THE FALL by Tarsem Singh

paging tipsy mothra

http://www.iwatchstuff.com/2008/04/02/fall-poster-tarsem.jpg

looks pretty cool, I'll totally see this

Sure this will be way better than the book.

5 mythical heroes

Brix, Marc, Craig, Karl, MES

Anyway M. Night is all "Hey wait!" right about now.

Similar material was covered in my friend David's student film two year ago.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ru5_W_FWkP0. That's me as the sailor in navy blue.

i admit i enjoyed the cell even though it was totally stupid.

also i like that this whole movie is apparently all non-cgi. somebody has to keep the real elephants employed.

it is?

nuts

yah

that article's pretty interesting! if he wanted to shoot in India he'd take a job to shoot some Indian Pepsi commercial but then bring the movie crew along and also shoot some stuff for The Fall

I'm a little worried this might be totally boring and pointless like "The Fountain" but it could be good ...

also my thread title is wrong, he's just going by "Tarsem" now, lol

Didn't he always just go by that? I remember that being the case in the "Losing My Religion" days.

And in the little girl's-uh,
the little girl's vivid imagination-uh,
the line between fiction-uh,
the line between reality-uh,
start to blur in THE NORTH-UH!

i admit i enjoyed the cell even though it was totally stupid

OTM

I liked it too

the visuals were very pretty

yes (assuming you mean j.lo in her panties)

(sorry)

more the damien hirst stuff but sure, that too

plus little belly winch will haunt me forever...

yeah the belly winch was eeeks. a lot of the rest seemed like a nine inch nails dvd, but not in a bad way.

The Cell's script and main actors didn't deserve the set design, costumes, and score. Hopefully this one will.

Matthew Barney reimagining The Princess Bride

cinematography is A++++++++++++++++++++++++

this is supposed to be vg

Its more Baron Munchausen than anything else, but its a terrific little BIG movie. Certainly some awesome cinematography, and asurprisingly touching story (which is in itself a plea for "real cinema"), but it also constantly catches itself lulling into pretension by undercutting its own seriousness. The little girl is one of the oddest child star actresses I've ever seen, she seems really unprofessional but suckers you in. In the end its a quite traditional film about the redemptive power of a friendship between a suicidal and a kiddie, but the manner of its telling is really quite lovely.

And like you say above, i don't reckon a CGI swimming elephant would have been as good.

seeing this tonight or tomorrow :)

I've heard this awful, but I want it to be good so someone convince me that it's the next Holy Mountain so I'll see it.

The Cell was unwatchably bad (as was that crappy REM video) so please don't use those as evidence.

"someone convince me that it's the next Holy Mountain so I'll see it."

^^^trailer convinced me of this!

also av club review

That preview didn't convince me.

Roger Ebert "Magnificent"!

i'll report back??

o man you know this shit is up ebert's alley. this thing's playing nearby, everytime i see the marquee i'll think 'woah, they're showing some movie about THE FALL?' but no. have to admit this thread has me intrigued now.

i'm about to write actual thoughts, but fyi i'm on ebert's side (i mean, i haven't read the review, unless the review is the word 'magnificent')

hold on a sec

so you're not totally off in wanting a holy mountainesque film. Like Jodorowsky, this guy uses awesome and vivid imagery that seems inspired and sticks with you after the credits roll...and like Holy Mountain, if you saw ten pictures of these images, they wouldn't seem to fit together, but in the context of the film, they totally do (idk if the cell is like that at all), but (and i haven't seen holy mountain in a while, so apologies if i'm wrong) whereas the reasoning behind Jodorowsky's dramatically shifting images often felt deep and abstract, with The Fall, it's much simpler: it's a fairy tale coming out of a guy's mind. He's making it up as he goes along so he can get away with the desert becoming mountains becoming water becoming a face without any 'deep' reasoning (which isn't to say there is nothing deep about those transitions, it's just easier as a viewer to not think about them). The story is not boring, contrary to the neg. reviews (that's an odd ass insult to throw at this film!). It's a quirky fairy tale, but what makes the film so great is the daaark reality of the entire situation (and by 'the entire situation,' i'm referring to life outside of the fairy tale), and when that situation starts to meet the fairy tale world, things get brilliant...like inland empire or holy mountain, it's one of those films you could easily slam or praise. i'm doing the latter, obv.

and i'm not even drinking, christ, sorry about that

WALL-E/THE FALL SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER ABOUT WALL-E AND THE FALL

SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER ABOUT WALL-E AND THE FALL

i keep wanting films to end at v. dark places, and just like wall-e, this one had the opportunity to do that, but it didn't. instead it has an ambiguous ending that could be happy or sad and everyone on imdb says happy and gives good reasoning (i have good reasoning for thinking sad, though). (i also wanted wall-e to end with him being a completely different robot)

Its more Baron Munchausen than anything else, but its a terrific little BIG movie. Certainly some awesome cinematography, and asurprisingly touching story (which is in itself a plea for "real cinema"), but it also constantly catches itself lulling into pretension by undercutting its own seriousness. The little girl is one of the oddest child star actresses I've ever seen, she seems really unprofessional but suckers you in. In the end its a quite traditional film about the redemptive power of a friendship between a suicidal and a kiddie, but the manner of its telling is really quite lovely.

