All Things: Directors

ZACK SNYDER RESPONDS TO SPIELBERG'S SUPERHERO FILM COMMENTS: "HE MIGHT NOT BE WRONG"
http://www.comicbookresources.com/a...s-to-spielberg-comments-he-might-not-be-wrong

Last week, legendary director Steven Spielberg made a controversial comment about the state of the superhero film, predicting the genre will go the way of the Western in terms of popularity. In an interview with Yahoo! Movies, "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice" director Zack Snyder responded to those comments, saying Spielberg brought up a good point, and explained how he'll keep his DC film franchise fresh.

"He might not be wrong," Snyder said. "I think it puts more pressure on us, the filmmakers, to not just crank out superhero movies for the sake of it. To me, the one thing I love working in the DC universe is that Superman and Batman and Wonder Woman are American mythology. It's not about making a superhero, it's a mythological universe that we live in. That I hope stands the test of time. They stood the test of time. That's hopefully the sort of magic bullet. But who knows what audiences will want in the future."

As to how he'll keep his franchise fresh, he added, "To me it's about the drama, the humanity of it. Those are like Shakespearean characters, Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent, they have inherent drama built into their makeup."
 
Frances McDormand Will Lead ‘In Bruges’ Director Martin McDonagh’s Next Film
http://collider.com/martin-mcdonagh...ead-three-billboards-outside-ebbing-missouri/

McDonagh described the plot:


“It’s about a 50-year-old woman whose daughter is murdered and she goes to war with the police in her home town, because she thinks they are more interested in torturing black people than getting justice

A little more heavy/topical than I like in my flicks...but I will be seeing this cause he is 2 for 2 in my book.
 
‘Seven’ Screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker Looks Back At What’s Inside The Box, 20 Years Later
http://uproxx.com/movies/2015/09/se...-back-at-whats-inside-the-box-20-years-later/


[Laughs.] I don’t want to go into it too much because looking back on it I just go, “Why did I rewrite this for them?” Why didn’t I just storm off and say, “Look, I won’t rewrite this, this changes it too much”? But the thing to remember is if I didn’t stick around then I likely wouldn’t have been around when it came back around to Fincher. I’ll just say that it involved, as I remember it, an abandoned church and the seven deadly sins were depicted in a kind of tableau of paintings, and I don’t believe there was any head in the box or anything, there was just a confrontation in an abandoned church. It sounds like the end of Batman.

The head in the box really scared a lot of people creatively along the way, people who were deciding whether to make this movie, deciding whether to put money into this movie. Mike De Luca at New Line championed it, but there were other voices in the process saying, “What if the guy drives out in the end and there’s a box and you open the box and there’s a TV monitor that shows that Gwyneth Paltrow’s character is in jeopardy, but then we can save her,” that kind of thing. So, like I say, thank God for Fincher, thank God for Brad, thank God for Morgan, thank God for De Luca, thank God for Kevin Spacey, thank God for all the people who dug their heels in and said, “Look, this is the ending that’s appropriate.”

There’s nothing wrong with up endings, it’s just that the dark ending of Seven was what it was about. To change the ending to something else was to remove the very heart of the story. It’s about “optimist Mills,” Brad Pitt’s character, going up against this pessimistic kind of world-weary detective in Somerset, Morgan Freeman’s character. Those dramatically-opposed points of view are pushing and pulling each other throughout the story. And then once pessimism is confirmed, even to the optimist who’s been arguing that the fight is always worth fighting, will the pessimist in the light of confirmation of all his worst predictions, will he stay or will he walk away?

The other thing is Seven opened and it did all right moneywise. But the thing that was really surprising was that the next weekend it went through that week and it had very little drop-off. And it sustained for three or four weeks very close to where it had started. I really do think that a lot of that had to do with the fact that the ending had provided an experience that I think is incredibly valuable — but these days is a little bit devalued — and that giving the audience an appropriate and earned ending that is surprising is really a pretty rare thing.

The ending probably had some people arguing about it when they left the theater, or having a conversation about it when they were at the coffee shop afterward. I do thank God that the ending was maintained thanks to these people.

One of Fincher's two best, the other is Fight Club. God bless him for fighting for the ending.
 
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Christopher Nolan Issues A Bleak Warning To Movie Theaters
http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Christopher-Nolan-Issues-Bleak-Warning-Movie-Theaters-87437.html

For once I actually agree with him. The biggest threat to movie theaters though is the audience itself. The texting, talking, just general rudeness is forcing the ever diminishing crowd of people who actually go to WATCH A MOVIE into boutique theaters where, for the most part, the crowd is more mature. But those theaters are not what the BIG BOYS make movies for, and like a lot of folks are saying...smaller movies with smaller budgets just aren't getting made with the same frequency they used to. So movies are getting dumber and so are the audiences.
 
‘The Hateful Eight’: 70mm Version Is Longer, Different Than Multiplex Cut
http://collider.com/hateful-eight-different-versions-70mm-quentin-tarantino/

I am gonna go out and just wholeheartedly endorse that you do whatever you can to see this in it's 70mm form. At least once. I would imagine the Arclight is going to be the destination, at least as far as Los Angeles. For me, getting up and going to see this on Christmas morning is going to be that great little present at the bottom of the tree.
 
NYFF Review: Michel Gondry’s ‘Microbe & Gasoline’

Marked by unassuming framing that expresses his characters’ blood-brother kinship, as well as generates droll humor (a selfie taken by two cops in front of the vehicle that Gasoline inadvertently photobombs), Gondry’s direction is assured without ever being showy. That’s also, ultimately, true of his fantastic leads. Buoyed by a script brimming with authentic back-and-forth ribbing and confessional exchanges, newcomers Baquet and Dargent exhibit an alternately ribald and frank rapport that, like the film itself, taps into the volatile anxiety of finding one’s self. It also conveys, courtesy of a climactic punch to the face, the resilient loyalties often formed in the process. [B+]
 
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