Love and Mercy - News and Reviews - First clip is out.

[SMiLE Brian]

Please finish it!

[Ed Roach]

If this movie does well financially, as it seems likely to do, maybe that will encourage someone to resuscitate the Dennis Wilson movie, "The Drummer". Just a thought.

Surprised you hadn't heard what happened with the director that was shepherding "The Drummer":

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/cotown/la-et-ct-midnight-rider20150309-story.html#page=1

and here's an article about what happened when the project originally went south, before Randall's problems:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/beach-boys-estate-pulls-planned-665205

[Larry Franz]

If this movie does well financially, as it seems likely to do, maybe that will encourage someone to resuscitate the Dennis Wilson movie, "The Drummer". Just a thought.

Surprised you hadn't heard what happened with the director that was shepherding "The Drummer":

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/cotown/la-et-ct-midnight-rider20150309-story.html#page=1

and here's an article about what happened when the project originally went south, before Randall's problems:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/beach-boys-estate-pulls-planned-665205

Thanks for the links. I'd read that the project was canceled and why it was, but never say never, I guess. Maybe someone will reconsider or see an opportunity now, since it's Hollywood?

I don't remember hearing about the death on the Midnight Rider film, or the director being punished, but that story may have received more coverage in LA and the entertainment press than it did other places.

[sea of tunes]

Aaron Eckhart would have been the perfect Dennis Wilson.  It's a shame he was wasting his talent on I, FRANKENSTEIN.  His work with Neil LaBute was was among his best.  He showed a ton of range.  That film THANK YOU FOR SMOKING was very dark and clever, as well.

I remember THE DRUMMER being cancelled and the family deciding "no".  It's a shame.  I've always got the vibe that even though Brian's affairs have always been in limbo (or at least until the last 15-20 years) Dennis' remain that way, even in death.

[37!ws]

Okay, in catching up with posts on this thread, I have nothing to say at the moment other than....Chocolate Shake Man, I LOVE your user name!

[harveyw]

I don't know if this has been posted before (don't think so..)
http://www.theweeklings.com/rbwarren/2015/06/15/love-mercy-and-the-saving-of-brian-wilson/

Any ideas of a UK release date yet?

[sea of tunes]

I don't know if this has been posted before (don't think so..)
http://www.theweeklings.com/rbwarren/2015/06/15/love-mercy-and-the-saving-of-brian-wilson/

Any ideas of a UK release date yet?

July 10th

[KDS]

Aaron Eckhart would have been the perfect Dennis Wilson.  It's a shame he was wasting his talent on I, FRANKENSTEIN.  His work with Neil LaBute was was among his best.  He showed a ton of range.  That film THANK YOU FOR SMOKING was very dark and clever, as well.

I remember THE DRUMMER being cancelled and the family deciding "no".  It's a shame.  I've always got the vibe that even though Brian's affairs have always been in limbo (or at least until the last 15-20 years) Dennis' remain that way, even in death.

He was also very good as Harvey Dent / Two Face in The Dark Knight.  And Thank You For Smoking is a very underrated dark comedy.  I think he'd make a great Dennis Wilson. 

[debonbon]

L&M comes out in Australia next week and I won two free tickets today! I can't wait to see it.

[Komera]

I remembered somewhere on this forum there's been speculation about why Marilyn hired Landy.  I THINK it was in this thread, but I'm too lazy to go look for it just to quote it.  And this is an appropriate place anyway.

So I was reading an old article that I hadn't gotten to yet.  I think I may had inadvertently found a plausible answer:
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/the-healing-of-brother-brian-the-rolling-stone-interview-with-the-beach-boys-19761104?page=8

MARILYN: It's that, but it's also something they need to do for themselves. You know, they're all just so happy to be back together. I mean, the thing that made me go to Dr. Landy was I couldn't stand to see Brian, whom I just love and adore, unhappy with himself and not really creating. Because music is his whole life, that's number one to him. So one of my girlfriends told me about Dr. Landy and I went and talked to him for an hour. I said, "I need someone who's gonna go to him, not where he has to go to you because he won't do it." And Dr. Landy said, "Yeah, I think I can do it." When I met Dr. Landy, I knew I'd met someone who could play Brian's game.

Yeah, I'd imagine it'd be tough to try and force a 340lb man to go somewhere he doesn't want to.  Now I've got this picture in my mind of a teeny-tiny Marilyn trying to pull a giant Brian ball by the arm.

[metal flake paint]

Love and Mercy Q&A with Brian and Melinda Wilson, Bill Pohlad (director), and Claire Rudnick Polstein (producer).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VT-uPyCfXY

[Mr. Tiger]

The latest I've heard is that due to the success of L&M they're greenlighting the Dennis Film again with the new title "Love and Mercy 2: Love and P*ssy"

[petsoundsnola]

I hope the Dennis movie finally sees the light of day.

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/the-beach-boy-who-went-overboard-19840607?page=2

[sea of tunes]

Noticed this posted on a German DVD site.  Looks like the Blu-Ray/DVD release date in Germany is October 15th.  No cover art or features listed, way too early for that. 

http://www.dvd-forum.at/news-details/51270-dvd-blu-ray-love-mercy-beach-boys-biopic-ab-oktober-auf-dvd-blu-ray

Blu-Ray Amazon.de link:

http://www.amazon.de/exec/obidos/ASIN/b00zwb0exk/osterreichi01-21

DVD Amazon.de link:

http://www.amazon.de/exec/obidos/ASIN/b00zwb0eui/osterreichi01-21

Just passing it along...I assume the U.S. release date will be around this date or a few weeks earlier.

