Here is the Fall/Holiday Preview for Miramax Films. Blindness and Doubt may score big for Miramax.
BLINDNESS
September 26, 2008
CAST:Mark Ruffalo, Julianne Moore, Gael Garcia Bernal, Sandra Oh, Danny Glover
DIRECTOR: Fernando Meirelles
From Nobel Prize winning author Jose Saramago and acclaimed director Fernando Meirelles (“The Constant Gardener,” “City of God”) comes the compelling story of humanity in the grip of an epidemic of mysterious blindness. It is an unflinching exploration of human nature, both bad and good–people’s selfishness, opportunism,and indifference, but also their capacity for empathy, love and sheer perseverance.
It begins in a flash, as one man is instantaneously struck blind while driving home from work, his whole world suddenly turned to an eerie, milky haze. One by one, each person he encounters – his wife, his doctor, even the seemingly good samaritan who gives him a lift home – will in due course suffer the same unsettling fate. As the contagion spreads, and panic and paranoia set in across the city, the newly blind victims of the “White Sickness” are rounded up and quarantined within a crumbling, abandoned mental asylum, where all semblance of ordinary life begins to break down.
But inside the quarantined hospital, there is one secret eyewitness: one woman (four-time Academy Award® nominee Julianne Moore) who has not been affected but has pretended she is blind in order to stay beside her beloved husband (Mark Ruffalo). Armed with increasing courage and the will to survive, she will lead a makeshift family of seven people on a journey, through horror and love, depravity and beauty, warfare and wonder, to break out of the hospital and into the devastated city where they may be the only hope left.
HAPPY-GO-LUCKY
October 10, 2008
CAST: Sally Hawkins, Alexis Zegerman, Andrea Riseborough, Samuel Roukin, Sinead Matthews, Kate O’Flynn, Sarah Niles
DIRECTOR: Mike Leigh
Just how hard is it to be happy? In the effervescent new comedy from writer/director Mike Leigh (“Vera Drake,” “Secrets & Lies”), Sally Hawkins stars as Poppy, an irrepressibly free-spirited school teacher who brings an infectious laugh and an unsinkable sense of optimism to every situation she encounters, offering us a touching, truthful and deeply life-affirming exploration of one of the most mysterious and often the most elusive of all human qualities: happiness. Poppy’s ability to maintain her perspective is tested as the story begins and her commuter bike is stolen. However, she enthusiastically signs up for driving lessons with Scott (Eddie Marsan), who turns out to be her nemesis – a fuming, uptight cynic. As the tension of their weekly lessons builds, Poppy encounters even more challenges to her positive state of mind: a fiery flamenco instructor, her bitter pregnant sister, a troubled homeless man and a young bully in her class, not to mention that she has also thrown out her back. How this affects not only Poppy’s world view but also the outlook of those around her begs the question “glass half full or half empty”?
THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PAJAMAS
November 7, 2008
CAST: Vera Farmiga, David Thewlis, Rupert Friend, David Hayman, Asa Butterfield, Jack Scalon
DIRECTOR: Mark Herman
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is a fictional story that offers a unique perspective on how prejudice, hatred and violence affect innocent people, particularly children, during wartime.
Through the lens of an eight-year-old boy largely shielded from the reality of World War II,
we witness a forbidden friendship that forms between Bruno, the son of Nazi commandant, and Schmuel, a Jewish boy held captive in a concentration camp. Though the two are separated physically by a barbed wire fence, their lives become inescapably intertwined.
The imagined story of Bruno and Shmuel sheds light on the brutality, senselessness and devastating consequences of war from an unusual point of view. Together, their tragic journey helps recall the millions of innocent victims of the Holocaust.
DOUBT
December 12, 2008
CAST: Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, Viola Davis
DIRECTOR:John Patrick
Set in the Bronx in 1964, Doubt explores the shifting, elusive nature of truth as reflected in a crime that may or may not have occurred. The stoic, hidebound Sister Aloysius (Streep), principal of a Catholic parochial school, is certain that one of her more popular teachers, Father Flynn (Hoffman), has been molesting a young male student. A novice, Sister James (Adams), unwillingly caught up in the intrigue, does not remain entirely convinced of Flynn’s guilty actions. Determined to arrive at the truth, Sister Aloysius decides she must confront the boy’s mother (Davis).