OTM

plot description sounds like it's by m night shyamalan?

will never forgive this guy for making me sit thru his dull s&m fantasies in The Cell

maybe i haven't see enough shyamalan (sixth sense, signs, the village?), but i don't think this is anything like him

much more jodorowsky than shyamalan

p.s. plz note "presented by david fincher and spike jonze"

Is IMDB shit for release dates or is this not coming out in the UK? Where did you see it, Pete?

the line between fiction and reality starts to blur

does it now

i really liked this.

it is nothing like shamalyan. it is quite a bit like baron munchuasen, crossed with cinema paradiso or something. anyway it was 100% enjoyable.

Loved it. That little girl is so cool..

yeah the girl was great, I thought she was very natural, the conversation he has with her where he tries to find out if she's lying or not was like talking to my two year old.

I read an interview with Lee Pace, he said Tarsem let her just read the dialogue naturally, no coaching or anything, and they shot a lot of her scenes with him through a hole in the curtain around the bed, so she wouldn't react to the camera. He said the only time she really had to 'act' was the heartbreaker at the end.

Tarsem Singh-ah

The little girl who plays Alexandria is my pretty much my favorite person ever. The movie goes out of its way to provide these insane, epic fantasy visuals, but all of my favorite parts are the chatty hospital scenes between her and Roy.

yeah the most touching part of the movie is actually the very very end with the film stock clips of stunt men and her voiceover, which seems like a directorial acknowledgement.

I liked that the fantasy sequences were often pretty funny. This movie definitely didn't take itself seriously, otherwise it would have sucked.

^ the main problem with The Cell

finally saw this! it was good!

so much gorgeous stuff in this movie, wow

He's making it up as he goes along so he can get away with the desert becoming mountains becoming water becoming a face without any 'deep' reasoning

that's how i chose to view it, and also that when you're a little kid sometimes stories don't make a whole lot of logical sense and your imagination just connects the dots.

This movie definitely didn't take itself seriously, otherwise it would have sucked.

― akm

Thought the dramatic climax, with all the heros dying horribly in storyland while the litte girl boo-hoos endlessly (unbearably, incomprehensibly) in the here-and-now took itself SOOOOOOO goddam seriously that it all but erased the good vibes generated by previous humor and kick-ass visualsness. Almost. Still dug it, overall, and the ending montage helped undo some of the damage.

Reminded me of Be Kind Rewind, in overdone third act hankie-drama, and in closing tip of the hat to film history/magic.

i liked this

Boy, I love this movie.

This was a treat.

one of the things that stuck with me most about the movie was like when the stuntman is telling the story and mentions "The Indian" character, the girl thinks of a South Asian Indian whereas the character meant a Native American.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VdONYkKFmQ

Will rep for "The Fall" til I'm old and toofless. Love that film.

Seems to be the only Tarsem thread. Anyway, first promo photo from his take on Snow White:

http://www-deadline-com.vimg.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/snow_white-embed_2011_a_p_20110722202343.jpg

I loved the Fall, so I will see this. And it's always nice to see Sean Bean die in something.

You've seen this, of course:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEhtsgu6bJg

Immortals is "the best-looking awful movie you will ever see" sez Ebert.

I heart Tarsem, but I hate serial killer Superman and Kellan Lutz.

http://www.bestgeekblogever.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Immortals-God-fight.jpg

https://variety.com/2024/film/global/tarsem-singh-4k-restoration-the-fall-locarno-the-cell-1236098714/amp/

4K version coming to Mubi Sept 27.

Also:

The restored version is approximately two minutes longer than the original theatrical release. Singh explained he reinserted two scenes he regretted cutting, including one featuring a priest character. “The poor guy traveled with me around India for two months, and I gave him the ugliest haircut in the world to match a mountain for a particular dissolve. And then the scene I’d made his haircut for, I took it out,” Singh said.

Singh also added a title card at the beginning of the film, reading “Once Upon a Time in Los Angeles” to better frame the narrative. “It’s a grown-up’s fairy tale – that’s a hard thing to sell because people don’t know what category to put it in,” he noted. “I think it was a line that I wish I had not taken out.”

A bit hmm on the title card bit, but I’ll reserve judgment until I get to see it.

Man I would love a chance to see this on the big screen again, hopefully they put it in some theaters too

Hopefully! Here's the trailer:

https://mubi.com/en/films/the-fall/trailer

Catching a screening tomorrow! Meantime:

https://www.indiewire.com/features/interviews/the-fall-movie-streaming-theaters-oral-history-tarsem-1235054784/

I spent *years* trying to remember what the name of this movie was. Very hard to search for based on descriptions of the visuals (and somehow it got muddled up in my mind with seeing "Tale of Tales").

Yeah, being able to finally see this on a big screen was the right idea. Treat yourself if you can. (And kinda jealous of everyone upthread in the past who did!)