Emily hinted that you believe in love at first sight because of how you met your wife. Is this true?

It is. It’s funny, I’m sure that it was, but I wonder – now that we have four kids and have built this life together – if I’m retroactively imbuing that moment with all of the subsequent experiences. I feel like it was love at first sight, but maybe that’s just my revisionist history.

Do you remember what she was wearing?

I remember her smile. That’s what I remember more than anything.

Do you believe in destiny? Do you believe you have your own life in your hands?

It’s one of those questions that you can’t answer and I think that’s why people have been asking it for millennia. We’re trying to propose it in a fun way in this movie. I feel like I’m in control of everything until I look back at my life and go, “Wait a minute, what odd series of events took place.” There is that Garth Brooks song where he sings “Thank God for unanswered prayers” – every job that I auditioned for that I was desperate to get that I didn’t might have taken me down a different path. It’s that thing where I feel stuff could be predestined, but I sure like to think that my choices were better.

What made you choose this film?

George (Nolfi, Director) is my friend and when he first showed it to me we had worked on one movie together, Ocean’s Twelve. Subsequently while he was doing more and more drafts of The Adjustment Bureau, we did the third Bourne movie and that was a movie that we were writing as we went. It was a lot of pressure and going through that experience with him and spending hundreds of hours in hotel rooms trying to figure out what we were going to shoot the next day, I knew he could handle the pressure of directing. There was so much more pressure in the Bourne situation that I knew this would be kind of a cakewalk.

What about the story?

I thought the story was interesting. I hadn’t really done a love story and I really loved the idea of a modern-day love story, the obstacle to which was this Philip K. Dick creation of this Adjustment Bureau. It seemed tonally to be really unique and not like anything I’d ever seen and ambitious in that way, but also ultimately a really entertaining and a fun movie. Plus, I believe in George.

Do you think that actors are like politicians, that they hide behind an image to sell tickets?

To a certain degree. I really wonder how much you can micromanage an image anymore. I think with technology being what it is, there’s very little mystery left with public people. Celebrities get followed around 24 hours a day and get their pictures taken 24 hours a day. You can open up a magazine and see where they spent their entire week and when they went to Starbucks. There’s very little intrigue.

The whole star system has changed drastically. Nowadays almost anybody can be a star overnight.

Thank God for that. The reality shows that are in all the magazines, I don’t know who any of them are but I’m so grateful because it’s a match made in heaven that they want to be in those magazines.

It seems different than before because now it happens very fast and also lasts for a few seconds.

Fifteen minutes is way too long now. It’s taken a lot of pressure off [of me]. I live here [in New York] and walk around all day every day and I’m fine. A couple of guys showed up to take my picture when Stella was born and that was it. They know where I am and they know where I live. I talked to the guy and asked why has was taking my picture and he said it was because I just had a daughter and they wanted to get an updated photo of me. They didn’t come by my apartment because they wanted to respect my privacy. I said, “Thank you, I really appreciate that.”

But they got you anyway.

They got me taking my kid to school. They know where I live and where my kids go to school, but they don’t bother me. I’m not what is selling magazines right now, so if they need to get an updated photo they come and squeeze off a couple of shots. My kids never know. I drop my kids off and go talk to them and ask what’s going on. “Did something happen I need to know about?”

You’re also approachable and a very nice guy and you try to live a normal life instead of having millions of bodyguards around.

Which is why I think there’s not any interest; when you demystify that stuff. Those magazines really sell sex and scandal and there’s nothing scandalous about a middle-aged married guy with kids.

You play a politician in this movie. Is there anything fascinating you find about politicians or politics?

No. I certainly admire people who do it, but it’s not a life for me. I met this political consultant for this movie, a smart political strategist who had worked for Clinton. He said he was thinking of retiring and I asked why. He said because they basically figured out the most effective thing you can do is just to sling dirt, and whether it’s true or not that’s what actually works. All of the nuance from his job is gone. He used to find it very interesting to try to craft arguments as to what was going to connect with people. So you spend your life raising money to throw mud.

But you are interested in human rights, aren’t you?

Very much so, but I don’t think the most effective use of my time is to go into politics. There’s things like water.org. I can get that out there just as effectively like this.

Do you know why George Nolfi decided to make The Adjustment Bureau now? We’re living in a time when people feel oppressed by all these different circumstances and institutions. Did you think about that when you were making this film?

Yeah, it felt timely. I’m sure [Philip K.] Dick felt he was making a comment about the FBI, but it does end up being a timely movie. I think maybe that’s why the story survived, just because it is relevant to the time that we’re living in.

From the outside, an actor’s career looks like its calculated, but its seems to be made up of accidents in a way. Do you recall any life-changing accidents in your career?

I’m the guy who passed on Avatar. Score! Actually, I would never pass on a Jim Cameron movie. The truth is I was finishing The Bourne Ultimatum and I literally couldn’t do it. I was desperate to work with him. I think he’s just a genius. It really was out of my hands. But what I really want to do is sit next to him while he directs and watch him because he’s such a visionary. I joke now and say I’m the guy who passed on Avatar because it’s a good line. I also say that it’s too bad that I did because the movie clearly suffers from my absence.

