http://www.apple.com/trailers/sony_pictures/acrosstheuniverse/

Her theater is brilliant. She is visually as impressive with her visuals as any other director working today. And now this, which at first bored me but then exploded with awesomeness...

...I'm excited about this one.

_______________________________________________________________________
"Writing Rules, dumb-dumb..."
- Simon Stiles (D.L. Hughley), Studio 60

V.

that's all that matters.....

(to me)

I agree though....

seems like julie is kinda slept on....

the rest is very mediocre.

to hair


i do think she is amazing sometimes too art house but yeah I been down with her since frida

I'm fully willing to give Julie Taymor the benefit of the doubt but there's no middle ground on this one. I think it's interesting that they save the musical weirdo stuff for the last 20 seconds of the trailer after they've built up the traditional love story.

BTW

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/20/movies/20roth.html?8dpc=&_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print

March 20, 2007
Film Has Two Versions; Only One Is Julie Taymor’s
By SHARON WAXMAN

LOS ANGELES, March 19 — In Hollywood creative differences among moviemakers often make for more interesting results on the screen. But rarely do those battles escalate so much that a studio takes a movie away from an award-winning director.

Such is the case — for the moment — with “Across the Universe,” a $45-million psychedelic love story set to the music of the Beatles, directed by Julie Taymor, the stage and screen talent whose innovative interpretation of the Disney animated film “The Lion King” is one of the most successful modern stage musicals.

After Ms. Taymor delivered the movie to Joe Roth, the film executive whose production company, Revolution Studios, based at Sony, is making the Beatles musical, he created his own version without her agreement. And last week Mr. Roth tested his cut of the film, which is about a half-hour shorter than Ms. Taymor’s 2-hour-8-minute version.

Mr. Roth’s moves have left Ms. Taymor feeling helpless and considering taking her name off the movie, according to an individual close to the movie who would not be named because of the sensitivity of the situation. Disavowing a film is the most radical step available to a director like Ms. Taymor, who does not have final cut, one that could embarrass the studio and hurt the movie’s chances for a successful release in September.

Ms. Taymor declined to be interviewed, but issued a carefully worded statement: “My creative team and I are extremely happy about our cut and the response to it,” she wrote. “Sometimes at this stage of the Hollywood process differences of opinion arise, but in order to protect the film, I am not getting into details at this time.”

Mr. Roth, a former Disney studio chief who proclaimed his ’60’s-influenced, artist-friendly ethos in 2000 by naming his new company Revolution Studios, is himself a director, of films like “Christmas With the Kranks,” “Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise” and “Freedomland.”

He said that Ms. Taymor was overreacting to a normal Hollywood process of testing different versions of a movie, something he has done many times before, including with Michael Mann’s “Last of the Mohicans.” He called his version of “Across the Universe” “an experiment.”

“She’s a brilliant director,” he said. “She’s made a brilliant movie. This process is not anything out of the ordinary. Her reaction through her representatives might be. But her orientation is stage. It’s different if you’re making a $12-million film, or a $45-million film. No one is uncomfortable in this process, other than Julie.”

And he warned that the conflict could hurt the movie. “If you work off her hysteria, that will do the film an injustice,” he said. “Nobody wants to do that. She’s worked long and hard, and made a wonderful movie.”

A spokesman for Sony Pictures Entertainment declined to comment, saying the project was developed by Revolution.

“Across the Universe” stars Evan Rachel Wood as Lucy, an American teenager, and Jim Sturgess as Jude, a British import, who fall in love during the turbulent 1960s. The movie, set to 35 Beatles songs, seems to spring from Ms. Taymor’s experimental sandbox, combining live action with painted and three-dimensional animation and puppets, and featuring cameos by Eddie Izzard, dressed as a freakish Mr. Kite; Bono, singing “I Am the Walrus”; and Joe Cocker, singing “Come Together.”

Ms. Taymor has been editing the film for the better part of the last year, after completing the shoot in 2005. An initial release date of September 2006 was pushed off.

Mr. Roth said he had been working with Ms. Taymor on and off during nine months of editing, and that the problem was merely one of length.

Under pressure from Mr. Roth and after test screenings, Ms. Taymor trimmed the film from an initial 2 hours 20 minutes. She told associates she considered the film finished.

Fights between visionary filmmakers and studios are nothing new. Orson Welles spent most of his career fighting with studios that took away his movies, editing options and even limited his film stock. And those fights commonly focus on the running times of movies, which, as critics have noted, seem to grow inexorably longer.

