Look! It's The Imaginarium Of Dr. Parnassus

This was worth coming out of semi-retirement for, surely?

The pics, taken by James Hatts, originated at London SE1.

Christopher Plummer Is Dr. Parnassus - And Our First Look At A Design From The Film

In a truly genius piece of casting, Terry Gilliam has made Christopher Plummer his Dr. Parnassus. As previously reported, Tom Waits is involved - but as Mr. Nick, the devilish villain of the piece.

Phil Stubbs came good on his promise and has published the image below in his new piece on the film. He's also confirmed the Heath Ledger, Lily Cole, Andrew Garfield and Vern Troyer casting as covered here as the weeks and months have gone by.

For many, many more details I'll point you towards my previous script review, which gives a good idea of the characters and plot. No doubt Phil Stubbs will be bringing us more as the film progresses, and I'll be doing my best to find out what I can also, in the many long moons until it is expected to be released in early 2009.

Please send me any information - any information at all - you have about this film.

The Imaginarium Of Dr. Parnassus Is Go Go Go

I've received a couple of e-mails from fellow Terry Gilliam lovers, each containing different, but exciting, information about his next film, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus.

The first included a partial cast list - but a quick check of imdb showed it was already there. As well as Heath Ledger and Tom Waits, who we already knew about, and Lily Cole, that I mentioned last week, there are also roles for Vern Troyer - Mini Me from the Austin Powers films, as well as a waiter in Gilliam's own Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - and Andrew Garfield, who recently graduated from British TV to roles in Boy A, Lions for Lambs and The Other Boleyn Girl. See Garfield at the bottom of this post.

The other e-mail simply told me that the film was now pretty deep into pre-production. Sniffing around, I ended up finding very little on the film - only a brief mention of the film's status by the producer, Samuel Hadida, and a teaser for upcoming news on Phil Stubbs' Gilliam fansite.

Stubbs has promised to feed a link for his piece to AintItCool, so expect to see Parnassus exploding across the web very soon.

And let's hope as hard as we can that being in pre-production actually means production, post-production, release and greatness follow.

New Dark Knight Set Pics Offer Spoilers

A user of the X-Realms messageboard has posted a number of on-set pictures from The Dark Knight. Amongst the spoilery material therein is a look at Heath Ledger without Joker make-up and dressed as a cop.

The images were actually posted some time back, but the link surfaced on IGN today and that's how it came to my attention.

I'm on the record as not really caring much about The Dark Knight, but this is quite a big piece of news for Batfans, isn't it? The rendering of The Joker as a loon who applies make-up rather than has deathly-pallor by disfigurement? Does this put him more on a par with mask wearing psychopaths like Jason, Michael Myers (or, on this side of the screen, John Wayne Gacy) than the grand-guignol and penny dreadful antecedents I had previously associated with the character? And is this a bad thing?

I actually find it quite interesting.

Why So Serious?

There's been a lot of Dark Knight action in the last 24 hours or so. Flash mobs, teaser trailers, stills and chat. The still is below and you can either stream or download the trailer from an official site, but the flash mobs, well, if you want one now, you'll have to organise your own.

His Master's Voice

In case you hadn't noticed, I'm quite the fan of Terry Gilliam (hence the title of this post). There's a new video interview online in which he discusses Tideland with some Spanish folk, and spills the latest on Dr. Parnassus. Apparently, producers are in Hollywood right now, trying to drum up the dollars and within days, Gilliam will know if he has the greenlight.

Gilliam simply calls them 'his producers' - any idea who they might be?

I dare say Heath Ledger's involvement will make this fundraising initiative somewhat easier. Tom Waits, on the other hand...

The Imaginarium Of Tom Waits - With Heath Ledger In Tow?

According to a Q&A in today's El Pais, Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus is moving ahead... and he's cast Heath Ledger and Tom Waits.

Exciting? I'd say so. With an exploding cherry on top.

Here's the original question and original answer, in the original Spanish, and unaltered:

Q: Creo que Tideland es una de sus mejores películas. Eso sí me dejó el cuerpo algo revuelto y a la vez que con un extraño sentimiento de ternura. Me gustaría saber qué proyecto cinematográfico se encuentra barajando en este momento, gracias.

A: the imaginarium of the doctor parnassus. Con Heath Ledger y Tom Waits.

So, which character would Ledger be playing? I have the script (previously reviewed) and there's a couple of possibilities.

