February 26th, 2007

Zodiac *REVIEW WITH SPOILERS!!*
A Paramount (in N. America), Warner Bros. (international) release and presentation of a Phoenix Pictures production. Produced by Mike Medavoy, Arnold W. Messer, Bradley J. Fischer, James Vanderbilt, Cean Chaffin. Executive producer, Louis Phillips. Directed by David Fincher. Screenplay, James Vanderbilt, based on the book by Robert Graysmith.
 
By TODD MCCARTHY

An obsession that cannot be satisfied erodes the souls of the central characters in "Zodiac," a mesmerizing account of the infamous, never-solved Bay Area serial killings as seen from the perspectives of several men who spent years trying to crack the case. Conveying an astonishing array of information across a long narrative arc while still maintaining dramatic rhythm and tension, this adaptation of Robert Graysmith's bestseller reps by far director David Fincher's most mature and accomplished work. It is decidedly not sensationalistic along the lines of "Seven," hardcore fans of which may be disappointed by new pic's methodical nature and unavoidable inconclusiveness. But discerning auds worldwide will find deep satisfaction, pointing to moderate but sustained B.O. given proper distrib nurturing.

From the exceptional coherence with which James Vanderbilt's script grapples with complex events and dozens of characters to the journalistic setting, procedural format, era in question and the very presence of David Shire as composer, the cinematic touchstone for "Zodiac" is clearly "All the President's Men."

And yet the feel of the new film is very different. Due to the extended timeframe, West Coast setting, working-class characters, preponderance of rock songs and, most decisively, Harris Savides' precise yet fluid HD camerawork, the pic possesses a kind of seedy dreaminess that most strongly recalls another indelible epic of '70s California, "Boogie Nights." Both films occupy that rarified high ground where audacious artistry and nervy commercial filmmaking occasionally converge.

Beginning with the startling July 4, 1969, shooting of two teenagers in a makeout parking lot, the pic jumps ahead to the moment a month later when the culprit sent portions of a cipher to three Bay Area newspapers and threatened to continue killing unless they were immediately published.

Of course, he went ahead anyway, attacking another amorous couple by a lake in Napa. Unblinkingly filmed, the daylight slashing is agonizing and bloody but is the last explicit sequence of its kind in the picture, which then almost entirely assumes the points of view of those who struggled in vain to nail the taunting, bedeviling psychopath.

Just as the locus of "President's Men" was the Washington Post, so the home base of "Zodiac" is a newsroom -- this time the San Francisco Chronicle's, a space where funkiness has won the battle with respectability and there's not a female reporter in sight.

Goateed crime reporter Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr.), with the air of a dissolute dandy, takes on the case. Unofficially, so does the paper's bashful new cartoonist, Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal), who manages to deduce the meaning of the cipher and its reference to "The Most Dangerous Game," the short story and film about the hunting of mankind.

Once the the self-named Zodiac strikes in San Francisco proper, the city cops join the hunt, led by homicide Inspector Dave Toschi (Mark Ruffalo) and his partner, Inspector William Armstrong (Anthony Edwards).

Despite the fact the Zodiac provides hidden clues in his texts and leaves behind partial evidence at crime scenes, the cops make little headway. Much of the early going is devoted to Toschi, Avery and the self-appointed Graysmith trying to connect the dots while the public remains on edge.

As the investigation fans out, the cops' attention is drawn to an uncouth, hulking loner, Arthur Leigh Allen (John Carroll Lynch), who has a history of "touching" youngsters. Despite uncanny "coincidences" (Allen wears a Zodiac watch and is a "Most Dangerous Game" fan), no conclusive proof ties him to the crimes, so the search goes on.

And on. After several years, the trail has gone cold and those who have followed it are old before their time. Worst off is Avery, who's a physical wreck -- a victim of his addictions and obsessions. By the late '70s, Toschi's star has fallen; he's been moved out of homicide, his old partner Armstrong's earlier decision to quit having been proven prescient. Still, Toschi is intermittently willing to help the ever-enthusiastic Graysmith, who is now industriously retracing everyone's steps with the intention of writing a book about the case.

