantino film I've watched the most.
Dude, it's so nuanced and lyrical and beautiful a movie. What the unfortunate thing is that, at the end of the day, nobody gave a shit about a relationship between a 60 year old white guy and a 45 year old black woman. And that's the crime, because it's so beautiful. Behaviorally it's like, fuck man – Samuel L Jackson is genuinely menacing in that film. Bridget Fonda is wonderful. Find me a DeNiro performance that's anything like that in the last 15 years. There's no caricature, he's not satirizing himself.
I love movies, man. I fucking watch all over the place, everything, like you do. We come from that culture. There's nothing I love more than watching a movie and saying, 'Wow, how did they do that?' I remember watching Persona when I was 19 and thinking, 'This is the biggest piece of shit on the planet.' I watched it seven years later and it's one of my favorite films of all time. I take those things seriously, and for critics to say, 'It's like Tarantino...' Come on, man. You have to invest more. You have to. You gotta look for it or it's pointless, don't even bother. If you see a gun and there's a hit man in it, don't even bother, because it's fucking Tarantino. I feel like there's a correlation in this country between our comfort with things and our ability to brand them immediately.
We were talking last night about Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, a movie which just got trashed at the time even though it's a masterpiece. Besides the Tarantino thing, are you worried that this is the kind of movie that critics will not get?
Here's where I am very confident: this movie will wear very well over time. This movie will be – no matter how dismissed it is – I defy you to watch the movie a second time and not see new shit. If that's the case, listen, the fact that Universal let me make this movie and let me end it the way it ends, which to me is the only thing it has in common with Narc – the ambiguity of the ending – whatever critics' or audiences' ambivalence towards the film, you can't do anything about that. You fall reaching. I would rather try something and have it be a complete wipeout than to say, 'Let's trim this back.' We do that too much. So yes, this kid gets a boner while he's throwing punches at this guy.
I was glad you went back to that a second time, because the first time I was like, 'That kid didn't really have a boner, did he?'
[laughs] It's a freak show, man! Mixed in with a nice salad and some prime rib there's some cotton candy. There's room on the table for everything. So yeah, you're right, it may be one of those things where it polarizes people because you have to think. If you check out of this movie, don't even bother – you have to keep up. At the end of the day, that's the movie I wanted to make. Whatever it does, it does. But I'll never apologize for it.
The cast in this film is great. Not just people who are great and you expect them to be great, but people like Alicia Keys, who really surprises. She's killer. How did that cast come together?
There's such a dearth of interesting screenplays knocking around. I like writing for a reader. If you're going to take two hours out of your life to read this, I'm going to give you something that's entertaining. The script drew a lot of attention, and I had a lot of people, from Ryan Reynolds to Alicia to Jason Bateman, saying they want to do this. Nobody got paid any money. The budget on this was 21 [million], it was like no money – in terms of a studio movie. 21's a lot of fucking money but not in terms of a studio. And at that budget level I didn't get messed with, and I had Working Title, who are extraordinary producers. They bulletproofed me. They're used to doing Bridget Jones and Love, Actually, these very high-minded, droll British comedies – although they also did Shaun of the Dead, which I loved. And they did Hot Fuzz. They have an eye for this, but they bullet-proofed me.
But that cast, they all just got down, man. They got down and went with it. Alicia, I told her we're going to train you. You can't look like you've never been in gunfights. Ryan Reynolds was so goddamned fast – he had an HK and he was so fucking fast with that gun. You'd see him be BAM! BAM! BAM! and then drop [the clip] and be firing within two seconds. Unbelievable. And Alicia's the same way – we were going to have a contest between them. She does what's called tap, rack and bang – we deliberately put a jam in her gun, in this case a snap cap that won't cycle, and the gun won't fire, so she literally had to retap the mag, get rid of the bad shell and keep firing. I didn't speed up any of that shit – that's them moving that quickly. When you see Ryan drop that reload when Nestor's about to put the gun to her head and shoot her, I didn't take any frames out of that – that's how long it takes him to get a gun up.