First up, there's Anton, though he's described as only being 18 or 19 years old. Here's his introduction:

PERCY, a dwarf, dressed as a medieval demon and rigged out as a one-man band plays a fanfare introducing a young man (ANTON, 18-19 years old) who emerges from the back of the stage dressed as Mercury/Hermes, the messenger of the gods, with wings on his helmet and sandals.

The other contender is The Hanged Man, a chap without a name who is soon given the moniker George St. George. This is the part I thought Hugh Grant would be up for - but, of course, I can see Hugh making a decent job of it. In his days as a Gilliam rep player Johnny Depp would most likely have been a shoo in.

Of the two, I can most easily imagine Gilliam shifting Anton's age along a little and giving Ledger that part. He's ideal, really, in all other respects.

And Tom Waits, if you hadn't guessed, would be taking the title role of Dr. Parnassus. Here's his introduction, which follows Anton's directly:

ANTON
Ladies and Gentlemen... Step up! Step up!... I, Mercury, the messenger of the gods, invite you... tonight, for one night only... at this very venue... to enter the mind, the very great mind, of Doctor Parnassus!

PERCY does a roll on the drum as a curtain behind ANTON rises to reveal DOCTOR PARNASSUS dressed in sumptuous oriental robes apparently levitating several feet above the stage. (He’s sitting on a glass plinth). DOCTOR PARNASSUS is seemingly in a trance. A bronze tripod containing burning incense stands beside him.

ANTON (CONT’D)
Doctor Parnassus... as old as time... yes, ladies and gentlemen, more than a thousand years old ... he has the power to empower your mind. A secret learned in the mystic East, deep in the heart of a pharaoh’s tomb. That’s right, the Great Pyramid of Egypt, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Let Doctor Parnassus open your imagination. Let him guide and transport you to worlds and possibilities you never dreamt of... If you dare. Because... Beware... there are dangers. You will have to choose. Will your soul fly?... Or will it be dashed on the rocks of darkness? The choice is yours and yours alone. Transcend the heights on Beauty’s wing.

Good stuff, isn't it? The only questions now are where the money is going to come from and when shooting is going to start.

Here's What's Wrong With The Bat For IMAX

USA Today have broken the news that The Dark Knight will be released to IMAX cinemas. Sounds like a good move, eh? It's not that simple however... we'll get into that in a moment... but first... the pictures.

Yep, they also included two pictures - one of masked bank robbers, one of whom may be The Joker (my money's on the one in the back) and another in which, indeed, The Joker appears without his mask. Let's take a look at them, before we go on...



Quite a cleverly chosen pair of pics, I feel. I've been quite impressed by the marketing of this film so far.

So, back to the problems. What's up with this decision to shoot on the IMAX format? Well, there's two things.

The first isn't specifically an issue this time round but in the case of every feature film shot on IMAX. Simply put, composing images and editing them together for a screen of that size is a trickier thing than working for, say, a decent sized cinemascope frame.

Imagine a simple conversation comprised of two set-ups, each of them over the shoulder shots. Now imagine the sequence cutting back and forth between the two of these pieces of footage. The eye has to travel, on each cut, from side to side of the screen, and this takes time, particularly as the eye has to read a large area ofd information to find a new focal point. And this time is instrumental in the precision of an edit. The difference in scale between a small cinema screen (think about those in the dark recesses of a smaller multiplex, where films wind up after five weeks on release or so) and an IMAX screen is enough to require different edits. Really - to make your cuts absolutely smooth in even a simple conversation scene can require a frame or two, maybe even three or four, of alteration between these two scales. That's assuming, of course, the perfect edit is something we're seeking.

Okay, this isn't a deal-breaker when we're only talking about conversations, about the ping-pong back and forth between two over the shoulder shots. When you start dealing with fast action, multiple angles and complicated shifts in screen geography, however, you might start finding your film unravelling a little. The kinetics of a sophisticated action sequence can be disturbed quite seriously by not taking the scale of the finished product into account.

So, the question now becomes, does Nolan leave a buffer in his edits to allow for the massive scale of the IMAX screen, of the immense, detailed images that the eye has to navigate - even though this might make the film seem a tiny bit sluggish in a normal auditorium or on TV? If he can't work the format pefectly, he'll be left with a trade off between clarity and pace when, really, both are equally important.

That's always an issue, and not specific to this case. And there are solutions, there are ways to stage and cut your sequences to sidestep the problem. But these solutions are tricky to keep in sight, aren't something directors and editors are widely skilled or experienced in, and not everybody is going to be able to pull it off.

And of course, to make matters worse, Nolan is using the IMAX format for only the action scenes of his film - where the above problem will be at it's most noticeable. But this fact also leads us on, however, to the other problem, the one specific to this project.

