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ZODIAC Discussion

post #1 of 257
2/8/07 at 3:55pm
Thread Starter 
FANTASTIC movie. Fincher's most mature work. Loved it.
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post #2 of 257
2/8/07 at 4:03pm
Did they cut it down, or is it still close to 3 hours?
Happy to hear it's great.
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post #3 of 257
2/8/07 at 4:06pm
you prick tease...

Glad to hear it. Can't wait to see it, just about 2/3 the way through the second book.
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post #4 of 257
2/8/07 at 4:09pm
Had a friend see it last year. Said it was outstanding, so good to hear another kudos from someone else. Counts out the week before or the week after 300. March is looking mighty nice this year.
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post #5 of 257
2/8/07 at 4:14pm
awesome, I love Fincher but the previews for this didn't really sell me. Glad to hear it's a quality film.
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post #6 of 257
2/8/07 at 4:26pm
Good news... hopefully I'll be back in NY when this opens so I can catch on a "nice" big screen.
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post #7 of 257
2/8/07 at 4:38pm
Dammit. Had a chance to go to a screening last night and family shit got in the way. Everyone I know who saw it liked it too.
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post #8 of 257
2/8/07 at 4:48pm
Excellent.

So I assume Gyllenhaal is less annoying than usual in it.
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post #9 of 257
2/8/07 at 5:02pm
Glad to hear he's returned with a vengeance. The trailers had me worried.
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post #10 of 257
2/8/07 at 5:09pm
I think some of you are tricking yourselves. Let's ask Devin: Is trailer indicative of the film's vibe and feel?

I thought it would end up seeming that way. The trailer had a Chinatown/Summer of Sam feeling and that is what sold me on it. Those that thought the trailer was detrimental to a possibly very good film, you might want to revisit the trailer after seeing the film.
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post #11 of 257
2/8/07 at 5:38pm
Recent trailers/commercials made the film look better than the official trailer. I'm just guessing here, but I think part of why the film is tough to sell is because its not a simple genre film.
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post #12 of 257
2/8/07 at 6:00pm
Good news. Zodiac is one of my favorite criminal cases, and Graysmith's book is fascinating. I was already sold by the trailer, but it's great to get confirmation of quality.
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post #13 of 257
2/8/07 at 6:22pm
As someone fascinated by the Zodiac case myself, I found it interesting the way Fincher altered little details of the murders as we've come to know them in Graysmith's books. This is especially strange because Fincher is maniacal about detail everywhere else in the movie.
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post #14 of 257
2/8/07 at 6:48pm
Thread Starter 
I'm essentially a Zodiac virgin, but now I am going to pick up Graysmith's book and see what the differences are.

People are going to hate this movie. The killings stop halfway through the film, and even then they aren't really the focus of the story.
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post #15 of 257
2/8/07 at 6:50pm
Really looking forward to this one. Glad to hear the early praise.
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post #16 of 257
2/8/07 at 11:29pm
Been dying to see this since the trailer.

Heard they shot this on the Genesis cam. How does the HD look?
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post #17 of 257
2/9/07 at 1:58am
Devin's fairly correct - it's a fascinating movie that never falters. Those expecting a variation of Se7en are going to be severly disappointed, although there's a scene by a lake that's the most unsettling, unnerving piece of friction and horror I've seen in quite some time. Even more horrendous is that it's so understated. Sticks with you.

Savides' work with the Gensis is top-notch; some beautiful imagery throughout.

Devin - how long is the film now? Last cut I saw was pushing three hours.
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post #18 of 257
2/9/07 at 2:29am
Excellent. I can't wait for this. At all.
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post #19 of 257
2/9/07 at 3:31am
Am I right in thinking that this is basically "All The President's Serial Killer"? If so, bring it. It looks fantastic.
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post #20 of 257
2/9/07 at 3:53am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ratty
Am I right in thinking that this is basically "All The President's Serial Killer"? If so, bring it. It looks fantastic.
Ditto the "All the President's" sentiment. Definitely looking forward to a moody investigative piece as opposed to a typical procedural.
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post #21 of 257
2/9/07 at 4:47am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Yando
Devin - how long is the film now? Last cut I saw was pushing three hours.
Well, I'm not Devin, but the cut I saw this week was approximately 2 hours and forty-five minutes.
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post #22 of 257
2/9/07 at 4:57am
Awesome news!
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post #23 of 257
2/9/07 at 5:01am
I'm glad it doesn't focus solely on the Zodiac murderer. He seems like a totally inane twerp. He made so many threats that he didn't follow through on - it seems like it's totally plausible that most of the threats might have been made by different people, or threats made and then murders happened at hands of others and were connected to the threats...I personally wouldn't want to see a moment to moment depiction of what the Zodiac murders are said to have been.
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post #24 of 257
2/9/07 at 9:22am
I see this in a few hours so hopefully I'll end up agreeing with you. If not, the junket this weekend is gonna be reeeeal awkward.
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post #25 of 257
2/9/07 at 11:02am
Well, I guess I'll see it. I'm hard up for a movie this time of year.

