Badmouth » terry gilliam

Badmouth » terry gilliam http://www.badmouth.net Look, Ma! No pants! Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:04:13 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 The Brothers Grimm http://www.badmouth.net/brothers-grimm-2005/ http://www.badmouth.net/brothers-grimm-2005/#comments Tue, 20 Sep 2005 06:18:27 +0000 Brian McDonough http://www.badmouth.net/?p=222 The premise of The Brothers Grimm should immediately induce two thoughts: Recasting dull German scholars Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm as adventurous young hearththrobs fighting real fairy-tale creatures is the absolute dumbest premise for a movie outside of casting Rob Schneider as a man women would pay to have sex with. Second, that only a genius of Terry Gilliam's caliber could pull this off. And you'd be half right. Gilliam fails so badly here, you want to check the credits to make sure it wasn't done by some unknown cousin, maybe a Jerry Gilliam. I mean, the premise of Time Bandits is pretty dumb if you reduce it to a sentence, and The Fisher King could be a tough pitch, too. I'm not sure you even can reduce Brazil to one coherent sentence. Yet in each case, the inventive lunacy of Gilliam makes the films not just successful, but masterful. The Brothers Grimm just sucks. And you know, I would not have thought I could possibly hate a movie that casts Monica Bellucci as an evil queen. But by god (who, if she really exists, would have to look exactly like Monica Bellucci), that's what happens here. Related posts:

]]> http://www.badmouth.net/brothers-grimm-2005/feed/ 3 interview: terry gilliam http://www.badmouth.net/interview-terry-gilliam/ http://www.badmouth.net/interview-terry-gilliam/#comments Sat, 27 Aug 2005 07:41:04 +0000 Patti Marcotte http://www.badmouth.net/?p=217 Director Terry Gilliam has made some of the best and most interesting movies of the past thirty years. The only American member of the legendary British comedy troupe Monty Python, Gilliam was the animator for the classic BBC television series Monty Python's Flying Circus and directed the troupe's groundbreaking film Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Gilliam moved on to his own projects and in 1985 co-wrote and directed the seminal science fiction and fantasy film Brazil. Brazil set the tone not only for Gilliam's surreal films, but also for his contentious relationship with the major studios. According to Maxim magazine, Gilliam was so stressed during filming that he lost all feeling in his legs for a week. Gilliam had trouble with the suits at Universal over the dark ending he wanted for the film. The studio wanted a happy ending, and began producing its own version of the film dubbed the “Love Conquers All” edit. While they were busy hacking, the movie languished without a release date for more than a year. Meanwhile bootleg copies of Gilliam's original cut began circulating among movie critics and the Hollywood elite. Gilliam's still unreleased version of film was named the best picture of 1985 by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and several prominent critics began wondering if Brazil could be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar even though it had never been released. This finally embarrassed Universal into releasing the film as Gilliam intended. While Universal was no match for Gilliam, God was another manner. Every possible mishap plagued his last movie project, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, starring Johnny Depp and Jean Rochefort. Floods, injuries and military jets all combined to kill the film before it even had a chance to get off the ground. The disaster was recorded by the documentary crew assigned to make a behind the scenes feature for the DVD and turned into the feature film, Lost in La Mancha. Gilliam's other films include 12 Monkeys, The Fisher King, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. He recently sat down for a roundtable interview with the press to promote his new movie The Brothers Grimm. Related posts:

]]> http://www.badmouth.net/interview-terry-gilliam/feed/ 4