Graysmith's search leads him back to Allen, and one encounter the earnest fellow has with a former Allen associate is breathtakingly suspenseful. Graysmith's eventual conclusions may possess an element of wish fulfillment, but are about as convincing as circumstantial evidence will allow.

Throughout the film's 2½ hours, Fincher maintains the sort of locked-in, ultra-focused hold on his material he's displayed before, but with a touch that, if not exactly gentle, is less ferocious and overbearing. Due in part to the times at which certain scenes were shot, as well as to the limpid quality of the HD images ("Zodiac" is the latest big production shot with the Thomson Viper Filmstream Camera), a certain twilight, afternoon-into-darkest-night atmosphere dominates, appropriately enough given the characters' slow descent into the murky abyss.

There's no showing off with technique this time, no pandering to the public's baser instincts, just extremely disciplined filmmaking in which the camera is always in exactly the right place. Notably imaginative are the transitions and means of conveying the passage of time, marked at one point by the stop-frame construction of the landmark Transamerica Building.

Playing the author of the book on which the film is based, Gyllenhaal carries the burden of the large structure capably and lightly. Starting as an almost naive foil for Avery's urbane cynicism, Graysmith ultimately sustains his obsession longer than anyone, and with endurance comes reward, even if his complete immersion costs him his second wife (Chloe Sevigny).

Downey richly amplifies Avery's booze-and-drug-fueled glibness and, later, his descent into disease and disenchanted seclusion. Most resembling a young Columbo, Ruffalo has a number of choice moments, but the role seems oddly truncated; one doesn't really get the sense of a legendary cop who served as the inspiration for Steve McQueen's character in "Bullitt," Clint Eastwood's "Dirty Harry" (itself based on the Zodiac murders and referenced herein) and Michael Douglas' character in "The Streets of San Francisco."

Performances and casting are impeccable down to the smallest role. Brian Cox socks over his extended cameo as San Francisco's showboating celebrity lawyer Melvin Belli. Also making striking impressions are Charles Fleischer as a strange film buff acquaintance of the possible killer, Philip Baker Hall as an ostensibly reliable handwriting expert and, above all, Lynch as the unsettling prime suspect.

On top of everything else, "Zodiac" manages an almost unerringly accurate evocation of the workaday San Francisco of 35-40 years ago. Forget the distorted emphasis on hippies and flower-power that many such films indulge in; this is the city as it was experienced by most people who lived and worked there. For this, hats off to production designer Donald Graham Burt, costume designer Casey Storm and the hairstylists, among many others. The only inaccuracy catchable on one viewing: the too-early presence on the streets of diamond lanes, which were not introduced until the '70s.

Shire's subtle score, which comes increasingly into play as the action accelerates, effectively complements the double-soundtrack's worth of pop tunes headlined by Donovan's "Hurdy Gurdy Man," which hauntingly frames the picture.


 
Camera (Technicolor, widescreen, HD), Harris Savides; editor, Angus Wall; music, David Shire; music supervisors, George Drakoulias, Randall Poster; production designer, Donald Graham Burt; art director, Keith Cunningham; set designers, Lori Rowbotham Grant, Kevin Cross, Dawn Brown Manser, Jane Wuu; set decorator, Victor Zolfo; costume designer, Casey Storm; sound (Dolby Digital/DTS/SDDS), Drew Kunin; sound designer, Ren Klyce; supervising sound editors, Klyce, Richard Hymns; re-recording mixers, Michael Semanick, David Parker, Klyce; visual effects, Digital Domain, Matte World Digital, Mar Vista Ventures, Ollin Studio; visual effects supervisor, Eric Barba; stunt coordinator, Mickey Giacomazzi; assistant director, Mary Ellen Woods; casting, Laray Mayfield. Reviewed at Paramount studios, Los Angeles, Feb. 8, 2007. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 156 MIN.


