I saw Interview over the weekend. It was definitely worth the 84 minutes. Frankly, I was surprised to see a movie trimmed so nicely as most directors will never admit their movie is shorter than nine rolls.
The movie is dedicated to Theo van Gogh, the Dutch filmmaker who was tragically murdered by an Islamic extremist in 2004. It’s also a remake of Theo’s movie (Interview) which was shown on Dutch television. It seems that Theo originally envisioned a remake with Buscemi and Miller, so in a way they carried on without him.
The movie’s premise is simple - a journalist has been assigned to interview a B-movie actress that’s also popular with the tabloids.
The journalist (Buscemi) didn’t do his homework (i.e. read the file, watch the movies) because he feels the interview and the interviewee are much below his usual game - polititians in Washington.
The B-movie star, Katya (Sienna Miller), comes an hour late and immediately starts complaining about the table at the restaurant. To cut the long story short, they are off to an awful start. End of Act I.
Acts II and III aren’t that straight-forward. There’s a lot of talking, flirting, drinking, smoking, and more talking. As the movie progresses the journalists loses more and more of his “moral highground”. It’s definitely an interesting movie and I recommend seeing it.
The fluctuating nature of the technology means that most filmmakers still have to fight to shoot their films on HD. Directors like Steven Soderbergh and Robert Rodriguez can get away with HD because they keep their budgets down. But once budgets start rising to $100 million, or tent-pole status, the resistance is much fiercer.
And more from Savides, this time re: Fincher:
He’s amazing. I don’t think anybody could’ve done it this way. David had to figure it out on his own, and then present it to the studio. He had to do smaller projects, commercials. He’d been using the Viper, got really used to it. So by the time I stepped in he had gotten the Viper integrated and he’d figured out how to make the camera work. When I got there, 90 percent of the problems had been ironed out. I was just part of the creative solution.
The movie’s premise is simple - a journalist has been assigned to interview a B-movie actress that’s also popular with the tabloids.
Following Michael Mann’s lead, David Fincher has decided to shoot
Recent Comments