But it is rare for an executive to step in and cut the movie himself. Ms. Taymor was still making her own final edits to the film when she learned several weeks ago that Mr. Roth had edited another, shorter version. That version was tested last week in Arizona, to a younger audience than the more mixed test group than saw Ms. Taymor’s cut in Los Angeles on March 8, according to an individual close to the film.

Mr. Roth, who vowed never again to allow a director final cut after the disastrous 2003 Martin Brest movie “Gigli,” said that the various versions were testing well, but that he had a responsibility to find the most successful incarnation. “It’s ‘show’ and it’s ‘business,’ ” he said.

Ms. Taymor has been showered with numerous awards, including a MacArthur “genius” grant in 1991. The stage version of “The Lion King,” which currently has nine productions worldwide, is notable for Ms. Taymor’s unusual staging and the use of mechanical masks that make the actors seem like real animals. (Mr. Roth, who ran Disney at the time, admitted to having been skeptical about the masks but later told Ms. Taymor he’d been wrong.)

Ms. Taymor has had more mixed results in Hollywood. Her bloody Shakespeare adaptation, “Titus,” bombed at the box office, taking in just $1.9 million. “Frida,” in 2002, about the artist Frida Kahlo, was successful, winning two Oscars and a moderate financial windfall.

Mr. Roth said he believed that the current tensions would be worked out, and that Ms. Taymor would find the best, final version of the film somewhere between his own and her last cut.

But those in Ms. Taymor’s camp were more skeptical, saying the director was not inclined to make any more changes. Ms. Taymor herself struck a more conciliatory note in her statement: “I only hope that we will be able to complete the film we set out to make.”

"Mr. Roth is himself a director, of films like “Christmas With the Kranks,” “Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise” and “Freedomland.”"

Even Titus, which bombed, I think is a terrific Shakespeare film. As far as I'm concerned, she has done zero wrong yet, and if she's proven Roth wrong before with her musical vision, he should trust her again.

But he also thought Christmas With the Kranks was a good idea. So...

... if it ain't her cut, I might wait for the DVD.

It's a collection of attractive set pieces and I think it's a good example of of how her editing needs to be more aggressive. But, at 128 minutes, the film sounds lean compared to other films that have been released recently.

Mech

she may be dope in the theatre, but film in a whole nother thang...


The avatar: Windimoto Is Here...

www.myspace.com/windimotomusic

*********************
Quote of a lifetime:
"...music is not just a hobby or what I do...it's what I live...music is the voice of my god, my vehicle for spiritual enlightenment..."
-Illogicz

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117971531.html?categoryid=2508&cs=1

Excerpt 1:
When Roth saw Taymor's 128-minute cut, he balked. He tried to show her a way to cut her extravaganza by some 20 minutes and screened his proposed edited version. She freaked.

Excerpt 2:
Finally, Sony Pictures chief Amy Pascal and Roth saw fit to back Taymor's version of "Across the Universe," which Taymor cut by four minutes, and made peace with her.

"Four minutes was a lot about pacing," says Taymor. "That was fine with me. If you were going to suggest radical cuts, you were going to make another movie. I stuck to my vision of this film. I never went into the histrionic scenes I heard about. I think women get that more than men."

--

But then, IMDb has the film at 131 minutes and 133 minutes at TIFF.

Regardless, of how long it is, is it Taymor's or Roth's cut? From other articles citing Taymor, it seems like it's hers. Could be she's just sucking it up so she can continue to work w/ the major studios. Or maybe not.

And no, I haven't seen it

But she did cut 4 minutes total
______________________________________________________________________
This ain't a scene
it's a
got
damn
arms
race

I never went into the histrionic scenes I heard about. I
>think women get that more than men."



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kurly's Super-Duper Awesome DVD Collection:
http://kurlyswirl.dvdaf.com/owned

can't wait till it comes out.

she gets an A+++++++++++ for me off G.P.





<================================

my avy is effin hilarious

well u cant argue with that. well rounded argument, almost circular.

V.

can't wait to see it, after seeing the trailer before spider-man 3.

Almost as bad as this:

http://www.broadwayworld.com/videoplay.cfm?id=4001&show=on

nm

i was wondering how ill it must be to be paul mccartney
this is like the ultimate respect

Also like Frida...the story is likely pretty dull.

m

She also did Titus.

Probably one of the worst adaptations of a Shakespeare play to hit the screen.

That was probably one of the worst examples I've seen of a director doing her best to outshine the source material.

