Contagion: Soderbergh, Winslet/Damon/Fishburne/Cotaillard/Paltrow/Law/etc/etc/etc

Early, early anticipation for this fall 2011 release, because I was an extra in it for two days this week and it sounds pretty exciting. See you in nine months.

Summary:

Well, if you took the breadth and scope of "Traffic" or "Syriana," tidied up the writing, and found a subject matter that terrified you relentlessly for two hours, you'd have something close to "Contagion." Burns, who wrote the script for the previous Soderbergh/Damon collaboration "The Informant," as well as "The Bourne Ultimatum," has clearly done an enormous amount of research, and it's thoroughly, horrifyingly conceivable throughout, but it's also as much about the way that information can spread virally in the Web 2.0 age, as it is about the spread of the virus.

Another day of extra work for me tomorrow. They've filmed everywhere from the murkier parts of the South Side to the poshest suburbs.

Hmmm. This is the first I've heard of this and only from that blurb upthread but sounds sorta promising! My best friend did extra work for years and loved doing it. I always thought it would be pretty interesting.

I made it through Philip Roth's The Humbling between makeup and shooting two weeks ago. I'm bringing Indignation tomorrow. Went in with low expectations, will probably be out of focus, but was near Winslet and Soderbergh while they were discussing a shot, so that was something.

Are you into acting in general? She had studied film and I remember her once telling me that although it could get really boring, she plowed through a lot of books too, she couldn't think of another job at that point where she'd get to see how movies were actually made. She was in AI and I remember her being pretty in awe of being able to watch SS at work. Good food too, right?

Really good food on the first day of shooting. I was one of only about 20 extras, so we ate with the crew and cast -- mahi mahi, jerk chicken, all kinds of good stuff. (Signed some paperwork, so can't talk about the shoot.) Next day had 300 extras, and the food was closer to school lunch.

But, yeah, definitely been fun seeing the moviemaking. Not many cameras used for what seem like major scenes.

I do a lot of stage directing and some playwriting, only act when folks think of me for stuff or when something fun like this comes up. This makes up for not being on the ball when every other Irish-looking actor in Chicago ended up in Public Enemies.

My previous extra work (I'm in the yellow coat at 0:05):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ct3Co-ghEc

nice

ha! awesome.

Was reminded of this last Friday when I happened to be looking at Twitter when the first photos came through from Japan--like, literally seconds after the quake: photos of kitchen plates on the floor, and the like. This movie is very much about information spreading in similar ways.

First footage screened: described as Outbreak meets Children of Men

Hopefully rather more of the latter than the former

http://cdn.screenrant.com/wp-content/uploads/Steven-Soderbergh.jpg

Moved up to be released Sept. 9.

OI MATES ERE'S JUDE LAW

http://gawker.com/5821104/contagion-watch-gwyneth-paltrow-get-sick-and-die

wow, i can't wait to not see this

"Someone doesn't have to weaponize the bird flu...the birds are doing it."

That's a difficult line to say convincingly and I think Larry very nearly nails it.

i hope this is about matt damon trying to kill all the birds in the world, like a cranky old guy in his yard

fuckin no good dirty birds

Really Angry Birds

Also:
Bryan Cranston
Elliott Gould
John Hawkes
Demetri Martin

this movie is begging for a Mad Magazine treatment, preferably by Mort Drucker

In the fall of 1956, shortly after the departure of Mad's founding editor Harvey Kurtzman, Drucker found his way to Mad. His debut there coincided with a World Series broadcast, and publisher Bill Gaines told Drucker that if the Brooklyn Dodgers won the game, he would be hired. The Dodgers did win.

i love this anecdote because i want to believe it was how the mad offices worked all the time.

that looks weird and not like i expected

also didnt realize that this was a participant media thing. wonder what their angle is

http://www.comingsoon.net/gallery/63121/hr_Contagion_1.jpg

I want to see this but maybe on DVD so I can mute Jude Law's bits.

this reminds me of exodus or something--this big, sort of self-serious movie with like everybody in the world in it.

larry fishburne is such a pro.

My fiancee has a special interest in topics relating to global health and disease, and she's stupidly excited about this movie. We watched the trailer the other day, and she was clapping to herself at various points.

(Actually, we both let out a gasp of excitement when Veronica Mars's dad showed up.)

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2011/08/13/scenes-from-steven-soderberghs-contagion-big-screen-report/

http://www.bleedingcool.com/wp-content/uploads//2011/08/gwyneth-paltrow-contagion-poster.jpg

The unglamorousness of this poster makes me weirdly happy

The trailer made the thing looked like a crisper Outbreak.

