Oscar 2009: Previsões

[Administrator]

A confiança do Meirelles me assusta. Espero que ele, realmente, tenha motivo.

Adaptar Cegueira não me aparenta ser tão simples assim.

[Administrator]

Assisti ao maravilhoso A Família Savage, agora meu TOP de melhor atriz o Oscar 2008 é:

 

Laura Linney (terceira melhor atuação de 2007, perdendo apenas para Ryan Gosling em Lars and the Real Girl e Ashley Judd em Bug)

Marion Cotillard

Julie Christie

Cate Blanchett

Ellen Page

[FeCamargo]

Assisti ao Into The Wild. Mereceu a esnobada... fora que aquelas letras inseridas na tela são provavelmente a coisa mais péssima que vi no cinema em muito tempo. FeCamargo2008-05-10 13:29:32

[Administrator]

É, esse é bem ruim mesmo (e eu também detestei essa bobagem das letras na tela, me lembrou uma novela da Globo - Páginas da Vida, se não me engano ).

[Blood Drink]

Nossa! Também assisti hoje à INTO THE WILD e achei-o sensacional!

O roteiro é brilhante. A direção, espetacular. A montagem é contagiante. A fotografia estupenda. A atuação de Emile Hirsch foi uma esnobada sem motivo, igualmente a do filme, principalmente com o fraquíssimo ATONEMENT em competição.

 

A história é muito triste, principalmente na parte em que o pai dele chora e se joga na rua pela falta do filho, que abandonou tudo e foi embora. Essa relação pai/mãe e filho mexe muito comigo.

Blood Drink2008-05-10 22:33:03

[Blood Drink]

Sem contar a trilha sonora e músicas do filme. Qualquer pessoa com a mínima audição possível prestigia uma trilha dessas... O Oscar deixa mais uma vez a desejar. 

[FeCamargo]

Discordo de todos os pontos, menos da fotografia.

[saulomeri]

Eu gostei de Into the Wild. Bem, não achei nenhuma maravilha, mas deu pro gasto.

 

[Ronny]

Trailer de Vicky Cristina Barcelona, de Woody Allen.

 

http://br.youtube.com/watch?v=XO8x2zu44CE

 

Nenhum diálogo, muito sexo... E Scarlett Johansson e Penelope Cruz partindo pros finalmentes.

[Ronny]

Críticas de Blindness a qualquer momento pipocando na rede. A exibição do filme, em Cannes, ocorreu às 10:00 hrs locais (Paris), 5:00 da manhã no Brasil.

 

Enquanto isso, novas fotos:

 

 

No mais, Philip Seymour Hoffman e Samantha Morton em Synecdoche, NY:

[saulomeri]

Após sessão tensa em Cannes, Meirelles e elenco quebram o gelo em entrevista

O silêncio e o desconforto deixados no ar logo após a sessão para a imprensa de “Ensaio sobre a cegueira”, novo filme de Fernando Meirelles, na manhã desta quarta-feira em Cannes, se desfizeram minutos depois com o início da entrevista coletiva do elenco. O diretor brasileiro foi bastante elogiado pela atriz Juliane Moore - “Quando minha agente disse que eu poderia fazer um filme com o Fernando disse a ela: não brinque comigo!” - e as críticas dos jornalistas não vieram.

Confira a cobertura completa do Festival de Cannes

Galeria de imagens de Cannes 

O mais crítico ou cético parecia ser o próprio brasileiro: “Ainda acho que talvez não seja o melhor filme para abrir o festival”, brincou Meirelles, repetindo o que vem dizendo desde o anúncio da escolha do longa para abrir Cannes. “É um filme indigesto para preceder um jantar.”

De fato, o filme exige estômago. Não só para ultrapassar os primeiros minutos, um tanto truncados, em que um a um os personagens vão ficando misteriosamente cegos, mas para dali em diante suportar a crescente degradação humana dos doentes que são abandonados em um sanatório à própria sorte. O cardápio inclui fezes, urina e restos de comida pelo chão, feridos que, sem auxílio médico, acabam morrendo e precisam ser enterrados pelos próprios internos e uma polêmica - e possivelmente já atenuada - seqüência de estupros coletivos.

