WINTER IN WARTIME is a film set winter of 1944 in a village in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands (as Holland endured the Nazis’ icy grip) and shot in Lithuania, is an adaptation of a semiautobiographical 1972 novel by the Dutch author Jan Terlouw, who lived under German occupation for five years. The period was known in the Netherlands as “the Hunger Winter.” The film was an Academy Award nominee for Best Foreign Language Film in 2008.
The narrative framed in a boy’s coming-of-age story in a snowbound rural Holland, contemplates the fog of war and the mysteries of adult life through the eyes of Michiel (Martijn Lakemeier), the 13-year-old son of the town’s stoic mayor, Johan van Beusekom (Raymond Thiry).
It’s January 1945, a time when the Nazis’ defeat was beginning to seem inevitable, and the temptation to play it safe in occupied territories must have been strong.
Michiel, a fresh-faced 14-year-old, yearns to join the resistance. Michiel views his father’s uneasy cooperation with the Nazi authorities with disdain, even though it is essential to maintaining the fragile peace in the area. In his mind, his father, the mayor is seemingly only interested in maintaining the status quo between the town and the German Army.
The boy also looks up to his dashing Uncle Ben (Yorick van Wageningen), a hearty resistance fighter who arrives for a visit carrying a suitcase filled with ration cards, canned sardines and a radio. Ben, who appears to have better connections with the local German authorities than Johan, isn’t exactly what he seems. Meanwhile, an allied plane is hit in the air and crashes, but before it hits the ground, a young British airman named Jack (Jamie Campbell Bower) is able to escape by parachute. Michiel (who wants to contribute as his uncle Ben does to the resistance) finds the downed and the wounded RAF pilot in the nearby woods, and now gets his chance.
But he quickly finds himself mired in a hornet’s nest of murky motives and multiple identities. Given the times and Michiel’s adolescent need for heroes and villains, neutrality is not an option. The boy finds it increasingly difficult to tell which of his beloved immediate family and the village elders is a resister, an informer, or an appeaser of the occupying Nazis.
Michiel’s father is arrested when the body of a German soldier, killed by Jack on the night of the plane crash, is found in the forest. Jack wants to turn himself in to save Michiel’s father, but Ben tells Michiel he can save his father. Ben’s efforts fail, and Michiel’s father is shot by the Germans.
Michiel tries to take Jack to the town of Zwolle, across a river, but the Germans foil their attempt, and the two narrowly escape after a chase through the forest. Michiel finally turns to his Uncle Ben for help in getting Jack to Zwolle. Ben agrees, and Ben, Jack and Erica set off for the bridge to Zwolle. As they leave, Ben tells Michiel that Dirk should never have gotten Michiel involved with Jack. After they go, Michiel realizes that he had never mentioned Dirk’s role to Ben. Quickly checking Ben’s suitcase, he finds papers showing that Ben is working for the Germans.
Director and screenwriter Christopher Zalla’s debut film “PADRE NUESTRO,” (also released as “Sangre De Mi Sangre” in the US) is a tale of stolen identity and desperation that unfolds as a taut thriller and showcases some awesome performances by a multi-generational cast.
At its heart the film is a story of survival at any cost and the odds that lie against an illegal immigrant, the grit and hardships demanded of these unfortunate people.
Padre Nuestro is a very original, very dark and shadowy drama with unexpected story twists. It also jerks you back and forth between two parallel story tracks. The film won the Grand Jury Prize for Dramatic film of the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. It was also screened at the Cannes Film Festival.
In Padre Nuestro, a film almost entirely in Spanish with small English portions.
We meet the hero, Pedro, as he escapes from Mexico by quickly scaling a fence along the U.S. border. Waiting on the other side (not miles away, or hidden) is a truck for taking immigrants to New York. Pedro is hustled inside, the doors are slammed, and the truck begins a 2,500-mile journey, to be survived entirely on half a taco and a small bottle of water.
Now begins the story of Pedro (Jorge Adrián Espíndola), a Mexican immigrant who is traveling by truck to New York City to find his wealthy father, Diego (Jesús Ochoa), a man he has never met. All Pedro has is a 17-year-old letter with an address at which Diego once worked. He harbors a strong desire to make contact with his dad and carries the letter of introduction from his mother to help him accomplish his goal.
It is also the story of Juan (Armando Hernandez) Juan, a ruthless and conniving ex-career criminal who tries to escape his past by hopping on the same truck as Pedro, transporting illegal immigrants from Mexico to the Big Apple.and Pedro (Jorge Adrian Espindola).
Pedro (the sweet naive kid from Puebla long-estranged from his father, Diego) meets Juan meet on the truck.
Over the course of his journey, Juan meets and befriends Pedro. When the truck arrives he finds that Juan has stolen all he has, and then proceeds to assume his identity to trick Pedro’s father throughout the movie. Pedro slowly makes his way to New York, but Juan arrives first and finds Diego, convincing him that he is his long-lost son. The truest of these relationships, paradoxically, is the false one.
Meanwhile, the “real” Pedro wanders the streets, remembering only his father’s street address (still accurate after 17 years). He enlists Magda, a hard-worn Mexican girl, who does drugs, makes a living by her wits and her body, and wants nothing to do with Pedro. They nevertheless become confederates, picking up $50 here or there by performing sex for men who want to watch.
Jesus Ochoa, a much-honored Mexican actor, creates a heartbreaking performance as Diego, the “old man,” as Juan always calls him. He was once in love in Mexico, left, sent money home, returned, and then (after apparently fathering the real Pedro), returned to New York 17 years ago. Maybe he told his wife he owned a restaurant, or maybe she lied about that to her son. No matter. He is a dishwasher and vegetable slicer, who earns extra money by sewing artificial roses. He has money stashed away. He is big, burly, very lonely. He comes to care for this “son.” Despite Juan’s deception, Juan comes to care for him — almost, you could say, as a father.
Magda is a tougher case. She does not bestow her affection lightly, nor is the real Pedro attracted to prostitution as a way for them to earn money. But Christopher Zalla, (who wrote and directed this contemporary post-noir thriller), does a perceptive, concise job of showing us how Magda lives on the streets and nearly dies. Magda and Pedro are together as a matter of mutual survival.
The film alternates between the story of each man as they each seek out food and shelter and comb the city for the man in whom they see a chance to establish a secure future. Pedro, Juan and Diego have paths that must eventually cross
One unmistakable feature of the Indian highway is the presence of the brightly decorated trucks that ply the country’s roads. The men who drive these trucks spend long hours on the road and can be away from their families for weeks at a time, so their trucks act as a second home and they take great pride in them. The interior and exterior of the trucks are colorfully decorated with paintings, stickers, garlands, tassels, and shrines, which are not only a unique form of folk art but also an expression of individualism.
The title of the documentary — ” HORN PLEASE “ — is derived from a message seen behind each and every truck in India. It is a signal for the vehicles behind the trucks to blow the horn before overtaking. The sheer exposure of the signage has led it to become a popular phrase among Indians.
HORN PLEASE is a documentary that encapsulates various aspects of an age-old folk art form of India — the TRUCK ART, an art form that makes journeys through the dusty highways of India, incredible in more ways than one. With a kaleidoscope of bright paints, motifs, typography and some unique couplets, these Indian trucks take you on a rather colorful journey of diverse cultures and beliefs of the country. The designs painted on the trucks do not merely stand for aesthetic purposes, but they also attempt to depict religious, sentimental, and emotional viewpoints of the people related to the truck industry.
This film focuses on the origin of truck art and its evolution since then. And also how it influences not just the world of art, but also the lives of its artists and the truckers who interact with it on a daily basis. Largely, it investigates on whether the once-accepted type of art as a unique form of expression, will survive the test of time in this era of capitalism.
Another Interesting Book With A Similar Title “HORN PLEASE: The Decorated Trucks of India” by Dan Eckstein:
Photographer Dan Eckstein traveled over 10,000km across India’s byzantine and burgeoning road network documenting these elaborately decorated trucks festooned with lights, brightly colored text, paintings of Hindu, Muslim, Sikh and Christian deities, pop cultural fixtures and geometric patterns–symbols representing a blinding mashup of new and old India. What Eckstein produced is a singular portrait of the subcontinent–distinctly Indian, and a vividly colored reflection of this country in flux between tradition and modernity. “Horn Please” serves as a psychedelic guide to design in India and a showcase of the visual vernacular of the subcontinent.
The book captures the beauty of India’s truck driving culture …offers a glimpse inside the world of drivers, truck stops, restaurants, and repair services that make up a roadside culture familiar yet wildly distinct from the one most Westerners have come to know.
Set in the elegant world of high-end art and antique dealers, Giuseppe Tornatore’s The Best Offer is a romantic thriller that plays out like a cross between Hugo and Vertigo, with a bit of Her thrown in.
