Law abiding citizen - articoli ed interviste

Bellissima intervista, è bello ogni tanto sentire Gerry parlare in modo serio e intelligente!


Alan in versione padre Stolberg nooooo

Bell'intervista!!!

In questo articolo si parla della vendita dei film a Cannes per la distribuzione sul mercato estero in questo periodo di crisi e ci sarà anche LAC, speriamo che qualche distributore italiano lo acquisti!!!

Pointers for selling films at Cannes
In difficult times, pictures must stand out

A slot in the festival lineup, or in one of the sidebars, doesn't guarantee a North American distribution deal. Sure, it's one of the quickest ways to generate buzz, but buyers still need to be sold on why the film will work at the domestic box office.

Last year, a number of high-profile films unspooling at the fest left the Croisette without deals in place, including Steven Soderbergh's "Che" and Charlie Kaufman's "Synecdoche, New York."

Well-seasoned sales agents — some of whom have been burned by showing a film in the white hot spotlight of the Palais — recommend sitting out Cannes and waiting for the Venice or Toronto fests.

"We try to avoid bringing stuff to Cannes that doesn't have U.S. distribution in place," one seller says. "It's not worth risking your life on one night in France."

DRUM UP ATTENTION

Unspooling a finished film at the market isn't a cakewalk either. Ask filmmaker Peter Roger, whose documentary "Oh My God" is making its world premiere in the Cannes Market. (Peace Arch is handling sales.)

"First, get great publicists. Second, have a campaign that stands out. Basically, do anything you can to be recognized," he says.

He'll use a snappy visual campaign to lure buyers (he won't divulge the details). He also says having a simple concept — in this case: How does having faith play a role in people's lives? — helps. And he'll tout the appearances of Hugh Jackman, Ringo Starr and David Copperfeld.

KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE

The best way to sell a finished film is in the marketing and the research," says Odd Lot Intl.'s Brian O'Shea, who is taking dance movie "B-Girl" to the Marche. He says if he's comparing the movie to, say, "Step Up," he needs to know where that film did well overseas and where it didn't. "That way, distributors are able to quickly dissect the information and come up with a specific plan."

The Film Department's Steve Bickel agrees that sellers have to do their homework. "In order for a distributor to buy your product, you have to know how these films will do in a particular territory," says Bickel, who will be selling foreign rights to thriller "Law Abiding Citizen," starring Gerard Butler and Jamie Foxx. (Pic has domestic distribution via Overture Films.)


CREATE THE RIGHT ENVIRONMENT

At AFM, IM Global's Stuart Ford recruited a huge teenage audience for a screening of "Paranormal Activity." "It was 100 distributors and 300 teenagers from the Valley," he says. "We sold out the whole world in 48 hours. I'm sure if we would have put a bunch of middle-aged men in the room, the reaction wouldn't have been as euphoric."

Ford has quite a movie experience lined up for Cannes Market this year: "Bitch Slap," which he describes as "a pure exploitation pic — chicks, boobs, guns and bad guys, in that order." His strategy includes a May 14 private screening, with a themed party to follow. "Doing things in a crass, fun-filled way is best for this film," he adds. "In these recessionary times, people want escapism."


TO SCREEN OR NOT TO SCREEN, THAT IS THE QUESTION

Some buyers and sellers are starting to wonder if it's better to show an entire film at the market, or entice with clips only.

"I've been noticing that major distributors already have a screener with them when they arrive at Cannes. With screeners, you can get to a whole bunch of people very quickly," says Unified Pictures' Ann Dubinet.

Unified will use Cannes Market to show footage of Werner Herzog's thriller "My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done," with Chloe Sevigny and Michael Shannon. It'll be the first time buyers get a look.

http://www.variety.com/article/VR111800337...oryId=3620&cs=1

In questo articolo dove si parla dei due nuovi poster viene anche spiegata meglio la trama del film

Plot:
“Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler) is an upstanding family man whose wife and daughter are brutally murdered during a home invasion. When the killers are caught, Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx), a hotshot young Philadelphia prosecutor, is assigned to the case. Over his objections, Nick is forced by his boss to offer one of the suspects a light sentence in exchange for testifying against his accomplice.
Fast forward ten years. The man who got away with murder is found dead and Clyde Shelton coolly admits his guilt. Then he issues a warning to Nick: Either fix the flawed justice system that failed his family, or key players in the trial will die.
Soon Shelton follows through on his threats, orchestrating from his jail cell a string of spectacularly diabolical assassinations that can be neither predicted nor prevented. Philadelphia is gripped with fear as Shelton’s high-profile targets are slain one after another and the authorities are powerless to halt his reign of terror. Only Nick can stop the killing, and to do so he must outwit this brilliant sociopath in a harrowing contest of wills in which even the smallest misstep means death. With his own family now in Shelton’s crosshairs, Nick finds himself in a desperate race against time facing a deadly adversary who seems always to be one step ahead.”

