After a six year hiatus, Cameron Crowe is about to come back in a big way with three films released in five months: The music documentaries Pearl Jam Twenty and The Union as well as the narrative film, We Bought A Zoo. Like all of his previous films, though, these are singular stories. Crowe’s never been much of as a sequel guy. However, during the annual Television Critics Association press tour, when asked if he’d ever do a sequel to Say Anything, Crowe said the following:
I do kind of think there might be another chapter to that. I’ve thought about it from time to time, and talked to John Cusack about it. Lloyd Dobler might be back. It’s the only thing I’ve written that I would consider doing that with.
Can he possibly be serious? After the jump, read more about that as well as his choice of composer on We Bought a Zoo, Sigur Ros member Jonsi. Read More »
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Trailers are an under-appreciated art form insofar that many times they’re seen as vehicles for showing footage, explaining films away, or showing their hand about what moviegoers can expect. Foreign, domestic, independent, big budget: I celebrate all levels of trailers and hopefully this column will satisfactorily give you a baseline of what beta wave I’m operating on, because what better way to hone your skills as a thoughtful moviegoer than by deconstructing these little pieces of advertising? Some of the best authors will tell you that writing a short story is a lot harder than writing a long one, that you have to weigh every sentence. What better medium to see how this theory plays itself out beyond that than with movie trailers?
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If you’re more interested in the typical fall slate of festival entrees than summer’s glut of tentpole action fare, this is a great week. The Toronto International Film Festival announced the first wave of films that will play the fest in September. This is a batch of about 50 titles, which makes up only a small chunk of the programming. Usually TIFF features between two and three hundred films. But these are some of the highest-profile entries.
Below you’ll find rundowns on the new films from George Clooney, Bennett Miller, Jay & Mark Duplass, Todd Solondz, Francis Ford Coppola, Cameron Crowe, Sarah Polley, Fernando Meirelles, Lars von Trier, Marc Forster, Steve McQueen, Alexander Payne, and Lynne Ramsay. No announcement yet of the Midnight Madness programming choices, always some of my faves, but this is a great start. Read More »
Six years have passed since we last saw a new Cameron Crowe movie and now we get three in five months. It starts in September with Pearl Jam Twenty, Crowe’s documentary on the influential Seattle grunge band. Then in December Crowe returns to narrative filmmaking with We Bought a Zoo starring Matt Damon and Scarlett Johansson, followed quickly in January by The Union, his documentary about Elton John‘s collaboration with Leon Russell. The first two films will be released in theaters but HBO has picked up The Union and will air it in January 2012. Read the press release and more after the break. Read More »
Cameron Crowe seems to be really enjoying Twitter. Not only has he been replying back to fans, he’s continued to tweet photos from the set of We Bought a Zoo. Crowe’s latest is scheduled for release on December 23 and stars Matt Damon as a man whose family buys and moves to a zoo after an untimely death. It also stars Scarlett Johansson, Elle Fanning, Thomas Hayden Church, Patrick Fugit, Angus Macfadyen, John Michael Higgins and others. Several of them – and the monkey from The Hangover Part II – are in the new photos that Crowe himself took and posted online. Read More »
Cameron Crowe is keeping busy. He just world premiered his Elton John documentary, The Union, at the Tribeca Film Festival, released the first trailer for his upcoming Pearl Jam documentary, Pearl Jam Twenty, is currently directing We Bought a Zoo and even started tweeting. The writer/director whose love of mass media was immortalized in Almost Famous recently joined Twitter, the popular social networking site, and immediately put it to good use with some never before seen shots from the set of his upcoming drama starring Matt Damon, Scarlett Johansson and more. Check them out after the break. Read More »
Cameron Crowe hasn’t had a film on screens in a while — his last was the tepid Elizabethtown, in 2005 — but he’s roaring back with three features in 2011. Roaring, I tell you. One new film is the drama We Bought A Zoo, with Matt Damon, Scarletty Johansson and Elle Fanning. That one will hit in mid-December. Then there is the first of two documentaries, The Union, about the making of Elton John and Leon Russell’s album of the same name.
Finally, he’s got Pearl Jam Twenty, a doc which celebrates the twentieth anniversary of the band’s existence. (Which is actually not quite right, as the band formed prior to 1991, but ’91 is when the major debut release, ‘Ten,’ hit shelves.) Now there’s a brief teaser for the doc, which shows the very early days, when Peal Jam played under a different name. Read More »
I’m a huge fan of director Cameron Crowe, and Almost Famous is one of my favorite films of all time. Before I started /Film, one of the websites I use to check on a regular basis was a Cameron Crowe fansite called The Uncool (which, yes, is a brilliant reference from Almost Famous). The guy who owned the blog, Greg Mariotti, you might know from another film blog called PixarTalk (he’s appeared on the /filmcast as well), sold the site years ago to Crowe himself.
Cameron brought Greg on to help with his official site, which was a cool looking flash-designed dysfunctional mess, and the blog folded. Updates became few and far between. Recently Mariotti relaunched The Uncool as a stand-alone official blog, which is allowing him to post all sorts of cool Cameron Crowe-related material. I’ve been looking for an excuse to write about the blog for the past month, and now I have one.
Today Greg posted an article titled “5 Things I Learned About We Bought a Zoo”, which includes photos and observations from visiting the California-based se of his new film, a big screen adaptation of We Bought a Zoo which stars Matt Damon, Scarlett Johansson, Thomas Haden Church, John Michael Higgins, Angus MacFadyen, Patrick Fugit, and more. I’ve never been to the set of a Cameron Crowe film, so I’ll have to live vicariously through Greg’s reports… but maybe someday? Head over to TheUncool to learn about the changes that Cameron has taken from Benjamin Mee‘s book, technical details (yes, the movie is being shot on film), details on Cameron’s new partnership with Director of Photography Rodrigo Prieto and more. I’m sure he has more, which will likely be posted in future updates.
