The Master , the latest from Paul Thomas Anderson starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Joaquin Phoenix , have captured the zeitgeist of Venice Film Festival talk in the first half of the festival, but perhaps more quietly, director Haifaa Al Mansour is making celluloid history with her film Wadjda . Al Mansour is Saudi Arabia’s first female director, in a country that forbids movie theaters. The film follows the story of a determined 10 year-old girl living in the country’s capital, Riyadh. Shot entirely in Saudi Arabia, according to the director, the film follows young Wadjda as she lives her life trying to dodge the strict rules of Saudi society both at home and school. According to a profile of the film in Reuters , she is disciplined for not wearing her veil, listening to pop music and not “hiding in front of men.” But her sites set on a green bicycle that she decides to raise money to get it. Her plan is to learn Koranic verses and take part in a religious competition at school. If she can raise the money, she will buy the bike. And in the meantime, she will – at least temporarily – show herself as a renewed pious girl. “It’s easy to say it’s a difficult, conservative place for a woman and do nothing about it, but we need to push forward and hope we can help make it a more relaxed and tolerant society,” she said after her film premiered in Venice, speaking to reporters in English, according to Reuters. She added that the restrictive kingdom has started to open up for women, noting that female athletes traveled to London for the recent Olympics and that its monarch, King Abdullah has opened up better educational opportunities for women and they now can vote in municipal elections. “”It is not like before, although I can’t say it’s like heaven,” she said. “Society won’t just accept it, people will put pressure on women to stay home, but we have to fight.” Still she did encounter some social-stigma while filming in the country’s capital despite having received permission. Locals in some more conservative areas of the city did not like seeing a female filmmaker directing with men on the set and at times used a walkie-talkie in order to give instruction to her male actors. Wadjda is playing out of competition at the Venice Film Festival. [ Source: Reuters ]
The October issue of Vanity Fair magazine has a Scientology-related cover story about Tom Cruise that makes Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master look like light comedy. In a feature titled, ” What Katie Didn’t Know: Marriage, Scientology-Style,” special correspondent Maureen Orth reveals the details of a top-secret 2004 mission that Shelly Miscavige, the wife of Scientology head David Miscavige, undertook to find a girlfriend for Tom Cruise. The magazine reports that, according to several sources, the organization devised “an elaborate auditioning process in which actresses who were already Scientology members were called in, told they were auditioning for a new training film, and then asked a series of curious questions including: ‘What do you think of Tom Cruise?'” The sweepstakes winner was Iranian-born, London-raised actress Nazanin Boniadi, who had a recurring role in General Hospital and How I Met Your Mother . Boniadi dated Cruise from November 2004 until January 2005, after Orth reports, a month-long preparation in which she was “audited” every day — a Scientology-based process in which she revealed “her innermost secrets and every detail of her sex life.” Boniadi also underwent a physical transformation that allegedly included losing her braces, the red highlights in her hair and her boyfriend. (Orth cites a “knowledgeable source” who says that the actress was shown “confidential auditing files of her boyfriend to expedite the breakup,” although the church denied any “misuse” of confidential information.) According to Vanity Fair , Boniadi was flown to New York in November to meet Cruise. After dinner at Nobu and ice-skating at the Rockefeller Center rink there, which had been closed to the public but not “an entourage of Scientology aides,”, the actress spent the night with Cruise. Orth cites several sources who say the two did not have sex, but that Cruise told Boniadi, “I’ve never felt this way before.” Approximately one month and at least two confidentiality agreements later, the magazine reports, Boniadi was kicked to the curb. Orth writes that anything the actress said or did that met with Cruise’s disapproval was relayed to a member of the Scientology staff. Boniadi, also reportedly offended fast-talking Scientology top gun David Miscavige by repeatedly telling him “Excuse me?” while she was entertaining him in