|
Post by serin on Jan 7, 2013 6:43:03 GMT -5
Rosamund Pike on Filming Jack Reacher With Tom Cruise: "The Chemistry is Buzzing"
Jack Reacher, a thriller from Paramount based on One Shot, the ninth book in the best-selling series by the mystery writer Lee Child, opened last month with a cast headed by Tom Cruise, as the former military-police officer Reacher, and Rosamund Pike, the British beauty, as Helen Rodin, the lawyer who has to track Reacher down in order to exonerate her client. Pike, 33, an Oxford graduate who made her film debut as Miranda Frost, the icy Bond girl in Die Another Day (2002), says she had to work hard to humanize the stereotype of the American lawyer: “I wanted to defeat that, because the most interesting thing about bringing a character to the screen is to make her relatable.” A consistent screen delight over the past decade, Pike has played a wide range of roles, from the sweet Jane Bennet, opposite Keira Knightley’s Elizabeth, in Pride & Prejudice (2005) to the grifter Helen, opposite Carey Mulligan, in An Education (2009). The great bonus attached to her latest role is co-starring with the iconic Cruise. “It’s not only exciting to meet the person that you’ve watched since you were a child but then to work with him. I know he’s a great actor, but there’s a difference between being a great actor and being a great actor to work with, and he’s both.” She is delighted with the results. “The chemistry is buzzing. It’s brain matching brain. You want to go on the ride with them, because it’s sexy.” Vanity Fair
|
|
|
Post by roxthefox on Jan 14, 2013 12:30:54 GMT -5
Too bad nothing happens between their characters, ha ha.
|
|
|
Post by architect on Jan 15, 2013 22:16:01 GMT -5
Too bad nothing happens between their characters, ha ha. McQuarrie covers that (and more) in a great Q&A he did with Jeff Goldsmith. You can listen (or download) with the pic below:
|
|
|
Post by architect on Jan 15, 2013 22:21:06 GMT -5
Jai Courtney reaches new heights in Jack Reacher
Writer-director Christopher McQuarrie (writer of The Usual Suspects) was in Pittsburgh prepping the film when his casting director sent a link to Courtney's audition.
"I watched Jai do a cold reading," the director recalls. "What's so interesting is how well he embodies such a despicable villain for somebody who has such a good soul. I mean, Jai is a truly unaffected person."
McQuarrie sent the audition to Cruise, who was a producer.
"Five minutes later Tom emailed back and just said 'Cast him'. It was so evident that we'd struck gold with this guy, there was no question."
Next thing he knew, Courtney was on set with Cruise pointing a gun at him.
While he admits "the little boy within was pumped" to play an action baddie, his reaction to being in Cruise's presence is far more reserved.
"When you're working with people you've seen in hundreds of films ... it's a bit crazy to step outside yourself for a minute and think, 'This is surreal.' But I try not to get too bogged down in that.
"Look, these people are colleagues, it's about getting down to business. I don't get too worried about the celebrity thing."
Courtney's first appearance as Charlie in Jack Reacher is bad-ass cool, but soon turns chilling as he aims his rifle at five innocent citizens.
"Everyone says, 'This guy's so nasty, he's ice cold.' " Courtney laughs. "I like to think that at the core of it there's some softness there. Maybe. Probably not." THE REST
|
|
|
Post by architect on Jan 15, 2013 22:22:41 GMT -5
National Writers Series - An Evening with Lee Child
|
|
|
Post by serin on Jan 16, 2013 6:11:55 GMT -5
"Jack Reacher" Music By Joe Kraemer
January 15, 2013 Music By Joe Kraemer
La-La Land Records LLLCD1240
13 Tracks/Disc Time: 61:48 Grade A-
Jack Reacher is slowly becoming a hit film after receiving positive reviews throughout the holidays and will become a cult action film once it's released on Blu Ray in the coming months. The film is based on the series of books by author Lee Child and this film is based on the book "One Shot" and stars Tom Cruise as the titular character, a former ex-military investigator who arrives at small town after five people are shot dead by a professional sniper. After a suspect is apprently caught for the crimes, Reacher is called upon after seeing a television interview with the alleged suspect and with the help of a young defense attorney Helen (Rosamund Pike), Reacher soon gets more than he bargained for as he looks deeper into these killings. The film was directed by Oscar winner Christopher McQuarrie (The Usual Suspects) who wrote and also directed the very underrated and intoxicating action psuedo-Western, The Way Of The Gun as well as write the screenplay for Valkryre and The Tourist starring Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie.
