Filmonic » Matt Damon

Invictus trailer

Liam — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 15:19:01 +0000

Another day, another trailer for a Matt Damon movie. However this film will focus more on Morgan Freeman who plays the former President of South Africa Nelson Mandela. What’s that you hear? Oscars? I thought I heard that too.

Invictus tells the true story of how Nelson Mandela (Morgan Freeman) joined forces with the captain of South Africas rugby team, Francois Pienaar (Matt Damon), to help unite their country. Newly elected President Mandela knows his nation remains racially and economically divided in the wake of apartheid. Believing he can bring his people together through the universal language of sport, Mandela rallies South Africas underdog rugby team as they make an unlikely run to the 1995 World Cup Championship match.

Invictus is directed by Clint Eastwood and will be released December 11th in the US and February 5th in the UK.

First trailer for Matt Damon’s Green Zone

Liam — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 18:27:24 +0000

Yahoo! have released the first trailer for Green Zone which stars Matt Damon as a warrant officer who helps a senior CIA officer in the search for weapons of mass destruction. Yes, this is an Iraq film. A $100 million Iraq film to be exact, which was a risky move from Universal as these types of films haven’t exactly blown up the box office.

Damon is reunited with Paul Greengrass who directed him in The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum, and as a result it has a Bourne vibe to it. Watch below:

Green Zone will be released next March.

REVIEW: The Informant!

Dave — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 20:41:35 +0000

Steven Soderbergh has been putting films in theaters for 20 years, starting with sex, lies and videotape at the Sundance Film Festival in 1989. He made Sundance the festival it is today, for better or for worse, and though rumors and quotes from those close to him suggests that Soderbergh still gets frustrated with the movie business to this day, the man continues to be prolific.

The Informant! is Soderbergh’s third film this year (counting Che: Part One and Part Two as a single movie, the other is The Girlfriend Experience) and his third shot digitally and, like his other releases in 2009, The Informant! is a character piece. Christoph Waltz’s performance as Hans Landa in Inglorious Basterds is still the best performance of the year, but Matt Damon carries this film with his character work, even when he’s being helped along by straight-faced comedians.

The Informant! is based off a non-fiction book by Kurt Eichenwald, but the first frame of film, even before the studio credits is a disclaimer about the movie being based on fact, but altered for drama, “So there.”

Matt Damon put on the pounds to play Mark Whitacre, vice president of ADM, a company that processes corn and corn byproducts. The plot summary would have you believe: “The U.S. government decides to go after an agri-business giant with a price-fixing accusation, based on the evidence submitted by their star witness, vice president turned informant Mark Whitacre,” but that’s really just the setup for the crazy amount of lies create the narrative structure of the movie.

We are dropped into Whitacre’s head with voiceovers by Damon as we see him wind through the office or stare into space with a blank look on his face. He seems like a happy guy, and he’s genuinely enthusiastic about corn products. As the voiceovers continue throughout the film, they diverge from the visuals more and more, until the asides begin to shape the context of the scene they blast over, sometimes playing over dialogue that we don’t get to hear.

The result was that I felt I was on Whitacre’s side, privy to the information he was (or as much of it as I could understand as the first ten minutes of the flick are filled with a lot of corn-processing data and facts) and hearing his thoughts as he multitasked through his business and let his mind wander. Up until the FBI gets involved at a serious level, Damon plays Whitacre like a harmless innocent, just doing his job and looking out for his family. The blank look Damon keeps on his face when he’s not talking looks like it could erupt into a grin at any minute. Damon plays Whitacre with a touch of wonder, as if there is still something amazing about corn processing. Then, the shit storm starts.

There’s a virus attacking the production of lycene (it’s not important that you know what that is, a pre-screening cram session would be unnecessary), and Whitacre gets chewed out by his superiors. With his ass towards the fire, Whitacre reports to his bosses that their Japanese competitor might have a mole injecting the virus into the lycene-producing bacteria and for a few million dollars, the company will out their own man.

Against the wishes of Whitacre, the FBI gets involved, and that’s when the film opens itself to some comedy.

After he turns informant, Mark Whitacre reveals himself to be something of an idiot. Multiple times throughout the film, I was shaking my head as he let more company secrets escape or almost blew the case for the FBI. Soderbergh and Damon spent enough time during the first parts of the movie to get me on Whitacre’s side, so even when his deceptions and mistakes start to cause more damage than they are worth, I couldn’t help but feel for the picture Mark Whitacre had of himself: a family man who caught a lucky break and just wants to take care of his own people. He does pointless acts of charity, but also owns 8 cars. He turns informant for the FBI because every consumer in the world is getting ripped off “before they finish breakfast,” but also wants to build stables on the grounds of his home for his kids.

As the film winds up, we’re exposed to more of Mark Whitacre. As soon as the investigation into global price-fixing begins, the Soderbergh starts to peel away layers of the pleasant looking, harmless Mark Whitacre we spent 40 minutes watching. As a more accurate picture of the character develops, the film picks up, gets funny and Damon’s performance reveals itself as much more than it initially appeared.

