Come anticipate the Wachowski/Twyker film of CLOUD ATLAS

This shit cray. Absurdly long trailer below
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DhJsPW862k

What do you think of David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas?

not sure which should be the thread for the movie, but just linking to the other one for the reference of ILXors in the post-apocalyptic future

http://i.imgur.com/Ux2Sa.png

The uncanny valley cgi yellowface of all fucking things is putting me off.

Nah this thread is necessary - keep the movie stuff in here from now on I reckon.

the other board is called I Love BOOKS. How was i supposed to know to look all the way over there?

oh dear this looks really really bad. but may be fun. some of like line deliveries in the trailer are cringey as hell.

May have to be a DVD job 'cos with the book I simply skipped the chapters with the characters I had no interest in and read the other 4 characters. Can't really do that in the cinema.

I'm already sort of offended by the Irish gangsters in the trailer

i hope the whole film is edited, narrated, scored & intertitled like the trailer.

http://i.imgur.com/7GQ5M.png

Gosh, I think it looks pretty swell. Swell, in this case, being anavery intentionally chosen word. Swelling music, swollen emotions, bloated construction. But it looks good. Y'all are a bunch of cynics. (Granted, I never saw the Matrix sequels or Speedracer or Bound, so maybe I have more than the average amount of good will for Lana and Andy and Tom Tweaker).

anavery = a very

I just realised i spelt his name wrong in the thread title. The movie doesn't look as bad as i was expecting in fairness

oh man, that trailer.

as i remember it, the connections between the stories in CA was a thin conceit that gave Mitchell an excuse to tell awesome stories and play around with genre, period, and structure (ie what he does). seems like it might be hugely over-played in the movie (although i would buy that it's just something they needed to get out of the way in the trailer, which would otherwise look completely schizophrenic if you hadn't read the book).

I haven't read this, but this trailer makes it seem like it should rightly be about 10 hours long in order to not be completely incoherent.

this looks horrific; Innaritu sci-fi.

at work so can't watch the trailer, is this gonna have all 6 stories in it? are they gonna use the same folding/unfolding structure as the book? could be a glorious mess

so twykler directed some and the wachowskis direct some is that correct

ugh fuck this

it looks awful from the preview but just cause the tone is so humorless, the ott visuals are sweet and the actual movie could have a totally different vibe

this looks horrific; Innaritu sci-fi.

― Simon H., Thursday, July 26, 2012 2:04 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark

innaritu wouldnt go in for all those explosions and chases

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m7s82woJ261qa9bmvo1_400.png

whats going on w/toms ear there

that's a matte painting, right?

I loved the book, and the movie looks spectacular. Did they actually pull it off? I thought it would be impossible.

Apparently copyright blocked now?

Hmm, yeah, all of the ones popping up on YouTube seem to blocked now.

http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/wb/cloudatlas/#videos-extralarge

Trailer up on Apple now. I never read the book—I don't even recall really hearing about it, for that matter—but this looks like a fascinating disaster. Count me in.

it certainly looks like it'll be pretty to look at if nothing else. i may actually get to see this in the theater if it comes out in november, hurray! the book is awesome, kind of the best thing ever. but it's not the kind of thing that could be too easily filmed? eh, maybe thats not true, not like there isn't good plot, dialogue, etc. it's just kind of complex, certainly an awful lot of information/characters/worlds etc to fit into 2 1/2 hours.

you know what would be frikkin cool, but will never happen? if they actually made 6 (six) one and a half hour movies, cut each of them off in the middle right where the book does, then made you wait a week to see the next installment. like charge $3 a pop or something? i mean, obviously Thats Not How Things Are Done, but i for one would totally dig seeing it that way

AWESOME i was waiting for more sci-fi about christ since prometheus was such a let down

it's like the fountain squared

the future parts look as good as AI though, always a good sign

This looks like really overwrought and ponderous. Descriptions of the book sound terrible too. Is that what passes for a Nebula award nominee these days?

i haven't heard of this book nor have i read it but i have opinions about it now the people who made the matrix are making a movie of it

The Matrix was also nominated for a Nebula. Oh the shame

xp exactly!

lol the declining standards of scifi awards *sniff*

(havent actually read the book this judgment is based on)

the book is good and has been uniformly praised by those who have read it fwiw

the book is really good. looking forward to this even though that trailer is pretty ponderous.

trailer has some moments tho the "everything is connected" tag kinda bums me out.

also if yr not familiar with the book or with mitchell then say what u will about the trailer or the wachowskis but please reserve judgment on those.

feel like the ponderous right here right now aspect of the trailer could easily just be the trailer as thats a vibe thats often cultivated in trailers

everybody should read Cloud Atlas (and Jacob de Zoet)

its a p sweet book but i dont really get everyone declaring mitchell a genius

like in comparison to its inspiration if on a winters night a traveler cloud atlas comes of kinda conventional and forced

the effort at laying out the more formal narrative and making it magical shows its seams, and i think his voice is rather more suited to the olde tyme trader than it is to some of the other characters

i find calvino p annoying but the mitchell book fun. like one of the best pageturners of the past decade. i thought the london-lit-scene+gangsters and the composer segments were the best (the most 'his' in terms of voice, maybe; the central section a bit too directly riddley hoban, the noir kind of forgettable)

ugh now there are two 'come anticipate' threads lined up in new answers. i wish people would stop doing that.

ya its one of those things i liked a lot but still found overrated, prob not worth complaining abt, but you do deserve endless rebirths in bewildering literary wastelands for calling calvino annoying

its funny because were talking abt the book in the one abt the movie xp

from the trailer, at worst i think this is gonna be a beautiful failure, so i am hyped

agree that Cloud Atlas is not nearly as daring formally as many reviews seemed to suggest. but it's also generous and funny and compassionate and unexpectedly moving and mitchell writes a good sentence, which you wouldn't think would be so hard to find these days and yet.

the book is great, really ingeniously constructed. I think you would dig it, Alex.

it's formally "daring" the way A Thousand and One Nights is formally daring - nested narrative structures are as old as literature

I guess what I'm saying is I don't think he's a genius for using a really old literary tactic, but he does do it very well and his approach to it is engaging

i like the book a lot but not quite enough to be sufficiently perturbed by the prospect of the film being crappy to avoid watching it

xxxp I am intrigued enough by the recommendations to have already requested it from the library. It doesn't sound like my thing, but I'm willing to give it shot.

the book is great, really ingeniously constructed. I think you would dig it, Alex.