Does being nominated for an Academy Award feel make you feel good about yourself?

I always feel like the right actor gets the role. I’d worked with Gus [Van Sant] twice before, and he called about the role that Josh Brolin played in Milk. He sent me the script and I couldn’t make it through the script without bawling my eyes out because it was such an incredible story. I told him absolutely, I’m in, and he sent me all the research materials to play Dan White. I remember I was on the road promoting the Bourne movie and I was talking to him from Australia, then something happened with the financing and they pushed [it back] like three months. I was going off to do Green Zone and I literally couldn’t do it because of the conflict. There was a writers strike coming up so I had to bow out of Milk and it really upset me. I knew the movie was going to be great, but then I saw the movie and Josh was so good in that part. I felt the movie was great and the right actor got the part. The Fighter was the same way. I was supposed to play Christian’s role and I dropped out. Darren Aronofsky was going to direct it, and we both dropped out. But I look at Christian’s performance and go, “My God, the right actor got the part.”

You prefer to live in New York rather than Hollywood?

Yes.

It’s more normal for your kids and for your life.

Yes, it is. There are more paparazzi in LA.

New York is a great place to raise your kids. It’s changed.

It’s really changed, totally. You can see [by] how many strollers you see. The diners all have stroller parking.

When you’re playing against Terence Stamp, I kept thinking it was Jason Bourne meets General Zod.

[laughs] I kneel before Terence Stamp!

What was it like?

It was awesome. For that part we needed some gravitas, because there’s that great monologue he gave about trying to take the training wheels off and letting humanity go, but human beings keep it screwing up. Obviously, we needed a big actor for that, a person with a lot of weight and heft and we talked about someone like Robert Duvall. One day George called me and said, “What about Terence Stamp?” I thought it was a terrific idea and we literally ended up with our first choice for every role. We got everybody we wanted, which is a credit to George’s script.

Is it true that there was a different ending with a Chairwoman?

Yes, we had the Chairwoman. I don’t know if that’s a secret or anything, but we shot it and it was too much like a philosophy lesson. She literally had a five-page monologue, which was beautifully written, but we saw the movie [with it] and it just stopped. We had all this momentum and it just kind of stopped dead in its tracks, so there was a whole rethink about how to finish it. The whole question was, do we really want to see the Chairman? The Adjustment Bureau was made up of men and women, but a lot of people don’t notice that it was all male. But it was all male because the reveal is that the Chairman is a Chairwoman. Once we redid that, it’s all male. [laughs] Total misogynists! We have to re-shoot everything!

This is your first romantic role and you have an amazing chemistry with Emily. It’s not easy to get that spark onscreen.

She’s really great. We have similar senses of humor. We laughed the whole time and were just goofy the whole time. In defining the relationship, when we were rehearsing the great thing about having a writer/director is that we changed stuff and tweaked stuff and that didn’t throw George at all because he wasn’t totally rigid in his thinking. We all knew that if the relationship worked then the movie could work, but if it didn’t then we were dead. The David character was always a great lead role and we wanted and needed her to be a formidable, three-dimensional woman. With a modern-day woman it should feel like a modern romance, so we talked about it a lot in rehearsals and tried to get that dynamic and her natural, great sense of humor into the dialogue.

Are you going do more romantic roles?

If they’re good. I’ll do anything that’s good. I never choose thematically, although maybe themes do appear, but that’s by accident. Career strategy doesn’t really work. You end up making your best educated guess one movie at a time, then at the end you look back and maybe there’s a pattern or maybe there isn’t. If a great romance came along, I’d certainly love to do it.

What do you mean by a good role for you?

I’ve read thousands of scripts and written scripts, so I know a lot about the technical side of it. For me, honestly, it’s a feeling I get, which I’m sure has to do with the thousands of hours I’ve spent working on screenplays. But if something moves me, I will usually do it.

EXCLUSIVE CLIP FROM “THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU” (On DVD and Blu-Ray)

Source

Share

Share

Quick, what’s the oddest thing about Matt Damon’s career? The obvious answer is that he has played a lot of oddballs. The drug-addled Gulf War veteran of Courage Under Fire (a role for which he lost 40 pounds — and he wasn’t exactly chunky beforehand). The troubled megamind of Good Will Hunting. The moody parasite-sociopath of The Talented Mr. Ripley. The amnesiac ex-government fighting-and-killing machine of the Bourne films. The lost-inside-himself CIA cipher of The Good Shepherd. The whistleblower-without-a-twinge-of-idealism in The Informant! The melancholy psychic of Hereafter. No question about it: For an actor who has long resembled a clean, upstanding, gleaming-white-toothed Boy Scout, and who now looks like a slightly older Boy Scout, Matt Damon has spent a long time going out of his way to cast himself against type.

But that’s still not the oddest thing about his career. That would be the fact that, in nearly 15 years as a major movie star (I’m dating his leap to leading man status from the explosive success of Good Will Hunting), Matt Damon has never starred in a romantic comedy. Not once. He has never tried to lighten his image, or rebound after a box-office failure, or simply play the game by agreeing to do some fluffy-sexy chick flick in which he plays a carefree executive bachelor who flirts with, gets taken down a peg by, and falls for Julia/Sandra/Jennifer/Kate/ Renée/Drew/etc.

