Book of Eli

[GeneChing]

Is Denzel packing a dao? Excellent!

Official HD trailer

Premiering January 15th, 2010.

[Skip J.]

So Denzel is a ma guy????

I love post-apocalypse .... I'll see this one...

[sanjuro_ronin]

Excellent, nothing like a good old fashioned movie about killing bad people after a holocaust of some sorts !
Good family entertainment !

[Lucas]

i saw the preview for this and while it looks neat, there seems to be an element of CHEESE going on. ill still watch it, and ill probably like it...

but im biased in that i think the best post apocolyptic movie would simply be an adaption from the Fallout series.

from the landscape in that movie, it looks like its directly pulled from Fallout 3.

no joke. so to me, it looks pretty inspired, visually, by that series. which is cool but someone just needs to go and make the movie FALLOUT. it could be very bad ass.

im pretty sure anyone who has seen that game would probably agree with me. the first thing that went in my head as i watched the preview was 'this should just be fallout'...

[Dragonzbane76]

after watching that I would say yes it does look like Fallout. awesome.

[Zenshiite]

When I saw the trailer for this at Ninja Assassin I thought "****, my graphic novel idea for a bagua fighting, dao-wielding post-apocalyptic hero is shot now..."

[AdrianK]

from the landscape in that movie, it looks like its directly pulled from Fallout 3.

Yeah, I mean, can't they get their own ideas for how a war-ravaged metropolis should look?

Seriously though.. theres really only so much you can do with that.

[Jimbo]

Is Denzel packing a dao? Excellent!

Official HD trailer

Premiering January 15th, 2010.

Although I can't watch youtube on my home computer, when I saw the trailer in the theater, I remember Denzel's big knife as having a series of holes in the blade. If that's what you mean, I have seen those before, and I believe it's a type/brand of machete. I've seen the same thing used as a piece of gear on a survival show to hack vegetation.

Actually, the post-apocalyptic movie I'm really hoping to see before it leaves theaters is The Road, starring Viggo Mortensen. Comparing the trailers, it looks somewhat more believable than The Book of Eli.

[mawali]

The trailer seems mediocre!
I noticed that the fight coreography was lacking in that too much quick cutting, lack of camera depth in the execution of technique, postures highly unbelieveable with finishing blows and lack of posture definition not matching the punches or kicks! Insufficient extension, contraction and riposts/counters.

[GeneChing]

I saw a screener yesterday and came away with two morals that I thoroughly endorse: Moral #1: After the apocalypse, it will be good to be literate. Moral #2: After the apocalypse, it will also behoove you to be handy with a sword.

Interview: Allen and Albert Hughes Talk About the Future of America and THE BOOK OF ELI
Written by Christina Radish Monday, 11 January 2010 15:57

Twins Allen and Albert Hughes made their mark as filmmakers with their debut as the 20-year-old creators and directors of Menace II Society, a compelling, realistic look at inner-city life that premiered in 1993. Since then, they have been very selective in the projects that they take on, making The Book of Eli only their fifth feature film and the first they're released in nearly a decade.

While at the press day for the film, the Hughes Brothers talked about their interest in religion and their feelings about the future of America.

Q: Why did you want to direct this particular film? What was it about the script and the story that connected with you?

Allen: Around page 40, there's the scene in the movie where Gary Oldman's character, Carnegie, goes berserk and says, "It's not just a book, it's a weapon," and he goes into that diatribe about the Bible, and I was like, "Woah!" In the original script, Eli would recite more from the Bible to people he was going to mercy kill. So, we knew it was a Bible and we knew he was a man of faith. And then, you get to this other character and he says that, and I was like, "This is deep. This is about something. This is not just about blowing stuff up. This is the age-old battle over people." Everything is subjective and it shouldn't be, especially when it comes to a book like that, but people read into it what they want to read into it, and they take out of it what they want to take out of it, a la Jim Jones and the Kool Aid incident.

