The trailer should be released online any time now...

It is playing in front of Black Swan

I've waited nearly three years of my life to see some sort of moving image from this movie. To say I'm ecstatic would be an understatement. So, this one means a lot to me. I'll post it whenever it shows up.

Black Swan is supposed to be pretty great, and with this I'll have to see it now. Thanks for the heads up.

Great day for movie news. Hopefully I can see Black Swan tomorrow.

The Thin Red Line is still my favorite film of all time.

Here's the trailer shot with a cam inside a movie theatre:

Yeah, I came across this and I couldn't hold back my desire to watch it pirated. I was going to wait but couldn't. They say it won't hit the web until another couple weeks.

This exceeded my expectations already.

I'm not going to lie, but if the movie is any way as good as that trailer, then I'm going to say it's the greatest film of all time. I know, I'm getting ahead of myself, but come on, fucking look at that imagery: the kid walking over the pews in the church, running in the dining room, the old school "2001"-like space visuals. Good god, this movie might just encompass my whole philosophy in life.

Wow...fucking love Malick

I came across the trailer last night when I saw Black Swan. It looks like the real deal team.

Yup--


http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/fox_ ... reeoflife/

Was just about to post this, looks pretty fucking spectacular!

I'm not gonna be one of those d-bags who comes in and shits on a thread. I'll just say, I don't care for Malick's work in general. The Thin Red Line is probably my least favorite movie. I really hated it.

But, I saw the trailer for this before Black Swan and I'm definitly interestied. I'll give it a shot. Looks promising.

It's an acquired taste. Personally, I love it.

I really want to like this new one. I'll give it a fair shot; try not to bring in any baggage.

I'll be seeing this on imagery alone

It's pretty to look at, but with a bunch of contemporary Hollywood bullshit lines and concepts imposed on a historical setting.

Far from Hollywood bullshit lines and concepts. It was all Malick. The studio hated his movie and expected something wholly different. The composer, James Horner's score was rejected by Malick. Horner complained that Malick could have made a movie on the grand scale of a Titanic love story but failed because of his renegade style of filmmaking. The full interview, which is long, can be read here. Horner simply blasting away at Malick:

Spoiler: show

DANIEL SCHWEIGER: The New World is done by Terrence Malick, a very esoteric director. Especially in terms of his music and he has never used what anyone could consider a traditional score until The New World. What was it like working with the director who had such unique approaches to film music?

JAMES HORNER: I would sum up Terry as a brilliant photographer - and that’s where it stops. The images in The New World are stunning, in Thin Red Line are stunning. In Thin Red Line he was surrounded by a couple of three or four people, a wonderful editor, a wondurful sound effects person who guided him through the dubbing and a couple of other people. And on The New World they were not employed. And Terry shot The New World and the whole idea of The New World was going to be a love story between John Smith and Pocahontas. And there is no reason in the world why it could not have been as great love story as Titanic was. That was the premise he got hired on and that is the premise he promised everybody he was going to deliever. So he went out shooting the movie, went over time, and got beautiful images and everybody "Oh god, this is so beautiful". There were a couple of things that were pasted together by a couple of the experienced editors of the love scenes. "Oh, this gonna be great, absolutely great". Okay, he had eight editors working for him - two prestigeous, the rest out of the wood work and some assistants. There was so much film he was working on night - on night there was a crew, on day there was a crew. When I first saw it, it was a mishmash of unrelated scenes, complete mishmash. I said "Well Terry, you need to..." - he asked me what I thought - "You need to cohere this, I mean this scene should be there" or kinds of editing things were wrong. It was the first assembly and he is a very, very nice man. That was like in April and he was supposed to have a cut ready by May to look at. And that we missed, he missed his deadline and it was in middle of June we saw it, the studio saw it and it was the same thing I saw two days after he finished shooting. It has gone through two and a half month work and it was just the same state. This was when I first saw it and red lights start to go up everywhere because I’m getting close to my recording dates and this is unscoreable like this. He also knew what the music was. I played him scenes, I played himeverything on the piano and I had the feeling he does not really know what movie music was. He didn’t have any experience with real film music being presented to him. Even in Thin Red Line it was all cut up. Here I was writing music for him which he would say was beautiful and great and sounded great on the piano, whatever. But I knew - and I warned everybody - this man does not have a clue what to do with movie music or how it works, not a clue. He is gonna to hear his first cue and not know what to do with it and I warned everybody. I begged him to watch several of movies that have music in them very effectively. Be it One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, I mean I showed him all kinds of films or asked him to see all kinds of films that were head scores in them. He said he would, but he never did. And slowly the editorial team started to disintegrate. The good editors left and they brought in more asisstants and it was cut by a bunch of incompetence. There was no real editor. He continued on in that way asking for opinions and we were approaching recording recording and there were no scenes to record, there were no scenes to time. He had no structure, literally, no structure. Scene A that was should go to scene B to C to D a natural progression. He had it attached to scene Z and that was attached to scene X and that was attached to scene D. I mean, there was no way to score it. So what I did with the film company’s permission is I made sequences from myself. I had my music editors assemble sequences as I thought they should be or as they normally be. And we scored some of that and it was lovely, just what everybody had hoped would be intended by the film. And Terry saw it and immediately took it back to his editing room and cut it apart and we were still recording and I realized that it was just a waste of everybody’s money to keep recording that we were commited because we had hired the orchestra. So Terry was making this movie that was incomprehensable. Everybody told him it was unwatchable. Everybody. Everybody. And he had Final Cut and when a director has final cut everbody can scream and shout but unless you’re willing to really go head to head in combat you basiclally have to throb your hands and say "I have no control of this man." And if we get the reputation of taking a director’s cut film from a director and recutting it ourselves and releasing no one want to make movies with us. So the studio company let him go along. He never did preview it but he played it for the studio and there were 35 people would come to the screenings and slowly over the course of three hours - because it’s a three hour movie - they would walk out. The editor who had worked on The Thin Red Line begged Terry to fix the fim. It was a love story and Terry doesn’t feel those feelings. All I can say is that Terry is on the surface a stone and he does not know how to tell love stories to save his live. When we scored the movie he completely disassembled everything. The score made no sense anymore and he started to stick in Wagner over scenes and a Mozart piano concerto over an Indian attack everybody to a man thought he was insane. By this time I was no longer on, I basically said "**** you" so I just did say a four letter word. I’m out of here. I’ve done my score. I thought what I have done was exactly what my brief was being hired, exactly what the studio wanted, exactly what the film supposed to be and the one who broke the bond was Terry. From the day he started editing to the final day when they kicked him off the dubbing stage he was just spending hour after hour doing nothing. It was like shuffling the tiles in a Rubik’s Cube. There was never a solution. All he was do was shuffle scene D over to scene X or Y would go up to A. Now that. Let’s try putting up A after D and putting D behind J. There wasn’t any gift of telling the movie. Terry doesn’t so this. And that was something we all learned about the great Terry. I never felt so letdown by a filmmaker in my life.

