19 replies to this topic

[templer1972]

Now on the CBn main page...

Pierce Brosnan Speaks About 'Seraphim Falls'

_{Survives 'treacherous' conditions on set along with Liam Neeson}

Seraphim Falls will get its WORLD PREMIER AT TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL next month

[Righty007]

Sounds like an interesting film.

[Bondian]

Hope they've got enough towels.

[Qwerty]

Sounds like an interesting film.

Think so as well. I wonder how it'll do at the box-office.

[Qwerty]

Here's an article about what other films will also be making an appearance at this year's film festival: http://www.showbuzz....in1884795.shtml

[templer1972]

review/preview from toronto film festival


Film Title:
Seraphim Falls

Programme: SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS
Director: David Von Ancken
Country: USA
Year: 2006
Language: English
Time: 115 minutes
Film Types: Colour/35mm


SCREENING TIMES:
Wednesday, September 13 9:00 PM VISA SCREENING ROOM (ELGIN) Buy tickets now
Friday, September 15 3:00 PM VISA SCREENING ROOM (ELGIN) Buy tickets now


Production Company : Icon Productions
Canadian Distribution : Sony Pictures Releasing Canada
US Distribution : Samuel Goldwyn Films
Foreign Sales Agent : Icon Entertainment International




Executive Producer: Stan Wlodkowski
Producer: Bruce Davey, David Flynn
Screenplay: David Von Ancken, Abby Everett Jaques
Cinematographer: John Toll
Editor: Conrad Buff
Production Designer: Michael Hanan
Sound: William Sarokin
Music: Harry Gregson-Williams
Principal Cast: Pierce Brosnan, Liam Neeson

We are in the American Rockies. Snow covers everything, dampening sound and colour. Gideon (Pierce Brosnan), a bearded figure cloaked in fur, contemplates a fire. Shots pierce the quiet. Gideon, convulsed with fear, is hit by a bullet and moves quickly away.

Soon we learn why his fear is so acute: Gideon is a hunted man. Colonel Morsman Carver (Liam Neeson), a Confederate officer, has hired several mountain trackers to find and kill him to avenge a terrible wrong committed at the end of the Civil War.

So Gideon stumbles away, bleeding profusely. A man

[SecretAgentFan]

Wow! Could Pierce have another winner with the critics after THE MATADOR? If yes, he should keep doing these character parts and reinvent himself as a "real" actor like Connery did. Maybe he will even win an Oscar when he

[MarcAngeDraco]

Sounds very interesting...

[CM007]

[quote name='SecretAgentFan' post='601702' date='7 September 2006 - 10:09']
Wow! Could Pierce have another winner with the critics after THE MATADOR? If yes, he should keep doing these character parts and reinvent himself as a "real" actor like Connery did. Maybe he will even win an Oscar when he

[timpossible]

[quote name='CM007' post='606517' date='13 September 2006 - 20:36']
I think Brosnan will do a Connery and Reinvent Himself.....I can

Edited by timpossible, 13 September 2006 - 10:01 PM.

[dinovelvet]

[quote name='timpossible' post='606585' date='13 September 2006 - 15:00']
[quote name='CM007' post='606517' date='13 September 2006 - 20:36']
I think Brosnan will do a Connery and Reinvent Himself.....I can

[Qwerty]

The upcoming Butterfly on a Wheel is exactly what I'm talking about. I'm looking forward to that!

Yes, that does look quite good!

[mccartney007]

Brosnan and Neeson survive 'treacherous' conditions on set of "Seraphim Falls"

VICTORIA AHEARN Wed Sep 13, 4:16 PM ET

TORONTO (CP) - Pierce Brosnan's days of dodging bullets as Agent 007 were an apparent cakewalk compared to the "treacherous" conditions he and actor Liam Neeson faced on the set of their new film, "Seraphim Falls."

"It was pretty brutal, actually," the former James Bond star said at a news conference at the Toronto International Film Festival, where the western epic is debuting. "It was terrifying," said Neeson.

"Seraphim Falls," the feature directorial debut from David Von Ancken, is a Western saga set in the 1860s, five years after the end of the U.S. Civil War.

Neeson plays a southern colonel who vows revenge on a northerner and former Union Army captain (Brosnan), whom he blames for a major act of atrocity at the tail end of the war. The film also stars Angie Harmon and Angelica Huston.

