New Banner

Like the new banner? I hope so. It was made by Michelle @ Jeff Goldblum Online. She's so sweet! Thanks girl!

Adam Resurrected Scheduel @ AFF

Adam Resurrected Scheduel @ AFF
Here is the confirmed date of the premiere of "Adam Resurrected" at the Austin Film Festival:


Adam Resurrected
Sat, Oct 18
6:30 PM
Paramount
713 Congress Ave., Austin, TX 78701

More Information

Map

I also added this to the calendar.

UltimateJeffGoldblum.com's 100th Post!

UJG.com's 100th Post! (well, 101)

I've reached a milestone! Congradulations to UJG! Today, I made my 100th post in just two months! Within those 2 months, I've updated you with the latest news, video, and photos + more on Jeff Goldblum (mostly about "Adam Resurrected").




In review, we've seen Jeff: promote "Adam Resurrected" through the Telluride Film Festival & Toronto International Film Festival (with many articles, reviews, interviews, videos, and audio throughout), re-unite with his "The Big Chill" cast members, become "Pimp of the Year" through TMZ, and here at the website, we got the FIRST sneak peek at the "Adam Resurrected" movie and "Law & Order: CI" promo commerical. And don't forget the plethora of photos and street candids! All of this, with so much more in between!

I thank all of you fans for visiting, especially to Michelle and Ida! You guys are the greatest! So, continue to visit and hopefully there will be 1,000's of posts (well, there probably are total if you include the Myspace and Yahoo! Group)! Jeff still has a lot in store for us, and I have a lot in store for UJG in the upcoming months and the upcoming year.

Stay tuned and thanks again!
More Jeff Goldblum to come!
Stay Goldblum!

Goldbama Strikes Again!

Goldbama Strikes Again!
September 28, 2008

Jeff Goldblum is shown here proudly sporting his Obama t-shirt (hence the name, Goldbama), out and about in NYC with new fellow cast member, Eric Bogosian (Law & Order: CI) laughing and talking with friends.




I'll try and get them in a bigger size. Enjoy!

Toothpick Legs and Blondes

Toothpick Legs and Blondes
Jeff Goldblum
September 10, 2008
TheCelebrityCafe.com
Written by: Jenn Martonic

I had posted this to Twitter a while back, but I didn't get the full story until now:

Jeff Goldblum was spotted at JFK airport - sporting the skinny jeans with his toothpick legs! Saw him at the JFK airport picking up an unknown blonde woman. He was incredibly SKINNY in real life. Seriously, his legs were like my fingers. He was also wearing skinny jeans. And he is very tall too - like a human walking stick.

Well, we know why Jeff is skinny. He played a Holocaust survivor, and plus he's getting older. I mean, he's no Sylvester Stallone. There could be a lot of factors. I hope those are the reasons, and not nothing else (i.e. - I hope he's not sick or anything). That's solved.

But who's the mystery blonde???

Phil Brown's Thoughts of "AR" at TIFF

Phil Brown's Throughts of "AR" at TIFF
PHIL BROWN FOR METRO TORONTO
September 13, 2008 05:13

Another Toronto International Film Festival has come and gone. The last 10 days have been a barrage of celebrities, paparazzi, parties, and coffee … lots of coffee.

Oh, and there were mo­vies, too — quite good ones, as well. It was actually a very strong year for the film festival, with plenty of titles worthy of generating that ever so elusive buzz. Here is a rundown of some of the highlights of my festival experience:

*This is his thought of Adam Resurrected*

Biggest Disappointment
Adam Resurrected — Paul Schrader really needs to rediscover subtly and give up on gratuitous religious symbolism. No more scenes with burning bushes in the desert, Paul. That may have worked in The Last Temptation Of Christ, but you were really pushing it this time.

Jeff Goldblum TMZ Video Revised

A lot of you have been saying that you couldn't view the video, I've fix the kinks and hopefully it works. I uploaded it to Blogger and it uses Google to stream the videos. I don't know how Google videos work for you, so try your luck:

Jeff Goldblum Fan Q & A

Jeff Goldblum Fan Q & A
I just created this, and I thought it would be fun and interesting to post. You can copy and paste the questions and place it into your blog if you want. Just credit me. I may add to it over time.

Personal

*Name/Sex/Age/Location?
- Joyce. Female. 22. Florida, USA.