― Dunn O)))))))) (Shakey Mo Collier), Saturday, July 28, 2012 9:11 PM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Dont really get this... Seemed like some short stories, tenuously connected

http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/vulture/2012/08/03/03_hugo-weaving.o.jpeg/a_560x0.jpg

re: the third of those: i think i convinced myself in the trailer that i didn't see that

http://collider.com/wp-content/uploads/halle-berry-cloud-atlas-white.jpg

'halle-berry-cloud-atlas-white.jpg'

this looks mega stupid, but so does the book on reading the wiki synopsis. but people seem to like it a lot so...

i haven't heard of this book nor have i read it but i have opinions about it now the people who made the matrix are making a movie of it

I couldn't finish CA but loved Ghostwritten and Black Swan Green. Jacob de Zoet was entertaining. This could be a disaster though.

A description of the book probably sounds a bit goofy but somehow cumulatively it becomes quite affecting. I liked the two "future" stories and the first story best.

you all flipped out over 'goon squad' too and i thought that was garbage!

"things happen... to people... in time" whoa buddy

I've liked all of Mitchell's books tbh. haven't read Jacob De Zoet yet.

agree w/Ryan that the two future-sequences were best but then I wish more people wrote books like Riddley Walker so

He's just a really entertaining writer, whatever you think about his conceits. Didn't like Goon Squad

never even heard of it

lol I think the entire reason I read Mitchell/Cloud Atlas was cuz it came up on that thread where I was whining about how much I hate modern fiction

hugo weaving

he's a caracter

you all flipped out over 'goon squad' too and i thought that was garbage!

Whoa whoa whoa let's be clear, I thought goon squad was mostly garbage too, this book is way different

this looks like a disaster. and the book, i don't know. i dug the dystopian future korea clone breakout story and the composer knave stories. the rest. eh.

his last two books are close to amazing, especially the thousand autumns of jacob de zoet but even it breaks down with a weirdo samurai raid plot to end things. but i still love it.

ryan/shakey mo OTM

goole OTMish wrt Goon Squad. it's nbd but sweet.

OMG a movie about dream premonitions and reincarnation and whatever crazy steampunk stuff was in the trailer -- Yeah I think I'll be catching this one in the cinema.

BTW Lana Wychowski is now fully transitioned and living out and proud as woman, even though her transition was an open secret for several years (it's kind of a hard thing to keep under wraps, obv...). Cool news!

the wychowski siblings

like that part in the trailer where the guy goes "that music! that's the music in my dreams!" gave me goosebumps...

many xposts later --- nested storytelling is still daring because its hard to execute well. Mostly it just comes out like a lazy anthology, things like ATAWN and the Sargossa Manuscript are absolute masterpieces.

ATAWN? love the saragossa manuscript.

and the trailer's great! dying to see this, though k-weaving looks like a terrible mistake.

as i remember it, the connections between the stories in CA was a thin conceit that gave Mitchell an excuse to tell awesome stories and play around with genre, period, and structure (ie what he does). seems like it might be hugely over-played in the movie (although i would buy that it's just something they needed to get out of the way in the trailer, which would otherwise look completely schizophrenic if you hadn't read the book).

― 40oz of tears (Jordan

This. There was nothing portentious about the connections about the book. This will probably be an absolutely ridiculous film, though the future sections certainly look pretty.

I think Ghostwritten is Mitchell's best book; I read it shortly after it came out before he was a big name, and was blown away.

Also I hope they haven't forgotten to put some jokes in. He can be a very funny writer.

dystopian korean futures are always compelling to me for some reason

oops sorry I meant "ATAON"!

I couldn't finish CA but loved Ghostwritten and Black Swan Green. Jacob de Zoet was entertaining

how does Number 9 Dream always get left out!?!?!? that's a fantastic book! wish they'd make it into a movie too.

i'm going to see this stoned to bejezus the nanosecond it comes out, but i'm not necessarily assuming it will be good. it might be though, and if not i reckon it'll at least be pretty to watch.

it's definitely his worst book though

bad Yakuza subplot but amazing, amazing ending

(also it's the only good Haruki Murakami book *cough*)

i'm going to see this stoned to bejezus the nanosecond it comes out, but i'm not necessarily assuming it will be good.

http://www.theimproper.com/film/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Tomhanks-cloudatlas.jpg

human manifestation of "Quake engine"

http://i.imgur.com/5y5f5.jpg

Can't wait for this year's Southland Tales.

Tom Hanks singing "Mr. Brightside"...

they should put Eric's quote on the poster

"Can't wait!" -- Eric H.

nah, I meant the whole quote, but I have a bizarre interest in southland tales. not that there is any other sort of interest in that film.

is that Meryl Streep in dayo's photo

Trying to imagine the extremely candy-colored and exploding universe in which Southland Tales is seen as a sober-minded film for whispery conversations about in coffee houses.

"It reminded me of when I first saw Bergman, Antonioni and Savage Steve Holland."

if cloud atlas has a line as mystifying as "pimps don't commit suicide" I will eat my hat

fuck eating a hat

"Clone horniness is not a crime"

"Wait!" -- Eric H.

Hope Owen does music for Southland Tales 2: Clone Pimp Boogaloo

I like the story in the making of featurette that the three of them had had a standing jokes for years that they should basically make a movie that was all of the good movies ever, and then someone wrote a book about it.

new yorker article by aleksandar hemon - http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/09/10/120910fa_fact_hemon?currentPage=all

”Portman raved about the book, so Lana began reading it, too. She and Andy, who is two and a half years younger, have retained a childhood habit of sharing books, and soon both of them were obsessively parsing the novel and calling friends to insist that they read it."

so glad we can blame this on Natalie Portman

saw this being filmed round the corner from my office in glasgow. SPOILERS halle berry gets into a car.

