Once upon a time, a nuclear-powered Russian K-141 Kursk sub sank during a training exercise in the Barents Sea.
It happened in the year 2000, and, now, Matthias Schoenaerts is going to help tell that story, as one of 23 sailors on board to survive the crashed that caused the ordeal and desperately cling to oxygen and hope as the minutes to rescue tick-tocked by ’em.
The film will be titled Kursk, and it will be based on A Time to Die: The Untold Story of the Kursk Tragedy by Robert Moore.
Alrighty then. Anything that keeps Schoenaerts coming to the movie theater is fine by me.
Photo: Initials-LA.com.
Fresh off his turn in The Danish Girl, Matthias Schoenaerts is looking ahead at...Dakota Johnson?
No, the Belgian Brando hasn’t gone after a part in the Fifty Shades of Grey sequel and gotten it. He is, however, set to explore The Sound of Metal with the How to Be Single actress, his Bigger Splash co-star.
The drama from Darius Marder (he co-wrote The Place Beyond the Pines) will center on the members of a band led by Johnson, and how the hearing loss its drummer (Schoenaerts) begins to experience affects their rhythm and, of course, his future.
Production is expected to get underway late this summer.
Photo: Express.co.uk.
There is something so incredibly...confounding about The Danish Girl, Tom Hooper’s fine take on the story of transsexual Danish landscape painter Einar Wegener, one the first men ever to undergo operations to become a woman back in the 1930s.
For one, the second-in-a-row showcase of Eddie Redmayne’s Academy Award-winning talent hardly belongs exclusively to him. It Girl Alicia Vikander (Ex Machina) co-stars opposite the Theory of Everything revelation, and while she is being campaigned in the Supporting Actress category this awards season (for her leading-caliber turn as Gerda Wegener, the unwavering portraitist-wife of Einar), the film is just has hers, if not more than Redmayne’s.
Vikander brought it. She is in The Danish Girl to win it (gf came to play!), and she easily steals the film away from her leading man. Like, she is the one referred to as the Danish girl, this story is that much about her (too).
Not that Redmayne doesn’t show up. His nuanced, if shtick-y dual portrayal of a loving husband in chaos with himself, and, later, of Lili Elbe, a blossoming woman misunderstood by a society that absolutely thought her gender identity crisis was a perversion but who was nevertheless bravely determined to live as her truest self, is the stuff of Oscar-nomination dreams.
Lucinda Coxon’s adaptation of the David Ebershoff novel that gives the film its name and marching orders, however, translates into something that draws a mostly by-the-numbers performance from Redmayne, for he is completed unaided by Hooper’s penchant for tight close-ups. Can’t the Academy Award-winning director of The King’s Speech allow his talent some room to breathe?
He really should because his style, which arguably worked on an ensemble akin to that of Les Misérables – ergo the praise lavished upon Anne Hathaway, for instance – can grow tiresome fast when imposed onto one or two actors. Worse, it can betray their bag o’ tricks.
It is aggroying to see how Redmayne clicks in and out between Einar and Lili in certain scenes (he does this blink-y, focus-y thing...). It is almost as distracting as having to have to accept the hair and make-up that Vikander sports in the film. Her wig is just so obvious, and during one of Lili’s earliest, most pivotal scenes, the actress looks or is lit to look as if she just stepped out of the spray tan booth.
I mean, WTF.
That Vikander manages to transcend these poor production values is a testament to her commitment to her work and, perhaps, to her smart recognition that the role of Gerda Wegener was a starmaker.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. So what is this about Gerda and Lili having an early scene together, how did that go?
See, the film spins its yarn in a matter-of-fact way. We meet Einar and Gerda. They’re artists living in Copenhagen; he’s the toast of the town, while she’s the struggling artist in the family. They’re super-tuned to each other until one day, she asks him to pose for her, as a woman, so she may finish the piece on which she’s been working (the model, a bon-vivant-dancer-friend of theirs winningly portrayed by Magic Mike XXL’s Amber Heard, is running late, you see). The seemingly innocuous moment awakens something in Einar, though – something very real he knows has been dormant.
Long story short, Gerda is not against having Lili around the house or the studio: Lili, with whom Gerda speaks and essentially girlfriends around town for fun, turns out to be quite good for her business (Copenhagen and then Paris fall for her portraits). Alas, Einar begins finding it increasingly more difficult to tame Lili’s desires. He tests his and her own boundaries with a dalliance with a suitor played by SPECTRE’s Ben Whishaw, and for the second half of the film, lives out loud as Lili (well, as loud as he can be in the privacy of his old home with his trying-to-be-understanding-and-supporting wife).