Albert: That's the fine line that we had to walk with the movie. Like that Kenny Rogers line, we had to know when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em. We had to decide how much spirituality to put in and take out, at any given time. Hopefully, in the end, the audience reads into it what they bring to it. You find those answers yourself. It's just your experience that answers some of these questions for you. If you're inclined to be a bad person at heart, you're probably going to side with Gary's character.

Q: Why did it take you guys this long to find the right project, since making From Hell in 2001?

Albert: We purposely tried to do that Kubrick thing. We released a movie in 2001, and then one in 2010. No, I'm kidding. We wish there was that good an excuse.

Allen: Early success, especially as early as we hit it, at 19 or 20, with Menace II Society, is a gift and a curse. The gift is obvious. You get success and you don't have to worry about much. You're making some money and people know who you are. And, the curse is that you've got to catch up and start to live life, and figure out what life is. To be a good storyteller, you should learn about life and have real-life experiences. And, you can get pigeonholed as black filmmakers. When Oprah goes in 100 years, God bless her, they're not going to say, "She was the best black talk show host." They're going to say, "She was the best talk show host, period." You want to be the best doctor or the best journalist. You don't want to be pigeonholed. So, after Menace, Dead Presidents and American Pimp, we wanted to do something different. And, we always look to what speaks to us. We want people to know we're going to do what speaks to us. It could be something like that movie Precious, or it could be something like From Hell. You don't know what's going to speak to you.

Albert: Also, we don't want to do something just to do something. This is our hobby. We can do that in our off time. We will serve no wine before its time, even if that wine might be sour. At least we spent time on it and tried to make it right. We cared.

Q: This film places an emphasis on the value that books have. Was that in the original script?

Allen: What was in the script was how precious words were. There was an undercurrent of that. Albert was very much a stickler about what we showed, as far as the books. We're losing tactile reading. We've got the Kindle, and all this stuff. It breaks my heart that the new generation is not touching books when they read and they're not going to the library. That is one of the most precious things we have and it's slipping away, very, very rapidly. So, when you do a movie that's a so-called post-apocalyptic movie, but also has Western themes, you go back to these primal things. In the 1700s, there were books. People were reading books. So, the whole Western aspect, jumping back like that, you get right back to the basic fundamentals. Everything comes full circle, as they say. So, we were cognizant of that, as well as what books we were burning.

Albert: I put a comic book in there.

Q: When you cast Denzel Washington in this, how do you remove the movie star and make him as spiritual and downplayed as he is in this role?

Albert: Denzel, by nature, is a very religious and spiritual man. He makes no secret of that. So, he helped us with that, in a way. We're not exactly the most well-read Bible readers in the world. My brother said something awhile ago that was funny about Denzel. He said, "You don't tell Denzel to do anything. He comes in, you confer with him and you talk with him." If he has heart and passion for something, he's there 110%, and he was on this, to the point of almost exhaustion for us. He went over all the scripts in pre-production. He took every single script version, opened them all up, and pulled nuggets out of each one of them. He'd play each role. He'd go page by page, for hours on end. We needed a break. He's a tireless worker.

Allen: One other things that I found very interesting was that scene where he has to quote from the Bible. It's a long excerpt from the Bible. And, on the day, I was just like, "He's not going to do this. There's no way because it's going to be corny, it's going to seem preachy, it's going to be weird." He has this saying, "You've gotta take the curse off it." I just thought he wasn't going to do it, but how he took the curse off it was to just say "we" instead of "I," and he started doing things while he spoke, and then he had everything settled and pulled the sword out. In essence, what he did with those moments that you're walking that fine line with spirituality was take the curse of the corniness of it. He's so wise, so experienced and such a veteran in the little tricks to pull that off. I found that very fascinating. And, this is something you've never seen him do before.

Q: What research did the two of you do, since you weren't too familiar with the Bible?