Did you see who gets out?

korea berry

Straw Berry

Mitchell has said of the book:

Literally all of the main characters, except one, are reincarnations of the same soul in different bodies throughout the novel identified by a birthmark...that's just a symbol really of the universality of human nature.

lol, k. i think i'll pass, on the book and the movie.

The book is not as clever as it thinks it is but it is hugely entertaining along the way.

the book is good. like people said upthread the "connections" between all the stories are not really a big part of it. I'm as tired of the Innaritu weird-coincidences-linking-unrelated-stories style as anyone but in the book it's not really a big deal. the movie will most likely overdo it though.

That's my fear as well. What was an occasionally interesting gimmick in the book seems like it's going to be elevated to a more dominant structure in the film.

Article was interesting, no intention of seeing the movie.

Second, shorter trailer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BKSU9TWezk

hmm that actually looks 'not bad'. Keeping my fingers crossed that the eVeRyThInG iS cOnNeCtEd!! angle is trailer-only

i think you hope in vain. can you really imagine hollywood making a film of this without really milking that angle? not feasible really. the last 30 minutes will most likely be some cosmic collage of all the characters colliding through time and space and media.

Is hollywood making a film of this as well?

this isn't a hollywood film?

since the characters across the stories are being played by the same actors it's pretty clear that that is going to be the message of the film.

No, fair point, I forgot that the Wachowskis stepped up once Jon Turteltaub bailed on the project.

Shame that he took Ryan Reynolds with him, though.

First reviews for this are trickling out.

"<i>Cloud Atlas is a huge movie, the sort of film you could build a college course around. Is it completely cohesive? I’d have to argue it’s not, but my respect for the effort far outweighs my concern over clarity issues. I wouldn’t recommend anyone walk in there that didn’t want to ponder the very meaning of life, but, given that stipulation, it’s the exact sort of film we need directors attempting. If art informs culture, and surely it does, then you want your artists asking the big questions.<i>"
http://www.slashfilm.com/laremys-cloud-atlas-review-tiff-2012/

wish we had an edit function on this

A peer saw this over the weekend and his chief descriptor was "silly."

I reckon the author of that review might be a bit dull-witted; this may end up being enjoyable, but I seriously doubt it will be profound in any way.

"It’s like a two-hour-and-forty-minute version of the last half of Inception,"

OMG DNW

http://www.avclub.com/articles/on-tiff-day-3-the-wachowskis-and-tom-tykwer-tackle,84723/

lesson of everything since the first matrix movie is surely that the wachowskis ruin everything they touch, even properties they invented

the stuff in the trailer that looks interesting to me (particularly the weirdo settings, sci-fi elements, fish on the floor, hardboiled noir stuff, generally speaking the aesthetics) is almost completely undermined by the hackneyed sentiments and dime-store philosophy about how we're all connected. the mismatch is not necessarily a problem - i've liked good looking movies w/ terrible ideas before. those 2 actors tho... i don't know if i'm up to watching a tom hanks halle berry cosmic love story.

it's like the fountain squared

― the late great, Saturday, July 28, 2012 1:50 AM (1 month ago) Bookmark

can someone who's read the book convince me it's not? the fountain was probably the worst movie I have ever seen btw

The book has nothing to do with the "wow it's all connected!" aside from a few casual moments. Book is essentially a series of novellas built around a common theme (people tend to oppress one another)

the last 30 minutes will most likely be some cosmic collage of all the characters colliding through time and space and media.

...the characters across the stories are being played by the same actors...

I just realized that the last half hour is just every character having cosmic sex with Tom Hanks

Or are they actually just having sex with themselves ??

http://badassdigest.com/2012/09/08/movie-review-cloud-atlas-is-overwhelming-odd-and-utterly-completely-amazing/

Maybe this is the death of irony.

Yeah I'd argue a theme of the book is that "people are connected...within a perpetual system of oppression and cruelty." for that reason it feels like if the movie abandons the "nested" structure of the book it probably misses some of the point?

http://blogs.laweekly.com/arts/2012/09/cloud_atlas_review_the_wachows.php

Adversity is faced and the lesson is repeatedly learned that people born of different races, bloodlines and sexual orientations are all equally human. Unless they're snooty book critics, corporate hit men, hard-ass retirement home nurses, or anyone else who disrupts a hero character's journey.

ha ha ha

44.

I simply cannot get with a movie that takes the concept of eternal recurrence seriously. I say this as a Finnegans Wake fan no less.

http://i.imgur.com/a297M.jpg

Is this a quasi-genre now?: the meaning-of-life movie that reminds you of a prog-rock concept album? Sometimes good (Synecdoche New York, Tree of Life), usually bad (The Fountain, The Matrix sequels, the "deep" bits of Inception).

I don't know if this review is right but it's funny.

http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/2012/09/toronto-international-film-festival-2012-cloud-atlas/

love people itt pre-judging a book based on a trailer of a shitty adaptation by two shitty filmmakers way to go guys

Or are they actually just having sex with themselves ??

IMO, if you find another human being that is you, you should have sex with it.

lol Wells again: "celestial cornholing"

http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/09/all_due_respect.php

pssh, tykwer is ok, he's certainly not shitty or michael bay

Bought the book today, lets see how this is

the book was good, holding out hope that the movie isn't all just pretty pictures and no substance.

still think The Diamond Age (Or A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer) is a much better book and would make a better movie, though. seems to me Cloud Atlas ripped off Diamond Age a wee bit.

Diamond Age had Stephenson's standard poor ending tho

nobody writes 4/5 of a cracking yarn like neal stephenson

It took him until Cryptonomicon, but he finally figured out how to tie everything together. It's just that he had multiple novels fall apart until then. Diamond Age had a crap ending, Snow Crash wandered off into the desert for 100 pages before coming back, etc.

Neal's swordfighting vidja game kickstarter got the go-ahead, too:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/260688528/clang

still think The Diamond Age (Or A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer) is a much better book and would make a better movie, though. seems to me Cloud Atlas ripped off Diamond Age a wee bit.