Para aprenderem a caminhar como cegos, os atores contaram que usaram vendas para interagirem entre si e saírem à rua. “Quando você está cego, é obrigado a se ver dentro de uma nova perspectiva, e algumas seqüências acabam parecendo comédia”, disse o mexicano Gael García Bernal, espécie de vilão da trama. “Tudo o que eu fazia no começo na tentativa de atuar como cego parecia errado, espero que essas fitas tenham sido destruídas”, brincou.

A cegueira de que trata o filme, no entanto, não é só física, mas como diz Meirelles, “é também psicológica, sociológica, política”, sobre “Como as pessoas vão se relacionar, se organizar quando uma tragédia dessas acontece”.

“Após a destruição causada pelo furacão Katrina (em Nova Orleans, EUA), recebi vários telefonemas de gente falando para eu fazer o filme logo. Mas o Saramago queria que fosse uma alegoria, que não idenficássemos lugar ou período específicos”, afirma o roteirista Don McKellar, responsável por convencer o escritor Saramago a vender os direitos do romance. “Em 1998, quando pensei pela primeira vez em adaptar o livro, tentei pedir ao Saramago pela editora dele, mas ele se recusou. Disse que o cinema destrói a imaginação”, lembrou Meirelles.

Diego Assis, do G1, em Cannes

[Faéu]

Ô meu deus... que será que será....

[Ronny]

Os jornalistas não criticaram o filme, é isso?

[Ronny]

Homens de sorte!

[Beckin]

Algumas criticas :

 

Screendaily

 

"Despite an Awards-worthy turn by Julianne Moore, Blindness is uneven"

 

http://www.screendaily.com/ScreenDailyArticle.aspx?intStoryID=38780

 

Hollywood elsewhere

 

The problem with Fernando Meirelles' Blindness, which screened this morning at the Cannes Film Festival, is that the milieu of the story, which is based on a novel by Jose Saramago, is bleak and confining. It's more than just the milieu, actually. The second and third act of this film delivers a kind of lockdown vibe.

 

Two or three people clapped at the end of the press screening. The reception at the press conference was on the muted side. The movie, I fear, is going to be generally "meh"-ed when it opens, and audiences are almost certainly going to steer clear. I respected Blindness -- I certainly agree with what it's saying -- but it didn't arouse me at all. Opening-night films at big festivals are often underwhelming on this or that level -- bland, suckish, so-so. I'm sorry to be saying what I'm saying as I worshipped Meirelles' City of God and very much admired The Constant Gardener. But the truth is that Blindness is more than a bit of a flub.

http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2008/05/blindness.php

 

The Guardian (essa é bem positiva, acho)

 

Fernando Meirelles has taken Jose Saramago's apocalyptic novel and turned it into a drum-tight thriller that challenges as it chills

 

http://film.guardian.co.uk/cannes2008/story/0,,2279859,00.html

 

 

Beckin2008-05-14 10:38:42

[Ronny]

Crítica positiva do Kirk Honeycutt, do Hollywood Reporter:

 

(...) The film raises any number of issues about governmental panic, social order, the corruption of power and the dangers of conformity. But despite stylistic visual flourishes by the gifted Brazilian director, the film cannot overcome its own coolly cerebral underpinnings.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/awards_festivals/cannes/news/e3i9808673cbfb6ec1febdb25a330ae0944

 

[Administrator]

 

Reações conflitantes, por enquanto. Bem que o Meirelles disse que seria do tipo "ame-o ou odeie-o".

 

Crítica da Variety, não muito positiva:

 

The personal and mass chaos that would result if the entire human race

lost its vision is conveyed with minor impact and an excess of stylish

tics in "Blindness' date='" an intermittently harrowing but diluted take on

Jose Saramago's shattering novel. Despite a characteristically strong

performance by Julianne Moore as a lone figure who retains her

eyesight, bearing sad but heroic witness to the horrors around her,

Fernando Meirelles' slickly crafted drama rarely achieves the visceral

force, tragic scope and human resonance of Saramago's prose. Despite

marquee names, mixed reviews might yield fewer eyes than desired for

this international co-production.

 

 

 

Saramago, who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1998, long resisted

the idea of having his 1995 masterwork (translated from Portuguese into

English in 1997) adapted for the bigscreen. Meirelles, tackling his

second literary property (after 2005's "The Constant Gardener"), has

proven the Portuguese writer's instincts to be sadly correct. A horror

tale, a bleak allegory and a chronicle of human suffering as consoling

as it is devastating, "Blindness" emerges onscreen both overdressed and

undermotivated, scrupulously hitting the novel's beats yet barely

approximating, so to speak, its vision.