Telluride. (A representative for Miscavige told Vanity Fair , “Mr. Miscavige doesn’t remember any girlfriend of anyone, in his entire life, insulting him.”) Despite these reportedly stressful conditions, Boniadi “was in love with Cruise,” Orth writes. That said, she was “overwhelmed” by “the intensity of his affection, especially his predilection for public displays” — a detail that should not come as a surprise to those who remember Cruise expressing his newfound love for Katie Holmes on national TV by jumping on a couch on Oprah Winfrey’s show in 2005, Cruise, on the other hand, told Boniadi “I get more love from an extra than I get from you.” By the third week in January 2005, Boniadi was asked to move out of Cruise’s house and into Scientology’s Celebrity Centre. She was told that the Mission Impossible actor “wants someone with her own power — like Nicole,” as in Cruise’s ex-wife Nicole Kidman. Cruise would meet Homes later that year and announce his engagement to the Dawson’s Creek actress that June. Boniadi would not fare nearly as well. The magazine reports that when the actress ran into a friend at a Scientology Center in Florida, Boniadi spilled the beans on her relationship with Cruise, only to have the friend report her. As punishment for her indiscretion, a “knowledgeable source” told Orth that Boniadi’s punishment was “to scrub toilets with a toothbrush, clean bathroom tiles with acid and dig ditches in the middle of the night.” She was also tasked with selling copies of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard’s book, Dianetics on street corners. (A Scientology spokesperson told the magazine, “The Church does not punish people, especially in [that’ manner.”) A spokeswoman for Cruise called the Vanity Fair story, which includes a number of other revelations about Scientology and Cruise, “false.” [ Vanity Fair ] Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
I’m glad Philip Seymour Hoffman is in voiceover — and not in his underwear — when he declares “Man is not an animal” at the beginning of the final theatrical trailer for Paul Thomas Anderson ‘s highly anticipated film, The Master . Otherwise, the line — which is accompanied by a scene of Phoenix rhythmically pounding his fists on a table — would recall a little too closely the scene from David Lynch’s classic 1980 film The Elephant Man in which the tormented titled character, played by John Hurt, wails “I am not an animal…I am a human being!” (Actually, I’m conflating here. Hurt isn’t in his underwear in that scene, but Bradley Cooper did play the character, as directed, in his skivvies in Williamstown, Mass. just a few weeks back.) Phoenix, who acts out with his fists more than once in the trailer — and with a pistol — plays a Navy veteran who falls in with the charismatic leader of The Cause (Hoffman), a quasi-religious movement with parallels to Scientology. In one scene, a character portentously declares: “Good science allows for more than one opinion. Otherwise you really have the will of one man, which is the basis for a cult.” That’s followed by a voiceover of Amy Adams, who plays Dodd’s wife, saying: “The only way to defend ourselves is to attack,” a line that could be interpreted as a reference to Scientology’s reputation for fighting back aggressively, particularly in the media, when its organization comes under scrutiny. Here’s the trailer. The Master opens on Sept. 21. Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
The Batman brand is in the toilet at the outset of The Dark Knight Rises , the third and most self-consciously ornate pillar of Christopher Nolan’s caped crusader resurrection trilogy. The four years since The Dark Knight have passed as eight within the city state of Gotham — one of the neater doublings in a movie inlaid with prismatic tiling — and even the mayor condemns Batman as “a murderous thug.” The late Harvey Dent, by contrast, has been canonized as a civic hero; something called the “Dent Act” has ushered in an era of safe streets and soft despotism. Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale), meanwhile, is still heartbroken over the murder of Rachel Dawes and said to be peeing in Mason jars and polishing his curly fingernails in some shuttered wing of Wayne Manor. As a memorial for Dent drones and tinkles smugly on, the movie’s animating question flickers across Commissioner Gordon’s (Gary Oldman) face: Batman died for this ? The this at the heart of The Dark Knight Rises is a city whose predicament is conceived broadly enough to accommodate any number of thematic readings, but too hedged to explore any one of them well. In winding up at casual cross-purposes, the film’s perspective on governing power structures and mass psychology (to name only two) feel like Nolan playing ideological peek-a-boo. Despite heavy provocation, it’s a movie that can only supply embarrassment to those who look beyond the gleaming chaos and heroic suffering for meaning. What it amounts to is a frantic set of distractions from an uncommonly thrilling ride on the old Gotham express. Bruce Wayne’s first warning of what’s to come, and what’s happening beyond the manor gates — the Catwoman in the coalmine — arrives in the figure of a burglar named Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway, tart but sexless). Selina draws Bruce out of hiding — something a philanthropist on the clean energy tip played by Marion Cotillard couldn’t manage — and warns him of a coming storm that will level the elite and the commoner. When the faithful Alfred Pennyworth (Michael Caine) implores him to focus on deploying his dwindling resources and building a better (or any) personal life, Wayne takes it as a challenge to his alter ego’s honor and his failing body. Meanwhile, Commissioner Gordon is paying more attention to his gut than the crime statistics, and it’s telling him something is rotten in Gotham. What that might be is considered from several angles — computer chaos, corporate greed, social inequality, nuclear threat, economic terrorism—and we wait to see which will prevail. Nolan never quite chooses, though, opting for a little bit of each whenever it’s convenient. Bending over all of them, in an arc extended from The Dark Knight (there are even more direct connections to Batman Begins ), is the obsessive pursuit of Batman’s “true” identity. “The idea was to be a symbol,” Wayne sighs to a hotfooted cop played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. But there’s no place for symbols in a search-engined society; nothing so delicate can survive in cold, data-based climes. The city clamors for Batman, wanted for the death of their hero, on a plate: This Gotham seems destined for slow-motion self-destruction; our villain’s arrival is framed as more of a helping hand. They may have forsaken Batman, but the city’s need for viable symbols is borne out in the heavily spackled image of Dent, and, from his first appearance in the bravura prologue, the intransigent evil embodied by Tom Hardy’s Bane. “No one cared who I was until I put on the mask,” Bane gurgles (not true Tom Hardy! Not true!) in vocoder tones I’d put somewhere between Yoda post-testosterone patch and Sean Connery on appletinis. Batman’s comeback is hamstrung at every turn — by his vicious new opponent, by the police (led by Matthew Modine’s canine would-be commissioner), and by an app-loading tablet that the superhero considers in the universal stance of tech-befuddlement. Consigned, after a colossal ass-whipping, to a vaguely Arab hellmouth with handy cable news access, Wayne spends the middle chunk of the movie striving for the spiritual strength to escape in time to keep Bane from his plan to “feed the people hope to poison their souls” before blowing the whole city to pieces. A sub-tangle with nuclear power, which is framed as both the savior of the world and its destroyer, provides the movie’s ultimate double. But Bane’s motives are obscured too long and too provocatively to succeed in drawing us into the wildly nettled political revolution he comes to represent. We’re told his power derives from his fanatical belief — something a privileged playboy can’t buy — but in what? His is a psychology of convenience and comic-book dogma, which is only a problem insofar as the film insists he have a psychology at all. Bane’s proselytizing about social equality and death by moral complacency inspires real dread, but again Nolan isn’t prepared to stand behind the incendiary postures he strikes. There’s always an out, in this case the fact that Bane’s politics are just a theatrical prelude to less complicated darkness. Undeniable is Hardy’s menace: Less a man than a masculine experiment gone awry, he seems to be strutting naked even in boots and crust punk combat gear. What Bane is most clearly is a terrorist, from his vaguely plotted assault on Gotham’s stock exchange, to the fondness for human shields and Taliban-tinged sports stadium executions, to the plan not to rule or capture the city with a grand gesture but to wipe it out. Though it was filmed in several locations, including Pittsburgh, in this installment that island city is most obviously New York, from the glimpse of the scaffolded Freedom Tower to the crippled Brooklyn Bridge to the richies dragged out of their Fifth Avenue penthouses. If anything the pretense of Gotham adds a certain gratuitousness to