If you’re going to make a movie about Nelson Mendela, it’s pretty much a given that Morgan Freeman would play the South Africa president. So it’s no surprise, then, that he shows up here in Clint Eastwood’s Oscar-baiting flick about Mendela’s early moments as President, in which he attempts to unite a post-apartheid country through the national rugby team.
Matt Damon shows up as leading player, Francois Pienaar. Of course, the team captain guides his team to the 1995 World Championship and everything in South Africa has been peaches and cream since then. Or something like that. Expect nominations aplenty when this is released on December 11.
Am I worried that director Paul Greengrass has turned an adaptation of Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s book Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone into a $100 million Bourne-esque action picture for Universal?Â
Absolutely. This is a fairly standard cut action trailer. But that doesn’t make me want to see this movie any less. Greengrass is, afterall, the Irish madman behind both kinetic Bourne movies and the politically charged United 93 and Bloody Sunday.
“It’s great, I’ve seen it. They’re finishing some of the effects, and it’ll be ready for March. We got a $100m Iraq movie, so we’ll see!,” Damon said in an interview with Empire Magazine. “I do have high hopes for it, though. I think it’s really good. I know the Iraq movies haven’t been particularly popular so far, but hopefully this will find an audience. It’s a thriller, really, set against the canvas of Iraq in 2003.”
Universal needs to sell this movie (hence the straight forward trailer), but I’m guessing Greengrass has something far better and deeper up his sleeve than this trailer is letter on.
This is where Matt Damon ballooned up and grew a mustache. I’m surprised how much this comes off as a comedy. Wasn’t quite expecting that type of tone. Was expecting something more like The Insider, but leave it to Soderbergh to cut left when you’re expecting a button hook. I can get down with it.
By James Furbush | September 11th, 2008 | 6:00 am PDT
Yeah okay, pretty standard Hollywood stuff here. Actor Matt Damon speaking out against Republican Vice President nominee Sarah Palin. He’s saying all the stuff liberals are thinking and basically asking the media to do their f*cking jobs and stop with the he said/she said and start calling Palin on her lies about the Bridge to Nowhere. You know, the kind of job that shouldn’t be left up to bloggers. I digress. The part I loved though is towards the end when he just becomes flummoxed and resorts to “I wanna know if she thinks dinosaurs were on the Earth 4,000 years ago.” You can almost see the blood vessels getting ready to pop, but he does a good job maintaining composure.
Paul Greengrass has a knack for following up his Hollywood entertainments, like The Bourne franchise, with emotionally moving and political affair. His current project Green Zone is no different.
Based upon the book, Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone by Rajiv Chandrasekaran, the movie recounts the early days of the Iraqi War. The book is, according to my friend Zack who is currently serving in Afghanistan and has also served in Iraq, one of the few must read books about this war.
Greengrass and actor Matt Damon are going the authentic route with this one. They’ve hired actual US soldiers who served tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan to star in the movie. I don’t think this one will be any easier to watch than United 93 was.
From Publishers Weekly:
As the Baghdad bureau chief for the Washington Post, Chandrasekaran has probably spent more time in U.S.-occupied Iraq than any other American journalist, and his intimate perspective permeates this history of the Coalition Provisional Authority headquartered in the Green Zone around Saddam Hussein’s former palace. He presents the tenure of presidential viceroy L. Paul Bremer between May 2003 and June 2004 as an all-too-avoidable disaster, in which an occupational administration selected primarily for its loyalty to the Bush administration routinely ignored the reality of local conditions until, as one ex-staffer puts it, “everything blew up in our faces.” Chandrasekaran unstintingly depicts the stubborn cluelessness of many Americans in the Green Zone—like the army general who says children terrified by nighttime helicopters should appreciate “the sound of freedom.” But he sympathetically portrays others trying their best to cut through the red tape and institute genuine reforms. He also has a sharp eye for details, from casual sex in abandoned offices to stray cats adopted by staffers, which enable both advocates and critics of the occupation to understand the emotional toll of its circus-like atmosphere. Thanks to these personal touches, the account of the CPA’s failures never feels heavy-handed.