 

 

 

A deliberately unspecified but primarily English-speaking city is

experiencing an outbreak of what becomes known as the "white sickness,"

causing stricken individuals to lose their eyesight, seeing nothing but

white rather than darkness. First to succumb is a driver (Yusuke Iseya)

who suddenly goes blind behind the wheel; his condition also afflicts

his wife (Yoshino Kimura), the doctor (Mark Ruffalo) who examines him

and several other patients at the latter's office, just for starters.

 

 

 

The only one who proves inexplicably immune to the rapidly spreading

contagion is the doctor's wife (Moore), who conceals this fact so as to

accompany her husband to the abandoned mental asylum where the blind

are placed under government quarantine. As the wards become crowded

with internees, guarded by soldiers ready to fire at anyone who tries

to escape, "Blindness" paints a despairing picture of humanity under

siege.

 

 

 

Yet where the novel derived its power from a gradual, painstakingly

detailed account of deteriorating conditions inside the prison,

Meirelles resorts to visual shorthand and montage. In a manner more

expedient than plausible, food grows scarce, the corridors become

strewn with human waste and a violent faction, led by one gun-toting

refugee (played by Gael Garcia Bernal), begins demanding payment of the

most humiliating kind from the female internees. Tastefully shot and

staged, the rape scene disturbs but also exemplifies the film's

willingness to flinch from a work that, on the page, is utterly

unflinching.

 

 

 

Burdened with the ability to see the world going blind and mad around

her, the doctor's wife, acting as a stand-in for the audience, takes

violent, decisive action that triggers a breakout from the asylum.

Moore gets ample opportunity to show both unrestrained tears and

clenched resolve as the woman who bravely leads a small group to

freedom, including her husband, the first blind man and his wife, a

beautiful young woman (Meirelles vet Alice Braga) and an old man (Danny

Glover). Latter also provides incessant voiceover narration that,

accompanied by the intrusive, dirge-like wailing of the score, tries in

vain to fill in for the philosophical asides, wry humor and gorgeous

epiphanies of Saramago's voice.

 

 

 

Foregoing the vibrant, furiously overheated visual style he brought to

"City of God" and "The Constant Gardener" (the editing, by "City of

God's" Daniel Rezende, is noticeably less frenzied), Meirelles adopts a

cooler but, in its own way, no less fussy aesthetic. He often floods

the screen in luminous white to mimic the sensation of blindness, at

other times bathing his characters in the stuff so they appear to be,

in one's words, "swimming in milk." This deliberately artificial effect

gives the film a stagy, self-conscious air, a feeling only heightened

by the book-inspired conceit of not giving the characters names.

 

 

 

Tule Peake's production design impresses with the transformation of the

sterile mental ward to squalid ninth circle of hell, and Meirelles'

vision of the outside world, littered with rubbish as extras stagger

blindly about, is no less convincing. Pic was lensed in Ontario, Brazil

and Uruguay, and appropriately enough, the city in which it's set looks

both vaguely familiar and effectively otherworldly.[/quote']

 

Gusmão_Raimundo2008-05-14 12:00:03

[Administrator]

 

14/05/2008 - 11h26

Novo filme de Meirelles não empolga críticos

Da Ansa

 

CANNES, 14 MAI (ANSA) - O filme de abertura do 61º Festival Internacional de Cinema de Cannes e último trabalho do diretor brasileiro Fernando Meirelles, "Blindness" (Cegueira), recebeu poucos aplausos da platéia após a sua projeção.

Em uma sala lotada, jornalistas assistiram ao filme com atenção e de forma silenciosa.

O longa-metragem é uma adaptação do romance "Ensaio sobre a Cegueira", do escritor português laureado com o Prêmio Nobel José Saramago, que mostra a humanidade à beira do desastre após ser acometida por uma epidemia de cegueira.

No elenco do filme estão nomes como Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Danny Glover, Gael García Bernal e a brasileira Alice Braga.

 

Desde o começo afirmo que adaptar Saramago é delicado demais. Mas ainda acredito no filme!

