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Lucky Punk
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« Reply #181 on: February 14, 2009, 02:24:33 PM » |
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The Scotsman used to be my broadsheet newspaper of choice. Clint has often been portrayed as a right wing reactionary in it's critic pages ( the Paulline Kael school of groupthink ). This one is a bit more balanced, though not much detail on Gran Torino. http://news.scotsman.com/movies/Clint-Eastwood--A-reformed.4976961.jp Some interesting thoughts about Heartbreak Ridge. |
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higashimori
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« Reply #182 on: February 15, 2009, 02:59:15 PM » |
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 " Gran Torino (15) Verdict: A gran night out ***** " http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/entertainment/film/175335/Gran-Torino-15-Directed-by-and-starring-Clint-Eastwood.html By Robbie Collin, 15/02/2009
GRAN Torino, the new film directed by and starring Clint Eastwood, is about a retired auto worker who’s sick of immigrants moving into his neighbourhood.
And I’m not saying he’s a petty, foul-mouthed racist. But this guy could give Carol Thatcher a run for her money backstage at The One Show.
This film about age and race divides is classic Eastwood, with the 78-year-old showing his mastery at every turn.
As a leading man, he packs all the punch of a retired Dirty Harry, growling his lines in a voice so rough it could sand a plank.
And as a director, this is full of the measured, painstaking story telling that nobody does better.
In short, it’s a monumentally great film and keeps you spellbound till the lights come back up again. And even a Jamie Cullum dirge over the end credits can’t wreck it.
OUT FRIDAY
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Lucky Punk
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« Reply #183 on: February 15, 2009, 06:02:10 PM » |
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KC
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« Reply #184 on: February 15, 2009, 10:16:52 PM » |
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Meanwhile, the U.S. box office for Gran Torino keeps on growing, though it's fallen out of the Top Ten. From Box Office Mojo: Slumdog Millionaire held steady with an estimated $7.2 million, outplaying its fellow Academy Award nominees by a wide margin, and its total climbed to $86.5 million. Push rounded out the Top Ten with an estimated $6.9 million, off 31 percent for $19.3 million in ten days, but it was Gran Torino that was built to last. Clint Eastwood's action drama was right behind Push with an estimated $6.8 million, easing six percent. With $128.9 million in the till, it pulled ahead of Escape from Alcatraz to rank tenth among Eastwood's movies adjusted for ticket price inflation. http://www.boxofficemojo.com/news/?id=2548&p=l.htm |
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Dan Dassow
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« Reply #185 on: February 16, 2009, 06:33:15 AM » |
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Canada Free Press linkWalt Kowalski is not only a legend. He is a Polish American hero. What a former Detroiter saw in Clint Eastwood’s ‘Gran Torino’ By Online Sunday, February 15, 2009 - Polish American Congress
(Cynthia Zawatski is a long time supporter of the Polish American Congress and its Anti-Bigotry Committee. After she saw Clint Eastwood’s film “Gran Torino,” she wrote a Letter to the Editor which she wanted to share with us.
Now retired, she was raised in Detroit in a family of ardent Polish American activists. In the 1930’s her father, Thaddeus Przylubski, was prominent in labor circles as a founder and organizer of the United Auto Workers in that city.
After moving to Ashland, Oregon where she now resides, Cynthia became an outreach director for the United Farmworkers Union.
Clint Eastwood’s portrayal of Walt Kowalski in his film “Gran Torino” struck such a responsive cord in her, it prompted her to pen her personal recollections and send them to us.)
Ashland, OR . . I am a longtime subscriber to the Journal. I wait expectantly for each new edition. I am seldom disappointed. But, in the January edition, a piece out of Los Angeles was reprinted. The subject was the new movie “Gran Torino.”
The reporter presented what was a simplistic, uninspired critique of a film about which he or she had little understanding. He called it a story about Hmong immigrants. He reported that Clint Eastwood played a Polish American man and that the film was made in Detroit.
Perhaps the journalist has no familiarity with Detroit or the industrial Midwest. The human drama that is taking place there, the heartache of those who built the great city of Detroit – the great union that gave them prosperity – the churches, the fine schools, the sense of place, the dignity and the pride they earned for themselves and their offspring.
It must be told, as in the case of the film’s main character, Walt Kowalski, many were in fact Polish. They built a new life after being driven out of Poland early in the century. My father was one of them.