Rush plays art auctioneer Virgil Oldman, renowned for his appraisal skills and ability to spot forgeries. He leads a deliberately structured life. He’s a high-end art auctioneer with an acid tongue, a sharp eye for a diamond in the rough. He can quickly tell if a nondescript slab of wood has a Renaissance painting hidden beneath it, or if a random piece of metal discarded in a corner might have belonged, once upon a time, to some wondrous (and valuable) automaton.
But Oldman also engages in his own deception. With the help of an old friend and partner in crime Billy (Donald Sutherland), he routinely scams the auction houses by having Billy bid on works he has deliberately undervalued, to procure the most obscure and valuable paintings for his private collection. He pays Billy a fee and takes home the masterpieces — all portraits of women — which he hangs in a secret room and savors with intense if solitary pleasure.
Virgil is hired to look at the contents of a creepy mansion, evaluate and auction off her estate full of priceless furniture and paintings and arcana. . Its sole occupant, Claire Ibbetson (Sylvia Hoeks), a beautiful, mysterious and agoraphobic heiress who refuses to go outside or let anyone see her. Seeming to communicate only via phone and through walls, she hires Oldman to evaluate and auction off her estate full of priceless furniture and paintings and arcana. Ever vigilant for opportunities to add to his collection, Virgil accepts, though he’s irritated by her eccentric manner.
As he catalogs Claire’s estate, Oldman stashes away more bits and pieces of gears he finds, taking them to his repairman pal Robert (Jim Sturgess) to put together. As time goes by, the chandeliers and furniture and paintings are sorted and catalogued, but the elusive young woman keeps coming up with reasons she can’t meet him in person. At first, Virgil is annoyed. But as any lonely man might do in his position, he begins to grow obsessed with her.
The film creates an appealingly uncompromising protagonist and a lush sense of suspense straight out of a 1940s film like “Suspicion” or “Rebecca.”Claire’s mysterious condition, and the particulars of Virgil’s growing bond with her, carry shades of Vertigo-style obsession and even a bit of Spike Jonze’s Her in the length of time she spends as a disembodied voice. Complicating matters are a playboy mechanic (Jim Sturgess) and a 19th-century automaton straight out of Hugo. Shot all over northern Italy, Vienna and Prague, the film’s precise setting is deliberately left a blank.
Working entirely in English for the first time in his long career, screenwriter/director Tornatore is best known for his nostalgic Cinema Paradiso, which won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in 1990. But The Best Offer is completely different in style and tone.
Cast: Geoffrey Rush, Jim Sturgess, Sylvia Hoeks, Donald Sutherland. Director: Giuseppe Tornatore. Screenwriter: Giuseppe Tornatore. Producers: Isabella Cocuzza, Arturo Paglia.
The greatest achievement of THE BIG SHORT is its success in dumbing-down what are arguably the most complex financial mathematics and risk management concepts used by mortgage-linked derivatives experts, and bring them down to a level that the average movie-goer can appreciate. If they pay sufficient attention throughout the film.
Based on Michael Lewis’s bestseller by the same name, “The Big Short” tells the story of a handful of renegade traders who figured out that the subprime mortgage bubble would end in catastrophe, and bet against (i.e. “shorted”) it.This group made millions betting against subprime housing by buying up credit-default swaps on mortgage bonds.
The film educates the viewer using comedic episodes of analogies presented by celebrities in cameo roles, while keeping the rapid pace of the film’s storytelling continue without interruption. Standing in his kitchen, celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain cuts up three-day-old fish for a seafood stew while explaining how banks repackaged crappy mortgages into bonds. Selena Gomez joins behavioral economics professor & economist Dr. Richard Thaler at a blackjack table along in Las Vegas go over how a collateralized debt obligation works. Margot Robbie sipping champagne in a bubble-bath (remember “Wolf Of Wall Street”?) explains what it means to “short” something.
However, the real credit for storytelling belongs to the book’s author Michael Lewis who despite being popularly linked more to his book “Moneyball” (and the film based on it), has done more to help masses understand the financial complexity of Wall Street’s trading instruments. His books are a lesson in functioning of the bond trading markets and the history of how they came into being. The film is based on The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, a non-fiction book by Michael Lewis about the build-up of the housing and credit bubble during the 2000s. The serious enthusiast is also strongly encouraged to pick up a copy of Micheal Lewis’ groundbreaking first book LIAR’S POKER, as a way to catch the backstory of THE BIG SHORT as well.
Liar’s Poker is a non-fiction, semi-autobiographical book by Michael Lewis describing the author’s experiences as a bond salesman on Wall Street during the late 1980s. First published in 1989, it is considered one of the books that defined Wall Street during the 1980s, along with Bryan Burrough and John Helyar’s Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco, and the fictional The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe. The book captures an important period in the history of Wall Street. Two important figures in that history feature prominently in the text, the head of Salomon Brothers’ mortgage department Lewis Ranieri and the firm’s CEO John Gutfreund.
A COMMENTARY ABOUT THE STATE OF OUR FINANCIAL SYSTEM Most economists blame the latest crisis not on Wall Street malfeasance but larger economic forces. Low interest rates and global flows of capital inflated the housing bubble. The growth of “shadow” banks, aided by financial innovation, drastically increased leverage and weakened underwriting standards while escaping regulatory scrutiny. Politicians’ obsession with home ownership caused them to turn a blind eye to the excesses of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and private lenders alike.
These forces created a misplaced sense of safety. The Federal Reserve’s success in stamping out inflation, moderating recessions and containing periodic financial mayhem—such as the 1987 crash—convinced investors, regulators and the Fed itself that it was safe to take on bigger debts. Underwriting standards collapsed because home buyers and lenders alike believed national home prices would never drop significantly.
That last happened during the Great Depression, and the Fed assured it would never let that happen again. Financial innovation reinforced that sense of safety. Mortgage-backed securities protected lenders from localized housing busts, and credit default swaps insured lenders against the underlying loans’ defaults. The widespread use of both inflated lending, prices and leverage.
Howie Hubler, a trader at Morgan Stanley profiled in Mr. Lewis’s book (but not the movie ) was like the movie’s protagonists, bearish on housing and bet against the lowest-rated slices of subprime-backed mortgage securities. But at the same time he made bullish bets on their triple-A-rated pieces, which tumbled in value, inflicting a big loss on Mr. Hubler’s firm. So even traders who correctly thought the housing market would collapse believed financial innovation had immunized some markets to the consequences.
Even if Wall Street financiers weren’t breaking the law, the money at stake clearly incentivized them to ignore Cassandras and suppress misgivings about the triple-A ratings. Upton Sinclair famously said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” “When you are incentivized to believe something, you will believe it.”
ABOUT THE FILM & ITS STORYTELLING CHALLENGES The biggest challenge for any director with a subject matter such as THE BIG SHORT to make a film on, is the question – how do you make a movie about the housing market, mortgage backed securities, collateralized debt obligations, collateralized debt swaps, and synthetic CDOs interesting for the average person. Clearly Adam McKay succeeded beyond expectations. Filmmakers have already approached the story from a number of angles, from sober-minded documentary (“Inside Job”) to operatic boiler-room drama (“Margin Call”) already.
McKay focuses on the greed, stupidity, hubris, and arrogance of Wall Street bankers gone wild. He captures the idiocy and complete capture of the rating agencies (S&P, Moodys). He reveals the ineptitude and dysfunction of the SEC, where the goal of these regulators was to get a high paying job with banks they were supposed to regulate. He even skewers the faux financial journalists at the Wall Street Journal who didn’t want to rock the boat with the truth about the greatest fraud ever committed.
As the meltdown approaches, the film darkens in tone while keeping much of its comic edge—high resentment giving way to heightening disbelief, followed by horrified belief, about rampant deception, self-deception and the financial system’s fragility.
Christian Bale’s quirky performance as one eyed Dr. Michael Burry (a one-time medical doctor sucked into the world of trading), whose Asperger’s Syndrome actually allowed him to focus on the minutia and discover the fraud before everyone else. Running a very successful West Coast hedge fund, Michael Burry is a stock-picking shaman with a glass eye and an utter lack of social graces, who crunches numbers while pacing his office barefoot and blaring heavy metal. By actually bothering to go through the thousands of individual mortgages that make up the securities that underwrite so much of the banking industry, Burry realizes that a dangerous number of subprime home loans are on the verge of going south, and decides to plug more than a billion dollars of his investors’ money into credit default swaps, effectively betting against the housing market. His seemingly insane investments create enough of a stir on Wall Street to attract the attention of alpha-banker Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling, who also serves as the film’s foul-mouthed narrator, often breaking the fourth wall of film-making.
Thanks to a fortuitous wrong number, Vennett winds up going into the credit-default-swap business with Mark Baum . He is an abrasively hysterical character with his foul mouthed commentary and insults to authority. He is the heart and soul of the movie, and deserves recognition for his unusually brilliiant and serious performance. The potential windfall also interests the bumbling small-potatoes investment team of Charles Geller (John Magaro) and Jamie Shipley (Finn Wittrock), who loop in a former banker-gone-New Age (Brad Pitt) to help get them a spot at the grown-ups’ table.Brad Pitt plays a supporting role, but does it with his usual class as a retired banker who does not want to touch Wall Street with a barge-pole.
