Brad Pitt @ Venice Film Festival 2007

so he’s a little tired, he was up all night pleasin the missus.

I see the morons can not even separate the meaning of a photocall and a premiere. Not surprised at all.LOL!!!

Sexiness is a state of mind not physical perfection.

Brad and Angie have IT in spade. I like the “rough” edges around the man, it makes him more human. It means he has lived and age is just a natural progression of life. Brad is and will always be sexy at any age. You “younglins” have a lot to learn about life.

It is not even 10 o’clock and you already complaining.

He look good with or without the glassses. way above Clooney.

Emmanuel Levy says TAOJJ is a MASTER PIECE and gave the film a grade “A”

Venice Film Fest 2007 (Competition)–Inventive in narrative structure, contemplative in tone, evocative of the Old West, and significant as a retelling of a mythic saga with a fresh, contemporary perspective, Andrew Dominik’s “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford,” is nothing short of brilliant.

Alongside with Joel and Ethan Coen’s “No Country for Old Men,” which is a Western in disguise, or rather a modern Western, “Assassination of Jesse James” is the second masterpiece of the season, one that immediately positions itself as a major revisionist work about he legendary criminal Jess James, as well as a resonant deconstruction of the roots of one of the most persistent issues in American history and culture: The complex link between crime and fame, and the obsession with celebrity. For those who think that these are new problems that define and plague our culture, the movie serves as a useful reminder that they have been around for over a century.

On another level, it’s hard to think of a director in recent times who has made such a huge leap to the major league of filmmaking as Aussie Andrew Dominik, who previously made the rather small but well-executed “Chopper,” based on the life story of the notorious Australian criminal Chopper Read. Playing the global festival circuit, “Chopper” was a film that many critics (including myself) admired but few saw, due to its subject matter, national origins, and limited theatrical distribution.

“Assassination of Jesse James” world premieres in competition at the Venice Film Festival, which kicks off August 29, before going to Toronto Film Fest and opening wide later next month.

At the risk of overselling the film, since my review is written right after watching it, my first impression is that Dominik has made a poignant modernist Western that ranks with Arthur Penn’s achievement in “Bonnie and Clyde” (1967), Same Peckinpah’s grand, eloquent Westerns (specifically “The Wild Bunch,” and “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid”) and Robert Altman’s “McCable and Mrs. Miller”. “Assassination of Jess James” should place Dominik in the forefront of Hollywood’s new, bright and visionary filmmakers.

What’s amazing about Dominik’s film, which he also wrote, is that it’s not violent at all, not by standards of Westerns films of the 1970s, and certainly not by standards of today’s actioners. Instead, he made the very shrewd decisions to offer a new angle on the mythic saga of a criminal like Jesse James and to follow his central characters and their entourage well after James’ notorious death.

Basically, “Assassination of Jess James” is a study of jealousy, obsession and revenge, centering on legendary hero’s nemesis outlaw, Robert Ford (Casey Affleck, in a career defining performance), and his deadly, both destructive and self-destructive preoccupation with America’s most notorious figure at the time.

Early on, the film, which has had a long, troubled history, was billed as a Brad Pitt vehicle, due to the fact that he’s also the producer (See Essay). However, though Jesse James is the feature’s nominal hero, the central figure is decidedly Bob Ford, since most of the personal and historical events are seen and depicted from his subjective POV.

The other innovative device chosen by Dominik is to have an extensive voice-over narration (by Hugh Ross), which links events and also comments on the characters and their actions. As a framing device, the narration offers another layer of storytelling, one that turns the saga into a more evocative film, sort of a ballad, though it may create problems for viewers who favor direct, emotional involvement with a film’s characters.

Based on the novel of the same title by Ron Hansen, “Assassination of Jesse James” delves into the public and private lives of America’s most notorious outlaw and his unlikely assassin, the coward Robert Ford, by focusing in great character and historical detail to the last year of Jesse James before his infamous shooting.

Most of the saga is set in 1881, when Jesse James was 34 and his killer Bob Ford was 19. As he plans his next great robbery, Jesse continues to wage war on his enemies, a wild and diverse bunch, all trying to collect the huge reward money and, more importantly, the promised glory that will comes with his capture.

But the film is not about plot in the conventional sense of the term, even if many significant events take place in 1881-1882. As writer and helmer, Dominik knows that there have been countless books, plays, and tales about America’s “first bonafide celebrity.” As colorful and fascinating they might have been, most of those yarns, including previous Hollywood films (see Essay, emphasized Jesse’s larger-than-life public persona and daring exploits.

