PremonitionExtrasGregPearson
Photo by Greg Pearson/The Times.
Extras line up at Creswell Elementary
in February.
Originally uploaded by alexandyr1.
Locals itchin' to get an early look at "Premonition" should log on to the official website. There's a long trailer posted there. The thriller will be released in March 2007.
It stars Sandra Bullock and Julian McMahon. It was shot in Shreveport earlier this year.
In terms of plot, it looks like we have a case of mistaken memory. A wife plagued by visions of her husband's death tries her darnedest to save him from dying. And guess what? Nobody believes her.
Local McDonald’s eateries better stock up on Royales with Cheese, because Samuel L. Jackson is headed to Shreveport. The “Pulp Fiction” legend will star in “The Cleaner,” a Millennium Films feature that will begin a seven-week shoot in January.
The super-talented Sienna Miller (see "Casanova" and pipe down) has been riding a run of un-super press recently. In a current interview with Rolling Stone, she renames the location of her latest movie: "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh." Oh what, oh what, fair reader, could rhyme with Pitts-burgh?
"Initiation of Sarah," a TV movie of the week made in Shreveport, premieres at 7 p.m. on Oct. 22 (Sunday) on ABC Family. Did you get a part? Did you work on the movie? Please email me and I'll chat you up a bit.
The highly anticipated movie adaptation of "Dallas" appears to be retooling its cast. John Travolta is still set to play J.R. (I love it!), according to Variety (requires registration) , but names like Luke Wilson, Jennifer Lopez and Shirley MacLaine appear out for now. What in tarnation?! I wanted those interviews!
The Robinson Film Center plans to spice up local screens with a new series of independent films. The nonprofit film center will bring "Half Nelson" (Ryan Gosling) to the Louisiana Boardwalk's Regal Cinemas in Bossier City on Nov. 2.
This just in from the Tech news bureau:
Antonio Banderas took a break from shooting “Homeland Security” in Shreveport on Friday to meet the Bossier Parks Steelers. The unmasked movie star thanked the peewee footballers for cleaning up an empty, rundown house that was later transformed into a secret restaurant for the comedy.
Many of the waves in "The Guardian" were created within a 750,000-gallon wave tank in Shreveport. Maher Ahmad, the movie's production designer, played a big role in creating them.
He designed the tank, which measured 80 feet wide, 100 feet long and eight feet deep.
Surrounding half of it was a five-story cyclorama that was painted bright blue. It served as a giant blue screen.
The other half was surrounded by splash guards. They could be removed to get cranes, cameras, crew and actors in and out of the tank.
Dump tanks, or 4000-gallon drums, released water down chutes and onto the actors and vessels.
Three 150-horsepower fans and eight hidden chambers were used to generate waves that measured nine feet or more from the top to the bottom of their swells.
In other words, there was some serious wave-making going on. I sent seven questions to Mr. Ahmad. Below are his answers.
Alexandyr Kent: The Bering Sea is as much a character in the movie as Costner’s Ben Randall and Kutcher’s Jake Fischer, and a huge part of those rescue scenes were filmed in a 750,000-gallon wave tank in Shreveport. How challenging was it to create this “monster of nature,” as director Andrew Davis termed it, within a land-bound industrial park?
Maher Ahmad: The fact that we were using a basically untested approach to the making of waves, and the additional pressures of time and budget, and the fact that we had already started building the tank once in New Orleans and had to start all over again in Shreveport made it very difficult job indeed. It took the coordination of not only my efforts coupled with the our construction coordinator and his crew; the paint dept and its crew; the special effects and stunt departments and their crew; but also the outside work of a variety of engineers (including structural, environmental, soil, mechanical, and electrical engineers). And on top of that, we had to deal with a scarcity of labor, materials, equipment, and supplies that was due to reconstruction efforts going on in New Orleans.
AK: As the production designer for “The Guardian,” how did you balance the audience's desire for thrills with the story's demand for drama? Was there ever a point at which you feared the sea would overpower the storyline?
MA: Those kinds of decisions are really more the province of the writing, directing, and editing than any decisions that I make. I gave them the sets and the environment; the director and writers decide what to shoot and with the director the editor decides what specifically the audience sees.
AK: Technically, what was this wave tank capable of creating? How big were those waves during the rescue sequences? When we watch the film with rolling water and the blowing wind, it looks like the actors are in trouble.
MA: Because the tank was pneumatic rather than mechanical, we had great control over the kinds and the power of the waves we could make. We actually never had the power up full during any of the scenes. We got six-foot swells and troughs but we probably were capable of making them much, much bigger.
AK: What effect in the film is your favorite, and how did it add to the tension of the scene?
MA: For me, my attitude to the work I do on my films is that of a good parent: I love them all, although some my be different than others, some may be more successful or attract more attention than others, they are all pretty wonderful, and I love them equally.
AK: Tell me a bit about the scene when the rescue swimmers (Kutcher and Costner) save the kayakers in the cave. You installed a cave in the wave tank. How big was it? What did you do to make the environment and the water inside the cave look so authentic and threatening?
MA: The cave was a 150,000-pound set that was built from steel, rebar, foam, and plastic next to the set and then moved by two 150 ton cranes and dropped into the tank. It had to withstand a terrible beating form the force of the waves. It was about 40 feet high, and 80 feet wide and about 60 feet long. It was open three feet at the bottom which caused the waves to bash against it in a realistic manner.
AK: You have rolled a passenger jet over for “U.S. Marshals” and sunk a pirate ship for “Miss Congeniality 2.” Was creating the effects for “The Guardian” just another day at the office, or was the challenge especially demanding?