Which makes me much rather want to see an original work of hers than an adaptation. Hopefully this new one is, since otherwise I have to say that watching the trailer told me precisely jack squat about the movie but volumes about the cool visuals the movie had to offer.

Titus is probably Shakespeare's worst play.

I actually like the play a lot, but that's just me. You're right though, overall it's usually considered one of his lesser works.

I don't know. I guess it just bothered me because I was really into Shakespeare when I saw it. I could just see the producers that greenlit the program watching early footage of the film and just shaking their heads like "I sure don't get but fuck it I'm not the artist or...whatever."

I don't know, revisionist adaptations of Shakespeare are usually fun, but I guess this one just didn't work for me. She could probably make incredible music videos though.

when i was in grad school
one of my professors talked about this script, i think
talked about how it would never get made
because it used all those beatles songs

fuck--someone from my school might have written it, actually
i'm not sure why i never put the two together

so overblown and gaudy that it's brilliant.

Still, I doubt I could really sit through that in a theater. I would need breaks as it's not really my favorite type of directing and filming style.

--Maurice

That was pretty amazing to see...



http://www.myspace.com/livesociety

i'm in love with this film.

it's definitely a love or hate type of movie.
for me, it was incredibly moving at times. it was long, it was overdone, it was a bit fucking campy too (and i won't lie, the camp did make me cringe a little) but i loved it.

a few people walked out. those who stayed seemed to be raving about it as they left.

i'd recommend it.

Great trailer but I remain skeptical

i'll catch it on DVD.

i'm more than sure i wouldn't be tryin to watch when this comes out tho

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/across_the_universe/

Truly a love it or hate it pic, I see.

they took any sense of danger or mystery that the beatles songs have out of the music and made them so middle of the road, dave matthews band, hootie and the blowfish. i want to take a shower after watching that trailer.

The visuals and the music were solid, but the story and "dialogue" sucked ass. There was about an hour of a good movie here, but it got so tiresome and trite as it progressed. It pretty much fell apart when they sang "Dear Prudence" to, well, Prudence, when she locked herself in the closet. There were a few other a musical pieces after that, "I Am the Walrus," "Mr. Kite," and "Happiness is Warm Gun") but many more were cringe inducing ("Revolution" and "All You Need is Love").

Julie Taymor is still a visual genius, but she needs more story to work with here.

Oh yeah, someone tell Bono he should never try a Texas accent ever again.

the whole movie seemed to rely on the visuals and the songs.

what i really hated was the fact that i felt no chemistry between jude and lucy until later in the film when they actually hooked up. it made no sense to me.

i wonder if there were no dialogue scenes at all, what people would think of it.

>i wonder if there were no dialogue scenes at all, what people
>would think of it.

No she is not... Titus is an awful film that was conflated and over-wrought and Frida was a descent film that was visually fun, but biased and about Diego Rivera as much as Frida. She needs to learn how to focus her scripts more and cut down the length of the film while at the same time allowing the great visual work to compliment the story and not replace it. watching the extras for both Titus and Frida and watching her interviews it is no surprise her films are the way they are, her passion for art focuses too much on art as being transofmative, rather than a space for praxis to occur.

My girl is ready to go see Across the Universe, i'm not. i already know i will not enjoy it, becasue i flat out can not watch musicals, which ironically are some of the most socially aware and political films/art forms, but honestly the genre it way too much for me. i have universally hated every critically accliamed musical: Caberet, West Side Story, Grease, Hair Spray, Mulan Rougue, Chicago, Rent, Dream Girls, ect. Across the Universe will no doubt enter this list of mine

nm

Character development? There really isn't any. They throw in Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin characters and have them fall in love...although it has really squat to do with the story, but hey, they're from the 60s! They also throw in an Asian, presumably Vietnamese lesbian character for no good reason, you know, just to cover all the bases.

There are so many sequences in the movie that are put there to look pretty like a painting, but if you think about them for a second they are freaking ridiculous. Like there is a scene with the Asian girl sinigng "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" while wandering around on a football field during some school football practice. The football players are all diving and tackling, meanwhile she's just moseying along and singing while all kinds of rough house shit is going on right by her. It actually made me laugh out loud at the theater, I was just waiting for the coach or someone to stop the song abruptly shouting "Bitch get out the way!!!!"

That's really the whole movie too. It's really, really bad. The only halfway interesting part is Bono's ten minutes of screen time, even though he does a not so great version of "I am the Walrus". But he says all his lines without once betraying his accent. Now that I think of it he was also the only actor in the movie that had any personality, albeit cartoony.

