Contagion: Soderbergh, Winslet/Damon/Fishburne/Cotaillard/Paltrow/Law/etc/etc/etc

prob was too realistic/governmental w/o really going 4 body horror shock factor stuff or pounding the rioting or like what the media coverage wld be like...all well done though, but yeah, theres no dramatic way 2 really end it & all the minor personal relationships arent v resonant

did also remind me of traffic just in the shear # of plotlines & name actors

that was kind of... boring... enjoyed it, though, and I liked it jumping around between characters without jarring.
Jude Law being irritating was kind of the most 'interesting' storyline, I think. Weird that you didn't really feel the scale of 2.5 million dead or whatever it was.

I'm always a little crestfallen when humankind rallies in the third act.

― Gus Van Sant's Gerry Blank (Eric H.), Wednesday, September 7, 2011 3:49 AM (3 days ago) Bookmark

otm. basically deep down inside i don't respect a movie unless everyone dies at the end.

i liked this, though.

for some reason i laughed out loud when they pulled off gwyneth paltrow's scalp :-/

prob was too realistic/governmental w/o really going 4 body horror shock factor stuff or pounding the rioting or like what the media coverage wld be like...all well done though, but yeah, theres no dramatic way 2 really end it & all the minor personal relationships arent v resonant

did also remind me of traffic just in the shear # of plotlines & name actors

― johnny crunch, Friday, September 9, 2011 7:31 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

yikes, you really wanted that stuff? i was relieved it was mostly free of cliches like those.

once the third act kicked in i was wondering how he'd stick the landing cuz the movie was clearly throttling down at that point, but i thought the ending they went with was really powerful and appropriate, esp since damon's story was the easiest to relate to.

really enjoyed this, really liked how restrained it was without being dry, liked that it refused to talk down to the audience (no scenes where a scientist explains something and then an audience stand-in says 'hurr how about in ENGLISH now, PROFESSOR') - i think the only misstep was the jude law character

ensemble cast is only way you can compare it to Traffic, they approach their material from remarkably different angles. this is such a still picture, the camera almost never moves, paltrow flashbacks probably the only handheld stuff in the movie

p. curious how it looks in imax

no i didnt want those things at all...i meant more like too "real" to do big box office #s

yea jude law character was not v good...there were a few moments where he was dropping conspiracy knowledge that made me lol and i think were supposed to but i feel like it was p subtle & ppl missed it

oh word, yeah

yeah i didnt really 'get' the character until the reveal about him late in the movie. made me think that i'd have a different perspective if i watched it again

forgot to mention what i liked best about the flick - it's a 'process' movie

larry fishburne was v good

Guy who played the bearded doc who breaks the news to Matt Damon about Gwynnie was at my screening in Evanston, IL. He had a whole retinue with him who applauded after his scene, which was followed by jeers of "No one cares!"

lmao

i was trying to figure out why the rear admiral's right hand man was so familiar - he was the bald photographer on Just Shoot Me!

http://starsmedia.ign.com/stars/image/object/911/911279/enrico-colantoni_photoboxart_160w.jpg

what'd you think of the movie jaymc

dad on vmars, i knew him right away tbh! xp

Ha yeah, I had no idea Enrico Colantoni was on Just Shoot Me -- I know him p. much exclusively as Keith Mars.

I think I agree pretty much with you, TamTam, about the movie in general. Admired the restraint and the straightforward approach. Loved how ***SPOILERS*** willing it was to dispense w/ Winslet's character and how Jennifer Ehle quietly becomes the hero.

The one thing that sort of bothered me was that ***MORE SPOILERS I GUESS*** you have all these scenes of civilization descending into chaos: airports and offices closed, massive looting, Matt Damon can't even get an MRE. And then it's eventually OK once the vaccine is introduced? Maybe this is actually how it would happen, I dunno. But I found myself wondering about the details of how the world continued to function despite the chaos.

i honestly had no idea this was a Soderbergh movie until 5 minutes ago when i saw this thread on new answers. i'm sure i saw the title as one of his upcoming projects at some point and just never made the connection. i guess the TV ads don't display his name prominently at all and maybe his 'distinctive' look has been used by so many other directors that i don't even recognize it as his off the bat anymore?

IRA FLATOW (NPR Science Friday): Wow. Let's talk a bit about this new movie that you had a hand in.

LAURIE GARRETT Author of "The Coming Plague" (1995): Aha, "Contagion." Yeah.

FLATOW: "Contagion." Give us a little thumbnail of that.

GARRETT: Well, ever since I wrote "The Coming Plague" back in the '90s, I've had one movie company after another come to me and say oh, let's do a movie about an epidemic, and we want you to be involved in advising us to make it really scary, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And that's almost always been hideous and the experience horrible.

And of course, many people have seen the movie with Dustin Hoffman called "Outbreak" in which, miraculously, at the end, from one little squirrel monkey, they get enough antiserum to save thousands of people, - wholly implausible.