The finale of the movie is sobering and infuriating. After unequivocally proving that Wall Street bankers (aided and abetted by the Federal Reserve, Congress, the SEC and mainstream media), destroyed the global financial system, put tens of millions out of work, got six million people tossed from their homes, and created the worst crisis since the Great Depression, the filmmakers are left to provide the depressing conclusion.
“No bankers went to jail. The Too Big To Fail banks were not broken up – they were bailed out by the American taxpayers. They actually got bigger. Their profits have reached new heights, while the average family has seen their income fall. Wall Street is paying out record bonuses, while 46 million people are on food stamps. Wall Street and their lackeys at the Federal Reserve call the shots in this country. They don’t give a fuck about you. And they’re doing it again.”
EPILOGUE: Under proposals currently moving through Congress, our financial regulators are supposed to sit down together to identify and head off asset bubbles before they pose a risk to the system. But a bubble becomes a systemic risk only because it is not recognized as such.
POINT BREAK Is Not About A FBI Story Or A Character Drama At All. Its All About Extreme Sport & Its Spiritual Core That Drives People To Find Their Limit.
I expect a natural inclination to revisit and make comparisons to Kathryn Bigelow’s 1991 cult action film of the same name that follows FBI agent Johnny Utah (Keanu Reeves) as he goes undercover to infiltrate a cache of Southern California surfers suspected of robbing banks. That’s about as I would encourage you to go as you walk in to watch this new film. While there are similar thematic elements that were used as inspiration, there is nothing of a remake at all here.
Here is how the typical description of this 2015 film would look like: Thrill-seeking criminals perform a series of daredevil stunts to steal money and gems, only to give it away to the poor and less fortunate. Training for a job with the FBI, young recruit Johnny Utah is handed the enigmatic case of Robin Hood heists in Mumbai and Mexico, in which American conglomerates were targeted and the loot was distributed among the poor.
Utah suspects that only extreme athletes could pull off these heists. He puts his extreme-sports experience to good use, identifying the perpetrators as fellow athletes trying to pass the legendary Ozaki Eight — a series of “Ordeals” honoring the forces of Nature around the planet, laid down by environmentalist-guru Ozaki Ono, who died attempting the third one.Utilizing his own special skills, Utah infiltrates the gang of athletes after befriending their charismatic leader, Bodhi (played by Edgar Ramirez).
As Johnny experiences the rush of their lifestyle, his superiors fear that he was being stretched between his loyalty to the FBI and his respect for the athletes and his passion for extreme sports
Ericson Core’s incarnation of POINT BREAK is really about one thing, extreme sports, and the film handles those sequences extremely well. Shooting in a number of treacherous and visually impressive locations, including Venezuela’s Angel Falls and the Cave of Swallows in Mexico. The locations are actually spread over Germany, Austria, Italy, Switzerland, France, Mexico, Venezuela, French Polynesia, India and the United States, all of which are spectacular in both their otherworldly beauty and their inhospitality.
Having cut his teeth lensing fast-track blockbusters like “The Fast and the Furious” and “Payback” before helming “Invincible,” Core, who also filmed the movie, has poured his expertise into devising jaw-dropping stunts and visualizing awesome natural wonders. The film starts with a daredevil freestyle motocross sequence in the Arizona desert that sees Utah (played by Australian Luke Bracey) lose his best friend in a tragic accident.
What really sets it apart is having actual extreme sport athletes involved in the production and shooting the film, which offers some brilliant POV shots. The outstanding visual effects fully taps into the cinematic potential of such dynamic sports as base jumping, sheer-face snowboarding, wingsuit-flying, free climbing and big-wave surfing. Aerial shots of the characters floating between the canyons like puffy cushions in their wingsuits are at once goofy and sheer visual poetry, while the scene in which Bodhi and Utah hang off a practically vertical cliff by their fingers is a milestone in novelty as well as composition.
The sheer range of sports represented here (surfing 70-foot waves, snowboarding, wingsuit flying, free rock climbing, and high-speed motorcycle stunts) through whiz-bang stunt choreography, were all performed by champions in their field. Core showed his true talent as a cinematographer, capturing some of the world’s most accomplished extreme athletes doubling as the film’s characters as they perform death-defying stunts against breathtaking backdrops which rival anything attempted by the Fast & Furious franchise.
Renowned extreme athletes performing stunts in the film included surfers Makua Rothman, Billy Kemper, Brian Keaulana and Ahanu Tson-dru; snowboarders Lucas DeBari, Ralph Backstrom, Mitch Toelderer, Mike Basich and Xavier De La Rue; motorcyclists Riley Harper and Oakley Lehman; wingsuit stunt pilots Jeb Corliss, Jon Devore, Julian Boulle, Noah Bahnson and Mike Swanson; and free climber Chris Sharma, as well as Bob Burnquist, Xavier de le Rue, Jeb Corliss, John Devore, Jonathan Florez, Laird Hamilton, Dylan Longbottom, Iouri Podladtchikov, Laurie Towner and Ian Walsh).
The rest of the incredible production team behind Ericson Core included Oscar-winning editor Thom Noble (“Thelma & Louise,” “Witness”), production designer Udo Kramer (“North Face,” “The Physician”) and Oscar-nominated costume designer Lisy Christl (“Anonymous,” “White House Down”).
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This distinctive superyacht Ocean Emerald designed by Sir Norman Foster served as the spectator-platform and a party place during one of the early scenes in the film of surfers competing against 70-foot waves crashing in Biarritz in the south of France.
FILMING LOCATIONS YOU CAN VISIT Filmed on four continents using pro athletes in place of stuntmen, Point Break pits high-stakes stunts against the primal forces of nature. From the world’s tallest waterfall to a massive fissure in the Alps, these are the real-life locales you can visit from the film.
Caineville, Utah, United States
Colloquially known as “Swingarm City,” Caineville is a mecca for motocross riders the world over thanks to its miles of undulating, dusty terrain. In the film, extreme-athlete-turned FBI agent Johnny Utah (Luke Bracey) and his buddy ride on some of the most extreme routes the area has to offer before jumping their bikes onto a narrow butte.
Cave of Swallows, Mexico
Utah first sniffs out his targets when he discovers that they jumped out of a cargo plane straight down into the Cave of Swallows, the world’s largest cave shaft. Diving in here from the sky might seem pretty nuts, but the 1,220-foot-deep pit is actually a popular BASE jumping location in real life. The pit cave also teems with flocks of swifts and parakeets, which it is named for.
Teahupo’o, Tahiti
To capture the big-wave action, the filmmaker shot at one of the premier surf locations on the planet: Though the film’s surf scene takes place off the coast of France, it was actually filmed in the blue swells just south of Tahiti, where wave heights can climb into the double digits.
Walenstadt, Switzerland
Point Break’s biggest stunt features four guys jumping off the Jungfrau, a peak in the Swiss Alps, and flying through a massive fissure in the mountains—a feat known as “Grinding the Crack.” The athletes in the suits performed the flight about 60 times to get all the angles, leaping from mountain heights to the crystal-clear Lake Walensee in the valley below.
Aiguille de la Grande Sassière, France
While snowboarding down the snow-covered side of this 12,300-foot-high mountain, the boarders in the film accidentally triggered a Class 4 avalanche—talk about a “whoops” moment.
Falzarego Pass, Italy
Bodhi (Édgar Ramírez) and his group of daredevil eco-criminals attempt to pull off gold-mining sabotage from the vantage point of this scenic road that winds its way through Italy’s Dolomites. The route was originally carved out to provide access to the 1956 Winter Olympics in Cortina.
Hall in Tirol, Austria
The film’s high-altitude bank heist takes place in Tofana, Italy—a fictional location that’s actually Hall in Tirol, a medieval town in western Austria. Owing its early prosperity to salt mining, Hall is home to a historical district brimming with well-preserved Gothic architecture.
Angel Falls, Venezuela
At a jaw-dropping 3,212 feet high, Angel Falls is the tallest uninterrupted waterfall in the world. Naturally, this makes it the perfect spot for Bodhi and Utah to do a little free climbing on the sheer cliff face of Auyán-tepu, the tabletop mountain from which the falls spring.
I just saw a pre-release screening of Pixar’s THE GOOD DINOSAUR that opens this week. The film took a long convoluted path since 2013 that finally ended with the studio allowing it to see light of day theatrically. The film screens along with a pretty spectacular new Pixar 3D-Short, “SANJAY’S SUPER TEAM, created by longtime Pixar artist Sanjay Patel who makes his directorial debut with this “semi” autobiographical film of an Indian-American boy fantasizing about the similarities between his favorite TV superheroes and his father’s Hindu gods (More on this cool film #D short in the review).