The desire to steer clear of those kinds of movies has been an almost ideological decision on Damon’s part, and for anyone who follows him, it’s a choice with a ready explanation: Chick flicks are Hollywood at its most cheesy, formulaic, corporate, and even embarrassing — for the most part, they’re happy-face gobs of product masquerading as movies — and Matt Damon is not a cheesy guy, and not a formulaic or corporate actor either. He doesn’t make movies he doesn’t believe in. That’s why he’s virtually the only actor of his generation who was able to become an action star and hold fast to his integrity while doing it. The Bourne films aren’t quite works of art, but they’re super-smart about exciting audiences. They’re thrill rides with a vision.

That said, Damon’s choice to steer clear of the whole RomCom Industrial Complex has had a profound impact on his screen image. Simply put: You don’t think of him in a romantic way. A number of the films I listed above have involved him in romantic subplots, yet when I call up the image of a Matt Damon movie, I almost always envision him alone, intense and hyper-aware and a bit cut off, grappling with whatever dilemma is buzzing around in his busy, obsessively centered head. Damon is peerless at this sort of thing (his single greatest role to date may be Tom Ripley, whom he embodied with such scary and bravura cunning). Yet there’s a real paradox to the fact that he has played so many disturbed solipsistic troubleshooters — and it’s not just that he still looks like a shining all-American jock. I’ve had the occasion to meet and talk with Damon a handful of times (going back to before he was a star), and I can testify that he’s one of the brightest, funniest, most down-to-earth and friendly people who has ever worked in this business. I believe — though I can’t prove — that his evolution as an artist, his whole attraction to playing furtive and gimlet-eyed anti-social types, emerges from his perception that if he acted as accessible and friendly on-screen as he is in real life, he might risk looking like a bland actor. To be taken seriously, and to do interesting work, he almost had to become the anti-Boy Scout.

And that makes The Adjustment Bureau, Damon’s ominous-on-the-outside, heartwarming-on-the-inside sci-fi romantic mindbender, a fascinating new wrinkle in his career. The picture, which is based on a 1954 short story by Philip K. Dick (not exactly the first author you think of adapting of when you’re trying to make a date movie), sat on the shelf for a while, which lowered industry and media expectations for it, which meant that its $20 million opening weekend registered as a surprise success. But I think that something more interesting was also going on. Since The Adjustment Bureau mashes together several genres at once (it’s dreamy-druggy metaphysical sci-fi…and a violently paranoid Philip K. Dick fantasy about scary men in dark suits who control the world…and a Sliding Doors love story about yearning and fate and connection and The Moment that can change everything), no one, before it came out, knew quite what to make of it. But the movie’s release, and initial (moderate) hit status, clarified things: It’s an offbeat romance for adults. Which means, bottom line, that it’s a movie people will turn out for to see Matt Damon and Emily Blunt fall in love.

The two look very good doing so. Reviewing The Adjustment Bureau last week, I kept trying to think of a Damon/Blunt variation on the old quip (by Katharine Hepburn) that famously explained the chemistry of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers: “She gives him sex, he gives her class.” I wasn’t able to think of anything quippy, so I dropped it, but here, prosaically, is what I would say now: In the charming, extended scene in which the two meet (in a hotel men’s room), Emily Blunt, a magnificent flirt, gives Damon a certain randy spontaneity, and he grounds her lofty British sauciness. I actually enjoyed Damon’s quiet romance with Cécile de France in Clint Eastwood’s Hereafter, but The Adjustment Bureau marks the first time in a long time — maybe ever? — where Damon and his costar communicate the kind of crackling livewire attraction that makes an audience perk right up. We’re so unused to real sparks (as opposed to the damp sparklers set off by the average chick flick) that in this case those sparks light up the theater.

But what, if anything, does this do for Damon’s image? Does it shift it, deepen it, evolve it? Will it adjust his future as a movie star? That’s up to him. What I would say is that he now has a chance to make his romantic side more central, and that it might be the single freshest thing he could do to finally star in — yes — a romantic comedy. Don’t get me wrong, though. I don’t want to see him, you know, team up with director Garry Marshall to play a wisecracking financial hotshot in Stock Exchange, costarring Kate Hudson as the broker girlfriend and Rachel McAdams as the cable-TV money analyst (“Because this is one Wall Street player who’s putting his default…into a new kind of swap!”). No, I’d like to see Matt Damon use his taste for the adventurous to shepherd, and star in, a good romantic comedy, one that took off from the lightness he showed on 30 Rock. The kind that wouldn’t make us — or him — cringe. The kind that might even reinvent the form.

So would you like to see Damon take a break from playing misfits, loners, and spooked assassins? Can you envision him, fundamentally, as a romantic star? If so, who would you like to see him paired with? Or is he doing just fine as is?

Source

Share

Writer/director George Nolfi leads MTV News through the film’s trickier scenes.

