Hitchcock - 2012/13 Biopic

Technocentral

A film about Hitch and the making of Psycho is been made with Anthony Hopkins in the lead, hopefully will be good as Hitch is in my top 5 favourite directors, "Scarlett Johansson is portraying Janet Leigh, Jessica Biel plays Vera Miles, and James D’Arcy has taken on the role of Anthony Perkins" .Hopkins looks fairly like him if this still is anything to go by:

JP Liz V1

Technocentral wrote: »

Didnt recognise Hopkins :eek:

WatchWolf

They should have had Andrew Garfield as Anthony Perkins, they're identical!

Regardless, Hopkins looks great.

ImpossibleDuck

Yeeeeeees!

I'd love to see Hopkins give Hitchcock a go, think he's classy enough to pull it off brilliantly.

mike65

Sacha Gervasi directs - he did the Story of Anvil so its a bit of a leap.

losthorizon

This I'm looking forward to because Hitchcock was a brilliant director but also distinctly odd. Could be brilliant.

grohlisagod

WatchWolf wrote: »

They should have had Andrew Garfield as Anthony Perkins, they're identical!

Regardless, Hopkins looks great.

They look ridiculously similar!

artvanderlay

Why do they make these movies? It'll just be another famous actor doing an impression of someone that is already super famous anyways, like Meryl Streep and Thatcher. It's hardly acting or bringing a character to life. There must be such a dearth of good original scripts in Hollywood that they keep pumping out these boring movies.

Sad Professor

It's not like it's a remake. And Streep was very good as Thatcher. The reason it seemed like an impersonation is because the terrible script/director didn't give her anything else to do. Hopefully this won't turn out like that film.

I'm not sure Hopkins is right for this though.

Technocentral

artvanderlay wrote: »

Why do they make these movies? It'll just be another famous actor doing an impression of someone that is already super famous anyways, like Meryl Streep and Thatcher. It's hardly acting or bringing a character to life. There must be such a dearth of good original scripts in Hollywood that they keep pumping out these boring movies.

Maybe, but Hitchcock was a genius and a fascinating character who hasn't had a film (as far as I know) made about him. Considering rubbish like "Battleship" and "Act of Valour" is been made, a film about someone who had some real talent and influence on the artform is of interest to the rest of us who have half a brain.

Technocentral

Sad Professor wrote: »

It's not like it's a remake. And Streep was very good as Thatcher. The reason it seemed like an impersonation is because the terrible script/director didn't give her anything else to do. Hopefully this won't turn out like that film.

I'm not sure Hopkins is right for this though.

I'm not sure either though he might be, who would you suggest? Hitch was such a singular entity its hard to pin down the right person, would it be a lookalike or someone who gets his personality right or both, Frank Langella didn't really look like Nixon but managed to inhabit the character?

pixelburp

Portrayals of historically famous people are a tricky beast; go to far to look & sound like the subject and you stray into impersonation, try too little and people just don't buy you as Famous Figure X. So visually I'd worry that Hopkins will be all make-up & voicework, little inhabiting of the character.

Ironically, I thought Hopkins portrayal of Nixon was excellent, despite having no visual resemblance to the politician. The same goes for the likes of Micheal Sheen as Brian Clough or George C Scott as Patton: little physical likeness but the performance worked.

But dismissing a movie without so much as a trailer is pretty silly & kneejerk in all fairness.

Technocentral

pixelburp wrote: »

Portrayals of historically famous people are a tricky beast; go to far to look & sound like the subject and you stray into impersonation, try too little and people just don't buy you as Famous Figure X. So visually I'd worry that Hopkins will be all make-up & voicework, little inhabiting of the character.

Ironically, I thought Hopkins portrayal of Nixon was excellent, despite having no visual resemblance to the politician. The same goes for the likes of Micheal Sheen as Brian Clough or George C Scott as Patton: little physical likeness but the performance worked.

But dismissing a movie without so much as a trailer is pretty silly & kneejerk in all fairness.

Unlike Frost/Nixon that film was awful though, not really Hopkins fault, more Stone's , like The Doors and Malcom X, both piss poor.