DANIEL SCHWEIGER: Well, I think, it’s a listing experience. There certainly is no letdown.

JAMES HORNER: Well, the cd is as I intended. I said to myself "This is not worth it. I want to resign." I’ll get my money anyway so to speak but I don’t care about the money. I want to do what is needed in the film and make a wonderful film. I kept telling Terry "Terry, this does not have any emotion in it. Don’t you understand?" He looked at it and he would say "I don’t know if emotion is important here." The whole movie goes by without you knowing that this girls is even called Pocahontas. I don’t even know if people noticed that. No one ever uses the word Pocahontas in the movie. I said "Terry, people, this is the name of the girl", she got this name of her backer when she hounded into the english fort. Nobody knew what her real indian name was and this was the name of this women up to the end of this movie. You never knew she was Pocahontas, there was never really a love story, it was only alluded to. It was a complete mishmash and what was released. What amazing is 50 million dollars later what was released in the cinema was the exact version of the movie I saw when it was first assembled. The only thing different was they had spent 40 million dollars in between editing, moving the Rubik’s Cube. Out came the other end the same movie and all the important people have resigned and said "Terry, you’re out of your mind.". That’s the story of The New World. It was the most disappointing experience I’ve ever had with a man because not only threw out my score - he loved my score - he didn’t have a clue what to do with it. He didn’t have a clue how to use music. So what he started to do was as I said take classicle pieces. But not even pieces the would be transparent and lovely. He was taking Wagner like a thick, thick planket or rock putting it on his movie and, I swear to god, on the dubbing stage everybody thought he was joking and he would bring up these musical solutions and take out the score and putting in Wagner or take out the score there and putting in Mozart. The cd is what I wrote for the movie and it makes a lovely cd but it’s the weirdest experience, he loved all the music, but he had not a clue. It’s not like he fired me and I’m bitter. What happened was I’m bitter because he did not make the movie he promised everybody he would make. Everybody felt betrayed, from the film company down to the editors. Everybody felt betrayed and this was the man who took the story that could have been one of the great love stories and was one of the great love stories in history and turned it into crap. And it’s because he doesn’t believe in those things, he doesn’t understand them and most importantly he has not an emotion in his body. He’s emotionless. He looks at a scene and it breaks everbody’s heart and there are 15 people in the room crying. When we scored a scene the orchestra came in because it looks so beautiful, its photography is so stunning and it was a scene we put together for scoring. It wasn’t Terry’s cut , it was more or less James Horner and his music editors’ cut. So that we could have a structure to score to, otherwise it was just going to black film. There was no film to record to. It was a fifteen minutes sequence literally there were like 80 people. We played it like two or three times. He was in the room, all crying all thinking how moving it was, how brilliant it was - not the music, but the scene. They thought the picture was so beautiful and the story and everybody was so excited and I tought surely that showed Terry that he was on the wrong track. The primary editor Richard Chew etc were there and it was so clear what people longed for in the movie what the music brought out. But that’s not the movie Terry had in mind and he saw the reaction and he took that whole scene and, of course, but it back on the Rubik’s Cube stage and the whole thing was deconstructed and unwatchable again.

