Tema: La fuente de la vida (Darren Aronofsky, 2006)

Iniciado por Grubert

De todas formas, el propio Aronofsky dice que ha hecho de la necesidad virtud. En la versión inicial, tenían previsto rodar megabatallas épicas entre los conquistadores españoles y el ejército maya. Pero como desde entonces han salido películas con grandes batallas de masas (Las dos torres, Troya, el Rey Arturo...), ahora ya no tiene sentido seguir por ahí. Por lo cual la batalla se centrará en la lucha del protagonista contra una fuerza que le supera de lejos en número.

Ya. La verdad es que después de leer tu aclaración me he quedado mucho más tranquilo respecto del resultado final (a fin de cuentas, a quién le apetecía ver las megabatallas esas). Ojalá vuestra confianza esté justificada y salga un peliculón.

A Reincarnation Story That Won't Stay Dead
By DAVID CARR

Published: March 20, 2005


MONTREAL

INSIDE a giant warehouse ringed by trailers and generators on the outskirts of this frozen city, dozens of Mayan warriors stood ready, all armed with spears. The polyglot atmosphere on the movie set thickened at every turn: bare-bottomed men who spoke Mayan received directorial instructions in Spanish from Americans who also have enough French to make nice with the local crew of "The Fountain."

The movie is a science-fiction epic that spans three historical periods and rides on a bit of time travel. It is directed by the Brooklyn-born Darren Aronofsky, who came to out of nowhere with the mathematics-themed thriller "Pi" and followed up with the addiction drama "Requiem for a Dream," both of which were produced with a lot of moxie and very little money and played to major critical acclaim. Backed by Warner Brothers, "The Fountain" was supposed to be Mr. Aronofsky's breakout studio movie, with a budget approaching $100 million and Brad Pitt in a lead role. But just weeks before it was scheduled to shoot in 2002, with crew and actors already ensconced in Australia, Mr. Pitt abandoned the project for "Troy," saying he had issues with the script. In Hollywood, that generally would be the end of the story.

It was a crushing disappointment for Mr. Aronofsky; he vividly remembers flying back to Australia from Los Angeles to tell the crew that the film had collapsed. But his refusal to let go of a project he had been working on for years, along with surprisingly durable support from Warner, means the movie is back, albeit with a reduced vision. "The Fountain," which is about the search for eternal life, seems to have its own grip on the concept.

"For four or five months, I tried to find something else," Mr. Aronofsky said, working a salad in his trailer during a lunch break. "But every time I started to circle a new idea, I realized I was closer to making 'The Fountain' than any of those other films."

So Mr. Aronofsky continued to push his improbable epic, even though Warner offered him the opportunity to direct a number of large films, including "Batman Begins" (which eventually went to another sophisticated young director, Christopher Nolan.)

"How many different projects was he offered?" said Jeff Robinov, Warner's president of production. "But he came back to me and said, 'I want to make my movie - what can I do to make that happen?'" Mr. Aronofsky whittled his budget to $35 million, replaced Mr. Pitt with Hugh Jackman of "X-Men" fame, and, finally, the movie was his to make.

With his fleur-de-lis baseball cap and wispy beard, Mr. Aronofsky, 35, could be one of the French-Canadian grips if he were not quietly running the show. On set, the project did not have the feel of a movie saved from turnaround - it felt more like a caper. During a fight scene, a chunk of Mr. Jackman's beard was ripped away and the entire crew, including Mr. Aronofsky, scanned the ground, trying to distinguish the gray wisp from the abundant moss.

"The beard has been found!" one of the grips shouted triumphantly. "The beard has been found!" came back a mock joyful chorus from the rest of the crew.

Mr. Aronofsky has been making films with the same hardy band of familiars for 10 years, and now they are working with all the fancy toys and support that go with big studio work. Their project is very ambitious: "The Fountains" is a love story that spans 1,000 years as a man searches for a cure for his terminally ill wife.

On the set, Mr. Jackman, cast as a Spanish conquistador in the 1500's for a portion of the film, crept down a high-walled corridor near a Mayan temple with two soldiers behind him. Jungle vegetation hung everywhere and mist machines overhead made sure everything was dank. Mr. Aronofsky gave a signal and suddenly the warriors were streaming into the scene, overwhelming Mr. Jackman as he flailed at the mob. Once subdued, he was hoisted on their shoulders to be presented to the Mayan spiritual leader who was ensconced at the top of the temple. Mr. Jackman, who spent the day getting the stuffing knocked out of him in take after take, said it was all terrific fun.