Clint Eastwood’s character is—as the actor said himself—an “urban legend” born of truth and no small amount of agony as Detroit and its people see their beloved city vanish before their very eyes.
These brave people, who generations ago came themselves as immigrants, have seen many challenges and have overcome them as a people bound together by a sense of oneness.
But over the last decade, an obstacle named “globalization” has presented a chain of events that even they cannot seem to overcome.
No matter how hard they struggle, and as those who built this good life watch nearly helplessly, all they have known seems to fall into chaos. A new people arrive. A people from far away who come with hope to also find a better life. In “Gran Torino” these two cultures come together, a clash at first, and then they join together to defend their honor.
Walt Kowalski is not only a legend. He is a Polish American hero. This film should be in every Polish American home to be viewed by generations to come in remembrance of those who came before. As with Walt Kowalski, ours is a generation whose time, as we have known it, perhaps is coming to an end.
While we are remembering the past and observing the present, we also honor those new immigrants who must find a way to build a new beginning – even as our people did.
It is a beautiful aspect of the film that these new immigrants, the Hmong people whom Walt Kowalski came to love, were helped, protected and taught by a Polish American veteran who has his own private darkness caused by having been through a terrible war.
There are generations now of Walt Kowalski’s. But his is the definitive moment in our history. We perhaps shall not see the likes of him again.
Clint Eastwood has given us here more than he may know. He has given Polish Americans – truly all Americans – a legend.
It is a time now to pause and remember our fathers and mothers and to honor them as this film does, even in its sometimes hard-edged humor. We pray history will.
Cynthia Zawatski
Ashland, Oregoni
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higashimori
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« Reply #187 on: February 16, 2009, 02:19:32 PM » |
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" Gran Torino, Clint Eastwood's Highest-Grossing Film in the U.S. to Date, Opens Nationwide on 25th February " http://www.itnews.it/news/2009/0216184602006/gran-torino-clint-eastwood-s-highest-grossing-film-in-the-u-s-to-date-opens-nationwide-on-25th-february.html LONDON, February 16 /PRNewswire/ -- Gran Torino, which has attained the highest gross at the U.S. box office of any film in legendary actor/director Clint Eastwood's filmography, is set to open in the UK on 25th February, 2009.
Gran Torino has scored US$120 million at the U.S. box office and is still growing. The film is directed by Eastwood, who stars as an iron-willed Korean War veteran who is forced by his immigrant neighbors to confront his own long-held prejudices.
The film's U.S. gross tops the list of pictures directed by and/or starring Eastwood, including In the Line of Fire (US$102m), the Oscar-winning Unforgiven (US$101m) and Million Dollar Baby (US$100m), Space Cowboys (US$90m), Every Which Way But Loose (US$85m), Mystic River (US$90m) and The Bridges of Madison County (US$71.5m).
In the U.S., Gran Torino opened for a three-week limited run, during which it landed on a number of year-end ten best lists, with Eastwood's performance and the film's screenplay winning awards from the National Board of review, among other accolades. The film expanded to general release on January 9 and raced to the top of the weekend box office, earning a record-breaking $29.5m and becoming the biggest-ever opening for an Eastwood film as well as the biggest-ever 3-day January opening.
Warner Bros. Pictures presents, in association with Village Roadshow Pictures, a Double Nickel Entertainment, a Malpaso Production, Gran Torino. The film is directed by Clint Eastwood from a screenplay by Nick Schenk, story by Dave Johannson & Nick Schenk. Eastwood, Robert Lorenz and Bill Gerber are the producers, with Jenette Kahn, Adam Richman, Tim Moore and Bruce Berman serving as executive producers. The film stars Clint Eastwood, Bee Vang, Ahney Her, Christopher Carley, John Carroll Lynch, Brian Haley, Geraldine Hughes, Brian Howe and William Hill.
The creative behind-the-scenes team is led by Eastwood's longtime collaborators: director of photography Tom Stern, production designer James J. Murakami, editors Joel Cox and Gary D. Roach, and costume designer Deborah Hopper. The music is by Kyle Eastwood and Michael Stevens, orchestrated and conducted by Lennie Niehaus. The title song for "Gran Torino" is performed by British jazz singer/pianist Jamie Cullum and Don Runner. It was co-written by Eastwood; Cullum; the director's son, Kyle Eastwood; and Kyle's writing partner, Michael Stevens.
