The Burning Plain - International Trailer

The past and the present have a curious way of effecting one another as several people seperated by time and space are about to discover -- Mariana, a 16-year-old girl trying to put together the shattered lives of her parents in a Mexican border town; Sylvia, a woman in Portland who must undertake an emotional odyssey to burnish a sin from her past; Gina and Nick, a couple who must deal with an intense and clandestine affair; and Maria, a young girl who helps her parents find redemption, forgiveness and love. The five will discover that their actions may mean the difference between life and death as well as their own journeys into seeking redemption...and whether or not they will ever find it.

Director: Guillermo Arriaga
Cast: Kim Basinger, Charlize Theron, Jennifer Lawrence

Release: September 18, 2009
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The Road - We now have a trailer

A brilliant book looks to have a brilliant trailer.

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The Road - Esquire have seen it and loved it

John Hillcoat's adaption of Cormac McCarthy's brilliant novel, The Road, was due out last year, but was pushed back and back. It is now due in October of this year. Previously there have been reviews posted for rough cuts of the film and they were not that promising.

I really love the book so I wanted the film to be as good as it could possibly be so I was getting a little worried.

Now Esquire magazine have seen the final cut and it sounds as if things could be looking up. They say it could be the most important film of the year.

The Road is no tease. It is a brilliantly directed adaptation of a beloved novel, a delicate and anachronistically loving look at the immodest and brutish end of us all. You want them to get there, you want them to get there, you want them to get there — and yet you do not want it, any of it, to end.

You should see it for the simplest of reasons: Because it is a good story. Not because it may be important. Not because it is unforgettable, unyielding. Not because it horrifies. Not because the score is creepily spiritual. Not because it is littered with small lines of dialogue you will remember later. Not because it contains warnings against our own demise. All of that is so. Don't see it just because you loved the book. The movie stands alone. Go see it because it's two small people set against the ugly backdrop of the world undone. A story without guarantees. In every moment — even the last one — you'll want to know what happens next, even if you can hardly stand to look. Because The Road is a story about the persistence of love between a father and a son, and in that way it's more like a remake of The Godfather than some echo of I Am Legend.

A story without guarantees. In every moment — even the last one — you’ll want to know what happens next, even if you can hardly stand to look.” … “You have to see it. Really. You do. Not because it’s grim, not because it’s depressing, or even scary. The Road is all of those things, both acutely and chronically. But there was not a single stupid choice made in turning this book into this movie. No wrongheaded lyric tribute to the novel. No moment engineered simply to make you jump.

The film stars Viggo Mortensen, Academy Award winners Robert Duvall and Charlize Theron, Guy Pearce and 12-year-old Kodi Smit McPhee.

Have a read of the full review if you wish.

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Viggo will walk along The Road in October

Dimension Films and 2929 Productions have finally announced that they will be releasing John Hillcoat’s adaptation of the Cormac McCarthy novel The Road, on October 16th 2009.

Academy Award nominee Viggo Mortensen, Academy Award winners Robert Duvall and Charlize Theron, Guy Pearce and 12-year-old Kodi Smit McPhee star in the the story of a man (Mortensen) and his young son (Smit-McPhee) traveling through a desperate, post-apocalyptic world.

It was meant to be release last year, but was knocked back. I am made up it is finally going to be released as it was one of my favourite books of recent years.

Source: /Film

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The Road - Concept art for adaption of Cormac McCarthy's excellent book

It has been an absolute age since there was anything new about The Road. It was due out last year but has pushed back and is now due out in October, 2009.

Now Quiet Earth (via /Film) have found a Flickr stream that has a load of Style Frames for The Road - Water colours, pencil sketches and photo montage based on actual location photos.

It is an absolutely stunning book, haunting, melancholy, horrific in places yet strangely uplifting and these images capture just a little of that.

I really want to see the film as I am curious how they will portray some of the scenes (especially those set at night).

Directed by John Hillcoat, screenplay by Joe Penhall. Production Design by Chris Kennedy. The Road stars Viggo Mortenson, Robert Duvall, Charlize Theron, Guy Pearce and Kodi Smit-McPhee

What are your thoughts on the style frames? Are you excited about seeing the film or did you think the book as wa great big waste of paper?
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The Road - New photos of Viggo, Kodi and Charlize

Been a while since I heard anything about the adaption of Cormac McCarthy's excellent book, The Road. Now these new photos have hit the web.
They show Viggo Mortensen as the Man, Kodi Smit-McPhee as the Boy and Charlize Theron. Still waiting to see some photos of Guy Pearce and Robert Duvall.



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Hancock - Deleted scene that shows why Superman and Lois would never have a baby. Brodie in Mallrats was right!

I finally got to watch Hancock the other night and to be honest I enjoyed it. It wasn't anything brilliant but it made me chuckle and the first half was better than the last half. Will Smith was pretty good, but I get the feeling he felt stuck in his own image. I still couldn't figure out why Charlize Theron would stay with a mortal human and child knowing they would grow old and die, also why didn't she become a crime fighting hero as well? You could definitely tell that it had gone through a number of rewrites and it was sad to think about how great it could have been.

Here is the scene that was mentioned a while ago about Hancock getting busy with a lady and showing that everything about being superhuman is risky. Remember the original title for the screenplay was Tonight, He Comes.

As Brodie (Jason Lee) said in Mallrats, "It's impossible, Lois could never have Superman's baby. Do you think her fallopian tubes could handle the sperm? I guarantee you he blows a load like a shotgun right through her back. What about her womb? Do you think it's strong enough to carry his child?"

io9 had the clip and also have a list of Superheroes who cannot have sex.