Mr. Aronofsky, staring down at a videoboard in his hand to see a playback, said: "We put a lot of time and money into this shot because it is the third scene in the movie. I have been thinking about this scene for six years." In his trailer during a break in shooting, he continued: "It has been birth, death, rebirth for this film, which is interesting because it is very much what the movie is all about as well. Each time the movie has died and come back, it has come back leaner and meaner. What we shot this morning used to be a $15 million scene."

Mr. Aronofsky is making do, something he is more than used to. "Pi," a percussive black-and-white portrait of a not-so-beautiful mind, was made for $60,000, with his best friend as the star while his mom managed the catering operation. "Requiem for a Dream," a portrait of relationships addled and then curdled by drugs, cost $5 million.

"Pi" earned Mr. Aronofsky the Sundance directing award in 1998, and Ellen Burstyn received an Oscar nomination for her role in "Requiem." So the filmmaker's currency grew to the point where a number of studios and producers were knocking on his door.

"The fact that we're in Montreal and that we have huge sets and a big crew that can do almost anything is different," he said. "But I end up spending my days doing exactly the same things, worrying about the same issues and focusing on the same things."

And, he said, the stakes are actually no higher than they were before: "There's always been a lot of pressure and tension on the line. If 'Pi' didn't work out, I have no idea what my career would be. I don't think I would have gotten another shot at it. If `Requiem' didn't work out, they would have called me a 'one-hit wonder with a sophomore slump.' "

Mr. Aronofsky wrote "The Fountain" with Ari Handel, a long-time associate who happens to have a Ph.D. in neuroscience."We spent time walking around the streets of Manhattan for two years," Mr. Aronofsky said. "It took us a long time to write. We basically talked story, and then I would go off and disappear and write, come back and then we'd talk about it."

The outcome, a love story with scenes that go off into outer space, is not exactly "Hitch." "It is about a man's search for the fountain of youth at the core," Mr. Aronofsky explained. "It's about a man who's searching for eternal life whose wife is dying, who comes to terms with his own mortality and comes to terms with his own life and his own existence through trying to save his wife. It is not that simple, but it is true in a way that attracted me."

Mr. Jackman, sitting on a canvas chair after his morning of getting pounded on by the Mayan extras, Mr. Jackman said the rigors of the project suited him: "It is the hardest job I've worked and by far the most satisfying. Darren wants blood. As a director, he is very much inside my head."

Certainly, Mr. Aronofsky and his collaborators - including the producer, Eric Watson, and the cinematographer, Matthew Libatique, with whom he has worked in the past - have taken pains to bring authenticity to the sprawling project. Some 20 of the 70 extras cast as Mayan warriors are Mayan. And the day job of the man cast as Mayan spiritual leader is, well, a Mayan spiritual leader. When the Mayans got off the plane from Guatemala in Montreal, it took them 20 minutes to get over the fact that they could see their breath.

There will be lots more shooting, to capture Spain and Central America in the 1500's, a present-day American city, and then a trip out to a nebula near Orion anywhere from 150 to 500 years into the future.

But it's not as esoteric as it sounds, Mr. Aronofsky said: "There's major best sellers that are about living forever. It's the biggest theme in our society. If you look at all the extreme makeovers and all that stuff, it's all about staying young. This movie taps into a lot of those themes."

fotos

Lo presentan hoy en la Comic-Con de San Diego.

The Fountain-The story of one man's 1000-year struggle to save the woman he loves. As a 16th century conquistador, a modern-day scientist, and a 26th century astronaut, he searches for the secret to eternal life. Join writer-director Darren Aronofsky (pi, Requiem for a Dream) and Rachel Weisz (The Mummy, Constantine) for a preview and discussion of this truly unique science-fiction/fantasy film.

Qué ganitas le tengo a esta película.

Su estreno en España?


Un saludo.

En imdb sólo pone que en Australia el 22 de diciembre. A ver si aquí llega también para navidad más o menos.

Pí aún no la he visto aunque la tengo en la colección, la que sí que he visto es Requiem por un sueño y me sorprendió muchísimo, la considero como una de las joyitas de mi colección,así que espero con espectación ésta peli, además me gusta el reparto. Puede salir algo interesante,también me parece un proyecto arriesgado. Ya veremos, falta muuuuuuuuucho.

Aintitcool estuvo en Comic-Con:
click

Entrevista con Aronofsky

Entrevista con Rachel Weisz

Entrevista con Geof Isherwood, creador de los storyboards:

[quote]NRAMA: The Fountain must have been one of your more exciting projects.

