REMINISCENCE : Promotion and Release (SPOILER ALERT)

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www.youtube.com/watch?v=DunaLTAPSEo&t=12s

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And many of us have known through his public image and the side of himself he shares with the public what kind of a person he is -- a true gentleman, an activist for humanity, and a great sense of humor! Great guy, this Man from Oz&NYC!


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Hugh Jackman/Nick Bannister's image is everywhere!

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Rebecca's view on working with Hugh --

Ferguson and Jackman reunite on the big screen after working together on the acclaimed 2017 musical drama ‘The Greatest Showman’. However, Ferguson jokes that it would be her last movie with him.

“There’s just so much I can take. It’s too much really,” Ferguson said about the multitalented actor. “The thespian that he is, I’m like, ‘Seriously, c’mon, stop singing your lines.’ But for me, to be on the receiving end on the film where we had to deep dive into things that were hard and difficult, dark and sexy — and just feeling so wonderful to do with someone who you are safe with. I can do anything and I’m protected. I can try things out. I can be ridiculous. I can humiliate myself and still be so embraced and for him, just holding space for me. And hopefully he feels the same about me.”

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Interview with Lisa Joy --

With " /Film " --

/Filmcast
Cool Stuff


‘Reminiscence’ Director Lisa Joy on Her Noir Influences and Directing Hugh Jackman [Interview]
Posted on Thursday, August 19th, 2021 by Jack Giroux



Reminiscence is a real deal, large-scale noir. Hugh Jackman plays a bitter and jaded detective of the mind, looking like he could walk the dark and rainy streets next to Kirk Douglas or Burt Lancaster and not appear out of place. Jackman delivers old-school blunt dialogue and narration only his signature sincerity could sell.

Filmmaker Lisa Joy‘s film is both new and old-school. It’s not the typical summer movie, in which characters solve conflict with fists, not brains. Joy’s movie is a carefully crafted mystery with more sorrow than action. It’s an ambitious feature filmmaking debut for the co-creator of HBO’s Westworld, who got her screenwriting career kickstarted when she wrote a spec for Pushing Daisies.

We sat down with Joy and she talked to us about making her sci-fi noir, including the classic films she references, how she writes action, and why Hugh Jackman is far more than one of Hollywood’s favorite good guys.




You’ve made a very nostalgic movie about nostalgia.

Yeah, it’s about nostalgia, but also plays with certain retro elements in terms of the art deco, quality of the set design, and the costumes. But nostalgia is also a way of looking back at something that was classic and impactful. Something that can’t quite lose its grip on you. I think that the inspirations that I draw from them are all like that. They’re movies that you remember again and again. I love To Have and Have Not, I love Vertigo, I love Out of the Past, and that all comes back and they’re like these themes, phrases of songs that get stuck in your head and influence who you become and how you see the world. I think we are made of nostalgia.


Out of the Past definitely feels like a reference here. How was it writing such hard-boiled dialogue and narration?

It was really, really fun for me, and especially the picture of Hugh Jackman delivering the lines and the rest of our actors. All of my actors happened to be whip-smart. I hit the jackpot. They can deliver those lines with a severity that goes beyond anything that I wrote simply on the page. That was really fun. I mean, it was important for me in doing something that has elements of an updated noir.

I knew that one thing to look at was voice-over because it’s such a characteristic of those types of films. I wanted to make sure that I could incorporate it in a way that was embedded in the DNA of the film. It was fun to play with that.


Narration is tricky in sci-fi, too. With voice-over, how do you strike the balance between defining the character and the world?

It is very, very difficult. I think I consider myself done with voiceover and narration when as many people think that there’s too much as think there’s too little. You’re never going to please everyone. As long as you’re pleasing yourself and people are somewhere in the middle. People either love it or they hate it. But for me, it’s part of the language of noir and it’s central to the conceit and reveals of the film. I just tried to make it as poetic as possible. Also, I trust that Hugh Jackman could read me the phone book and I’d listen to it for years and years.


Did you and Hugh Jackman want to subvert the hallmark qualities of a noir anti-hero or really lean into what defined those characters?

