Ferrari (Michael Mann)

JP Liz V1

Adam Driver, Penélope Cruz and Shailene Woodley have been cast in Michael Mann’s long-gestating passion project Ferrari, which is back on track.

Driver will play Enzo Ferrari and Cruz will play his wife, Laura Ferrari, in the biopic about the famed Italian motoring icon, while Woodley takes on the role of Lina Lardi, Enzo’s mistress. Mann’s Ferrari project earlier had Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman attached to star.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/adam-driver-penelope-cruz-shailene-woodley-michael-mann-ferrari-1235089925/

STXfilms has nabbed worldwide rights ahead of a May 2022 production start date

Driver continues picking very diverse interesting roles, one of the best working actors of this generation

bnt

I've seen talk of this for a while, surprised there isn't a thread on it already. Michael Mann (Last of the Mohicans, Heat, Collateral) is set to direct Christian Bale in a biopic of Enzo Ferrari, a name any car lover will recognise. From Deadline:

Paramount Pictures has signed on to distribute in most world territories Enzo Ferrari, the Michael Mann-directed drama on a pivotal year in the life of the Italian auto magnate that will star Christian Bale. The film is now set for a summer 2016 shoot in Italy, with funding from Vendian Entertainment and YooZoo Bliss Film Fund. Vincent Maraval’s Insiders will sell at the upcoming AFM the world territories not spoken for in this Paramount deal. As part of its funding deal, YooZoo Pictures will distribute Enzo Ferrari in China.

Enzo Ferrari is the personal, intimate story of a passionate man and his sprawling world, at times hilarious and at the next moment devastating, as he faces a brutal challenge to his survival. It takes place in 1957.

Half the comments on that article are some variation of "please shoot on film", but given Mann's successful early adoption of digital for Collateral, I doubt it ... :cool:

Dirty Dingus McGee

Apparently changes have been made by the producers and it will now star Vincent Chase and be directed by Frank Darabont.

bnt

News to me. Got a link?

Brendan Flowers

Bale has dropped out it seems
http://variety.com/2016/film/news/christian-bale-ferrari-movie-drops-out-1201681240/

Maybe the stars are aligning for Vinnie Chase to take the lead

Now we are talking! If anything was setup for Mann to sign off his amazing career this would be it.

Sad Professor

https://youtu.be/KZHxT2yb2cE

This has been in development for a while…

pixelburp

Interesting dialogue free trailer - except for one brief bit of Adam Driver's Italian(?) accent 🤭

Certainly a very epic trailer in its edit, I wonder how much actual road "action" there'll be versus Ferarri's life.

I know Blackhat has its fans but it was such a let down, I hope this brings Mann back to a level he had achieved before.

AMKC

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121047529#Comment_121047529

It's looks awesome.

Certainly a very epic trailer in its edit, I wonder how much actual road "action" there'll be versus Ferarri's life.

I would say a lot by the looks of that.

unkel

Awesome, can't wait.

Agent Coulson

Looks amazing.

bnt

I see from the blurb that the film will cover the 1957 Mille Miglia. I advise against reading the Wikipedia page on that race since it could be seen as spoilers. This was two years after Stirling Moss in his Mercedes-Benz basically wiped the floor with everyone, especially Ferrari.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121053077#Comment_121053077

Ah don't say things like that; now I absolutely want to look up the 1957 race 🤭

Do spoilers apply for real events, now 70 years ago? It's always a tricky needle to thread.

odyssey06

Scriptwriter is the late Troy Kennedy Martin who passed away in 2009 and whose credits go back to Z Cars, Kellys Heroes and The Italian Job.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121053134#Comment_121053134

Kelly's Heroes!

When they say they don't make em like that anymore - I think of bonkers, vaguely anarchic stuff like that.

JP Liz V1

Even with the strike, it is getting premiered with the cast and director at Venice Film Festival

pixelburp

Brand new trailer, which has more story and more moments of the racing. I have a feeling the accents might be a huge stumbling block for some!

https://youtu.be/8oOVNMjM1Jk?si=KuZttfuDLVKqa88p

JP Liz V1

It's getting a cinema release, Cruz and Driver look phenomenal in their roles

santana75

Saw it on Stephens day and overall I thought it was very good. It felt like not enough though, which is a good thing I suppose. I wanted to see more about Enzo's later life, like his relationship with Giles Vilenueve for example. Adam Driver is great but Penelope Cruz is brilliant(and terrifying).

johnny_ultimate

On a bit of a Mann buzz at the moment between this and the Blackhat director's cut!

I enjoyed this on the whole I must say. Mann is one of the few mainstream directors there still using digital cinematography in interesting unique ways. Here, he uses the extra clarity and sharpness to emphasise the racing scenes - both the spectacle and the danger. Two crash scenes in this had me gasping aloud as they're portrayed with a frankness that is highly unusual for cinema. Just brutal and sad. Which I think serves the film on the whole: it shows Ferrari as this guy chasing perfection, and the other humans he's willing to put in the danger zone to achieve that. So it's far from a hagiography, I reckon: it's more unsentimental and critical, while still being a strong and resonant portrait of a prominent figure during a particular period of his life. It actually worked better than Maestro for me for that reason. Not entirely sold on the Italian accent work (even in Driver's otherwise strong performance), and think Woodley is a bit underserved, but Cruz is very good.

One thing that did jar a bit was the editing. I don't quite know what it was, but it had an odd, erratic rhythm to it, with some scenes editing or transitioning abruptly. It's a minor thing overall, and the film has more than enough going for it, but given Mann's still such a formal perfectionist it just surprised me how clunky a handful of edits were.

