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Ang Lee's Life of Pi opens 21 November 2012: USA, Canada, and--Taiwan
Aloysius J. Gleek:
--- Quote from: Aloysius J. Gleek on April 09, 2011, 04:03:28 am ---http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2011/04/ang_lee_adds_tobey_maguire_to.html
Ang Lee Adds
Tobey Maguire
to Pi
By: Kyle Buchanan
4/8/11 at 8:00 PM
Tobey Maguire is getting a piece of Pi. The actor has just signed on to reunite with director Ang Lee -- for the third time, following their work together on The Ice Storm and Ride With the Devil -- in Life of Pi, Lee's adaptation of the Yann Martel bestseller. Maguire will play a man interviewing a young boy named Pi, who spent 227 days on a boat with a Bengal tiger. Pi sure has been through a lot lately. [Variety]
--- End quote ---
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/tobey-maguire-life-of-pi-oscar-367978
Tobey Maguire
Cut From Oscar Contender
Life of Pi
by Kim Masters
8:00 AM PDT 9/5/2012
Insiders say the actor's performance wasn't working.
He might have been too famous for the role.
Can an actor be too famous for a party? Tobey Maguire had shot a brief role in Ang Lee's Life of Pi, due in theaters Nov. 21 from Fox, as a writer who interviews the central character. But an insider says the Oscar-winning director felt the performance wasn't working -- awkward because Lee's relationship with Maguire dates to 1997's The Ice Storm.
A source close to Maguire says the actor, who eventually will appear in Warner Bros.' postponed The Great Gatsby, was too famous among the cast of relative unknowns.
In a statement to THR, Maguire says: "I fully support Ang's decision to go a different direction for this role in Life of Pi. Ang shared a lot of the film with me, and what I saw was absolutely beautiful." Says Lee: "To be consistent with the other casting choices made for the film, I decided to go with an entirely international cast. I very much admire Tobey and look forward to working with him again in the future." Life of Pi is expected to be an awards contender.
The writer role now is being played by Rafe Spall, who appeared in Ridley Scott's Prometheus and played William Shakespeare in Roland Emmerich 's Anonymous.
This story first appeared in the Sept. 14 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine.
Aloysius J. Gleek:
http://www.indiewire.com/article/despite-shaky-screenplay-life-of-pi-is-ang-lees-best-spectacle-since-crouching-tiger
Despite Shaky Screenplay
Life of Pi
Is Ang Lee's Best Spectacle
Since Crouching Tiger
by Eric Kohn
September 28, 2012 1:28 PM
Suraj Sharma in "Life of Pi."
Yann Martel's bestselling 2001 novel "Life of Pi" followed the young Indian survivor of a shipwreck stuck on a lifeboat with a tiger -- the kind of high concept scenario both easy to comprehend and difficult to envision in movie terms. Much of the story, narrated by its spiritually minded protagonist, contains prolonged philosophical discussions and remains tethered to an extremely minimalist setting. That Ang Lee has managed to turn the limitations of his source material into his adaptation's greatest strength makes "Life of Pi" a significant achievement for the filmmaker in spite of blatant problems with structure, dialogue and other surface issues. "Life of Pi" succeeds in its most audacious moments and struggles whenever it returns to familiar ground.
David Magee's generally faithful screenplay deepens the sensationalistic imagery of the novel's opening setting with enjoyably ostentatious 3D that instantly leaves an impression. The title sequence is set in the lavish Indian zoo where the inquisitive Pi Patel (Suraj Sharma) is raised by his secular father. From the first 30 seconds of the film, when a hummingbird hovers before our eyes and a sloth seemingly dangles off the screen, "Life of Pi" announces Lee's intention to craft astonishing visions.
But when the movie flashes forward a number of years to find an adult Pi (Irrfan Khan) living comfortably in Canada and recounting his incredible experience to a wide-eyed journalist Rafe Spall), "Life of Pi" introduces a sloppy framing device that instantly drags the exposition into problematic territory. Notwithstanding Pi's constant voiceover, Lee's insistence on returning to Pi's austere living room throughout his tale constantly interrupts the allure of a significantly engaging parable.