Albert: I'm not that well versed on the Bible, but I've got it on my iPhone. For any movie you do, you do your research of looking at the other movies that people want to compare it to, and then you do the scientific stuff, with what could happen 20 or 30 years from now, after the apocalypse. For us, the research was, "How is the world going to look?" The reality of what's really going to happen wasn't so important. To us, even though it sounds strange, the environment and the post-apocalyptic aspect of the movie is peripheral. This could have very easily been a Western, which everybody wants to compare it to. It could have been set on an island. We just wanted to get the elements right, so we did do a lot of research on that, but not the stickler research where it had to be a certain way. We wanted to bend the rules a little bit and be a little bit more surreal.

Allen: Personally, I'm obsessed with religion, and different forms of religion. I've watched lots and lots of documentaries and read lots and lots of books. I even read the version of the Bible for retarded people, like me, so that I could understand it. I just like to break all religions down. I've studied Christianity and the Knights Templar. A lot of that stuff, Eli is based off of, along with Native American and the Shaolin monks. You have to study all these elements and bring together the commonality of the theology. There's a through-line there. We've always been obsessed with religion.

[GeneChing]

...from above.

Albert: I wouldn't say obsessed. I'm just fascinated by how people react to it, whether good or bad. It's just a fascinating subject. The wars and disagreements that go on come from religion. It's a weird duality that that one thing had, no matter what version of religion it is. They all have some sort of friction going on, and that friction comes from people. People are the problem, not the book. That's what's fascinating to me.

Q: Can you talk about getting this great supporting cast together, which includes Gary Oldman, Malcolm McDowell and Tom Waits?

Allen: Gary came from Denzel. The bad guy wasn't there, at first. He said, "The good guy is only as good as the bad guy," and he worked on flushing that character out. We did a lot of improv and a lot of workshops with just us, Denzel and the script. Then, one day, he just said, "You know how Gary Oldman would do this?" And, for a few days straight, he kept going, "Gary would do it this way." And then, we just said, "Why don't we try to get Gary to play Carnegie?" Gary was very much into going, "Look, I've played bad guys. This guy is not a bad guy. He just does really bad things." There's some grey in there, but some people think he's just straight-up evil because he reaches that Jim Jones point where he crosses the line. But, I liked that he approached the role going, "This is a guy for whom the ends justify the means. He's not a bad guy, but he does bad things." With Tom Waits, we knew that 95% of that scene was improv. It wasn't scripted at all.

Albert: The funniest stuff is not in there.

Allen: It was the only scene in the movie where two gentlemen, after the shotgun goes down, are actually reminiscing and having a civil conversation. It was only an actor of Tom Waits caliber, who's also a musician, who could pull that off. After Denzel did the scene, he was like, "That guy can go." He felt the rhythm, and it was a natural rhythm. We tried to go down the line, with all the actors. Michael Gambon and Frances de la Tour were just amazing British actors who brought a lot to the table.

Q: Will it be another nine years before we see the next Hughes Brothers film?

Allen: No.

Albert: Maybe 10.

Q: Do you guys know what you'll be doing next?

Albert: At this stage, on every movie, we get that question and we wish we had the answer. I can promise that it's not going to be as long. I hope it doesn't. We don't purposely do that. It isn't a Kubrick excuse.

Q: Do you both live in Los Angeles?

Allen: I live outside of L.A.

Albert: And, I live part-time in Prague, in the Czech Republic.

Q: Why Prague?

Albert: I got a little tired of America.

Q: Why did you set The Book of Eli in America, instead of some other place?

Allen: Because America's got it coming. No, I'm joking. I would like to answer that question. Before 9/11, the arrogance of this young nation showed that we should have disaster movies come out only about this country, to remind us and keep us humble. We're young.

Albert: The bullet needs to get knocked out, a couple of times.

Allen: I'm not just saying this to be political, but we have a great country. We have a phenomenal country, and I'm not talking about the Constitution. Have you ever gone out and looked at this place? It's so beautiful, and we take it for granted. We have such a great Nation.