Should the scene have been kept in the film? What are your views on Hancock?
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Early review of the early version of The Road

One of NY Entertainment's Interns got to see an early screening of The Road. This is what he had to say about it.

However you adapt it, Cormac McCarthy's The Road is going to be bleak. Director John Hillcoat, a relative unknown, gets it just about right. Arguably the best parts of the film (aside from some stellar acting, which I'll get to in a minute) are the postapocalyptic urban exterior scenes — burnt-out malls, crumbling highways, long-abandoned neighborhoods. It certainly doesn’t hurt that Hillcoat did most of the filming in and around Pittsburgh, a bastion of urban American beauty, but every inch of the landscape and set seems to be painstakingly trashed.

Hillcoat expands the book's flashback sequences to give Charlize Theron more screen time (she's good!), and contrasts the grayscale color palette of the movie-present with the vivid one of the movie-past. Viggo Mortensen seems to play a mix of Aragorn from Lord of the Rings and Tom Stall from A History of Violence. His unnamed character is human and believable (and naked at one point — Viggo didn’t want you to forget Eastern Promises). As his son, newcomer Kodi Smit-McPhee holds his own.

Hillcoat and screenwriter Joe Penhall tone down the more gruesome parts of the original novel (we don't see the baby on the spit, for example), and they never actually show any of the cannibals eating people (we only see charred bones and a severed head). The scene in the basement, with the prisoners waiting to be eaten, is jerky and brief, though the camera lingers just long enough for us to see that one legless man has already been nibbled on.

Aside from a few sound glitches and yet-to-be applied color correction, The Road seems pretty close to completion. At the end of its two-hour running time, the crowd I saw it with (made up of those lucky enough to be walking through Union Square when they were passing out free tickets last night) applauded.

What do you think of that?

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The Road - Some thoughts from an early screening

Here are some views people had after seeing an early test screening of The Road. The film sounds as if it is still unfinished, full of temp voices, missing scenes, and unfinished special FX. There is also mention of a voiceover that doesn't quite work. This all goes someway to explain why it is being pushed back to next year. AICN have a more positive review of the film. What do you think?

Source: Quiet Earth

"The introduction is awful, featuring a roughly five-minute montage of repetitive scenery as the opening credits roll cross-cut with out-of-chronological-order flashbacks to Charlize Theron (who is awful). Theron has four short scenes, starting out as a goddess in a perfect world eating ripe strawberries degrading into madness. It's hard to present such a perfect ideal's degradation into misery in five minutes. Such little thought was put into her character that she might as well be cut from the final print."

"The scenery, make-up, and overall atmosphere are exactly as they should be, and the director really successfully shows the author's vision on the screen."

"There are continuous, stock shots of the father and son trudging across the dismal countryside punctuated by set pieces which were more often than not pretty well-done, specifically the fallout shelter and old man scenes. However these set pieces always alternated between happy and sad, leading to that annoying episodic feeling. This is what it was like:Father & Son Walk ==> Sad Set Piece ==> Walk ==> Happy Set Piece ==> Repeat ad nauseum"

"The first fifteen minutes or so are perhaps somewhat disjointed as it's very flashback-y for a while, and for a time I was worried the movie was going to put too much emphasis on Charlize. Because it keeps jumping back and forth, it takes a bit to establish the bleak world we're in, and I thought maybe they could have spread these flashbacks out more. But once the movie really gets going, it finds an excellent rhythm for a very long time."

"I think there was one positive element to the experience, and that's Nick Cave's score, and it sounded like he had only completed three or four tracks for the whole thing and they looped it as temp."

"Harvey Weinstein was at the screening, and he left early- whatever that means, I'll leave to the pundits. But not only is the film unfinished for its supposed November release date, it's also a complete fiasco on every creative level."

"Not a single scene worked. Not one. I imagine they can fix it in some way, in editing, but they can't recast the distracting supporting players, and there's only so much they can reshoot. Maybe too early to tell, but from what I could see, it's got the makings of a massive disappointment."

There have been so many fantastic films that tested terribly that I don't see this as any reason to get worried about the outcome of the film. Someone more famous than me once said that "films are made in the editing room" so once all is said and done I image the film will be more in line with our expectations. Oscar worthy? Who can say but for now things aren't looking all that sweet for our beloved The Road.

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The Road - Photos from movie based on Cormac McCarthy's novel

USA Today have some photos from The Road. A movie based on the book by Cormac McCarthy. It's set in America after a nuclear winter has set in and follows a father and son travelling down a deserted road trying to get to the coast. All they have are the clothes on their back, a pistol and some food.

The film stars Viggo Mortensen, Charlize Theron and 11-year-old Kodi Smit-McPhee was shot in Pittsburgh, New Orleans and on Mount St. Helens in Washington state for scenes of devastation.

"It's tangible, the misery and hopelessness and the bleakness," Mortensen says. "It gives you much more to work with if you're filming in that world instead of a green screen."

Sounds like a bundle of laughs, but I've heard really good things about the book and Mortensen is a solid actor. Think I'll be picking up the book.

The Road is directed by ex-music video director John Hillcoat, of The Proposition. The screenplay was adapted by Joe Penhall, of Some Voices, Enduring Love, and The Undertaker and is based on Cormac McCarthy's novel of the same name first published in 2006. The Road hits in November 2008

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