But then, the people I went to see it with all loved it. So...

I don't know. I will say that I saw Disturbia a few days before this, and then Perfect Strangers before that. Those were both bad movies, but I didn't feel cheated out of my money after I watched them. Across the Universe put a big frown on my face for 2+ hours.

I would say stay away from this movie unless you love musicals, love the Beatles, love the 60s but weren't alive during them, oh and also love Moulin Rouge.

Also, it helps if you don't like good plots or dialogue.

.

...but didn't have a good story. The visuals were so spectacular in some sequences that it made the other sequences feel underwhelming.

I didn't really have too much of a problem with the dialogue, cuz the point of the movie was to tell the story through the songs. The problem came when the songs weren't telling the story, they were just tacked on for cool visuals. Mr. Kite? Very cool scene. Because? Beautiful. Neither of these songs at all propelled the story forward. And they were back to back. So it's 8-9 minutes of a film with cool visuals and in no way contributing to a plot.

In the end, I think Taymor was fighting for the visuals because she knew they were the best part of the film. I bet Roth wanted to cut those extraneous scenes that didn't move the story forward, but they're the best part of the film.

This movie frustrated me. I still liked the experience, but it's really not that good as far as your standard definition of a "movie." Moulin Rouge used its music to propel the story forward, so that one works better as a movie. This one seemed a bit more peaceful, more willing to take its time (clearly), but at the end of the day the cool visuals didn't help the story, and the story looked even worse next to the cool visuals.

You might want to see this film, because I did find it interesting, and parts of it I thought were brilliant. Taymor's theatricality is at times really splendid to behold. But I also found it long, and uninterested in the actual story.

I'm gonna think about this one some more.

I think its just nitpicking to say that there were about 10 minutes of the movie that should have been cut out because it didnt "move the story forward." Why are we analyzing this movie so academically? It was a beautiful movie, beautiful characters, and come on its a musical - there are gonna be songs and sequences just for the sake of songs and sequences just like any musical. Overall it was super creative and really original. It was a fresh look at the 60s which frankly, i didnt think was possible and was truly skeptical about it. some of it was cliche, but very very very little of it. and the parts of "the 60s" that we are all familiar with, like the war and the riots, were just as apart of the plot as the love story. the plot I thought, was way more complex than the critics gave it credit for. as for there being songs that didnt belong in the film. okay, helter skelter should have been curbed. that was horrible and i cringed every time i heard it. OTHERWISE though, lovely lovely movie. i thoroughly enjoyed it and the good parts far outweighed the bad.

the sake of sequences" in a good musical. When you do, you have a bad song that weighs the film down.

The whole point of a musical film is use songs to tell the story, to explore characters and maintain story arcs. When you stop your film cold to introduce two characters we never see again with two long musical sequences involving posterized footage and two-story puppets, you end up losing/baffling/possibly boring much of the audience

i mean shit, his look and voice in the movie nearly creeped me out. I vote for a nirvana documentary/musical with Joe anderson as kurt.

The first third or half of it was great. Then Bono showed up in the Mystery Machine and the entire picture went to hell.

All that stuff in that middle section with the huge puppets and shit (I know it's supposed to be a PG-13 friendly acid trip) wasn't blended well at all into the texture of the story.

Speaking of which, the story itself was very familiar in a not good way. I suppose the idea was to tell an ordinary late-60s story in an non-ordinary way, but the story was far too predictable in the second half.

Loved "With a Little Help from My Friends", "Something", "Let It Be", and "Come Together", though. Was surprised to find "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" relegated to the end credits.

Ending was hideously weak, on both an emotional and cinematic level. With all the puppets and computer animation in the middle of the film, was there no thought given to/no budget for us to go out with a little more of a bang?

>Ending was hideously weak, on both an emotional and cinematic
>level. With all the puppets and computer animation in the
>middle of the film, was there no thought given to/no budget
>for us to go out with a little more of a bang?

Like, I'm convinced that the only reason they had her in the movie was so that they could sing her out that damn closet (no pun intended).

It was okay to me. I even liked Bono's part. I thought Jude got back in the country a little too easily, though.

saw it recently and man, those covers... ew

for those who haven't seen it, here -- compare & contrast

Movie ver.: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ib9pJbHSUKE
Original ver.: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riOnVUJAo3k

I was sitting there thinking maybe they should have gotten someone else to sing, acting fine, singing no.

Without pain, without sacrifice, we would have nothing.-Tyler Durden