- posted by Ally 
- credits: Variety.Com
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 February 26th, 2007

Re-creating a monster
Michael Ordona
Sunday, February 25, 2007

"I am waiting for a good movie about me. Who will play me?" -- a 1978 letter mailed to The San Francisco Chronicle, apparently from the Zodiac killer.

Nearly 40 years after the Bay Area became aware of a psychopathic murderer who sent taunting letters to local newspapers threatening schoolchildren, demanding that people wear buttons with his symbol and identifying himself as "the Zodiac," director David Fincher ("Fight Club," "Se7en") has made what he hopes will be the definitive film on the case. Growing up in San Anselmo, Fincher was haunted by this true-life bogeyman.

"I remember coming home on the school bus one day when I was 7 and wondering why we were being followed by police cars," the director says by phone. "My dad was a straight shooter. He said, 'Apparently, there's a killer who murdered five people and in his latest letter to The Chronicle he said he would take a high-powered rifle and pick off schoolkids one by one,' and I remember thinking, 'Well, you have a car ...' "

Fincher, producer Bradley J. Fischer and screenwriter James Vanderbilt painstakingly researched the case, aware not only of their responsibility to the facts and the feelings of the loved ones involved but also of the irony of fulfilling the killer's wish.

"It's more ironic that three weeks ago I had to kill the plans the studio had to put out Zodiac buttons," Fincher says. "I just said, 'Guys, we're not doing it.' ... We wanted to be careful that we just didn't make an entertainment."

Toward that end, the film depicts only the killings where survivor or witness accounts could guide them. Although he is known as a consummate film stylist, Fincher's staging of a Zodiac murder at Lake Berryessa is startlingly plain -- no scoring, very little intercutting.

"Mundane is the way that we talked about it," he said. "You can't hype murder. It should be shocking, it should come out of nowhere. If you put a lot of violins under it -- I didn't feel it was truthful. It really happened to people, and there weren't violins there. We want it to be sad and violent and to come at a cost."

The filmmakers were hardly the first to fall into the bloody grip of the case. Investigators and journalists became entangled in its obsessive tendrils, some to the detriment of their health. But it was a political cartoonist at The Chronicle who would become the leading authority on the Zodiac killer.

When Robert Graysmith began writing about the murders, he was a novice. Ten years and 13 drafts later, his 1986 "Zodiac" became a classic of the genre, followed in 2002 by "Zodiac Unmasked." Three of his seven true-crime books have been made into movies, but "Zodiac" clearly has special significance for him.

"The thing about the movie is that now I can forget about it," he says with a broad smile during a promotional stop at the Beverly Hilton. "I don't have to think about this case anymore."

Not only is the film based on his writing, but Graysmith is also its main character (played by Jake Gyllenhaal). On a visit to the set of the Chronicle newsroom, the author was deeply impressed by Fincher's meticulousness.

"I go to one of the desks, I pull out the drawer: Chronicle pads, Eagle pencils that the artists used, the pneumatic tubes work, the phones work," he says. "I just couldn't believe (Fincher's) attention to detail."

Graysmith says one of the original investigators took Fincher to the site of the Lake Berryessa murder. The shoreline had been altered by torrential rains, and some other features from the time, such as trees, were gone. Fincher tested the footing, checked sightlines and sound in the lonely spot -- then suddenly ran around the inlet to another location.

"He came back and said, 'No, the murder site's over there.' (The detective) said, 'My God, you're right.' Fincher realized the texture of the ground had to be different for Zodiac to leave his footprint," Graysmith says. "What Zodiac could have seen from his car up on the road above, how the sound of the woman's voice would have carried, it had to be the second spot. I was stunned. That is creative as hell. He's the smartest guy I've ever met.

"They really have uncovered so many new facts that aren't even in the film. It's just astonishing -- new papers and new interrogation tapes and maps of the murder sites signed by (the chief suspect)."

Producer Fischer acknowledged that the project became all-consuming. At the Hilton, he gave a tour through a detailed display tracking the killer's known activity. Arriving at the section chronicling the murder of San Francisco cabdriver Paul Stine, Fischer indicated the police sketch of the suspect.

