The Tree of Life

[huntergrayson]

Terrence Malick's the history of everything ever opens here in limited release on May 27th. (June 10th for you Canadian Greecies). No, that's literally the synopsis: it encompasses ALL OF CREATION - meaning, there's motherfucking dinosaurs, y'all! There's also some family drama with Brad Pitt as Bad 50s Dad and Sean Penn as his Damaged Present Son.

This was the hottest ticket at Cannes (it was supposed to play there last year, but Malick wasn't done editing yet), leading to crazy "will Malick show up?" frenzy - he's as elusive as Salinger, y'all! - spoiler alert: no. Apparently, he is only the second director in the history of the festival to skip the press conference.

Reviews were mixed: as in, it was met with a few boos at the early a.m. press screening, better received midday and got a rapturous standing O that evening at the "celeb" screening. Here's Movieline's review. And here's Salon's. It saddens me that Ebert isn't healthy enough to travel to the Croissette.

Will this get Terrence the Oscar that's eluded him for the last, oh, 30 odd years?

Interestingly enough: this NY Mag article says that that's how long he's been working on this.

Most gorgeous trailer of recent memory.

The poster ain't bad either.

I am definitely intrigued and excited - I consider Thin Red Line to be better than Spielberg's WW2 take which came out that year.

[petitesuite]

The last time Brad Pitt made an awards bait-y movie with a director I normally really like--Curious Case of Benjamin Button--the result bored me to tears and was generally incredibly disappointing. So I am only very, very tentatively looking forward to this.

[Atreides]

Jessica Chastain must have one hell of an agent/publicist to get her name on the poster and trailer along Pitt and Penn. Her resume is very light. I'm sure I wasn't the only one in the audience who thought "who?" when seeing her name pop up on the screen.

[huntergrayson]

She's already attached to his next project (along with Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams & Rachel Weisz!), so she must've impressed Malick.

[mariposalabrown]

That was filmed all around Texas, and the film community was abuzz about Chastain, she's Malick's pet. What that means exactly I have no idea, but there's that. I look forward to it, but I'm sure I will fall asleep like in the rest of his movies.

[huntergrayson]

I dunno if they did a special Chicago screening for him but Ebert saw it and loved it.

[addison]

May 18, 2011 11:05:34 GMT -4 @huntergrayson said:

I dunno if they did a special Chicago screening for him but Ebert saw it and loved it.

Thanks for the link - what a beautiful review. Ebert writes so well:

What Malick does in "The Tree of Life" is create the span of lives. Of birth, childhood, the flush of triumph, the anger of belittlement, the poison of resentment, the warmth of forgiving. And he shows that he feels what I feel, that it was all most real when we were first setting out, and that it will never be real in that way again

I'm really anxious to see this one - that trailer is amazing on its own.

[Deleted]

I am so excited for this movie that I've prewarned my friends I'll need to see it alone so as not to draw attention to myself, sobbing uncontrollably, as I did at the soul-shattering poetry of "The Thin Red Line".

[huntergrayson]

Awwwwwww.

Not to make you, like, totally jealous or anything, but guess who saw TTRL for the second (third?) time like this.? (I think this was literally the second and last public screening of the dye-color Technicolor print).

The greatest thing is that it was on the tail-end of finals week, so I was completely sleep-deprived from all-nighters and would drift off for brief catnaps interrupted by the Most Eye-Ball Fucking Poetic Images on the screen. It was overwhelmingly beautiful.

[divasahm]

I used to babysit one of the storyboard artists, who has worked with Malick before--he is absolutely ecstatic today!