the clear references — symbols pulled out of their context for sheer, emotion-zapping effect. Beyond that a scrappy city all its own emerges, where Batman is just another part of the steeply vertical landscape and it wouldn’t be all that odd to find him slugging it out in the streets, as in his climactic, cleanly drawn confrontation with Bane. Beginning with a thrilling underground, multi-vehicle chase and through a series of old fashioned brawls, Nolan, director of photography Wally Pfister and editor Lee Smith restore a baseline of coherence to the action that in some instances has the feeling of a many-paneled page, with levels and layers of action — a ka-pow over here, a thwack over there. If New York is Gotham’s most obvious touchstone this time out, the Windy City asserts itself in Nolan’s script (co-written with his brother Jonathan, working from a story by Nolan and David S. Goyer). The dialogue is inflated to regulation turgidity and then some. Hathaway does her best, but without Heath Ledger’s Joker there’s no one to let the air out now and then, which makes this week’s cinematic rendering of the apocalypse more terribly earnest but also more genuinely terrifying than most. Along with making the most prominent case for the continued relevance of the auteur theory, with this trilogy the British director reminds us that well-built brands never really die. Certainly one elegiac current running under the The Dark Knight Rises is that they don’t make them like Batman anymore, either in Gotham City or your local cineplex. During its more didactic lapses, episodes of shocking darkness and overwhelming density, you can practically make out the silhouette of Nolan looming behind the screen, appraising us with folded arms: Do they deserve this movie? Are we worthy of it? The Dark Knight aspires to the epic and reaches it on a number of impressive and less impressive levels. That it is a frequently, unnervingly glorious triumph of brawn over brains is not despite but in spite of Nolan’s admirably stubborn — if persistently, risibly serious — insistence that the modern superhero can have it all. Follow Michelle Orange on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
In the latest installment of One-Sheet Wonder , a column going deep on the best, worst, weirdest and other milestones of contemporary movie-poster art, Movieline takes a look at the new poster for Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master . — Ed. The Master , Paul Thomas Anderson’s enigmatic follow-up to There Will Be Blood , has been trailed by speculation and assumption for months — Is it about Scientology? Is Philip Seymour Hoffman portraying L. Ron Hubbard in a biopic capacity? — and every question has been met with denials and mystery. But each new marketing piece sheds more light on what we’ll get. After two beautiful , beguiling teaser trailers, a beautiful, beguiling one-sheet for Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master debuted today over at Ain’t It Cool News . But like the clips before it, the poster tells us almost nothing about the movie. (Or do they?) The first trailer was peppered with Scientology-ish personality questions, and this poster seems based on an abstraction of an e-meter, the device used in Scientology auditing. The close-up of a barreled piece of silver metal seems like an unfinished soda can. But take a look at the tubes in this photo (pictured right) and it’s not a far leap to see the poster as a macro view of one of those e-meter tubes. But then what’s that dirty, flat-champagne-like liquid draining out of the poster (notice the drops at the top)? It could reference Hubbard’s Naval background and his life on a yacht, and there’s a vague nautical element to the fonts. Or it could refer to the flushing of alcohol that comes with the Scientology auditing process. Whatever the case, it creates a nice refraction in the word “MASTER,” bisecting it and putting the halves increasingly off kilter as you go from left to right, a reflection of the schism hinted at in the second trailer (” Just say something that’s true! “). This probably won’t be the only poster for The Master , but don’t expect a second one-sheet to bathe the plot in sunlight. There Will Be Blood had two domestic one-sheets, and while the teaser was far more engaging than the final art neither gave the game away. Time will tell whether The Master follows suit, but like with TWBB the mystery surrounding the film — encapsulated in this excellent first poster — makes the wait to see it interminable. Dante A. Ciampaglia is a writer, editor and photographer in New York. You can find him on Twitter , Tumblr , and, occasionally, his blog .