And I said, when they approached me, it was Steven Soderbergh as director, Michael Shamberg and Stacey Sherr who were involved in "Erin Brockovich" and a whole host of fantastic movies, and screenwriter Scott Burns, who had just come off doing "The Bourne Ultimatum," starring Matt Damon.

They all came to me and said look, let's - we'd like to bring you on board to help us make a really, you know, right movie, a really scientifically accurate look at what a pandemic of a really virulent organism would look like. How would the world respond? What would we do? What would transpire over time? And not hysteria but as accurate as possible.

And so I worked on this script with Scott Burns for about three and a half years, and I think - I think people are going to be blown away when they see this film. Soderbergh is a genius as a director, and many of you probably realize that his masterpiece was "Traffic."

And one of the signatures of "Traffic" was that it assumed great intelligence on the part of the audience. There's never a moment when a character sort of turns to the camera and says oh, here's what's going on. You know, you have to pay attention.

And it had five different plot sets, and the characters never quite knew about each other, but the audience could see how they connected. So this is structured very much the same way. You have plot unfolding at the CDC in Atlanta. You have plot unfolding in Minneapolis, Chicago, San Francisco, Hong Kong, Macao, London, interior of China and so on.

FLATOW: Weren't you afraid that they were going to just make another Hollywood "Towering Inferno" sort of movie?

GARRETT: Yes. I was very afraid of that, and I told them straight up, our very first meeting in a restaurant here in New York. I said OK, I have conditions, and they don't have anything to do with money and the usual stuff that you Hollywood people have conditions about. My conditions are number one, this is not going to be about an evil scientist, and you're not going to make scientists look bad.

Number two, it's - everybody's not - it's not going to come from outer space. Number three, everybody's not going to turn into aliens, and the last person alive is not going to be Will Smith. Number four, you're not going to find a miracle cure where the whole world's saved from one little monkey.

And number five, you're not going to portray Africans as, you know, the source of all disease and all horror on the planet. And then finally I said, you know, I think it has to be as much about the nature of public health and global response and cooperation versus competition on the world stage as anything else. And I think you're going to be amazed when you see this picture.

FLATOW: And they agreed to all of that.

GARRETT: They did.

i can see how you'd miss that, the advertising hasnt played up his involvement at all - no A FILM BY stuff or anything

Most people just want to go to see Gwyneth Paltrow die.

Hollywood having their finger on the pulse for once.

i thought this was really good -- horrifying, if you pay attention, and let the off-screen details sink in. "r-2" and all that. also, a love song to the public sector, which could use it.

forgot to mention what i liked best about the flick - it's a 'process' movie

― https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i_qxQztHRI (Princess TamTam), Saturday, September 10, 2011 3:30 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

yeah, totally--it reminded me of Zodiac in that regard.

lol bizkit bomb never fails

ehehehe

Matt Damon can't even get an MRE

I'm out-of-focus (and maybe out-of-shot) getting an MRE when the line goes crazy--and I'm painted-up-sick out-of-shot in the big armory.

I think the music/montage sequences may be my favorite parts.

Where were your scenes shot, EZ?

The armory scenes were at an armory at 52nd and Cottage Grove. The MER scene was at a park in Evanston a block from Northwestern's athletic buildings (we were held in a gym for a few hours before about six hours of prep and shooting). The first day I was called was to be a pedesrian on the street whenKate Winslet sees military trucks from her hotel room (actuallt the Hampton Inn in River North), but after costuming 20 of us, they shot it with the sidewalks empty.

so this was all chicago? the crowd up my way was giggling at all the twin cities details that were off. like the sick dude on the bus who said he was "at lake and lyndale" got a huge laugh.

they should have made g paltrow do a marge gunderson accent

Saw this today. Was kinda disappointed. They should have given it one of those '70s style movie posters with tiny headshots of the cast in rows at the bottom - "And Bryan Cranston as Admiral Soandso."

Maybe this is actually how it would happen, I dunno. But I found myself wondering about the details of how the world continued to function despite the chaos.

It's probably far easier to depict a disaster where *everyone* is dead rather than just 1 out of 12. I thought a couple of scenes were pretty effective - especially liked the brief one where Damon is in the mostly empty food court (chairs up on the tables, etc.). Felt like services were actually eroding down.

Jude Law character didn't bother me much... he was acting like any other tone-deaf internet douche. The WHO subplot with Cotillard was a complete bust though.

she was so hot though

"And Bryan Cranston as Admiral Soandso."

that was his character's actual name, incidentally

so this was all chicago?

All the Minnesota stuff was shot around Chicago. In the screenplay, the multinational company is 3M.

I thought this was just okay. If you like pandemic movies, you'll probably like it. If you saw the made-for-TV bird flu movie "Fatal Contact: Bird Flu in America" in 2006, this was basically that with a better cast and higher production values.

I thought this was pretty good, though it seems to take some stabs at meaningfulness that I couldn't make out.

The second half of the cotillard plot was silly, but she is crazy hot.

What do we make of that final montage. It went by so fast I didn't quite get the chain of events from the bulldozer to the bat...