"The composite picture of Zodiac (was) this man with black horn-rimmed glasses," he says, pointing to the horrid crime-scene photos of Stine. "You'll notice there's blood covering his entire face except for one area in particular: around his eyes. You look at the (license) photo of Stine, he wore horn-rimmed glasses, he needed them to drive. Zodiac took his glasses. Reached in, put them on and walked down the street."

The killer was known to claim just such grisly souvenirs, and in the Stine shooting actually took the time to cut pieces of the victim's shirt, later used to authenticate letters Zodiac sent. But the theory of Stine's glasses wasn't noted in the police report and came as a surprise even to Graysmith.

Inspector David Toschi, who was San Francisco's lead investigator on the case, has served as inspiration for at least one previous film ("Bullitt") and is one of the main characters in "Zodiac" (played by Mark Ruffalo of "You Can Count On Me"). Toschi cooperated with the filmmakers but has yet to see the movie. After all, he had a painful experience watching an earlier Zodiac-inspired picture, "Dirty Harry."

"He couldn't take it," Ruffalo says. "He was in the middle of one of the biggest cases in the United States at the time. ... They had a mountain of evidence (against their prime suspect), and it took them nine months to get a search warrant to search the guy's trailer. So he's just crawling out of his skin. And (Dirty Harry) just walked up and he's like, 'I don't care. You're gonna walk free, I'm gonna blow your brains out.' And the audience goes, 'Yeah! All right!' I think that was frustrating for him."

The makers of "Zodiac" faced another problem because the case remains unsolved.

"What I was curious about when I read the script was how interested I was even though I knew there would be no release," Fincher says. "Is it possible to fulfill these needs for an audience without the guy being led away in handcuffs? There's no bow tie, no ribbon at the end of this. There are enough entertainments out there so that people can get that (elsewhere)."

Michael Ordona is a freelance writer.


- posted by Ally 
- credits: SFGate.Com
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 February 26th, 2007

Jake Gyllenhaal does everything right
Savvy role choices and a private life stays private equal a smart career path
By Patrick Enright
MSNBC contributor

Perhaps it’s the nostalgia talking, but in the golden era of Hollywood, we movie audiences were so much more civilized. We worshipped the stars of the silver screen for their strength of character, their iron jawlines and gorgeous lashes, their representation of the best of humanity.

Of course it’s true that as long as there have been famous actors, there have been badly behaved actors, as well as the tabloid rags itching to expose the industry’s sordid underbelly. But mostly, we liked our stars for their knight-in-shining-armor-ness — these days, we’re only interested in the idols when they’re slurring drunkenly at the camera, shouting racial epithets at police officers, appearing in haggard mugshots or shaving their heads bald and playing a game of Revolving-Door Rehab.

We care about them the most when they’re at their worst, ruining their careers or starring in dud after dud, not when they’re donating to poverty-fighting charities.

Surely, this comes as no surprise? Well, in the face of an overwhelming avalanche of stupid celebrity tricks, it’s time to sound a counterpoint. It’s time to spend some time on the one actor who has done (nearly) everything right: Jake Gyllenhaal.

In case you’re unwilling to accept Gyllenhaal’s popularity, which is a good baseline measurement of his success, as a given, here’s a simple experiment you can even try at home. Do a Google search for the phrases “I hate Ben Affleck” and “I love Ben Affleck.” You’ll return about 3,000 results for the former and 37,500 results for the latter, giving you a love-hate ratio of 12.5 (for every person online who hates Ben Affleck, 12 love him).

The same test with Heath Ledger’s name results in a love-hate ratio of about 90. Now try it with “I hate/love Jake Gyllenhaal” — you’ll get 8,410 “love” results and only three (three!) “hate” results, for a staggering ratio of 2,803 people who love Mr. G to every one person who hates him.

Just for Schadenfreude, Tom Cruise clocks in at a miserable 0.05 love-hate ratio.