According to USA Today, the IMAX format is only being used for four action sequences. Nolan explains that these four scenes will 'fill the IMAX screens' - the implication being that the others won't.

Just a few days ago I was listing films that are in more than one aspect ratio during their running time - suddenly, here's another for the list. In the other cases, however, the change was always made horizontally: the film widened, or narrowed. That isn't the case here - this time, the film is to become taller, to expand vertically. And while a horizontal shift isn't exactly invisible, it's much less distracting than a vertical change - at least at this scale.

So, four times throughout his film, Nolan is to suddenly shift the window on his film's world. Four times throughout his film, he's to take his audiences by the scruff of their necks and pull them back into their cinema seats, remind them just how artificial an experience they are having. This is just the same problem the IMAX version of Superman Returns had (without the sideshow bonus of 3D). It's simply not a good idea - and four times, throughout the film? And just as momentum is supposed to be building?

Terrible move. Terrible.

My early recommendation is to avoid the IMAX release of The Dark Knight altogether. Hopefully the compositions in the action scenes will work fine on a normal cinema screen too, and the film will therefore at least have one 'optimum' version.

We're only just starting to see the damage that DVD and home cinema have really done to cinema. They've squashed audience sizes just enough that studios, directors, exhibitors and distributors are turning to William Castle novelty and chicanery, no matter the cost to the film. I hope they stop these silly sideshow gimmicks right now and simply get on with the matter of making all of their films in 3D. That's not only the best solution they have, it represents a genuine step forward in cinema.

The Joker's Gone... Dark Knight Trailer In December?

Try to revisit the Joker picture and you won't find it. Now the page has been replaced with a simple 'page not found' message... and some hidden text. Highlight the whole page and you'll see a seemingly neverending string of 'ha ha ha'. Mixed in amongst these letters, however, are a few left overs - line them up and you get the message 'see you in December'. Seems like a foregone conclusion, doesn't it?

So, while we're waiting, bookmark the see you in december dot com url (I ran a WHOIS and indeed it has been freshly parked) and keep one eye open at all times.

In other Joker jokes, and likely to be a hoax, I believe, is the MySpace page set up by one 'Mr. Happy' at myspace dot com slash ibelieveinharveydenttoo. Don't friend it and hype some chancer, but keep an open mind and, what the heck, the other eye on this page. You never know.

Joker Update

That Joker picture is coming along nicely - if, by nicely, you mean quickly. Here's the current state of play as I write, in Jpeg form:

[EDIT: And he's nearly done now, see?]

Those Blackmailing, E-Mail Skimming Bat-Cheats

Warners have come up with a cracking wheeze, as we so often say here in blighty.

A site has been set up that, originally at least, shows a defaced version of the Harvey Dent campaign picture. Underneath is a box for surfers to enter their e-mail addresses - and their reward? They receive an e-mail from 'tragicpast', complete with a pair of co-ordinates that will reveal one more pixel of a hidden picture. The more surfers input their addresses, the more picture is revealed - and the inference is, quite clearly, that we're going to see The Joker taking shape back there. I would hope that after 50% or so has been chipped away they'll just pull back the curtain - who's going to sign up just to de-fuzz Heath Ledger's face?

Ah, Warners. You know how keen people are to see The Joker. So keen they'll give you their e-mail addresses even though there's no indication at all what you'll be doing with them.

[EDIT: Yahoo and Hotmail accounts don't appear to be working with the site. Anybody prepared to try the various temporary e-mail sites to see if we can blast through this thing in a hurry?]

Aint It The Joker?

Aint it Cool have posted what appears to be a make-up test for Heath Ledger as The Joker. Nore interesting than that however (you can see it below, anyway) will be their Talkback. Let's see what the Batfans make of it.

My reaction? Meh. It's hardly revolutionary, it's hardly an offense to the eyes. Does look a little The Crow-ish, but I dare say there'll be a lot of things putting the finished film off track far more than any make-up job.

More From The Dark Knight Script

After yesterday's first look at some scenes from the Dark Knight script, here's... well, today's second look at some scenes from the Dark Knight script.

SPOILER ALERT

Remember the scene towards the top of Tim Burton's Batman, in which the criminals discuss their fear of The Bat? There's something similar here - downplaying the supernatural element discussed in Burton's film, therefore toning down any idea that superstition plays a part in fear, but not removing it completely:

A DEALER and a BUYER are in the middle of a transaction.

DEALER
I want eighty for the bag.

BUYER
Eighty? It was sixty last week.

DEALER
Inflation. Ain't it a bitch.

