The illusionist
 

after watching the teaser of this movie, i cant wait to watch the full movie. stars ed norton, paul giamatti and jessica biel. Director Neil Burger delights in getting period details right! The illusions are smart, as is the script. The photography is gorgeous, as is Jessica Biel. And the line between truth and illusion is blurred so persuasively that for a moment or two, you may even believe that a romantic costume drama could stand up to all those special-effects blockbusters in the dog days of summer.

you can watch the teaser at www.theillusionist.com

I've been looking forward to this for months. Good to see Ed Norton back on the big screen.

Wow, the thread starter doesn't sound at all like a plant. This is your first post, you saw just the teaser and can comment on how smart the film and illusions are, and how the line between truth and illusion is so persuasively blurred? :rolleyes: Get lost.

To be fair, it DOES have Jessica Biel... :drool:

If only they could have had Jessica Biel in The Prestige as well instead of Scarlett Johannson. She might be (very) pretty but she's a stale actress. Just my opinion of course.

heh...

Also, the deliberate dis-use of capitalization in the movie title and throughout the post doesn't mean he/she really tried hard to look like a fellow otter...

BLASPHEMY I SAY!!

Well, in all fairnes, neither is a great actress (although I give Scarlett a significant edge over Biel), although Jessica Biel is by far more attractive.

Unfortunately for your threadcrap, he's right on with his comments and yes, I am very much looking forward to this one.

So the fact that this brand new member has all this positive stuff to say about a movie they've never actually seen doesn't strike you as a bit odd? I'm looking forward to this movie too, but I can't stand this kind of underhanded sneaky marketing.

Does it matter? a thread would have been started in time, it looks like a great film, and I'm looking forward to seeing it.

Man I thought I was gonna get blasted for saying something bad about Scarlett. There's a lot of love for her on these boards. You're right, Jessica ain't such a great actress either but her performances tend to blend into her movies whereas as Scarlett stands out more.

the video kept stopping on me but from what i saw it looked pretty sweet.

plus ed norton, paul giamatti, and bob yari as the producer :thumbsup:

It is a shame this movie is being to be released so closely to the prestige. I am sure this will prove to be a good movie, but I want to see it's couterpart so much more.

I can't believe all the people in this thread defending an obvious shill.

They're like weeds, you have to kill them before they go to seed.

Who fuckin' cares if he's plugging his own movie? Get over it people. He provided information about the movie with the teaser- that you may or may not have seen already. You can draw your own conclusions about the movie.

I think it looks brilliant.

If anyone's interested, Yahoo is showing the first six minutes of the film.

http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/theillusionist.html

Who cares. Somebody needed to create a thread about the film anyway.


Thanks! :)

I guess spamming really does work.

Saw this at the weekend and loved it, loved norton as Eisenheim, and really loved his manager, who was also in Miami Vice..

I'm surprised this is getting very little discussion at all, as I tried to see it last week in SF and it was sold out, this weeks show also sold out.

And this is the giamatti I love, not the lady in the water crap, rufus sewell was also damned good, I didn't care much for ms biel though.

The film was shot in the czech republic and they recreated Vienna expertly, I kept trying to see if I could see the winter palace.

and now I see why it's only on 144 screens.

I didn't get a sense of why from your previous post.

I saw this and really liked it. Ed Norton and Paul Giamatti were really good. Jessica Biel really wasn't in it a whole lot.

I'm hoping this spreads to more screens this Friday.

I think it's a case of sarcasm lost in text format.

Punctuation lost, actually. It makes sense once you add one little colon in there. :)

Just got back from seeing it. Outstanding film! One of the year's best, for sure. Edward Norton continues to astound me. Such a great actor. And Paul Giamatti just gets better and better too.

Was this really filmed in the Czech Republic? I need to go research this. Because after seeing it, it made me want to go to Vienna.

My parents and grandparents saw this last night. All four enjoyed it. My dad said that Norton and Giamatti were in top form and that Jessica Biel was easy on the eyes.

The Illusionist can't make the boom mic disappear.
 

The Illusionist has a great story, great costumes, great cast, and great preformances... however this movie is suffering from sloppy boom mic and camera work, and piss poor editting.

