Idea Transcript
Drug cartel thriller opens Sept 18
Deakins, Villeneuve embrace cruel nature in ‘Sicario’
Film
LOS ANGELES, Sept 16, (RTRS): Denis Villeneuve, the FrenchCanadian director whose drug cartel thriller “Sicario” opens Sept 18, says that film and his previous, “Prisoners” — both shot by Roger Deakins — “belong to the same cinematic alphabet. Both movies wanted to embrace nature.” “For ‘Prisoners,’ we were embracing the idea of shooting during Thanksgiving in the fall, that kind of depressing, dark light. And ‘Sicario’ is the opposite; we went for the harsh, brutal light of the Chihuahua Desert (in Mexico) — very harsh, very cruel sunlight.” Villeneuve adds that both features deal with “a naturalistic approach, and a kind of minimalism visually,” which happen to be
Deakins’ stock in trade. If the d.p. can do without artificial light, or f/x, for that matter, all the better. What he can capture on camera is what he prefers to see onscreen. That’s not to say he won’t use whatever tools are necessary. On “Sicario,” like “Prisoners,” he went with the digital camera of the moment, the Arri Alexa. And on a particularly harrowing scene where a US task force raids an underground tunnel used to smuggle drugs, he and Villeneuve used two different night-vision attachments employed by the military — one an infrared thermal system.
Ridiculous “You have to have some kind of light, even if it is very minimal,” Deakins says. “It was almost ridicu-
lous how little light I was using, but I didn’t want to go too far and make the image look too good, because, naturalistically, it wouldn’t work.” The scene is a perfect example of a director and his d.p. going for a heightened realism, while also delivering a bravura sequence visually. Shooting at the border and in certain parts of Mexico on “Sicario” certainly posed problems, especially in Ciudad Juarez, a city mired in drug violence and countless murders over the past couple of decades. And when a shootout at the El Paso/Juarez border was called for, impossible to do due to security reasons, the filmmakers created the Bridge of Americas on a parking lot in Albuquerque. “We had the same problem on
‘No Country for Old Men,’” says Deakins about the 2007 Coen brothers movie, “we created (the border) on an overpass.” But capturing the verisimilitude of Mexico was important, especially in a convoy sequence to arrest a highranking cartel member, in which Mexico City’s sprawling suburbs double for Juarez. “Denis and I thought, ‘this has to be another world,’ it’s key to Emily’s (Blunt) character,” says Deakins. “It’s got to be totally alien to her experience. “Mexico City is like an urban monster,” adds Villeneuve. “I was looking for specific things. The scouts found places in Mexico City that were really close to the reality of Juarez: the wide streets, those shopping centers, the architecture,
the poverty.” Although Villeneuve says he was “born in 35mm,” using the Arri Alexa brings “a sensibility that 35mm film doesn’t have. But with Roger he approached digital like 35; it means everything is done on camera, on the set. Color timing for Roger is a very small process. It’s something more crude in some ways. At the end of the day, it’s not about the camera, it’s who’s behind the camera. And it’s Roger Deakins, who could shoot with a shoe and it would look great.” Villeneuve will be working again with Deakins on a “Blade Runner” sequel, which neither of them could talk much about. Harrison Ford will reprise his role as the bounty hunter of the title from the 1982 original,
also notable for the work of the late d.p. Jordan Cronenweth.
Original Deakins has always wanted to shoot a science-fiction movie, despite his experience filming “1984” 30 years ago with director Michael Radford. He doesn’t plan on referencing Cronenweth’s work on the original. “The way a film looks comes from the script and the director’s interpretation,” he says. “Obviously Jordan’s work stands by itself.” And, for Villeneuve, Deakins stands by himself. “With Roger, every single shot is crucial and unique,” says the director. “He has the pressure of being Roger Deakins on every shot. He brings a strong poetry to the image, but in a very natural way.”
