Michael Mann

[TedW]

Hasn't Farrell done enough to be considered at least a good actor let alone better than Foxx.

Not really.

So In Bruges, Horrible Bosses, The Way Back, Cassandra's Dream, and The New World mean nothing?

I'm not totally convinced he's "good" in any of those -- acceptable, sure. Maybe just barely good if I'm being charitable. But he is most definitely not a better actor than Jamie Foxx.

[oh yeah]

I think you're confusing Ali with Ray, Foxx being outstanding in the latter. He never really followed up on the promise of that, Collateral, and Miami Vice, but it's clear on the basis of those three that he's very talented.

No, I was thinking of Ali, and Foxx's excellent supporting role there as Bundini.

[Mr Sausage]

I think you're confusing Ali with Ray, Foxx being outstanding in the latter. He never really followed up on the promise of that, Collateral, and Miami Vice, but it's clear on the basis of those three that he's very talented.

No, I was thinking of Ali, and Foxx's excellent supporting role there as Bundini.

Hah! Totally forgot he was in that. Whoops.

[John Cope]

Hasn't Farrell done enough to be considered at least a good actor let alone better than Foxx.

Not really.

This is a nonsense. Farrell is a terrific actor with tremendous presence on screen and pursues a line that goes underexplored these days. He is the heir to Mickey Rourke's unique blend of familiar masculine strength and troubled vulnerability. He manages to adroitly dispense that flailing desperation even in something otherwise less than distinguished like Phone Booth. I first saw him in Tigerland and was convinced fully then. All else has simply backed that early assessment up. Having said that obvioulsy there are roles and films that have offered him more than others. For me the triumvirate of Alexander, New World and Vice remain his career high point.

[TedW]

Hasn't Farrell done enough to be considered at least a good actor let alone better than Foxx.

Not really.

This is a nonsense. Farrell is a terrific actor with tremendous presence on screen and pursues a line that goes underexplored these days. He is the heir to Mickey Rourke's unique blend of familiar masculine strength and troubled vulnerability. He manages to adroitly dispense that flailing desperation even in something otherwise less than distinguished like Phone Booth. I first saw him in Tigerland and was convinced fully then. All else has simply backed that early assessment up. Having said that obvioulsy there are roles and films that have offered him more than others. For me the triumvirate of Alexander, New World and Vice remain his career high point.

Uh, no. He is not an heir to anything except Hollywood also-rans. He is terrible in Alexander, he's not bad in New World, and he's the second worst thing in Vice after Gong Li, who is miscast. So... each to his own.

[flyonthewall2983]

Miami Vice is held up by Jamie Foxx and a good supporting cast. I like Colin but I have to agree he wasn't up to par here, and I think he's said as much himself. I do hope he works with Michael in something again, because he's been pretty good in what I've seen of him lately (especially In Bruges and Seven Psychopaths). I agree he's fantastic in The New World but that's par for the course, really.

[Mr Sausage]

Heat discussion moved to its dedicated thread.

[oh yeah]

Apparently, Mann's upcoming cyber-crime film now has a release date of January 16, 2015.

Err, what? Firstly, January is a horrible time to release a film like this. Secondly, the film's been in post since September. Why's it need 16 months? Seems excessive. I wonder if there is some problem, either with the film itself or with the studio? Seems like Mann's last few films took about 8-10 months in post, and a behemoth like Heat took even less. What's the deal? Or, I can understand taking a while to finish, but a January release? Isn't that usually when the most disposable romcoms or horror flicks etc. are dumped out by studios? All of Mann's films since Heat or Mohicans have come out either in summer or Oscar season, so I'd think this one would follow suit.

[flyonthewall2983]

Well it seems a few other Universal titles are also being pushed back (notably 50 Shades of Grey) so it may not be limited to that one title.

[flyonthewall2983]

His next film now has a title, Blackhat, and a much more interesting premise than I anticipated

...follows a furloughed convict and his American and Chinese partners as they hunt a high-level cybercrime network from Chicago to Los Angeles to Hong Kong to Jakarta.

[ArchCarrier]

Transcript of a 90-minute interview for Hollywood Masters.

[flyonthewall2983]

Great interview, thanks for sharing.

[flyonthewall2983]

Zen Pulp, Matt Zoller Seitz's 5-part video essay on Mann's work up to Public Enemies, when this series came out.

[Feiereisel]

Zen Pulp, Matt Zoller Seitz's 5-part video essay on Mann's work up to Public Enemies, when this series came out.

Great find! This is essential viewing for Mann fans.

[flyonthewall2983]

Transcript of a 90-minute interview for Hollywood Masters.

Interesting tid-bits about each of his films there, including his correspondence with a murderer during Manhunter, his dealings with Mike Wallace and Don Hewitt during The Insider, and Tom Cruise almost taking the role of the cabbie during Collateral. Kind of surprised they could show the whole transcript, especially if it was being shot for TV.

[flyonthewall2983]

There's a really good interview with him conducted by Robert Rodriguez on his El Rey channel, for a series called The Directors Chair. Some interesting anecdotes about Manhunter, especially how rushed the final scenes in Dollarhyde's home were.

