The Three Realities of ZOOM

The Three Realities of ZOOM

From the crazy mind of Pedro Morelli, written for the screen by Matt Hansen, and produced by Niv Fichman, these three creative geniuses collaborated to create the distinct universes of ZOOM. Hansen explains that “originally, the film was similar to INCEPTION in that it started with one reality point and went further into one’s consciousness. This changed when I suggested that we do the film Escher staircase style where we would have different worlds affecting one another. Conceptually, this idea sounded really cool, but we soon realized that realistically the idea was fairly complicated. We then decided cut the film down to three stories, which led us to create ZOOM.”

Emma The Cartoonist

Emma works in a factory that makes love dolls. But when she looks in the mirror, Emma tends to compare herself to the dolls and becomes dissatisfied with her own flawed body. And so, she decides to invest her savings in breast implant surgery. The surgery endows Emma with enormous breasts, just like the dolls. But she has a hard time getting used to their presence and begins to feel like a stranger in her own body. Emma questions her decision and ultimately tries to get the implants removed. Unfortunately, she doesn't have enough money left for the surgical reversal.

“The thing about Emma is that a lot of people know a girl like this,” says writer Matt Hansen. “She’s nerdy but not in a pejorative kind of way. She’s caught up in this society of perfect appearances, but unable to see her own inner beauty.” Emma’s inner beauty captivated producer Niv Fichman as well. “Emma is someone who I would love to meet,” says Fichman.“She’s a secret artist, she draws really well. I feel sorry for her because she has this problem where she is not as confident as she looks and wants to be augmented. But this unrealistic image of beauty is something society has imposed on all of us and that is one of the main themes of the film.”

In her free time, Emma likes to draw cartoons and creates a comic book about the life of a filmmaker named Edward.

Edward The Filmmaker

Edward is designed by Emma to be the perfect man. Charming, handsome and sexy, he is a successful action film director. Immersed in a world of fame, fortune and vanity, he craves to be recognized for his artistic sensibility. Edward's problems begin when his penis dramatically shrinks overnight - the result of a derisive practical joke by his creator Emma, who holds his destiny in her hands. This sudden and senseless mutation leaves Edward in despair.

The character of Edward is far too familiar to those in the film industry. “Edward’s a caricature of a variety of directors in movies that both Niv and I have come across over the years, in that he’s a commercial guy who is trying to make something meaningful or arty,” says Hansen. “He’s a parody of that type of filmmaker, the process of making a film as well as having various people influencing the work, for better or worse.”

Edward's latest project is a movie about a successful Brazilian fashion model who strives to be a novelist.

Michelle The Novelist

Michelle is a Brazilian fashion model living in Toronto. She dreams of becoming a novelist despite the discouragement of her manager (and boyfriend) Dale. But when Michelle shows an incomplete manuscript to a respected publisher, he thinks it has great potential and encourages her to complete it. In order to concentrate on finishing the book, Michelle escapes to Brazil so she can focus exclusively on her work.

Michelle’s character was created around the concept that one should not judge a book by its cover. “Michelle is that kind of girl who people think is just beautiful,” says Hansen. “She has all these advantages in life: she goes to the front of the line; she can get what average people can’t and she sees the benefits and disadvantages to that---one of them being that she is not taken seriously as a writer because she’s only seen as beautiful.”

Throughout her story, Michelle is writing a book about Emma, an insecure woman who works in a factory that makes love dolls.

And this closes the circle between the three realities of ZOOM.