Whenever Lee abandons the contemporary setting, the movie successfully funnels its thematic conceits into an involving high seas epic. At its core, "Life of Pi" revolves around one man's ongoing attempt to reconcile his spiritual tendencies with an awareness of nature's inherently chaotic state (in the book, the character double-majored in zoology and religious studies). The early scenes that establish the adolescent Pi's burgeoning interest in world religions despite his strict father's disdain move swiftly along, aided by the exotic backdrop the zoo provides. Once the family decides to leave the zoo and set sail for Canada with their menagerie in tow, "Life of Pi" enters into a fantasy realm enhanced by the surrounding waves, which eventually subsume the weak ship.
With phenomenal underwater footage that realizes the pandemonium of wild animals run loose on a slippery vessel, the intense and supremely well-crafted scene of the ship's demise is perhaps the best of its kind since "Titanic." It's the first of several disorienting moments of lyrical beautiful to transcend the clumsy screenplay. Once aboard his lifeboat with a handful of animals including the fierce tiger curiously named Richard Parker, Pi struggles to survive the restless sea while forming an odd symbiotic relationship with the starving beast. From this point forward, the main scenario forms Lee's most spectacular achievement since "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" -- ironically enough, there's more tiger in this movie than that one, and he's a magnificently realized screen presence -- and the movie certainly represents Lee's grandest directorial achievement since "Brokeback Mountain."
With Pi and the tiger trapped on their tiny craft, "Life of Pi" settles into a contained drama that's enlivened with storybook imagery. Heavily reliant on CGI from the team behind "Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," Pi's saga includes more than just a daunting tiger. The grandiose critters he encounters at sea include massive schools of fish, colossal whales and jellyfish that light up the ocean in the dark of night. For reasons only revealed later on, "Life of Pi" contains a tremendously involving degree of magical realism that enhances the harsh fairy tale quality of the adventure. The movie's visuals frequently transcend the plot. In one instance, Pi's cosmic hallucination of land and sea creatures morphing together against a starry backdrop easily outdoes all the soul-searching dialogue ("God, I am your vessel," Pi shouts to the heavens in one of several cases where the script overstates his crisis of faith).
Anchored by newcomer Sharma in the lead role, "Life of Pi" is better at conveying the young man's mounting despair than his lingering optimism. With ongoing reminders that his plight represents something beyond its superficial definition, Lee's film constantly undoes its own spell, particularly in the painfully obvious closing act. But it's still a wild ride to get there.
Considering its flaws, the number of elements that do connect not only stand out but actively sustain the movie's appeal. Unlike "Castaway" or other tales of marooned victims struggling against nature's indifference, "Life of Pi" manages to inspire the same kind of awe that, at other times, it overstates to cheesy effect. In its finer moments, however, Lee translates the book's prose into grand visual conceits meant for the big screen. Posited as a story that "will make you believe in god," instead it has the power to confirm one's faith in the cinematic experience.
Criticwire grade: B+
HOW WILL IT PLAY? An appropriate choice to open the 50th edition of the New York Film Festival, "Life of Pi" is being released by 20th Century Fox on November 21. It seems destined to fill the "Hugo" slot during this year's awards season for its status as a heavily effects-driven and sentimentally involving epic, but has an even greater shot at awards acclaim due to the popularity of the book.
Aloysius J. Gleek:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/09/29/is-ang-lee-s-visually-breathtaking-life-of-pi-this-year-s-slumdog-millionaire.html
Is Ang Lee’s
Visually Breathtaking
Life of Pi
This Year’s Slumdog Millionaire ?
Oscar winning filmmaker Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain )
premiered his latest epic, Life of Pi, at the 50th Annual
New York Film Festival. Is it an awards contender?
By Marlow Stern
Sep 29, 2012 9:25 AM EDT
Pi Patel (Suraj Sharma) and a fierce Bengal tiger named Richard Parker
must rely on each other to survive an epic journey in the film The Life of Pi.
In February 2010, author Yann Martel received an envelope from the White House. Inside, there was a two-paragraph note: “My daughter and I just finished reading Life of Pi together. Both of us agreed we prefer the story with animals. It is a lovely book—an elegant proof of God, and the power of storytelling. Thank you."
The letter was signed by President Barack Obama.
After ten years in Hollywood development hell, that saw directors M. Night Shyamalan, Alfonso Cuarón and Jean-Pierre Jeunet come onboard only to jump ship, Martel’s 2001 bestselling novel Life of Pi has finally completed its journey to the big screen—with Oscar-winning filmmaker Ang Lee at the helm.