Gran Torino is distributed worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company, and in select territories by Village Roadshow Pictures. http://www.grantorinomovie.co.uk
Note To Editors.Gran Torino will platform at The Odeon Leicester Square from 20th February, 2009
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« Reply #189 on: February 19, 2009, 09:04:25 PM » |
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Thanks, Sylvie! The reviewer, François-Guillaume Lorrain, calls it Clint's "most personal film." Si, dans un siècle, on veut expliquer qui était Clint Eastwood, voilà le film qu'il faudra montrer If, a century from now, someone wants to explain who Clint Eastwood was, this is the film that ought to be shown. |
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« Reply #191 on: February 21, 2009, 11:30:52 AM » |
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It's not really about Gran Torino at all, since she hasn't seen it yet, but it's very good anyway. For those who can't read French, here are a few highlights: Catherine Hiegel joined the Comédie-Française (the French national theater) in 1969 and has worked there ever since. She's the doyenne of French actors, and has also worked as a director. Now she's going to see Gran Torino.
"I don't really care what the film's about. I'm going to see it for Clint. Like everyone, I loved his action films, when he played Western heros, avengers of the oppressed ... And then came The Bridges of Madison County. What shocked me was the acceptance of his age. It's very rare to find an actor who accepts aging, who shows his body, its weaknesses ... People who accept their age as a plus, rather than as a minus, that touches me. And the end of the film, when he leaves ... I love to cry in the movies, like a schoolgirl. I cried during Million Dollar Baby. But there, it was a fountain! I wasn't fit to be looked at. When I left, I stared at the ground so people wouldn't see my eyes. She goes on to say that he's courageous for announcing that Gran Torino would be his last film as an actor, for knowing when to quit, but as we know ... he HAS left the door open, in case the right script comes along. I hope Mme. Hiegel enjoys the movie! |
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higashimori
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« Reply #193 on: February 22, 2009, 07:40:41 AM » |
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" Gran Torino, Clint Eastwood, 117 mins, 15 " The screen legend plays an angry old man at war with the city of Detroit Reviewed by Jonathan Romney http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/reviews/gran-torino-clint-eastwood-117-mins-15-1628608.html You could be forgiven – though probably not by the man himself – for doubting whether Clint Eastwood is really an actor. With a range that’s not so much limited as, let’s say, specialist, Eastwood is at once an irresistible force and unmovable object, rooted in the screen like a gnarly, unbendable tree. More than any Hollywood actor alive, he is what he is.
And Eastwood is most what he is when directing himself. I have huge respect for his films in which he chooses not to appear, but it’s hard to feel much love for them. When he’s in front of his own camera, that’s another matter – and I’d take even a dud Eastwood-shoots-Eastwood film, such as the daft thriller Absolute Power, over one of the academic prestige pieces he makes when wearing his auteur Stetson: earnest, tendentious stuff like the recent Changeling.
In Gran Torino – which he’s said will be his final role – Eastwood is back on both sides of the lens, and that’s always good for him: he knows how to expend the least energy necessary in the two jobs. Not that there’s anything remotely Zen about his performance here: the intensity is always visible, but it’s all tightly contained around his jaw and neck muscles. In one scene, Eastwood’s character loses patience with his family and he just snarls at them. The camera closes in around his head and shoulders; the brows knit like tensed cable; the teeth clench and he emits a growl, a proper get-away-from-my-kennel growl, like the bulldog in Tom and Jerry. In fact, if Eastwood had done nothing but give close-ups of himself as a growling head, Gran Torino would still have been riveting. As it is, he’s turned in a terrific, taut, no-frills drama, with the kind of provocative social content that we’ve come to expect from Hollywood’s most unpredictable conservative liberal (or liberal conservative).
Written by Nick Schenk (story credit shared by Dave Johannson), Gran Torino has been read by some as Eastwood’s belated reparation for the vigilante ethic he embodied in Dirty Harry – although as a thoughtful humanist, Eastwood the director balanced the books long ago. But certainly, Walt Kowalski offers a sour portrait of how a Harry Callahan might end up. Throughout, the film seems to cater to the old-school Eastwood fans, who would love to see a cussed old white conservative getting his gun and sorting out the whole damn hell-in-a-handcart situation of America today. Several scenes give us just that, the fearless patriarch seeing off African-American and Asian gangs alike with his contemptuous glare: nothing less than an ancient God of Disapproval.