*When did you first hear about Jeff Goldblum?
- As far back as I remember, Jurassic Park.

*How long have you been a fan of Jeff?
- Since Jurassic Park. I was too young to remember him in his older movies such as "The Fly" (I was born in 1986 when it came out). I was 7 when JP came out and I loved his character Ian. Years afterward (I was to obsessed with boybands in the 90's), I started watching his movies, then his old movies and following up on him, collecting stuff, and I got to love his acting, and getting know his personal side through videos, TV appearances, interviews, articles, etc...

*Have you ever met Jeff Goldblum?
- Unfortunately, no. Not yet. I want to though. Hopefully one day.

*Favorite Jeff Goldblum movie?
- Aww... too many to name! Let's see... I really like him in Jurassic Park (of course), Mr. Frost (creepy!), Shooting Elizabeth, Independence Day, The Big Chill, Death Wish, Pittsburgh, Hideaway, Lush Life, Twisted Obsession, Mini's First Time, Beyond Therapy, Beyond Suspicion, Transylvania 6-5000, The Fly... Pretty much all of them (those that I've seen). He brings something different to the table each time.


*What makes Jeff Goldblum so special to you?
- His personality. He's so down to earth and passionate about what he does. He's a very unique actor, and person.


*Anything to say to Jeff if he was reading this right now?
- I LOVE YOU JEFF!!!! (*screaming like a crazy woman!*) lol. No. Thanks for being a wonderful actor, and person. You're a great inspiration. You inspire me in many ways. Thank you so much for what you do.

*Dream Jeff Goldblum role?
- Superhero. A member of the X-Men.

*The best role yet?
- I haven't seen it yet, but "Adam Resurrected". It's a very challenging, and a bit personal role for Jeff.

*Best Co-star/collaboration?
- He and Geena Davis in "The Fly", of course.

*Best TV show appearance?
- Any appearance on late night TV or talk show!

*If you were to spend a day with Jeff...?
- Well, after being resuscitated from the shock of the news; I'd like to just hang out and be casual. Talk, eat, chill, watch movies... just be normal.

*Do you have anything in common with Jeff?
- Yes, many things. Too many to list here.

*Do you collect anything with Jeff Goldblum? If so, how big is your collection?
- YES! I have been collecting for about 5 years. Movies, magazines, posters, articles, etc... I have over 100 items (I have to take pictures). I use to have a big Jurassic Park collection. I gave most of it away. I traded it for *NSYNC and Backstreet Boy stuff. lol I wish I would have kept it though.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------


The Website

*What's your position?
- Webmaster. I do it all!

*When, and why did you decide to make a Jeff Goldblum fansite?
- Well, I've always wanted to create a website (a fan website in particular). I decided to create the UJG website a year ago (2007). I had collected many things and I wanted to share my love for Jeff with other fans and that's how this came about. I started with an online group (http://www.movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/jeff-goldblum) and expanded across the net. I decided I was going to expand it to a full-blown website in late 2007, and hopefully, I'll make it into a domain in 2008 or 2009.

*Why do you think Jeff deserves a website?
- Why not!? I mean, he's a wonderful actor and should be admired by all. I want to make sure that this underrated, highly talented, gifted actor; and amazing person, is NEVER forgotten!

*How did you come up with the name?
- I wanted something easy. So I played around with different names and combination. I figured out what I wanted to with the website, and came up with Ultimate Jeff Goldblum. I wanted to have the "ultimate" Jeff Goldblum fansite, and that name fitted perfectly with what I wanted to do.


*How much time to you spend on your websites (including social networking websites, blogging, searching for news, photos, etc...)?
- Pretty much all day, daily - on and off, in between.

*Is this an "official" Jeff Godlblum website?
- No. Just a fan website.

*How long did it take you to create UJG.com?
- 2 years.

*What's the purpose of UJG?
- To bring fans the latest news and updates + more on Jeff Goldblum.

*How do you keep up with everything?
- LOTS of time and organization.

*What do you think of other Jeff Goldblum fansites/blogs/pages?
- I like them all. Whether they are updated or not. It doesn't matter. If someone takes the time out to do something (and building pages aren't that simple) like that for someone they admire, kudos to them.

*Anything to say to your visitors?
- Thanks for visiting and supporting me. And keep coming back! Tell your friend and fellow fans about UJG!