From the very beginning of this, with both him and Rebecca, I was like, these are not your classic roles. We need to subvert them in performance. We need to change the expectation of what it means to be the femme fatale and the hero. For Hugh, that means he wasn’t always going to be the perfect hero. There would be times when he would cross lines and he would become the villain.


There was one scene where he’s holding the gun and we just did a push-in on him holding it. He begins to shake with rage. During that moment, he transforms, for me, from the hero into the villain, because he’s gotten so blinded by his desire for revenge and answers that he’s lost control of his own moral compass.

I remember telling Hugh, you are literally ugly for this, you cannot be this beautiful man of desire. You must show the ugliness within and on your face. He completely understood what I was talking about. He is an actor with no vanity who will do anything that a character calls for. It’s what’s so incredible about Hugh. There are not many movie stars like that.


And he never does movie star crying. He lets it be ugly, too.

He does. He is an incredibly decent, kind guy, but just because he’s nice, doesn’t mean he’s simple. He is one of the most complicated, emotionally thoughtful, and intellectually sharp actors I’ve had the pleasure of working with. He is very, very sharp. And so when he brings it to the screen, he really brings it.

The way that I directed Hugh was, on the takes I would say, give a note. We would talk about it beforehand. We were really in sync for the character in the film, but I would give notes during the course of it and always he would make these beautiful adjustments. But at the end, I always said, “Now, here’s the Hugh Jackman take. Do whatever the f**k you want Hugh.” He’s so bright that he adjusts to your notes. He thinks about the character from his own point-of-view gives and himself his own notes, right? And then by the end, when you let him run free, he brings something you’ve never seen before. Something that simply directing him to do would have never surfaced. He just internalizes everything and creates something so pure. So in every scene, I guarantee it’s the Hugh Jackman take that won.



When you put the hammer in his hand during that fight scene, was that an Oldboy reference?


[Laughs] It was. I love Oldboy. It’s just a great film and I love director Park. We talked. He actually was interested for a while in directing Reminiscence, which I would’ve loved to see but it was at a different studio at the time. And we could not agree on that, but he is a great influence. He managed to make a fight scene unlike any that I’ve ever seen before. And you’re always looking for something fresh in every fight scene.

The hope for me is that it doesn’t just ascend to punching and fast cuts and such a large, symphonic mash of colors and sound that you could literally leave, take a bathroom break and come back and still doing this thing. That to me is the definition of what you’re striving for. You can’t take a bathroom break during this fight scene and come back and be like, it’s cool they’re still mashing each other to bits. And so, I really appreciate fight scenes that are scripted. There is a beginning, a middle, and an end. Action that has an arc in which the emotional journey of a character is as important within that fight scene as the physical blows that they are doling out and receiving.



How did the idea of the piano during that fight come about?

Again, that’s one of those things where I knew I wanted something really specific for that final fight scene. The piano came to me because first of all, we’re talking about the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, right? Orpheus is this musician and so much of this film also deals with music because music is a time-traveling device, much like nostalgia. Hear the right song and you’re right back in your father’s car making out with someone. It just puts you right there. I wanted some instrument to help embody the theme of that. And the other thing that I think is really interesting is I used to go to The Magic Castle. Have you ever seen The Magic Castle?


I have, yes.

It’s cool, right? There was this magician that I saw once, and I’d seen a bunch of magicians, and then he came and he was playing a lot with ice and fire. Not only did they have this incredible sleight of hand and this visual flourish, but shifting the temperature of things, made the magic that much more powerful. And so for me, I know we have water, which is going to feel psychologically like we’re drowning and short on air. I wanted the sound to echo that, right? The music cuts out and we’re only hearing organic sounds, the sounds of blood rushing through one’s ears, the sound of a heart beating.

I wanted to strip everything down to its elemental cores, but I also thought that image of the piano, that image of music falling and descending would be so beautiful. And even if you didn’t hear a piano then, just the visual cue of a piano would remind you of those creaking strings. It was adding another sensory dimension to it that gives you a more visceral feel for the fight, I thought.