This movie is funny the way I find the humor in the tiny sect of absolutely insane conservative Christians in this country. Both Mark Whitacre and the insane Christians (the kind that kill abortion doctors; far from the majority) do bad things but they think that because their intentions are good, things will work out in their favor. Call it repentance or “catching a break,” it’s blind idiocy to think that Hail Marys cancel out physical violence in any aspect or that taking down your own company will somehow make up for the very real crimes you’ve committed.

After the summer movie season had me out week after week watching things explode, be they aliens, space ships, nuclear reactors, a 1930s bank, transforming robots or Hitler, it was nice to take a trip into the darkness of the theater and see a well-constructed and performed character piece that made me laugh, sometimes uncomfortably.

With awards season just around the corner, it’s time to plug our brains back in for 4th quarter cinema.

Matt Damon talks Bourne 4

Liam — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 22:42:33 +0000

Back in April we heard that Universal were aiming for a Bourne 4 summer 2011 release and a draft of the script should be finished by June. Well it is now the end of July and according to Matt Damon they still don’t have a script.

From Sci-Fi Wire:

“I just saw [producer] Frank Marshall, and we were talking about it,” Damon said in a group interview today in Pasadena, Calif., where he was promoting his History Channel special The People Speak. “Then I’ve talked to [Bourne Supremacy and Ultimatum director] Paul Greengrass quite a bit about that.”
During press rounds for Ultimatum, Damon and Greengrass joked that a fourth film would have to be called The Bourne Redundancy, because the character has already found his identity. For his part, Damon says he’s interested in reprising the action-hero role, but won’t commit before confirming the quality of the script.
“Oh yeah, we won’t do it unless it’s good,” Damon added. “Promise.”
The literary world was able to continue the Bourne series even after Ludlum’s death: Eric Van Lustbader wrote The Bourne Betrayal, The Bourne Deception, The Bourne Legacy and The Bourne Sanction. “I didn’t read those,” Damon said.
Since a script is still a long way off, Damon has not had to hit the gym to get back into fighting shape. He will, when the time comes, if necessary, he said. “Not yet,” he said. “None us have kind of seen [a script] yet, and Paul’s still cutting a movie that we worked on, so we’ll get together and talk about it.”

George Nolfi has been hired to write the script, so he could be working on it as we speak. Aslong as they get things going during 2010 they should hit their 2011 spot.

Bourne 4 in 2011

Liam — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 01:17:26 +0000

Frank Marshall, producer of the Bourne trilogy, updated his Twitter profile with the following messages:

Bourne4 is in the works for Summer 2011…
George Nolfi is the writer of Bourne4, should have a draft by June.

If they keep on target this would mean Bourne 4 should start filming sometime next year. Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass have already signed up to return, and George Nolfi wrote The Bourne Ultimatum so we can expect a film as good as the previous ones.

With producers, directors and actors revealing information on Twitter we can expect more of these mini updates.

Matt Damon is anti-Bond

Liam — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 21:17:50 +0000

Ever since the Bond franchise got a much needed makeover in 2006 some people have been comparing the action and style of Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace to the Bourne movies. However Matt Damon does not think the franchises could ever be compared, and made it quite clear during an interiew with Usmagazine.

“They could never make a James Bond movie like any of the Bourne films,” Damon said. “Because Bond is an imperialist, misogynist sociopath who goes around bedding women and swilling martinis and killing people. He’s repulsive.
“Steve [Soderbergh, who produced Damon's 2005 spy movie, Syriana] told me that years ago he was offered a Bond movie,” the actor went on. “He told them he’d do it if they gave him creative control.
“‘Absolutely not,’ they said. They have a formula, they stick to it, and it makes them a lot of money. They know what they’re doing, and they’re going to keep doing it.”

Obviously Damon is going to support his own franchise, however people seem to like this ‘repulsive’ character seeing as though the Bond franchise has been going strong for nearly 50 years (with a few gaps along the way).

However, I get the feeling Damon didn’t actually mean much of what he said. Earlier in the interview he revealed that he wasn’t invited to the Obama Inauguration after campaigning for them for 2 years, so he was probably still pissed off about that.

Universal Nabs Rights to Bourne Novels

Liam — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 20:39:41 +0000

Universal have got themselves the exclusive rights to the Jason Bourne character and first look at other Robert Ludlum novels, according to Variety.

The deal with Ludlum Entertainment paves the way for more installments in the Bourne saga, which was originally envisioned as a three-picture series but has become Universal’s answer to James Bond.

After the first three films grossed a total of more than $1 billion worldwide, Universal signed Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass for a fourth film that George Nolfi is writing. The film is expected to be readied for the summer of 2010.

George Nolfi Writing Bourne 4

Liam — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 17:27:35 +0000

Universal have decided that a Bourne trilogy is simply not enough, and have hired George Nolfi to write the script for Bourne 4, according to Variety. He co-wrote the screenplay for The Bourne Ultimatum so it probably won’t be crappy, however he will be writing an original story, not an adaptation of one of Robert Ludlum’s novels.

Director Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon are attached, but the question is: Do we want a fourth film?