Doing everything right
All right, so Gyllenhaal’s widely adored and not reviled. Why? The first answer is his almost preternaturally savvy choice of film roles. He started to get some adoring attention right about the time he played the title character in cult classic “Donnie Darko,” in which he was quirky, conflicted, lovable and just a touch sinister. With that kind of a beginning, your Sean Penn types would have stubbornly clung to the indie path and wound up as Eric Stolz, wasting away in indie-land with occasional forays into big-budget catastrophes like “The Butterfly Effect.” But Jakey immediately mixed things up with a little film called “Bubble Boy,” a beyond-inane laugh-fest about, yes, a boy in a bubble. It’s Jim Carrey-caliber stupid, and equally hilarious, and it was exactly the right thing to burst the Holden Caulfield vibe Gyllenhaal had going after “Darko.”

The actor went dark and indie again in 2002 with “The Good Girl” and “Moonlight Mile,” and he threw his hat into the big-budget-blockbuster ring in 2004 with “The Day After Tomorrow,” aka “An Inconvenient Truth: The Entertaining Version.” In the last three years, he’s played gay in that Oscar-baiting cowboy movie, flexed his muscles as a butch soldier in war flick “Jarhead” and done his thing as a math wiz in “Proof.” Now he’s back on screens in serial-killer thriller “Zodiac.”

In other words, over the course of what is undeniably the most well-planned career in Hollywood, Gyllenhaal has showed his acting chops in every major movie genre except musicals. And he checked that one off his list a few weeks ago when he appeared on “Saturday Night Live” and did a riotous falsetto rendition of “Dreamgirls” tune “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” while dressed in a wig and cocktail dress, marking the first time in several years that the show’s opening monologue has been funny.

 

Personal life stays private
Gyllenhaal has also been clever where his personal life is concerned, revealing just enough to keep fansites abuzz and not so much that he reaches a saturation point or gets his fans overly invested in one fling or another. He had a reported dalliance with Kirsten Dunst, but there’s just enough ambiguity to his sexuality to keep audiences guessing and bloggers blathering.

Though he’s publicly claimed heterosexuality, he’s said that “it’s flattering when there’s a rumor that says I’m bisexual” and that “I’ve never really been attracted to men sexually, but I don’t think I would be afraid of it if it happened.” Is it any surprise that that kind of a non-denial denial, coupled with his fearlessness in “Brokeback Mountain,” spawns rampant rumors?

Furthermore, he’s managed to avoid any and all controversial political statements that might alienate audiences. It might be partly that he’s learned from his sister’s mistakes — back in ’05, Maggie made some comments about possible American culpability for the events of 9/11 that led to public outcry and her widespread condemnation — but it’s still impressive, considering that he hasn’t shied away from political material (cases in point: “Jarhead” and the upcoming “Rendition,” which concerns a U.S. detention center).

Yet even though he’s held his tongue, Jake has done just enough acting out to maintain a little bit of a bad-boy aura, but not enough to really get in trouble.

Take his exuberant, likely alcohol-induced insistence on mugging for the camera at an Oscars pre-party last year (do another quick Google search for “Jake Gyllenhaal Oscars 2006” and you’ll find the shots). They’re silly, he’s making a fool of himself, but … they’re kinda endearing and sweet at the same time.

It’s this fine line that the actor has managed to walk so successfully to date. Regardless of whether it’s Gyllenhaal’s own astuteness that has allowed him to safely navigate Hollywood’s treacherous depths, or the string-pulling of an elite team of super-managers, it seems certain that we won’t see the actor on “The Surreal Life” or in rehab anytime soon. And thank the deities for that.


- posted by Ally 
- credits: MSNBC
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 February 26th, 2007

JAKE GYLLENHAAL

Nowadays the zodiac is just something that late night 900 ads talk about. Thirty years ago, there was a killer named The Zodiac, whose crimes were so random no cop could catch him. Newspaper cartoonist Robert Graysmith became intrigued by the crimes and wrote a book about them. Jake Gyllenhaal plays him in the movie Zodiac.