GWYNNETH PALTROW CONTAGION

my god this looks bad. plus isn't soderbergh always going on about how much he hates movies and wants to retire? just do it and spare us. even matt damon acts like a fanny in the trailer.

gwyneth dies a horrible death is one hell of a hook for audiences

seriously though hot zone meets traffic sounds fun to me

that looks weird and not like i expected

the trailer, the trailer...

i kinda like that i cant really tell who or even what this movie is abt but man do i wanna see it

Heard an interview with the author of ... "The Coming Plague?" Anyway, she was a technical adviser, and while she is biased, she said this movie nails it. She says she had been working on the script off and on for 3.5 years, so maybe Soderbergh is just clearing out his backlog before he (doesn't) retire?

Soderbergh isn't even 50 yet btw. The odds of him retiring any time soon are nil.

That's the part that keeps this from being "oh, we saw this in Outbreak already." The movie is as much about how information passes as it is about disease. Add in how big pharm companies would interact with government orgs in this type of situation, and it's a whole new story.

this movie is fucking boring.

It's a scientific fact that a viral outbreak would, contrary to Hollywood convention, actually be very boring, so job well done.

its like world war z with all the cool shit sucked out of it.

By cool shit you mean zombies, right?

(SPOILER ALERT) If you ever wanted to see Gwyneth Paltrow make a cameo appearance in The Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes, buy your tickets now.

No way this is as boring as Traffic, either. I'm a sucker for disaster movies, no matter how po-faced.

yeah, the act of watching and loving the dreadful 2012 made me realize that im completely powerless in the face of any kind of disaster movie schlock - just ladle that shit into my gaping maw please

Contagion: NO RETURNS

im just inordinately attracted to any movie that features the destruction of the human race

I'm always a little crestfallen when humankind rallies in the third act.

Is this "really about the spread of information"? I almost think it'd be more interesting for it to "really" be about disease, which doesn't exactly need a metaphor to be compelling.

Well, it's both: it's really about a pandemic, but also going into detail about how information spreads during such a crisis.

Demetri Martin is in this? Must to avoid.

Sodes seems to love DM for reasons I can't discern - he was gonna play DePodesta in his version of Moneyball

prob was too realistic/governmental w/o really going 4 body horror shock factor stuff or pounding the rioting or like what the media coverage wld be like...all well done though, but yeah, theres no dramatic way 2 really end it & all the minor personal relationships arent v resonant

did also remind me of traffic just in the shear # of plotlines & name actors

that was kind of... boring... enjoyed it, though, and I liked it jumping around between characters without jarring.
Jude Law being irritating was kind of the most 'interesting' storyline, I think. Weird that you didn't really feel the scale of 2.5 million dead or whatever it was.

I'm always a little crestfallen when humankind rallies in the third act.

― Gus Van Sant's Gerry Blank (Eric H.), Wednesday, September 7, 2011 3:49 AM (3 days ago) Bookmark

otm. basically deep down inside i don't respect a movie unless everyone dies at the end.

i liked this, though.

for some reason i laughed out loud when they pulled off gwyneth paltrow's scalp :-/

prob was too realistic/governmental w/o really going 4 body horror shock factor stuff or pounding the rioting or like what the media coverage wld be like...all well done though, but yeah, theres no dramatic way 2 really end it & all the minor personal relationships arent v resonant

did also remind me of traffic just in the shear # of plotlines & name actors

― johnny crunch, Friday, September 9, 2011 7:31 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

yikes, you really wanted that stuff? i was relieved it was mostly free of cliches like those.

once the third act kicked in i was wondering how he'd stick the landing cuz the movie was clearly throttling down at that point, but i thought the ending they went with was really powerful and appropriate, esp since damon's story was the easiest to relate to.

really enjoyed this, really liked how restrained it was without being dry, liked that it refused to talk down to the audience (no scenes where a scientist explains something and then an audience stand-in says 'hurr how about in ENGLISH now, PROFESSOR') - i think the only misstep was the jude law character

ensemble cast is only way you can compare it to Traffic, they approach their material from remarkably different angles. this is such a still picture, the camera almost never moves, paltrow flashbacks probably the only handheld stuff in the movie

p. curious how it looks in imax

no i didnt want those things at all...i meant more like too "real" to do big box office #s

yea jude law character was not v good...there were a few moments where he was dropping conspiracy knowledge that made me lol and i think were supposed to but i feel like it was p subtle & ppl missed it

oh word, yeah

yeah i didnt really 'get' the character until the reveal about him late in the movie. made me think that i'd have a different perspective if i watched it again

forgot to mention what i liked best about the flick - it's a 'process' movie

larry fishburne was v good

Guy who played the bearded doc who breaks the news to Matt Damon about Gwynnie was at my screening in Evanston, IL. He had a whole retinue with him who applauded after his scene, which was followed by jeers of "No one cares!"