Skinfull

Wait... thats hopkins?! Thats insane! O_o

Would love to see a movie on Hitchcock but Psycho isnt my favourite of his. Either way though, I'm in!

Thoms Yorkie Bars

Spitting image :eek:

Dermighty

JP Liz V1 wrote: »

Didnt recognise Hopkins :eek:

Hitchcock was a fat ****!

North by Northwest is one of my favourite movies.

Skinfull

Just watched Rope. I think its my favourite though that can change. I just love that movie so much, the characters the dialogue both on and off screen, the camera angles and oh my god the tension!!! Love it!

baalthor

Technocentral wrote: »

A film about Hitch and the making of Psycho is been made with Anthony Hopkins in the lead, hopefully will be good as Hitch is in my top 5 favourite directors, "Scarlett Johansson is portraying Janet Leigh, Jessica Biel plays Vera Miles, and James D’Arcy has taken on the role of Anthony Perkins" .Hopkins looks fairly like him if this still is anything to go by:

Who will play the Three Investigators ?

Technocentral

baalthor wrote: »

Technocentral wrote: »

A film about Hitch and the making of Psycho is been made with Anthony Hopkins in the lead, hopefully will be good as Hitch is in my top 5 favourite directors, "Scarlett Johansson is portraying Janet Leigh, Jessica Biel plays Vera Miles, and James D’Arcy has taken on the role of Anthony Perkins" .Hopkins looks fairly like him if this still is anything to go by:

Who will play the Three Investigators ?

Dunno maybe they're just walk on parts and it concentrates on the main actors.

Icarus Wings

First poster for the biopic of possibly film's most iconic director has been released! Anthony Hopkins is in the starring role, with Scarlett Johansson as actress Janet Leigh and Helen Mirren as the big guy's wife, Alma Reville. Danny Huston, Toni Collette, Jessica Biel, Michael Stuhlbarg and James D'Arcy also star.

Writer for The Terminal, Sacha Gervasi, is in the director's seat and it's based on Stephen Rebello's book, Alfred Hitchcock and The Making of Psycho. Set for release on 23rd November in the US.



Absolutely cracking likeness! :eek:

Icarus Wings

Actually just saw a thread already started for this! :rolleyes:

Sorry mods! Any chance of merging this with it? :o:o

Sad Professor

Merged.

blue note

Skinfull wrote: »

Just watched Rope. I think its my favourite though that can change. I just love that movie so much, the characters the dialogue both on and off screen, the camera angles and oh my god the tension!!! Love it!

I always thought it would have been a better film if we hadn't seen the body at the beginning of the film.

D-FENS

blue note wrote: »

I always thought it would have been a better film if we hadn't seen the body at the beginning of the film.

Would have been an interesting take on it alright, but i did enjoy the "Columbo" approach of the audience knowing what the murderer knows and it's up to the protagonist to work it out, and bare in mind the tension Skinfull mentions would not work half as well if the audience didn't know the truth from the start. It's workS really well all filmed in the one room. must be even better in the stage version

blue note

D-FENS wrote: »

Would have been an interesting take on it alright, but i did enjoy the "Columbo" approach of the audience knowing what the murderer knows and it's up to the protagonist to work it out, and bare in mind the tension Skinfull mentions would not work half as well if the audience didn't know the truth from the start. It's workS really well all filmed in the one room. must be even better in the stage version

I actually think it would work better if we didn't know. I think not only would we be worried that he'd open the box, we'd want him to even more for our own curiosity! But, there is an argument that Hitchcock knew more than me. I don't buy into it, but it seems a popular opinion.

bertie4evr

blue note wrote: »

I actually think it would work better if we didn't know. I think not only would we be worried that he'd open the box, we'd want him to even more for our own curiosity! But, there is an argument that Hitchcock knew more than me. I don't buy into it, but it seems a popular opinion.

This video explains why he tells you

theres a body in the box

.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPFsuc_M_3E

blue note

bertie4evr wrote: »

This video explains why he tells you

theres a body in the box

.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPFsuc_M_3E

I don't think it does to be honest, I still think the tension would be there if we wondered if there was a

body in the box.

zombiepaw

Hitchcock said "The length of a movie should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder".

