This might be her first but it won’t be her last – Angelina Jolie brought seven minutes of Unbroken to Cinemacon. It’s already being called an Oscar juggernaut, which of course guarantees it will getting serious reaming when it opens. Can’t people start measuring and managing their expectations now? But, yeah, written by the Coen brothers (+
Richard LaGravenese and William Nicholson), lensed by Roger Deakins? How can it go wrong.
Jack O’Connell plays Zamperini.
Laura Hillenbrand (author of the Book Unbroken) on the film’s subject:
Growing up in California in the 1920s, Louie [Zamperini] was a hellraiser, stealing everything edible that he could carry, staging elaborate pranks, getting in fistfights, and bedeviling the local police. But as a teenager, he emerged as one of the greatest runners America had ever seen, competing at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, where he put on a sensational performance, crossed paths with Hitler, and stole a German flag right off the Reich Chancellery. He was preparing for the 1940 Olympics, and closing in on the fabled four-minute mile, when World War II began. Louie joined the Army Air Corps, becoming a bombardier. Stationed on Oahu, he survived harrowing combat, including an epic air battle that ended when his plane crash-landed, some six hundred holes in its fuselage and half the crew seriously wounded.
On a May afternoon in 1943, Louie took off on a search mission for a lost plane. Somewhere over the Pacific, the engines on his bomber failed. The plane plummeted into the sea, leaving Louie and two other men stranded on a tiny raft. Drifting for weeks and thousands of miles, they endured starvation and desperate thirst, sharks that leapt aboard the raft, trying to drag them off, a machine-gun attack from a Japanese bomber, and a typhoon with waves some forty feet high. At last, they spotted an island. As they rowed toward it, unbeknownst to them, a Japanese military boat was lurking nearby. Louie’s journey had only just begun.
That first conversation with Louie was a pivot point in my life. Fascinated by his experiences, and the mystery of how a man could overcome so much, I began a seven-year journey through his story. I found it in diaries, letters and unpublished memoirs; in the memories of his family and friends, fellow Olympians, former American airmen and Japanese veterans; in forgotten papers in archives as far-flung as Oslo and Canberra. Along the way, there were staggering surprises, and Louie’s unlikely, inspiring story came alive for me. It is a tale of daring, defiance, persistence, ingenuity, and the ferocious will of a man who refused to be broken.
The culmination of my journey is my new book, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption. I hope you are as spellbound by Louie’s life as I am.
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87th Annual Academy Award Predictions:
Best Picture
Big Eyes 7 Nominations
Birdman 4 Nominations
Carol 6 Nominations
Gone Girl 6 Nominations
The Hobbit: There and Back Again* 7 Nominations
Inherent Vice 10 Nominations
Interstellar 10 Nominations
Magic in the Moonlight 4 Nominations
Unbroken 9 Nominations
Best Director
Paul Thomas Anderson for Inherent Vice
Tim Burton for Big Eyes
Todd Haynes for Carol
Angelina Jolie for Unbroken*
Christopher Nolan for Interstellar
Best Actor
Ben Affleck in Gone Girl*
Robert Downey Jr. in The Judge 2 Nominations
Micheal Keaton in Birdman
Jack O’Connell in Unbroken
Joaquin Pheonix in Inherent Vice
Best Actress
Amy Adams in Big Eyes*
Cate Blanchett in Carol
Jessica Chastain in Interstellar
Rosemund Pike in Gone Girl
Emma Stone in Magic in the Moonlight
Best Supporting Actor
Richard Armitage in The Hobbit: There and Back Again*
Josh Brolin in Inherent Vice
Robert DuVall in The Judge
Colin Firth in Carol
Jason Schwartzmann in The Grand Budapest Hotel 4 Nominations
Best Supporting Actress
Octavia Spencer in Get on Up 3 Nominations
Tilda Swinton in The Grand Budapest Hotel
Sigourney Weaver in Exodus 3 Nominations
Jacki Weaver in Magic in the Moonlight*
Reese Witherspoon in Inherent Vice
Best Original Screenplay
Birdman
Carol
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Interstellar
Magic in the Moonlight*
Best Adapted Screenplay
Gone Girl
The Hobbit: There and Back Again*
Inherent Vice
Jersey Boys 2 Nominations
Unbroken
Production Design
Exodus
Get on Up 3 Nominations
The Hobbit: There and Back Again
MacBeth* 2 Nominations
Snowpiercer 2 Nominations
Costume Design
Birdman
The Hobbit: There and Back Again
Inherent Vice
MacBeth*
Snowpiercer
Film Editing
Gone Girl
The Grand Budapest Hotel
The Hobbit: There and Back Again
Inherent Vice
Interstellar*
Makeup
Big Eyes*
Guardians of the Galaxy 1 Nomination
Maleficient 1 Nomination
Visual Effects
Big Eyes
Godzilla 1 Nomination
The Hobbit: There and Back Again
Interstellar*
Noah 3 Nominations
Cinematography
Carol
Big Eyes
Interstellar
Inherent Vice
Unbroken*
Original Score
Alexandre Desplat for Unbroken*
Micheal Dyenna for Foxcatcher 1 Nomination
Danny Elfman for Big Eyes
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross for Gone Girl
Hans Zimmer for Interstellar
Original Song
Jersey Boys
Everything is Awesome from The Lego Movie 2 Nominations
A Million Ways to Die in the West 1 Nomination
Were Doing a Sequel from Muppets Most Wanted* 1 Nomination
Unbroken
Animated Feature
Big Hero 6 1 Nomination
The Boxtrolls 1 Nomination
How to Train Your Dragon 2* 1 Nomination
The Lego Movie
Mr. Peabody and Sherman 1 Nomination
Sound Editing
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 1 Nomination
Get on Up
Interstellar*
Noah
Unbroken
Sound Mixing
Exodus
Get on Up
Inherent Vice
Interstellar*
Noah
The Coens wanted to do the adaptation of James Dickey’s “To the White Sea,”
Unbroken, the book is phenomenal. If the movie is 50% as good as the book it will be unbeatable
Isn’t this the film the Coen Brothers decided not to make because the logistics, etc. were too complicated? Too complicated for them, but not for Angelina Jolie? Hmm. Either she’s a genius or this is hubris.
I think too people may have reached saturation point with stranded in a raft on the ocean flicks (depending on how much Unbroken concentrates on that incident in Zamperini’s life). We’ve also got Ron Howard’s Richard Parker film coming up.