From ComingSoon.net:
"The new international trailer for Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, starring Heath Ledger and Christopher Plummer, and featuring Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law, is now online.
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is a fantastical morality tale, set in the present day. It tells the story of Dr. Parnassus and his extraordinary 'Imaginarium', a traveling show where members of the audience get an irresistible opportunity to choose between light and joy or darkness and gloom. Blessed with the extraordinary gift of guiding the imaginations of others, Dr. Parnassus is cursed with a dark secret. Long ago he made a bet with the devil, Mr. Nick, in which he won immortality. Many centuries later, on meeting his one true love, Dr. Parnassus made another deal with the devil, trading his immortality for youth, on condition that when his first-born reached its 16th birthday he or she would become the property of Mr. Nick.
Valentina is now rapidly approaching this 'coming of age' milestone and Dr. Parnassus is desperate to protect her from her impending fate. Mr. Nick arrives to collect but, always keen to make a bet, renegotiates the wager. Now the winner of Valentina will be determined by whoever seduces the first five souls. Enlisting a series of wild, comical and compelling characters in his journey, Dr. Parnassus promises his daughter's hand in marriage to the man that helps him win. In this captivating, explosive and wonderfully imaginative race against time, Dr. Parnassus must fight to save his daughter in a never-ending landscape of surreal obstacles - and undo the mistakes of his past once and for all."
The film is scheduled to open in the US on Christmas Day. In my opinion, audiences will be glad to see Heath one last time. It took guts to keep the lines referring to death. And here I thought that Heath, Johnny, Colin and Jude would look differently. Oh, well.
It's interesting to me that now Jude Law has two movies coming out the same day - Imaginarium and Sherlock Holmes.
Showing posts with label The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus. Show all posts
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Terry Gilliam and the Film of Imaginative Death...
From IMDB.com:
"At a news conference at the Cannes Film Festival following Friday's screening of The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, director Terry Gilliam and cast members were repeatedly questioned about how the death of co-star Heath Ledger affected the production of the film. Gilliam said that he originally felt that it would have to be canceled (as his earlier Don Quixote film had been following an injury to one of its stars). 'I couldn't see how we could finish it without Heath because we were in the middle of production,' Gilliam told reporters. 'Fortunately, I was surrounded by really good people who insisted that I shouldn't be such a lazy [jerk] and I'd better go out and find a way of finishing the film for Heath. That's what we did.' Gilliam eventually decided to use friends Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell to play Ledger's character -- something made possible because characters who enter a fantasy world through a magic mirror sometimes change their appearances. 'Heath goes through it three times and that was it, we had the solution.' Gilliam also disclosed that Depp, Law, and Farrell essentially worked for no pay; donating their fees to Ledger's daughter Matilda."
Okay, I realize that this title is a bit more dramatic than my usual ones but I couldn't figure on anything else, so I decided to go with a Indiana Jones-like title.
Surprisingly, the film has been getting a lot of bad reviews.
"Terry Gilliam has come a long way since the late '60s, when he admittedly became one of the original copyright infringers by cutting out photos and pictures from magazines and newspapers and using them inventively as graphic inserts in the BBC's Monty Python's Flying Circus without permission. Gilliam has now let his imagination loose in a movie about a traveling circus act called The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. Although the film co-stars Heath Ledger in his final performance (he died while the film was still in production), it is not the performances or the script that captured the attention of audiences who previewed it at the Cannes Film Festival Friday, where it was shown out of competition. Reviewing the film for the BBC, Emma Jones commented, 'There's no doubt that the imaginary world [Gilliam has] created is awe-inspiring, but it's ultimately designed for an art house audience. The critics at Cannes loved it, but most cinema-goers would need to see it more than once to start untangling the multiple themes.' Peter Bradshaw wrote in Britain's Guardian newspaper: 'When Gilliam shoots off into his surreal wonderland, his film has a kind of helium-filled jollity and spectacle. ... a reminder of the old Python magic. But the film's convoluted curlicues are tiring, insisting too loudly on how 'imaginative' everything is. And when it descends into the real world -- Lucy out of the sky without diamonds, as it were -- the film can frankly be a bit ho-hum.'"
I thought a film showing Heath Ledger's final uncompleted performance would be one of the greatest movies ever! [hint hint - The Dark Knight]
"At a news conference at the Cannes Film Festival following Friday's screening of The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, director Terry Gilliam and cast members were repeatedly questioned about how the death of co-star Heath Ledger affected the production of the film. Gilliam said that he originally felt that it would have to be canceled (as his earlier Don Quixote film had been following an injury to one of its stars). 'I couldn't see how we could finish it without Heath because we were in the middle of production,' Gilliam told reporters. 'Fortunately, I was surrounded by really good people who insisted that I shouldn't be such a lazy [jerk] and I'd better go out and find a way of finishing the film for Heath. That's what we did.' Gilliam eventually decided to use friends Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell to play Ledger's character -- something made possible because characters who enter a fantasy world through a magic mirror sometimes change their appearances. 'Heath goes through it three times and that was it, we had the solution.' Gilliam also disclosed that Depp, Law, and Farrell essentially worked for no pay; donating their fees to Ledger's daughter Matilda."
Okay, I realize that this title is a bit more dramatic than my usual ones but I couldn't figure on anything else, so I decided to go with a Indiana Jones-like title.
Surprisingly, the film has been getting a lot of bad reviews.
"Terry Gilliam has come a long way since the late '60s, when he admittedly became one of the original copyright infringers by cutting out photos and pictures from magazines and newspapers and using them inventively as graphic inserts in the BBC's Monty Python's Flying Circus without permission. Gilliam has now let his imagination loose in a movie about a traveling circus act called The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. Although the film co-stars Heath Ledger in his final performance (he died while the film was still in production), it is not the performances or the script that captured the attention of audiences who previewed it at the Cannes Film Festival Friday, where it was shown out of competition. Reviewing the film for the BBC, Emma Jones commented, 'There's no doubt that the imaginary world [Gilliam has] created is awe-inspiring, but it's ultimately designed for an art house audience. The critics at Cannes loved it, but most cinema-goers would need to see it more than once to start untangling the multiple themes.' Peter Bradshaw wrote in Britain's Guardian newspaper: 'When Gilliam shoots off into his surreal wonderland, his film has a kind of helium-filled jollity and spectacle. ... a reminder of the old Python magic. But the film's convoluted curlicues are tiring, insisting too loudly on how 'imaginative' everything is. And when it descends into the real world -- Lucy out of the sky without diamonds, as it were -- the film can frankly be a bit ho-hum.'"
I thought a film showing Heath Ledger's final uncompleted performance would be one of the greatest movies ever! [hint hint - The Dark Knight]
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