[oh yeah]

Yeah, I just watched that the other day (it's up on YouTube now apparently), and I thought the Manhunter anecdote was the most interesting part. I had no idea that those infamous jerky jump-cuts in the showdown between Graham and Dollarhyde were put in there not by artistic choice but out of necessity -- because Mann didn't have the sufficient crew/effects to do a continuous shot of Noonan being repeatedly shot by Graham, and so had to splice together separate shots of each gunshot/wound. Regardless, though, I think the jump cuts work quite well in creating a disorienting atmosphere.

What irritated me, though, was how the interview perpetuated the mainstream-media view of Mann's career, in basically positioning Collateral as his last film, dismissing his increasingly abstract last few features, and ultimately depicting Mann as a rather conventional action-film director. So The Insider, Ali, Miami Vice (2006), Public Enemies and Blackhat weren't even mentioned, let alone discussed. I find this especially surprising and galling in the case of The Insider, which is likely second only to Heat as Mann's most acclaimed and consistently-praised film. But by only covering one film he's made since 1995 (!) the interview is literally leaving out half of Mann's career, and an extremely pivotal part of his evolution as an artist, at that. It would be like having a Lynch retrospective and stopping after Wild at Heart. Shameful. I know time constraints probably played at least a partial role in all this, but it's not like it would've been impossible to trim some of what they had (especially about Miami Vice the series, which Mann never even directed a second of) and at least cursorily cover some of these great and important later works. I have to imagine Mann finds this all rather insulting. I'm sure he's fine with leaving out The Keep, though...

[flyonthewall2983]

It is up on YouTube but it's slowed down, and has this weird glare in the middle of it. Guess they think that can evade it from being taken down.

I would guess he had some idea that it would be like a greatest-hits retrospective instead of something more in-depth. Rodriguez seems to have genuine affection for his work and gets along with him personally, so I'm sure that was the case. I do like that they talked a bit about his career in television prior to becoming a director. I'm very intrigued by Police Story now.

[oh yeah]

Eh yeah, I'm sure Mann knows the name of the game, and he did have a friendly rapport with Rodriguez. I guess I meant just more in general, how seemingly every retrospective of his career (that isn't on some obscure cinephile blog) just totally glosses over his post-Heat or post-Insider films besides Collateral. I mean you'd think "greatest hits" would include more than one work from the past two decades. Filmmakers tend to cherish their most recent creations especially, and so to consistently have people say how they love the work you did 20-30 years ago but not even broach the subject of the work you've been doing for the past decade-plus... I think any artist would probably be hurt by that on some level.

[nolanoe]

Somebody needs to get that Directors Cut of The Keep out there!!

[flyonthewall2983]

Deadline interview, mostly about Heat but before that he talks up the history of the Ferrari project, and how Sydney Pollack was initially involved. He also intimates that he may go back to film for that one, after seeing Heat on the big screen.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

Eh yeah, I'm sure Mann knows the name of the game, and he did have a friendly rapport with Rodriguez. I guess I meant just more in general, how seemingly every retrospective of his career (that isn't on some obscure cinephile blog) just totally glosses over his post-Heat or post-Insider films besides Collateral. I mean you'd think "greatest hits" would include more than one work from the past two decades. Filmmakers tend to cherish their most recent creations especially, and so to consistently have people say how they love the work you did 20-30 years ago but not even broach the subject of the work you've been doing for the past decade-plus... I think any artist would probably be hurt by that on some level.

This seems to be recurring thing with The Director's Chair. I've only seen two episodes (on John Carpenter and Francis Ford Coppola), and as I recall, the Carpenter episode all but stopped with They Live and the Coppola episode barely touched on anything after Dracula.

[flyonthewall2983]

There is an effort to crowdfund a documentary about The Keep, a project which has Mann's blessing.

[oh yeah]

That sounds interesting, but I'd much much rather just get the actual film on DVD/Blu finally. Watching it a second time recently (I hated it the first time), I was really enamored by a lot of things about it -- even if the strongest points by far are undoubtedly the music and cinematography -- and honestly I think that even in its butchered state it casts a certain unique, dreamlike spell which all in all I find more interesting than the Hollywood-y Collateral and Last of the Mohicans, or maybe even the great debut of Thief. It's a wonderful aesthetic experience even if the acting is largely stiff, plot coherence kind of goes out the window at the start, and the dialogue is not so good at all -- which is kind of fitting considering how much Murnau and other silent/German Expressionist directors are all over the film, influence-wise. Call it Mann's Zabriskie Point -- it's not as great as that film, but quite similar in that it's a very maligned work, a critical and financial disaster by a great director which I nonetheless love, and which prizes aesthetic immersion over traditional narrative storytelling. Or maybe a better comparison would be to Lynch's Dune, which is another second or third feature by a promising filmmaker that's made in a genre and on an epic scale completely different from the director's other films; I think The Keep is much better and freer/less hampered by convention than that (very) interesting failure, though.

[George Drooly]

Call it Mann's Zabriskie Point -- it's not as great as that film, but quite similar in that it's a very maligned work, a critical and financial disaster by a great director which I nonetheless love, and which prizes aesthetic immersion over traditional narrative storytelling.

I think it's garbage, and his second worst film after the atrocious Blackhat. At least Zabriskie is, as far as I know, original; The Keep is little more than a ridiculously misguided attempt to cash in on the success of Raiders of the Lost Ark, as it transparently apes the latter film's Nazi/archaeology imagery and supernatural mumbo jumbo.

I'm wondering about the supposed "science fiction" film he spoke of making a few years ago. I certainly hope it wasn't Blackhat, and I hope he lives long enough to make whatever it might be.