lmao

i was trying to figure out why the rear admiral's right hand man was so familiar - he was the bald photographer on Just Shoot Me!

http://starsmedia.ign.com/stars/image/object/911/911279/enrico-colantoni_photoboxart_160w.jpg

what'd you think of the movie jaymc

dad on vmars, i knew him right away tbh! xp

Ha yeah, I had no idea Enrico Colantoni was on Just Shoot Me -- I know him p. much exclusively as Keith Mars.

I think I agree pretty much with you, TamTam, about the movie in general. Admired the restraint and the straightforward approach. Loved how ***SPOILERS*** willing it was to dispense w/ Winslet's character and how Jennifer Ehle quietly becomes the hero.

The one thing that sort of bothered me was that ***MORE SPOILERS I GUESS*** you have all these scenes of civilization descending into chaos: airports and offices closed, massive looting, Matt Damon can't even get an MRE. And then it's eventually OK once the vaccine is introduced? Maybe this is actually how it would happen, I dunno. But I found myself wondering about the details of how the world continued to function despite the chaos.

i honestly had no idea this was a Soderbergh movie until 5 minutes ago when i saw this thread on new answers. i'm sure i saw the title as one of his upcoming projects at some point and just never made the connection. i guess the TV ads don't display his name prominently at all and maybe his 'distinctive' look has been used by so many other directors that i don't even recognize it as his off the bat anymore?

IRA FLATOW (NPR Science Friday): Wow. Let's talk a bit about this new movie that you had a hand in.

LAURIE GARRETT Author of "The Coming Plague" (1995): Aha, "Contagion." Yeah.

FLATOW: "Contagion." Give us a little thumbnail of that.

GARRETT: Well, ever since I wrote "The Coming Plague" back in the '90s, I've had one movie company after another come to me and say oh, let's do a movie about an epidemic, and we want you to be involved in advising us to make it really scary, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And that's almost always been hideous and the experience horrible.

And of course, many people have seen the movie with Dustin Hoffman called "Outbreak" in which, miraculously, at the end, from one little squirrel monkey, they get enough antiserum to save thousands of people, - wholly implausible.

And I said, when they approached me, it was Steven Soderbergh as director, Michael Shamberg and Stacey Sherr who were involved in "Erin Brockovich" and a whole host of fantastic movies, and screenwriter Scott Burns, who had just come off doing "The Bourne Ultimatum," starring Matt Damon.

They all came to me and said look, let's - we'd like to bring you on board to help us make a really, you know, right movie, a really scientifically accurate look at what a pandemic of a really virulent organism would look like. How would the world respond? What would we do? What would transpire over time? And not hysteria but as accurate as possible.

And so I worked on this script with Scott Burns for about three and a half years, and I think - I think people are going to be blown away when they see this film. Soderbergh is a genius as a director, and many of you probably realize that his masterpiece was "Traffic."

And one of the signatures of "Traffic" was that it assumed great intelligence on the part of the audience. There's never a moment when a character sort of turns to the camera and says oh, here's what's going on. You know, you have to pay attention.

And it had five different plot sets, and the characters never quite knew about each other, but the audience could see how they connected. So this is structured very much the same way. You have plot unfolding at the CDC in Atlanta. You have plot unfolding in Minneapolis, Chicago, San Francisco, Hong Kong, Macao, London, interior of China and so on.

FLATOW: Weren't you afraid that they were going to just make another Hollywood "Towering Inferno" sort of movie?

GARRETT: Yes. I was very afraid of that, and I told them straight up, our very first meeting in a restaurant here in New York. I said OK, I have conditions, and they don't have anything to do with money and the usual stuff that you Hollywood people have conditions about. My conditions are number one, this is not going to be about an evil scientist, and you're not going to make scientists look bad.

Number two, it's - everybody's not - it's not going to come from outer space. Number three, everybody's not going to turn into aliens, and the last person alive is not going to be Will Smith. Number four, you're not going to find a miracle cure where the whole world's saved from one little monkey.