Albert: The analogy is this: Europe is a wise, grey-bearded, old man that's been through it all. It's been through gays, religion, abortion and all those little issues. That grey is showing, and that wiseness. America is a baby. It might be a cute baby, but it's a baby.

THE BOOK OF ELI opens in theaters January 15th

[GeneChing]

Hadn't considered the 'paler sidekick' factor. Does Mila count?

Denzel Washington braves a new world in The Book of Eli'
* Originally published January 13, 2010 at 8:52 a.m., updated January 13, 2010 at 8:54 a.m.
By John Anderson
Newsday

For some pretty obvious reasons — including their best actor Oscars — Denzel Washington has long been compared to the venerable Sidney Poitier. But back when Poitier was coming to dinner, he wasn't getting there by trudging through a post-apocalyptic, "Mad Max" landscape, carrying the fate of mankind on his shoulders and lopping limbs off bad guys with a big old chef's knife. So any comparisons are probably over.

No, Washington has made his very own and pretty indelible presence in our movie culture, but it's safe to say that when "The Book of Eli" opens Friday, it will introduce fans to a new Denzel — one who has joined the sci-fi fantasy posse currently invading movie theaters galaxy-wide and promises to ignite a Washingtonian debate.

"Is Denzel chasing Will Smith's action-hero status and pretend street credibility?" asks critic Armond White. "Is this an 'I Am Legend' contest? Terrence Howard and Jeffrey Wright have nothing to be afraid of."

Maybe not, but one can see why Washington might want to chart a new course through the continually heaving landscape of the movie business. With few exceptions ("The Great Debaters" of 2007, for instance), his movies have always made money — but a very static kind of money. Over the past decade, the thrillers in which Washington has specialized have been remarkably consistent earners — "Training Day" ($77 million domestic; $105 million worldwide); "John Q." ($77 million; $102 million), "Man on Fire" ($78 million; $130 million); "The Manchurian Candidate" ($66 million; $96 million); "Inside Man" ($88 million; $104 million); "Deja Vu" ($64 million; $180 million); and last year's "The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3" ($66 million; $150 million).

But Washington has been the victim of some nasty facts of life: The movies that have made major money — like "American Gangster" ($130 million domestic; $266 million worldwide) — have paired him with another (white) star, and it's made a big difference, even if his paler sidekick has been Russell Crowe (or, in "Pelham," John Travolta). The black American movie has traditionally not sold well overseas, and global sales are a major motivator in what studios are choosing to make. Add to this that Washington has not, for some time, made himself politically or artistically important — there's been no "Philadelphia" (1992), no "Malcolm X" (1993), not even "The Siege" (1998), with its prescient paranoia about radical Islam. So why not take a trip into the future?

Directed by brothers Allen and Albert Hughes ("Menace II Society," ''From Hell"), "The Book of Eli" is, in a sense, a Western: The title character, the classic lone wolf, travels the scorched world of 2043 carrying a book in which the salvation of mankind is enclosed; the conflict arises when the book is seized by the mayor of a makeshift frontier town (Gary Oldman).

If it sounds a bit like something by Sergio Leone and starring Clint Eastwood, Allen Hughes will not disabuse you.

"It was an Eastwood-esque role," he agreed, by phone from Los Angeles. "Shaolin monk meets Sitting Bull meets Moses meets Bruce Lee. And Denzel was the first choice in my mind. He was the guy."

Hughes, who hasn't directed a movie with his brother since the Jack the Ripper movie "From Hell," said since that Johnny Depp vehicle opened in 2001, he and Albert have had five or six projects they were deeply interested in doing, but that, for one reason or another, never got made.

"One we were very passionate about — and which got made because a movie star made it — was 'Confessions of a Dangerous Mind,'" he said, referring to George Clooney's directorial debut. "We had a strong vision for it, but at the time the politics of it weren't right. It was a movie we were perfect for, something that was original, but it just didn't happen."

