THE COUNSELOR - Ridley Scott/Cormac McCarthy Thriller

[AndyDursin]

Score is by British composer Daniel Pemberton (not a Media Ventures guy), just FYI...

[John Johnson]

Score is by British composer Daniel Pemberton (not a Media Ventures guy), just FYI...

Several of his scores are on the moviescoremedia label.

http://moviescoremedia.com/?s=daniel+pemberton

[John Johnson]

Daniel Pemberton has recently recorded his score for Ridley Scott’s upcoming thriller The Counselor. The film starring Michael Fassbender, Brad Pitt, Cameron Diaz, Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz, Rosie Perez and Dean Norris follows a lawyer who finds himself in over his head when he gets involved in drug trafficking. Novelist Cormac McCarthy (No Country for Old Men, The Road) wrote the screenplay. Scott is also producing the Scott Free and Chockstone Pictures production with Nick Wechsler (Magic Mike, We Own the Night) and Steve Schwartz & Paula Mae Schwartz (Killing Them Softly, The Road). The music was recorded at Abbey Road Studios in London. The project marks Pemberton’s first collaboration with Scott. The composer’s previous film scoring credits include The Awakening and the thriller Blood starring Paul Bettany, Mark Strong and Paul Cox, which has recently been acquired by Image Entertainment for U.S. distribution. Scott’s last five directorial efforts, including American Gangster, Robin Hood and Prometheus featured scores by Marc Streitenfeld. The Counselor is set to be released on November 15, 2013 by 20th Century Fox.

Pemberton also has the thriller In Fear coming up. The movie marks the feature directorial debut of Jeremy Lovering and stars Alice Englert, Iain De Caestecker and Allen Leech. The film follows a couple with plans to stay at a countryside hotel and soon becomes lost in a maze of country roads and the target of an unknown tormentor. Nira Park (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) and James Biddle are producing the thriller, which premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Pemberton co-scored the project with Roly Porter. The movie is set to be released in the UK this fall. No word yet on domestic distribution.

http://filmmusicreporter.com/2013/04/26 ... counselor/

[Monterey Jack]

It continues to amaze me that Scott -- a director well into his seventies -- continues to average a new movie every year or so. I mean, it's one thing when you're Woody Allen, making once-a-year, modest art-house fare for a comparative pittance, but Scott is always out there, releasing expensive, logistically-challenging studio films with major stars every year-and-a-half or so. Have to admire his sheer workaday productivity, even if the occasional stinker slips through (anyone remember A Good Year? Didn't think so). So much better than the "announce a new project every other week, and only make one out of every ten" approach favored by obsessive/compulsive auteurs like Quentin Tarantino or Guillermo Del Toro.

[Monterey Jack]

Score is by British composer Daniel Pemberton (not a Media Ventures guy), just FYI...

If his Counselor score is as good as this, count me excited.

[AndyDursin]

Opens Friday and not one review online yet....apparently the screening was last night.

Cant see how this one proves to be a commercial success...its impossible to figure out the plot from the trailer too

[Paul MacLean]

It continues to amaze me that Scott -- a director well into his seventies -- continues to average a new movie every year or so.

Scott came out of advertising, where he was directing, if I recall right, one or two commercials a week. I'm sure this informed his work ethic as a filmmaker.

But I also suspect he is driven by the knowledge that he doesn't have a lot of time left (he is in his late 70s, and all his siblings are gone now). I'm sure this motivates him to say what he needs to say as quickly as possible.

Ridley is one of my two favorite living directors (the other is Polanski) and I agree its great to see him so prolific, but I do wish he would veer away from "real world" topics and do what he is best at, like science fiction and historic pictures. I and really I wish he'd direct another fantasy.

[Mike Skerritt]

Cant see how this one proves to be a commercial success...its impossible to figure out the plot from the trailer too

Yeah, what's odd to me is they're selling the depravity of the piece (see what that did for VERY BAD THINGS) and not the civilian-turned-drug-dealer story (see what that did for BREAKING BAD).

I've seen the McCarthy pedigree referenced a little bit ("...from the creator of NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN"), but frankly I don't think his name will resonate all that well with middle America. Scott's a much bigger name.

[Mike Skerritt]

AV Club's (positive) review: www.avclub.com/articles/the-counselor,104635/

I'm intrigued by the idea that in writing a screenplay, as opposed to a novel, McCarthy evidently manifests his themes textually rather than burying them.

[AndyDursin]

Yeah, what's odd to me is they're selling the depravity of the piece (see what that did for VERY BAD THINGS) and not the civilian-turned-drug-dealer story (see what that did for BREAKING BAD).

The AV Club review aside, most of the reviews I've read this morning are terrible (even the "fresh" ones are mixed), so the tight embargo had to be the result of them trying to bury the film.

They're going to be up against it outside of that because the cast doesn't have any stars in there to open the movie. Pitt's just a supporting part and he's barely in the trailer -- Fassbender, Cruz and Bardem don't sell tickets by themselves. Diaz might be masturbating on a car windshield, but at this point in her career I think her time has past.

My prediction is it'll do better than A GOOD YEAR but rank as one of Scott's commercial misfires. Of course we can blame Fox for poor marketing but some of the reviews (which call the film "ugly" and "repellent") lead me to believe this film was going to be a hard sell to the general public anyway. Pitt had a hard time last year opening the downbeat KILLING THEM SOFTLY (which I liked despite the fact I found it overpraised) and this movie doesn't even have him in a lead role to sell it.

The Hollywood Reporter's review is the kind of thing that'll kill this film. This movie needs big reviews and word of mouth or it will crash and burn.

Despite its scaldingly hot cast and formidable writer/director combination, The Counselor is simply not a very likable or gratifying film. In fact, it's a bummer....it's no fun -- not even dirty, sordid, delicious fun..what one is left with is a very bleak ending and an only slightly less depressing sense of the waste of a lot of fine talent both behind and in front of the camera.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movie/ ... iew/649925