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2015
Features
Variety
This photo provided by Lionsgate shows, Josh Brolin (center), as Matt Graver, in a scene from the film, ‘Sicario’. (AP)
Film Actor pays tribute to Wes Craven LOS ANGELES: Paramount and Skydance Pictures have tapped newcomer Danika Yarosh to join Tom Cruise’s “Jack Reacher” sequel. Insiders say there is a possibility her “Heroes Reborn” schedule might conflict with the project, but as of now she is the choice for the role. Cobie Smulders is also in talks to join the pic. Ed Zwick is set to direct. Zwick and and Marshall Herskovitz penned the most recent draft of the script after Richard Wenk penned the original draft. Paramount grossed $218 million worldwide from 2012’s “Jack Reacher,” directed by Christopher McQuarrie from his own script based on the Lee Child series. The sequel will be based on Child’s “Never Go Back,” in which Reacher travels from South Dakota to the Virginia headquarters of the US Army Military Police Corps and finds his new commanding officer has been arrested. Cruise and Don Granger are producing. (RTRS) ❑ ❑ ❑
LOS ANGELES: Lifetime has given the greenlight to “UnBreak My Heart,” an original movie based on singer Toni Braxton’s memoir. The authorized film will follow Braxton’s ups and downs through severe chronic illness, financial troubles and divorce while navigating her son’s autism and family struggles. Braxton will executive produce and appear in the film, which is set to begin production later this year. “Un-Break My Heart” will also be executive produced by Craig Baumgarten, Erik Kritzer and Marcus Grant, and hails from Link Entertainment. The script was penned by Susan McMartin, with Vondie CurtisHall set to direct. (RTRS) ❑ ❑ ❑ LOS ANGELES: Elizabeth Banks is in negotiations to direct a reboot for Sony’s “Charlie’s Angels” franchise.
Depp on comeback as Bulger in ‘Mass’ TORONTO, Sept 16, (Agencies): There’s no surer way to make Johnny Depp chuckle than to cite those who call his icy performance as the Boston gangster Whitey Bulger in “Black Mass” a return to form for the actor. “My comeback!” Depp wryly exclaims, his eyes lighting up behind blue-tinted glasses. For an actor who has always delighted in head-to-toe transformation, playing the part of the rebounding superstar is not one that appeals. It doesn’t suit him much, anyway; his stardom has always been predicated on the wild abandon of his metamorphoses. “I don’t watch movies, so I don’t know what other people are doing because I don’t care what other people are doing,” he says. “I want to do what I want to do, and if it works, great, and if it doesn’t, I can pump gas again.” Scott Cooper’s “Black Mass,” which opens Friday, is an expansive look at the bonds of old-neighborhood loyalties that fostered the FBI’s disastrous shielding of Bulger’s Winter Hill Gang, which eradicated Boston’s Italian mafia only to replace it with a murderous Irish-Catholic fiefdom. Based on the book by Boston Globe reporters Dick Lehr and Gerard O’Neill, it’s the first fact-based movie about the notorious crime boss and FBI informant (memorably the inspiration to Jack Nicholson’s gangster in “The Departed”) since the long-vanished Bulger was arrested in California in 2011. He was later sentenced to two life terms for, among other things, his involvement in 11 murders.
Predictions
nomination for Depp. In a joint interview with Cooper, the director of “Crazy Heart” and “Out of the Furnace,” the two discussed the challenges of portraying a folk-hero criminal who has, as Cooper said, “left a real emotional scar on the city of Boston.” “No disrespect to any victims or families of victims, but there was some element for me that was kind of glad that he got away,” says Depp. “For 16 years he was on the lam and he wasn’t causing any trouble. He was living his life. Good on him.” With blond hair slicked back and pale freckled skin, Depp’s Bulger is harrowing in its sleazy ruthlessness and cold-blooded intimidation, bearing none of the whimsy that has accompanied some of the 52-yearold actor’s recent films like “The Lone Ranger” and “Mortdecai.” But Depp, who sympathetically played John Dillinger in Michael Mann’s “Public Enemies,” says he sought to find Bulger’s humanity. “You can’t approach him as a gangster. You can’t approach him as just innately evil because no one wakes up and shaves and goes, ‘I’m an evil mother” says Depp. “He’s a Catholic boy and kind of in a weird way a pillar of the community, very sensitive in a lot of ways.” Depp calls the first time he emerged from make-up during the Boston shoot and walked to set as “a frozen moment.” Cooper, too, recalls vividly the chilled reactions by Bostonians, some of whom knew Bulger and perhaps weren’t eager to see him resurrected on South Boston streets.