By James Furbush | February 25th, 2008 | 9:33 pm PST
Variety is reporting that Universal Studios has locked up actor Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass with a boatload of money to come back and reprise the successful amnesiac-spy.
It’s not quite a done deal and my guess here is that Universal is covering their bases.
More recently, Shmuger and Linde [Univeral Executives] landed Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon for a fourth “Bourne” movie, even though the director and star seemed ready to wrap it up after three pics.
If Greengrass and Damon can come up with a good script and the price is right and their schedules clear up then they will come back. It won’t be inexpensive considering that Tony Gilroy scripted all three movies and he was just nominated for the Academy Award for writing and directing Michael Clayton. That in itself would command a hefty price tag, but he probably won’t be back to script numero 4. So they will hire someone who isn’t as good a writer as Gilroy.
That’s a lot of ifs in that paragraph. The great thing is that the series went out on a high note and bringing Bourne back would only be a sweat treat for fans of the series. So don’t hold your breath, but there is a small window that Jason Bourne could be back on the screen in the next few years.
Also: There were two novels not written by Robert Ludlum that feature Jason Bourne. Most people think they’re “okay.” Can’t imagine they would base the next installment on either of those books.
There’s no word on which role Matty Damon will portray, however, the book is an intimate look at the mistakes of the U.S. provisional authority at the onset of the Iraqi War.
He presents the tenure of presidential viceroy L. Paul Bremer between May 2003 and June 2004 as an all-too-avoidable disaster, in which an occupational administration selected primarily for its loyalty to the Bush administration routinely ignored the reality of local conditions until, as one ex-staffer puts it, “everything blew up in our faces.”
This sounds like it could make for an intense companion piece to Greengrass’s amazing United 93. In all likely hood Damon won’t be kicking ass and taking names, but he stands a good chance of being a bumbling idiotic bureaucrat.
For Hollywood Studio execs anyway. Although, based on the box office success of The Bourne Ultimatum, Matt Damon may command a huge price tag for all his films henceforth. Regardless, we found this a pretty fascinating look into the fiduciary aspects of Hollywood.
Forbes Magazine calculated which actors and actresses have the highest box office returns versus the cost of having the actor in a movie. Damon was first, with a return on nearly $29 for every dollar spent. Brad Pitt came in second and Vince Vaughn rounded out the top 3.
The other top ten inlcuded: Johnny Depp, Jennifer Aniston, Angelina Jolie, Renee Zellweger, Reese Witherspoon, Ben Stiller and finally, Sandra Bullock. Oddly, outside the top four, we’d say that’s a pretty drap list.
Love this trailer for the latest Matt Damon Bourne flick. What’s nice about this trailer is you finally get a sense of just what the movie is all about. And the possibility of a NYC Bourne car chase sequence has us so giddy we’re going to go out and watch The French Connection just to get us tittilated. Anyway, the Bourne franchise, especially if the third movie delivers the goods, will go down as one of the best spy trilogies/franchises of recent memory.
Interestingly at the end of the trailer it says to join the search for Bourne go to www.google.com/bourne, which just brings you to this site.
Damn. We. Can’t. Wait. August third can’t come fast enough.It’s funny, but when the first two Jason Bourne movies dropped, they not only reminded the movie going public how much they loved Matt Damon (the franchise pretty much revived his sinking career), but they also made the James Bond franchise feel retardedly dated. In a way, Bond lovers everywhere have Jason Bourne to thank for getting that franchise back on its feet.
So now the third movie in the Bourne franchise, The Bourne Ultimatum, hits theatres at the tail end of the summer and it’s just about a perfect time for it. The big movies will all have wound down, but people will still be in the mood for something they love, something they crave, an ending to a satisfying trilogy.
Yahoo Movies has the official trailer, which is better than the international trailer that dropped at the beginning of April. There isn’t much difference, but this new one has a better second half and really is the better of the two. We say head over there watch the trailer, but if you don’t really care, then we’ve taken the time to include the international trailer below.
We’re just wondering when the hell Paul Greengrass had time to direct this one. He must’ve jumped right in after United 93. The cast becomes even more impressive, adding Paddy Consadine and David Strathairn to the mix.
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