The characters and the plot-line in the The Good Dinosaur are quite similar to those Pixar visited so many times before, and so is the formulaic “find your courage” plot line. It simply retreads a lot of well-worn narrative and thematic ground in that respect. The real story about THE GOOD DINOSAUR is the fact that Pixar broke new computational ground in the re-creation of some truly amazing (and real) landscape imagery never before seen in such resolution, clarity and authenticity. A lot to write about here. But first a little bit about the film itself.
One of the biggest surprises for me about The Good Dinosaur is that it is actually a Western. It begins with a near apocalypse 65 million years ago and an asteroid racing toward Earth. And while that’s around the time, that dinosaurs became extinct, the film hypothesizes a story with alternate-timeline premise.
What if the asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs had missed the Earth? What if they had zipped right past the planet, creating a false alarm instead of an extinction level event? “What if the dinosaurs didn’t get wiped out with a meteor?” And, millions of years later, primitive humans and dinosaurs coexisted?
The Good Dinosaur presents a world where people and dinosaurs coexist, but also where the latter has become the dominant intelligent life-form. We see dinosaurs and other talking animals interacting with a feral human, and the film implies that absent the pesky meteor dinosaurs would have perhaps evolved enough to engage in agriculture. While humans scamper around on all fours, their language a primitive series of grunts, the dinos speak impeccable English, wield tools, and tend to crops.
Our hero is a young Apatosaurus named Arlo (voiced by Raymond Ochoa), runt of his litter and the underachiever of his folksy farm clan. Arlo wants to “earn his mark,” to meet the expectations of his patient Poppa (Jeffrey Wright), but he can’t seem to overcome his anxiety. Thankfully, there’s nothing like a little adventure—coupled with some parental loss, a signature of Pixar’s parent company since Bambi—to instill courage in a plucky talking animal. Swept up in a rapid river and deposited miles from his home, Arlo has a dangerous voyage ahead of him. Separated from his family as they struggle to bring in the harvest (winter is coming!), Arlo finds himself alone in the wild until Spot becomes his protector and friend as they try to make their way back to Arlo’s family. Arlo will need to overcome his fears if he’s to make it home. His only steady companion: a feral human child whom he names Spot (voiced by Jack Bright, who only grunts and howls but never actually speaks words). Spot becomes his protector and friend as they try to make their way back to Arlo’s family. Arlo will need to overcome his fears if he’s to make it home.
While they start off more as adversaries (at least Arlo has a very specific reason to be angry with Spot), the two eventually become best friends as they traverse the unforgiving and often terrifying wilderness of prehistoric America. Along the way, the duo encounter religious zealot search-and-rescue pterodactyls, T-Rex cowboys, and raptors who rustle the T-Rexes’ herd of primeval longhorns. Mother Nature is also as much of an enemy here as any of the bad dinosaurs.
Spot is alone in the world, but he’s fearless and a survivor, qualities that inspire Arlo. Their bond is the best part of the film, and, with his dog-like antics, Spot steals every scene he’s in. It’s adorable and hilarious. You believe in the bond between these two, and the movie’s final moments will generate enough feels to make even the most stoic adult choke up.
There are moments where the film can be genuinely terrifying — enough so that it may be too extreme for very little kids — with death always right around the corner. The Good Dinosaur certainly doesn’t shy away from the ever-present mortal dangers of prehistoric times with more than a few deaths (some played for laughs, others not) occurring along the way. To say more in this particular case would be to spoil things.
PIXAR’S ANIMATION TECHNOLOGY BREAKS NEW GROUND
On a technical level, The Good Dinosaur is gorgeous-looking, especially its photo-realistic imagery. Never before have water and landscapes looked so real in an animated movie.
This is a visually dazzling animated feature, with photo-realistic backgrounds effortlessly merging with somewhat more conventionally cartoonish animal characters.
Perhaps more than ever before, the animators do the heavy lifting: Every detail, from the gentle bob of a beast’s breathing to the fluid shifts of Spot’s facial expressions, has been lovingly rendered. And that’s to say nothing of the few set pieces, the most striking of which finds the fins of psychotic pterodactyls—the movie’s villainous flock—ominously dipping down out of a cluster of storm clouds, as though the sky itself was shark-infested waters.. The film is at once an enormously sophisticated visual achievement—just look at the way water ripples, the way light bounces, the shots of raindrops bouncing off leaves and clouds curling around rocky ridges here that look like real-world documentary footage. There is great beauty in every frame. While the realism allows Pixar’s artists to flex their graphical muscles in a very different way to, say, the fantastical landscapes of Inside Out, it’s also vital in cultivating the palpable sense of danger that pervades the film.
The film’s stunning locations set in Jackson Valley, the Grand Tetons & Yellowstone were created using terrain mapping technology to capture the actual geometry of several areas found in the American wilderness. As the camera pulls back further and further, our heroes become tiny specs on an enormous canvas.
CREATING THE STUNNING PHOTO-REAL LANDSCAPE
Sohn and his Director of Photography, Sharon Calahan, felt that realism would really make the characters, Arlo specifically, pop off the background. To help achieve the stunning backgrounds, Director Sohn and his team downloaded United States Geological Survey satellite photos of 65,000 square miles of the northwest, along with their topographical data.
When inputted into their computers, this gave them a 3D environment that could look out over 50 miles into the distance. The United States Geological Survey has satellite photos of all of North America along with typographical data for the height. To accomplish this near-impossible task, the set team used actual USGS data of the northwest United States to create the sets in the film.
They downloaded the terrain for Wyoming, and using the Survey’s height data and satellite images from Google Earth, they were able to bring Arlo into the landscape they had just seen. The geographical data povided a foundation the team could then build on, first with vegetation, dirt and water. It would take time to texture and populate the environment with vegetation, but the result was a lot of bang for very little buck.
They even used that data to conduct digital virtual location scouts — Pete Sohn would “visit” the locations using the virtual topographical locations created from the data and chose the locations needed for each sequence of the film. 64,600 square miles of North America were downloaded and adapted to help tell Arlo’s story. The river that takes Arlo away from his home was modeled after the Salmon River in Idaho. The desert where Arlo meets the T-rexs was modeled off of Zion National Park.
As a test, Pixar’s set team downloaded the information and took a famous Ansel Adams photo and applied the data to where the photographer would have taken the image. The result was miles and miles of 3D geographic environment. They kept the scale of the environment, but they chose different types of trees and such to suit the scene. They would also alter the data to fit their story, turning real-life locations into fictional ones.
While all this data looks beautiful (and it really does), it also took up a lot of space and time. The landscapes gobbled up 300TB of server space, 10 times the entirety of Monsters University. This is on top of the over 900 visual effects shots (which include the movements of the river, rain, smoke and clouds), twice as many as have ever been used in a Pixar movie. Just one sequence of Arlo getting swept away by a river has more data than all of Cars 2.
To achieve this realism effect, the Pixar team ALSO spent time in the American Northwest, immersing themselves in landscapes they wanted to recreate in Arlo’s epic journey. Director Peter Sohn and his team traveled to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and Juntura, Oregon and southern Montana. “The area has a fantastic variety of landscapes, ranging from the Jackson Valley and the Tetons to the amazing geysers and waterfalls in Yellowstone,” said production designer Harley Jessup. “We studied the grasslands of Montana and the Red Desert, then incorporated all of it in Arlo’s journey.”
CREATING THE REALISTIC PHYSICAL BEHAVIOR OF WATERSCAPES The Good Dinosaur’s water effects in particular are staggeringly detailed — the river running alongside Arlo’s journey has more character than 90 percent of the cast. At one point, a semi-conscious Arlo lies in the river’s shallows, while light plays across the ripples in the water, partially obscuring the multicolored rocks below. In that moment, the water is beautiful enough to completely distract from the distressed protagonist lying in it. When the river roils in a rainstorm, or relaxes into a deep, still pool, it’s hard to tell that the film wasn’t shot in live action. And the fantastically detailed trees and grasses of the mountainside Arlo and Spot traverse are just as stirring. If humanity successfully pollutes all the world’s water, kills off the greenery, and breaks every mountain down for oil, future generations can lie in their dwelling-tubes and watch The Good Dinosaur alongside films like The Searchers and Shane to remind them exactly what the wide-open spaces of the American West once looked like.
Over 900 effects shots were created for The Good Dinosaur, twice as many as Pixar has ever done in a feature. The effects department is responsible for providing many of the natural phenomena you see onscreen: smoke, fire, fog, water, etc. Motion is important to the effects department to give you a sense of scale, timing and weight. For instance, the way snow mists in the wind off the top of mountain might reflect the mood of the scene.They use physics simulation software, using different toolsets for different problems. The software solves equations of motion for every frame of an effect, as it understands the physics of how things are supposed to move and behave.