I went with my wife and two of our friends today. We lost count (we got up to ten before we stopped bothering to count) how many times the boom mic was in the shot. Sometimes you would just see the tip of it other times it was just blatantly there hanging over the actors' heads. As if that wasn't bad enough in a lot of scenes they have a black bar running across the top of the screen to block out the lighting rig. One scene actually was missed and the rig was completely viewable. It's extremely irritating watching a good story with good actors and having all these careless mistakes show up. It took me out the story everytime it happened. And I kid you not, friends, it was not once or twice, it was at least fifteen to twenty times that the boom mic dropped into frame and remained, following the actors about as they spoke.

If you are the type of person who this does not bother then I encourage to you to go see the movie because it is a good tale. If you are the type of person who is easily bothered by this then don't see it. If you are a student of film go see it as an example of how a rush production and some careless mistakes can ruin an other wise good movie.

Sounds like you should complain about your projectionist.

Yeah, boom mic is the projectionists fault, not the Illusionists fault. You should have complained.

MATT

How is it the pronjectionists fault when the boom mic is on the film hanging a 1/3 of the way down the screen? There is no way he could of hidden that and nor should he have to. Just poor film making.

It is NOT poor film making. I didn't see a mic hanging down once. If you did, that's a framing issue. Which is indeed the fault of the theater. And poor editing !? Are you kidding me? Did we see the same movie?

Quite possibly the most anal objection to a movie I ever heard. I never noticed a mike, and the movie was LOVED by the crowd I was with. It was a terrific film. I thought the editing was terrific actually.

Got back from this about an hour or so.

As others said, Giamatti was great. The locations were great also. Norton was fine with flashes of a better than fine performance, but lacked the depth that I would have expected from his character.

Biel's acting was blah, and she was underused if they wanted her as eye candy.

The story, however, was painfully predictable. Painfully.

I wouldn't consider that anal at all if the projectionist where I went screed up that badly and exposed that much. Truely a case for demanding one's money back!

Just saw it. Let me say that I love the subject matter of magicians and illusionists. It just flat out fascinates me, so I have a bias. That said, I really liked this movie a lot and while the swerve at the end was predictable, the path to it never once lost my interest. Biel wasn't that great, but she wasn't in the movie enough to really bring it down IMO. Giamatti and Norton were both remarkable, as always. My only gripe is that aside from the swerve, they never really revealed how the other magic tricks were done, but I guess that's part of the charm of seeing a movie called "The Illusionist." I give it a B+/A- . Great acting and pacing, but it could have done without the scene of Norton and Biel's hanky panky, not to mention I did not buy into them being the same age one bit.
Can anyone point me in the direction of some places that might answer how those tricks/illusions were pulled off? I know stuff like that was done back in the day, and a lot of modern illusionists do material that is just as astounding.

I was a projectionist for years, it was the projectionists fault... there is more information in the film image than is actually supposed to be projected on screen (the film is FLAT ratio, where this is a problem)... if they had moved the frame UP on the screen, you would have seen what you were intended to see.

I saw The Illusionist last night, and even though it was very predictable and kind of "by the numbers", I enjoyed it for the most part. Giamatti and Norton were great, Biel wasn't given much to do though and in this kind of film, I'd much rather see an interesting piece of casting as "the bad guy" rather than the wholey uninspired choice of Rufus Sewell (I like the guy, but you look up "typecast" in the dictionary, you'll see his face). Overall it was light and entertaining.

The biggest complaint I have about the movie actually has nothing to do with the movie at all...it's that as good as The Illusionist was, I couldn't get the perfection of the trailer for "The Prestige" out of my head. This was a good movie about a magician, but boy, come October people won't remember it much after Nolan, Jackman and Bale have had their way....

MATT

The movie was predictable...But AWESOME! A good movie does not have to be "tricky" or whatever. It was great story telling and had superb acting. I knew what was going to happen (at least the main "twist") but coud not wait to see how it got there and thought the telling of the story was amazing.

The Titanic was predictable :) and everyone loved it (I hated it). The Illusionist was a very good movie. It was my favorite of the year so far (followed closely by Little Miss Sunshine). Go see this flick and don't get caught up thinking it is supposed to be a M. Night movie.

For the record, I never once saw a boom mic. ;)

The boom mic is definitely the projectionist's fault, we had the same thing happen during The Ring. Should have complained to the management.