And number five, you're not going to portray Africans as, you know, the source of all disease and all horror on the planet. And then finally I said, you know, I think it has to be as much about the nature of public health and global response and cooperation versus competition on the world stage as anything else. And I think you're going to be amazed when you see this picture.

FLATOW: And they agreed to all of that.

GARRETT: They did.

i can see how you'd miss that, the advertising hasnt played up his involvement at all - no A FILM BY stuff or anything

Most people just want to go to see Gwyneth Paltrow die.

Hollywood having their finger on the pulse for once.

i thought this was really good -- horrifying, if you pay attention, and let the off-screen details sink in. "r-2" and all that. also, a love song to the public sector, which could use it.

forgot to mention what i liked best about the flick - it's a 'process' movie

― https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i_qxQztHRI (Princess TamTam), Saturday, September 10, 2011 3:30 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

yeah, totally--it reminded me of Zodiac in that regard.

lol bizkit bomb never fails

ehehehe

Matt Damon can't even get an MRE

I'm out-of-focus (and maybe out-of-shot) getting an MRE when the line goes crazy--and I'm painted-up-sick out-of-shot in the big armory.

I think the music/montage sequences may be my favorite parts.

Where were your scenes shot, EZ?

The armory scenes were at an armory at 52nd and Cottage Grove. The MER scene was at a park in Evanston a block from Northwestern's athletic buildings (we were held in a gym for a few hours before about six hours of prep and shooting). The first day I was called was to be a pedesrian on the street whenKate Winslet sees military trucks from her hotel room (actuallt the Hampton Inn in River North), but after costuming 20 of us, they shot it with the sidewalks empty.

so this was all chicago? the crowd up my way was giggling at all the twin cities details that were off. like the sick dude on the bus who said he was "at lake and lyndale" got a huge laugh.

they should have made g paltrow do a marge gunderson accent

Saw this today. Was kinda disappointed. They should have given it one of those '70s style movie posters with tiny headshots of the cast in rows at the bottom - "And Bryan Cranston as Admiral Soandso."

Maybe this is actually how it would happen, I dunno. But I found myself wondering about the details of how the world continued to function despite the chaos.

It's probably far easier to depict a disaster where *everyone* is dead rather than just 1 out of 12. I thought a couple of scenes were pretty effective - especially liked the brief one where Damon is in the mostly empty food court (chairs up on the tables, etc.). Felt like services were actually eroding down.

Jude Law character didn't bother me much... he was acting like any other tone-deaf internet douche. The WHO subplot with Cotillard was a complete bust though.

she was so hot though

"And Bryan Cranston as Admiral Soandso."

that was his character's actual name, incidentally

so this was all chicago?

All the Minnesota stuff was shot around Chicago. In the screenplay, the multinational company is 3M.

I thought this was just okay. If you like pandemic movies, you'll probably like it. If you saw the made-for-TV bird flu movie "Fatal Contact: Bird Flu in America" in 2006, this was basically that with a better cast and higher production values.

I thought this was pretty good, though it seems to take some stabs at meaningfulness that I couldn't make out.

The second half of the cotillard plot was silly, but she is crazy hot.

What do we make of that final montage. It went by so fast I didn't quite get the chain of events from the bulldozer to the bat...

I don't remember the exact details of the bulldozer->bat sequence. Was it something like bulldozer construction stirring up the bat nest?

I think this would have been a lot better if there was a final struggle between Jude Law and Demetri Martin wearing their moon suits.

it was a final touch of irony: bulldozers owned by the multinational corp. for which paltrow works disrupt the natural habitat of a group of bats, who end up closer to human civilization. there, an infected bat takes a bite out of a crabapple. it falls to the ground and is eaten by a pig. the uncooked pig is handled by a chef who later shakes hands with paltrow.

so it suggests an ultimate (?) human cause for the tragedy. again, kind of pat irony.

film was def. a mixed bag. pretty gripping, though a lot of plot threads seemed to go nowhere. something about the virus mutating within a population of AIDS sufferers in durban? so wait only 30% of people with the disease die from it? what happens to the rest (aside from those immune like matt damon)?

the prom scene was mildly affecting but as a conclusion to this film it was a very bad idea.