Pixar has also updated the technology used to create clouds in the film, ditching the ‘sky matte’ paintings that are traditionally used in animated films in favour of realistic digital clouds made of millions of particles – this volume of ‘thinking particles’ is particularly useful for a scene in which Arlo tosses Spot up through the clouds while running along the ridge of a mountain. They wanted to create 100% volumetric clouds or the first time. Usually Pixar just paints clouds into sets, but by creating a new cloud library, Pixar would be able to light them and insert them in many scenes. This was particularly important for stormy scenes. From the rapid river that sweeps Arlo away to the towering mountains he must learn to climb, much of the set of “The Good Dinosaur” looks so real it feels more like a photograph than animation. There are shots of raindrops bouncing off leaves and clouds curling around rocky ridges here that look like real-world documentary footage.
One of the greatest challenges for the team was a river sequence in which Arlo is swept away. The film features more than 125 shots of the water alone, more shots of water than in any other Pixar film. To achieve this, the effects team broke down the river into different pieces, and then repeated those pieces. While on these travels, the team lived the fantasy they were trying to create. They rode boats down rapid, winding rivers and went on a horse riding expedition. During their boat ride, they lost the GoPro camera that was capturing their journey. Luckily their guide later retrieved it, and the team was able to use the solo footage of the river.
SANJAY’S SUPER TEAM
Sanjay Patel’s Sanjay’s Super Team short cartoon that precedes this film is pretty spectacular. Longtime Pixar artist Sanjay Patel makes his directorial debut with this “semi” autobiographical film and was partnered with Pixar producer Nicole Paradis Grindle.
A little boy races to the TV for cartoons only to be called over by his father for Hindu meditation. While it’s a big deal that the movie represents Pixar’s move to show more diversity in their storytelling, it also happens that Sanjay’s Super Team is a visually interesting, exciting, and heartwarming film that will likely win audiences over from the minute Sanjay bounces on-screen with his action figure.
The “mostly true story” of an Indian-American boy fantasizing about the similarities between his favorite TV superheroes and his father’s Hindu gods is helmed by first-time director Sanjay Patel, a Pixar animator since A Bug’s Life, it’s a personal story about how he related to his father and his family’s culture as a child. It’s a fast-paced, dynamic superhero throwdown, full of Tron-worthy, bright, glowing colors and a tremendously effective sound design. It’s sweet and intense.
According to Sanjay Patel: Personally, I’ve done a lot of research and study of Hindu culture and find the myths to be very inspiring and appreciate how sacred they are to my dad and his friends. So going in, I knew exactly what we had on our hands. So each deity was carefully constructed and we paid close attention to the details, to make sure they were respectful. But it was also fun to think that we were introducing some people to them and showing why they are significant and how they are different. Why Vishnu is blue but Hanuman is green? And we made and thought about all those specific choices, because we knew right away that if we didn’t, we would upset some people. We just wanted to be faithful to the mythology. But from there, we wanted to form some connections which might have gone overlooked. In India, these classical myths are performed all the time, often in theater or dance. So we drew upon those traditions. We brought in an expert who had studied traditional dance in India, and taught our animators how to be specific in the deities’ movement, because we don’t use language in the film. So each deity was assigned a specific dance tradition. So we tried to give each layer an interesting way of introducing this culture to people who may have no knowledge going into the theater.
With every new Pixar movie not only comes the excitement of new family movie, but the appetizer of a new short. With the release this week of The Good Dinosaur comes one of the best shorts in recent years: Sanjay’s Super Team.
A little boy races to the TV for cartoons only to be called over by his father for Hindu meditation. Yes, it’s a big deal that the movie is Pixar’s move to showing more diversity in their storytelling, but it also happens to be a visually interesting, exciting, and heartwarming films that will likely win audiences over from the minute Sanjay bounces on-screen with his action figure. Longtime Pixar artist Sanjay Patel is making his directorial debut with this “semi” autobiographical film and was partnered with Pixar producer Nicole Paradis Grindle.
Lesley Coffin: You put in right at the beginning that the movie is “based” on a true story, so I’m just curious what part of the story was inspired by your real life?
Sanjay Patel: The initial pitch was actually something completely different, and didn’t really have anything to do with family. It was just about a kid who wasn’t appreciating his culture and absorbed in comic books.
Nicole Paradis Grindle: A generic kid from India right?
Patel: Yeah, and the premise was just about a kid appreciating his culture. And as I was telling the story, I showed this drawing I had, which illustrated the way I grew up with my dad. And I told John Lasseter a little bit about how I grew up, and that every morning, my dad would get up in the morning and worship his gods, while I would worship mine on TV. And I had this one drawing that really illustrated that, and straight away, John said he loved the idea about a movie about a kid not appreciating his culture, but he also really loved the idea that through appreciating your culture, you can build a connection with your father. And that was absolutely true of my own story and isn’t something we had to manufacture for this film. It took be 30 years to get here, but it is definitely based on a true story.
TMS: I know you’ve both worked at Pixar for a while, but this being your first time directing, how did you partner up and create the team for this film?
Grindle: They just kind of put us together because I was available. Perhaps it was kind of by design but no one told us that or gave us a reason why. But it has turned into a great partnership. We really get along well and I was very passionate about the story and bringing his vision to the screen. It’s a great story and I am personally someone who gets excited about seeing new and fresh voices on screen, and that includes having more ethnicity and women in leadership roles. So this project certainly resonated and we had a good relationship right away.
TMS: Had you ever worked on a film together?
Grindle: We have both worked on the same films, but in the past, Sanjay has always worked on animation or was part of the story team, and I was always in a different department. So this was our first time really working together.
Patel: But I’ve seen all of Nicole’s work growing up. I was obsessed with the shows she worked on at Liquid Television, like Æon Flux. And of course Roger Rabbit, which is one of the seminal movies of my childhood.
Grindle: I can take no credit for that movie. The production assistant takes no credit for that film’s success! I never thought I would work in animation until I did that movie, and then I just fell in love with the world of animation and all the people that work in that world.
TMS: Father and son are so instantly endearing and sweet, because they aren’t hyper-realistic human characters, but they also have some very realistic features, like the design of their eyes. How did you decide on the character’s design and style?
Patel: There was a lot going on when we were thinking about and designing those characters. One of the big things were concerned about was how to link the designs of essentially the two worlds together, and show a connection between father and son with their features. But we also wanted to create a design aesthetic which felt universal for all the characters. Initially we designed father and son in isolation from the deities, but then John Lasseter came in and suggested finding something to unify all the characters. So our art director looked at classical Indian sculptures and saw that many have these beautiful eyebrows and noses which give the eyes an almond shape. So we used that to unify the characters.
TMS: Whenever doing a film that deals with religion, you have to consider how respectful you are compared to how much freedom you have, but with this film you also had to make the film both playful and informative for kids. How did you determine the approach you would take on this film?
Patel: Personally, I’ve done a lot of research and study of Hindu culture and find the myths to be very inspiring and appreciate how sacred they are to my dad and his friends. So going in, I knew exactly what we had on our hands. So each deity was carefully constructed and we paid close attention to the details, to make sure they were respectful. But it was also fun to think that we were introducing some people to them and showing why they are significant and how they are different. Why Vishnu is blue but Hanuman is green? And we made and thought about all those specific choices, because we knew right away that if we didn’t, we would upset some people. We just wanted to be faithful to the mythology. But from there, we wanted to form some connections which might have gone overlooked. In India, these classical myths are performed all the time, often in theater or dance. So we drew upon those traditions. We brought in an expert who had studied traditional dance in India, and taught our animators how to be specific in the deities’ movement, because we don’t use language in the film. So each deity was assigned a specific dance tradition. So we tried to give each layer an interesting way of introducing this culture to people who may have no knowledge going into the theater.
Grindle: But in a respectful way. We were so aware of those concerns, and didn’t want to do anything which might make those deities look too cartoonish or too much like the superheroes on Sanjay’s TV. That was parallel we drew, but we don’t want anyone to say they are just like superheroes. These are deities and we want to honor them.
TMS: The deities’ have that stream of light which makes the action sequences feel so unique and graceful in a way we haven’t seen before. Was that part of the reason you chose to look at dance traditions?
Grindle: We were talking about incorporating something which made things feel almost cosmic and infinite. And Sanjay is a big fan of Anime so he drew from those influences, but we also talked about everything from the Arora Borealis to an image from 2001: A Space Odyssey. And with all that brainstorming with our team, we found a way to turn that old, gray temple into something where the walls seem to melt away and turns into this cosmic space. We wanted to experience the transformation from something feeling enclosed and dark to something feeling light and beautiful. Really create a sense of the celestial realm on screen.
TMS: How familiar were you with Hindu culture?
Grindle: Not very much at all. I think I came at this from a very typical white, European background. I knew something of it, but very little. I’ve learned so much doing this film and found that part of it to be really enjoyable. I found there is so much depth that I never knew about before, and just hope other people from a similar background are inspired by this film to learn more. I’m sure a lot of people will go in saying “I don’t know about these deities” but want to learn about them. And they are just the tip of the iceberg.