Like “Bonnie and Clyde,” “Assassination of Jess James” shows that Jesse James as the object of owe and admiration—even to those that he robbed and terrorized and the families of those he admittedly killed. The sensational newspaper and dime novels, that chronicled the Jesse James Gang at its height, during the 1870s, made sure that Jesse was never “just a criminal” who deserved to be captured and executed.

In other words, the thirst for sensationalistic tales and obsession with celebrities, both legit and illegit, which define our culture today, go back to at least a century ago, right after the Civil War. This is one modernist touch that elevates Dominik’s film way above the norm of a well-told, well-crafted Western.

In many ways, “Assassination of Jesse James” is not a Western at all, since in its epic scale (and epic running time of 161 minutes), poetic tone, and visual beauty, it’s an evocative film that speaks to our times in a more relevant way than most stories set at the present.

Who was Jesse James? Dominik doesn’t pretend or claim that he understands him. Instead, he keeps his central figure as a mystery, an enigma, to the very end. He suggests that to some Jesse was a Robin Hood type, targeting banks and railroad owners that exploited poor farmers. To others, Jesse was a man with a tragic cause, a wronged and wounded Confederate solider striking back against the Union that had ruined his life. And there were those who saw him as the last frontiersman, a symbol of freedom and the American spirit, a charismatic rebel who flouted the law and lived by his rules, by his own code of ethics.

Who was his killer? According to the film Robert Ford was first and foremost an admirer, a man full of contradictions. As youth, he was an idealistic and ambitious lad who had devoted his adolescent years to the hope of riding one day alongside his idol. He could never imagined, as become clear and sad in the film’s last reel, that history would ultimately mark him and stigmatized him as “the dirty little coward,” who didn’t have to balls to engage in a direct shootout and finally shot Jesse in the back.

Most of the tale, though, is a detailed chronicle of how Ford became a member of Jesse’s inner circle, which ultimately enabled him to bring down a formidable figure that numerous lawmen across a dozen states had tried and failed? The movie is about the evolution of friendship and camaraderie, ho Ford and his brother (Sam Rockwell) come to be friends of Jesse and what happened among this trio in the last days and hours leading up to the gunshot that would end one man’s life and become the definition and sum total of another’s.

Just in case you thought this is a story of three amigos, Dominik enriches the saga by introducing at least a down fully developed characters, Jesse’s wife (Mary Louise Parker) and children, his larger family, and entourage of mostly male buddies.

The brilliant Oscar-nominated lenser Roger Deakins shot the movie in Canada’s Calgary and Winnipeg, where Clint Eastwood also filmed some of his Westerns. Deakins is an expert of capturing the unique beauty of remote wintry sites, as was evident in the Coen brothers’ Oscar-winning “Fargo” and the upcoming “No Country for Old Men,” which is very much a Western, albeit set in modern times.

It’s a pleasure to report that, for a change, judging by the end result, the rumors of Domink’s troubled production are just rumors–or else, they corrected the picture’s problems whatever they were. And while “Assassination of Jesse James” is an art film in the positive sense of the term, it’s also, as of today, one of the best films of the year.

http://www.emanuellevy.com/article.php?articleID=6936

Brad Pitt looks great !

he looks great, he’s 43, how do ppl expect a 43 yr old to look? and saying clooney looks good is too funny, the man looks sick.

the gang arriving in Venice

http://i13.tinypic.com/4qgepfb.jpg

51 KrungKrung : 09/02/2007 at 9:37 am
43 Polencheck - are you one of the VIRUS? why so pissed of huh? so obvious, you’re so busted
———————–r u an idiot or do u just play one here?…gthmf

WOW what a gorgeous sight to wake up too on a Sunday morning. The man is just total hotness all over. He looks fantastic.I love that color on him. I can’t wait for the RC later

And way to go Variety for that great review.

Good morning Jared and thanks for the new thread

pittwatch.com has pics of brad and the whole family arriving in venice

BAMPZS fans it’s Sunday here, a long weekend in the US and lets just pity the poor folks who have nothing better to do than sit and wait for a new thread about the JP’s so they can spread their venom! Pretty sad lives if you ask me! We are here enjoying and celebrating a family we love, I don’t have the time to spend lurking on a site about people I don’t care for, there is too much fun to be had! So lets just pity the poor souls with nothing better to do, and get ready for a Red Carpet celebration tonight!!

the photographers threatened to walk-out of the presscon when brad pitt refused to remove his sunglasses… he looks a bit tires but still hot…