And it's the best kind of artistic collusion, because everybody's in on it and they all want to bring it. We had the Tremor Brothers – Maury Sterling, Chris Pine and Kevin Durand – they really hung out, they really became brothers. They talked in character, they always addressed one another by character name. They were really into it. Because it was something opposed to some douchebag romantic comedy they usually get offered.
Like Ben [Affleck], I said, you don't mind playing this guy who's going to get punched out in the first twenty minutes? He got the humor in that, he saw the reason for that. I think it was all those things that contributed to having the greatest cast.
When this comes out, it'll have been five years since Narc. Why so long?
We had a couple of non-starters. I spent a couple of months on A Walk Among the Tombstones at Universal, and we couldn't make that mesh. Then I spent 15 months on MI3. I made lifelong friends on that movie, we'll be bonded forever by our experiences on that movie. It's tough man, when you see your contemporaries and guys like Chris Nolan making a bunch of great films, I think he's really gifted. The closest compatriot to my experience is Darren [Aronofsky] and what he went through on The Fountain. Then you have people like Kim Pierce – people who you really love who you'll wait for. I can't wait to see Stoploss, this Gulf War thing. It's the process, and as much as I was pissed off about MI3, I'm glad it happened because I wouldn't have been able to make this. I wrote my adaptation of Killing Pablo after I left, so a lot of stuff... it was like a confluence. I look at that film and I say, do I wish I made that? No. I'm glad I made this. And listen, brother – I don't want to go another five years.
When you spend 15 months on a film like MI3, a big film that doesn't happen, what's the lesson you learn?
That there's something to be said for brevity. There's something to be said for expedience and pure purpose. Stripping something down to its most elemental, what you need to make it work. And I'll put the action in this movie up against the action in MI3, especially at what we spent, and with that cast. At the end of the day what that taught me was, in a lot of ways, what not to do. The script is the first block in the building, and sometimes in Hollywood we treat it like something to endlessly work on. Maybe it can endlessly evolve, but do yourself a favor – have 120 pages to evolve. Don't have 50. Don't have a handful. It becomes diminishing returns. You have the rare instance of Die Hard, where you start out with a script of 30 pages, but it's so rare. In my relatively short experience in this business, it's never yielded a good film, or anything close to a masterpiece. Those come from hard work, being solitary and cranking it out. I will never start a film again without a finished script. And also a collective understanding of how we'll approach the movie – too much of that changed during the process.
It seems like it's a bad idea to start a movie with only a date and sequel number.
I love the X-Men movies, but I wasn't crazy about X3. I know the situation behind that – they were rushing for a date. I think Matt Vaughn saw that and said, forget about it. Do I have fundamental problems with that movie versus the other two? Sure – and I'm all for the great summer entertainment, but I'm all for Raiders of the Lost Ark. And I don't think that's too much to ask for, that it be smart. Raiders is still a brilliant series of stunts pieced together, but it's the energy and the grace and the beauty behind it that, to me, remains pure. Now it's like let's blow it all out, do it day and date, get all the money first weekend, fool everybody and run off to Brazil. To me that model has to change. I would love to be able to make movies in this kind of budget range, because this is where you have the most freedom.
Quote from: RegularKarate on December 10, 2006, 08:00:07 PM
the script is pretty weak... the characters are very mildly motivated and it's hard to attach to any of them so you don't really give a shit in the end where it tries to convince you that what's happening is very emotional when it's just... happening... I couldn't have cared less what happened to who since no one was really all that developed. there are definitely some "cool" scenes that worked for me (though nothing that hasn't been done before) and some scenes that made me laugh, but it doesn't change that it's nothing special.