MA: Every aspect of every film has its own particular demands and problems. "The Guardian" was by far the biggest water picture effort that I have done and the previous films that I did that had water work were a good preparation for what we all managed to pull off in Shreveport.
AK: Lastly, was there ever a point when Costner, Kutcher, the actors and the stunt doubles said, “Maher, enough with the crashing waves already. I can’t take it anymore!” Did you really beat them up as much as it appears in “The Guardian?”
MA: Again, I was not directly responsible for how long the actors spent in the water, or what they were required to do while in it. It is the director and the stunt coordinator that subject them minute by minute to the rigors of the tank. However, it is indeed the fact that the actors were heroic in how hard they worked, and how little complaint they made, under extremely difficult circumstances.
____
The wave tank is now owned by Ken Atchity and a group of investors. The facility is now called the Louisiana Wave Studio. I'll talk with Mr. Atchity about the future of the facility soon.
In 2002, Michael Wilson and a film crew set out to chronicle a year in the life of the Burning Man festival, a weeklong arts festival that sprouts up on a Nevada desert landscape during the week before Labor Day.
They wound up with "Burning Man: Beyond Black Rock," a documentary that takes a behind-the-scenes look at the artists, organizers and festivalgoers who make it one of the most mysterious and enduring art gatherings.
Art is exhibited by hundreds and experienced by more than 30,000, but nothing but ice and coffee is sold. If art has ever existed for art's sake, it's at the Black Rock Desert.
Wilson, a former Shreveporter who now lives in Austin, Texas, will screen "Burning Man: Beyond Black Rock" on Saturday at Centenary College."You know, it's just the coolest thing on the planet," Wilson said. "It's an unbelievable meeting of some of the most creative people that I've even run across."
He will answer questions after the screening.
Click here for a story I wrote on this documentary in August.
SCREENING
WHAT: "Burning Man: Beyond Black Rock," presented by the Centenary Film Society, Robinson Film Center and Columbia Cafe.
WHEN: 4 p.m. Oct 7. A Q&A with Michael Wilson will follow the screening.
WHERE: Kilpatrick Auditorium, 2911 Centenary Blvd., Shreveport.
ADMISSION: free. Call the film center for more details at (318) 424-9090.
RELATED LINK: http://www.burningmanmovie.com/.
If you’re lucky enough to be a University of New Orleans student, you can nab a ticket to the regional premiere of “Flags of Our Fathers.”
The National WWII Museum will screen the new movie, a story of Iwo Jima directed by Clint Eastwood, on Oct. 15. Tickets are limited to current UNO history and film majors. The museum is working to honor its commitment to educating younger generations about the war.
Guests of honor will include two of the films stars: Ryan Phillippe and Jesse Bradford. They will attend the invitation-only reception at the museum from 4 to 6 p.m. The screening will begin at 7 p.m. at the AMC Elmwood Palace 20 theaters in Harahan. The public can’t get tickets, but they can stand along the red carpet.
UNO students need to get students by clicking here.
“Flags of Our Fathers” premieres nationwide on Oct. 20.
(Pictured is a still from "Flags of Our Fathers.")
Anybody wanting to know about TurnKey Louisiana, a Shreveport-based vendor of film equipment and services, should attend the following meeting on Tuesday. The company's co-founder, Gary M. Strangis, is pictured here.
Stars are aligning in Shreveport again. “Homeland Security,” an action and comedy feature starring Antonio Banderas, Meg Ryan, Selma Blair and Colin Hanks, begins its six-week shoot today.Early estimates from Box Office Mojo put “The Guardian” in second this weekend, taking in a slightly lower than expected $17.667 million. “Open Season,” an animated feature with voice work by Kutcher, should take first with $23 million.
It’s a respectable opening for “The Guardian,” and it should keep Louisiana in the Hollywood spotlight for longer than the star-studded “All the King’s Men.” The latter opened Sept. 22 and will likely end up with a gross of just $6.287 million after two disappointing weekends.
While box office receipts quantify demand, they rarely measure quality.
Do the critics’ reviews of “The Guardian,” including mine, match your taste? Most major critics—I’m not in this group—were mixed in their feelings.
Chris Kaltenbach of The Baltimore Sun loves the action-drama. He writes, “The Guardian is that rarest of cinematic commodities: an action movie displaying brains and heart and the opportunity for its stars to do something more than keep the narrative flowing between explosions.”
A.O. Scott’s take in The New York Times represents most of the middle-of-the-road reviews. The film is passable, but Scott has seen way too many like it. He cuts to the heart of Costner’s Ben Randall by writing, “Mr. Costner is comfortable in this kind of role, perhaps too comfortable. The profane, leathery, sad-sack qualities of the character — his unorthodox teaching methods, his fondness for whiskey, his gruff manner — amount to a nearly transparent veneer smeared over his essential saintliness.”
Stephen Hunter of The Washington Post pans the movie. He criticizes the clichéd bits of dramatic characterization that fail to round out the heroes, Randall and Fischer (Kutcher). “The movie begins to overload its frail reed of a structure with giant sloppages of cliches from other movies, some so bad it's almost comical. Costner's wife (Sela Ward) has left him and he misses her, so we get a few scenes of the drunken, embittered guy on the phone, begging her to pick up over voice mail. Then Kutcher picks up a gal at a bar (Melissa Sagemiller) and begins one of those aren't-we-quiptastic flirtations that seem to happen only in movies.”
Do you agree with any of these critics, or did they (including me) collectively miss the boat? Check out most of the majors here, and please post your comments below.
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