I don't know, I'm hit and miss with Fincher. I despised Fight Club and Panic Room, but thought The Game and Seven were pretty good. I think he makes pretty pictures and can create mood, beyond that things tend to collapse.

The most exciting scene they can pick out of the whole movie for the TV ads is the killer calling Jake Gyllenhal...and hanging up. Wow. He totally incovenienced him. Precious seconds of Jake's life were wasted.
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post #26 of 257
2/9/07 at 12:05pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kyle Reese
I don't know, I'm hit and miss with Fincher. I despised Fight Club and Panic Room, but thought The Game and Seven were pretty good. I think he makes pretty pictures and can create mood, beyond that things tend to collapse.
I'm with you on that one. I'd actually even say that Seven was no better than a decent flick. Nice atmosphere but nothing new in terms of serial killer movies. I've kind of always looked at it like "A Doll's House", there's nothing interesting in it until the end, and the ending doesn't redeem the rest of it.

I hated The Game the first time I saw it but have grown to appreciate it as probably the best film Fincher had done. And it's actually The Game that makes me think Fincher can do a good job creating tension in Zodiac.

The trailer left me underwhelmed despite having a great look but I'm going to trust Devin's opinion (and a brilliant cast) on this one and check it out at the theatres.
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post #27 of 257
2/9/07 at 2:02pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by devincf
FANTASTIC movie. Fincher's most mature work. Loved it.
Great news, thank you. I needed that on Friday afternoon, I had a tough week at work.
This year is really looking up, I have Pan and Children of Men opening here this weekend. We are sort of seeing the best of 2006 combined with a really strong opening of 2007.
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post #28 of 257
2/9/07 at 7:41pm
The thing I remember most about the trailer is 2 beautiful images. The fireworks from a bird's eye view over San Francisco's night skyline and an aerial shot that pans downward to the Golden Gate Bridge traffic with the blue of the water and the whiteness of the fog on the perimeter of the bridge. Fincher comes up with the most beautiful, original shots...

But this story fascinates me, and it looks like good character work from the actors.
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post #29 of 257
2/9/07 at 8:15pm
Not only those shots but the ability to reinsert the Embarcadero Freeway into the city which was later torn down.
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post #30 of 257
2/9/07 at 8:39pm
God I want to see this film so bad. I read an early review that called it Fincher's "Boogie Nights". Any take on that sentiment?
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post #31 of 257
2/12/07 at 5:41am
Quote:
Originally Posted by cpnspaulding
God I want to see this film so bad. I read an early review that called it Fincher's "Boogie Nights". Any take on that sentiment?
Wait.... what? That just shot it up to my #1 most anticipated film of 07'

Got a link to this review?
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post #32 of 257
2/16/07 at 12:37am
I was able to steal some advanced screening tickets from VFS for this on the 22nd. Really looking forward to it.
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post #33 of 257
2/16/07 at 8:32am
David Poland's little "review" on this movie.

http://www.mcnblogs.com/thehotblog/a...2/zzzzzzz.html
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post #34 of 257
2/20/07 at 8:13am
Poland doesnt like it? Even more reason to look forward to the film.
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post #35 of 257
2/20/07 at 11:49am
Maybe some of you in other towns can tell me, are there Zodiac billboards everywhere? Maybe is is because Fincher is here shooting Benjamin Button, but there are Zodiac billboards all over town (we normally don't get a lot of movie billboards in New Orleans).
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post #36 of 257
2/20/07 at 12:07pm
Saw this in the city this morning near Bryant Park and had to snap a crappy pic with my newfangled camera phone -

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post #37 of 257
2/20/07 at 12:22pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alex Riviello
Saw this in the city this morning near Bryant Park and had to snap a crappy pic with my newfangled camera phone -