GI: The Fountain was definitely much more involved and a much more interesting project than a lot of them, true. Unfortunately, most of the others didn’t really come out too well for various reasons. Of course, movies are such big productions so it’s not usually one person that is going to make or break it unless you’re the lead actor or director or something.

[...]
In terms of The Fountain, my work was almost entirely storyboards but I did a couple of costume changes for Hugh Jackman. Darren [Aronofsky] also had a couple other people doing them. But when they came here, because of the new and different sets, a lot of scenes were redone. I probably did about half the movie because they wanted to storyboard every scene.

NRAMA: How was it working with Darren Aronofsky?

GI: He was very specific. When we would sit down, he’d have like an overhead blueprint diagram to show where the actors would be and the camera positions. He had a shot list because he shot it in a very specific way. He was limiting himself to certain camera angles to create a specific look for the movie so I would follow that.

NRAMA: Did he give you like thumbnails or just describe it to you?

GI: No he would go with the shot list and this blueprint and then from there I would just draw. He didn’t do thumbnails per se. He liked fairly tight and finished drawings. Here and there if he wanted suggestions, he would say, “If you have an idea let me see it.” He was very open to that. To me, the storyboard process is all preliminary anyway. In the sense that once you get on the set, he might see something else and change it. Storyboards are mostly to be used by the director but also for other departments so when they get to the set they’ll say “Ok, we only need to build so much for a set because we’re not going to see half of it.”

NRAMA: Can you tell me what some of your suggestions were?

GI: There’s a big scene of Jackman and a couple of other conquistadors fighting against a whole horde of Mayan warriors. That was a scene which was rewritten a few times. I storyboarded it about three or four times because it was the most complex scene in the movie. There were a lot of visual effects shots involved. The storyboards are especially important for the visual effects because they really need to know what the frame is going to be. I was like; maybe he should do this instead of that because it would be more logical for him to be reacting naturally to what the other warriors are doing. Darren may write the scene out in ten or 15 minutes or even a half an hour. But when I’m working on a scene for day after day I’m thinking about it a hundred times more. So lots of little things are going to happen in my mind and I can say “hey what if this could happen or that?” It’s just a matter of spending more time with something and getting flashes. I guess I’ll see how it comes out in the end but I hope some of those will come through.

Also in a couple other scenes I had the thought of them playing a little more dramatically but staying within his shooting style and he liked the way those played out.

NRAMA: Was anyone aware of your comic book background?

GI: I showed him my stuff when I first went in but I don’t know if he was really aware of it at the time. The local art directors, that set up the interviews, all know because they’re familiar with me. But by and large when I go in for an interview film people are usually not up on all that.

NRAMA: Did you see much of the work that Kent Williams was doing for The Fountain graphic novel?

GI: Yeah I saw a lot of that. Kent was continually emailing Darren pages of stuff and he had them printed up and put up on his wall. So every so often, when I would go in to see him and talk over stuff I would be looking over Kent’s work. As the actual movie progressed it was quite startlingly different from what Kent was doing but he had told Kent to just go with it.

NRAMA: Do you know if your work is going to be included in any behind the scenes stuff for The Fountain?

GI: I know there were a couple other people videotaping everybody on the crew including myself. They were doing a “Making of The Fountain” for the DVD and there are a number of shots of me either talking with Darren or doing some drawing. I was in the office with Darren once and one of them was in there filming something and I said “Stop, wait a minute, don’t go there, come stand around over here and you’re going to get a better angle.” Darren was looking at me crooked and said, “Who’s the director around here?’” I said “Watch, you’ll see. They’ll get a nice angle on this.” I think that’s the one danger film directors have when they come across people who’ve done comics for a long time because as a comic artist, we have to be everyone on the crew. Especially when working for Marvel, you get a plot but you really have to break that down and tell the story and often have to re-jig the plot to make it fit. We’re the actors, the production designer, set designer, costume designer, you’re everybody. Doing work on a movie is much more limited in scope but also much more intense. But usually it’s more of a sketchy nature and I don’t have to bring as much detail into it. Especially on concept drawings and things like that because they’re more on a preliminary basis and they’re quite subject to change so it’s not really cost effective it to spend three or four days doing a picture and then have somebody in two seconds say “Nah, that’s not what I want.” I really enjoy doing movie work as well because of the variety you get.

NRAMA: It doesn’t seem like you’ve worked with directors as interesting as Aronofsky before.