http://teaser-trailer.com/2009/08/law-abid...izen-movie.html

Nuovi trailer: The Wolfman, Parnassus e Law Abiding Citizen

L'ultimo trailer vede protagonisti Jamie Foxx e Gerard Butler nell'intenso thriller drammatico Law Abiding Citizen, nel quale pochi secondi di spensieratezza sono il preludio alla tragedia che darà il via ai propositi di vendetta di un uomo che improvvisamente perde tutti gli affetti, e come viene annunciato dai titoli "diventa capace di tutto". Le prime scene del trailer mostrano un Gerald Butler dal volto segnato dal dolore, gonfio e provato da una spaventosa tragedia, che fa contrasto con quello dell'avvocato Jamie Foxx, estremamente curato e dallo sguardo lucido. Poi appena i propositi di vendetta del protagonista iniziano a prendere corpo, ritroviamo Butler sexy come sempre, e con un'espressione resa quasi più luminosa dal concretizzarsi di un compito che si è promesso di portare a termine e che, in un certo modo riesce a dare un senso alla sua vita. Non mancano le scene drammatiche quindi, alcune delle quali particolarmente dure, che mostrano un'esecuzione capitale - che probabilmente offre lo spunto al personaggio di Butler di farsi giustizia da solo - ma neanche quelle più puramente d'azione, con scontri, inseguimenti e incendi. Diretto da F. Gary Gray, il film vede protagonisti anche Leslie Bibb e Viola Davis, che recentemente ha ottenuto numerosi riconoscimenti per la sua interpretazione ne Il dubbio, tra cui una nomination agli Oscar e una ai Golden Globe.

http://www.movieplayer.it/news/10242/nuovi...biding-citizen/

Secondo il regista, Lac mostra un nuovo aspetto di Gerry e di Jamie, secondo lui la sintonia tra i due attori ricorda quella tra Jodie Foster e Anthony Hopkins nel Silenzio degli innocenti. E questo film mostra davvero che Gerry è un attore serio e non solo un donnaiolo o un sex-symbol!



Director F. Gary Gray is taking a lot of pleasure in the fact that that his upcoming "Law Abiding Citizen" thriller is going to show moviegoers new aspects of both Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler.

"The chemistry between them reminds me of the on-screen chemistry you got with Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins in 'Silence of the Lambs,'" Gray says. The film has Butler as a man who goes on a stunningly planned spree of revenge after one of the men responsible for his family's killing is set free in a plea deal — arranged by Foxx's district attorney character.

"A lot of times when you hear Gerard Butler's name, people go into how great-looking he is or how much of a ladies' man he is," Gray observes. "I think with this, people are really going to get a sense of how much range he has as a serious actor." And they'll get to see Oscar winner Foxx in a role that might previously have been considered "Denzel-like."

MEANWHILE: Gray has jumped on the Twitter thing in a big way, tweeting news bites, photos and video throughout production of the "Law Abiding Citizen" psychological thriller. And now he's fallen into using the new medium as a marketing tool. With the picture in post-production, en route to an October premiere, Gray has announced his own contest in which the winner — the person who brings the most followers to Gray's Web page — will get to come to the "Law Abiding Citizen" premiere complete with travel and accommodations provided.

"There's been a great response from all over the world," says Gray, whose credits range from "The Italian Job" and "Be Cool" to his unforgettable video for TLC's "Waterfalls." "It really is exciting, and you know what's really funny? It wasn't something that was planned by the head of marketing. It just kind of happened. You start to develop a digital kind of relationship with the Twitterers. It's reciprocal.

"At any given time, you have access to thousands of opinions, and you can get constructive criticism — mostly constructive," he goes on. "That's pretty hard to beat. No middleman, no conduit. It's not filtered. It's raw, real time response. It's important for artists to keep their fingers on the public pulse. This is an effective way to do it."

Gray has also been doing what might be called Twitter tutoring — answering followers' questions about how to break into the movie business, about how to get cast in films, about writing, directing — in addition to queries about working with stars like Ice Cube, Queen Latifah, Charlize Theron, John Travolta, Vince Vaughn and many more. "Last night, I had a marathon Twittering session, a little over two hours. That was OK, I was at home, I had a snack," he says. "I didn't actually plan it, not at all. It was just one of those things."

In questo articolo Gerry spiega di essere stato lui a voler interpretare Clyde, anche se inizialmente doveva interpretare il procuratore, il personaggio dello psicopatico lo attirava molto di più. E quando il personaggio è stato reso più umano nel copione e non una sorta di Hannibal Lecter anche il suo manager e il suo agente hanno cominciato ad accettare la cosa.

Gerald Butler fights system in 'Law Abiding Citizen'

Originally presumed to play the role of the lawyer, the actor gravitated toward that of the vengeful man outside the law.

Reporting from Philadelphia - Gerard Butler narrowly escaped being a lawyer twice over.

Before he began his acting career in earnest, Butler spent years studying to be a lawyer in his native Scotland and landed a job as a civil solicitor that lasted long enough to convince him he had no passion for the profession. Devoting less time to his apprenticeship than to the drink he has since sworn off, he was fired before he had a chance to practice and moved to London the next day, where he landed the part of Renton in the stage version of "Trainspotting."