So far, 2011 has been woefully lacking in the damn-that’s-cool sci-fi department. “I Am Number 4,” alas, just didn’t cut it.

But this weekend brings us a sci-fi respite, before summer movie season begins, in the form of “The Adjustment Bureau.” Based on a Philip K. Dick story, the flick’s conceit is that there’s a vast, supernatural force — the titular adjusters — that controls and guides the fate of humanity. For star Matt Damon, that means his quest to achieve political superstardom and bed Emily Blunt is propelled, and sometimes compromised, not just by free will, but by the adjusters dictating his fate.

The adjusters, played by the likes of John Slattery and Anthony Mackie, have abilities that range from “freezing” people to make behavioral changes to turning normal doors into geography-leaping portals. For all this high-concept trickery, though, the entire movie maintains a realistic feel — partly because of the filmmakers’ aesthetic and partly because they weren’t working on an “Inception”-like budget.

Writer/director George Nolfi (making his directorial debut after penning scripts like “The Bourne Ultimatum”) gave MTV News a call to take us behind the scenes of the film’s coolest elements.

Why Are the Adjusters Dressed Like “Mad Men” Extras?
Perhaps it’s just because Slattery, a star of “Mad Men,” rocks a slick-looking suit throughout, but many people have been wondering: Why do the adjusters looked like they just stepped out of the hit AMC show?

“I wanted the bureau to have a throwback quality to suggest they’ve been here forever,” Nolfi explained. “They have to blend into our world and yet the audience has to be able to pick them out of a crowd. They’re wearing suits that you’d just think, ‘They’re very well-dressed, that’s a guy who reads GQ.’ The suits and hats are all from different eras — ’30s, ’40s, ’50s, ’60s.”

But not all adjusters wear suits — just the ones, for instance, who follow a suit-wearing politician like Damon. Each adjuster dons gear that allows them to blend in with the person they’re following. “I cut out some scenes where other people from the bureau are much more informally dressed,” the director said. “They’re in black jeans and leather vests and baseball caps. They’d be following someone like me around, when someone in a suit and a fedora would be very obvious.”

How’d They Pull Off the “Frozen” Scenes?
When Damon first, inadvertently discovers the existence of the bureau, the adjusters are in the process of “freezing” his co-workers in place and using wacky gadgets to do their work — including scanning brains.

“I didn’t want there to be high-tech gear,” Nolfi told us, adding that the scanner was not built by the prop department but rather was a found object. “That was owned by a collector. It was a shyster’s tool kit from the ’40s or ’50s for changing people’s moods. I liked that it was electricity inside a glass tube.”

To achieve the “freezing” effect, Nolfi didn’t have the budget to create entire CG characters, so he instructed his actors to stay as still as possible. “We then went in with CG to take out eye-blinks and arm movement — just stabling the actors,” he said.

How’d They Accomplish the “Door” Trick?
One of the coolest recurring effects is how adjusters are able to open doors in regular buildings that then lead, thanks to their supernatural powers, to vastly different locations. Instead of walking out onto the street, for example, they suddenly jump to Yankee Stadium. Nolfi and his team employed a variety of visual tricks to accomplish the task.

“Early on, when you’re just seeing that the room next door is not actually next to you but a totally different area, that’s a simple green screen,” he said. “It gets more complicated when you have to move people through those doors. When they’re moving through a door, we’d build part of the set [with both locations] and then make a cut. The most complicated is what we call an Escher staircase at the end, which was a huge set we built that allowed a very large techno-crane to be moved around for a continuous shot.”

Where Did the Idea for the “Case Books” Come From?
As the adjusters follow Damon around, they constantly refer to a book filled with shifting symbols that essentially provides a map for the politician’s fate. The concept for what Nolfi dubbed the “case book” was born, once again, of the desire for a low-fi technology.

“It was part of this idea that they don’t have fancy, whiz-bang technology, but rather they had this supernatural ability that flows through almost dated-seeming technology,” he told us. “Instead of a computer tablet, which would be the way you go if you’re making ‘Minority Report,’ we went with a book.

“In terms of what’s in the book, the shifting lines and stuff,” he added, “I had this conception of them being circuit diagrams. It harkens back to the old days.”

How’d They Make Emily Blunt Look Like Such a Great Ballerina?
Ballet is certainly in the pop-culture ether. Just ask “Black Swan” star and recent Oscar winner Natalie Portman. Blunt plays Damon’s love interest, an up-and-coming ballerina about to hit the big time. Like Portman, Blunt trained for months, six days a week, to twist and turn like a ballerina. In front of the camera for her main ballet scene, she did the majority of the dancing, while a pro subbed in for the most difficult moves.

What’s most interesting about the scene is how different it looks from the rest of the film. That was no mistake.

“When the bureau was in control on the situations, the shots were elegant and controlled and formal and smooth,” Nolfi said. “When they’re not in control, it becomes more handheld. But for the dance scene, it didn’t fit into either of those choices. We wanted to convey the beauty of dance: It’s control and yet it’s freedom. I wanted full body shots, the face and the feet. We moved the camera back and forth on a dolly so there was a sense of movement. It was Emily’s moment, and she was unbelievable.”