I really don't see any connection between the two.

me neither

BIRTH
LIFE
DEATH

well, both books have a main female protagonist from an atypical background living in a society segregated into distinct "phyles" or pseudoanarchistic tribes. both protagonists are mentored by wealthy paternal philanthropist/revolutionary types. both are touted as leaders or harbingers of a new world order. both go through phases of servitude, as well as mastering. naivete, then disillusionment. both live in and come from future-asia. both glean the bulk of their knowledge or learning from an electronic book that they cherish, due to their socioeconomic caste neither of them are supposed to have access to this knowledge/book, eluding knowledge is kept from the poor in order to maintain their state of servitude to the rich. knowledge is power, knowledge is freedom, knowledge is dangerous, etc etc etc.

neal stephenson has written several novels that span lifetimes and that span several generations of several families (shaftoes in particular). seems to me Cloud Atlas is a condensed and simplified version of all of NS's novels in one book.

so many similarities. too many, really.

dunno which version of Cloud Atlas you were reading that has a "main female protagonist"

oh you're talking about one 6th of the book. okay.

Stephenson isn't even close to the mastery of genre styles that Mitchell exhibits, nor did NS invent the multi-generational/multi-continental storyline I dunno what you're talking about really.

the biggest problem with this film is that it doesn't star

Eddie Murphy...Eddie Murphy...Eddie Murphy...Eddie Murphy...Eddie Murphy...AND...Eddie Murphy!!

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/14/movies/cloud-atlas-as-rendered-by-tom-tykwer-and-the-wachowskis.html

From the beginning the filmmakers ruled out the idea of telling the novel’s six stories sequentially. They didn’t think audiences would sit still for it. “Try to imagine, you’re sitting there in the theater for 90 minutes, and then a whole new story starts,” Ms. Wachowski said, shaking her head. So instead they broke the novel down into hundreds of scenes, transcribed them onto color-coded index cards and shuffled them around, looking for patterns and parallels and a way to splice them together. Eventually they began to see certain similarities between characters in the different narratives and hit upon the movie’s most distinctive feature: having a single actor play multiple roles.

In effect they took what is a relatively minor motif in the novel — the idea of eternal recurrence — and turned it into a major one. They also laid on top of it a plot of moral or karmic progression, so that Mr. Hanks, the lead, goes from being the movie’s worst character, a doctor trying to poison the 19th-century notary, to its best, the futuristic goatherd, Zachry, who saves humanity, or what remains of it. Mr. Grant, on the other hand, goes in the opposite direction, starting out bad as a racist missionary in the 19th-century story and winding up worse as a slobbering cannibal in the postapocalyptic one. Some actors even play members of the opposite sex.

Mr. Mitchell recalled that they met in a hotel in Cork, and then he and Ms. Wachowski spent a couple of hours in a pub over pints of Murphy’s discussing narrative theory. “I felt as if I’d been in a creative writing course,” he said. Mr. Mitchell happily approved all their ideas, including such departures from the book as transporting part of the action to another planet. (Mr. Mitchell even has a cameo. Graduate students will one day write theses about his presence at the execution of one of his characters.) “I felt that if it’s in the spirit of the book and works for the film, then go for it,” he said, adding: “The way the characters evolve is sort of like ‘Pilgrim’s Progress.’ That’s how I like to think of it. It’s a matrix — no pun intended — of ‘Pilgrim’s Progress.’ ”

Another early reader of the script was Mr. Hanks, who declared it “bodacious.” who declared it “bodacious.” who declared it “bodacious.” who declared it “bodacious.” who declared it “bodacious.” who declared it “bodacious.” who declared it “bodacious.”

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m7s82woJ261qa9bmvo1_400.png

I thought this book was well-written and readable and a couple of the individual stories were quite good (esp. 5 and 6) but that overall it was kinda over-baked. Interconnecting threads between the stories probably the worst part of the whole thing.

And of course that's what the movie is focused on so there ya go.

sorry, i'll stop being annoying some day but i'm starting to sense a theme here:

It might be possible to write a novel more unfilmable than David Mitchell’s “Cloud Atlas,” but you would have to work at it...In all honesty, I’m amazed that of all my books, this is the one that filmmakers of that caliber and reputation would want to make,” Mr. Mitchell said...“Screenplays often really lay it all out for you, but this was like the blueprint for some complicated piece of architecture,” Mr. Hanks said. “They voluntarily made a dense, complicated screenplay in which nothing seems to make any sense, and then the scenes start to match up...Very few studio executives shared Mr. Hanks’s enthusiasm. They were put off by the multiple narratives, with their different tones and different themes, Ms. Wachowski explained... Backers kept dropping in and then dropping out, even after contracts had been signed, forcing the filmmakers to keep whittling the budget...“It was a constant beating down,” Mr. Tykwer said. “A couple of times the movie fell apart even as we were shooting it.”...So you’d get to the set, talk for an hour, an hour and a half, then shoot, and then you’d be done. I remember thinking, ‘Am I doing something wrong here?’"... “It was extremely challenging in every way, shape and form. They should have been panicked, but there was no panic.”

i'm going to go ahead and make the bold prediction that "They should have been panicked, but there was no panic." will be fitting epitaph for this

I didn't think the connections between the stories were bad - they were amusing in a minor way - but yeah they were hardly the point. what was most enjoyable for me was how well he engaged with the stories' respective genres.

xp

Eh I thought the recurring birthmark or whatever it was a little "DO YOU SEE?!?!" And I didn't find much value in the interruptions. Agree that the genre exercise part of it is quite fun, but for me none of the individual stories (with the possible exception of the fifth which to me could have stood quite well on its own) is much of a patch on their obvious influences.

Curious about his other books though (none of which I take it have much if any sci-fi elements?)

ghostwritten has a bit of sci-fi-ish stuff iirc

sort of.

but yeah sci-fi is not Mitchell's thing, in general.

ghostwritten is totally a sci fi book. so is no9dream arguably

thousand autumns has fantasy elements

i guess im in the minority when i say that i really liked the implication of connection in cloud atlas. i agree with what i think nabisco said on the other thread about wishing that mitchell had gone a bit farther and actually sketched out what was happening w/ the connections instead of just sort of hinting that "something" was happening

I haven't read no9dream.