The Danish Girl deftly explores the conflict that Lili brings into Einar’s and, especially, Gerda’s life, yet it is structured in such a traditional manner that mirrors more “classic” propositions. Much as in Redmayne’s last awards-baiting offering, a love triangle of sorts develops when Matthias Schoenaerts enters the scene as a childhood friend of Einar’s who takes a shine to not only Lili but Gerda as well. It eclipses the anguish and abandonment that colors the dissolution of the Wegeners’ marriage, but it discreetly helps bridge Gerda’s own transition from wife to friend to leftover. From beginning to end, she comes off the most fully realized.
Ultimately, the film falls on this side of working thanks to Vikander, albeit in a minor way, as far as filmmaking is concerned, and a major way, as far as telling an Important Story to Tell is concerned. The transgender movement is hot right now, and rightfully so, so it is imperative that more and more people witness what it was like once upon a time. Einar and Lili, they put themselves through the ringer to try to live in the authentic way the lot of us take for granted.
For that, this one deserves attention.
Just try to forget that Nicole Kidman and Gwyneth Paltrow were once attached to star. That will trip you up for a while...if you let it.
My Rating ***
Photo: Focus Features.
Dunno what it is about 2015, but it is giving major vibes of a repeat.
See, I am thinking that Eddie Redmayne and Julianne Moore are destined to repeat their dances with Oscar next winter. At least when it comes to getting nominated, although everything I’m hearing could very well point to back-to-back wins.
The evidence is finally in front of us now that we’re starting to see the first previews for their respective films, The Danish Girl and Freeheld.
Redmayne’s The Danish Girl, the story of transsexual Danish painter Einar Wegener, one of the first men ever to undergo operations to become a woman – known as Lili Elbe – back in the early 1930s, for one, screams of awards bait. The film was helmed by Academy Award-winning director Tom Hooper (The King’s Speech). It’s a period piece featuring an It Girl (Alicia Vikander), the Belgian Brando, Matthias Schoenaerts, Amber Heard, and Ben Whishaw.
It is incredibly timely, given its subject matter. And it, well...check out the film’s trailer and see for yourself.
Right?
Photo: IndieRevolver.com.
I feel that, for the last couple of years, I have been waiting for Matthias Schoenaerts’ star to take off, you know. For him to happen, really happen, in America.
Sure, the fact that the Belgian Brando’s stateside ascent has been a slow and steady one is a good thing, for it means that he will stick around for a while – but I need a little more Schoenaerts in my life. And I need it now.
I mean, Rust and Bone feels like a long time ago, The Drop pretty much kinda came and went last fall, and this weekend’s The Loft is not getting a whole lotta buzz.
OK, sure, soon enough he will be inescapable, what with Suite Française and Far From the Madding Crowd getting ready to come out and be seen. But will those decidedly art-house-y projects break the guy through?
Big maybe.
HBO also seems to think that Schoenaerts is som’in’ to be see, alright, which is probably why the clever creatives working on this Lewis and Clark mini for the premium cabler (including executive producers Tom Hanks, Brad Pitt, and Edward Norton) have tapped the actor for a starring part on it, opposite Casey Affleck.
Based on this Undaunted Courage book by Stephen E. Ambrose, Lewis and Clark will relate America’s first contact with the land and native tribes of the country west of the Mississippi River, centering on Corps of Discovery captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, two journeymen venturing into uncharted territory to deliver President Jefferson’s message of sovereignty as they search for his all-water route to the Pacific Ocean.
Mmm...period Schoenaerts....
Photo: GettyImages.com.
Mmm...atthias Schoenaerts.
Mmm hmmm.
The Belgian Brando Рsoon to be seen in Suite Fran̤aise Рis set to join Eddie Redmayne in The Danish Girl, the Tom Hooper-directed story of transsexual Danish painter Einar Wegener, of one the first men ever to undergo operations to become a woman back in the 1930s.
Schoenaerts joins a cast that also includes Alicia Vikander and Amber Heard.
Photo: TheFashionisto.com.
Picture it: Five married friends, at the behest of one of them who is not quite so keen on keeping it in his pants, decide to share a secret “f--- pad,” right.
Hey, it happens. In certain circles.
Anyway, that’s where things get real interesting: One day, one of ’em stops by to drop off some groceries and finds a dead, bloodied woman handcuffed to the bed.
So they all cannot help but wonder: Who did it? Who else knows about this secret they’ve been under the impression the’ve been so good about keeping? And what ever happened to Patrick Wilson being in the film that tells this story, The Loft (the remake of the 2008 Belgian thriller), anyway?