Source

Share

Though it’s a Western about an ugly lizard, Rango was quite a draw over the weekend, and The Adjustment Bureau was no slouch either. While overall weekend business was off 32 percent from last year’s Alice in Wonderland madness, it was up from the comparable weekends in 2009 and 2008. (…)

The Adjustment Bureau debuted in second with $21.2 million on nearly 3,200 screens at 2,840 locations. Its start was close to Unknown’s last month, and it was a big improvement over Matt Damon’s last vehicle Hereafter ($12 million). In fact, Bureau posted the highest-grossing opening yet for a top-billed Damon movie outside of the Bourne series. In its marketing, the movie was concisely pitched as an exciting romantic thriller with a fantastical angle. According to distributor Universal Pictures, the audience was 73 percent aged 30 years and older and 53 percent female.

Source

Share

Share

Genre: Romance/Thriller
MPAA Rating: Rated PG-13
Starring: Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Anthony Mackie, Terence Stamp, John Slattery, Daniel Dae Kim, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Michael Kelly, Liam Ferguson, Anthony Ruivivar
Director: George Nolfi

Plot: Do we control our destiny, or do unseen forces manipulate us? Matt Damon stars in the thriller The Adjustment Bureau as a man who glimpses the future Fate has planned for him and realizes he wants something else. To get it, he must pursue the only woman he’s ever loved across, under and through the streets of modern-day New York. On the brink of winning a seat in the U.S. Senate, ambitious politician David Norris (Damon) meets beautiful contemporary ballet dancer Elise Sellas (Emily Blunt)-a woman like none he’s ever known. But just as he realizes he’s falling for her, mysterious men conspire to keep the two apart. David learns he is up against the agents of Fate itself-the men of The Adjustment Bureau-who will do everything in their considerable power to prevent David and Elise from being together. In the face of overwhelming odds, he must either let her go and accept a predetermined path…

Media:

Featurette – Behind Scenes Fate vs. Free Will – Screencaps

Trailer:

Share

]]> http://www.mattdamonfan.net/movie-news/the-adjustment-bureau-is-out-in-theathers-today/feed/ 0 http://www.mattdamonfan.net/movie-news/the-adjustment-bureau/the-adjustment-bureau-reviews/ http://www.mattdamonfan.net/movie-news/the-adjustment-bureau/the-adjustment-bureau-reviews/#comments Fri, 04 Mar 2011 18:02:45 +0000 Annie http://www.mattdamonfan.net/?p=793 With the movie being released today there’s a lot of reviews now. I’ve posted some below, and here are some links! Have fun!

Share

For millennia, mankind has wondered whether humans have free will and make our own decisions, or if Fate, God or gods are really pulling the strings and controlling our unalterable destinies. In The Adjustment Bureau, Matt Damon plays David Norris, a New York congressman who is told by shadowy, fedora-wearing supernatural agents of predestination that his promising future cannot include Elise, a dancer played by Emily Blunt, who Norris meets and falls for in a chance encounter on the eve of a big election. See the trailer below.

Perhaps the strongest parts of The Adjustment Bureau are the early scenes between Norris and Elise as their paths cross over several years. The chemistry between Damon and Blunt is undeniable, making it easy to understand why Norris remains so smitten with her despite the Bureau’s threats. And Damon, a close follower of politics who has donated generously to democrats, displays a facility with campaign mannerisms that makes you wonder if he’ll eventually run for office.

And let’s call a spade a spade: the agents are basically angels in suits who take their orders from God, known by the agents as the Chairman. I enjoyed the idea of God and his angels operating like the boss and employees of a bureaucracy, checking reports and tinkering with events to keep the gears of destiny running smoothly. And in a refreshing twist, the angels, led by Terence Stamp and Mad Men’s John Slattery, aren’t near omnipotent like the angels in the bible. Despite being able to predict and disrupt events and teleport across New York using a network of magic doors, the agents are exceedingly human, with limited powers that leave them struggling to meet deadlines, complaining about their assignments, and requiring clearance from “upstairs” if they need to deviate from protocol. The film is as much about the agents and their difficulties keeping Norris on his assigned path as it is about Norris’ efforts to break from it.

It’s because The Adjustment Bureau has so much going for it that it’s so surprising when the film takes a precipitous, sometimes laughable slide in its last act as a sympathetic agent played by Anthony Mackie helps Norris hatch a plan to save Elisa from her assigned fate, involving a chase through New York and the revelation that the teleportation doors only work if you’re wearing one of the agents’ fedoras. I assume the hats are supposed to represent halos, but c’mon — it’s a magic freaking hat.

It’s a shame that The Adjustment Bureau, with its sparkling performances, promising premise, and thought-provoking questions about free will, human nature, fate, and the justness of God’s motives could end in such a pat, corny heap that’s sure to draw negative comparisons to superior mind-benders like Inception and The Matrix. If you are destined to see The Adjustment Bureau, I’d recommend you exercise some free will and catch something else. After all, maybe that’s what the Chairman wants you to do…

Source

Share

Critic Rating: 4.5/5
When ‘Blade Runner’ meets Alfred Hitchcock
By Ann Hornaday
Friday, March 4, 2011

God is in the details. So are the best movies.