GrackCold2008-05-14 12:06:50

[Ronny]

Já era esperado. O mais curioso é que mesmo quem não gostou, se contém.

Ao menos não houve quem detonasse - não crítico relevante.

 

.....

 

 

Ronny2008-05-14 12:18:15

[thalesgn]

Pevisíveis as críticas, não estava esperando que esse filme fosse universalmente aclamado, pelo menos não do início. Filmar três filmes sucessos de crítica é quase impossível. Mas pelo visto, não é uma bomba, certo?

 

Se bem que eu não espero que o filme seja o carro chefe das premiações de fim de ano.

 

 

[Administrator]

Eu não acho que era esperado. Afinal, se trata de Fernando Meirelles, respeitadíssimo e que exerce uma grande influência sobre a atividade cinematográfica. Pelo material de divulgação, acreditava que, apesar de cético, o filme surpreenderia e seria uma sensação. Pelo visto não.

O que eu tenho lido é que os críticos acharam que não há personalidade. Estranho isso.

[thalesgn]

Não discordo do talento do diretor, mas sempre estranhei que o filme quase não era citado por sites de premiação como o Awards Daily.

 

[Administrator]

Merten tem razão quando fala sobre "tempo de maturação". Ainda mais quando se trata de filmes aparentemente nada fáceis, como Ensaio.

 

[Kate Ryan]

Blindness B+
By Emanuel Levy

Cannes Film Fest 2008--"Blindness,"
Fernando Meirelles' new film, is an honorable and challenging follow-up
to his spectacular debut, "City of God," and the highly accomplished
"The Constant Gardener," both of which were Oscar-nominated.



An ambitious rendition of the best-selling book (of the same title) by
Nobel Prize winner Jose Saramajo, "Blindness" is a timely, socially
significant, and gloomy film that reflects our zeitgeist in the post
9/11. As such, the movie is a most pertinent selection as opening night
of the 61st Cannes Film Festival. Miramax will release the film
domestically and Focus Features internationally in the fall.



"Blindness" is a "perfect fall" picture in more senses than one, the
kind of fare that deserves serious consideration by critics and viewers
(and perhaps Oscar voters as well), even if it doesn't fully fulfill
expectations from such collaborators as author Saramajo, director
Meirelles, screenwriter Don McKellar, and a superlative cast, headed by
two of the best actors working today: Julianne Moore, who carries the
film solidly on her fragile shoulders and Mark Ruffalo.



Thematically, inevitable comparisons will be made with "The Constant
Gardener," Meirelles' 2005 film, which was also a political parable
centering on a troubled marriage, and even more so with Michael
Haneke's superior existential-apocalyptic saga, "Hour of the Wolf,"
which world premiered at the Cannes Festival several years ago, but few
people saw in the U.S. (It was made by Haneke before "Cache" and his
English-speaking remake, "Funny Games").



At once a realistic and a metaphoric, "Blindness" tells the compelling
story of humanity during an epidemic of mysterious blindness, but it
could equally apply to any epidemic, be it AIDS or other lethal virus.
Indeed, at its good moments, which are plentiful, the saga explores
human nature at its most complex and ambiguous, the positive and
negative dimensions brought out by a disastrous crisis, one that leads
to selfishness, opportunism, indifference, and murder, but also
encourages empathy and sympathy, love and understanding—above all the
will to survive and persevere at all costs (and I mean all costs).



Philosophically, "Blindness" raises such significant questions of the
fine line between humanity and inhumanity, order and disorder, or at
what point, individuals cease to behave like human beings and turn into
the kind of animals that are solely concerned with survival.



The film's first reel is nothing short of brilliant, replete with
mesmerizing ideas, images, and sounds. After a series of close-ups of
traffic lights (with red being the most prominent), an overhead shot
reveals a traffic jam with hundreds of cars on busy highways. A sudden
scream of an Asian male while driving, "I am getting blind," leads to
good behavior from a stranger (Don McKellar), who comes to the rescue
with an offer to drive the shocked victim; later, he will be accused of
stealing the Asian's car.

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Significantly, the chaos and later full catastrophe begin suddenly, in
a flash, as one man is instantaneously struck blind, with his whole
world changing into an eerie, milky haze. Finding the right visual
corrals to illuminate the film's central theme, Meirelles, his
brilliant cinematographer Cesar Charlone, and sharp editor Daniel
Rezende often pause, turning the screen into an all-white or all-black
canvas, an imagery that accompanies an interesting argument about our
popular perception of blindness—does it signify whiteness or blackness,
colors and symbols that feature prominently throughout the narrative.