yeah. this movie bothered me a little bit. i didn't like it. this made Snatch seem like Shakespeare. there is too much exposition in the beginning, and for a movie this over-the-top the thing missing for me was "fun". the movie seemed sort of mean spirited, maybe that was just witnessing the way the crowd reacted to certain things, but the beginning really seemed to hate women. and i really try to never judge a movie on the way a character acts to say 'thats what the movies saying' but there was something not right here. the more serious elements did not sit with the more ridiculous bits of over the top, not that they couldn't have worked, just that in carnahands they didn't.
it was cool seeing 2 of my favorite tv show dudes in their brief 2 scenes but mostly everyone was wasted here. the best part was alicia keys and taraji p henson. and i agree, i dont know if alicia keys is a great actress, she wasnt bad, but i was drawn to her. some of the dialogue was bad, when the capper is "fuck it" blam blam blam, you've really gotten lazy. so, a not good overall. i am not sure how carnahan went so wrong, in interviews he talks about the audience connecting with these characters otherwise its just gun porn, well joe, you completely failed! thats exactly what it is. i can't believe clint mansell did the score.
i wasnt expecting much, i just hoped it would be fun. it wasn't even that. beware: it IS january.
Pulp friction
Source: Sydney Morning Herald
It's probably best not to bring up Quentin Tarantino's name when discussing influence and inspiration with writer-director Joe Carnahan. Unless you enjoy a nicely modulated torrent of curses and invective worthy of a Tarantino script.
"There seems to be this school of know-nothing critics who, when someone so much as touches a gun or utters some variation of the F-word, insist that it was all cribbed from Tarantino," Carnahan says. "I find that absurd. It's as though sliced white bread, the internal combustion engine and the neo-noir pulp thriller were all invented in 1992 by this genius. So what were people like Don Siegel, Sam Peckinpah or the Coen brothers doing before that?
"I'm sorry, but f---ing Quentin Tarantino didn't invent the neo-noir movement. I saw a review of Scorsese's The Departed which said something like, 'Scorsese seems to be entering Tarantino country here.' So now Martin Scorsese is cribbing from Tarantino?"
To save you checking: 1992 was the year Reservoir Dogs, the first of Tarantino's nihilist thrillers, came out. Siegel was the eminent, now deceased director who worked with Clint Eastwood, among other macho luminaries, on films such as Dirty Harry. And the late Peckinpah sneaked as much violence as he could get away with into films such as Straw Dogs (1971).
"It's my big beef at the moment," Carnahan says. "Since when did everything with an overlay of violence or a hit man become the intellectual property of Tarantino? We bitch about things being derivative but then we act like there's no film history pre-1992. It's really disturbing."
What set Carnahan off were some unfavourable comparisons between Carnahan's latest film, Smokin' Aces, and the key ingredients of the Tarantino oeuvre: gratuitous violence and, of course, innovative, copious cursing.
At 37, Carnahan is six years younger than Tarantino. He obviously sees the Pulp Fiction guy as another entrenched Hollywood establishment figure.
Yet Smokin' Aces touches on some rich Tarantino staples. There are the Mob, the FBI, gambling, high rollers and the casino showbiz circuit, with Wayne Newton making an onstage cameo as himself. Tarantino would have set it in Vegas, but Carnahan uses a B-grade casino zone, Nevada's Lake Tahoe, as his backdrop.
Carnahan is much admired for two earlier films, Narc (2002) and Blood, Guts, Bullets and Octane (1998). He assembled a stellar cast for Smokin' Aces including Ryan Reynolds, Ben Affleck, Andy Garcia, Ray Liotta and Jeremy Piven, of TV's Entourage. Hip-hopper Common and R&B goddess Alicia Keys are two musical luminaries who turn up in their movie debuts. Antipodeans Martin Henderson and Joel Edgerton also make significant appearances.
The whole gaggle get face time for the film's ace in the hole: a central shoot-out that is intricately detailed. And let's say it: as a psychopathic set-piece, it's positively Tarantinoesque.
But most critics have found a problem. For all the grey matter that gets splattered artistically and graphically on elevator doors, penthouse walls, air-conditioning ducts and the odd aquarium, little is resolved. Not a lot of thought accompanies all that gore.