“Black Mass” is a richly populated ensemble, including Joel Edgerton, Benedict Cumberbatch and Julianne Nicholson. But Depp’s Bulger is the centerpiece of the film, and it has prompted predictions of an Oscar
“Johnny takes risks as an actor that most movie stars won’t even take because they’re too fearful that they’ll lose their audience, that they’ll lose their status as a movie star,”
Banks will also produce via her Universal-based Brownstone production company with her husband and producing partner Max Handelman. “Charlie’s Angels” launched in 1976 on ABC and lasted five seasons with Farrah Fawcett, Kate Jackson and Jaclyn Smith portraying private detec-
Cruise
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tives working for a benefactor named Charlie. Cheryl Ladd replaced Fawcett, with Shelley Hack and Tanya Roberts joining in later years. Sony produced a 2000 movie with Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz and Lucy Liu, which grossed $264 million worldwide. The 2003 sequel “Charlie’s Angles: Full
says Cooper, the director of the gritty bluecollar dramas “Crazy Heart” and “Out of the Furnace.” “The emotional and psychological transformation that I saw in the man who is sweet and gentle and kind and thoughtful into that? I don’t even know where that comes from.” “I think they call it schizophrenia,” retorts Depp. Cooper and Depp both reached out to Bulger, now 86 and incarcerated in a Florida penitentiary, in hopes of sitting down with him, if only to soak up his personality and mannerisms. Depp says Bulger, not a fan of the book the film is based on, wrote a kind note declining. In an email, Bulger’s attorney, J.W. Carney, said: “Mr. Bulger considers the book ‘Black Mass’ to be largely a work of fiction, with made-up incidents and conversations that have little connection to the actual events.” But Cooper says the most important accuracy for him in a tale so tangled in perspective was in the larger meanings of Bulger’s story. “People don’t come to narrative movies for the facts,” he says. “They come to movies like this for psychological truth, for emotion and humanity. We did our best job telling our version of the story. But only these men know the truth.” The notion that “Black Mass” is any sort of “comeback” for Depp particularly riles Cooper. But Depp, whose recent string of box-office disappointments has been much chronicled, is merely bemused. “The Mad Hatter is the Mad Hatter. What am I going to do, play him like Lee Majors?” Depp says. “Am I going to go in and play Tonto as the Native American with no humor or pride or war paint? Am I going to play Mordecai straight? No, I’m going to have fun with it. If I have fun with, I believe the peo-
Throttle” grossed $259 million. (RTRS) ❑ ❑ ❑
LOS ANGELES: Ato Essandoh has joined Matt Damon in the next installment of the Jason Bourne franchise. Alicia Vikander, Vincent Cassel and Tommy Lee Jones are also on board for the film,
ple will have fun with it. All of these films were for hopefully none of my doing.” But after a run of fantasy, science-fiction and comedy, Depp’s Bulger is grimly grounded in reality, and a welcome reminder that Depp’s talents of transformation work just as well in darkness as in light. Depp took questions at a rare public Q&A on Monday night at a screening of his Warner Bros film “Black Mass” at the Toronto International Film Festival. The actor, who plays Boston gangster James “Whitey” Bulger in the movie, turned reflective for a moment when a fan asked him about the late director Wes Craven casting him in his breakthrough role in 1984’s “Nightmare on Elm Street.” “Wes Craven was the guy who gave me my start, from my perspective, for almost no reason in particular,” Depp said of the horrormovie legend who died at 76 from brain cancer last month. “I read scenes with his daughter when I auditioned for the part. At the time, I was a musician. I wasn’t really acting. It was not anything very near to my brain or my heart, which is pretty much how it remains to this day.” The line got a big laugh. “But Wes Craven was brave enough to give me the gig based on his daughter’s opinion,” Depp continued. “I guess she had read with a bunch of actors, and after the casting sessions, she said, ‘No, that’s the guy.’ I always think of her for putting me in this mess, and certainly Wes Craven for being very brave to give me this gig. But he was a good man — so rest in peace, old Wes.” Speaking about what drew him to “Black Mass,” Depp explained that he didn’t think of Bulger as a villain. The ’80s-set film is directed by Scott Cooper and co-stars Joel Edgerton, Dakota Johnson, Benedict Cumberbatch and Peter Sarsgaard.
and Julia Stiles is set to reprise her role. Paul Greengrass is back to direct and co-pen the script with Christopher Rouse. Frank Marshall will produce the action-thriller alongside Jeffrey Weiner for Captivate Entertainment. Greengrass, Damon, Greg Goodman and Ben Smith also produce.
Rouse and Henry Morrison serve as executive producers. Plot details are unknown at this time. Production is currently underway with the film set to bow on July 29, 2016. Damon’s three Bourne movies, the first of which was released in 2002, grossed nearly $1 billion cumulatively at the worldwide box office. (RTRS)