In the first and best act, half a dozen characters are explored in
terms of their status, sight, and vision. With the exception of a
single woman (Julianne Moore), one by one, they lose their eye-sight,
forcing them to encounter the same problems and experience the same
unsettling fate. First, there's the seemingly good Samaritan who gives
the Asian a lift home, then there is a doctor (Mark Ruffalo), an
accountant (Maury Chaykin), a young boy (Mitchell Nye). It's
noteworthy, that the characters have no specific names. They are
identified as "First Blind Man" (Yusuke Iseya), "First Blind Man's
Wife" (Yoshino Kimura), "Woman with Dark Glasses" (Alice Braga), "Man
with Black Eye Patch" (Danny Glover), and "Bertender" (Gael Garcia
Bernal), who becomes the King of Ward Three during the second half of
the story, when all the blind people are quarantined.



As the contagion—now labeled the "White Blindness"—spread, panic and
paranoia set in across the city. The government, ineffectual and not
knowing how to handle such crisis, takes the easy way out: It decides
to round up and quarantine the newly blind within a crumbling,
abandoned mental asylum.



Early on, a big "secret" is revealed (and I am not spoiling anything),
that the doctor's wife is not blind. Despite her husband's fears, she
is not been affected. Loyal and loving, she insists on going with him
to the hospital and later to the asylum, pretending to be blind. Soon,
she becomes not only the eyewitness to the events, but also a guide and
a leader, finding courage and other resources she didn't know she had.
Moore's character is the closest the film has by way of a lead
protagonist and POV: Most of what we see is through her own eyes.



Signs of a loving yet troubled marriage, just like in "The Constant
Gardener," though for a different reason, are disclosed in the first
chapter. The situation becomes more tense and worse, when the doctor
has hard time accepting her, as he says, as his mother or nurse,
anything but a wife. Later, the doctor is caught by his wife having sex
with another blind woman, and still later, all the women, including the
doctor's wife, are requested (actually proffered) to provide sexual
services to the leaders of Ward Three as a condition for getting food,
which is in short supply.



Tale's second section is full of details of the kind of organization
that emerges within the asylum, one with peculiar rules and regulation
as to sanitation, food, relationships, and even music (on AM
radio)—anything that will land the place a semblance of order or
ordinariness, which are of course an impossible tasks.



In time, the doctor's wife leads a makeshift family of seven
individuals on a journey through horror and love, depravity and beauty,
sacrifice and forgiveness, sadomasochism and altruism, and warfare and
wonder, binary concepts that are deliberately juxtaposed and then
vividly illuminated.



We know that it's a matter of time before shotguns are heard, some
victims will carelessly die (they are described by the new blind rulers
as "dead fish," anonymous faces). Suffice is to say that there is an
effort to break out of the hospital and go back into reality, which is
now one huge devastated space, populated by homeless people.



As noted, "Blindness" is a tough and demanding picture, containing some
powerful scenes that are hard to watch. Thought-provoking, the movie
asks without making value judgments viewers to take a stance for
themselves about behavior during extreme crises, and to contemplate on
the dangerous fragility of social order and ultimately the exhilarating
collective spirit of humanity.



Literary Source



In 1995, the acclaimed author Jose Saramago published the novel
"Blindness," an apocalyptic tale about a plague of blindness ravaging
first one man, then a whole city, then the entire globe—with
increasingly devastating fury and speed. Though the story was about a
loss of vision, the book opened the eyes of its readers to a new,
revelatory view of the world.



The book was celebrated by critics as an instant classic, a magnificent
parable about our disaster-prone times and our metaphoric blindness to
our sustaining connections to one another. It became an international
bestseller, and also led, along with an accomplished body of equally
thought-provoking literature, to Saramago receiving the 1998 Nobel
Prize for Literature.

[Administrator]

Awards Daily é um site voltado, principalmente, para o Oscar. Nunca achei que Blindness fosse uma produção voltada para o padrão americano, ainda mais por ter um ar independente. Não acho que esta falta de atenção significava que o filme não seria recebido com alarde.