I dunno what sci-fi elements max is alluding to in ghostwritten - the Zookeeper thing, I guess? that's such a small part of the book

thats the huge climactic ending

I thought it ended with the Aum Shuriya cultist trying to set off another gas attack

uh SPOILERS

I guess

i mean i dunno a book that features a battle between a massive artificial intelligence and a murderous non-corporeal identity...

nixonland?

battle between a massive artificial intelligence and a murderous non-corporeal identity...

this is SO obscured/far in the background tho

no way, and even if it were how does that make it not sci-fi?!?

oh god are we going to have a genre discussion

*hits eject button*

there's actual ghosts and stuff in it too. Not that that makes it sci-fi. Never mind.

I like that the Tykwer & Klimek are doing the music for this. I'm wondering if they're scoring the whole film or only their half of it.

Currently only about 5/12ths thru the book, to the beginning of the first NeoKorea sequence

Uh oh; most of the shots in the trailers make sense to me now, and I have at least 1/3 of the book to go.

Pretty much a disaster, but ludicrously watchable its entire running time.

I suppose giving an entire all-star cast a series of gender and/or race reassignments will have that effect.

haha this was so bad. almost 3 hours of unrelated intersecting anecdotes w/ a veneer of new age 'philosophy' wrapped around it

i have such a headache now

bbbbbut were the anecdotes
connected

COSMICALLY

i will admit the robin hanson finale moved me a touch

is this awesomeness fest the movie?

(you know, where it turns out that all life is just a complex predictive em market)

i think it is a film that they will want to screen at awesomeness fest, yes

Never read, the review makes the movie sound irritating as hell:

http://www.filmfreakcentral.net/ffc/2012/10/cloud-atlas.html

*this review

oh man, i almost forgot the gratuitous and totally unexplained name dropping of solzhenitsyn

Tom Hanks, and the never-ending quest to play in a film in which the CGI is potentially average.

A commenter on the review brings this up, but why not just have different actors play the different versions of the characters?

they took 6 different mediocre short films and tried to make 1 good movie out of them. there's a master + commander movie, a blade runner movie, an avatar/mad max movie, an english comedy about old ppl, a pam grier blaxploitation mystery... none of them rise above the level of genre pastiche. maybe the book had more insight + originality in these stories but i didn't see it in the film.

Bunch of asian waitresses = you know you are dealing with sci fi shit

also the acting was so bad

Finished the book. I liked it.

sorry guys but in this case the book is awesome
see you at life of pi

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/video/human-rights-campaign-visibility-winner-382123

Ebert sez **** -- http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20121024/REVIEWS/121029991

yo ebert got played by this POS

Old man swells at Cloud Atlas

i'm curious to see what armond thinks

Surely this is one of the most ambitious films ever made.

not surprised in the slightest that ebert loves this

In some ways, I love it too. But I also recognizes that it's overwhelmingly terrible.

lol, recognize

Our local critic.

the smashing dishes scene from the screen cap in that link was def one of the more embarrassing moments in the movie

yeah i love ebert but this is exactly the kind of thing he gives four stars to.

Ebert loved The Matrix, too, so it makes some sense.

god bless him for still having a blowable mind this late in the game, honestly.

also i like walter chaw but "longwinded russian prisoner solzhenitsyn" legit offended me

Glenn Kenny says meh: http://movies.msn.com/movies/movie-critic-reviews/cloud-atlas/

maybe rex reed's best ever nonsensical trash-related simile: this film is "coming at us in sections like an exploding garbage truck".

A three hour explosion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6bIx0vPLBc

So, uh, this was basically six bad movies (or more accurately, five bad movies and one amusing-but-out-of-place one) for the price of one.

so basically Mordy otm, except I should note that the dialogue in the chronologically-last segment reminded me of Pootie Tang.

sold

Ladies and gentlemen, the New Age Southland Tales has arrived.

I enjoyed this, but you should read the book first.

I'm glad they kept the pub scene.

I think I enjoyed Looper more, tho.

I've not read the book, which lots of smart folk I generally trust have praised, but the pub scene and its boorish Scottish stereotypes contradicted the "one love" hokum pretty glaringly.

So, uh, this was basically six bad movies (or more accurately, five bad movies and one amusing-but-out-of-place one) for the price of one.

― Simon H., Saturday, 27 October 2012 23:35 (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha, which is the latter?

i was wondering whether this thread would have discussion of lana's speech on it

guessing the amusing, out of place one is the current day London bit, tho that has easily the worst single perf in the whole movie (i.e. Hanks as Irish boxer/novelist)

yeah that one, which would have been an amusing-but-forgettable short on its own. thankfully the horrible Hanks bit is at least brief.

tom hanks as irish boxer/novelist i can't decide if that is better or worse than tom hanks as korean clone

also, pretty sure Broadbent is the only one who comes out of this unscathed

xpost -- It's statements like that that confirm how utterly unappealing this movie has to be. Who the hell would actually WANT to go see him do that?

xpost I still <3 Ben Whishaw pretty hard.

xpost -- It's statements like that that confirm how utterly unappealing this movie has to be. Who the hell would actually WANT to go see him do that?

― Ned Raggett, Monday, October 29, 2012 10:35 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

*raises paw*

Explain yourself.

lana's speech is actually pretty good

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/lana-wachowskis-hrc-visibility-award-382177

I guess I forgot about Whishaw since he really only has a prominent role in one of the segments.

two interviewy bits:

http://www.avclub.com/articles/the-wachowskis-explain-how-cloud-atlas-unplugs-peo,87900/

http://www.nerdist.com/2012/10/nerdist-podcast-the-wachowskis-and-tom-tykwer/

The latter gets far more into Lana talking about art & film than one would expect from a Nerdist show.