Andre80Johnson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rQuRLERl6A

kitakyushu

Icarus Wings wrote: »

Absolutely cracking likeness! :eek:

Not really. Doesn't look much like Hitchcock at all in those two pix imho. Probably looks more like an overweight version of Neil Kinnock or something.

MagicMarker

Andre80Johnson wrote: »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rQuRLERl6A

Don't like the look of that at all tbh, doesn't look like much of a biopic either. Not a great fan of joe hanson either.

pixelburp

Similar to Joseph Gordon-Levitts fake eyebrows in Looper, Hopkins' obvious make-up is very distracting to the performance; looking at pictures of Hitchcock from Google images, Hopkins looks doesn't even look like the man himself, so I'm not sure what the point of it all is. A good performance will often compensate for any lack of physical resemblance so it shouldn't be a prerequisite - plenty of biopics feature actors with no strong likeness - and in fact, to me excessive make-up and prosthetics would surely be a constraint on any talented actor.

pixelburp

Just back from seeing this & I think 'undercooked' is the best way to describe the film. Not bad, just leaves a lot to be desired: no one facet gets enough time and energy, so it leaves the film feeling unfocused and underwhelming. Considering the subject matter it's a criminal waste mind you: the story of Hitchcock or the story of Psycho should make for fascinating films in their own right. There's also a frankly bizarre misstep with Hitchcock being 'haunted' by Ed Gein - to what end I had no idea.

Hopkins turn as Hitch is fine, but the fat-suit is a little excessive; we know what the actor looks like, so padding him with prosthetics diminishes his performance & makes it feel more like an impression than anything else. Which is a shame, because it's one of Hopkins more restrained roles of late (mostly, sometimes he's a bit too cartoony)

I haven't seen The Girl, which is claimed to be something of a one-sided character assassination, but at least they are playing for an angle; this just muddled its way through a unfocused script without saying anything interesting at all. Hitchcock liked to eat I guess.

Technocentral

pixelburp wrote: »

Just back from seeing this & I think 'undercooked' is the best way to describe the film. Not bad, just leaves a lot to be desired: no one facet gets enough time and energy, so it leaves the film feeling unfocused and underwhelming. Considering the subject matter it's a criminal waste mind you: the story of Hitchcock or the story of Psycho should make for fascinating films in their own right. There's also a frankly bizarre misstep with Hitchcock being 'haunted' by Ed Gein - to what end I had no idea.

Hopkins turn as Hitch is fine, but the fat-suit is a little excessive; we know what the actor looks like, so padding him with prosthetics diminishes his performance & makes it feel more like an impression than anything else. Which is a shame, because it's one of Hopkins more restrained roles of late (mostly, sometimes he's a bit too cartoony)

I haven't seen The Girl, which is claimed to be something of a one-sided character assassination, but at least they are playing for an angle; this just muddled its way through a unfocused script without saying anything interesting at all. Hitchcock liked to eat I guess.

"The Girl" might have been one sided but it was a great, dramatic and very well made film, Jones very much did a close approximation of Hitch, how was the lovely Scarlet?

Sad Professor

Bland, bland, bland.

I didn't like The Girl, which was basically a heavily fictionalised character assassination, but it was a better, more interesting film than this. For a film called Hitchcock it's not really about Hitchcock or even the making of Psycho. It's more concerned with Hitchcock's marriage. Mirren is excellent and acts Hopkins, who is unfortunately in sleep-walking mode, right off the screen. They should have called the film Alma. The Girl wasn't particularly cinematic either, but it was more deserving of a theatrical release than this.

pixelburp

Sad Professor wrote: »

Bland, bland, bland.

I didn't like The Girl, which was basically a heavily fictionalised character assassination, but it was a better, more interesting film than this. For a film called Hitchcock it's not really about Hitchcock or even the making of Psycho. It's more concerned with Hitchcock's marriage. Mirren is excellent and acts Hopkins, who is unfortunately in sleep-walking mode, right off the screen. They should have called the film Alma. The Girl wasn't particularly cinematic either, but it was more deserving of a theatrical release than this.

I dunno, I thought Mirren was equally on autopilot, her performance was one I'd seen from her about a half-dozen other times; channelling that slightly stern, matriarchal figure she admittedly does so well.