The P3 Update Magazine Blog

Just heard from a friend who’s at Cannes and saw Che, the epic film biography of the Latin American revolutionary Che Guevara, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, directed by Steven Soderbergh.

As my friend said, “It’s no Ocean’s Eleven type  light-hearted movie.” He’s not kidding. The two-part saga runs four hours, 30 minutes, with an intermission and is almost entirely in Spanish. It’s also shot digitally. But then maybe only someone like Soderbergh, who won the Palme d’Or back in ’89 for Sex, Lies and Videotape, would follow up the frothy success of  Ocean’s Thirteen with a serious look at an asthmatic Marxist revolutionary.

It stars Benicio Del Toro, the Oscar-winning co-star of Soderbergh’s Traffic, as Guevara,  and the two films are titled The Argentine and Guerrilla. Matt Damon, one of the stars of the Ocean’s Eleven franchise, also appears. The director gave a press conference about the film and smartly defended both his choice of language - “You can’t make a film with any level of credibility in this case unless it’s in Spanish,” he noted, and the film’s length and format -  “I find it hilarious that most of the stuff being written about movies is how conventional they are, and then you upset people if something’s not conventional.” My friend said it also played without any credits at all – either at the start or end of the film. Whatever the reaction in the U.S., it’s got to be one of the more interesting and provocative films to surface this year, cementing Soderbergh’s rep as one of the most versatile directors in the world.

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By Dyana Carmella

According to what I’ve been hearing (and reading), The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) and the studios are approaching the end of a deal that could lead to a new prime time TV contract. They’re apparently following the footsteps of the Writers Guild, which helped to conclude the 100-day strike that drastically hurt our industry. In the AFTRA deal, residual payments for actors would increase when their movies and TV shows are sold online. This would create a payment method for content that is now downloaded for free.

Since content distribution is rapidly moving toward the Web, any compensation opportunity is going to be sought after. I’m surprised it has taken this long for people to realize what’s going on over the Web and I’m very hopeful that this is resolved quickly, so everyone can get back to work.

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by Iain Blair

I met Bob Marley in London back in the day – I still have a great autographed photo from him on my wall – I went to many of his shows, and as a big fan I’ve always wondered why no one ever made a film about him. So, I was thrilled to hear that Martin Scorsese planned to do a biopic of the late great reggae artist this year.

But now, the Oscar-winning director has pulled out from doing what was the authorized Bob Marley biopic ( which is not to be confused with another Marley project in the works, the Weinstein Co.’s unauthorized biopic), apparently due to scheduling conflicts. Scorsese has several film projects lined up, including Shutter Island, with Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo, a possible Teddy Roosevelt biopic and a documentary on another late great musician, George Harrison. The good news on the Marley front is that the film is now being directed by Jonathan Demme, Oscar-winner for Silence of he Lambs, and a big music fan and music video vet. The film is still expected to be released as planned on Feb. 6, 2010, marking the 65th anniversary of Marley’s birth.

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 By Iain Blair
Was hanging out with legendary costume designer Jim Acheson who was in town for a brief visit en route to New Orleans, where he’s giving the keynote speech to the Costume Society of America. Jim has won three Oscars - for “Dangerous Liaisons,” “The Last Emperor” and “Restoration,” and he also designed all the costumes for all three “Spider-Man” blockbusters. For the last few years he’s been living in Wellington, New Zealand - “so it’s quite a culture shock coming back to LA” -  and tells me he just completed “The Laundry Warrior” down there. “It’s a ninja western set in 1875, and it stars Geoffrey Rush, Kate Bosworth and Danny Huston,” he said. “Originally we were going to shoot it in New Mexico last year, but it was cheaper to do it in New Zealand and we did the whole thing in a studio in Auckland, and it’s all green screen and CGI. It’s very poetic and looks amazing, and was directed by first-timer Sng Moo Lee.”

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By Iain Blair

Went to see the new, highly anticipated Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull on the Paramount lot last weekend. The screening was -surprise, surprise – packed, and there was a genuine ripple of excitement running through the audience as the movie started with a bang (a crazy car chase through the desert). But the film, set in 1957 and finally coming to theatres 19 years after Indy’s last adventure, sadly ran out of gas, despite endless -and often highly contrived - fights and chases. The script is convoluted and cliched and WAY too talky. All the older leads (Harrison Ford and Karen Allen in particular) predictably seemed to be shot through hundreds of jars of vaseline and layers of gauze to mask their real age. As for newcomer Shia LeBeouf, he makes a Marlon Brando-style intro in leathers on a motorbike, but he’s no Brando! It’ll make a fortune (probably) but it’s a big disappointment.