“The Adjustment Bureau,” an enormously entertaining speculative thriller starring Matt Damon, would earn its kudos for ambition alone. An adaptation of a Philip K. Dick story, this is a movie of myriad genres and tonal gradations, including classic science fiction in the tradition of “Blade Runner” and “The Matrix” and the doomed romance of “An Affair to Remember.” Throw in the conspiratorial intrigue of “The Manchurian Candidate” – and a first-time director to keep it all straight – and the singular achievement of “The Adjustment Bureau” becomes all the more impressive.

Working from his own script, director George Nolfi has executed the cinematic equivalent of a twisting, tumbling high dive with precision and finesse. He proves himself just as adept with dazzling feats of visual imagination as with human emotion, which, while less spectacular, entails a higher degree of difficulty.

Granted, to enjoy “The Adjustment Bureau” most profitably, the viewer must engage in some powerful suspension of disbelief. Damon plays a gifted young New York politician named David Norris, who, as the movie opens, is wrapping up a campaign to become the state’s youngest U.S. senator. Handsome, charismatic and hot headed, Norris is practicing a crucial speech in a Waldorf Astoria men’s room on election night when he meets Elise Sellas (Emily Blunt) as she steps out of one of the stalls. The fact that Elise is hanging out in the gents’ is but the first tip-off that she’s a free spirit. Within moments, they’re lost in the badinage of two people on the brink of something big.

As a couple, David and Elise are clearly meant to be, but it turns out that David’s future may have other plans. The Fates are aligned in the form of the title outfit, led by a no-nonsense operative named Richardson, played by John Slattery in a crafty, deadpan take. At one point, Richardson explains to David that his life course is being overseen by a shadowy figure called “The Chairman.” The identity of that omnipotent figure is never disclosed, but from the looks of the retro-perfect hats and overcoats Richardson and his men wear, it’s either Frank Sinatra or “Mad Men’s” Bert Cooper himself.

Slattery’s martini-dry turn as Richardson – as well as Anthony Mackie’s doe-eyed performance as a bureau rookie named Harry and the always deliciously malign Terence Stamp as head agent Thompson – injects notes of wry, antic humor into “The Adjustment Bureau,” which in less adroit hands could have become a ponderous exercise in self-serious style. Instead, Nolfi consistently resists the temptation to overreach, tempering David’s fight against destiny with welcome jolts of sprightly, irreverent wit.

As a simple race-and-chase, “The Adjustment Bureau” succeeds on the purest cinematic level, especially in a wowser of a climactic pursuit that recalls “Inception” in its mind-bending tour through multiple doors of perception. (Nolfi clearly knows his way around cats and mice, having written “Ocean’s Twelve” and “The Bourne Ultimatum,” among other films.) Handsomely staged as a valentine to New York at its most timeless, the sequence seamlessly integrates shots of everyday Manhattan with visual effects that suggest the Bronx is down and the Battery’s up.

For all these flourishes, the most gratifying rewards of “The Adjustment Bureau” aren’t in structure and craft alone, but in Nolfi’s grasp of the details, which ground even its most preposterous plot twists in an authentic world. From the outset, the movie smoothly captures contemporary political culture as Norris makes the rounds from “The Daily Show” to the cover of GQ. (The filmmakers of “The Adjustment Bureau” reportedly piggybacked on Damon’s publicity tour for “The Informant!” to film him bantering with Jon Stewart.)

A succession of cameos ensues, including by pundits Mary Matalin, James Carville and Wolf Blitzer and by political players Terry McAuliffe, Mike Bloomberg and Madeleine Albright, with Damon looking every bit the focus-grouped ward heeler throughout. The capper comes when Norris delivers a mini-masterpiece of Sorkinian political rhetoric that, in its savvy, sophistication and self-award candor, could have sprung fully formed from Jed Bartlet’s speechwriting shop. (“The Adjustment Bureau” also understands the peculiarity of political fame: When Norris arrives at a crowded nightclub at one point, he isn’t deluged but politely acknowledged by the few people who know who he is. He’s a rock star, but only in a mediasphere where Scott Brown possesses a Q rating somewhere between Justin Bieber and Richard Lugar.)

As satisfying as it is to watch a movie in which sci-fi speculation on fate and free will co-exists so easily with references to Sarbanes-Oxley, “The Adjustment Bureau” gets the boy-girl thing right, too. As James Franco and Anne Hathaway now know too well, chemistry is everything. And within moments, Damon and Blunt generate sparks that fly not between superbly compatible physical specimens but real people.

When Elise taunts David about his tie or he makes winking reference to the length of her skirt, there’s a giddy, invisible vibration between them, created by the tuning fork of inside jokes and shared references. Even though their relationship is threatened by an utterly absurd existential danger, it’s been established with such real-world gestures and rhythms that, when David decides to fight for it, the audience is right there with him.

