(MENAFN- Arab Times) Palestinian director Mai Masri's drama "3000 Nights," about an unjustly incarcerated Palestinian schoolteacher who gives birth in an Israeli prison where she fights to protect her son and maintain hope, has been picked up for distribution in the Arab world by Egypt's Mad Solutions ahead of its world preem Saturday in Toronto's Contemporary World Cinema section.
"Nights" marks the feature film debut of Masri, a noted Palestinian documaker who studied film at UC Berkeley and San Francisco State. She is known for docus including "Beirut Diaries: Truth, Lies, and Videos," and "33 Days." Pic is a French (Les Films d'Ici), Lebanese (Nour Productions, Oriouane Productions), and Jordanian co-prod.
Mad Solutions, an expanding Cairo and Abu Dhabi-based marketing and distribution company, is headed by prominent Arab film market analyst Alaa Karkouti.
The messy complexities of drone warfare trigger command decisions, moral crises, collateral damage and cover-your-backside buck passing in "Eye in the Sky," a rivetingly suspenseful drama that deftly intertwines elements of ticking-clock thriller and tragic farce. Director Gavin Hood ("Tsotsi") and scripter Guy Hibbert ("Five Minutes of Heaven") resist giving their material the extra push that might have transformed the movie into a flat-out black comedy. But much like "Dr Strangelove," the Stanley Kubrick classic it often recalls, this teasingly hard-to-label war story has more than a fair share of scenes that generate explosive laughter - until the laughter catches in your throat. Appreciative reviews and enthusiastic word of mouth, along with op-ed analyses and cable-news punditry, could significantly boost box office prospects and ancillary-platform potential.
To be sure, Hood and Hibbert aren't exactly tilling territory here. In the last year alone, drone warfare has served as subject matter for "Good Kill," the Andrew Niccol film starring Ethan Hawke, and "Grounded," George Brant's award-winning play, which Julie Taymor staged to great acclaim at New York's Public Theater with Anne Hathaway in the lead (and only) role. But while those dramas were intimate, tightly focused character studies, "Eye in the Sky" is appreciably more panoramic in its approach, jumping back and forth across four continents while detailing the particulars of a multinational military mission involving British commanders, image-conscious politicians, a Las Vegas-based drone pilot, Kenyan Special Forces personnel, and Somali terrorists who meet in a safe house that may not be so safe after all.
Persuasive
Steely-eyed Col. Katherine Powell (a fiercely persuasive Helen Mirren) oversees Egret, a meticulously planned operation aimed at capturing a radicalized young Englishwoman (Lex King) who has joined Al-Shabaab terrorists for a conference in a quiet corner of a densely populated Nairobi neighborhood. When high-tech surveillance reveals that the wayward Brit, a similarly radicalized US national, and their Al-Shabaab allies are readying suicide-bomb attacks, Col. Powell thinks the objective should be changed from "capture" to "kill." Lt Gen Frank Benson (Alan Rickman), her superior, readily agrees that requesting a missile assault by a US military drone is the correct course of action.
Trouble is, while Powell impatiently awaits final approval in her war room, Benson is quite literally surrounded by second-guessing politicos who fret over legal repercussions - and, more important, public reactions. Obviously mindful of the potential for Wikileakage, they worry that footage of a missile attack in a sovereign nation - especially one that results in inadvertent civilian casualties - could end up as "postings on You Tube." In the interest of being safe, not sorry, the politicos "refer up" to both the UK foreign secretary (who's in Singapore at an arms industry trade fair) and the US secretary of state (who interrupts his activity at a Beijing ping-pong tournament to cheerfully sign off on the attack).
Further complications arise, and additional "referring up" is necessitated, when drone pilot Steve Watts (Aaron Paul) views an inconvenient detail on his monitor: An angelic-looking little girl (Aisha Takow) has entered the kill zone to sell bread. Watts demands a recalculation of the game plan, to avoid harming (or, more likely, killing) a civilian. Benson argues that the primary targets, suicide bombers, will kill dozens of men, women and children. The politicos continue to dither. And meanwhile, Powell's frustration mounts as she considers the possibility that the terrorists may disperse before a final OK to kill is given.
Here and there throughout "Eye in the Sky," Hood and Hibbert sprinkle humanizing character quirks - Benson worries about buying the right doll for his child; the UK foreign secretary (a fine seriocomic turn by Iain Glen) is impeded by a bout of food poisoning - to counterbalance the ever-increasing suspense with comic relief. But the humor is far subtler, and much darker, during stretches when the movie is deadly serious.
Characters repeatedly resort to evasive, Orwellian double-speak, whether they're issuing orders or raising objections. (At one point, the drone pilot is given clearance "to prosecute the target.") But the purposefully innocuous language often is more horrifying or hilarious (or both) than any blunt-spoken admission of culpability, cowardice or cold-blooded calculation ever could be.
Purely on the level of a crackerjack political thriller, "Eye on the Sky" is hugely entertaining, with razor-sharp editing by Megan Gill suitably amping the tension, and sharp lensing by Haris Zambarloukos effectively contrasting the chilly confines of the interiors and the menace in broad daylight of the exteriors.
Warner Bros' "Our Brand is Crisis" is about politics-as-big-business, the pervasiveness of marketing/spin and about personal redemption - but what it's really about is star power. Sandra Bullock joins the Oscar race with a terrific performance that features both big, juicy scenes and quiet moments. Best of all, it reminds that she is that rare star-actor who is capable of showing new layers of talent with each film.
"Our Brand" screened at the Princess of Wales theater on the second night of the Toronto Fest, and Bullock told the audience that the role had been written for a man, but she asked producers George Clooney and Grant Heslov to consider changing it to a woman. "George could have played the role, but maybe I could have played it better," she deadpanned.
Clooney added that the shift in the script was surprisingly easy, and "it made us realize that there could be a lot more (male-written) roles out there" that could/should be rescripted for women.
Clooney and Heslov had seen the Rachel Boynton-directed 2005 documentary of the same title, and commissioned Peter Straughan to write a script that fictionalized the events, but retained the premise of US political strategists working on a Bolivian election. Once Bullock got the eight-years-in-development project in motion, they signed on director David Gordon Green.
Green said he likes working with actors, and enjoyed their improvs, such as on a bus sequence. An audience member asked if the rear end sticking out of the bus window was really Bullock's, which inspired some quips from her and Clooney on the topic of tushes, joking that it was really his bum doubling for hers.
In contrast with past years, the best actress Oscar race has more serious contenders than usual, but Bullock's stellar turn is certainly a hot contender. The film opens domestically in October.
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