Filming took place over 48 days last year in Oregon, Colorado and New Mexico, and although Neeson and Brosnan - both from Ireland - felt it was a dream come true to be in a western, they suffered from the rigorous terrain of Santa Fe.

"It was thirsty work, that's for sure," said Brosnan of filming with mounds of heavy western attire in the desert last fall.

Their solution? "A good night in the bar at the end of a long day," said Brosnan.

Then there was the chase, which was central to the movie.

Brosnan's character had to run on foot for most of the pursuit in the Santa Fe mountains, where the altitude "kind of took the stuffing out of you a bit the first two weeks," he said.

The on-set conditions in Oregon in January of this year were equally extreme.

There, Brosnan, fastened on a tether, had to jump off a waterfall taller than Niagara Falls into a river in temperatures as cold as -36 C - something even the Navy Seals who were in the area wouldn't do, said Von Ancken.

"The ... people we had with us to protect everybody said the life expectancy in the river was four minutes without a dry suit on," said the director, who also co-wrote the script.

"And so Pierce had his modified dry suit on but he ... exposed (his) hands, feet, face."

Neeson didn't have it so bad.

"Pierce ... he had to get in the water quite a few times and be naked and stuff," said Neeson, whose film credits include "Schindler's List" and "Kinsey."

"I always had my bear skin coat on. He had it rougher than I did."

Brosnan said it was a "fearsome" time but it made acting easy and provided another opportunity to shake his Bond affiliation.

"I suppose I'd kind of painted myself into a corner there with suave and debonair," he said.

"And it's time to get out there and do a bit of acting. Look for a bit of character work.

My favorite bit is the "good night at the bar" bit, mainly because I got to experience numerous nights out with these fine fellas when we were filming this.

Anyway, all the reviews I've read thusfar have been postive about the film. Good news there, I say.

[Qwerty]

Now on the CBn main page...

Pierce Brosnan Speaks About 'Seraphim Falls'

_{Survives 'treacherous' conditions on set along with Liam Neeson}

[Mamadou]

My favorite bit is the "good night at the bar" bit, mainly because I got to experience numerous nights out with these fine fellas when we were filming this.

Explain. This sounds interesting.

[mccartney007]

My favorite bit is the "good night at the bar" bit, mainly because I got to experience numerous nights out with these fine fellas when we were filming this.

Explain. This sounds interesting.

I worked on this film with these guys. We spent numerous nights at the hotel bar after a hard day of filming.

The End.

[CM007]

My favorite bit is the "good night at the bar" bit, mainly because I got to experience numerous nights out with these fine fellas when we were filming this.

Explain. This sounds interesting.

I worked on this film with these guys. We spent numerous nights at the hotel bar after a hard day of filming.

The End.

Any stories you care to share with us......

[mccartney007]

Any stories you care to share with us......

There really was nothing other than the usual shenanigans that go on when people are at a bar drinking. Except the drunken stories sometimes involved talk about Remington Steele, which I gather isn't too common.

[templer1972]

Seraphim Falls -variety review


A Samuel Goldwyn Films and Destination Films release (in U.S.) of an Icon production. (International sales: Icon Entertainment Intl., London.) Produced by Bruce Davey, David Flynn. Executive producer, Stan Wlodkowski. Directed by David Von Ancken. Screenplay, Von Ancken, Abby Everett Jaques.

Carver - Liam Neeson
Gideon - Pierce Brosnan
Madame Louise - Anjelica Huston
Hayes - Michael Wincott
Pope - Robert Baker
Parsons... - Ed Lauter
Minister/Abraham - Tom Noonan
Henry - Kevin J. O'Connor
Kid - John Robinson

By TODD MCCARTHY

Seraphim Falls" looks like something out of the ordinary solely by virtue of its rarity, but in 1956, it would have been a solid but unexceptional revenge Western. An unforgiving man's relentless pursuit of a Civil War-era adversary is played out across a magnificent backdrop ranging from snow-packed mountains to the lifeless desert floor, and John Toll's cinematography ensures the action is worth watching. Aside from spasms of brutal violence, however, there's nothing rousing or new here; the names of well-cast leads Liam Neeson and Pierce Brosnan won't be enough to muster more than modest theatrical B.O. for this very physical but familiar oater.
Familiarity is entirely relative, of course. A large share of today's audience wasn't born when the "recent" major film this most resembles, Clint Eastwood's "The Outlaw Josey Wales," was released 30 years ago. Nevertheless, little in the original script by David Von Ancken and Abby Everett Jaques is fresh, from the dramatic format to the simple psychology and motivations of the characters; from the men's desire to say as few words as possible to the film's message of forgiveness.