GI: I met Bryan Singer very briefly because he was going to direct Confessions of a Dangerous Mind in Montreal. I met with him a couple of times and went over a couple of scenes. There was a scene where Chuck Barris is supposedly an assassin and is escaping in East Berlin so he wedges his car in an alley and tosses a hand grenade so it explodes. Bryan had already left and gone back to LA at the time so I was in talking with the producers about this scene and they told me that I had to take that scene out with that car blowing up or they were going to take the cost of that scene out of my salary. I told them I couldn’t do that because I would have to charge them more. They fell out of their chair; they just couldn’t believe that some local yokel was talking to some LA big shot like that.

NRAMA: How does that compare to Aronofsky?

GI: He knew what he wanted and that was in his favor. The movie was originally going to be shot in Australia with Brad Pitt and for various reasons that didn’t work out. He obviously knew this material inside and out so that’s why I was a little surprised when he said “If you have any ideas let me know.” I figured he had it absolutely down cold. But when it came to the filming from what I could see it was all done in a very orderly manner. No panic or anything like that, it was very calm on the set, which is the way things should be. I noticed he did shoot a lot of takes for each shot. That was interesting because some directors would only do two or three but he would sometimes do 15, 17 or even 20 takes. Though some shots he only did a couple but for others he did an awful lot of them. I had a feeling he was doing that to give his editor choices. He would let Hugh and Rachel [Weisz] do the scene over and over again to let them kind of feel out how it should go but I don’t remember him giving them a lot of direction.

Web de la peli :?

Dios que mareo!!

De momento solo es un salvapantallas... :8))

wo wo wou!!!

Lo de la web es muy tentador...esos colores, ese escaso movimiento...esa musiquilla...ese nada!!!

Madre mía, que de ganas q le tengo a esa peli...

para abrir un poco más vuestro apetito...el mío lo ha abierto...y de paso reflotar el hilo, aki van algunas imagenes nuevas:









Vaya barbas lleva el amigo Darren...querrá hacerle la competencia a Jackman?? jeje!











GRANDE DARREN!!!!!!

Yo no consigo er las fotos...

mmmmmmmmmm

prueba directamente en la WEB de JACKMAN

:afro

La novela gráfica se ha retrasado, ¿no? Porque yo no la encuentro por ninguna parte. Igual quieren sacarla al mismo tiempo que se estrene la peli...

el futuro,los mayas,una nave q es un arbol,un libro raro...parece regreso al futuro.

el futuro,los mayas,una nave q es un arbol,un libro raro...parece regreso al futuro.

Quiero creer q eso no es una critica )

Volviendo a la peli en si, que ganas de verla y q miedo a que me decepcione.+

Me parece lo mäs raro q he visto en mucho tiempo,pero es de aranofski...se lo de el reparto fallido con brad pitt y cate blanchett,pero me convencen mas jackman y wiesz,q era lo mejor de constantine.espero ansioso verla porque lo q han hablado acerca de su trama es muy inquietante.he visto fotos de jackman en un juego de pelota maya?No se, la verdad.

Iniciado por siriusblack1979

se lo de el reparto fallido con brad pitt y cate blanchett,pero me convencen mas jackman y wiesz

Para mi el binomio ideal sería Hugh Jackman y Cate Blanchett

Rachel Weisz también es un pedazo actriz, donde va a parar.

Iniciado por Sargento McKamikaze

Rachel Weisz también es un pedazo actriz, donde va a parar.

Y que se esté tirando al director también influye lo suyo :8))

Pero eso fue después de la preproducción, según tengo entendido. De todas maneras es una gran elección.

Weisz es una buena actriz, eso no lo dudo (ayer precisamente ví Enemigo a la Puertas), pero sencillamente me gusta mas Blanchett y me parece mejor, que definitivamente no esté en el proyecto no hace que me desinterese en él, por que si espero con ganas la peli es mas por Aronofsky que por sus actores.

Para mi desde el momento en que saltó la noticia de esta película es la película que más espero. Jackman y Weisz me encantan y que decir de Arronofsky me parece un genial director que puede confirmarse como gran director con esta pelicula, aunque me gustaría introducir una pregunta:
Creeís que funcionará bien es taquilla esta pelicula????
Personalmente creo que estamos ante el nacimiento de un relativo fracaso comercial y a la vez una cult . movie tota, como en tantas y tantas ocasiones.
A ver que opinión teneís al respecto.

frikis reunios a ver esta peli...el autoestppista galactico cumplio en eeuu.no me preocupa en absoluto.oeoeoeoeoeoe.