As for The New World, it has slowly beeen recognised by the film community as one of the best films of the last decade--here and there anyway (perhaps out of respect). Same thing happened with The Thin Red Line. Too unconvential for people, but then out of nowhere Martin Scorsese claimed it was the best movie filmed in the 1990s. And with the recent Criterion Collection of TTRL released, it has, like TNW, slowly gained the respect it deserves. But I hope The Tree of Life is different, and I think it might be, considering the buzz so far hasn't been seen with a Malick film before.

'All Malick.'

'Renegade style of film-making.'

'Too unconventional for people.'

OK sorry, I should've said a bunch of contemporary Hipster-cred bullshit lines and concepts imposed on a historical setting.

It may have been an artfully-made film, but what I'm saying is, it was a contemporisation of something historical, so was never believable. It borrowed from philosophical concepts and works of the 20th century, and the lines coming out of the actors' mouths were hardly believable in the context of the period. For once, I'd like to see a movie about an important historical period which helped me to understand the historical people and why it was important. The whole 'I love you Pocahontas' schtick doesn't reveal in any way the implications of such an important event on the rest of history. It was just a nice love story.

Sure, it was no Titanic, but that's aesthetics. Underneath, Titanic is exactly what it was. They all are.

i disagree 100%. If you read that Horner interview he would agree with me on the basis that Malick is like a "stone on the surface"--that he knows nothing about love and relationships in the movies. But then again it is not the story he wanted to tell, so I don't know if Malick knows anything about relationships in the movies or not. Coincidentally, he is now filming The Burial, an original story of his that centers on a love triangle.

I think Malick concentrated more on the blending of cultures and the foundations of what made America in the beginning, and not so much the intimate relationship between Pochantas and John Smith, but rather the intimate relationship between cultures and peoples (Pochantas and John Smith being symbols) and that is why they felt so superficial or distant. But the characters weren't meant to be portrayed as a Jack and Rose. I think the final 10 minute sequence highlights that perfectly, and if it wasn't for that final 10 minutes I probably wouldn't have liked it as much as I do now.

and don't ever associate "hipster" with Malick ever again.

So you think they felt superficial and distant?

They weren't symbols though; the use of 'symbols' is an artistic contrivance. They were merely people in history. And the real Pocahontas was, correct me if I'm wrong, a young girl... so a romanic relationship would've made the guy a paedophile. Malick retained Disney's version of events here. I didn't say they were 'meant to be portrayed as Jack and Rose', but they were definitely a slightly more intelligent-played Jack and Rose.

Finally, when I said that it was contemporary concerns imposed upon historical events, this 'blending of cultures' is exactly what I'm talking about. When they look back, America is proud of its multi-culturalism, its constitution which says everyone is equal, etc. But all that is what America has become; it's contemporary. People in those days just didn't have the same desire for equality as we do. It was the white man trying to flush out the Native from this newly-'discovered' world (let's forget that natives 'discovered' it centuries ago). Now, I agree - the 'story' of Pocahontas celebrates two people going against the grain, forming a love relationship despite their differences. But that's a literary construct, a mythical one, which has been around since before Shakespeare. It exists in myth and fable.

The film is very skillfully made, but it's a postmodern filmmaker looking back on history, imposing onto it his own view of events, and his own philosophical ceoncerns, and his own artful techniques. No-one in real life is trying to be a metaphor for a message about multi-culturalism. But within these constraints, it's a very good film and deserves to be celebrated for its art. I just wish it was more enlightening on a real level.

And by the way, 'hipster' wasn't an insult. Gus Van Sant is one of my favourites, and he's hipster too. You Americans get far more riled up about the word than I do.

I say symbols, but maybe I should have said objects-- in that Malick could care less about the individual's own thoughts and feelings, because as you have mentioned, they are in fact his own thoughts. He uses them as objects in history so he can inject his own philosophy, yes. If you are not on the same page as his philosophy, then you'll feel distant and lost.

Never in the film did it reveal that the natives were fully comfortable with the white man in their territory. Again, in the end, there is a clip of an native fully dressed in native atire, studying the English property back in Royal England, and then he scampers away as if he feels it a threat more than anything else. Could Malick have touched more on what you wanted here? Sure.

But his main philosophy was to embrace life, no matter how nature takes its course, no matter what blends together, life is celebrated. It's a universal concern rather than an "American" concern. And really I'm only attacking your claim that it was a conventional love story between two characters, and I didn't get that at all. It's not in Malick's tool kit to make a movie like that. He looks at things on a universal level--and tries hard to find deeply profound moments that probably, for him, are a normal part of who we are.

I get offended with "hipster" because I've met film students who seem to fit that mold rather well. You can always pick them out. They loathe Steven Spielberg (except "Jaws" though).