Also, I like pianos and I got to play that piano in there. It was all clunky and messed up, but it was fun.


With Bannister and Watts (Thandiwe Newton), it’s refreshing to see, really, what’s the main relationship in this movie be both intimate and platonic. It’s rare.

For me, they have a shared past. They’ve known each other through better or worse. They already see each other fully. They are past infatuation. They know where each other’s bodies are buried. They know what hurts. And they know each other enough, in some ways to know that their friendship sustains them more than a romantic relationship ever really could.


I think it’s so funny because there’s a lot of… You get worried. And in Hollywood, if you cast two beautiful people, and Thandiwe and Hugh are both gorgeous, they have to make out, that’s the conventionalism. They absolutely have to make out otherwise, what are you doing?

And so casting Thandiwe, I was like, well, you are one of the most beautiful people I’ve ever laid eyes on, so I’m a little nervous. Everybody’s going to want you guys to make out. I asked, “Do you think it’s realistic?” And for me, I know that I have a lot of guy friends and those relationships are very deep to me. They’ve been big brothers. I was kind of a tomboy.

I wanted to know if that was universal. Thandiwe was like, of course, it’s ridiculous to suppose otherwise. We discussed that internally and she understood this bond. I even understand desiring in some way that person, but knowing it’s best to love him more fully in the one way that they really need, as well the one way that you can reliably give. And I think that’s a true testament of love, right? It’s selflessness knowing the state of love that sustains you both the longest and committing to that.

[Spoilers ahead in next question]


Night and day make for a nice visual motif, especially with the ending, in which you arguably get one happy ending, one tragic ending. Is that why magic hour felt right for those final images?

I knew that in a world where day is night and night is day and the heat is so scorching, you can’t go out. I knew that if you had somebody you loved, the moments that would be most precious to you would be magic hour, sunrise, and sunset. When you could actually go out and see the world with your own eyes for a bit and enjoy that 30 minutes or so. It happens to be that filmically speaking magic hour is also the enchanted hour in which everything looks the most beautiful and the night just kind of shimmers on the horizon, but you still got this beautiful daylight.

And so basically, it was very important for me to shoot in Florida, as well as New Orleans. I knew that I needed to get Miami practically in order to make the world feel real. So on the day we just ran around like fricking crazy with the actors, everybody running, Hugh was changing in public to try to make the time for the scenes. And we shot as much as we could to capture all that light before it was lost, which becomes kind of a nice memory for how to live life. So, you have good memories in the end.

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searchbeat.com/hugh-jackman-on-new-film-reminiscence-reprising-wolverine-role/news/


When he talked about the dystopian period in REMINISCENCE... he then said, in a sense, the last year or more has been dystopian for us!

That really hit!

We are ineed in a dystopian pandemic whose end we have yet to see.

Hopefully, while he started talking about the dystopian nature of REMINISCENCE, the end of this period will come as we begin to see the wonderful world of The Music Man

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Hollywood Reporter Interview with Lisa Joy, including mention of Hugh singing "Singin' In the Rain" while she played the piano on set


www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/reminiscence-lisa-joy-hugh-jackman-1235000277/

Excerpts --

It’s that magic that happens when people believe in something together, when you’re really in something with people. I would feel it when the actors would get excited about something that they discovered together or something that they had unlocked in each other in a performance. And they’re each such perfectionists. They would go again and again, and you could just feel that click when they were happy. So I was always happy when they were happy because they’re so hard on themselves.

And I have what I call the Hugh Jackman take. I’d give any notes and any thoughts that I had, but since he’s so versatile and prepared, it was always that last take where I said, “Now do whatever the hell you want.” So he would assimilate everything that he learned, and every single time, he would give the best take of the whole thing. He’s so brilliant. Hugh Jackman doesn’t leave set between takes, even though he must be exhausted after I’ve just been waterboarding him for ages. (Laughs.) He wants to be there to motivate and galvanize the crew out of solidarity, and those are huge blessings.


And as you talk about character with Rebecca or Thandiwe, you understand, even without speaking explicitly, that there’s an understanding of where these people are coming from as women. There’s this shared well that they were drawing from, and they understood the intention behind what I was saying and the subtext. So we were tapping into the same thing.