MA’ ROSA

MA’ ROSA   

                                                                                                                                            

Philippine release date:               July 27, 2016

Logline/Tagline/Quote:

·         Earning the Philippines’ first acting award from the prestigious Cannes Film Festival, Ms. Jaclyn Jose plays the titular role of Ma’ Rosa

                               

Director: Brillante Ma. Mendoza

Creative Consultant: Armando Lao

Screenwriter: Troy Espiritu

Director of Photography: Odyssey Flores

Musical Director: Maria Teresa Barrozo

Stars: Jaclyn Jose, Julio Diaz, Andi Eigenmann, Felix Roco, Jomari Angeles, Inna Tuason, Mark Anthony Fernandez, Baron Geisler, Mon Confiado, Neil Ryan Sese, Mark Dionisio, John Paul Duray, Vince Rillon, Mercedes Cabral, Allan Paule, Maria Isabel Lopez, Aaron Rivera, Ruby Ruiz, Kristoffer King, Timothy Mabalot, Luis Ruiz

Genre: Drama, Action

Synopsis 1:

ROSA owns a small community convenience store connected to their home in the slums of Metropolitan Manila. Together with her husband, NESTOR, they use their convenient store as cover-up for selling illegal narcotic, Methamphetamines. Their fate changes when their neighbor sets them up for a police raid leading to the couple’s arrest; a ploy for extortion. Backed against the wall, Rosa seeks help from her children, JACKSON, RAQUEL and KERWIN as they do the daunting task to buy their parent’s freedom.

Synopsis 2:

ROSA owns a small community convenient store connected to their home in the slums of Metropolitan Manila. Together with her husband, NESTOR, they use their convenient store as cover-up for selling illegal narcotic, Methamphetamines. their fate changes one Saturday night when their neighbor BONG-BONG, who works as a fly-by-night parking attendant, begs her to sell him a small pack of Methamphetamine without knowing that it’s a ploy for a pending buy-bust operation leading to Rosa and Nestor’s warrantless arrest by a police team led by Sergeant CASTOR.

The policemen command Rosa to rat-out their source of illegal narcotics as trade-off to their freedom. Hesitant, she has no choice but to call JOMAR, and cooperate with the policemen. But despite latter’s arrest, the policemen inform Rosa and Nestor that they still need to pay 50,000 pesos for their freedom. Backed against the wall, Rosa seeks help from her children, JACKSON, RAQUEL and KERWIN as they do the unthinkable. Jackson sells all their appliances while Raquel painstakingly borrows money from their poor relatives. On the other hand, Kerwin sells his body to his gay benefactor – all of these just to buy the freedom of their parents.

MTRCB Rating: (to follow)

Running Time: 1 hour and 50 minutes

Released by: Centerstage Productions thru Solar Pictures

Official Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/marosafilm/

Official Twitter: https://twitter.com/marosa2016

Official Hashtags: #MaRosa

Link to view TRAILER on YouTube: http://bit.ly/MaRosaTrailer

The Women of Trumbo

In celebration of Women’s Month, we bring you the three ladies of TRUMBO the movie. 

Screenwriter Dalton Trumbo’s acclaimed career comes to a crushing halt in the late 1940s when he and other Hollywood figures are blacklisted for their political beliefs. But all throughout this tumultuous period of his life, he was surrounded by very strong women ---friend, family, and foe.

The first lady is of course lovely wife, Cleo Trumbo, magnificently played by Diane Lane. Cleo was a former child performer who supported her mother and brother as a youngster. She epitomized Hollywood glamour but also had the strength of character to stand up to her headstrong husband. When Cleo and Trumbo first met, she was a carhop at a Hollywood drive-in where her talent for juggling water glasses made her a favorite with customers. Taken with both her beauty and her spirit, Trumbo quickly proposed. She turned him down flat and even returned the outsized tips he tried to leave her, but Trumbo’s persistence eventually paid off and Cleo remained by his side throughout his ordeals.

  

Cleo was the emotional anchor for Trumbo. She allowed her husband to get all of the attention. Similarly, Diane is a very generous, giving actress, who recognized that she was going to play second fiddle to Bryan, the way Cleo did to Dalton. She was not only comfortable with that, but she created a kind of stillness that represented what Cleo did in real life. 