The Buyer digs in his pocket. The Signal appears in the air. The Dealer spots it and steps back.

DEALER (CONT'D)
No, man. I don't like it tonight.

BUYER
What're you, superstitious? You got more chance of winning the powerball than running into him...

Inflation? Come on. Couldn't this simply pass without the padding? Or couldn't they at least have something less predictable and insipid to say. Clearly not an important scene, but as clearly not an interesting one either. We'll see when the movie hits if either the buyer or the dealer do run into Batman, but if they don't... well... I'm at a loss as to what other point this may have. Maybe Batman is about to intervene here and then spots the signal? Who knows.

Batman does turn up in another scene. A 'babbling junkie', complete with the stereotyped' "bugs crawling all over me" hallucination, is being violently interrogated by a mobster's bodyguard:

BODYGUARD
Who sold you the stash?

JUNKIE
They're going to eat my insides! PLEASE!

The Bodyguard whips out a gun.

BODYGUARD
Come closer. I'm gonna unscrew your brain.

DOGS START BARKING. The Bodyguard looks around, scared.

BODYGUARD (CONT'D)
(nervous)
He's here.

This being a Batman film, we also take a trip to Arkham Assylum. Cheer now. There we meet a prisoner that, I believe, is The Joker:

THE PRISONER sits, smiling, content. Stephens guards the door.

THE PRISONER
I want my phone call.

STEPHENS
That's nice.

The Prisoner looks at his hands, which have been cuffed again.

THE PRISONER
How many of your friends have I killed?

STEPHENS
I'm a twenty year man. I can tell the difference between punks who need a little lesson in manners... (crack his knuckles) And the freaks like you who would just enjoy it.

Stephens folds his arms. Turns away.

STEPHENS (CONT'D)
(quiet)
And you killed six of my friends.

...if that prisoner isn't The Joker, I'll be very surprised. The Joker is definitely the subject of a conversation between Commissioner Gordon and a 'terrorized cop'. In that scene, some cops have been stripped and bound, and The Joker and his crew made off with their uniforms and guns. Does this tie into the bank siege? Does The Joker pull a switch, putting the hostages into the clown masks with him and his cohorts disguising themselves as cops? Possibly. Pure speculation.

Part of The Joker's plan does seem to involve drugging folk. Witness the fate of a Thug in a holding cell:

One of the men, walks over, clutching at his belly.

FAT THUG
I don't feel good.

DETECTIVE
You're a cop killer. You're lucky to be feeling anything below the neck.

FAT THUG
(agony)
Please. My insides hurt.

DETECTIVE
Step away from the bars.

FAT THUG
The boss said he would make the voices go away. he said he would go inside and replace them with bright lights. Like Christmas.

DETECTIVE
That's great. Please step-

The Fat Thug COLLAPSES. The Detective grabs his radio.

DETECTIVE (CONT'D)
I need a medic in holding.

Bright lights? Like Christmas? Either a) this Thug is a weird simpleton; b) his dialogue is drug induced; or c) there's some dodgy writing afoot. A little bit of a) and b), perhaps?

This film is quite the cop film, in many ways. Prisoners, cells, uniforms abound. Compare this to Batman Returns, say, in which the police play no real part. The more I read, the more The Dark Knight is coming across like a redo of 70s police/detective dramas, this time with a great hulking, rubber suited lunatic at the heart of it. And a man with green hair.

Not a bad approach at all, and a clear continuation of Batman Begins which was, truth be told, rooted both in Burton's first Batman and a whole heap of comics.

So, is The Dark Knight going to compare favourably to The Taking of Pelham 123, Night Moves, Dog Day Afternoon, Klute, Assault on Precinct 13 or Dirty Harry?

Not the best of them, I'm sure.

More later. Watch this space. And check out the first installment in the meantime, if you haven't already done so.

[EDIT: There are/is a newer installment(s) of this script report now online. Come in the front page to see everything, or dabble with the labels below]

Picktaker Link

I thought I'd link directly to the photobucket account of the scooper that snapped Heath Ledger on the Dark Knight set. Perhaps new images will crop up periodically...

Bat Day Afternoon

The evidence is mouting: the Dark Knight sequence in the big ol' bank is quite a signifant set-piece for the film. Possibly even the climax of the whole movie.

Exhibit A: the School bus. Suggesting some kind of hostage situation. And hostage situations don't play out quickly.

Exhibit B: the presence of The Joker on the scene - and in tidy garb. Is this later in his arc, when he's more in control?