That is cool.
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post #38 of 257
2/20/07 at 12:33pm
I haven't seen anything like that here. Just billboards in every damn location of the city (including some where I know there are very few people living or traveling through there right now).
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post #39 of 257
2/22/07 at 3:25am
Quote:
Originally Posted by cpnspaulding
God I want to see this film so bad. I read an early review that called it Fincher's "Boogie Nights". Any take on that sentiment?
More like Amarcord

NYT article:

Lights, Bogeyman, Action

By DAVID M. HALBFINGER
Published: February 18, 2007

DAVID FINCHER, impolitic as ever, is ridiculing the notes he’s been getting from the studio executives overseeing his latest film, “Zodiac.”

“ ‘It’s easy to get lost in all the details,’ ” he intones, reading their critique of one scene from his laptop. “ ‘Are there any trims you could make here to cut down on the information and focus it even more’ ” on two main characters?

“I love this,” Mr. Fincher says, leaving no doubt as to his sarcasm. “It’s this weird shell game where they go, ‘Can you focus it more on the people by making it be less of them?’ And of course what it really gets down to is that they want me to audition their cuts to them.”

But he won’t. Instead, he says, “you just rope-a-dope.”

That same uncompromising attitude extended to his relationship with the cast, led by Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey Jr. and Jake Gyllenhaal, who endured multiple takes of 70 shots and beyond. Mr. Downey affectionately called him a disciplinarian, while Mr. Gyllenhaal, saying that as a director he “paints with people,” added, “It’s tough to be a color.”

At 44, Mr. Fincher remains Hollywood’s reigning bad-boy auteur, and his impatience with meddling has become as famous as his tendency to test his actors’ patience, stamina and preparation. But not as famous as his films, the most celebrated among them “Se7en,” the 1995 thriller that grossed $350 million worldwide, and “Fight Club,” his over-the-top answer to young male anomie.

After five years of withdrawing from one project after another, Mr. Fincher will present “Zodiac,” about the serial killer who terrorized San Francisco in the late 70s, on March 2. Then, in 2008, comes “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” the screenwriter Eric Roth’s epic reimagining of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s story about a man who ages in reverse. (Of more interest to some fans, “Benjamin Button” will reunite him with the star of “Se7en” and “Fight Club,” Brad Pitt, and amounts to a sharp turn for Mr. Fincher into romanticism.)

To trim “Zodiac” to just over two and a half hours, Mr. Fincher said he had to make painful cuts. Gone, for example, is a two-minute blackout over a montage of hit songs signaling the passage of time from Joni Mitchell to Donna Summer; in its place, artless but quick and cheap, are the words “Four years later.”

Mr. Fincher has always been outspoken, but if he takes this movie a little more personally, there’s a reason: For him, the Zodiac murderer, who terrorized the Bay Area and was never caught, isn’t just any old serial-killer story.

Raised in Marin County, Mr. Fincher was only 7 when the area was seized with fear in 1969. “I remember coming home and saying the highway patrol had been following our school buses for a couple weeks now,” he recalled in December in an interview in New Orleans, where he was editing “Zodiac” while filming “Benjamin Button.” “And my dad, who worked from home, and who was very dry, not one to soft-pedal things, turned slowly in his chair and said: ‘Oh yeah. There’s a serial killer who has killed four or five people, who calls himself Zodiac, who’s threatened to take a high-powered rifle and shoot out the tires of a school bus, and then shoot the children as they come off the bus.’ ”

“I was, like, ‘You could drive us to school,’ ” he recalled thinking.

It was that same sense that initially drew him to “Se7en,” he said: the fearsome power of the stranger among us. “That’s what Zodiac was for a 7-year-old growing up in San Anselmo. He was the ultimate bogeyman.”
“People ask me, ‘When are you going to make your ‘Amarcord?’ ” Mr. Fincher added, with a little laugh at the comparison to Fellini’s autobiographical tour-de-force. For now, he said, “It’ll have to be ‘Zodiac.’ ”
Much has been made of Mr. Fincher’s “dark eye,” his gloomy palette and dim view of human nature, as seen not just in his hits but in his lesser films “The Game” and “Panic Room.” And he’s had a reputation for cutting-edge special effects and innovative camerawork since, at 22, he directed his first commercial, for the American Cancer Society, featuring a fetus smoking a cigarette in utero, an ad that led to an early career as a top music-video director.