Pimp of the Year! Update...

TMZ's "Earth Girls Are Easy...If You're Jeff Goldblum" video in it's entirety:

Earth Girls Are Easy…If You’re Jeff Goldblum


An update from this post.

Adam Resurrected to be shown at the 2008 AFF

Adam Resurrected to be shown at the 2008 AFF
(Austin Film Festival) in Austin, Texas
October 16-23, 2008

Official Website
More Information

EXCLUSIVE! Adam Resurrected Movie Clips!

Well, this really isn't exclusive. I'm just so happy to finally see parts of the movie! I'm not going to write much. I love that accent! YAY!

Just enjoy the videos:



Adam Resurrected Clip #1






Adam Resurrected Clip #2





Credits: www.iklipz.com / The Movie Box!

*AAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!*

Jeff Goldblum Truly is "Bringing Sexy Back"

Jeff Goldblum Truly is "Bringing Sexy Back"
September 23, 2008
From the blog of Mark Baratelli (www.textingwhiledriving.blogspot.com)
Original title: Jeff Goldblum walked by me in Chelsea; Mark Baratelli

Just though I'd share:

Buy Jeff Goldblum's Tacky Crap

Buy Jeff Goldblum's Tacky Crap
www.defamer.com

Pardon us for bowing down before the altar of Craiglist so soon after it yielded such a wonderful nugget, but circumstances demand that we prostrate ourselves this morning:

"Hand-carved pool table formerly owned by actor Jeff Goldblum - $5000 I'm selling a hand-carved oak pool table formerly owned by actor, Jeff Goldblum. It is in very good condition with carved bare-breasted women art each pocket. It has brand new aqua colored felt and comes with cues and balls. For the right price, i will have it delivered and give you a photograph of Jeff posing on the table".

Note that the photograph allegedly features Goldblum posing on the table, not with the table, suggesting (to us, anyway) that the actor once splayed himself across its felt in a celebration of the majesty of his naked form. Lips may have been licked seductively, and chest hair twirled between greedy fingers...

Hold on. Five grand? For that kind of money, Goldblum himself had better appear in person to fondle those handcarved breasts while copulating with a side pocket.


*There is actually a photo of Jeff posing on the pool table (posted below). There was a photo of the pool table from CraigsList - Los Angeles, but when I check the link, it was deleted. What a rip off! I hope someone wasn't stupid enough to buy it.*



Although from looking at that photo, it would be nice if the pool table actually came with the real thing.

Movie Blog: Adam Resurrected Ratings & Review

Movie Blog: Adam Resurrected Ratings & Review
Review by Keith Uhlich
September 23, 2008
www.movieblog.ugo.com

Adam Resurrected is an out-and-out mediocrity, a strange thing to say about a film concerning a WWII-era Jewish clown (Jeff Goldblum) forced to be the dog of a Nazi commandant (Willem Dafoe - no, really?!!). As Adam Stein, Goldblum slathers an exaggerated German-Jewish accent over his already inimitable cadence, an unfortunately distracting effect made all the more pronounced by his inability to maintain the inflection throughout. It could be argued, by way of justification, that Stein is always playing a role, even his own heritage, but the distinct “work-for-hire” vibe brought to the project by Paul Schrader (directing Noah Stollman’s screenplay adaptation of Yoram Kaniuk’s novel) pretty much counteracts any such intentionality of performance.

The film is a mess of tones and feelings, and to no particular purpose beyond the conceptual. This is especially disappointing after Schrader’s precise and undervalued character study The Walker, though by this point it should be clear that erraticism is a key facet of his artistry. He’s only as good as his obsessions, and when he brings them to bear on a story that he clearly doesn’t care about, the effect is numbing, frequently risible (Dominion: Prequel to The Exorcist, I’m looking at you). Adam Stein’s journey from the Weimar stage to the concentration camps to an experimental psychiatric facility for Holocaust survivors in the Israeli desert (run by a comically over-attired Derek Jacobi) should feel at once epic and intimate, but it’s same-’ol-same-’ol for Schrader - in this context, even a late appearance by The Burning Bush comes off as old hat, a sad grab for The Last Temptation of Christ‘s piercing collision of Old Testament grandeur with New Testament insecurity.