i like process films too (damn y'all seen quattro volte?) but again, this one was a mixed bag in terms of how clearly and carefully it chronicled the process. in particular there was little attention given to the dynamics of the apparent societal breakdown that was occurring. i guess that was a consequence of the tight focus on a small group of characters (despite the ambitiousness of the plot as a whole). that said, the screenplay cheated a bit by having the same characters pop up in an unlikely number of contexts -- for example keith mars (sorry can't sell the actor's name) is both running the NSA's response to the virus _and_ taking part in a sting operation against jude law? dude keeps busy.

finally (!) did anyone else think this was kind of unfashionably optimistic? despite the chaos etc. they find a vaccine within days or weeks and everything (by the evidence of the film) returns to normal. or close to it. given how bleak lots of big films are these days (e.g. dark knight) i kept expecting the film to end with some sly suggestion that things were about to get much worse.

srsly this could have been the best movie ever but it just wasn't. but it wasn't bad.

soderbergh has never really hit a home run, has he? lots of OK films, only one (the limey) i'd consider really good.

yeah the vaccine as presented was almost a deus ex machina...

thinking on it a bit i think the Paltrow character is certainly the "center" of the movie in some ways, in that it comes back to her, it's her "head" we're trying to look into, her night at the casino...not sure what adultery has to do with it all tho.

Che part 1, Solaris, and Out of Sight are really good imo.

at first it resembles that familiar screenwriting trope (see: alfred hitchcock) where the person who does a Bad Thing is punished for it by dying horribly. but i don't really think we're supposed to hate on gwenyth paltrow. makes me wonder why the adultery thing was even in there. maybe the screenwriter thinks it makes the characters more "complex"?

xpost

yeah che pt 1 is pretty good, solaris too. i like out of sight but last time i watched it, it kind of fell apart in 2nd half.

yeah there's certainly something intended with her character. and some of the virus=information stuff was a little pat as expected "I told someone i loved, who told someone they loved..."

though i think that this film is suggesting that this very virus pattern (r0) is also our mode of salvation in these kinds of situations.

how so?

i dont think optimistic is what they were going for, it just seems that way in contrast to the cynical dreck that mostly populates the genre. realistically no epidemic could threaten the very existence of humanity, but those are the kind of stakes audiences are trained to expect. some people definitely felt blue-balled by that

the prom scene was mildly affecting but as a conclusion to this film it was a very bad idea.

why? i thought it was a canny move to refocus on something more personal, so as to evade the 'welp, that's it' ending. i really liked the long shot of damon sitting in the closet

the glibness of the end montage was a little eyerolly, and i wondered if it had anything to do with Participant Media's* involvement. damon looking at the pictures on the camera was enough to plant the seed in your head, it didn't need to be underlined.

i think i almost entirely agree that sodes hasnt hit that home run yet (he might have a few triples), and i came to hold him in pretty low esteem by the mid-2000s, but this feels like one of the more vital periods of his career right now.

*production company that does homegrown docs targeted at wealthy libs, and also some token financing of narrative movies with any tangential connection to the cause du jour - ie. The Informant! and agribusiness

prom scene was ok but u2 was not ok.

damon looking at the pictures on the camera was enough to plant the seed in your head

So when you saw the chef photo, you thought bat > pig > chef > GP? I needed the dots connected for me, I'll admit.

it helped that the staging of the scene made me think damon would stumble onto the big reveal via the camera, and yeah the chef photo is what did it - except i thought he was a butcher, with that bloody apron - i wouldn't have guessed the bat part though

there was a bit where jennifer ehle is running down the viral dna, that parts of it look like viruses in these different animal populations.

after all these moments that reminded me of other films (not favorably or unfavorably), like the social breakdown in "war of the worlds", it was kinda funny that the last little sequence reminded me of... arachnophobia! lol

if ever a subplot could have just been extracted wholesale from a film, it's the marion cotillard one here. i guess they wouldn't have wanted her removed from the film entirely after writing a big paycheck. but really, who goes to see a film for marion cotillard?

gotta say war of the worlds was better than this, even with the totally insulting ending of that one. (speaking of perversely optimistic endings.)

i dunno i kinda liked that plotline. maybe they felt like demonstrating that a response to a calamity would be global, but also that the response in different countries would have its own political strangeness (i.e. "we're not independence day")

what do you think abt the decision to have the virus start in HK? i would think they would want to avoid this simply b/c of SARS.

also: if it had started in africa everyone would be reading film as AIDS allegory.

gotta say war of the worlds was better than this, even with the totally insulting ending of that one. (speaking of perversely optimistic endings.)