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by Iain Blair
The VFX biz is so competitive and over the years many companies have dropped by the way. But CIS is definitely flourishing, thanks to high quality work and canny management decisions. Founded back in 1984, CIS is one of the industry’s most respected visual effects facilities and in early 2008, the company expanded by acquiring Rainmaker Visual Effects and is now comprised of CIS Hollywood, CIS Vancouver and CIS London. Recently, CIS Hollywood was the sole VFX vendor on “Leatherheads,” completing 237 effects shots that included stadium shots, crowd replications, environmental clean up (building, tree and pole removals) and set extensions. Even if the film didn’t do great in the box office, the FX were impressive.

Meanwhile, up in Vancouver, Dennis Hoffman, a 20-year production veteran, has been named Senior Vice President and General Manager of CIS Vancouver. He comes with a great pedigree, as he was formerly Vice President/Head of Production at Digital Domain, Vice President/Executive Producer at Dream Quest Images and Vice President/Head of Production at Cinesite. CIS Vancouver is hard at work doing FX for a bunch of upcoming releases, including “Tropic Thunder,” “Changeling,” “Twilight,” “Space Buddies” and “The Nutcracker.” The early buzz on “Tropic Thunder,” the war comedy starring Ben Stiller, Tom Cruise, Robert Downey Jr. and Matthew McConaughey, is very strong.

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 by Iain Blair 
Chatting with Mo Henry, an old friend and Hollywood’s reigning Queen of Negative Cutting, (her credits read like a TOP 100 movies list  – everything from Spider-Man and Harry Potter to Shrek…)  who’s crazed working on “The Dark Night,” the new Batman out in July. She told me that director Chris Nolan is doing it all “the old-school way – no digital dailies, and I’m cutting neg the old-fashioned way too. There’s no DI and no fixing stuff in post.”  Another very unusual thing – Mo’s cutting half the film on 35mm while the other half’s being done on IMAX and then the two halves will be married seamlessly. “The editing crew’s just amazing and it looks fantastic – people will definitely comment on just how beautiful the film looks,” she adds. She also told me that Heath Ledger is “incredibly scary and disturbing” as The Joker. “What a great loss to cinema.”

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 by Jim Thompson

Digital Hollywood is back in Hollywood with a slew of conference that addresses the future of entertainment. One of my favorite sessions was “The New Hollywood Equation – Content owners, New Platforms, Agents & Commerce.” This session took a look at new distribution channels for dealing with the next generation of Hollywood.

Needless to say, Internet distribution was the core topic. “Economics is the essence of our existence,” said Michael Jay Solomon, President, Solomon Entertainment Enterprises and former president of Warner Bros. International Television. “Right now the internet doesn’t find enough revenue to make it viable.”

But, the consensus is that is all going to rapidly change, as advertisers target Internet users to get their message across. “Everyone is going to work extremely hard to stay ahead of the trends,” said David Brooks, director/editor. He also said the studios will benefit from “…those executives that know how to put movies on iPods.”

This was a terrific first day session for Digital Hollywood.

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 By Iain Blair

Years ago I met David Lean at the Bel Air Hotel, where he always loved to stay. The genius behind such masterpieces as Lawrence of Arabia, The Bridge on the River Kwai, and Dr. Zhivago was fascinating to speak with about making all these classics and how Hollywood had changed. He was still determined to make another epic, Nostromo, based on the Conrad novel. Sadly, he died before he was able to get the project funded and off the ground, but his legacy lives on. So it’s appropriate that the current BritWeek celebration of all things British – from comedy to movies and music – is honoring Lean with a gala tribute. And if you’ve never seen any of his earlier B&W work, such as his 1946 version of Great Expectations, check it out.

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 By Iain Blair

Went to see Iron Man with a friend who worked on it, and all the early buzz is right on the money, something they know all about. The budget was a reported whopping $175 million. It was way better than your average comic-book-to-movie extravaganza. Although it seems that Robert Downey Jr., 43, is a bit too old for the title role, his age and world-weary look actually work for him and the character, and the scenes with Gwyneth Paltrow were terrific. The movie opens with a great action sequence set in Afghanistan that was actually shot near Lone Pine in the Eastern Sierras, according to my friend. He also shared how at first Jeff Bridges drove everyone mad over the way his bald head should have looked. They tried everything from bald caps to CGI but in the end, Jeff went back to basics: he just shaved it, he was happy, and was “the nicest person in the world” to work with. All the VFX by ILM, the Orphanage, and a bunch of other houses are first-rate, and the film is a great ride.

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