Adam Resurrected‘s most potent image sees Stein in dirtied-up Dauchau stripes, baying at a smokestack shooting his murdered family’s ashes into the nighttime sky. It resonates because of Schrader’s approach - detached and presentational, a sheerly unimaginable state of mind (man brought so completely and literally to the level of dogs) rendered with absolute and profound efficacy. He grasps wildly for meaning otherwise, the camera alternating (in an ineffectual mimic of Stein’s unhinged psyche) between sinuous tracks and handheld havoc, the performances between broad farce and agonized soul-searching.

Adam’s affair with the Institute’s comely nurse (Ayelet Zurer) is one of the more interesting threads: she’s set up as an ass-wagging fetish object, a woman all-too-willing to submit to her patient’s desires, which in Adam’s case entails falling to her knees, barking and panting for sexual gratification. Schrader’s often at his best when viewing the divide between sanity and insanity through a sexual prism, but there’s nothing here (even in the Goldblum/Zurer scenes) that approaches the knotty timbre of the gay bar tracking shot in American Gigolo, the “Kyoko’s House” sequence in Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, or the mid-film lovers kiss (a queered-up homage to Schrader’s oft-referenced movie muse, Pickpocket) in The Walker.

What we get instead is a half-hearted tale of redemption and, yes Virginia, resurrection, that nonetheless intriguingly suggests that to be reborn is to give up some very necessary aspect of our humanity. It’s difficult to say if Adam’s bond with one of the Institute’s feral residents - a young boy convinced he is all canine - is a case of the alpha meeting the omega (divine contradictions canceling out the often rabid emotional intricacies of mortals). At the very least it gets at a fascinating idea - that to be entirely sane is, perhaps, to sacrifice one’s soul, but it’s something Schrader only fleetingly investigates and ultimately drowns in overly literal symbolism, in an unconvincing portrayal (as revealed by a climactic bit of inmates-running-the-asylum revelry) of psychosis through decades-spanning pageantry.

UGO Rating
Writing: C-
Direction: C-
Performances: C
Visual Appeal: C+
Overall: C-

Easy to Assemble - Episode 1

www.easytoassemble.tv

Video: Day 8 TIFF: Jeff Goldblum - Adam Resurrected

Day 8 of the Toronto Film Festival:

Jeff Goldblum Interview

Paul Schrader Interview

www.filmcatcher.com

Video: Jeff Goldblum on QTV

Video: Jeff Goldblum on QTV
QTV Canada
September 12, 2008
Host Jian Ghomeshi's talks to Jeff Goldblum about his latest film "Adam Resurrected". The interview took place in a hotel room in Toronto during the Toronto International Film Festival.


ENJOY ALL 15 MINUTES AND 39 SECONDS!!!!!!! WOO!!!

Telluride Film Festival Eye Candy!

Ultimate Jeff Goldblum @ Orkut.com!

Ultimate Jeff Goldblum @ Orkut.com!


Ultimate Jeff Goldblum has opened a new group at Google's Orkut!

Join today! Tell your fellow friends and Jeff Goldblum fans!

Ultimate Jeff Goldblum @ Orkut.com!

*You'll have to get my approval to join!*

9/11/08 - TIFF Adam Resurrected Review

Toronto International Film Festival: Adam Resurrected
By Matthew Torti
September 11, 2008
www.chud.com

As I was leaving the theatre after last night’s screening of Adam Resurrected, the first thought that came to mind was: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

Even as I write this, I still don’t know what to make of the film. It’s a challenging, elegant film; one that trusts the audience to travel with the characters into the dark and horrific crevices of the mind that are on full display.

While One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest used humor to ease the tension of the story, Adam Resurrected contains very little humor. This is a result of differences between the protagonists. Jack Nicholson’s R.P. McMurphy is a sane man surrounded by growing insanity. Jeff Goldblum’s Adam Stein, on the other hand, is a broken, mentally damaged man trying desperately to hold on to what little sanity (if any) he has left while living inside a house of mentally disturbed Holocaust survivors.

Director Paul Schrader (writer of Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, just to name a few) takes his time with this picture, letting the story unfold at almost a snail’s pace. But the subject matter and performances are so engrossing that your attention is focused on the screen the entire running time. Just like Schrader’s other anti-heroes of Travis Bickle and Jake La Motta, Adam Stein is a man racked with guilt, trying to live in a world that has moved on without him. What’s so heartbreaking is the fact that Stein has the ability to grow, but his personal demons have become so strong over the years that they paralyze him, making him weaker day by day. What’s worse, he’s too proud a man to admit his faults, which inevitably prove to be his downfall.