Nah, I was thrilled that Hollywood for once actually KEPT THE END of the classic book on which they based their film

unless you mean the son's survival, which, yeah, was bullshit

yeah i mean the son's survival and glorious reunion among seemingly untouched boston brownstones

what do you think abt the decision to have the virus start in HK?

The kidnapping in the Cotillard subplot overshadows what could have been more interesting with that storyline: the refusal from China to admit publicly any responsibility, with shades of how China and the USSR dealt with AIDS.

Has Cotillard been riveting in an English-language movie? I think I've only seen her in this and Public Enemies. She's completely credible here--I've just felt in these two movies like there's something missing a little from her performances.

what do you think abt the decision to have the virus start in HK? i would think they would want to avoid this simply b/c of SARS.

i think it makes sense because of sars!

she's one of the best things about Public Enemies! that romance could've been so flat if she didnt bring that shit to life

i dunno, she seems kind of blank up on screen in her american roles.

actually i should say english-language since contagion is only incidentally american in a sense. much production financing came from abu dhabi (!).

i think shes the emotional center of Public Enemies - none of the movie's emotional beats work without her performance, because i dont think the character's really there on the page - but otherwise i'd prob agree. not that stuff like Inception gives much of an opportunity to do any kind of memorable character work

soderbergh has never really hit a home run, has he? lots of OK films, only one (the limey) i'd consider really good.

I'd proffer sex, lies, videotape, Out of Sight, Erin Brockovich and The Girlfriend Experience.

is TGE good? i didnt bother seeing it, i figured it would be like Full Frontal 2

Really good, second only to The Limey to me.

dang!

id temper that a bit, but its def A LOT better than full frontal

does my boy vinnie chase appear in it?

My Soderbergh keepers: The Limey, Out of Sight and Ocean's Eleven. I remember liking Schizopolis and The Underneath at the time, but it's been years since I saw either one. I thought Girlfriend Experience was almost infuriatingly boring, but I find Sasha Grey to be one of the most overhyped people in the history of civilization, so...

haven't really cared that much for the other films she's been in tbh

I had no idea who she was when I saw The Girlfriend Experience but studying her vacuousness was rather the point, one that Soderbergh didn't extenuate beyond endurance (I wish more movies were less than 80 minutes long).

Bubble @ 73m is the best of his "experiment" movies imo & kafka is really good

(I wish more movies were less than 80 minutes long).

i really think every movie should fight to justify any running length past 75 minutes or so

i think shes the emotional center of Public Enemies - none of the movie's emotional beats work without her performance

fixed

actually what's the slice-of-life-in-the-depression one from really early in his career? IIRC that one isn't bad. the limey does seem to be the consensus favorite though. it's a nice film--not profound or anything, but really elegant and terse in a satisfying way.

oops i mean fixed as follows

i think shes the emotional center of Public Enemies - none of the movie's emotional beats work without her performance

Luis Guzman's work in The Limey might be my favorite Soderbergh-directed performance (second: a tie between Albert Finney and Andie MacDowall).

soderbergh seems like the a bro (in a good way). i'd get a beer with him and ask him what went wrong with the good german.

p.s. they should have done more of a viral marketing strategy with this one. VIRAL DO YOU SEE?!!?!?

lol i was thinking i wouldve been kinda freaked out if this was released in the winter w/ ppl coughing around me

soderbergh would def have a ton of great stories. im v curious of his time w/ pat dollard as his agent

p.s. they should have done more of a viral marketing strategy with this one. VIRAL DO YOU SEE?!!?!?

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Thursday, September 15, 2011 9:15 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LppK4ZtsDdM

lol i was thinking i wouldve been kinda freaked out if this was released in the winter w/ ppl coughing around me

soderbergh would def have a ton of great stories. im v curious of his time w/ pat dollard as his agent

― johnny crunch, Thursday, September 15, 2011 11:31 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

there was this person down the row hacking through most of the movie and it made me increasingly uncomfortable as it went on

really looking forward to his male stripper movie starring channing tatum

Because you hope you'll start noticing all the men stripping in the audience?

wtf mate

lol i was thinking i wouldve been kinda freaked out if this was released in the winter w/ ppl coughing around me

it would have been FUCKING AWESOME if they had piped coughing into the rear surround-sound channels. oscars all around if they had done that IMO.

i can't lie i gave my hands a good washing after this movie was over.

me 2

this movie was kinda heavy!

btw only great soderbergh is out of sight fuiud

this movie was alright, but like it was basically as good as a good law and order

is there a thread about movies that would be better as video games, not necessarily saying that about this whole movie, but I definitely thought that about certain parts of it, like "I've played better video games" or w/e

i thought it was p good!

everyone dying and shit all grim

also when they kidnapped marion cotillard i was like DONT U TOUCH HER

fuckin u2 at the prom though

haha

i mean lets be clear here soderbergh is an intensely uncool dude

marion cotillard looks like zooey deschanel but real

the thinking mans deschanel

actually what's the slice-of-life-in-the-depression one from really early in his career? IIRC that one isn't bad.

