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Post by RhodoraO on Feb 17, 2017 6:13:16 GMT
Discussions, reviews, legacy, news, pics, artwork, etc.
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Post by RhodoraO on Feb 17, 2017 18:58:25 GMT
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Post by RhodoraO on Feb 22, 2017 4:08:43 GMT
Have you ever taken this poll on IMDb titled which asks: From this list of movie magicians/illusionists, which one is your favorite?Bale's Alfred Borden is of course on the list. As for the results... **SPOILER AHEAD** He leads with a difference of 2157 votes! Jackman's Angier is surprisingly at fourth place. Wasn't he supposed to be the more dashing/attractive one? **SPOILER END**
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Post by RhodoraO on Mar 10, 2017 23:07:06 GMT
From A. O. Scott's NYtimes review: Set in a stylized late-Victorian world of dueling music-hall magicians and diabolically clever inventors, it has a satisfyingly puzzlelike structure, zipping around in time and scattering clues throughout its busy scenes and frames. Like “Memento,” also directed by Christopher Nolan and based on a story by his brother, “The Prestige” is a triumph of gimmickry, a movie generous enough with its showmanship and sleight of hand to quiet the temptation to grumble about its lack of substance.
The point of a magic trick, after all, is not the content, whatever that might be, but the ingenuity of its conceit and the skill of its execution. And “The Prestige” — the title is a magician’s term of art referring to the climactic surprise that seals a successful trick — manifests an enthusiasm for the nuts and bolts of illusionism that is pretty much irresistible.
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Angier is the smoother performer, as much an actor as a prestidigitator, and Mr. Jackman, equally at home onstage and on screen, uses his lean, long-legged charisma to good effect. Mr. Bale’s fierce inwardness likewise suits the character of Borden, a working-class striver (Angier is a slumming aristocrat) who is also something of a purist. He disdains Angier’s crowd-pleasing antics in favor of a more stripped-down presentation, challenging his audience rather than charming or seducing it.
Mr. Nolan’s sympathies appear to lie mainly with Borden, but as a director, he has sensibilities more in line with Angier’s.
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Mr. Bale’s performance, in particular, is something to savor (especially in retrospect, when you at last understand just what he’s been up to), but the acting in “The Prestige” is, for the most part, subordinate to the plot twists and visual sensations.... An interesting paragraph, in reference to the technology shared by the Tesla character with Angier (Hugh Jackman): But the Nolans, eager to push the boundaries of their jaw-dropping parlor trick, introduce an element of bunk that compromises the coherence of the film’s concept. At least I suspect that Alfred Borden might think so, which makes me wonder if the filmmakers might not agree. Their slyest move may be to divide “The Prestige,” already caught between two protagonists, against itself. Maybe, in the end, it all makes sense. Or maybe convincing you that it does is just the last and cleverest of this movie’s many sleights of hand.____________ Also, according to the review, Ricky Jay, a real-life magician has a cameo in the movie.
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Post by RhodoraO on Jul 21, 2017 22:04:41 GMT
The Prestige has been receiving a lot of retrospective attention in the days leading up to release of Nolan's latest Dunkirk. Here I reproduce a great perspective on Nolan on general but really focusing on The Prestige on the blog The Ringer:
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Post by RhodoraO on Jul 21, 2017 22:13:46 GMT
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Post by RhodoraO on Feb 18, 2019 5:33:52 GMT
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Post by RhodoraO on Dec 24, 2020 15:14:54 GMT
A great 2006 piece from Empire about the making of The Prestige, that they republished this year before Tenet: www.empireonline.com/movies/features/the-prestige-inside-christopher-nolan-movie-magic-trick/A fun tidbit from Bale on his mom's reaction on David Bowie's involvement in the film: "His co-stars were predictably thrilled to be working with The Thin White Duke, but none more so than Christian Bale's mum; "When I told her I was in the same film as David Bowie, she said, 'Oh, finally you're doing an important film!' I said, 'Well, I have worked with Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman...' and she was like, 'But this is David Bowie!' And I don't even have a scene with him!"
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Post by RhodoraO on Feb 12, 2021 5:48:36 GMT
Quentin Tarantino referenced Christian Bale and his scene from The Prestige while talking about test audiences not understanding a key funny scene from his movie Django: movieweb.com/django-unchained-funniest-scene-cut/Original source for the Tarantino quote: Empire Online's Celebration Cinema podcast: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/celebration-cinema-edgar-wright-quentin-tarantino-in/id507987292?i=1000507570831Tarantino: ""We shoot the scene, and forget about the fact that it's a long comedy sequence - it's a five-minute non-sequitur in a movie that's already really long. So me and my editor Fred [Raskin] we cut the movie together, we cut that sequence together, and we're really happy with it... and so an interviewer would come and interview me and I would leave the editing room and have lunch with them and talk about something, and I'd go, 'Hey do you wanna see a scene from the movie?' "'Yeah sure, I'd be happy to!' Or a director or somebody would visit. And so we had like four different times where somebody came by to visit for whatever reason and we were gonna show them something, so we would bring out that scene and show it to them. And it never got the response we thought it should get. They didn't really know what the hell they were watching. It's almost like in The Prestige when Christian Bale does the magic trick [Hugh Jackman is] like, 'He doesn't even do it right! The audience doesn't even realize what a good trick it is!' (laughs)"
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Post by RhodoraO on May 11, 2021 4:47:46 GMT
The Prestige fan art is so rare to come by...
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Post by The Low Dweller on Jan 1, 2022 19:49:41 GMT
hadn't heard this piper perabo tidbit before. it's very sweet.
rebecca hall:
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Post by RhodoraO on Jan 2, 2022 6:11:31 GMT
Great finds, buddy! Both incidents are very sweet. This was probably Rebecca Hall's first-ever movie role in LA, by the sounds of it.
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