Following Rush Limbaugh’s attempt to cry conspiracy over the idea that The Dark Knight Rises villain Bane was meant as a political jab at Mitt Romney’s ties to Bain Capital, comic book writer Chuck Dixon — who created the Bane character for DC’s 1993 series Knightfall — chimed in to set the record straight on the character’s origins. “Bane was created by me and Graham Nolan and we are lifelong conservatives and as far from left-wing mouthpieces as you are likely to find in comics,” he told ComicBook.com . “He’s far more akin to an Occupy Wall Street type if you’re looking to cast him politically. And if there ever was a Bruce Wayne running for the White House it would have to be Romney.” [ ComicBook.com via The Guardian ]
A war veteran (Joaquin Phoenix) with a “nervous condition” finds himself entrenched in a cult — if not a religious cult, at least a cult of personality — built around a charismatic leader (Philip Seymour Hoffman) in Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master . At long last, after a series of enigmatic teases, the first full trailer has hit the web offering more than just abstract , beguiling peeks at the rumored Scientology drama. So how much L. Ron Hubbard is there in Hoffman’s Master? The trailer alights on Phoenix’s Freddie Sutton as he wanders into the world of writer, doctor, nuclear physicist, and theoretical philosopher Lancaster Dodd, whose Hubbard-esque writings are glimpsed. (The way Dodd pens the dedication of his novel — “As a gift to Homo Sapiens” — is a bit of scripting brilliance that hints at Dodd’s grandiose, bombastic personality in just a single glance.) Things seem innocent enough as Dodd and his wife (Amy Adams) welcome his new charge into the fold. “We’ll urge you toward existence within a group, a society of family,” Dodd says. Like Scientology, this group promises self-improvement through community, though suspense kicks in as an accuser drops the c-word — “cult” — sending Dodd’s group onto a more sinister path. “The only way to defend ourselves is to attack,” Adams spits. It all certainly seems to be calling out Scientology and its founder, moreso the unflattering public image of its followers in the eyes of the outside world — organized faith-peddlers masking dubious claims behind their eccentric figurehead, desperate to protect themselves against scrutiny or worse. It might not seem so Scientology-esque if the tales of ex-members exiting the group weren’t so dramatic , or if Katie Holmes hadn’t reportedly been followed by a gang of Church members following her separation from Tom Cruise, the kind of crazy story that highlights the organization’s more bizarre characteristics. But does The Master really seem to be about Scientology at its core? Not much is apparent so far. The parallels are there – the author-turned-spiritual leader, the cult-like tendencies, the insular power dynamic within and without, not to mention the suggestion that it’s all a sham — and maybe Anderson’s taking an overt jab at the Church by using the bones of Scientology’s story to set up his own. But Anderson’s films explore larger human themes within narrow, specific worlds; it feels reductive to call The Master a Scientology movie just yet, though how much specific criticism can be drawn from the story remains to be seen. So forget the Scientology ties for a moment. This trailer looks fantastic, and though it hints at much more of the plot than we’ve seen previously, it’s still tantalizingly mysterious. Most surprising is Amy Adams, who commands attention as Dodd’s wife with glimpses of a mousy-to-Lady Macbethian arc throughout the trailer. Watch the trailer debut via Yahoo : The Master will be released on October 12. Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
I hesitate to even post this video — part fever dream, part vaguely authorized marketing blip, yet utterly curiosity-stoking glimpse at what appears to be Paul Thomas Anderson’s forthcoming The Master . Joaquin Phoenix, take it away. The clip made its way to Twitter via YouTube just a little while ago. It was originally housed at the account ” Al Rose Promotions ” — an account named after the real estate man whom Daniel Plainview consults about the Bandy tract in There Will Be Blood — and linked out to themasterfilm.com , so there’s definitely something there beyond Phoenix’s machete-sharpening, beach-brawling, mechanically disposed grunt under interrogation by The Man. Suggestions welcome, but I’m inclined to take the mystery for now.