<3 King of the Hill.

the thinking 911 truther mans deschanel

fixed

sorry for bumping this thread out of nowhere but it just fuckin hit me that the one thing I wanted to post on the internet about this movie was the fucking font for all the transitions and shit in the movie, it was so horrible, what a font

I was less annoyed by the font than by the fact that the population figures weren't clearly designated as metro areas.

Yeah, some were some weren't.

By the movie's definition, Minneapolis is nearly as large as Hong Kong.

San Francisco pop. figures were crazeeeee

cliff martinez must not deserves to get bat pig disease.
steven soderbergh must deserves to get bat pig disease.
i say science words really serious and frown now.
oh no you actors who do good performing will die of bat pig disease.
even janitor man we forgot about but i shake your hand.
i have no difference if any theses people has bat pig disease or don't.
in the panda's den was better.
he should had will smith an jeff globloom.
then i have become happy.

Thought this fell somewhere between effective and just okay. I'm sure all the problems I had with it are voiced somewhere above. Two things I liked: a good Laurence Fishburne performance (an actor I really liked a long time ago, before he got progressively sillier in the Matrix movies), and Marion Cotillard, who belongs with Raquel Welch in Fantastic Voyage and Jennifer Lopez in The Cell in the "Yes, of course, she's a scientist" department. (Sorry, I'm immaturely stereotyping scientists.) I thought for sure that Jennifer Ehle was Jerry's lawyer love-interest on an early Seinfeld, but no.

why hasn't Jude Law been cast as Simon Le Bon in the Duran biopic yet

Love how they basically blame the whole thing on Chinese food.

I thought they blamed the whole thing on Gwyneth's gambling addiction.

Toxic goop.

marion cotillard looks like zooey deschanel but real

― max, Wednesday, September 28, 2011 9:14 PM (10 months ago) Bookmark

what the hell is this post

what's french for adorkable

you know, like if zooey deschanel were a real person, in life

adorquable

you know, like if zooey deschanel were a real person, in life

― max, Wednesday, August 8, 2012 4:46 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

what the hell is this post

sushi that is not even real zooey that is not even real

finally saw this, my main takeaway was "it's not a good thing to be a big name actress in this movie unless you are Marion Cotillard"

also Gwyneth acts involuntary seizures very, very well

voluntary ones need some work

my takeaway was "if you've played a Jane Austen heroine, Steven Soderbergh wants you in this movie" (Winslet, Paltrow, Ehle...maybe Keira Knightley was busy)

this movie is kind of remarkable in that the subtext seems to be about the basic competence of the government/experts and even bureaucracy against a kind of "wild west" of individualism represented not only by the breakdown of order caused by the virus but the blogger's spread of disinformation.

Yeah--I liked that the scientists had human failings but were skilled and smart and sorted shit out.

This was fucking terrifying.

what a terrible film this was. slickly paced so as entertainment it was functional and kept me watching but i don't think there was a single genuinely satisfying element. composed of way too many subplots, hardly any of which seemed adequate. the WHO kidnapping one was ludicrous and barely explained (the cut to cotillard happily teaching kids made me and my bf burst out laughing). matt damon's bland whitebread family (complete with most boring slow dance in the history of the world) made me wish they weren't immune (did he do ANYTHING with his immunity?). potential emotional resonance of the scientist who tested the vaccination on herself botched by terrible dialogue in the scene with her dad. janitor subplot served no purpose apart from clunky, cheesy atonement for lawrence fishburne's character.

characterisation was cardboard even by hollywood standards - so many big names, so few meaty roles. jude law and his hilarious cockney/australian accent obv the biggest dud but self-vaccinator was fleshed out neither before nor after her saintly act and seeing matt damon play the nice middle-class dad is so boring these days. kate winslet did about the best job, you really got a sense of her commitment/need to prove herself.