But the source of his dark-hued lens on life, Mr. Fincher suggested, might be as simple as that original bogeyman. “It was a very interesting and weird time to grow up, and incredibly evocative,” he said. “I have a handful of friends who were from Marin County at the same time, the same age group, and they’re all very kind of sinister, dark, sardonic people. And I wonder if Zodiac had something to do with that.”

Mr. Fincher was first approached about “Zodiac” by Brad Fischer, a producer at Phoenix Pictures, with a script by James Vanderbilt. It was based on two books by Robert Graysmith, a former San Francisco Chronicle cartoonist who became obsessed with the Zodiac, and who built a case against one suspect, now dead. Mr. Fincher said he wanted Mr. Vanderbilt to overhaul the script, but wanted first to dig into the original police sources. So director, writer and producer spent months interviewing witnesses, investigators and the case’s only two surviving victims, and poring over reams of documents.

“I said I won’t use anything in this book that we don’t have a police report for,” Mr. Fincher said. “There’s an enormous amount of hearsay in any circumstantial case, and I wanted to look some of these people in the eye and see if I believed them. It was an extremely difficult thing to make a movie that posthumously convicts somebody.”

Mr. Graysmith said Mr. Fincher’s team found evidence that investigators had missed. “He outdid the police,” Mr. Graysmith said. “My hat’s off to them.”
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post #40 of 257
2/22/07 at 3:29am
continued...

With a finished script and a $75 million budget, Mr. Fincher and Phoenix approached Sony, then invited other studios to bid. The most aggressive, Warner Brothers and Paramount, decided to team up. At the same time Paramount invited Warner to share the $150 million budget for “Benjamin Button.” So Mr. Fincher agreed to do the two movies back to back.

The result has been a marathon. “Zodiac” required 115 shooting days, about twice the average, though it came in under budget; “Benjamin Button,” which is still shooting in New Orleans, will take 150 days, not counting months to complete the illusion of Mr. Pitt’s metamorphosis from newborn old man to demented, dying baby.

Perhaps most challenging for “Zodiac,” Mr. Fincher said, were the adjustments he made as a director — both in adopting a quieter visual style and in trying to get the most from his cast.

“It’s as unadorned a movie as I’ve ever made,” he said. “It’s just people talking, and it’s hard to make an audience realize that they have to be paying attention. One way you do that is by not doing very much.” There are none of the “perceptual games” that he said he played in “Fight Club,” where the subject was “the most unreliable narrator possible,” for example. “It was like, cast the movie right, get the script right, shoot the scenes as simply as we can and get out of everyone’s way,” he said.

Mr. Fincher said the last thing he wanted was for an audience to seize on period details like an avocado-colored rotary phone, or an actor’s sideburns, and miss the point of a scene. In several days on the set in San Francisco and Los Angeles in late 2005 and early 2006, he could be seen constantly retaking shots to dim a lamp, remove a too-colorful car, or alter the costume of an extra whose garb seemed lifted from a fashion layout rather than what people really wore.

Mark Ruffalo, who stars as the lead detective, said “Zodiac” was unlike any other Fincher film. “He’s just completely gone for the character and the story, and has sort of made that the rule, and not the look,” he said. Near the end of filming, Mr. Ruffalo recalled, Mr. Fincher said he’d watched a rough assemblage of about half the movie. “He said: ‘I think it’s great, but I’m in territory I’ve never been before. I just don’t know if they’re going to get it. And that’s exciting news: ‘Here’s my brand, and I’m stepping outside of it.’ ”

More difficult was changing the way Mr. Fincher worked with, and made demands of, his actors. On “Panic Room” he grew frustrated with his process — detailed storyboarding and previsualization to diagram a movie shot-by-shot — because it left little room for discovery, Mr. Fincher said. “It just felt wrong, like I didn’t get the most out of the actors, because I was so rigid in my thinking,” he said. “I was kind of impatiently waiting for everybody to get where I’d already been a year and a half ago. And I’ve been trying to nip that in the bud. I felt like I needed to be more attentive to watching the actors.”

He added: “Every once in a while there are actors you can defeat.”
For Jake Gyllenhaal, who stars in the movie as Mr. Graysmith, Mr. Fincher’s attentiveness was a mixed blessing.