    

Although Cleo had the looks and charisma to be a film star, she chose to focus on being a wife and mother. She was very devoted to her husband and her children and her determination to protect them gave her strength. Lane says that while she had heard of the Hollywood Ten and Trumbo, she learned much more while shooting the film. “I became convinced that this story needed to be told,” she adds. “It’s frightening how little history people, myself included, are aware of. The human drama behind it is shocking. This story will be relevant as long as patriotism can be hijacked by whatever group is in charge.”

Nikola ‘Niki’ Trumbo, played admirably by Elle Fanning, is still fiercely proud and protective of her father’s legacy. “He believed Congress had no right to compel him to give testimony about his political beliefs,” says Niki. “I think he was stunned to have lost that battle. This is a story about a man who held true to his own beliefs and principles. We can all aspire to be that kind of hero, whatever our flaws and weaknesses may be.”

  

According to Nikola, the film makers “did a remarkable job of recreating the complexity and passion of my relationship with my father. He and I were, I think, very much alike – stubborn, very determined and challenging. It’s no surprise we butted heads a lot of the time.”

    

   

The real-life Niki Trumbo has high praise for Elle Fanning, the then 16-year-old actress who portrays her in a startlingly mature performance that takes the character from age 13 to 31. It became clear to Fanning through her contact with Trumbo that everyone in the family were victims of the blacklist. “They had to change their entire lives and live in secret,” she says. “Niki couldn’t tell anyone who her dad was or what he did. There’s already so much pressure as a teenager without adding to that, but she came out a fighter. Her sense of right and wrong saved her. And that came from her father.”

And lastly, our main protagonist Hedda Hopper, grandly played by Dame Helen Mirren. Hopper was a stage actress before becoming a contract player in silent movies. She managed to make the transition to talkies, but her film career was not a glittering success. When the roles started drying up, she transferred her substantial energy into becoming a very influential Hollywood columnist with a very large readership. And that she as was good at.

“Helen is a consummate professional and all about the work,” says producer Monica Levinson. “She was incredibly wonderful and you could tell everyone on set felt like we were in the presence of Hollywood royalty. She brought a very human element to Hedda Hopper, who essentially is the villain of the film.”

   

Mirren was enthralled by the story and setting of Trumbo. “How interesting Hollywood was at that time,” she exclaims. “Hollywood was an extraordinary construct, fed by publicity, by the Hedda Hoppers of the world, by the publicity agents and by the studios. There were titans abroad, all the great, great movie stars and filmmakers.”

Also, part of the attraction was the opportunity to work with Cranston whom she has admired for a long time. Mirren quips, “Working with Bryan was like being with an old friend. Actors watch each other’s work and we can develop certain little crushes on each other. Bryan has always been one of those actors for me.” And Mirren is a lover of hats, as was Hopper. She was once deemed worst-dressed at the Golden Globes for her hat, but in 'Trumbo', Mirren rocks the awesome accessory.

   

According to Mirren, Hopper truly believed she was fighting for what was best for America and for ideals that many Americans believed in. “The political dialogue hasn’t changed much. There is still a battle between those who believe that we have an obligation to look after people who are vulnerable and those who believe in individualism and self-determination.”

So, who “run the world?”

Trumbo in cinemas beginning March 16.

ONE OF THE WORST EVENTS IN HOLLYWOOD

By

Ymmanwel Rico Provinio

What tyrannical disservice could a democratic country, like the US of A, impose to its people? Why would a democratic country suddenly brandish communism in its own land?

World War is waving in the horizon, as the relations between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. deteriorated and the fear of the “Red Menace” reached unprecedented heights. A group called the House of Un-American Activities otherwise known as H.U.A.C., investigated thousands of Americans suspected of being communist sympathizers. Nobody was spared, when teachers, military contractors, civil servants, journalists, and others lost their jobs, their reputations, and even their families as suspicion and paranoia swept the nation. And Hollywood land and its denizens suffered from its claws and pangs.