Also, the "Swanneke Atomic Power" sign hidden in one of the shots of Neo Seoul was pretty good

this... kinda worked for me!

hugh grant plays thulsa doom, toe-sucking korean guy with a skullet, guy from weird al's Amish Paradise video, and a melted wax roger daltry

the restlessness of the editing was most interesting to me - it's not a boring movie, if nothing else, and it's so propulsive that you don't get a lot of time to dwell on the stuff that doesn't work. it's a very brisk 3 hour film

tom hanks is the best thing about it, since he treats it like a long SNL guest appearance

i didnt know what anyone was saying in the poor man's Riddley Walker parts, that was probably the weakest stuff for me

i wasnt sure what the 2012 stuff was meant to be a pastiche of. it starts out with some lukewarm publishing industry satire and slowly turns into Waking Ned Devine or something? maybe it played better on the page.

and the ending... i'm sitting there going 'this is such hippie-dippy crap' but dang if it didn't sorta move me anyway

keith david shows up in the pootie tang post-apocalypse wearing a white jumpsuit and bride of frankenstein hair

i dunno, i just find it endearing that they made this crap and took it seriously

ps. halle berry's bra-less 70s gazongas

Imagine you’re at the Olympics. An unassuming diver that represented a country you didn’t necessarily root for or supported took the platform. The diver was about to climb the long ladder to the top, when this athlete is suddenly in the air mid dive spinning like a top with perfect form, colors begin spilling out of them, the diver appears at the top of the board, they’re now seemingly representing another country, perhaps yours this time, they’re female and while the phasing image of the first diver is spinning the colors continue to explode from that point as the diver launches upwards rocketing through a roof that explodes into pedals of beautiful flowers that cascade Busby Berkeley style as if on rotating ethereal stages when suddenly you’re nursing from your mother as an infant and feel more complete and warm and connected, the blink reveals the diver, now the original entering the water without a splash, perfect. And you saw this live. It was captured by all the cameras – and everyone saw something different, spectacular and transcendently significant that leads them to leading a better life.

That’s CLOUD ATLAS.

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/59310

Both visions require the use of drugs.

http://www.grantland.com/blog/hollywood-prospectus/post/_/id/60875/yo-is-this-racist-race-bending-our-way-around-cloud-atlas

h4a OTM on all points, esp melted wax daltrey. pic takes a really sincere swing at a very difficult pitch. to the degree that it falls flat (and it does! all over the place!) i found myself able to give it a pass and ride along. they have a sense of humor about the whole thing (sonmi section reads as a solid matrix parody with special recognition for Jim Sturgess' haircut, Keith David as Korean Larry Fishburne, and a James-Hong-in-Blade-Runner cameo.

i can't recommend it exactly, but i wouldn't tell anyone not to go.

enjoyed this.

also lol @ soylent green is people, both times it appears

omg this was the worst movie i have never tried so hard to fall asleep in my life and i had already taken 2 percocets i just want to take a shit on every copy of it in existence

why does everyone in the future sound like boomhauer???

why do all the asian men look like aliens?? how did anyone look at that makeup and think "yes ppl watching this will totally suspend their disbelief and interpret these faces as belonging to humans"

I just thought the fabricants were Asians and the "Asians" were white/black people in makeup.

This movie ruled and all the actors in it were such troupers

My friend Steve described it simply as "You're watching lumpy make-up dance through time."

haha. loved it.

the asian-face thing is some plastic surgery fad in the book (which i've not read and have no interest in reading) but the movie is bad, yeah.

it's trying to be an anti atlas shrugged and it's way too ambitious but it works a surprising amount of the time.

xp oh i don't know i really enjoyed it, don't know how they could have adapted it any better tbh

cafeteria scene is exactly how i pictured it

i have low expectations i guess, just happy i never wanted to claw my eyeballs out. high tom hanks tolerance is definitely a prereq

Hugh Grant quietly ruled this movie btw

the first scene when I recognized him in costume as the lead cannibal was the moment when I realized I was 100% okay with this movie, the makeup is either played for maximum ridiculousness and we are in on the joke, or it is to explicit effect (I saw no unconsciousness in the 'racism' of the Neo Seoul world -- the film bent over backwards to demonstrate irony in that the 'purebloods' were all frankensteins trying to look asian through either surgery or bioengineering, and the 'fabricants' were the only purebloods)

liked it! teared up a couple times during 'the mantra' that repeats three times; I'm a sap. ridiculously cheesy, but if you're going to do cheese, at least shoehorn six films into one film and keep all the plots moving at breakneck pace. and there was just emotional connective tissue left to keep it meaningful for me when bad things happened to good characters.

another review:

http://ohnotheydidnt.livejournal.com/73061657.html

by the way i thought the movie was great, i read the book before but i've seen it twice with different people who hadn't, both were entertained throughout, both wanted to read the book now/see the movie again after seeing. i got a lot out of watching it a second time.

once you know to look for the makeup it's pretty obvious, but the first time i watched it i didn't really notice it at all, and was pretty surprised when i saw who played who in the credits.

actually i thought ebert summed it up pretty well, and though i think the movie maybe isn't as perfect as he makes it out to be, it's still damn good. i predict will it tank at the box office, but blow up in blu ray sales and rentals

can someone sum up what hugh grant does in this film for me, because ... lead cannibal?

he puts on ridiculous makeup and goes oogie boogie and scares tom hanks in the future and then hugo weaving keeps showing up as tom waits it's really magical

http://a.espncdn.com/photo/2012/1030/grant_wb_cloudatlashugh_300.jpg

enjoyed this.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Sunday, November 4, 2012

me too. and h4a otm: "dang if it didn't sorta move me anyway...i dunno, i just find it endearing that they made this crap and took it seriously"

also brine: "Hugh Grant quietly ruled this movie btw"

it's ridiculous and embarrassing and the makeup is often atrocious, "my father was a scientist but he believed in love" made me want to claw my ears out, and wtf yellowface future, but i kind of loved it anyway. jim broadbent is terrific every moment he's onscreen. and hugh grant, hugo weaving, doona bae, ben whitshaw, james d'arcy, all punching like champions. dunno about hanks and berry, but you know, stars. wish more movies were half this crazy.