lots of vaguely ~topical themes, all explored with such shallowness. blogging vs new media, govt bureaucracy, big pharma corruption, all nodded at, none dug into. also there were so many stupid scenes that should've been cut but no explanation of what that forsythia drug was apart from a vague, too-late "something something homeopathic".

thought it did a decent job of conveying the rapidity of social disintegration but there was a HUGE missed opportunity in terms of conveying physical/body horror - if what makes this disease stand out is that it can be passed on by the merest touch, you'd think more characters would become panicky/paranoid about touching things, touching each other - none of this was shown. you'd think that angle would be ripe for exploitation b/c touching public surfaces that millions of people have touched already with their gross unwashed hands is one of those things you have to ignore thinking about to actually live a normal life.

also chronological development was yawn, left it nowhere to go - would've been better if it had descended into total breakdown instead of the better-than-best-case-scenario save OR if we'd been dropped into characters' lives at the height of the panic, then worked simultaneously backwards and forwards.

unbelievable that it didn't get utterly panned by critics.

Coronavirus Outbreak Triggers Surge in Pirated Downloads of the Film ‘Contagion’

When the Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak started to hit the mainstream news, some people started to link it to the fictional “MEV-1” pandemic depicted in “Contagion.” Although the two can hardly be compared, besides being virus outbreaks, interest in the 2011 movie suddenly spiked.

Google Trends reveals that searches for the phrase “contagion movie” started to rise in January, reaching a peak around the end of that month. Later in February, as the Coronavirus started to spread globally, searches flared up again.

Rewatched this last night with someone who hadn't seen it before. Her comment after a hour was "this is the news right now"

I put a library hold on a DVD copy of this yesterday.

Didn't realize there was a separate thread. I posted about it in the other contagion thread the other day--yeah, it feels like a documentary at times. Extremely unsettling--especially the ending--and a much better film than I thought at the time. I think there may be a positive message, though, in the moment when Matt Damon looks at his daughter dancing in the living room and basically says "Okay."

Also spiked in legal rentals: it's at #7 on the iTunes chart, alongside nineteen 2019 releases, and went from being Warner Bros' 270th most-rented film to their second.

Her comment after a hour was "this is the news right now"

rewatching last weekend after the ninth diagnosis / fourth death at one facility nearby, I thought how much more measured and factual than the news it was. (and also that it felt like a missing scene from an episode-opening montage in Years & Years.)

the initial paltrow seizure in the hospital, something about the thrashing & the way her eyes roll back, gave me nightmares for weeks the first time i saw this. scarier than the exorcist, somehow.

I don't really know what I'm talking about up there 8 years ago but this movie has long been a "rewatchable" favorite for me, if not exactly a "comfort movie."

Something about it has always even moved me a little bit--the idea that our greatest vulnerability and greatest source of protection meet in the same place .

our greatest vulnerability and greatest source of protection meet in the same place .

our face?

i didnt want to be corny and say "each other," but "face" works just as well!

Sanjay Gupta has a scene. It feels like he's putting in 16 hours a day on CNN right now.

big piece in NYT by Wesley Morris on rewatching

have forgotten most of this film judging by his highlights

i think this was the movie where i finally gave up on soderbergh. so many scenes shot in the most by-the-numbers way possible.

Screening in Seattle tonight, at a repertory cinema that Soderbergh was at last week for an unrelated event:

https://i.imgur.com/YJ8PeRb.jpg

i sometimes wonder if this movie and others like it created a "CSI effect" for pandemics. the mortality rate of the disease in this movie is an absurd 25-30%, so like 2.5 million Americans and 26 million die worldwide before a vaccine is created. so people think of serious pandemics being like the type of diseases where you get it, regardless of how old or healthy you are, boom, you might die painfully. and then they see real pandemics like this one which could actually kill millions if not mitigated, but because it's predominate victims are the old and immunocompromised, and it doesn't kill the majority of people who get it, people think it's a 'nothingburger'.

I did enjoy this movie when I didn't know we'd be facing one of our own!

Scott Z. Burns interviewed about our current pandemic: https://www.vulture.com/2020/03/contagion-writer-scott-z-burns-reassures-us-about-covid-19.html

Spencer Chow at 6:28 3 Mar 12
Love how they basically blame the whole thing on Chinese food.

I'm watching House of Cards for the fourth or fifth time--we don't need to get into that right now--and, towards the end of S3, there's something that wouldn't have meant anything to me the time before, a couple of years ago: Doug Stamper (in the midst of a 60-day recovery) and his brother watch Contagion one night instead of the first Democratic debate.