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Annapurna is funding Jenkins' next film, an adaptation of James Baldwin's If Beale Street Could Talk

Outstanding news, and completely out of left field for me, as I had no idea he had adapted Beale Street and was in the process of obtaining the rights.

As a side note, I chuckled when I saw Variety misattribute Gloria Karefa-Smart's reference to Jenkins' debut film as a turn of phrase!

Annapurna, not A24.

Right you are, fixed!

Wow, looks great!

I am extremely ready for an African-American Carol vibe from the director of Moonlight. Extremely.

I wasn't the biggest fan of Moonlight, but this looks fantastic. I'm glad Barry Jenkins didn't compromise on his follow-up to it!

Good god now that's a trailer! Those Demme shots are a great way to pull you into what everyone's about to say. I loved Moonlight and Carol so beyond excited is how I'm feeling about now.

I liked but didn't love Moonlight.

This is looking pretty phenomenal, though. There's just something about the imagery that is really resonating.

Persona wrote: Thu Aug 02, 2018 11:33 pm This is looking pretty phenomenal, though. There's just something about the imagery that is really resonating.

Indeed. This teaser / trailer might be the best-shot thing I’ve seen this year.

It’s a great trailer but I’m not seeing how this is so different from what Moonlight was showing in its own trailer.

Oh, yeah, it's not all that different, I just think the cinematography game looks stepped up a notch and maybe the vision looks even more confident this time around? Some of the close-up shots here like the hand gripping or the underwater shot are just really something and I hope there's a lot of that in the film. But also some beautiful wide shot compositions, too, with kind of the lovely use of color and soft-edge lighting that Moonlight had in some of its scenes, but there seems to be a little bit more going on in these. Can't wait to see the whole thing and also what Cuaron did with same camera, Alexa 65, in B&W for Roma.

I also found the trailer's use of sound really effective. That audio clip of Baldwin really couldn't have been used better, I don't think.

The book sure doesn't take it easy on cops/district attorneys/white Americans. Maybe Boots Riley will like this one better.

Persona: You know there's an "edit" feature on your posts, right? You have now posted 4 times in succession, and 5 of the last 7 in here are yours. Hit the little pencil icon and you can just add further thoughts onto your last one.

I posted something snarky about this yesterday that I shouldn't have, but you really do not need to bump this thread every time you've got a new passing thought about it, there are better ways built into the forum's code that make that unnecessary.

Apologies, yeah, I didn't even realize that I was doing that since there were days between each of the posts and I guess I should have made mental note that I was the last one posting each time. Thanks.

All good.

Nothing wrong with enthusiasm, Persona, but you also don't want to treat the forum like your personal blog or Twitter account. It wears out your welcome real fast.

Yeah, certainly not my intention. In fact, I will go ahead and combine my posts.

Positive first response out of TIFF... but as not many effusive reviews as I think most expected. Prob not the awards player it seemed to be

domino harvey wrote: Mon Sep 10, 2018 6:06 am Positive first response out of TIFF... but as not many effusive reviews as I think most expected. Prob not the awards player it seemed to be

I'm going mostly by Twitter reactions, admittedly, and that's probably tainted by Barry Jenkins being an active on there himself, but most of what I've seen has been pretty effusive. Are there actual reviews that are being more measured?

Reviews in the Guardian and THR are both positive but yes, more measured. A few slightly less enthused reactions on letterboxd as well. The consensus among them seems to be that it contains a lot of individually beautiful and powerful moments but other elements drag it down and it doesn’t cohere into a singularly satisfying experience. Dave Franco’s brief appearance is also being singled out as an odd and distracting moment.

There is still an abundance of effusive reactions, though, and it seems likely to continue to be an awards player at least for cinematography, score, and a handful of performances, as everyone seems to agree those elements are all pretty exceptional.

Well the character Franco is playing is sort of an odd and distracting one in the book, too.

Maybe this is a case of a film being too faithful to its source material? Because I can see a lot of the stuff in the book, which works well in that context, perhaps not working so well in the cinematic medium.

Looking for myself and it does seems to me that most of the praise is pretty genuine and effusive. Maybe not "Star is Born" type hyperbole, but that's probably a good thing.

Continuing to be incredibly excited for this.

Whereas I could go the rest of my life never needing to see hyperbole like that directed towards any movie