Exhibit C: that an extended 'Bat Day Afternoon' would fit with Nolan's attempts to eschew typical superhero film plotting. Apparently. Maybe he's just pretending this is like a 70s cops and robbers drama, but with a guy in a rubber bat suit and another chap who looks like a clown and likes playing cards a bit too much. Strikes me as a better idea than anything Nolan and co. cooked up in the first installment.

Exhibit D: the jokerfied prop heads seen being taken onto the location. Looks like The Joker has perhaps made himself at home here.

Exhibit E: William Fichtner. He's too well known, and well-loved an actor to have a completely throw-away part. According to Batman on Film, he's been cast as 'the bank manager'. Clearly a quite substantial part.

Exhibit F: the ending of Batman Begins. Some comments have appeared online suggesting that, actually, Heath Ledger's appearance in the bank robbery scene is totally un-Joker like, with no make-up. Let's assume that's correct - does that necessarily place this scene early in the narrative, before he becomes Jokered? Well, how can it? He's already existing at the end of Batman Begins, it seems. The impression I get is that Ledger's make-up just isn't as obvious as people expected it to be. Of course, having said that - he was filmed in quite obvious make-up just yesterday. So go figure: either he's all green and white in this scene, or he isn't. The reports seem to be contradictory. Either way, it doesn't dictate that the bank robbery comes early in the plot at all.

I'm just connecting the dots here, and I might have drawn a saucepan instead of a roller coaster car, but something tells me The Dark Knight is going to feature an extended bank hostage situation. Doesn't sound like a bad idea at all. I hope I'm right - and I hope they do the idea justice.

And what's more, I think I can sniff my way through the make-up/no make-up scenario. Ledger wears a mask in a number of shots - no make-up needed beneath. In other shots, the mask is off. All of those Jokery heads could well be clown masks worn by the goons - and essential to the plot, perhaps, is not knowing which one the Joker is underneath. That might explain his (sometimes reported) dressed-down look too. Especially if one of his goons is in brighter grab.

We'll see soon enough.

Batfans Snap

SuperheroHype have published some pictures of what certainly appears to be Heath Ledger on the set of The Dark Knight. You'll have to go there to look at them. Spoiler alert: he's got a white face and green hair.

What do you mean that's not a spoiler? Apparently it is. Comic book fans don't much like change - witness their refusal to accept the cloud for of Galactus or (the oldiest, goldiest online argument of the lot) Spider-Man's organic web shooters. But they actually seemed plenty pleased about some rumoured changes to The Joker for Nolan's next film.

The rumour was, the white face and bright green hair were out, that the character was going to be a morturary-slab grey, with scars and ratty-tatty clothes. Certainly not the impression left by the pics now posted.

I could care less if this Joker is white with green hair or grey and covered in bumps, scars and slices - just as long as there's a reason for it. The green and white worked brilliantly for Burton, Nolan may or may not need something else. He might even need an eight mile tall giant in purple spandex and a truly absurd hat thing.

The questiuon is, really, what do these pictures tell us about The Dark Knight overall? Can we get slightly better bearing on it's direction from what we see here?

Terry Gilliam's King Rat

Heath Ledger and Terry Gilliam are working together to produce a very low-budget animated video for Modest Mouse's song King Rat. The track hasn't been released - if this will change when there's a video, nobody knows but I'd be very surprised if it doesn't turn up on YouTube in massive multiplicity.

At the moment, details are scarce but I have Modest Mouse fans in the family so I expect the drip-drip-drip of information to keep on coming. Watch this space.

Daniel Craig And Heath Ledger Top Choices For Lucifer In Paradise Lost: The Movie

The New York Times today has a piece on the planned $100 million feature film of Paradise Lost, likely to be directed by Scott Derickson. Derickson proved with The Exorcism of Emily Rose that he believes in the precise superstitions requisite to render this story of a War in Heaven with absolute sincerity and a sense of great importance.

"This could be like The Lord of the Rings or bigger" says Vincent Newman, the film's producer. Yeah, it could be, Vincent. He names both Daniel Craig and Heath Ledger as top choices for the role of Lucifer.

Talking of that ol' Devil, Stanley Fish, the author of Surprised in Sin: The Reader in Paradise Lost, is quoted as saying "In the introductory books the figure of Satan is presented with a certain kind of heroic glaze surrounding him, but then, as the poem proceeds, Milton quite deliberately, and for some readers unforgivably, insists that you see the terrible emptiness and self-aggrandizing narcissism at the heart of this character. You could pull the audience in by giving them the kind of romantic rebel that is so easy to respond to, and then pull them up short and ask them to re-think the matter and ask them to think about why this figure has such appeal to them.”