And then there’s Hugh Jackman singing “Singin’ in the Rain” while I played the piano on a different sunken set with a piano. (Laughs.) And between takes, I just got to be with people I love. When you’re filming, before you roll, the cameras are focused on people, and you see the loaders and the gaffers all wandering around set on this screen. And I always wished that I could roll on that because that’s the life and the whole ecosystem of collaborators that comes together behind the scenes. And those people with their faces pressed up, rubbing the lens, they make the magic happen, and they do it in a way where they don’t get all of their praises sung in this public way. But holy shit, they are just the most incredible collaborators in every way, and I always have a montage set to “Hallelujah” when I see their faces in the lens.

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Going to watch today on HBO MAX!! ❤️

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Poor box office results in the USA and overseas for REMINISCENCE --

variety.com/2021/film/news/box-office-paw-patrol-free-guy-1235046430/

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I was looking up more details on the Greek myth of Orpheus & Eurydice... via Wikipedia notes...as I am considering seeing HADESTOWN on Broadway next June.


en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orpheus_and_Eurydice


I was surprised to see so many artistic adaptations, in many forms ( literature, musicals, film, visual art, etc). I did see confirmation that HADESTOWN is really a musicalization of the tale, adapted from an earlier work by the same author.

But I was surprised to see that REMINISCENCE is the latest addition to the list of film adaptations!


I was even more surprised to see that the film MOULIN ROUGE was also inspired by this Greek tragedy.


I have seen Moulin Rouge and I know it is also a romantic tragedy...but while there is similarity in the death of courtesan Satine, the story seems to end there in terms of similarity to the Eurydice fate( called EURYDIKE in its original Greek Language) but while Christian does mourn her...the story ends there.

The Greeks, the inventor of the theatre, certainly have inspired so many adaptation tales, including the story of Nick Bannister and Mae!

No happy ending, though... just a happy middle


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Variety does a post-mortem on REMINISCENCE --


variety.com/2021/film/news/hugh-jackman-reminiscence-box-office-flop-1235046473/

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Cliff Curtis talks about working with Hugh, Lisa Joy and Reminiscence - some good insights.

abworldnews.com/cliff-curtis-talks-hugh-jackman-his-ideal-directors-and-nihilistic-films-like-reminiscence/

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www.giantfreakinrobot.com/ent/hugh-jackman-reminiscence-streaming.html


Not sure about the veracity of this site's reporting but it seems to be tracking film streaming




SPOILERS***********SPOILERS**********SPOILERS*********SPOILERS

Hugh Jackman Has The #1 Movie On Streaming


Okay, so it may not be the one fans are begging for, but Hugh Jackman has delivered again. His new film, a sci-fi noir thriller, has found its way to the #1 spot on the HBO Max streamer.


Reminiscence stars Hugh Jackman as Nicolas Bannister, who is a different kind of private eye. Instead of looking for people in the real world, he helps clients access their lost memories.

Nick is a vet and is partners with fellow vet Emily “Watts” Sanders (Thandiwe Newton). Together they help clients relive specific memories, her running the equipment while Nick provides the necessary input to help clients reach those memories.


The film is set in Miami, Florida in the distant future where climate change has affected everything around them. With the sea levels rising, Miami is now mostly flooded, and its extreme temperatures have forced the population to mainly live at night.

One day, Mae (Rebecca Ferguson) walks in. She has lost her keys and hopes that Nick can retrieve a memory showing her where they are located. Nick is immediately attracted to her. The next evening, Nick visits the club where Mae works as a waitress and singer. Nick’s attraction only intensifies when Mae gets up on stage and sings Nick’s favorite song. The two begin a relationship, much to Watts’ dismay, as she does not trust Mae.

We next find Nick waking up in the sensory deprivation tank, reliving memories of Mae on a loop, a practice that holds dangerous repercussions. Nick is chancing that he could be forever trapped in his memory. We then find out that Nick is reliving his memory of Mae because she disappeared months ago without a word, and he has been searching for her ever since.