How hard is it to play someone who actually exists?
It’s easy now. It’s different with every story, and it’s different with how every director approaches it. I’ve considered characters that I’ve played that aren’t necessarily real people to be people that are still living out there, or have lived, who have struggled with the same things. I think Jack Twist [from Brokeback Mountain] is just as much of a real person as Tony Swofford [from Jarhead]. I approached both in the same way. They’re aspects of every person, everybody’s personality. Particularly with something like Jack Twist, I went and I met with a lot of different cowboys and rode horses and learned how to pack mules and do all those things, and that became a big part of that character for me.

How did you get Graysmith right?
We met many times and he’s been to the set. He was just on set my last day of work. I actually videotaped him and that was a choice of mine. I think it just depends on the story. With Robert Graysmith it’s a different style, because [director] David Fincher is very much into the reality of what happened. He’s filming the murders exactly inch by inch, literally how it happened and where the bodies were, and how they moved, and all those things, so it’s based in a real reality, things that really happened, things they really said, so for me it’s very important to get idiosyncrasies of Robert Graysmith.

How intense is David Fincher?
He’s extraordinary in his own separate, very different way. It’s a totally different universe. I’ve never seen a movie that looks like it. The technical things he is doing are like all new, never been done before. I think that it’s also a different move for him because it’s performance driven too, which is not to say that the other one’s haven’t been but there’s lots of dialogue and all this stuff that he’s dealing with and it’s definitely a different universe.

You’ve done so many serious movies now, you have to do a light romantic comedy next.
I don’t HAVE to do it but if you WANT me to. [Laughs] I would love to. I’m doing this movie about a serial killer and it’s a long movie and it’s a 100-day shoot and I think I need a little humour in my life after this.

A lot of your fans can’t see these R-rated movies, you know.
I’m not trying to pander or not pander to a certain audience. I think that’s pretty clear and I don’t think I make choices thinking like I have some sort of audience. But of course I’ve had a lot of young girls come up to me and they’re so cute and so sweet and I’m so flattered. It happens a lot with them and it’s pretty cool that the same day you’ll go to a street fair and a guy who has no pants on, like his butt cheeks are coming out of his leather pants, and he says he likes my movie too. So it’s a pretty interesting existence.

How do you feel about being a sex symbol?
I don’t know what I am. I really just pick these things. I’m lucky enough to get them. I’ve been the new It guy for a long time.

Do you have time to stop and smell the roses, or are you going nonstop?
I think about doing a play I did on the West End in London and at that time it was the best experience I’ve ever had as an actor and from that spawned a relationship with John Madden who saw me in a play and then the relationship with Sam Mendes who saw me in that play and decided to have me read for Jarhead because of that. It’s just like thinking about all the connections, and meeting David Fincher at the premiere of The Good Girl and having the time that I had on that movie. All those things are always in my mind and it’s so f*cking incredible.

Does coming from a showbiz family make you more competitive?
The standards are pretty low in my family. [Laughs] My family is really easy, just like every family. It’s all easy. We all get along, everything is fantastic and the standards are really high and my parents have always made movies that I think are good. Like my mom’s mantra is that it’s always about the story and I feel really proud of the movies that I’ve done.

Do they give you advice about your choices?
They did, they used to, but they still influence me because of the past but I now have to go and do what my instincts tell me. I still come to them. Like if I was having a problem or difficulty with a scene or I didn’t feel like it was working, I’d call Maggie all the time and say, “I’m feeling this way and I don’t understand.” And she’d say, “It sounds perfect.”

Were you ever tempted to do something different away from acting? Like being a chef?
That’s a temptation and has always been but I started so young that I didn’t realize I was just as passionate about that.

What’s the best thing you can cook?
I think if I were to tell you my best dish it would prove I was a real amateur. There’s people who are not really good cooks but I’m going to be really confident when I say, “Oh, my Milanese is amazing.”

Where do you see yourself in 30 years?
Can I see myself in 30 years? Yeah, God, I hope so. I think age is something that’s earned and I don’t know how I see myself, but I hopefully see myself still here and doing something interesting, whatever it is.


- posted by Ally 
- credits: ChillOnline
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