What Nolfi understands and “The Adjustment Bureau” conveys so subtlely is that romance is less a function of grand physical passions than the quiet, unmistakable jolt of two sensibilities meeting and recognizing and protecting each other. Even if they’re played out against the most mind-bending alternate realities, those are the affairs we remember.

Contains brief strong profanity, some sexuality and a violent image.

Source

Share

(CNN) — Are angels prone to human error? So it seems, though the man upstairs also bears some responsibility for overwriting his own grand plans in “The Adjustment Bureau,” a sci-fi romance that plays like an extended episode of “The Twilight Zone.”

That’s intended as a compliment. Rod Serling’s classic show was often glib and sometimes sentimental, but it also played on ideas: philosophy, paradox, even politics. This was cerebral sci-fi for mass consumption, before special effects and spectacle took over. Not that these things are incompatible — just don’t expect many visual pyrotechnics here.

George Nolfi’s film (he’s writer-director-producer) musters a chase scene or two, but they’re on foot, and it’s almost comically lo-fi — as retro as the unfortunate trilby hat Matt Damon sports in the climax. He is David Norris, a young up-and-coming New York politician whose Senate hopes take a dive when certain frat-boy antics from his recent past come out in the press.

A chance encounter with an outspoken dancer Elise (Emily Blunt) hiding in the men’s room inspires him to veer off-message in his capitulation speech, which goes over so well with the voters it puts his career right back on track.

hat’s when the angels are caught napping. David bumps into Elise on the bus to work — he was meant to miss it — and they realize they’re made for each other. But they’re not, and the members of the Adjustment Bureau reluctantly take David into their confidence and convince him it was all in error. His future is at stake, and so is everyone else’s.

Like “Minority Report” and “Total Recall,” the inspiration is a Philip K. Dick short story, “The Adjustment Team,” though the film has as much in common with “A Matter of Life and Death” or “Wings of Desire.”

Still, the adjusters themselves hark back to 1954, when Dick wrote his story: With their flannel suits, hats and clipboards, these angels are quintessential 1950s bean counters and bureaucrats. Nolfi casts John Slattery from “Mad Men” as celestial middle-management, desperately trying to cover up the slip before the big boss gets wind of it.

The advertising pretends the film is an enquiry into fate vs. free will (there’s a hard sell!), but the movie is not so clear-cut, or even coherent, on that point. More interesting is the fiendish quandary trouble-shooter Terence Stamp poses for Norris: If he keeps seeing Elise, he tells him, not only will his career come to nothing, it will also mean the end of her dreams. Is he such an egoist that he thinks he’s worth it?

Nolfi doesn’t resolve any of this in a convincing fashion, but the movie chugs along at a pleasant clip and it has some neat touches — like the freeze-frame David inadvertently walks into when the adjusters are sweeping his office. More importantly, it also has a pulse. That’s almost entirely due to the palpable chemistry between Matt Damon and Emily Blunt.

She may not have the physique of the world’s next great dancer, but Blunt’s vivacity and unpredictable, mischievous rhythms show us why David would fall in love at first blush, and even suggest why he might be willing to give up the world for her.

Now, if Damon had given us any reason to suspect his ego might be bigger than his heart, “The Adjustment Bureau” might have come off as something edgier and more arresting than “Inception”-lite. Something worthy of Philip K. Dick, even. But that was never on the cards, and “Inception”-lite isn’t so bad. You might even prefer it this way.

Source

Share

Watch the full interview with Matt Damon and the cast of “The Adjustment Bureau” tonight. “Piers Morgan Tonight” airs weeknights on CNN/US at 9 p.m. ET and on CNN International at 1200 GMT/1300 CET/2000 HKT.

(CNN) — When CNN’s Piers Morgan asked actor Matt Damon if he was happy with the way President Barack Obama has been running the country and if Damon was “a fan” of the president, Damon answered “no.”

Damon and the cast of “The Adjustment Bureau” — Emily Blunt, John Slattery and Anthony Mackie — are Thursday evening’s guests on “Piers Morgan Tonight.” During the course of their conversation, Damon and Morgan covered Hollywood, politics, fatherhood and much more.

“He (Obama) misinterpreted his mandate,” said Damon. “He’s doubled down on a lot of things.”

“In his State of the Union he didn’t even say the word ‘poverty,’ ” said Damon. “You’ve got millions of people languishing in it.” Damon, who backed the Obama campaign in 2008, said he appreciates that the president is a “deep thinker.” The actor called Obama brilliant, but said he “definitely wanted more.”

When questioned about what he’d do about Afghanistan, Damon said, “I don’t think the mission there has been very well articulated. And I think it would help to kind of reframe the way we’re thinking about being there and why we’re there.”

Damon also said there has not been a meaningful reform of Wall Street. He said he believes that is “dangerous” and “shameful” and that the financial crisis is “just going to happen again,” because “they don’t make anything. They don’t build anything.”

Morgan asked about Damon’s well-known disapproval of Sarah Palin and the fact that he has spoken out against her since she was announced as John McCain’s running mate in 2008. Damon said he still feels it was reckless to have someone who was “a complete mystery to everybody” be “literally a heartbeat away from the presidency.” Damon also said he disagrees with Palin politically. “She’s not somebody who I would vote for.”