TMS: You use the superhero connection in the movie as the little boy’s entry point into understanding what his dad is talking about. But when you were growing up, did you have any kid friendly things to teach you and get you excited about the Hindu religion?
Patel: I was born in the UK but raised in LA, so I kind of had three level of removed. And the community in LA was still pretty new. There wasn’t even temple nearby. But in the 70s, there were some comic books published called Amar Chitra Katha which means Immortal Stories or Golden Stories. But they were kind of frozen relics from the early 70s, but just kept in circulation because there wasn’t anything else out there. I mean, they aren’t X-Men comics, so I was sort of like “boring.” But it was crazy when I finally got a job at Pixar, the church of modern day storytelling, and felt moved enough by these myths to want to tell them in a way so a kind like me in a culture like this could appreciate them. That was a huge motivator for me, because those comic books I had as a kid were terrible and did not get me interested. I can appreciate them now as an adult, but certainly not a kid.
Grindle: But most religions have those entry points for kids or kid friendly version of the stories, but it doesn’t sound like that exists in Hinduism.
An online piece written by a friend brought back to life thoughts long filed-away in the recesses of my memory. His mention of a poem written a long time ago by India’s poet laureate Rabindranath Tagore “Ekla Cholo Re” (Walk The Road Alone).
Tagore wrote the poem back in 1905, and went on to win the country’s first ever Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913.
It is a curious coincidence that I am thinking about this poem now, more than any other day.
This weekend I watched Christopher Nolan’s magnum opus INTERSTELLAR. Being a huge and longtime Chris Nolan fan since I watched his ground-breaking films (MEMENTO, INSOMNIA, THE DARK KNIGHT, INCEPTION, others), it was merely a matter of time that I would show up to watch his latest. (PS: No Spoilers Here !).
Its been a while since I watched a Sci-fi film that wrapped physics and the sheer power of story-telling around a core built on poetic sentiment. Read on.
Nolan has an unconventional style of creating his narrative & visuals in films he directs, or writes or produces. There are always deeper undercurrents flowing beneath the actual story playing out on the surface. Much like the century-old sewers that crisscross deep underneath the City of London where Nolan resides, moving huge volumes of waste totally oblivious to most Londoners living on its solid-surface. He also loves to challenge the audience with a cerebral, non-linear storytelling style, often provoking them to keep up with him.
Interstellar proved no different. But this time he had the advantage of added access to a formidable array of conceptual tools with which to weave all his complexity in the story. At the heart of, the film is a story of pioneers who chose to venture out into the ultimate unknown mankind has ever known – intergalactic space. But this attempt was prompted not by a sense of adventure (as most films would like to depict), but by an urgent need. Earth is close to its last gasps,food is running out, mankind is on the verge of doom.
But Nolan had the use of Time, Space and multiple other dimensions to transport our protagonists through. His non-linear style was made surprisingly easier this time around by the knowledge that theoretical physicists often use the concept of bending space & time around certain galactic objects. Something scientists have known a long time (thanks, Albert Einstein), observed in surrogate forms, but have never ever experienced directly. A group of brave scientists & engineers were being asked to now take a journey into that unknown aided only by a theoretical notion that still has many “holes” by way of proof.
Galactic Pioneers The protagonists were pioneers in every sense of the word. They were stepping into uncharted territory. They were surely scared. They were also terribly conflicted about leaving their closest human connections (family, friends, the familiarity of things around them), and to have to make an uncertain promise that they would ultimately return back to them.
THE SCIENCE OF INTERSTELLAR
Christopher Nolan clearly had a lot to draw from in the area of theoretical physics and astrophysics concepts. Kip Thorne ( a renowned physicist) who was also an adviser on the Interstellar project. One of the main themes in Interstellar is that characters can age at different speeds depending on where they are in the universe.
Interstellar Dimensions In 1912 Einstein predicted that gravity is a product of huge bodies, like Earth, bending space-time. What is even more extraordinary is that space is bending into a different dimension. On Earth the effect is minimal, adding just a few microseconds a day to the time of space. Consequently GPS satellites orbiting the Earth need to be adjusted to take into account that they are moving through time slightly more quickly – 40 microseconds a day – compared to a person with a SatNav on earth.
Bending Space The crew of Interstellar’s Endurance spaceship faced a headache when trying to get to Miller’s planet because it is trapped within the control of the huge black hole Gargantua. To avoid being sucked into the black hole, the spaceship had to be travelling at high speed to escape the huge gravitational and centrifugal forces.
“Wormholes” In Interstellar, the crew overcame the vast distances between galaxies by jumping through a “wormhole”. If you imagine the universe is a flat sheet of paper you could travel between two points by moving in a straight line. However if you bend the paper so that the points touch through it, and then make a hole, you can reach that point much quicker. Essentially, a wormhole is where space and time are being bent so that points are now closer together.But Prof Thorne hastens to add: “I doubt the laws of physics permit traversable wormholes. If they can exist, I doubt very much they can form naturally in the astrophysical universe.
THE POETRY OF INTERSTELLAR
We have come to expect science fiction films to create representations that challenge assumptions we have grown accustomed to living in. In that broader sense, Interstellar is no different. What brought out the core sentiment of Interstellar was really a few lines from a Dylan Thomas poem (see below), that were repeated several times in the film. In a way its also the core of what we know as the “pioneering spirit”.
Its what led Steve Fosset to attempt the risky balloon-ride across the globe. It inspired Felix Baumgartner to attempt the highest ever jump from a balloon hovering 39-miles up at the edge-of-space. It inspired James Cameron to take that perilous submersible trip 7-miles deep to observe and film the Marianas Trench (the world deepest point in the ocean). It inspired Amelia Earhart to attempt her transatlantic flight back in 1928. It also inspired an intrepid 14-year old Dutch girl Janice Dekker to sail solo around the world in an old unpowered yatch her sailor-dad restored for her. (Her filmed-footage was turned into an amazing documentary MAIDENTRIP). And it keeps people like Richard Branson ticking restlessly with a vision of commercial space travel. Damn the celebrity, full steam ahead.
The poem “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas (1914-1953) was published in 1951-52, but couldn’t be more true for these pioneers. Here’s how it goes.
Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
Dylan Thomas, 1914 – 1953
Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
The Fisher King, in which Robin Williams plays a homeless man whose life as an academic had been destroyed by the trauma of witnessing his wife’s brutal murder. The role may well have been one of Williams’s greatest and most-challenging performance.
“The Fisher King” stars Jeff Bridges as Jack, a radio talk show host. It begins stunningly well with a few glimpses of Jack Lucas (Mr. Bridges), a sleek, mean-spirited radio bully who is quite literally on top of the world. As the shock-radio DJ, Bridges has a malignant hatred of people. He insults his listeners daily, then he gets stoned in a black, glass tower of a penthouse while listening to the anthemic song “The Power.” Seen in his fashionably dehumanized high-rise apartment, or in his limousine, sneering at a pan-handler from behind dark glasses, Jack is instantly emblematic of the cold-hearted excesses of his time. Moments later, Jack’s career has ended. An emotionally distraught caller on Jack’s radio show, apparently following Jack’s advice and taking his cue from the host’s many on-air insults during the show, goes on a shooting spree. It results in a bloodbath at a fancy restaurant. Jack is devastated and quits his job and drops out into a long, alcoholic reverie. (In bringing a jaded late-1980’s celebrity to the brink of destruction and then allowing him to do penance for his cynicism, this film strikes at the heart of something disturbingly real.)
When Jack is next seen, three years later, he is as demoralized and barren as the mythical figure for whom the film is named. He now looks disheveled and lives listlessly with girlfriend and video store owner Anne Napolitano (Mercedes Ruehl), who has clearly not been successful in rekindling his spirits. One night while on a bender, he attempts suicide. Before he can do so, he is mistaken for a homeless person and is attacked and nearly set on fire by thugs.
But Jack’s quest for real forgiveness has just begun. His redemption arrrives in the form of Parry (Robin Williams), an apparently deranged but witty homeless person. Parry is a colorful derelict who takes many of his cues from visions of “hundreds of the cutest little fat people floating right in front of me.” He lives in a drab, industrial boiler-room setting (that recalls the look of Mr. Gilliam’s earlier film “Brazil”), turns out to be a casualty of the same yuppie-bar tragedy and is now convinced the holy grail exists. After pulling Bridges from the brink of death, Williams informs the DJ he’s destined for greatness. All Bridges has to do is find the Holy Grail and save the ragged drifter’s soul. And he is sure where the Holy Grail must reside: in a billionaire’s apartment on Fifth Avenue.
Jack is initially reluctant, but comes to feel responsible for Parry when he learns that the man’s condition is a result of witnessing his wife’s horrific murder at the hands of Jack’s psychotic caller. Williams’s character, seized by memories of that tragic final night with his wife, is also continually tormented by the hallucinatory Red Knight, a demonic (and very Gilliam-esque) vision that appears to him in moments of extreme anguish, a symbol of his madness and despair. Jack learns that Parry had slipped into a catatonic state following his wife’s death and had remained there for a few years. When he emerged he was obsessed with the legend of the Fisher King, a form of which he recounts to Jack. In Arthurian legend, the Fisher King, or the Wounded King, is the latest in a long line charged was charged by God with guarding the Holy Grail, but incurred an incapacitating wound for his sin of pride. A simple-minded Fool asks the King why he suffers, and when the King says he is thirsty, the Fool gives him a cup of water to drink. The king realizes the cup is the Grail and is baffled that the boy found it, as demonstrated in the closing exchange: “How did you find what my brightest and bravest could not?” The Fool laughed and said “I don’t know. I only knew that you were thirsty.”
Jack seeks to redeem himself by helping Parry find love again. He sets Parry up with Lydia, a shy woman who works as an accountant for a Manhattan publishing house, with whom Parry is smitten. Jack and Anne then join them for a dinner date. Following dinner, Parry declares his love for Lydia but is once again haunted by the Red Knight. As he flees his hallucinatory tormentor, he is attacked by the same thugs who had earlier attacked Jack. The beating is not fatal but causes Parry to become catatonic again.
Wearing Parry’s clothing, Jack infiltrates the Upper East Side castle of a famous architect and retrieves what Parry believed was the Holy Grail, in reality a simple trophy which Parry had seen inside the house. When he brings it to Parry, the catatonia is broken and Parry regains consciousness. Lydia comes to visit Parry as usual in the hospital. She finds that Parry is awake and hears him and Jack leading the patients of the mental ward in a rousing rendition of “How About You?.” Jack goes back to the video store and tells Anne that he loves her.
“The Fisher King,” directed by the ever-fanciful Terry Gilliam from an ingenious if loose-knit screenplay by Richard LaGravenese, is capable of great charm whenever its taste for chaos is kept in check. For every wild ride through Manhattan by an imaginary Red Knight trailing billows of flame, there is a small, comic encounter in a more down-to-earth mode.
The Red Knight, as well as the expressive set pieces of New York’s post-crackdown, pre-Giuliani homeless jungle, offer familiar sights to Terry Gilliam fans expecting his fantastical direction. The film even offers references to some of his other work, most explicitly Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Brazil — a Brazil poster dots the wall of the Video Spot office, and high angle shots of Lydia’s bureaucratic publishing job recall the stifling morass of office life in the director’s masterpiece. Gilliam gets magnificent performances from all four of his leads. Alight approach floats the film through potential pitfalls, such as its wafer-thin view of homelessness in post-Reagan America. The two most prominent homeless people in the film, Parry and a cabaret queen played by Michael Jeter, both found themselves crazed and homeless not because of deep-rooted psychological issues or economic duress but because of major traumas that broke them.
Compare this plainer, more realistic view of romance and romanticism to the lofty, self-consuming varieties found in Brazil, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, even, to an extent, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Though that style creeps in with the vignettes involving the Red Knight, The Fisher King deals in lilting but painfully tangible visions of love. Parry’s reverie in Grand Central Terminal turns the place into a giant dance hall, but beneath the gorgeous image of the expansive transit station bathed in angelic light is the harsh sight of the ragged Parry chasing a love that keeps getting farther away. When he finally gets to confess his feelings for Lydia, he must first overcome the uneasy suggestion that he’s a stalker. There’s a thin line between love at first sight and obsession, but Williams manages to find himself on the right side of the divide with a gorgeous speech that turns his microscopic detail of her life into a love letter. Insecure but harmless people like Parry cannot just ask someone out: they have to get to know the person and learn her quirks and likes and worries first.
The Fisher King may stands as the most touching movie Terry Gilliam, the director ever made, among his many masterpieces.
Directed by Terry Gilliam; written by Richard LaGravenese; director of photography, Roger Pratt; edited by Lesley Walker; music by George Fenton; production designer, Mel Bourne; produced by Debra Hill and Lynda Obst; This film is rated R.
“MAIDENTRIP” is a documentary that recounts the incredible feat achieved by Laura Dekker, the Dutch schoolgirl who became the youngest person to sail solo around the world in January 2012 at age 16.The Dutch teenager set out at 14 on a solo sailing trip around the globe. Her journey covered 27,000 nautical miles and lasted 519 days, and she currently holds the unofficial record for youngest person to accomplish such a feat.
But this is no fight-to-the-finish quest to break a sports record or perilous struggle for survival against the elements. Instead, it is a high-seas chanty of a coming-of-age tale: a portrait of a once-giddy youngster who develops into a poised and determined woman over the course of 17 months as she charts her course not just on the water, but in life.
The movie is directed by Jillian Schlesinger but primarily filmed with a Sony Handy Cam and narrated in both in English and Dutch (with subtitles) by Dekker herself during long passages aboard Guppy, her 38-foot refurbished ketch. In between endless days of sailing, there are stops at the Canary Islands, the Panama Canal, the Galapagos Islands and French Polynesia. Delicate watercolor-style maps provide a way to keep track of her progress while uplifting, often-propulsive string music by Ben Sollee sets the mood on the soundtrack.
Beginning with a Kickstarter campaign, New York-based Schlesinger provided her subject, who set out in 2010 without a follow boat or support team, with a Sony Handycam and mounted GoPro cameras. Novice camera operator Dekker captures the stillness of the open sea as well as the “super awesome” rainstorms and rough winds that toss her 38-foot ketch and sometimes create disasters in the compact kitchen.
The director also gave her lists of topics to address on camera or into a tape recorder during her downtime. What emerges, onscreen and in voice-over, is a preternaturally self-confident teen who doesn’t subscribe to her generation’s social-media egocentrism. Director Schlesinger rendezvoused with Dekker at various ports along her route, and the film includes footage of her traipsing around St. Maarten, the Galapagos Islands and French Polynesia, among other picturesque locales. The beauty of the settings notwithstanding, her time on land at first has the so-what feel of home movies, but through the glimpse of her bond with an older couple, a portrait of the sailing community comes into poignant focus.
Dekker’s trip was prefaced by a legal battle in which the Netherlands’ child-welfare bureaucracy sought custody of the then 13-year-old to prevent her from embarking on her solo trip. The controversy developed in Holland in 2009 after Dekker announced her plans to circumnavigate the globe. After 10 months, she prevailed. “They tried to break Laura down,” her father notes, “but she’s too strong.”Fearing for the teen’s safety, the government stepped in, sharing custody with her parents to prevent her from attempting the challenge until a court finally ruled that she could proceed. The media labeled her spoiled and delusional.
We learn in segments devoted to her upbringing—illustrated with home video and snapshots—if ever a child was raised to achieve this goal, it was Laura Dekker. She was born on a boat in Whangarei, New Zealand, during a seven-year trip around the world conducted by her Dutch father and German mother, and spent her first four years at sea. Dekker is at home on the water.
Divorce split up the family, with Dekker choosing to reside with her shipbuilding father while her mostly-absent mother lived elsewhere with her younger sister. She was forced to become self-sufficient when her overworked dad had a breakdown, learning various life skills and acquiring a self-assurance that would serve her well during her remarkable expedition. Their life is anything but privileged. The Guppy, the boat of Laura’s landmark trip, was a wreck they bought cheap and refurbished themselves. She had her own dinghy at 6 and always dreamed of repeating the route that her parents followed.
There are tense moments as storms approach, water gets in where it shouldn’t, and Laura works to navigate a deadly, reef-filled strait at night in the rain. Dekker captures on camera portions of some of the more harrowing episodes encountered during her oceanic trek, including the heavy damage her boat sustained after making it through the hazardous Torres Strait between Australia and New Guinea as well as enduring 60-foot waves and heavy rains while navigating around the Cape of Good Hope. Whenever the going gets really rough, focusing on the task at hand rather than filming becomes a priority.
The film is also filled with vitality, charm, and a sense of humor. Animated maps show the legs of the trip with watercolors and personalized little touches highlighting her dog Spot, where she was when she turned 15, and more that add a human touch. A scene counting the days trapped by dead winds in the Indian ocean features Laura joking that “bobbing on the waves for days” is enough to drive someone crazy, and it’s followed by her introducing a bird that had taken up residence on the boat. “I’m only speaking English to him,” she says straight-faced, “because he probably doesn’t understand Dutch.”
We get to watch as this confident and capable young woman deals with inclement weather, impending madness caused by doldrums, and a constantly developing desire for a life other than the one she left behind in Holland. By the time she crosses the equator, dancing alone in a party hat and offering pancakes to Neptune, you’ll find yourself loving her spirit and personality nearly as much as she loves the sea.
“Freedom Is When You’re Not Attached To Anything.”