Years later, after "300" had made him one of the hottest stars in the movie industry -- and his roles in movies as wide-ranging as "RocknRolla" and "Dear Frankie" had shown he had chops to match his clout -- Butler and his manager, Alan Siegel, settled on "Law Abiding Citizen" as the inaugural project for their production company, Evil Twin. There was just one catch:

The leading role, the part toward which Butler would seem to naturally gravitate, was that of Nick Rice, an ambitious Philadelphia district attorney whose callous treatment of home invasion victim Clyde Smith touches off a murderous rampage directed at the justice system's purported inequities. But as the project grew closer to fruition, Butler found himself reluctant to don a lawyer's garb, even if only fictionally.

"Seven years of studying and training to be a lawyer," he said with a rueful laugh on the movie's set in February. "That's what made me not want to be the DA."

In fact, an overview of Butler's career shows he's never been much for traditional leading-man roles, and the more he sat with the script, the more he found himself gravitating toward Clyde, whose grief over the murder of his wife and daughter has driven him to construct an elaborate and largely self-propelled vengeance machine that continues to dispose of the people involved in cutting a deal for his family's killers even after he is behind bars.

The desire to play a psychotic mastermind rather than a champion of justice did not sit well with Butler's representatives. "I had been saying to my guys for a while that I was interested in playing Clyde," he recalled, "and my agent and my manager were like, 'That's interesting, but just shut up.' " As the part was rewritten to make Clyde more human and less Hannibal Lecter, they began to come around. "The more I talked to them, it was like, 'You know, you haven't really done this before.' " Butler grins, his forehead smeared with ash from the explosions being filmed a few dozen yards from his trailer. "Also, they were having a hard time, crazily enough, finding a successful leading man who they felt could take Clyde on. They were worried about the effects of playing a character like that."

Butler's flipflop cleared the way for Jamie Foxx, who saw Nick as an equally compromised character whose ambition overrides any qualms he might have about the system he controls.

"My character is [ Rudy] Giuliani coming up in the '70s," Foxx says. "The people he was putting away were all bad guys, but he was moving up the ladder. He had his sights set on being mayor someday."

To prepare for the role, Foxx spent time with a black DA in Louisiana, a state that incarcerates a higher percentage of its black population than any other. "Eighty percent of the people he has to put away are African American," Foxx says. "How does he do that? It's like, 'I have to do my job.' So basically that's my thing. I have to do my job."

"Nick's been applying the letter of the law," Butler says. "It's just questionable as to the morality and as to the sensitivity of how that's been applied, because it doesn't always provide justice, and it doesn't always provide any support or comfort to the victims. In that way, it's very much a true comment to what happens today. And I think that my purpose is to come along and teach him that and teach him that people have to be accountable for their actions, whatever profession it is they're carrying out."

While stressing that the movie, which opens Oct. 16, is primarily a high-stakes chess match, both actors talked up the film's political undercurrents.

Butler touched on the ethical compromises of criminal defense, which he calls "a disgusting way to live," and Foxx invoked the Harrison Act, the anti-drug laws pushed through by invoking the specter of black men driven into a lustful frenzy by cocaine use. But director F. Gary Gray, who stepped in after original director Frank Darabont left the production, downplayed any deeper resonance.

"I'm not looking to change the world necessarily," he said. "If they want a message, they can go to church."

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/...0,6979196.story

Qui dicono che è stato Jamie Fox a voler interpretare il procuratore e che Gerry si è adattato, ma che ora ne sarebbe fiero ... basta che si decidano

Gerard Butler is crazy for 'Law Abiding Citizen': 'This is the Hannibal Lecter role'
September 23, 2009 | 3:19 pm

Is Gerard Butler making a movie every month or does it just feel that way? Los Angeles Times Calendar writer Rachel Abramowitz talked to him not long ago for "The Awful Truth" and "Gamer" and got a tidbit, too, about Butler's upcoming vendetta fantasy, "Law Abiding Citizen." Here it is. -- Geoff Boucher

Gerard Butler dumps his heroic persona for a walk on the wild side in the revenge thriller “Law Abiding Citizen.” While the F. Gary Gray film might make the ACLU shudder, preview audiences have been howling their appreciation often in favor of Butler’s psychopathic anti-hero.

“This is the Hannibal Lecter role. It’s Kevin Spacey in 'Se7en,' " says Butler, the Scottish actor best known for playing King Leonidas in “300.”

Of course, there’s a reason for the rage of Butler’s character. You’d be riled up if your wife and family had been brutally murdered in a home invasion and the court system let one of the killers off with a slap on the wrist. But Butler’s guy isn’t just after an eye for an eye; he’s a crazed vigilante bent on taking down the entire legal system.

This is Butler’s first foray into producing, and he not only worked on the Kurt Wimmer script but was willing to forgo his original intention to play the hero to get the movie made.

“We were having a hard time finding the right actor for the role," he said. Jamie Foxx was interested, but only in the district attorney role.

“ 'I’ll swap,' " Butler said. “He said, ‘Yes,’ at which point I went 'Oh ... I wish I hadn’t said it.'“

Butler wound up working with an acting coach for the first time on a movie, and now seems happy about his psycho turn. “I’m proud of it.”

-- Rachel Abramowitz

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/herocomple...bal-lecter.html