Long opening set-piece is a grabber. In Nevada's Ruby Mountains in 1868 (except for the river rapids scenes, which were shot in Oregon, pic was entirely lensed in New Mexico), salt-and-pepper-bearded loner Gideon (Brosnan) is shot in the arm. Forced to abandon his horse and rifle, he tumbles down multiple snowbanks, falls into a frigid river, plummets over a waterfall and loses his heavy coat before extricating himself and excruciatingly removing the bullet with his outsized hunting knife and cauterizing the gaping wound.

With determined hunter Carver (Liam Neeson) and his four hired guns closing in, Gideon makes his way up a tall tree, from where, with expert aim, he manages to drop his knife smack into the forehead of one of his pursuers and then get away before the others find him, pausing only to cut the dead man's belly open to warm his own frostbitten hand.

So off they go across the imposing landscape, Gideon staying a step or two ahead of his pursuers, who diminish in number along the way. There are intimations that Gideon committed some horrible atrocity that has provoked Carver's undying hatred, but revelation of its specifics is saved for a climactic flashback.

In the meantime, Gideon shrewdly manages to turn adversity to his favor on several occasions, as he and his hunters cross paths with other humans, including a small pioneer family, fugitive bank robbers, a wagon train of the devout, railway workers, a cagey Indian trader and, saved to the end, Angelica Huston as a snake oil saleswoman wandering far from where she might find customers.

For what it is, pic goes on excessively, with one final showdown too many. Its physical beauty notwithstanding -- Toll's work, which emphasizes the blues and greens of the forests, is always a pleasure to behold -- the film lacks a distinctive visual style, especially toward the end, when some hallucinatory heightening would have been in order. Gideon's frequent physical pain is palpable, and the killings are gruesome, but this motif doesn't translate into a feeling of pervasive harshness comparable to that found in, say, Anthony Mann's frontier pictures, such as "The Naked Spur," another film to which "Seraphim Falls" bears a passing resemblance.

For genre fans, however, a new Western is always welcome, and TV vet Von Ancken, in his theatrical feature debut, makes its way through some of the conventions with relative dexterity.

Of the two rugged Irish stars, Brosnan, for all his character's discomfort, seems to be having the better time. His lankiness sometimes reminding of James Coburn, whose turn in "The Magnificent Seven" also comes to mind thanks to Gideon's skill with a knife, Brosnan appears to relish his moments in the saddle as well as the gruff, minimal dialogue. For his part, Neeson also looks good out West but might have applied an extra edge of remorseless craftiness to his readings. (He also could have benefited from putting back the 20 pounds or more he appears to have lost of late).

As two of Carver's henchmen, Michael Wincott and Ed Lauter are perfectly cast for menace and treachery but aren't given enough to do make their roles indelible. Harry Gregson-Williams' score is solidly in the classical old-school tradition.

Camera (Deluxe color, Panavision widescreen), John Toll; editor, Conrad Buff; music, Harry Gregson-Williams; production designer, Michael Hanan; art director, Gary Barnes; set decorator, Wendy Barnes; costume designer, Deborah L. Scott; sound (Dolby Digital), William Sarokin; special effects supervisor, Peter Chesney; stunt coordinator, Bud Davis; associate producer, John Limotte; assistant director, Philip Paltern; second unit director, Rey Villalobos; second unit camera, Michael Feris; casting, Mali Finn. Reviewed at Toronto Film Festival (Special Presentation), Sept. 13, 2006. Running time: 115 MIN.

[Qwerty]

"For what it is, pic goes on excessively, with one final showdown too many. Its physical beauty notwithstanding -- Toll's work, which emphasizes the blues and greens of the forests, is always a pleasure to behold -- the film lacks a distinctive visual style, especially toward the end, when some hallucinatory heightening would have been in order."

Hmm. Never-ending ending?