The film has had a lot of positive things going for it aside from the film's performances' by Cruise, Pike and Robert Duvall. The real standout has to be the surprising and exciting score by composer Joe Kraemer, that should be added to the Best of 2012 plain and simple. Kraemer who had previously worked with McQuarrie on the aforementioned The Way Of The Gun, writing one the most exciting and memorable scores of the decade, along with writing the music the Cinemax TV Series, Femme Fatales; has written another brilliant piece of work here that should be a talked about score for sometime to come. The score itself is a throw back score to those pure orchestrial scores of the 1970's that were filled with suspense and drama, not like most scores of today that just get louder and louder with each year passing. The richness of the material is the score's major strong point and Kraemer really does pull this score off because of how he chose a more subtle and energetic tone than one than one that really hits you over the head with repeating brass action stingers. From the opening track "Main Titles", Kraemer introduces a grand, almost operatic theme that's pulsing and brustling with touches of action and suspense which would be the signature material of the score.
The score absolutely does not disappoint following its very solid start with a mysterious suspense laden track "Who Is Jack Reacher?", which has touches of the opening track's material stretched out in a slower, yet driven way. This would go on to inspire other solid tracks such as the "The Investigation". and the score's major set piece, "Evidence", a lengthy moody suspense piece that Kraemer really develops slowly and subtly with a great pay off at the end. Kraemer also does feature some very solid action material in "Helen In Jeopardy" and "Showdown" which are a distant cousin of Kraemer's excellent work on Way Of The Gun. "Finale & End Credits" finish off the score and the album on a great note with Kraemer reprising the score's major thematic material to a great conclusion.
La-La Land's excellent album is definitely a standout of their regular release catalog and one that should definitely award Kraemer more commerical possibilities of being rediscovered as the excellent composer that he is when he was first discovered for Way of the Gun in which fans have been wanting more from him in that essence. Jack Reacher is simply a marvellous score that really did catch me by surprise and definitely didn't disappoint as it went along. It is a terrific release that fans of throwback scores will love. I know I do. Excellent!
Examiner.com
Soundtrack
You think I'm a hero
|
|
|
Post by architect on Jan 17, 2013 21:16:47 GMT -5
FILM INTERVIEW: CHRISTOPHER MCQUARRIE & LEE CHILD EI: This is your second time working with Tom. After working with him as a writer on Valkyrie, what’s different working with him now as both a writer and director?
CM: Nothing's really different. We just seem to be having one long conversation about movies. Whatever movie we're working on at the time is secondary to that conversation. Casting him as Reacher, or his expressing interest in being Reacher, was a real boon because there was an opportunity for me to bring out a side of Tom that I don't think a lot of people had seen on-screen before.
EI: Such as?
CM: Such as, somebody who's extremely calm and extremely laid back under pressure, somebody who's just cool and very personable. Having Tom be in a movie where he's not under extreme pressure and chasing after something, but actually he's letting the movie come to him - that's something I haven't seen him do much before.
EI: Did you learn anything new about Tom from working with him this time around?
CM: Well, that's just it. Tom is determined to learn from every process. He's not the sort of actor who comes to the movie and says, "This is my thing; this is the way I do it and we're not going to do anything else." He comes to the process wanting to learn, wanting to be directed, and wanting to be taught, and so he's learned from Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Stanley Kubrick, you know, any number of directors you can name. And having absorbed all of that, he brings that as the producer to the movie when he's helping you as a filmmaker. So on the one hand, the producer is bringing you 30 years of experience with some of the greatest living directors of the 20th century, and on the other hand, you have the actor who's saying, "I'm here to help you make your movie. Tell me where to go."
EI: At the core of Jack Reacher, what do you think this film is truly about?
CM: He's about freedom. More importantly, he's about the fact that freedom is not just a right; it's a discipline. Freedom is not something to be taken for granted; it's something to be worked at. THE REST
|
|
|
Post by architect on Jan 17, 2013 21:22:14 GMT -5
Lee Child & Chris McQuarrie On Tom Cruise, Werner Herzog, and Cars Q: Much has been made about how Cruise doesn't bear much physical resemblance to Jack Reacher. Lee, now that you've seen the movie do you still feel he was the right choice to play your character?
LC: I do, actually even more so than I had in theory going into it. Having seen the end product I feel completely vindicated and that there are even dimensions that I hadn't anticipated. Part of the ongoing discussion is, well, who would have been the physical facsimile of Reacher? Well, there isn't anybody. Chris has been saying that not only is there nobody now, there never has been any leading actor that resembles Jack Reacher. And I've thought, why is that? You would think that in a hundred years of cinema history there would have been one of everything. I just think that somehow the camera lens does not relate well to large people. Otherwise we would have large people onscreen. But we don't. If you imagine a scene or still from your favorite movie with one of the actors replaced with a very large person it just doesn't look right. So I started out thinking, "It's a shame we can't get the physical facsimile but Cruise will do a fine job," into thinking, "Perhaps only Cruise could have done a fine job. Maybe if we had found someone who's the right size it wouldn't have worked."
Q: Tom Cruise says that Reacher is an analog character for a digital age. Do you both agree?
LC: Yeah, Reacher is a character rooted in myths and legends that are thousands of years old. So he is very much an old traditional character in the modern age and therefore valuable to the modern age but also bewildered by it and not at home in it.
CM: The thing that I love that really attracts me to this character is that there is an anti-materialist, anti-technology strain that runs through Reacher. He's in search of an Americana that's vanishing. The fact that we're all permanently grafted to the cellphones in our pockets, including myself. I love my iPhone, I love my iPad, my MacBook Air, and I'm the guy you call at 3:00 a.m. to fix your computer, I hate that s**t in movies. I feel like technology really gets in the way of drama and becomes a convenience that undermines dramatic tension and makes things too easy, not to mention the fact that if I ever see a person search Google to answer a question in a movie I walk out of the theater, because I know the filmmaker isn't working very hard. So I love the fact that Reacher is divorced from all that, creatively. But also emotionally. I think consciously or subconsciously everybody would like to live their lives like that for a little while. Or rather, they'd like to think they could. The truth of the matter is, I don't think most people would last 24 hours.
Q: One of things that really struck me is that there's no score during the car chase sequence. That's pretty rare these days.
CM: As with most decisions I make, I'm a fairly binary guy. When I first sat in that Chevelle, it had such an insane motor. You hear that thrum, and I knew right away that I wanted to hear that engine. I also knew that I was going to have a car chase that primarily centers around three different points of view, three different people and three different cars, and that each car would have its own distinct sound. I wanted to emphasize the constant shift in perspective, going inside and outside Tom's car, and that it would result in a key change every time you switch the camera angle and especially when you cut to a different car. Every time I shifted the perspective in the car chase I'm changing the notes. So I knew long before I ever shot the sequence that I was not going to have music. What I was fearful of was that, once I was done, music would be imposed on me. And the truth of the matter is, the studio watched the movie and they were flipping out over the fact there wasn't music over it. In fact, there are three sequences in the movie that go on for the better part of eight minutes that don't have dialogue: the opening sniper shooting, the car chase, and the final showdown at the quarry at the end of the movie. Those are all things where I didn't consciously set out to do that, but when I found myself writing for pages at a time without dialogue, I didn't allow myself to get uncomfortable either. If something didn't need to be said, then I wouldn't have it be said. THE REST
|
|
|
Post by architect on Jan 17, 2013 21:29:20 GMT -5
For McQuarrie, making the 'Jack Reacher' meant sleepless days and nights "Tom had to be out by Thanksgiving [2011] because he had to start promoting 'Mission: Impossible.' So we had a compressed schedule to allow us to let Tom leave before that date. As a result, Rosamund's schedule was spread out all over the place in order to accommodate that."
Then, news of Ms. Pike's pregnancy meant she had to be finished by Dec. 7, further complicating matters. That led to 24-hour days -- literally, sometimes -- for Mr. McQuarrie and his star-producer-stunt car driver, Mr. Cruise.
"Tom and I would work first unit all day and then we'd go out with the second unit at night and shoot the car chase and then roll back into the first unit the following morning with a break of about sometimes as little as a 20-minute car ride between the two units."
"You're kind of getting by on sheer momentum," said the bespectacled director, clad that day in a blue shirt, gray V-neck sweater, navy jacket and jeans, his thick hair brushed up and away from his forehead.
"There's a real energy you have when you're making a movie, but the truth of the matter is, you can only work at that level when everybody's making the same movie. ... I was physically exhausted throughout the making of my first film because I was dealing with a specific sort of resistance on that movie. There was real collaborative friction."
That meant questioning and reinventing the plan almost daily and finding the movie as he went.
"With this movie, I had a partner, we saw completely eye to eye and that made it a lot easier," he said of Mr. Cruise. "So, when you went to work, you were just excited about what you were doing."
The grueling schedule was tolerable because he knew it would end and his body could and would collapse. "I got home from Pittsburgh looking forward to that collapse and the day after I got home, at about 3 o'clock in the afternoon, I was with my wife and my two daughters, we were at a horseback riding lesson. I could feel it coming on. I could feel my brain just starting to atrophy," he said.
He figured he would go home at 5 p.m. and sleep for 72 hours. Instead, one of the girls was thrown from a horse and she landed in the hospital for two days and home from school for two weeks.
Plans to rest after editing "Jack Reacher" were [also] interrupted by a call from Mr. Cruise in London, asking him to lend a hand with the screenplay for "All You Need Is Kill."
So it turns out there is no, or little, rest for Oscar-winning screenwriter. Mr. McQuarrie . . . THE REST
|
|
|
Post by architect on Jan 22, 2013 21:04:42 GMT -5
Chris McQuarrie enlists Tom Cruise for big-screen incarnation of Jack Reacher Cruise was originally attached to the project as a producer. It wasn't until McQuarrie sat in with him on production meetings for Mission: Impossible—Ghost Protocol that the actor revealed he was interested in the part. Having worked together on several projects, including Ghost Protocol and Valkyrie, McQuarrie felt confident about directing one of the biggest stars in the world. "It's not like an episode of 'The Tudors' where Henry VIII is telling you he likes your house and he's really telling you to move out."
McQuarrie praises Cruise's commitment to his work. "He's one of us, he's very much a filmmaker. There's a perception of Tom as somebody who is more concerned with making Tom Cruise movies than with making movies. The truth is quite the opposite. He's there to serve the filmmaker. I've witnessed that with four other directors now, I've watched the way he supports and encourages them—challenges them, definitely. But above all he's there to make their movie."
Reacher is very different from the typical Cruise role. McQuarrie gave this approach to the actor: "I said, 'Tom, look, in every movie you've done you play a character who's under extreme pressure. Reacher is someone who does not experience pressure. Is that the sort of character you're interested in playing?' And Tom looked at me and just sort of relaxed into the idea. I think Reacher was someone that he had been longing to play, someone who is more akin to who he is in a difficult situation."
McQuarrie found himself adopting aspects of Reacher's character as well. "There are moments in the story when Reacher's not in control," the director says. "But even in those moments he knows exactly how he's going to respond. He has a plan. And all filmmaking is, when it's done correctly, is that you have a plan. You have contingencies, reserves, backups, and in a worst-case scenario, compromises. But you're always ready for chaos, and that's Reacher in a nutshell."
THE REST
|
|
|
Post by architect on Jan 22, 2013 21:08:06 GMT -5
Rosamund Pike, is a classically trained Brit skilled in blockbusters British actress Rosamund Pike has quietly become the woman who gives blockbusters their brains.
The beauty who co-stars with Tom Cruise in “Jack Reacher,” which opened last Friday, has previously busted chops as a sexy villainess in the 2002 James Bond flick “Die Another Day” and faced off against the Rock in “Doom.”
Pike, a classically trained, London-bred daughter of concert musicians and opera performers, performed with Britain’s National Youth Theatre as a teen. She built a solid Shakespearean background even before leaving high school.
“I’ve loved doing those action films,” says Pike, 33. “They’ve provided me with great experiences and opportunity.
“But I would argue actually that ‘Jack Reacher’ is not a classic action film ... and a lot of that has to do with the way Tom approaches it.”
“When Tom does something that can be perceived as an action film, he does it quite differently,” she says. “Jack is the polar opposite of James Bond. It’s like comparing an Aston Martin with a Lear Jet: they’re both very expensive, but very different machines.” THE REST
|
|
|
Post by architect on Jan 22, 2013 21:11:07 GMT -5
Werner Herzog: I was bound to team with Cruise Werner Herzog says it is “logical” that Tom Cruise wanted to work with him. He has explained they have a lot in common when it comes to their working methods.
"I was approached by the director and Tom Cruise. They wanted me. I think it's a logical idea because I've done parts before where I played really dysfunctional and outrageous and dangerous characters, like in Harmony Korine's Julien Donkey Boy, and because of that and other films they were interested in me,” he explained. “And I liked them for their professionalism and commitment – things that I prize myself."
Werner enjoyed working on Jack Reacher, which is directed by Christopher McQuarrie. He insists he wasn’t intimidated by the big budget movie, as he has been involved in a series of impressive productions during his career.
"No, the character and nature of a film is not necessarily related to the budget,” he replied when asked if he ever thought about how much money had been spent on the movie. “And by the way, I have made bigger films myself than Jack Reacher, not in terms of money spent – money is not the best indicator of intensity. The production value – if you think of how it registers on the screen, when you look, for example, at Fitzcarraldo, there is much more production value on the screen than in most Hollywood films.” THE REST
|
|
|
Post by architect on Jan 23, 2013 22:24:43 GMT -5
Jack Reacher: Rosamund Pike interview Rosamund Pike was midway through her screen test to play opposite Tom Cruise in Jack Reacher, the film version of Lee Child’s thriller One Shot, when she became aware of whispering in the background.
Peering into the darkness, she saw Cruise talking to the film’s director, Christopher McQuarrie. ‘I didn’t think twice about it,’ she says. ‘I just said, “I’m sorry, could you not talk during the take?”’
This was greeted by a stunned silence. As she realized afterwards, people don’t often tell Tom Cruise to be quiet, especially if they’re hoping to play his co-star in a £50 million blockbuster.
‘What’s more,’ she adds, ‘because I was nervous, I came across like this rather fierce teacher.’
Something plainly worked, though. A few days later Cruise called her to say she’d got the part. Or rather, he tried to. But by then Pike was in a club in Ibiza with her phone turned off . . . THE REST
|
|
|
Post by architect on Jan 23, 2013 22:27:27 GMT -5
David Oyelowo Talks The '70s Influences Of 'Jack Reacher' Q: What was it like working with Chris McQuarrie?
A: We talked a lot. That's one of the things I loved about the film – the collaborative element of it. I talked about the car chase. We referenced films like "The French Connection," "Bullitt," "Seven-Ups." In the relationship between Tom and Rosamund Pike, we referenced "Notorious," "North by Northwest." There's a little bit of "All the President's Men" in there. We talked about the tone, the look, the films from the seventies. We wanted, for instance, in the car chase, that it not be very cutty, where you can't tell what is going on but it's somehow exciting. The narrative is still being driven forward in that eight minutes of car chase, and that's very old school. We didn't want to patronize the audience. We wanted them to feel like they were right alongside Jack Reacher trying to figure the whole thing out.
Q:Was there anything you referenced specifically in your performance?
A: "All the President's Men" is a favorite film of mine anyway. In Redford and Hoffman, they're not detectives but they are on a trail, they are fastidious, they are on a hunt for information. That was a film that I certainly referenced. The thing about our film is that Chris so got the tone of the book right. This isn't usually the case – usually the book is so different from the film that it becomes counterproductive to read the book. But in this, the book became a very good resource for me in terms of film.
Q: Was there anything about "Jack Reacher" that surprised you?
A: You know, what surprised me was, you hear all these rumors and legends of Tom Cruise doing his own stunts. And in the past I was always like, "Yeah right that's a publicity stunt." But anybody who sees this film and sees this car chase – he is in every frame of any driving and he is driving that car. And because he is driving that car it meant that I had to be driving my car chasing him. We wanted to shoot it in a way that didn't feel cutty and made you feel like you were right there in the car with us. Audiences are very savvy these days, they can tell when we do a cut, because they will notice it's a stunt driver. But we are doing all the driving in that scene and that really surprised me. I did not think that, when I saw it on the page, I anticipated a lot more time with me sitting in the trailer while my stunt driver did the driving. But I was there the whole time. That was a pleasant surprise. THE REST
|
|
|
Post by architect on Jan 23, 2013 22:32:52 GMT -5
`Jack Reacher` director bonded with Tom Cruise over vintage cars Los Angeles: Before signing Tom Cruise for his forthcoming movie `Jack Reacher`, director Christopher Mcquarrie says he bonded with the Hollywood star over vintage cars, especially his Cadillac.
"I drove up in this old Cadillac that I`ve had since I was a young single guy. My car was in the shop, so it was either my wife`s minivan or this 1964 Cadillac convertible. Tom asked if he could look at the motor and pointed out that there was a wire that needed some work... we chatted all afternoon," McQuarrie said in a statement.
Cruise has fond memories of the meeting too.
"Yeah, he had this great car," Cruise said in a statement, adding: "I had been a fan of his since `Usual Suspects` and we just started talking about cars and films, about cinematography, performance and structure. We just hit it off." THE REST
|
|