Familiar Situations During the Philippine Martial Law

In the 1940s, Dalton Trumbo (played by Emmy & Golden Globe winner and Oscar nominee, Byan Cranston) is one of the highest paid screenwriters in the world, penning movie classics including the Oscar-nominated “Kitty Foyle” and “Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo”. A fixture on the Hollywood social scene, and a political activist supporting labor unions, equal pay, and civil rights. Brilliant, ambitious and contentious, Trumbo enjoyed exposing what he perceived as the world’s hypocrisy and injustices in his films. Academy Award-winners “Roman Holiday” and “The Brave Ones” were both written under pseudonyms during his 13-year exile from Hollywood.
 

In the late 1940s, the HUAC paid special attention to Hollywood, aimed at rooting out communists in the film industry. The Blacklist became a dreaded document when scores of prominent actors, directors, producers and screenwriters were publicly berated about their association with an array of organizations deemed to be “un-American”. Threatened with the loss of their livelihoods, many witnesses gave evidences against friends and colleagues. Ten of those called the “Hollywood Ten” refused to testify and answer any questions, denying the committee’s right to ask them about their political beliefs and denouncing the hearings as a violation of their civil rights. All ten were sentenced to prison for contempt of Congress. The best known among them was Dalton Trumbo.

“Trumbo was still known as a communist, but people don’t realize that he was actually patriot. He was a communist in the late 30s and early 40s, when that meant you were pro-labor and anti-Jim Crow, and you fought for civil rights for African-Americans,” says screenwriter John McNamara. “It had nothing to do with Russia and everything to do with how an already great country could improve itself”.

Trumbo’s story really breaks down to human rights as U.S. citizens to free speech and assembly. Trumbo and the other blacklisters were not only denied those rights – but persecuted without having committed any crimes. He was a true patriot – he loved his country. But the system failed him. His story is still relevant today, as the world in which we are living has many people facing too much intrusion from their government.

Indeed, these situations are familiar to the Filipinos who had experienced the dictatorial regime of Marcos in the 1970’s up to the 1980’s.

Powerful Enemies
 

During the Golden Age of Hollywood, actors John Wayne and Edward G. Robinson, together with a gossip columnist Hedda Hopper (played by Oscar winner Helen Mirren) were among Trumbo’s antagonists.

The quintessential man’s man and All-American hero, John Wayne, was one of the chief architects of Trumbo’s downfall. As the head of the Motion Pictures Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, he led the charge to ferret out communist sympathizers who wanted to use movies to influence the American people. Famed actor, Edward G. Robinson, who testified in front of the HUAC four times, ended betraying his friends and colleagues by giving out their names. He faced a moral dilemma of the most profound proportions.
 

Chief among Trumbo’s adversaries is the legendary gossip maven, Hedda Hopper, was a starlet whose career was never a success. She transferred her substantial energy into becoming a very successful Hollywood columnist with a large readership and enormous power. She marshaled the forces of anti-communism in Hollywood and came out strongly against Trumbo in particular. She was determined to convince America that these patriotic writers were traitors, and she wrote scathing, gossipy smears that were read by 35 million people.

Unexpected Allies    

    

At the apex of his career, Kirk Douglas, the superstar was one of the few brave insiders who used their influences to force the end of the blacklist in Hollywood. Douglas was instrumental in helping put blacklisted writers, performers, directors and other entertainment professionals back to work when he hired Dalton Trumbo.

Trumbo prevailed when star Kirk Douglas and director Otto Preminger each put the screenwriter’s real name on screen in their respective 1960 blockbusters, “Spartacus” and “Exodus”, effectively brought down the blacklist era to an end.

The history of the blacklist era and its continued relevance today were also big attractions for all those involved. “We sometimes take our rights for granted,” says the film director Jay Roach. “Free speech is easy to protect when we are saying things that are popular, but the Bill of Rights is designed to protect unpopular speech, especially in times of crisis. The blacklist era is almost forgotten, but everyone recognized that we had a singular chance to remind the world of the importance of this story”.

 

Trumbo will be showing in the Philippines beginning March 16. For more information, visit Solar Pictures on Facebook, Twitter and Instragram (@solarpicturePH).