Nick and Watts are then hired by prosecutor Avery Castillo to retrieve memories from a man in a coma. It is suspected that the man worked for Saint Joe, a drug kingpin. While searching the man’s memories, Nick sees Mae working as a waitress. As he continues to watch, he sees Mae become Saint Joe’s mistress and get hooked on the highly addictive narcotic, Baca.

Nick’s confrontation with Saint Joe doesn’t end well for Nick, who doesn’t get the information needed and incurs Saint Joe’s wrath. Saint Joe sends his men after Nick and almost finishes the job of drowning him before Watts arrives for the assist and rescue.

Nick is undeterred and continues his quest to find Mae. Now back in Miami, Nick hooks up Watts to his machine to have her relive the last time she encountered Mae. Here, Nick discovers that Mae broke into the vault where Nick and Watts store their client’s memories and that she stole the memory of Elsa Carine. Elsa’s memories include those of a tryst she had with the wealthy and married, land baron Walter Sylvan.


Apparently, their tryst led to Elsa being pregnant and producing a child, one who could be a potential heir to Sylvan’s fortune. Further investigating has Nick finding out that Elsa was recently murdered but the boy was kidnapped by a woman matching Mae’s description.

As Nick gets closer to the truth behind Mae’s disappearance, the walls begin to close in on him. Will true love prevail, or will it have to be relived on an endless loop?

Reminiscence comes from the mind of scribe Lisa Joy, who not only wrote the film but also made her directorial debut with it. If her name sounds familiar, it should. Joy is married to screenwriter, director, and producer Jonathan Nolan, who just so happens to be the brother of Christopher Nolan. Not that that should make much of a deal as it pertains to Joy as she has made a name in Hollywood on her own.


Joy got her writing career going on the excellent HBO series, Pushing Daisies. From there she went on to write for another excellent series, Burn Notice. All this led to Westworld, the highly acclaimed series that she created along with her husband Jonathan.

As for Hugh Jackman, no, this film is not a Ryan Reynolds/Deadpool – Hugh Jackman/Wolverine get-together, though fans would love nothing more. While the two did have a brief battle in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, with Reynolds playing some poorly conceived mute version of the Merc with the Mouth, fans are still clamoring for the two for once and for all duke it out with Reynolds current version of Deadpool.

Hugh Jackman has expressed time and again that his portrayal of Wolverine in the 2017 film, Logan, was the last time he would play the character. Since then, actually, since Reynolds went solo with Deadpool in 2016, he has constantly badgered Jackman about joining him in a Deadpool movie. Jackman hasn’t flinched…yet.


Hugh Jackman did do his pal Reynolds a favor by lending his vocal talents to Reynolds’s latest hit movie, Free Guy. If you haven’t seen it, what are you waiting for? See if you can figure out where Jackman makes his appearance.

Since Hugh Jackman’s “final” turn as Wolverine, he has found himself in a number of movies in stark contrast to Logan. He’s been seen in the musical The Greatest Showman, playing Phineas Taylor “P.T.” Barnum, The Front Runner, playing U.S. Senator Gary Hart whose run to become U.S. President was derailed by a scandalous love affair, and Bad Education, based on the true story of Frank Tassone, a Long Island school superintendent caught up in an epic embezzlement scheme.

While there are no signs of Hugh Jackman returning to the superhero ranks, he does have himself a pretty full calendar. Next up for Jackman is The Son, where he will play Peter, a busy man living his life with his partner and their baby, whose life is turned upside down when his ex-wife arrives with their teenage son, Nicholas.

hugh jackman reminiscence
Hugh Jackman also has The Good Spy, Enzo Ferrari (playing the title character), and Apostle Paul waiting in the wings.


For now, you can catch Hugh Jackman on HBO Max’s number one feature, Reminiscence. You can also hold out hope that Jackman just might bear those adamantium claws one more time.

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Here's the complete list --

blog.reelgood.com/weekly-top-10-movies-tv-streaming

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Amazon.france has announced the pre-order for the release of the home video for REMINISCNCE on December 23, 2021.

No indication if this is in English or French.

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