I don't remember the exact details of the bulldozer->bat sequence. Was it something like bulldozer construction stirring up the bat nest?

I think this would have been a lot better if there was a final struggle between Jude Law and Demetri Martin wearing their moon suits.

it was a final touch of irony: bulldozers owned by the multinational corp. for which paltrow works disrupt the natural habitat of a group of bats, who end up closer to human civilization. there, an infected bat takes a bite out of a crabapple. it falls to the ground and is eaten by a pig. the uncooked pig is handled by a chef who later shakes hands with paltrow.

so it suggests an ultimate (?) human cause for the tragedy. again, kind of pat irony.

film was def. a mixed bag. pretty gripping, though a lot of plot threads seemed to go nowhere. something about the virus mutating within a population of AIDS sufferers in durban? so wait only 30% of people with the disease die from it? what happens to the rest (aside from those immune like matt damon)?

the prom scene was mildly affecting but as a conclusion to this film it was a very bad idea.

i like process films too (damn y'all seen quattro volte?) but again, this one was a mixed bag in terms of how clearly and carefully it chronicled the process. in particular there was little attention given to the dynamics of the apparent societal breakdown that was occurring. i guess that was a consequence of the tight focus on a small group of characters (despite the ambitiousness of the plot as a whole). that said, the screenplay cheated a bit by having the same characters pop up in an unlikely number of contexts -- for example keith mars (sorry can't sell the actor's name) is both running the NSA's response to the virus _and_ taking part in a sting operation against jude law? dude keeps busy.

finally (!) did anyone else think this was kind of unfashionably optimistic? despite the chaos etc. they find a vaccine within days or weeks and everything (by the evidence of the film) returns to normal. or close to it. given how bleak lots of big films are these days (e.g. dark knight) i kept expecting the film to end with some sly suggestion that things were about to get much worse.

srsly this could have been the best movie ever but it just wasn't. but it wasn't bad.

soderbergh has never really hit a home run, has he? lots of OK films, only one (the limey) i'd consider really good.

yeah the vaccine as presented was almost a deus ex machina...

thinking on it a bit i think the Paltrow character is certainly the "center" of the movie in some ways, in that it comes back to her, it's her "head" we're trying to look into, her night at the casino...not sure what adultery has to do with it all tho.

Che part 1, Solaris, and Out of Sight are really good imo.

at first it resembles that familiar screenwriting trope (see: alfred hitchcock) where the person who does a Bad Thing is punished for it by dying horribly. but i don't really think we're supposed to hate on gwenyth paltrow. makes me wonder why the adultery thing was even in there. maybe the screenwriter thinks it makes the characters more "complex"?

xpost

yeah che pt 1 is pretty good, solaris too. i like out of sight but last time i watched it, it kind of fell apart in 2nd half.

yeah there's certainly something intended with her character. and some of the virus=information stuff was a little pat as expected "I told someone i loved, who told someone they loved..."

though i think that this film is suggesting that this very virus pattern (r0) is also our mode of salvation in these kinds of situations.

how so?

i dont think optimistic is what they were going for, it just seems that way in contrast to the cynical dreck that mostly populates the genre. realistically no epidemic could threaten the very existence of humanity, but those are the kind of stakes audiences are trained to expect. some people definitely felt blue-balled by that

the prom scene was mildly affecting but as a conclusion to this film it was a very bad idea.

why? i thought it was a canny move to refocus on something more personal, so as to evade the 'welp, that's it' ending. i really liked the long shot of damon sitting in the closet

the glibness of the end montage was a little eyerolly, and i wondered if it had anything to do with Participant Media's* involvement. damon looking at the pictures on the camera was enough to plant the seed in your head, it didn't need to be underlined.

i think i almost entirely agree that sodes hasnt hit that home run yet (he might have a few triples), and i came to hold him in pretty low esteem by the mid-2000s, but this feels like one of the more vital periods of his career right now.

*production company that does homegrown docs targeted at wealthy libs, and also some token financing of narrative movies with any tangential connection to the cause du jour - ie. The Informant! and agribusiness

prom scene was ok but u2 was not ok.

damon looking at the pictures on the camera was enough to plant the seed in your head

So when you saw the chef photo, you thought bat > pig > chef > GP? I needed the dots connected for me, I'll admit.

it helped that the staging of the scene made me think damon would stumble onto the big reveal via the camera, and yeah the chef photo is what did it - except i thought he was a butcher, with that bloody apron - i wouldn't have guessed the bat part though

there was a bit where jennifer ehle is running down the viral dna, that parts of it look like viruses in these different animal populations.

after all these moments that reminded me of other films (not favorably or unfavorably), like the social breakdown in "war of the worlds", it was kinda funny that the last little sequence reminded me of... arachnophobia! lol

if ever a subplot could have just been extracted wholesale from a film, it's the marion cotillard one here. i guess they wouldn't have wanted her removed from the film entirely after writing a big paycheck. but really, who goes to see a film for marion cotillard?

gotta say war of the worlds was better than this, even with the totally insulting ending of that one. (speaking of perversely optimistic endings.)