why do all the asian men look like aliens?? how did anyone look at that makeup and think "yes ppl watching this will totally suspend their disbelief and interpret these faces as belonging to humans"

in the book, the rich of neo-seoul alter their facial features, skin color etc extensively with surgery or bio-engineering or whatever, simply to be high fashion. for instance, there's a plot point where a freshly escaped somni walks through a crowd in an expensive dress and everyone is like "gasp! some rich edgy type has altered her features to look like a somni, how daring! this will be all the rage next season i'm sure of it" etc etc

so, werid, slightly fakey looking asians = fits perfectly with the source material fwiw

the movie might have at least touched on that

I got that loud and clear from this film; not surprised the book spent more time on it, but it's easier for books to do that. a lot of what I like about this film is that it does a fair amount of the world-building with set design and visuals, instead of the normal hilariously awkward expository dialogue exchanges between characters.

also, not the future: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/26/bagel-head-forehead-injections-japan-saline_n_1916188.html

i dunno, there seemed to be a fair bit of outright exposition in the sonmi story. after all, she first described her own working life and then had a larger world shown and described to her. plus the whole thing was an illustrated interrogation scene. and yeah, i figured that something had to be up with all the weird-looking pseudo-asian faces, but a passing comment or somesuch wouldn't have hurt, i don't think.

did like the slow, show-don't-tell parceling of expository info in the post-collapse story.

the movie might have at least touched on that

you're not wrong but hey CA was already 3 hours long, they were probably cutting everything not completely essential to the storyline. other than that nice smashing-the-chinashop scene of course, which comes (loosely) from the book as well and which i thought was lovely even if it didn't advance the plot

tbh it's hard for me to imagine what seeing this would be like without having read the book (twice!) already. i'm probably going to wind up doing six passes at this thing overall - i've seen the movie twice now and am currently halfway through a 3rd reading of the book, can't imagine not giving the movie a 3rd shot when it comes out on bluray as well.

yes i am a bit ocd about books and movies i like a lot

exposition of somni story is also straight from the book - that whole section is nothing but a transcript of somni~451's final interview before execution, and comes in pretty early with a "let's start from the beginning, what's a typical day like for a server etc" thing

thing most missed from movie adaptation of book: in post apocalyptic hawaii, marijuana is called "dammit weed"

Was neo-Seoul as creepy in the movie as it was in the book?

I wonder if this is making its money back

lol no it bombed

i think the wachowskis are kind of starting to get appealing in their commitment to awful ideas

I think the fact that there's a pensioner escape adventure stuck into the middle of the novel/movie just adds to its strength.

I just with they had held off on the dude's speech skills as long as they did in the book

like how they immediately frontload the thing with tom hanks in weird makeup doing bad accents. lets you know what you're in for right off the bat. "ok, this is kind of terrible, but maybe it'll be an entertaining kind of terrible." and it was!

why didn't anyone tell me that this movie is THREE HOURS LONG?!

i was amused/entertained by the absurdity for 2 hours, but the last hour was torture. when i saw the little kids around the campfire and they were like "more grampy more" i almost shouted NO! NO MORE! but i was too busy worrying if this was really going to be the end.

i can't believe i sat through this whole thing

i sort of loved this as a hilarious trainwreck, but i'm seriously wondering at the people who have been talking this up as a "grand renouncement of cynicism" and claiming that people who don't like it "don't like cinema"

who are these people

every review i've read is middling

b-real and sen-dog both gave it 8 bong rips out of 10, and they both seemed very pleasantly befuddled over it. so there's that.

they didn't actually go so far as to call it a "grand renouncement of cynicism" tho

crazy young people, not critics from what i'm aware

Watching this drunk was the right idea. Sort of glad I didn't finish reading the book.

The makeup in this reminded me of Nothing But Trouble.

lol, otm, tho without the musical dicknose

I enjoyed it! Much zippier and less laboured than I feared, and at times fairly resonant. The trans-racial and -gender prosthetics never failed to raise a giggle, but in a film this inherently ludicrous (and so utterly embracing of artifice) it didn't really matter. Quite fun figuring out who was who as well.

yeah i didn't mind the hour or so i caught (on screener), but the folks i was watching it with were nodding off and i can't say I'm driven to catch the last TWO HOURS (omg) esp since i hear SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER there's not much of a pay-off beyond "stories, how about 'em!"

The threads sort of come together thematically by the end if you squint a bit.

W...T...F...?

Final line of the movie: "The aristocrats!"

I finally went to see this last night and had pretty low expectations that were more or less met. The Timothy Cavendish storyline definitely worked the best, mostly because a) Jim Broadbent is great, b) they bothered to give the main character a personality and c) it got the human element right as a result. Its scope being so much smaller probably helped as well.

Frobisher section was alright, Ben Whishaw is a really good actor and more or less carried a paper thin character. Although they did ruin that character, in the book he's much more of a waspish Lucky Jim figure, which would have worked much better on screen than wimpish figure they went with. The music for the Cloud Atlas Sextet was less naff than I'd expected though.

The structure and pacing of the film was all wrong and the Luisa Rey section probably suffered the most for that, no tension, no sense of the stakes really mattering, breaking away at awkward inconvient points. You'd think a boilerplate 70s thriller would be the easiest to adapt but no they fucked it up.

The sci-fi sections are probably the weakest in the book, the action sequences in the Somni storyline were pretty fun because that's what you go to the Wachowskis for, but the woman playing Somni was either terrible or given nothing to work with. The post-apocalyptic section was borderline unwatchable, Tom Hanks and Halle Berry aren't any good at the best of times but there was zero chemistry between them and they were hindered even more by the ludicrous direction choices and incomprehensible dialogue.

The decision to reuse the same actors again and again led to some atrocious casting and make-up choices but surely nothing worse than Hanks's preposterous Irish gangster.

Three worst bits for me were Hanks' gangster, the scene just after with three cackling stereotypes, and the "My father was a scientist" at the end.

Other than that I enjoyed it a lot - certainly can't think of anyone else that I would've rather directed it.

I appreciated that all of the linkage is story, but I particularly liked that the Halo Jones figure that freed the world and became a spiritual icon is inspired by an overblown account by a self-aggrandising literary agent of a four-person escape from a nursing home.

I did detect/project a bit of author-dabbling-in-different-genre in that I imagined David Mitchell thinking "Ah-ha-ha-ha I shall tell them that the 12-year attendants are ascended and then everyone will be shocked when it turns out they're actually killed" which, really, no.