I have that answer! He was replaced, due to a scheduling conflict with that short-lived show he had on CBS, by Star Trek’s Karl Urban, who stars in the much-delayed project alongside James Marsden, Wentworth Miller (who will soon be seen on The CW’s The Flash), Eric Stonestreet (TV’s Modern Family), and that hot dish Matthias Schoenaerts, not to mention Isabel Lucas, Rhona Mitra, Margarita Levieva (TV’s Revenge), and Rachael Taylor (TV’s Crisis).
Check out the trailer for The Loft here, and keep and eye for a potential viewing in theaters...soon (the movie was supposed to finally see the light of day at the end of August – but not anymore).
Photo: Cinevox.be.
Last year, we got to see the late James Gandolfini in one of his last silver-screen performances in the comedy Enough Said.
It was a delightful playing-against-type turn, and a especially moving one at that, since he was playing an oh-so-believable romantic lead.
This year, though, we will get one more performance from the man who was Tony Soprano, in a more...obvious setting: a dramatic thriller.
And not just in any ol’ dramatic thriller but in the Tom Hardy-led The Drop, which is based on the Dennis Lehane short story “Animal Rescue.”
The Michaël Roskam-directed film – which co-stars Noomi Rapace, Matthias Schoenaerts (pictured here with Hardy...you’re welcome), and Adore’s James Frecheville – centers on a lonely Boston Brooklyn bartender who saves a little puppy and is then targeted by its former owner while a crime related to the city’s underbelly plays out.
Check out the trailer for The Drop now and make sure you check it out when it opens on Sept. 21.
Photo: charlidos.tumblr.com.
So like, #fail.
I mean, uhm...why did I not know that Matthias Schoenaerts is one the new faces and bodies and situations of Louis Vuitton?
Probably because when it comes to LV these days, it has all be about his Suite Française co-star, Michelle Williams.
Anyway, this spring and summer most definitely just got that much more studly because of Schoenaerts.
Don’t believe me?
Then click here to see the Belgian Brando and the Kim Jones-designed clothes he wears for the American-road-inspired campaign in action.
Photo: WWD.com.
Nic Pizzolatto is on fiya thanks to his hit HBO drama True Detective.
So it only makes sense that for his next project the powers that be have paired the guy’s material with Rust and Bone star Matthias Schoenaerts, another hot up-and-comer.
The Belgian star is going to star in an adaptation of Pizzolatto’s Galveston novel, the story of a man who finds out that his loan-sharking, bar-owning boss wants him dead – on the same day that he is diagnosed with a terminal illness.
Things devolve in what are described as Cormac McCarthy-esque ways from that point forward.
Yes! I am sooo looking forward to seeing Schoenaerts explode in the most Fassbenderian way. And he has quite a docket of films ready for release to assist him in just that endeavor.
One of the actors who has me the most excited these days is Matthias Schoenaerts.
The guy, o.k.a. the Belgian Brando, is said to have been tremendous in Marion Cotillard’s Rust and Bone (I’ve not yet made sure), and he soon will share the screen with Michelle Williams in Suite Française and with Tom Hardy and Noomi Rapace in Animal Rescue.
The industry has taken notice.
And the projects keep a-comin’ his way.
Case in point: the already-shooting-in-the U.K. adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd, in which Schoenaerts will appear as the sheep farmer Gabriel Oak opposite Carey Mulligan, Michael Sheen (The Queen, Showtime’s Masters of Sex), Orphans Tony nominee Tom Sturridge, and Juno Temple.
Mmm... Schoenaerts as a farmer....
Photo: DesignScene.net.
Yo, Tom Hardy and Noomi Rapace – make room for that Belgian star in the making known as Matthias Schoenaerts over at Animal Rescue.
The Rust and Bone standout has joined the adaptation of the Dennis Lehane short story.
Schoenaerts will reunite with his Bullhead director Michaël Roskam, to play a supporting role in the story of a lonely Boston bartender who saves a dog and ends up a mob target.
Sopranos star James Gandolfini also has come on board the project.
Photo: Zimbio.com.
For months I have been anticipating the release of the latest Marion Cotillard vehicle, Rust and Bone, because her performance in the film is said to be fantastic.
Now, I won’t lie, though – there’s also the matter of Matthias Schoenaerts, the Oscar winner’s Belgian co-star. The guy just has this look that does it...that makes it jiggle.
He looks like a bad boy. With a hot a bod and irresistible puppy eyes.
Guess that’s why the call him the Belgian Brando.
Which is probably why director Jacques Audiard (A Prophet) cast him in the film. I bet his character, Ali, a broken bare-knuckle boxer and bouncer, had to be believable as someone so unlikely to form a bond with Cotillard’s literally pulled apart killer whale trainer that it makes perfect sense they would be drawn together.
I mean, look at the guy.
It so sucks Imma gon’ have to wait a bit longer now since I’m not in the United States at the moment (the film opens in Miami on Jan. 11).
Photo: 123People.com.
