A couple semi-positive reviews, positve, and negative doesnt really say much, especially since it's a sci-fi film that has to be getting nothing but raves.

Another big thing is the buzz, where is it? It's been shown already yet we hear almost nothing? Doesnt bode well.

Why would it have any buzz right now, it comes out Christmas day.

because its out in the british isles already

I know, but I think we're talking about the American Oscar buzz, not like international hype.

well its not like Americans can't get viewings of it pretty easily now.

Speaking of which... You know anywhere where there's a really good quality version out there right now?

Movies need to be released to the public before buzz starts?

Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers (Dreamamount, 10.20) has been seen on the Left Coast, and it's "damn good," according to a certain eyeballer. The word is that some kind of limited peek will be given to a select group within a few days. That doesn't mean anyone's necessarily going to write anything about it straight away. Let's see how it plays out.



There's a certain John Fordian echo in Flags of Our Fathers , which I won't explain but I loved hearing about this morning. If the film has a primary focus, it's about the battle between war legend and war reality -- the space between the legend of battlefield heroism as promoted in political speeches and by war memorial statues, and the reality of what it actually is for the men who lay their lives on the line.

But the comment that really raised my eyebrows was a thought passed along to this witness from a voice in the Eastwood/Warner Bros. camp, to wit: as good and admirable as Fathers is, Letters From Iwo Jima -- Eastwood's lesser-budgeted film about the Japanese forces who fought the Americans on that volcanic island in early '45, and which is acted entirely in Japanese -- is "a better film."

This is obviously just an opinion, just one guy talking, etc. But when you consider the persistent questions about whether Letters will in fact be released in December '06 or sometime in January '07, well....what are people thinking? Flags of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima are joined-at-the-hip movies -- same war backdrop, same battle, same director, same color scheme. Some of the same incidents, according to Peter Bart's 9.3.06 Variety piece, are depicted in both.

How, given all this, can they not be considered as a single unified work? What person with any respect for what Eastwood has apparently constructed here would argue for Flags to be released on 10.20.06 and Letters to be released in January '07, which would mean that the latter wouldn't qualify as a '06 Best Picture candi- date? Especially given that guy's view that the Japanese film is the "better" work?



I reviewed Paul Haggis's Flags script last April -- here's a portion of what I wrote:

"Flags of Our Fathers is about the loneliness and apartness of young soldiers living in two worlds -- the godawful battle-of-Iwo-Jima world where everything is ferocious and pure and absolute, and the confusing, lost-in-the-shuffle world of back home, where almost everything feels off and incomplete.

"There are many, many characters in Flags but it's basically about three of the six young Marines who raised the American flag on a pole atop Mt. Surabachi during the Iwo Jima fighting in early 1945, resulting in a photo that was sent around the world and came to symbolize the valor of U.S. soldiers.

"Three of the flag-raisers died in battle soon after, but the three survivors -- John Bradley (Ryan Phillipe), Ira Hayes (Adam Beach) and Rene Gagnon (Jesse Bradford ) -- were sent home to take bows and raise funds and build morale on a big public relations tour arranged by the military.

"And the film -- the script, I mean -- is primarily about their vague feelings of alienation from their admirers and even, to some extent, their families. And vice versa.

"Heroes, a narrator says at the end, are something we need and create for ourselves. But the soldiers don't get it or want it. They only feel for each other. They may have fought for their country, but they died for their friends."

Hmm - thats interesting about the whole release date issue regarding "Letters". If its that good - they may not want it to take awards potential from Flags. In that case they may aswell wait a year or atleast 9 months till releasing it and not sacrifice it in January. Seems like its could go the same way as Zodiac!!

Yeah, even though they are being distributed by different studios, I'd say that Eastwood and Spielberg are running the show here, and they probably realize that Flags has a better shot than Letters, even if Letters is better. Letters can be a very VERY useful campaign tool if it's released in January. If Flags is strong and then voters see Letters, it's going to make the whole Flags of Our Fathers project all the more impressive. Consider, if you will, how Return of the King was rewarded for the entire LOTR achievement, despite being arguably weaker than FOTR and TTT.

I doubt that a Japanese language film would stand on it's own very well, but it could syphon off votes, and every vote is precious, so it would make a lot of sense to use it as a tool instead of using it as an individual film. They are both, essentially, one film. Flags is the part of the film that has the best shot at winning. I think it's a pretty smart strategy if they continue to present one as the film proper and the other as it's ace in the hole.

Yeah, even though they are being distributed by different studios, I'd say that Eastwood and Spielberg are running the show here, and they probably realize that Flags has a better shot than Letters, even if Letters is better. Letters can be a very VERY useful campaign tool if it's released in January. If Flags is strong and then voters see Letters, it's going to make the whole Flags of Our Fathers project all the more impressive. Consider, if you will, how Return of the King was rewarded for the entire LOTR achievement, despite being arguably weaker than FOTR and TTT.

I doubt that a Japanese language film would stand on it's own very well, but it could syphon off votes, and every vote is precious, so it would make a lot of sense to use it as a tool instead of using it as an individual film. They are both, essentially, one film. Flags is the part of the film that has the best shot at winning. I think it's a pretty smart strategy if they continue to present one as the film proper and the other as it's ace in the hole.

The Departed A

It?s a pleasure to report that "The Departed," the gritty crime-gangster drama, is Martin Scorsese?s best film since the 1990 ?The GoodFellas,? to which the new film bears loose resemblance in generic and thematic rather than stylistic terms.

After two quasi-epic films, ?Gangs of New York? and ?The Aviator,? both of which Oscar-nominated, and both flawed for different reasons, Scorsese is back on terra firma with a movie that?s right up his alley, one that?s linked directly not only to ?GoodFellas,? but also to ?Mean Streets,? back in 1973.

Like Michael Mann (who, incidentally, produced Scorsese?s ?Aviator?), Scorsese is one of American cinema?s strongest proponents of film noir, infusing most of his films with darkly humorous approach and quintessentially noirish themes, motifs, and visuals. Nonetheless, unlike Mann, particularly in his last, disappointing effort, ?Miami Vice,? in which striking style triumphed over a routine narrative, Scorsese is trying to find new subjects, with varying degrees of success, to which he can apply his singular, visionary nourish paradigm.

The story of "The Departed" is vaguely based on the 2002 brilliant Hong Kong thriller, "Infernal Affairs," which achieved great success in Asia before being released (briefly) in the U.S. in 2004.

The collaboration with writer William Monahan (?Kingdom of Heaven?), an Irish-American native of Boston, proves fruitful in ways that the teaming with Paul Schrader was a generation ago in movies like ?Taxi Driver? and ?Raging Bull.? Monahan and Scorsese treat their movie as one inspired by ?Internal Affairs,? rather than a remake per se. Putting aside that?s film?s distinctive milieu, they have created a different setting--South Boston--with different sets of characters and subplots. Monahan has judiciously expanded the scope of that movie, adding new characters, and enlarging one key role, mobster Frank Costello, played by Jack Nicholson, which was minor in the original saga.

Collaborating for the third time with Scorsese, after "Gangs of New York" and "The Aviator," Leonardo DiCaprio gives his first truly mature performance; it?s the first film in which he doesn?t look ?boyish.? Headed by Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Mark Wahlberg, Martin Sheen, Alec Baldwin, Vera Framiga, ?The Departed? is arguably the best-cast film of the year.

The story centers on two complex and morally ambiguous copes: Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) and Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio). Smart and unabashedly ambitious, Colin appears to be on the fast track of Massachusetts State Police Department. The Department?s Elite Special Investigations Unit is waging an all-out war to take down the city's cop organized crime ring from the inside--the key is to end the reign of powerful mob boss Frank Costello (Nicholson).

In contrast, Billy is street-smart, tough, and suffers from a violent temper that has cost him his badge and eventually lands him back on the rough streets of South Boston, where he is recruited into Costello's ranks.

The story is about how two young men are shaped by the forces in their lives: the police and the crime group, headed by Costello. Costello takes Colin as a young boy and makes him into a seeming pillar of the community so he can rise up in the hierarchy of the state police. But, in reality, he is Costello's inside man.

Billy?s determination to become a police officer is rooted in his desire to escape his upbringing. Billy comes from an underworld background and has many chips stacked against him. He joins the police because he has no other options, and he wants to do things differently than his family did. Ironically, he is asked to go undercover and pretend to be the very man he was determined not to become.

Billy is the perfect material for the police to send undercover, because he comes from the working-class element of South Boston. He is put in the position to join Costello's crew, but he has really been set up to rat on Costello.

The one main character in 'The Departed' who is neither a cop nor a criminal is also the only woman. Vera Farmiga plays Madolyn, a psychiatrist who specializes in dealing with troubled people on both sides of the law. In a twist of fate, Madolyn becomes another unwitting link between Colin, the man she is seeing romantically, and Billy, the man she starts out seeing professionally.

For Billy, Madolyn is the only emotional connection Billy has. She is the one person Billy can confide in, though in a limited way, because he can't reveal anything about himself or what he's doing. As his counselor, Madolyn tries to help him initially, but then a stronger personal bind develops between them.

Like most of Scorsese?s films, ?The Departed? is about sin, guilt, and redemption. Billy is ultimately trying to redeem himself and not just be a product of his environment, but he ends up deep in a situation that is extremely dangerous and deceitful. There are moments when he could be easily be caught as the 'rat,' and everything begins to cave in around him.

Damon's and DiCaprio?s characters are two sides of the same coin, even coming from the same neighborhood. Colin chooses one path, and Billy chooses another, but their lives are fatefully intertwined in ways they themselves could never understand. In the end, Billy and Colin are running on parallel tracks, and ultimately end up on a collision course.

The film gradually becomes a tense cat-and-mouse chase, based on information and misinformation, conveyed via computer and cell phones; here is one film that couldn?t even exist without the cellular technology (for reasons that cannot be disclosed here).

However, this being a noir policier?and a quintessential Scorsese movie?neither man is what he seems to be. As they work at cross-purposes, Colin and Billy are plunged into a dangerous game of cat and mouse in which the stakes are high, really high.

Each man becomes deeply consumed by his double life, gathering information about the plans and counter-plans of the operation he has penetrated. But when it becomes clear to both the gangsters and the police that they have a mole in their midst, Billy and Colin find themselves in constant danger of being caught and exposed to the enemy. Thus, each must race to uncover the identity of the other man in time to save himself.

The double identity, duplicity, and deceit are all manifest in Scorsese?s film, but, thematically, again borrowing from noir, ?The Departed? is soaked with the logic of a well-constructed crime melodrama (in the positive sense of the term) and the fatalism of a tragedy, focusing on the postmodern issue of identity, namely, what constitutes identity, a fluid concept to begin with, and what happens when people depart from what they really should be doing, and instead play roles allotted to them by various agencies.

In this film, Scorsese takes the crime-gangster genre and turns it into something different, even original. The uniquely American story involves the Irish underworld, the police force and the corruption within and without that agency. More importantly, the depiction of the characters and their attitudes toward the world in which they live, in both its public and personal domains, is uncompromising.

The production benefits from the cooperation of Thomas B. Duffy, a 30-year-vet of the Mass. State Police, who served as a technical consultant. Though the characters are placed in a specifically Bostonian Irish-Italian milieu, as a story of trust and loyalty, betrayal and deception, it could be found in any city around the world. Dealing with corruption within and without the police force makes the tale even more relevant to our times.

DiCapro excels in conveying the conflict of a young man who has gotten himself into a bad situation and then wonders what the hell he is doing there. He renders an intense, volcanic performance, based as much on gestures as on words, resulting in a truly high-impact emotional turn that should be remembered at Oscar time. Of the three roles he played for Scorsese, this is by far the most interesting one.

While the story is set entirely in Boston, principal photography was executed in and around the cities of Boston and New York. Most of the exterior scenes were shot in the Boston Common, Boston Harbor, Chinatown, and, of course, South Boston, known to the locals as "Southie." Traveling outside of the city, the company also shot in the neighboring towns of Braintree, Quincy, and Dorchester (where cast member Mark Wahlberg comes from).

Production designer Kristi Zea (who had previously collaborated on "GoodFellas") and cinematographer Michael Ballhaus capture the specific style of New England architecture, like the three-story wooden houses with front or back porches on each floor, and what they label as 'brutalist' mode of architecture, including the City Hall.

Juxtaposed with the city's historical landmarks, the imposing, cement-gray Hurley Building, in the heart of Boston's Government Square, was selected to serve as the exterior for the utilitarian headquarters of the Massachusetts State Police. Outside of downtown Boston, most of the structures are low, with plenty of sky view.

In New York, Scorsese chose areas of Brooklyn that could double as Boston. Zea and her team created the interiors of the headquarters on a cavernous soundstage in the Brooklyn's Williamsburg section, with the gray and brown palette of the existing structures.

As noted, ?The Departed? is strongly shaped by the noir vocabulary. The film is lit like a black-and-white work, especially in the police station, which doesn't have much color. Photographer Ballhaus took a similar approach to lighting the police headquarters, which are normally lit with fluorescents, thus creating a wash of light with no tension. Instead, Ballhaus uses direct light and shadows to add variety and texture to the atmosphere.

That said, whenever used, color creates a most dramatic effect. Costume designer Sandy Powell utilized color to set Nicholson's Costello apart from the rest. Most of the characters wear uniforms or ordinary street clothes in neutral tones of black, brown, gray, and beige. Not so in the case of Nicholson, perhaps due to his interpretation, which carries his role to an extreme. Consistent with the view that Costello has so much power he can wear whatever he wants and no one would dare question it, Nicholson is clas in orange shirt with blue jackets, or other lurid colors that call attention to his idiosyncratic character.

This being a quintessential?and vantage?Scorsese picture, ?The Departed? is richly dense with references and homages to other directors. Taking a cue from Hitchcock?s ?Marnie? and its use of red, there?s a deliberate injection of the color red within the predominantly colorless settings. Whenever there?s red on screen, it stands out, because most of the costumes and sets are quite monochromatic. Scorsese utilizes this specific color as a subliminal message, as a sign of risk and danger, with blood being the obvious correlation.

Speaking of blood, the last reel is particularly violent, and some of the shootouts are deliberately staged in a grotesque, extremist way. Two climactic encounters owe (perhaps unintentionally) a visual debt to Tarantino?s ?Reservoir Dogs? and ?Pulp Fiction.?

The letter X is also used symbolically, on windows, on walls, on floor, as a tribute to the 1932 movie "Scarface," directed by Howard Hawks and produced by Howard Hughes (the subject of "Aviator"), in which the X has special significance.

The X is, of course, a sign of death, and it?s used in the film in both subtle and more aggressive way. The concept of death harkens back to the film's title. The Catholic Church refers to the dead as ?the faithful departed.? Among other things, ?The Departed? is about faithfulness?to self as well as to others.

Finally, I recognized an explicit allusion to ?The Third Man.? Toward the end, there?s a poignant scene at the cemetery where Vera Farmiga walks by her lover Matt Damon without looking at him, just like Alida Valli did in that 1950 film with Joseph Cotton.

Little Children got it's first bad review.

Can anybody guess who gave it a negative without looking?

Slant?