Having Washington on board, he said, made a huge difference with "The Book of Eli." Not all the difference, but a difference.

"Denzel was a major factor in getting it made, but even when we got him, there were more hurdles. He was very helpful because, obviously, he's a great actor, a two-time Academy Award winner, a movie star, but there were still politics, and he had to get involved as a producer, and if he hadn't, the movie wouldn't have gotten made because it's not something that's in Denzel's normal wheelhouse."

Given that scenario — a major star leaving his comfort zone — Hughes said the studios "will come up with 6 million excuses why they shouldn't do it."

But the change of tempo — in both an artistic and professional sense — may prove to be a boon for Washington, a star of considerable luminosity that probably needs to be refocused.

"You want a guy with that luggage," said Hughes about casting "The Book of Eli." ''You want a guy with the nobility Denzel has — he's done Oscar-winning work for 20, 30 years, and he has a presence that harkens back to the great actors of old, guys who didn't have to say much but could walk onto the screen and consume the screen with their presence and their manhood."

That, Allen Hughes said, was what he wanted out of Washington. "This role requires him not to talk a lot, which is something he's very good at doing," he said. "In 'Training Day,' he's running his mouth 60 miles an hour and you're right there with him the whole time. So I was interested in taking that guy — and there's only one Denzel — and stripping it down, not having him say much."

And rewriting the book of Denzel Washington.

___

BRIEF PRIMER ON CAREER OF DENZEL WASHINGTON

Denzel Washington's career has seemed varied, yet predictable — thrillers, social dramas and biopics seem to arrive in comfortable succession — but he also has had far too many films for any easy assessment. The following, however, are the projects that got him where he is:

"St. Elsewhere" (1982-88) — The prognosis was decidedly positive for Washington after he played Dr. Philip Chandler in this gritty, cult-fave NBC series about a decaying teaching hospital in Boston's South End. When Washington checked out, he entered superstardom.

"Glory" (1989) — Ed Zwick's Civil War drama about the all-black 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry helped Washington become the first black actor to earn two best supporting actor nominations (the other was for "Cry Freedom"). He then followed Louis Gossett Jr. as only the second African-American to win in that category.

"Malcolm X" (1992) — Washington's fierce performance (his best?) was a bit too fierce for the academy, which gave him a nomination but bestowed the award on Al Pacino (for "Scent of a Woman," go figure). His portrayal of the black nationalist martyr cemented his longtime partnership with Spike Lee, the director who seems to bring out his best.

"Philadelphia" (1993) — Tom Hanks may have won the best actor Oscar, but wasn't this really Washington's movie? His performance as ****phobic lawyer Joe Miller was the engine of the film.

"Training Day" (2001) — Anyone find it ironic that Washington had to play an out-and-out bad guy to finally win his best actor Oscar? And for a movie in which he was arguably a supporting player? Whatever: He was mad, bad and dangerous as the gloriously corrupt Alonzo Harris.

"Inside Man" (2006) — Washington's fourth collaboration with director Lee (this year's "Inside Man 2" will be the fifth), this cat-and-mouse hostage drama played to all the actor's strongest suits — he was sexy, he was smart, he was funny and he owned the screen.

[GeneChing]

Read BOOK OF ELI: Art of Reading without Reading by Dr. Craig Reid.

[Zenshiite]

Seriously... for a couple years I've been kicking around this idea for a graphic novel that leads into the Islamic end times prophecies, and the more I read about this movie(haven't seen it yet) the more I realize that I have to scrap the basic idea of my character because my dude was going to be a loner bagua man with a big dao going around and righting wrongs and what not. Would probably end up fighting with some dictator in some kind of a town.

Of course, that's also Fist of the North Star in so many ways. That sucks, but what can you do? Looking forward to seeing this movie.

[mooyingmantis]

Taking my family to see it today.