In the end, things build up to the showdown, Walt’s personal OK Corral. Gran Torino is, of course, a contemporary Western, although the Wild Frontier is no longer an America under construction, but an urban America that’s been allowed to fall into disrepair by successive governments.
However, the film proves to be about alternatives to prejudice and vigilantism: as in his great 1992 Western Unforgiven, Eastwood has made a sometimes violent film that is also a disavowal of violence. Gran Torino is also a modest anatomy of American racism. Admittedly, the Asian characters play a largely instrumental part in correcting Walt’s complexes, and you can’t deny the stereotyping: studious son, hip sassy daughter… But at least the film takes a genuine interest in its ethnic background: when did a Hollywood movie last bone up on the Hmong? And in fairness, the stereotyping works across the board, with white suburbanites coming off worst: Walt’s bland bourgeois son and sullen granddaughter with her nose ring and mobile. But Eastwood might reply that all this is less stereotyping, more getting the job done with a couple of basic brush strokes – and who would argue?
As usual when he’s also acting, Eastwood’s direction is brisk, clean cut, to the point: a let-me-show-you-how-it’s-done-godammit sort of job. The film’s prosaic look is spot-on: photographed by Tom Stern, this sleepy suburban backwater, with its dried-up front lawns, has the look of an abandoned war zone, faded khaki tones suggesting that combat could erupt at any moment.
Eastwood is one of the handful of veteran Hollywood leading men who have dared to be old on screen, as opposed to acting the lovable old-timer. Like Wayne, Mitchum, Newman before him, Eastwood turns in a late performance that shows how the ornery young hero becomes a dyspeptic old sod. He nicely leavens the severity with self-deprecating humour, but Walt’s grouchiness, verging on the sociopathic, isn’t just for amusing effect: it embodies a character sharply defined by a good script. Walt’s loathing of his own family, his reluctance to reveal his more complex emotions, the psychic damage he’s sustained from horrors both witnessed and perpetrated in Korea – all this is complex stuff that the script specifies, but that Eastwood fleshes out, for the most part with little more than a scowl and a simmer. And minimalism of that kind really is great screen acting.
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Gant
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« Reply #196 on: February 23, 2009, 10:44:22 AM » |
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This from Geoff Andrews at Londons Time Out When Eastwood’s follow-up to ‘Changeling’ was announced in May, he quickly refuted rumours that he was making, belatedly, another ‘Dirty Harry’ picture. If its trailer promises a vigilante movie, the comedy-drama on release is actually a rather wise, insightful exploration of family and friendship, violence and vengeance. Admittedly, retired Detroit autoworker and Korean War veteran Walt Kowalski (Eastwood, in what, sadly, may be his last lead turn) initially comes across like a curmudgeonly elderly relative of Harry Callahan: unable to conceal his disdain for his folks, his late wife’s priest, and those now inhabiting his slightly run-down suburb, many of whom are Hmongs who left south-east Asia for the US due to the Vietnam War. One such is shy teen Thao (Bee Yang), whose reluctant initiation into a local gang involves stealing Walt’s beloved 1972 Gran Torino… Cue, much conflict: Nick Schenk’s screenplay centres on the encounter between Walt – a politically incorrect old bigot scarred by war – and today’s multicultural society. But as the film proceeds, with Thao’s sassy sister Sue (Abney Her) arousing both Walt’s protective instincts and his hitherto neglected capacity for self-analysis, it becomes more complex and engaging and it’s often very funny (as in a barber-shop scene where traditional American ‘masculinity’is hilariously exposed as an absurd construct). Finally, there’s a very moving development that takes Walt way beyond Callahan’s ethos. Eastwood’s subtle performance is as charismatic and effective as ever, while the movie covers his abiding preoccupations – race, age, individualism in a conformist world – with wit and intelligence. And in insisting that friendship’s more important than blood ties (or religious faith), Clint quietly goes against the grain. Predictably superior fare. Author: Geoff Andrew Time Out London Issue 2009, 19-25 Feb, 2009 www.timeout/fim/reviews/86485/gran-torino.html-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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