Salon.com > Life of Pi

How “Life of Pi” anticipated 9/11

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 19:00:00 +0000

PERHAPS THE BIGGEST SURPRISE at the 2013 Oscar ceremony was that Ang Lee beat out Steven Spielberg for Best Director with his adaptation of Yann Martel’s novel Life of Pi. Martel’s novel was itself a surprising Man Booker Prize award winner in 2002. You may remember that a controversy followed: according to some, Martel’s book, about a boy in a lifeboat with a tiger, was suspiciously similar to that of Brazilian author Moacyr Scliar’s 1981 novella Max and the Cats, about a man in a lifeboat with a jaguar. In a short essay titled “How I Wrote Life of Pi,” Martel has accounted for the influence that Scliar’s novel — or rather, what he recalls as John Updike’s negative review of the novel in The New York Times Book Review — had on him. (In fact, Updike never seems to have reviewed the book at all, and the only review that ran in The Times was positive.) Martel — who claims he only read Max and the Cats after the accusations of plagiarism surfaced in 2002 — borrowed Scliar’s basic premise, trying to turn it into a novel that was more successful than the one Updike had allegedly reviewed:

Ang Lee branches out to television

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 13:53:00 +0000

Oscar-winning director Ang Lee, whose film "Life of Pi" took home four Oscars this year, is transitioning from to television for a project with FX called "Tyrant." The BBC reports:

"Tyrant follows an ordinary American family caught up in the affairs of a turbulent Middle Eastern nation.

Shooting for the show on US cable channel FX will begin this summer.

The team behind the drama includes Homeland's Howard Gordon and Gideon Raff, who will act as executive producers."

"Ang Lee has demonstrated time and again an ability to present characters with such depth and specificity that they reveal the universal human condition," FX president John Landgraf said in a statement.

Bert Salke, president of production studio Fox 21, said, "The fact that the brilliant Ang Lee has signed on to direct his project for television speaks to the extraordinary nature of 'Tyrant.' "

Oscar’s very weird night

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 04:30:00 +0000

As Academy Award nominee Abraham Lincoln once said, "Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power." The Oscars are our annual endurance test of both. It's the Olympics of show-business power — a cage match whose outcome determines future development deals and stratospheric salaries. For the viewer at home, however, somewhere around the third hour/fifth ill-advised musical number, it tends to deteriorate into a trial of audience stamina and fortitude.

The show's organizers have in recent years flailed about before our eyes to make the evening's proceedings a less grim broadcast – bringing James Franco and Anne Hathaway in hopes of making it a dewy, youthful affair, then turning around and trotting out Billy Crystal with the promise of the balm of the reassuringly familiar. This year, the spaghetti it threw at the wall of television viewers was Seth MacFarlane, and the pitch was basically, "Let's try making the show saucy and fun -- like the 2012 Golden Globes, but without a British person." And now we know how well that idea works.

Herewith, then, are our most memorable moments of a show that will go down in history as the time the awards gave over its power to Stewie Griffin, and the adversity that followed.

Rudest Oscars ever?

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 03:26:00 +0000

This year's Oscars continued a familiar tradition -- running lengthy clip sequences at the expense of Oscar winners' speeches -- this year, winners have been interrupted by intrusive music and mic cuts as they thank their friends, family and colleagues.

The "Life of Pi" team accepting the best visual effects trophy was cut off by the gradually swelling music from "Jaws" -- no bland, non-threatening exit music this year! -- and, as one of the "Life of Pi" team attempted to speak over the music, the mic was cut.

"Poor thing," Nicole Kidman appeared to say in a mute reaction shot.

The same exact thing, less the Nicole Kidman cutoff, happened to the makers of "Searching for Sugar Man," the best documentary feature.

Meanwhile, Seth MacFarlane's opening number featured numerous musical numbers -- including one mocking actresses who'd played nude, in an apparent tribute to the theory of the male gaze -- and cutaways to William Shatner, and a lengthy medley of songs from "Les Misérables."

Notoriously, the songwriters behind "Once" were cut off in 2007 after winning the best original song trophy and Jon Stewart ushered them back to fully thank their colleagues.

It’s Ben Affleck’s evening

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 01:30:00 +0000

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Oscar nominees earn recognition at private luncheon

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 13:55:00 +0000

When it first kicked off in 1982, only a few stars showed up to the mid-day event meant to honor them. But within about 10 years, the luncheon has picked up steam; last year, the event set a new record: 150 of the 188 nominees arrived, with 18 of the 20 actor nominees in attendance, Variety reports. (Even Deadline hails the invite-only event as "unquestionably one of the highlights of any awards season"). This year, about 140 attendees showed up.

Though the event is mostly just a "feel-good , ‘everyone’s still a winner’ " pat on the back for nominees, awards strategists took the opportunity to gauge Oscar reactions in Q&A sessions, as ballots go out on Friday for the final vote. The stars who generated the most buzz at the insider event were "Beasts of the Southern Wild's" 9 year-old best actress nominee Quvenzhane Wallis, "Argo's" Ben Affleck (who has been shut out of the best director category although his film is a front-runner for best picture) and "Life of Pi" special visual effects nominee Bill Westenhofer.

“Life of Pi” and “Skyfall” among ASC award nominees

Wed, 09 Jan 2013 17:44:00 +0000

Just a day ahead of the Oscar nomination announcement, the 27th Annual American Society of Cinematographers Awards names its nominees for outstanding achievement in the feature film category: Seamus McGarvey,"Anna Karenina"; Danny Cohen,"Les Miserables"; Claudio Miranda, "Life of Pi"; Janusz Kaminski, "Lincoln"; Roger Deakins, "Skyfall" (bringing Deakins' career nominations to 11).

Via a press release, ASC president Stephen Lighthill noted that, though the range of films is diverse, “What they all have in common is that each project’s cinematographer contributed captivating visuals that enhanced and elevated the storytelling.”

The winner will be announced at the ASC Awards celebration on Feb. 10 in Hollywood.

“Life of Pi”: Sugar-coated revelation

Mon, 19 Nov 2012 18:40:00 +0000

Shimmering with picture-book intensity, Ang Lee’s much-awaited film version of Yann Martel’s bestselling boy-plus-tiger adventure saga “Life of Pi” walks a fine line between transcendent meaningfulness and utter New Age bogosity. Where you identify that line, in art and in yourself, is likely to determine how well you tolerate this movie. As readers of the book already know, “Life of Pi” can be described as a spiritual odyssey or a shaggy dog story (in which the dog is a tiger with a human name). Lee, something of a stylistic chameleon whose previous work includes “Brokeback Mountain,” “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” and “The Ice Storm,” cranks up the dial in both directions; this picture is part Bhagavad Gita and part Hallmark card from Deepak Chopra.