The Hollywood Reporter called it dazzling but said it led to "a dead end".
"Who wants to do the obvious?" Carnahan asks. "Most movies these days are formulaic bullshit. I would rather walk out of the theatre saying, 'That was reprehensible, I hated every frame of that movie.' The worst thing is to be indifferent to it."
Carnahan says there is a "very glaring difference between Smokin' Aces and a Tarantino film. Every character in my movie, no matter how grotesque, has a moment where they expose their humanity.
"They're not like those sarcastic, sardonic arseholes in a Tarantino film who kill for the fun of it and project this I-like-the-thrill, who-gives-a-f--- attitude. His characters are so far above it all. Not one character in this film does that."
If there are scripted, Hamlet-like moments of humanity, as Carnahan insists, it seems easy to blink and miss the uncertainty.
Wow. I just lost so much respect for Carnahan. Boo-urns.
why? he said what everyone has been saying for more than a decade. ppl gotta stop acting like movies began in 94. cept he said 92.
Doesn't he realize that it's more damning to make a Tarantino-clone movie and downplay its Tarantino-ness? Or has he really convinced himself that he didn't make a movie so easily comparable to Tarantino since A) it's the third act of True Romance stretched out to feature length; and B) stretching the third act of another film out to feature length is exactly what Tarantino did to get on the map? Fuck it, he should be happy they're not comparing him to Guy Ritchie instead.
Quote from: MacGuffin on February 02, 2007, 11:11:42 PM
"Who wants to do the obvious?" Carnahan asks. "Most movies these days are formulaic bullshit. I would rather walk out of the theatre saying, 'That was reprehensible, I hated every frame of that movie.' The worst thing is to be indifferent to it."
I'm just about indifferent to it. I can't say I liked it, but I have no reason to curse how bad it was either. Except that the "twist" sucked. Some of it may not be obvious but some of it was very obvious and it belonged in a movie that wasn't a comedic shoot-em-up almost every step of the way. But the rest of it is just as forgettable as Love and a .45 or any mid-late 90s neo-Tarantino film.
The only reason I would ever watch this again is to see Alicia Keys in fishnet stockings.
Quote from: jacksparrow on February 03, 2007, 07:23:36 AM
The only reason I would ever watch this again is to see Alicia Keys in fishnet stockings.
Agreed.
I liked it quite a bit but while the culminating action scenes were just plain fantastic, they dragged on just a tiny bit.
I saw it the other night. I think Carnahan is a better director than writer. I know he didn't intend to do a Tarantino-esque film, but anyone who makes an ultra-violent movie with articulate characters will be compared to Tarantino. It is sad but unavoidable. In the 70's, anyone who made a western was compared to Peckinpah and Leone. Certain directors own certain genres.
I think Smokin' Aces had a lot of great set-pieces, and some great moments. But it's all just a reminder of how great Tarantino's flms are.
Smokin' Aces Scores a DVD Prequel
Universal keeps the fire blazing on DVD.
Film site SlashFilm reports that director Joe Carnahan, whose 2006 crime romp Smokin' Aces performed less than smokin' at the box office, confirms that a direct-to-DVD prequel has recently been given the greenlight by Universal. Details on the project remain scarce - including the Carnahan's level of involvement - though the title's notable boost in performance on DVD is a likely reason why the overlooked film is getting the DTV treatment.
"Universal wants to move ahead with a direct-to-video prequel of 'Smokin' and asked me if I wanted to Godfather the thing and make sure we did a really cool story," Caranhan details. "The DVD numbers 'Smokin' Aces' has done are astounding and they want to strike while the iron is hot. Whatever reluctance I have is alleviated by the fact that we can really do this balls out, hardcore prequel and not be constrained by ratings or any other puritanical MPAA bullsh*t."
Carnahan's next project will likely be his much-discussed adaptation of the James Ellory novel White Jazz, the follow-up to the celebrated L.A. Confidential.