All eyes are on the fall festivals now as Venice and Telluride are set to gear up next week with Toronto shortly after. And just on the horizon: New York. The Film Society at Lincoln Center pretty much won the day this season by landing the big premieres of David Fincher's “Gone Girl” and Paul Thomas Anderon's “Inherent Vice,” while the choice of “Birdman” for closing night – despite the fact that it will have already played Venice and likely Telluride prior – felt like a natural progression. NYFF Director and Selection Committee Chair Kent Jones recently spilled a bit on the Fincher and the Anderson, two films hotly anticipated this season.
First, “Gone Girl.” He didn't have a lot to say but he did mention that the film is “this panoramic, phantasmagorical, acid trip of a movie that keeps shifting gears for an amazing cinematic ride.” He said “Vice,” too, was in that realm, “in a completely different way.” Here are his full thoughts on the Thomas Pynchon adaptation:
“Wild movie…It really catches [Pynchon's] tone. It really catches the antic nature of him: the crazy names of characters, the nutty behavior, and then also the emotional undertone. It has the flavor of Pynchon. It has this 'Big Lebowski' element to one side of it, but the emotional undertone, the desperation, the paranoia, and the yearning in the film… [Paul Thomas Anderson is] an absolutely amazing filmmaker and it”s incredible to see him responding to someone else”s creation and then building his own creation out of it. He sort of did that with 'There Will Be Blood,' but not really. It”s his own movie, inspired by the novel 'Oil!'”
He also mentions that Katherine Waterston is a stand-out in the film, which squares with the early thoughts we posted a few weeks ago. One of our sources said the film was packed with “Zucker Bros.-level gags” and also mentioned “The Big Lebowski” as a touchstone, so again, this looks to be (excitingly) a very different PTA experience.
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Meanwhile, a new image from the film has bubbled up, which you can see up at the top of this post. It's nice to have something, anything else. We're a ways off from release, but with the NYFF bow just over a month away, I imagine we'll get a trailer before long.
“Gone Girl” hits theaters on Oct. 3. “Inherent Vice” opens limited on Dec. 12.