[rn57]

http://acculturated.com/why-love-mercy-is-the-feminist-film-of-the-year/

Blogpost by a DC based journalist who frequently writes about religion and music. I doubt you'll see any other L&M review which compares Elizabeth Banks' performance in L&M to Charlize Theron's in Fury Road.

[wild neon sins]

Apparently got some kind of coverage on Uk tv this morning (or maybe yesterday), don't know what channel but sounded like it was part of a news or breakfast programme (search isn't finding anything), but got told it was mostly  Bill Pohlad  w/ a bit of Brian & Melinda.

fake edit:  might've been this from BBC Radio 4 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qj9z
"Director Bill Pohlad on Brian Wilson biopic Love and Mercy"

[Emdeeh]

Not a big review of Love & Mercy, but it's one of the films being featured at Athens, GA's Athfest event, which is a big regional music, arts, and film festival. Of Montreal is headlining, and some of the guys from REM will be there too.

http://flagpole.com/movies/movie-reviews/2015/06/24/em-love-mercy-em

[beacharg]

L&M has now 89% of critics' approval in Rotten Tomatoes (92% audience  )

And the box office has almost reached $8 million! Do we know which was the budget/cost?

[sea of tunes]

http://deadline.com/2014/09/toronto-lionsgate-in-3-million-deal-for-bill-pohlad-helmed-love-and-mercy-832471/

Lionsgate paid 3 million for the film after it was screened at TIFF, last year.  I'm almost positive that I read very early on that River Road financed (might as well say Bill Pohlad).  Total shot in the dark here but I would imagine the budget was around 2-3 million.

In this story earlier in the month, John Cusack said "no one was there for the money".  I take that to mean that everyone on the movie worked for scale, or close.

http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/movies/love--mercys-john-cusack-nobody-was-there-for-the-money-20150616-ghp1jh.html

[sea of tunes]

http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/movies/ct-love-and-mercy-musical-biopics-ignored-20150625-column.html

It's in theaters, and only recently in wide release. But up against the monster hits "Jurassic World" and "Inside Out" a modestly scaled winner such as "Love & Mercy" has had a difficult time getting noticed this summer.

It's not fair.

In large ways and small, the film explores how music, family, demons of all kinds can consume a vulnerable artist, or nearly. Paul Dano, John Cusack and Elizabeth Banks come through with some of their truest work to date.

And the movie hasn't yet made $7.7 million.

The injustice of this is no shocker. Last September Lionsgate picked up "Love & Mercy" for North American distribution three days into the 2014 Toronto film festival, eight months after Pohlad's project premiered at Sundance.

But now, in its summer 2015 run, the marketing of the picture has been tentative, ineffective. The title comes from a Wilson song title somewhat less recognizable than "Good Vibrations," and it's pretty flat. I suppose a more conventional movie might've found a larger audience, though of course then we'd have just that: a more conventional movie.

Longtime industry analyst Anne Thompson, who runs the Thompson on Hollywood blog over at indiewire.com, thinks the problem is simple.

Like "Love & Mercy," both those titles drew major acclaim at Sundance in January. But anyone who has attended a few big festivals knows the truth. Festival buzz is one of the least trustworthy sounds on Earth.

A film as gently, yearningly idiosyncratic as "Love & Mercy" was not destined to make "Walk the Line" money ($186million worldwide, the highest grossing musical biopic according to boxofficemojo.com) or even "Jersey Boys" money ($67 million, despite mass shrugs). Modestly budgeted films in this genre make do with the audience they can scrounge.

Further down the budget spectrum than "Jersey Boys" but infinitely higher up the quality scale, the great Gilbert & Sullivan biopic "Topsy-Turvy" made a mere $6.2 million in the U.S.; the wildly impressionistic Sid Vicious Sex Pistols dynamo, "Sid and Nancy," mustered only $2.6 domestically.

Along with "Love & Mercy" there's another new music film worth your time and trouble. Opening at the Music Box on Friday, co-writer and director Mia Hansen-Love's "Eden" evokes the '90s electronica scene in Paris and beyond, telling a fictional story of a rising young deejay. It's a mellow, bittersweet triumph of sonic ambience. And like "Love & Mercy," its focus is on music as a siren song, a driving force — a force not without its costs, but eternally lighting fires within.

[18thofMay]

The film got a review on the Today show here in Australia and is showing in three Cinemas close to my home, but the Sydney release is limited to the fashionable coffee house areas of Randwick and Newtown etc. VERY POOR!

[Kurosawa]

So she, VDP, probably Mike and anyone else that is not the focal point of the movie is gonna bitch about absolutely what amounts to insignificant details huh? Major case of insecurity and sour grapes on the part of all of them. I guess Carol and VDP would have been happy if the filmmakers had consulted them. Lord knows we can always be sure their recollections are spot on. These people were a blip in the life of Brian and the movie is HIS story. Get over it.

Oh, but it's ok for her to take credit for playing on beach boys songs that she never played on. Class act.

Yeah, not to mention several of them take shots at Melinda. Maybe they'd be happier if Brian had died in a puddle of his own drool around 1993 and if Landy inherited everything he had.

[Peter Reum]

I saw it this evening. Having lived it, there was a  "know too much" reaction initially. The movie struck a good balance of attention  between the gruesome and the musical triumphs. The courage it took for several people  to bring Landy's horrible treatment and malpractice to the attention of the board governing psychological ethics in California. Everybody is raving about Paul Dano's work, but I found John Cusack's work very compelling. The performance of Elizabeth Banks caught the Mama Bear feeling you get from powerful women like Melinda. Maybe Brian's song will get an Oscar nomination. Very well done...

[kiwi surfer]

A review from New Zealand where it opened yesterday.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501119&objectid=11471751

[Emdeeh]

Another review:
http://volumeathens.com/2015/06/film-review-love-mercy/