2smiggy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121560827#Comment_121560827

never bothered with watching Blackhat for some reason(possibly the IMDB score). Is the directors cut worth watching ?

johnny_ultimate

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121566472#Comment_121566472

I liked Blackhat a lot in the first place, and it's been like eight years since I've seen the theatrical cut so I can't comment too in-depth on the differences (those who saw them closer together suggest the DC is certainly an improvement). It moves one key setpiece around, adds / removes a few other bits, and tightens up other parts of the edit. But put some script and pacing shortcomings aside, it's a really great Mann mood piece IMO full of some excellent style and technique. Would definitely recommend the recent Arrow set which has the 4k theatrical cut and the director's cut on Blu-Ray.

AMKC

Just out from seeing this. Loved it. The cars every single car in it from the Peugeot to the Ferrari all looked amazing and stunning and they all sounded glorious too. The crashes were very well done too and after that big crash yes that was quiet gruesome.

Anyone know did that really happen?

I suppose I would give it 9 out of 10. My one dissapointment was it did not show or even say at the end when FIAT took over Ferrari.

smurf492

Maybe spoilers for people not familiar with Ferrari history????

pixelburp

Phew, finally caught this. Mann's career of protagonists beholden to their frequently toxic obsessions swung this time into a more sombre and tragically reflective creature. That is: how would an obsessive industrialist process grief? Mann's lead characters were not always unfeeling or uncaring individuals but they would be driven by a compulsion for precision that often overrode and trampled emotional connections or relationships. But when faced with the most terrible existential crisis a parent could ever face, how could that myopic preoccupation process a situation they never had any control over in the first place? What might become of a man who viewed his greatest loss as a failure of technical precision?

Fiction rarely has any prior interest in emotionally healthy answers when it comes to grief or emotional loss - 'cos clearly that's less entertaining than watching people unspool in front of us - so when you're Michael Mann, Enzo Ferrari's response to his son dying was a heady cocktail of repression and emotional distance; all mixed with a doubling-down of his already exacting determination. I once read that grief is simply "love with no place to go", so in Ferrari's case that love was channelled into full blown mania to ensure he wouldn't lose the one creation he did have control over. His vulnerability pared back to the bone so that even his drivers, egged on to embrace the "terrible joy" that was driving his beautiful machines in the first place, became non-entities forbidden from their own emotional attachments; asked to simply accept that death's hand must be always on their shoulder to be successes. Ferrari's brush with death must be his drivers' own. Meanwhile, his estranged wife could only haunt her own house while lost in a perpetual, impotent rage at the world and her husband - yet even she couldn't resist exerting her own degree of control over a world of these beautiful coffins.

Beyond the psychological components, the race scenes were themselves viscerally raw, if not emotionally: there wasn't that sense of the joyous with any of the set piece, instead filmed with a precise physicality that always emphasised how precarious speeding around in those metal tubes always was. And that danger & fragility had two distinct punchlines that were probably the most destructive scenes of vehicular violence I'd seen in film in years - maybe even ever, on reflection.

Faced with mechanical fluke or a moment of human error, bodies became rag-dolls, thrown and scattered around but before the brain could find it comical, Mann's unflinching eye showed us the net result of a car accident. It was brief but utterly brutal, to the extent governments could use it as cautionary tales in those various "please drive safely" campaigns they'll sometimes run. There's a razor's edge in cinema when it comes to how violence is portrayed: shock & provocation can too easily become (leering) titillation, accidental or otherwise; and while those seeking Ford v. Ferrari levels of inspiring raceday adventures will be disappointed, Mann's skill in this film was to deploy the race scenes as emotional scalpels that jostled the viewer out any complacency that Ferrari's world was only one of opulence or aspiration.

And yeah, the accents got a little distracting if I'm being honest - but only for the choice to have intermittent Italian dropped into the English-language dialogue. It was one of those ultimately trivial aspects that distracted me more than it probably should have. To this day, The Hunt for Red October remains the simplest, yet most cinematic, way of sidestepping this "issue" of the English language used in settings where none should be spoken; the other option being to have your main cast simply put on an English accent in lieu of their character's own (see everything from Valkyrie - which also aped John McTiernan's approach - to Napoleon or even I dunno, noted Frenchman Captain Picard). I wish Mann picked one of those choices instead of having the actors put on Mama Mia! cod accents.

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

flasher0030

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121740618#Comment_121740618

But did you enjoy it. Was it good or not. Been sitting on the fence on this one for few weeks. Haven't put it on yet, as I have heard a couple of opinions that it is too long, and can get tedious watching it.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121741194#Comment_121741194

Not trying to be smart or evasive but it depends on what you might want from the thing to consider it "good": if you just want racing thrills of classic / golden era manufacturers and human interest stories? Ford v Ferrari is the better package by way of comparison; but this was more of a character drama with intermittent but excellent racing scenes (that had really tragic endings). It wasn't a triumphant film, as racing movies often are, but something a bit more muted and introspective.

I thought it was a good movie, but on an intellectual level (yeah yeah I know that sounds wànky) than a visceral emotional ond. It was a very Michael Mann film in the sense of being about men's obsessions and the fallout caused by their mania, and perhaps more like ... say, Miami Vice than Heat, by way of pitching it against his other work.

Will I rewatch it? Unlikely: it was pretty messy and wouldn't ultimately rank it highly; I recently watched Manhunter and could see myself watching that again than I would Ferrari.

JP Liz V1

Looks to be on Sky soon as a Sky Original