I still like Max's idea of a 12-part BBC or HBO series with a different director for each story.

The decision to foreground the reincarnation element to the story was weird, like the book only kind of hints at it and this was really hammered home. But it doesn't make any sense even in the book - Luisa Rey and Timothy Cavendish would clearly have been alive at the same time. The book sort-of wriggles out of it by blurring the lines of fiction within fiction but there's not really any such move within the film.

I feel bad that it was hamamered home, because I completely missed it. If you mean the tattoo, I assumed it just meant "Hello I am your protagonist for this chapter".

The decision to reuse the same actors again and again led to some atrocious casting and make-up choices but surely nothing worse than Hanks's preposterous Irish gangster.

― Matt DC, Saturday, March 30, 2013 7:49 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark

*nothing better

I did detect/project a bit of author-dabbling-in-different-genre in that I imagined David Mitchell thinking "Ah-ha-ha-ha I shall tell them that the 12-year attendants are ascended and then everyone will be shocked when it turns out they're actually killed" which, really, no.

Quite the opposite, really. In Mitchell's version there's a big moment when the scales fall from Sonmi's eyes, but the dramatic effect is developed bc she's the only one who hasn't seen it coming from page one.

Final line of the movie: "The aristocrats!"

― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, March 20, 2013 5:51 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol

so a few half-formed thots because i just saw this. i imagine a lot of this has already been said here and elsewhere...

i was disappointed when i found out that they abandoned the "nested" structure of the book for a birth of a nation style cross-cutting between the different stories.

and it's not really because it doesn't make sense. you could even argue that Mitchell's structure for the novel was an attempt to present something through a literary technique that cinema has by now taken for granted--that ability to effectively present multiple different scenes/places/actions as if they are happening concurrently.

but i think by doing this they have missed a big part of what made the book so compelling. the book effectively goes forwards, and then backwards, in time. in that sense the causal processes and repercussions cascade both forwards and backwards, and i think a real link, often a moving one, is shown between individual actions and history, both in what happens beyond this moment and how what we do now reverberates backwards into the past (because "caused" by it)--almost as if it were a mutually causal process between past and future that creates this moment we are in.

cinema has the "cut"--something i dont think can really be effectively recreated in literature. and what's so useful about a cut is that while it establishes a difference it also more fundamentally establishes a continuity. so when you start cross-cutting between the different stories, sure you powerfully gesture towards a continuity that's certainly implied in the novel, but at the same time you flatten everything out into (imo) banal simultaneity--history and the past and the future are flattened out into a chronological holism. i think this leaves you with a rather empty platitude (everything is connected) rather than the more nuanced and even profound aspects of the novel which preserve the difference between individuals and the past and future while also showing the underlying continuities in more complex ways. so in the movie it's not so much an "eternal recurrence" but an endless "now"--and i think for a lot of reasons (ethical and political ones looming largest, but for me just plain old philosophical ones) its puts an enervating and even hollow complacency in place of the novel's urgency.

I think that's a fundamental difference in the media though - you get to put the book down and ruminate on effects and reverberations, the film (particularly one that is trying to fit into three hours a book that took a lot longer to read) has to keep moving, to trust that you'll pick up on connections afterwards.

i can't remember the last time i did so much research to figure out if i wanted to watch a movie on netflix. i read about this movie all morning. and read this thread. still can't decide. it's the hanks conundrum.

Start watching it and then fall asleep/ quit - that's what I've done at least twice. Same with Jupiter Ascending actually.

it's awful

if i want to fall asleep i'll just put on almost any french drama that netflix might have streaming. better than ambien!

or sense8

i'm like scott in that i keep wavering on whether or not i want to try to watch it. i did like the book a lot so i'm curious in how they try to do it, even if it's kind of awful.

T/S: cloud atlas v. sully

between the surprisingly fast pace of the separate plotlines and the uncanny prosthetics and effects for the actors' appearances, I thought Cloud Atlas was intriguing and worth a watch even if it doesn't quite hang together. I suppose "intriguing but doesn't hang together" describes most of the Wachowskis' output (although Jupiter Ascending was not intriguing at all, just straight sucked)

fun b minus, some very fuckin questionable decisions, some real cool bits that will stick with me. understood one of every five lines in the hanks/berry postapocalypse section so that seemed particularly generic and dumb. amazing how little actually happens in this - six episodes of six middling TV shows - and how i was nonetheless drawn to stick it out. something weird happens when yr cutting between six different stories at the same emotional moment --- what would be a two-minute scene of the tension rising in the face of impending doom becomes a twelve-minute experience of the same. like that audio trick where it sounds like the tone is perpetually rising, an infinite tension. cool trick.

what was the handoff supposed to be from the 70s paranoia thriller to the jim broadbent old-people farce? like i loved that his impact on the future of humanity was that his pretentious, self-serving novel of his dumb experience got turned into an oscar-bait tom hanks movie that inspires a 22nd-century revolution (i will not be subjected to criminal abuse!). ... but how did halle berry's investigative journalism give rise to his caper? he has a copy of her novel......? does this inspire his rebellion............?.... ...somehow.....? seems kind of a major thing to leave vague when the movie seems to be aiming for some thing where the events of the 18th century story reverberate all the way to humanity being able to live on as a passel of hanks/berry grandkids hearing stories around the campfire on alpha centauri. huh.

some real cool bits that will stick with me

― Doctor Casino, Monday, October 16, 2017

trust me, they won't

six episodes of six middling TV shows - and how i was nonetheless drawn to stick it out.

You had more stick-to-it-iv-ness than I did.

maybe the right mood was on me but fuckit i just enjoyed this pretty much as it wanted to play it

watching and loving SPEED RACER has made me want to come back to this someday. the wachowskis' unembarrassed sincerity and optimism about the human spirit and the potential to make a difference is really appealing to me in 2018.

you're gonna love sense8

just saw a screening of this and loved it
(except for the yellowface which was erm, questionable. but that section was still fun cyberpunk action!)
god bless the Wachowskis for swinging for the fences and their genuine belief in humanity