Like another highly anticipated fall film, the centuries-spanning saga Cloud Atlas, Martel’s novel would have been unfilmable a decade ago. However, thanks to the rapid evolution of 3D technology, Lee’s silver screen adaptation made its world premiere as the opening-night film of the 50th New York Film Festival (it opens on Nov. 21 nationwide).
“You’re warned to never make a movie featuring kids, animals, water or 3D,” joked Lee as he introduced the film, “You’re going to see them all here.”
The film opens with Pi (Irrfan Khan), a grown man, reminiscing to a novelist (Rafe Spall) about his childhood. (Lee regular Tobey Maguire was originally cast as the novelist, but Lee cut him out of the film and re-shot his scenes, describing his presence as “too jarringly recognizable.”) Born with the name Piscine, after the most beautiful swimming pool in France, Pi grew up in Pondicherry, India, a former French colony that’s not unlike a seaside village in the Côte d'Azur. There, his father, Santosh Patel (Adil Hussain), and his beautiful mother (Tabu), run a zoo. Both the visual sumptuousness, as well as the stunning usage of 3D, are immediately evident, as a host of exotic animals tantalize—and occasionally scamper toward—the viewer.
Pi was born a Hindu, but as a young teenager, is drawn to both Christianity and Islam, and begins to follow all three religions. He even wishes to be baptized, much to the shame of his father. “Faith is a house with many rooms,” he later says.
Due to political pressures back home, Pi’s family is forced to sell their zoo, eventually boarding a Japanese freighter to transport the animals, and the family, to Canada. En route, the ship capsizes after battling a terrible storm, eventually leaving 17-year-old Pi stranded in a lifeboat along with a zebra, a pesky hyena, an orangutan and a Bengal tiger that goes by the name of Richard Parker. By the time the food chain is established, only Pi and the menacing tiger remain.
This Cast Away -like middle section provides the bulk of the film’s action, and dazzling visuals, as Pi and Parker are stranded aboard their miniature vessel in the middle of the Pacific Ocean for 227 days—or 75 minutes in running time. Many of the images resemble magnificent paintings come to life; there’s a scene where a sea of bioluminescent fish ignite the water at night, and another in which a gigantic sperm whale explodes from the ocean then crashes back down into the water. The storm sequences, too, are terrifyingly realistic, enhanced by nimble usage of 3D and Lee’s engaging long takes.
As the days aboard “Pi’s ark,” as he calls it, progress, Pi, in a not-so-thinly-veiled metaphor, manages to tame the beast by a combination of Pavlovian conditioning and sheer force of will, to the point where the two form a beautiful, loving friendship (a la Christian the Lion and his owners). And the crouching tiger (sorry for that) is rendered in gorgeous, utterly convincing CGI.
The actor who plays 17-year-old Pi, Suraj Sharma, was a newcomer selected from a group of 3,000 boys who auditioned for the role. Forced to carry the middle portion of the film while stranded at sea, Sharma delivers, imbuing Pi with deep emotional honesty. From an overall visual standpoint, those scenes combine the breathtaking vistas of Lee’s Brokeback Mountain with the ethereal, balletic beauty of his Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
This is, indeed, one of the most beautiful-looking films since Slumdog Millionaire, although, unlike that Danny Boyle masterpiece—which was also told in flashbacks, featured an all-Indian cast and included Irrfan Khan—Life of Pi does leave holes in the viewer’s larger vision of Pi and his character development. And the book-ended opening and closing scenes don’t quite live up to the thrilling middle.
Nevertheless, Ang Lee’s visual fairy tale should make some noise come awards season—at the very least in any and every technical category.
Aloysius J. Gleek:
At the 50th Annual
New York Film Festival--
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbVbCYkyabo[/youtube]
Published on Sep 30, 2012 by Tomris Laffly
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cVppE2zo5A[/youtube]
Published on Sep 28, 2012 by David Berov
Aloysius J. Gleek:
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5sccxCnLPA[/youtube]
Published on Sep 29, 2012 by CELEBScom
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSNOW9_jlSY[/youtube]
Published on Sep 29, 2012 by CELEBScom
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_BSPgp9EyA[/youtube]
Published on Sep 29, 2012 by CELEBScom
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zpDVcX3CYU[/youtube]
Published on Sep 29, 2012 by CELEBScom
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