Perhaps as a result, the narrative tends towards the meditative and Dekker’s personal growth. At first, she recounts how she wanted to step ashore regularly for sightseeing. Loneliness is an issue. She weeps at the company of a pod of dolphins swimming alongside Guppy, as she begs them to linger a while longer.
She hangs out with an American sailing couple at one tropical port of call, catches up with her mother and sister at another and reunites with her dad in Australia, where he helps her repair the battered Guppy. But it’s when Dekker is stuck adrift for 47 days waiting for the wind to pick up on the Indian Ocean that she realizes that solitude actually becomes her. “I love being alone,” she says. “Freedom is when you’re not attached to anything.”
As the months go by, Dekker’s interest in being ashore lessens and, as for countless sailors before her, the solitude of the sea is what matters. She realizes that the everyday grind of the Netherlands—which she describes as “Get money, get a house, get a husband, get a baby and then die”—is not for her. Instead, Dekker buys a New Zealand flag to fly in French Polynesia, a place she refers to as “paradise.”
Not that Dekker doesn’t act her age regularly. She adorns herself with headbands, wrist ornaments and necklaces. She dyes her blond hair red around the trip’s midway point. She celebrates after making popcorn for the first time. She bounces around to music and eats out of a cooking pot just because she can. She even swears, though not quite like a sailor. Dekker is emphatic when she tells a reporter who comes aboard the Guppy that she is not concerned about making it into history books. It is about the experience, she says.
She says, “I don’t like when people tell me what to do,” it’s not an expression of mere adolescent impudence but the voice of someone who knows what she wants and is willing to do the hard work to get it. Fame and publicity are ordeals for her, not goals, as her bristly impatience with a reporter demonstrates. Repulsed by Western conformity and materialism, Dekker quite pointedly arranges for the finish line of her circumnavigation to be somewhere other than Europe.
Director: Jillian Schlesinger Producers: Jillian Schlesinger, Emily McAllister Executive producers: Louis Venezia, Rebecca Ritchie Brower, Gill Holland, Dominic Cicere Director of photography: Hillary Fyfe Spera Music: Ben Sollee Art Director: Leah Koransky Co-producer: Alex Halpern Editor: Penelope Falk
In 2010, 14-year-old Laura Dekker took to the seas in her sailboat, Guppy, on a quest to become the youngest person to sail around the world alone. Maidentrip, a forthcoming feature-length documentary, follows Dekker on her voyage, told largely through footage that Dekker shot while at sea. Far from her family and without a support team, Dekker goes where the wind takes her. In an exclusive excerpt of the film above, Dekker sails from French Polynesia to Australia.
In 2009, when Dekker first announced plans to sail the world, Dutch authorities prevented her from setting sail for a year. “Of course there are people who say you’re crazy, but it’s a dream. A great, great dream. I want to sail, I want to go around the world. I want to see all the places and not always the stupid same thing,” says Dekker at the start of the film. “I lived my first five years at sea and ever since, all I’ve wanted is to return to that life.” In January 2012, after 17 months at sea, Laura successfully completed her voyage.
In an interview with The Atlantic’s Video channel, filmmaker Jillian Schlesinger discusses the film:
The Atlantic: Why do you think Dekker’s voyage has been such a polarizing subject? After she finished sailing, and with Maidentrip on the festival circuit, has the conversation changed?
Jillian Schlesinger: I think anytime a young person is doing something so far outside the realm of what is considered normal and conventionally accepted, it ruffles a lot of feathers. Some people applaud and stand up for it, others call it insane and irresponsible. Everyone brings their own experiences and values to considering it, however I noticed the more I read the more it seemed Laura’s own voice was missing from the conversation about her voyage. Consequently, many opinions may have been formed without examining Laura’s unique circumstances and worldview. The film allows people into an extraordinarily remote and unique world. It’s hard to imagine being more at home and secure at sea than on land, but that is Laura’s reality. I think having Laura’s voice and perspective represented in the broader conversation about her story, free from the hyper-sensationalized media filter, has changed the conversation in many ways, especially challenging a lot of misguided, gender-biased language used to talk about her story early on. And now that the trip is in the past and she succeeded, that certainly changes things dramatically.
How did you come to meet Dekker and make the film?
I read about Laura in the New York Times in 2009 and immediately wanted to make the film. I spent some time thinking about the concept and approach and then reached out to Laura with a detailed illustrated proposal and a long personal letter about my experience and intentions. Laura connected to something in my proposal, responded, and we began discussing the details of how we would make this thing happen.
Jillian Schlesinger
What were the biggest challenges in making Maidentrip a reality?
This was a very challenging first film to make, but I’m glad I didn’t go into it with that mindset. Most of the creative and logistical challenges were really exciting, like the challenge making a film about something unfolding as it’s being documented and happening largely outside of your presence and outside of your control. It required a lot of trust—trust in Laura, in other collaborators, in the universe. It’s crazy now to look back on how it all came together, but at the time it was all unfolding, it seemed so hard to imagine that it would eventually become something that people could see and react to.
What was your relationship with Dekker like during filming? How involved was she from a creative standpoint?
Laura’s creative input and our collaborative working relationship were essential to every stage of the filmmaking process . I would say our relationship has been much more of a deep friendship and creative partnership than what I imagine to be a typical filmmaker-subject bond, if there even is one. When I would go to meet her in various ports along her route, the filming was always a secondary consideration to our many adventures. While we often had a camera in tow, the spirit of our collaboration was much more akin to two friends working on a project together, rather than me, the filmmaker, making a film about Laura, the subject.
What is Dekker up to today?
Laura is living on her own in New Zealand, doing a bit of traveling and speaking about her experiences. She recently got her driver’s license. She’s also busy plotting her next adventure.
Jillian Schlesinger
Maidentrip is a film directed by Jillian Schlesinger and produced by Schlesinger and Emily McAllister, with support from Louis Venezia. The design and animation were created by Moth Collective.
Netherlands (as Holland endured the Nazis’ icy grip) and shot in Lithuania, is an adaptation of a semiautobiographical 1972 novel by the Dutch author Jan Terlouw, who lived under German occupation for five years. The period was known in the Netherlands as “the Hunger Winter.” The film was an Academy Award nominee for Best Foreign Language Film in 2008.
The boy also looks up to his dashing Uncle Ben (Yorick van Wageningen), a hearty resistance fighter who arrives for a visit carrying a suitcase filled with ration cards, canned sardines and a radio. Ben, who appears to have better connections with the local German authorities than Johan, isn’t exactly what he seems. Meanwhile, an allied plane is hit in the air and crashes, but before it hits the ground, a young British airman named Jack (Jamie Campbell Bower) is able to escape by parachute. Michiel (who wants to contribute as his uncle Ben does to the resistance) finds the downed and the wounded RAF pilot in the nearby woods, and now gets his chance.
Colloquially known as “Swingarm City,” Caineville is a mecca for motocross riders the world over thanks to its miles of undulating, dusty terrain. In the film, extreme-athlete-turned FBI agent Johnny Utah (Luke Bracey) and his buddy ride on some of the most extreme routes the area has to offer before jumping their bikes onto a narrow butte.
Utah first sniffs out his targets when he discovers that they jumped out of a cargo plane straight down into the Cave of Swallows, the world’s largest cave shaft. Diving in here from the sky might seem pretty nuts, but the 1,220-foot-deep pit is actually a popular BASE jumping location in real life. The pit cave also teems with flocks of swifts and parakeets, which it is named for.
To capture the big-wave action, the filmmaker shot at one of the premier surf locations on the planet: Though the film’s surf scene takes place off the coast of France, it was actually filmed in the blue swells just south of Tahiti, where wave heights can climb into the double digits.
Point Break’s biggest stunt features four guys jumping off the Jungfrau, a peak in the Swiss Alps, and flying through a massive fissure in the mountains—a feat known as “Grinding the Crack.” The athletes in the suits performed the flight about 60 times to get all the angles, leaping from mountain heights to the crystal-clear Lake Walensee in the valley below.
While snowboarding down the snow-covered side of this 12,300-foot-high mountain, the boarders in the film accidentally triggered a Class 4 avalanche—talk about a “whoops” moment.
Bodhi (Édgar Ramírez) and his group of daredevil eco-criminals attempt to pull off gold-mining sabotage from the vantage point of this scenic road that winds its way through 
The film’s high-altitude bank heist takes place in Tofana, Italy—a fictional location that’s actually Hall in Tirol, a medieval town in western Austria. Owing its early prosperity to salt mining, Hall is home to a historical district brimming with well-preserved Gothic architecture.
At a jaw-dropping 3,212 feet high, Angel Falls is the tallest uninterrupted waterfall in the world. Naturally, this makes it the perfect spot for Bodhi and Utah to do a little free climbing on the sheer cliff face of Auyán-tepu, the tabletop mountain from which the falls spring.
Praas On World Films 