Mr. Gyllenhaal said he came from a collaborative filmmaking family: “We share ideas, and we incorporate those ideas.” He added: “David knows what he wants, and he’s very clear about what he wants, and he’s very, very, very smart. But sometimes we’d do a lot of takes, and he’d turn, and he would say, because he had a computer there” — the movie was shot digitally — “ ‘Delete the last 10 takes.’ And as an actor that’s very hard to hear.”

Mr. Gyllenhaal, 26, partly blamed culture shock; he’d just finished “Jarhead” for Sam Mendes, who gave him a much freer rein. Mr. Gyllenhaal stressed that he admired and liked Mr. Fincher personally. And he noted that other members of the “Zodiac” cast had far more experience, adding: “I wish I could’ve had the maturity to be like: ‘I know what he wants. He wants the best out of me.’ ”

That said, Mr. Gyllenhaal spoke candidly about his frustration with Mr. Fincher’s degree of control over his performance.
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post #41 of 257
2/22/07 at 3:31am
continued...

“What’s so wonderful about movies is, you get your shot,” he said. “They even call it a shot. The stakes are high. You get your chance to prove what you can do. You get a take, 5 takes, 10 takes. Some places, 90 takes. But there is a stopping point. There’s a point at which you go, ‘That’s what we have to work with.’ But we would reshoot things. So there came a point where I would say, well, what do I do? Where’s the risk?”

Told of Mr. Gyllenhaal’s comments, Mr. Fincher half-jokingly said, “I hate earnestness in performance,” adding, “Usually by Take 17 the earnestness is gone.” But half-joking aside, he said that collaboration “has to come from a place of deep knowledge.” While he had no objections to having fun, he said, “When you go to your job, is it supposed to be fun, or are you supposed to get stuff done?”

He later called back and said he “adored the cast” of “Zodiac” and felt “lucky to have them all,” but was “totally shocked” by Mr. Gyllenhaal’s remark about reshoots.

Robert Downey Jr., impeccably cast as a crime reporter driven to drink, drugs and dissolution, called Mr. Fincher a disciplinarian and agreed that, as is often said, “he’s always the smartest guy in the room.” But Mr. Downey put this in perspective.

“Sometimes it’s really hard because it might not feel collaborative, but ultimately filmmaking is a director’s medium,” he said. “I just decided, aside from several times I wanted to garrote him, that I was going to give him what he wanted. I think I’m a perfect person to work for him, because I understand gulags.”

Mr. Ruffalo too survived some 70-take shots. “The way I see it is, you enter into someone else’s world as an actor,” he said. “You can put your expectations aside and have an experience that’s new and pushes and changes you, or hold onto what you think it should be and have a stubborn, immovable journey that’s filled with disappointment and anger.”

He said Mr. Fincher was equally demanding of everyone — executives, actors, himself. “He knows he’s taking a stab at eternity,” Mr. Ruffalo said. “He knows that this will outlive him. And he’s not going to settle for anything other than satisfaction, deep satisfaction. Somewhere along the line he said, ‘I will not settle for less.’ ”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/18/mo...=1&oref=slogin
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post #42 of 257
2/23/07 at 4:19am
I loved this. It was fantastic.

It's so nice to have a movie that's plausible, and never waivers into the gun chase scenes. Don't expect that kind of stuff. This is a smart, funny thriller.
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post #43 of 257
2/23/07 at 4:21am
Variety and Hollywood Reporter weigh in.

Looks more and more promising with each word.
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post #44 of 257
2/24/07 at 6:34am
For those who have seen the movie...



SPOILERS



What exactly was the point Jakes character hearing footsteps in the old mans basement? Was that just an unnerving detail he remembers?
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post #45 of 257
2/28/07 at 9:05pm
More word from David Poland

http://www.thehotbutton.com/today/ho...70228_wed.html

and

http://www.mcnblogs.com/thehotblog/a.../how_long.html
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post #46 of 257
3/1/07 at 1:57am
Thread Starter 
http://chud.com/reviews/9075
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post #47 of 257
3/1/07 at 3:21am
I'll definitely be checking this out over the weekend. I was going to ask how the title sequence was, but I was glad to see that you addressed it in the review.
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post #48 of 257
3/1/07 at 3:26am
Devin, that was one great review! I was considering giving this one a pass in favor of Black Snake Moan, but now I'm not so sure...
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post #49 of 257
3/1/07 at 3:29am
Checking out this, and a screening of Black Book on Friday. I feel like it's November; a great feeling.
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post #50 of 257
3/1/07 at 4:02am
Sounds like Black Dahlia.
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