Looks like indie film financier/Tweeter Megan Ellison’s promise came true : According to a Box Office Mojo update, Paul Thomas Anderson ‘s The Master has been added to the fall 2012 release calendar, to open on October 12 — just in time for an awards run! No official word from distrib The Weinstein Co. on the date or final title for the Philip Seymour Hoffman-starrer, nor mention of if/when the pic will first debut at one of the season’s prestigious film festivals. While you await more info, mark your calendars… [ Box Office Mojo via The Playlist ]
The idea of seeing Queen Latifah and Dolly Parton in a movie together, not to mention a movie about a gospel choir, is a particular kind of heaven. Latifah is a radiant performer capable of elevating even the most mundane material to a level of charm and grace unachievable by most mere mortals. And Parton, aside from having one of the sweetest and most haunting voices in all of country music, is a firecracker presence by herself — if you could bottle force of will in a perfume bottle, you couldn’t name it anything but Dolly. But whatever Latifah and Parton might have achieved together in that mythical heavenly ideal, it’s just not coming together in this lifetime – or at least not in Joyful Noise , a well-intentioned, pleasant-enough picture that shoots off in too many directions to ever ignite. Latifah plays Vi Rose Hill, a sturdy, no-nonsense family woman who inherits the leadership of her church choir after the death of its beloved director (played, in just a few tiny scenes, by Kris Kristofferson). But this is a very small town we’re talking about — Pacashau, Georgia, pop. 233, or something like that — and petty rivalries and resentments abound. It turns out that G.G. Sparrow (Parton), who has contributed heaps of money to the church and who’s also a leading (and undeniably shapely) figure in its Divinity Church Choir, thinks she should inherit the mantle. She has some new ideas for the group, which she wants to implement before the all-important National Joyful Noise Competition. Vi Rose, a traditionalist, likes to do things the old-fashioned way. The two women start trading insults and play-fighting even before it becomes apparent that G.G.’s rapscallion grandson, Randy (Jeremy Jordan), who has just drifted into town from New York City, is madly attracted to Vi Rose’s daughter, Olivia (Keke Palmer), the choir’s obvious rising young star. Actually, there’s a new conflict every five minutes in Joyful Noise : It’s pretty much all writer-director Todd Graff ( Bandslam ) can do to tamp each one down, Whac-a-Mole style, before another one pops up. Vi Rose doesn’t much approve of Randy, until he takes her pop-music-loving, Asperger’s-afflicted son, Walter (Dexter Darden), under his wing. (Walter’s favorite song is the Left Banke’s Walk Away Renee , and if you’re going to have just one favorite, that’s not a bad one to have.) Randy, you see, is an ace pianist and arranger, and he also has some ideas for spiffing up the choir’s material and moves. Meanwhile, Olivia starts acting up, as young ‘uns will. And don’t look now, but a rival for her affections (Paul Woolfolk) is just about to show up at the local quarry, where Randy and Walter have gone to practice their vocals (it makes a handy echo chamber). That could be big trouble. And yet, somehow, it’s really not. There’s so much going on in Joyful Noise that there doesn’t seem to be much time for anyone to actually sing. Still, the gang manages to squeeze some in. Many of the numbers are pop songs reimagined as gospel material, some making the transition with ease (like Sly Stone’s “I Want to Take You Higher”) and others (“Maybe I’m Amazed”) that, no matter how you slice them — or tweak the lyrics — still sound like secular love songs rather than hymns of praise. One of the loveliest numbers is Latifah’s spare rendition of “Fix Me, Jesus”: It’s plain and unvarnished, in a way that too much of Joyful Noise isn’t. Parton sings a duet with Kristofferson (he returns from the grave specifically for this purpose), called “From Here to the Moon and Back,” which is pretty enough in its serene, wistful way. But even though there’s so much going on in Joyful Noise , there still isn’t much for its two stars to do other than trade one-liners masquerading as small-town insults. (Observing G.G.’s superblond tousle of hair, Vi Rose snickers, “What, you’re worried you’re not gonna be seen from space?”) Parton and Latifah are both high-spirited all right, and their sparring is reasonably fun to watch. But Parton’s face, as those of us who have loved her for years, is not what it used to be, and looking at it is a bit disconcerting. Latifah, on the other hand, looks as luminous as ever. As performers, the two clearly have a great deal of respect and admiration for each other, and that’s the motor that drives Joyful Noise . But movies need more than just good mechanics, or even just good chemistry, to bloom. They always need at least a scrap of divine intervention. And on that count, Joyful Noise could still use a little fixing from Jesus. Follow Stephanie Zacharek on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