Damon said, though, that while he is passionate about politics, he has no political aspirations.

“I feel like the work I do now allows me to change things,” he said. Damon said he puts most of his free time into the nonpartisan Water.org movement, which is dedicated to getting clean water to people.

While he said he is “interested in everyone’s opinion” and “interested in people who don’t agree with me,” when talking politics, that’s not his main interest. “I love my job. I love making movies.”

“The Adjustment Bureau” is based on the premise that people have no control over destiny. Forces manipulate their every decision and there is no free will. In the film, the team known as the Adjustment Bureau is charged with keeping people on their predetermined paths.

Matt Damon and Emily Blunt’s characters fall in love, even though they are not predestined for one another, and opt to fight the Adjustment Bureau.

Source

Share

I’ve been a fan of Matt Damon’s since Good Will Hunting. In the thirteen years since that film got released, Damon has starred in countless films and even though he is known the world over, every time that I’ve been fortunate enough to talk to him, he’s always been beyond cool and willing to answer any question. So when I sat down to talk about his new film The Adjustment Bureau for our partners at Omelete, I figured I was in for a good conversation. However, no matter what I was thinking when I walked in, I left the room even more impressed with Damon. That’s because when I first walked in he told me how much he loved my Goodfellas t-shirt and then we spent a few minutes talking about Martin Scorsese and Goodfellas. He was going to tell me a Godfather Part 2 story when I actually forced him to switch gears. However, after telling me some great stories about making The Adjustment Bureau, Damon gave me updates on Cameron Crowe’s We Built a Zoo and Neill Blomkamp’s Elysium.

But I’ve left out the best part.

At the end of the interview, I told him I’d love to hear his Godfather Part 2 story and then he smiled and proceeded to tell me an awesome story about the making of The Godfather Part 2 which he must have heard from either Scorsese or Francis Ford Coppola. I’m a huge fan of the Godfather films and had never heard what he told me. If you’re a fan of Damon’s, or just want to hear an awesome actor geek out like the film nerd that he is, you definitely want to hit the jump:

Finally, for more on writer-director George Nolfi’s romance/thriller The Adjustment Bureau, click here to watch 7 clips. The film also stars Emily Blunt, Terence Stamp, John Slattery and Anthony Mackie.

Matt Damon

* We talk about my t-shirt
* What are some of his favorite films. He talks about Goodfellas
* We then talk about The Godfather Part 2
* How did he get involved with The Adjustment Bureau
* We talk about how the film balances a love story and sci-fi
* How is working with Cameron Crowe on We Built a Zoo
* What’s up with Neill Blomkamp’s Elysium. Says he shoots this summer
* Ends the interview with an AWESOME Godfather Part 2 story

Source

Share

Share

Share

Matt Damon and Emily Blunt learn that their fate may be in the hands of a mysterious organization in ‘The Adjustment Bureau,’ in theaters March 4, and we have a first look behind the scenes at what Emily calls a “brain-melting experience”!

“They’re kind of a timeless group of people who are essentially guardian angels,” says Matt of the title organization. “There’s a master plan written in a language that our brains couldn’t possibly comprehend. … If somebody’s kind of going off-plan a little bit, they give them a little adjustment.”

Based on a Philip K. Dick story, ‘The Adjustment Bureau’ casts Matt as David Norris, an ambitious politician on the brink of winning a seat in the U.S. Senate. When he meets beautiful ballet dancer Elise Sellas, he is instantly smitten — and the course of his future changes, prompting the Adjustment Bureau to intervene, no matter what the cost.

“He was only meant to meet this woman Elise that one time, because it’s not in the plan for them to be together – but David is completely obsessed with her,” explains Matt.

Emily adds, “I think it speaks volumes about the attraction that these two people really have for each other, that he’s willing to risk a lot for her.”

Of the mysterious organization that controls their fate, she adds, “I think it must be such a brain-melting experience to come across an idea of The Adjustment Bureau, let alone to be confronted in a physical sense by this bigger force than you ever imagined. … There’s something ominous about them in how human they are.”

Working together has made the thriller that much more fun for Matt and Emily. The Brit actress says of her co-star, “He’s an instantly likable guy. He’s sort of an impossibly awesome guy. We hit it off instantly,” while Matt smiles, “I can just ride on her coattails – she’s got talent to spare.”

Source

Share

Universal has provided us with seven clips from Matt Damon’s upcoming romance/thriller The Adjustment Bureau. Written and directed by George Nolfi (writer of The Bourne Ultimatum), the film is based on a short story by Philip K. Dick entitled Adjustment Team and centers on the apparently forbidden relationship between politician David Norris (Damon) and Elise Sellas (Emily Blunt). As the story goes, the two are kept apart by a mysterious team of adjusters who claim it’s in everyone’s best interest if they go their separate ways. Hit the jump to watch the clips.

The Adjustment Bureau opens on March 4th. In addition to Damon and Blunt, the film also stars Terence Stamp, John Slattery (Mad Men), and Anthony Mackie (The Hurt Locker).

Video after the jump: