The Interpreter

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

I just saw The Interpreter (which I thought was rather good, notwithstanding the presence of the overexposed Ms. Kidman) and I thought they got the faded-70s grandeur of the UN building very nicely. I presume at least some of it was on stages, including at least inserts of the General Assembly, but does anyone know if they got permission to shoot on the actual location or whether they spent quite infeasible amounts of money recreating the place?

 

Phil

[Guest fstop]

For Phil

[drew_town]

I caught it about a week ago and thought it was an interesting movie. I was kind of ticked off with all the shot/reverse shot, though. I liked the ending the most- very anti-hollywood and honest. The subplots were better than the plot.

[Benjamin_Lussier]

They shot it in the UN.. well.. part of it ... its the first movie EVER that was allowed to be shot there... Nicole Kidman's overexposure has its benefits ;)

 

Ben

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

I thought it looked fantastic - I've been to the UN, and I thought they got the slightly faded-70s grandeur of the place very well indeed, although it's painfully obvious how poky most real places look when you shoot them in cinemascope. Plotting OK, thought they could have made more out of the whole language thing.

 

Phil

[Dan Salzmann]

I found the whole film completely unbelievable. It felt to me like a two hour Vespa commercial.

[Christian Appelt]

I liked the acting, but very little else.

 

Another film shot in Glorious Myopic Anamorphic, with at least a dozen shots so badly out-of-focus that they should have been reshot or discarded in editing. I got no good sense of space through camera setup and directing, many flat closeups without spatial relation between actors.

 

It certainly will look fine on DVD. It didn't on the big screen, some scenes were quite grainy, other very clean, so I suppose it had nothing to do with the duping and release printing process.

 

Kidman and Penn did a good job, but I dislike that style of cinematography. Tonight I'll take another look at NORTH BY NORTHWEST's scenes at the UN (matte paintings, studio sets and rear projection exteriors IIRC.

Edited May 17, 2005 by Christian Appelt

[Nathan D. Lee]

Check out the May issue of American Cinematographer, there is a lengthy article on the whole film, locations, lighting, post, stages, etc... www.theasc.com

[Guest Roman]

I found the whole film completely unbelievable. It felt to me like a two hour Vespa commercial.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

:lol: :lol:

 

This is a good one!! What bothers me most (besides Mr. Sean Penn?s painful to watch discontent with the part he was playing) with The Interpreter is that they created the whole buzz about the shooting in the U.N. like that matters for the story. We?re talking about the filmmaking here ? the supreme art of illusion! The buzz surrounding that movie was all about Ms. Kidman?s accent and again and again the fact that Hitchcock couldn?t get the permission to film inside the UN and Pollack get it. Who cares!?! For that matter I would always prefer ?fake? UN in North by Northwest over the ?real? UN in this flick.

 

Thus, IMHO instead of that fake African country Nicole Kidman supposedly come from, they should have been a tad less politicaly correct and feature some of real problems in this world instead. This compromise gave us something to talk about ? another Kidman?s accent, real UN location, the Vespa comercial and an empty feeling after seeing the movie?