In order to truly understand Stein’s plight, a great actor is needed. Enter Jeff Goldblum.

Jeff Goldblum’s entire career can be encompassed in three pictures: Earth Girls Are Easy, The Fly and Jurassic Park. His performances in these films were great, but let’s be realistic here, they were all one in the same. The jittery, stuttering, socially inept oddball became his calling card. With that said, I’m one of his biggest fans, and I knew that he had at least one great dramatic performance in him. But his portrayal of Adam Stein… it’s a Pandora’s box of a performance. It is heartbreaking, surprising, mysterious and frightening, usually all at the same time. And it seemed effortless.

During the Holocaust, famous circus clown Adam Stein (a Jew living in Germany) is spared the gas chamber so that he can be a Nazi general’s personal assistant and dog. Seriously. Commandant Klein (Willem Dafoe) forces Adam to eat, sleep and bark like a dog during the entire rule of the Nazi regime just for his own personal enjoyment. The reason Adam agrees to entertain Klein is so he can hopefully save his wife and children from the gas chamber. He doesn’t, and subsequently loses his mind, while sometimes reverting back to acting like a dog. After the Holocaust, Adam lives a life of guilt, pain and resentment. All the while, the spirit of Klein haunts his dreams long after his tormentor has passed on.

Years pass, and Adam falls in and out of sanity. Until the day he discovers a new inmate at the asylum (where he is a charismatic ring leader of sorts). Hidden away and mistreated by the guards, a little boy spends his days alone and scared. He was tortured by his parents and raised as a dog. Adam quickly realizes that in order to salvage what little sanity he has left, he must save the fragile mind and body of the little boy (whom he names David).

As I stated earlier, Adam Resurrected is a very difficult film; one that will be etched in my memory for quite some time. The majority of characters have broken bodies and souls, yet live as if nothing is the matter. And that is incredibly heartbreaking to watch.

The way in which Adam Resurrected addresses mental illness may be too much to bear for some viewers. It’s shown with realism seen through an unflinching eye. I know the thought of Goldblum acting like a dog borders on comedy, but watching his performance will haunt you to the core. Both the cast and crew, in fact, are working at the peak of their talents, effortlessly pulling you into the sad world of these characters.

It goes without saying that there is absolutely no entertainment value involved with watching this film. It takes the viewer to a time and place that some may have experienced, while others only read about. It is a horror story that peels away layers of our humanity and forces us to confront the choices we’ve made in our lives and how they may impact us in the future.

The heart of the film, however, is the love that kept Adam alive throughout his horrendous ordeal. It’s an incredibly powerful message when you think about it. Even in the face of insurmountable, almost invincible evil, love can prevail. But can it heal the wounds suffered throughout? After all, we are an incredibly delicate species.

9 out of 10

Restaurant Review Mentions Jeff Goldblum

Restaurant Review Mentions Jeff Goldblum
September 15, 2008
www.eater.com / www.cookshopny.com

Cookshop, infinitely solid as a general matter, was an organic, grass fed, locavore hell on a recent Friday night. 20-minute, no apology wait past a late resy time to be seated—a Jeff Goldblum walk in to blame?—was followed by inept service and mediocre food. I recommend a pass on the $38 NY strip steak and the $25 chicken--the first big and bland, the latter tiny and of the same flavor profile. Vicki, you are checking-in now and then, yes? — BL

Video: Jeff Goldblum Featured in TV Guide's 2008 Fall Preview

Video: Jeff Goldblum Featured in TV Guide's 2008 Fall Preview
September 19, 2008
Credit: www.veoh.com






Related Video:

*Sigh* Another "Boo!" for Adam Resurrected

*Sigh* Another "Boo!" For Adam Resurrected
Original: An underwhelming batch of films at Toronto festival
Published:Thursday, September 18, 2008
By Milan Paurich
www.vindy.com


Snippet:
Despite a bravura performance by Jeff Goldblum in the leading role, Paul Schrader’s Holocaust drama “Adam Resurrected” is so unfocused, meandering and overwrought that most of the audience at a morning press screening bailed before the end credits. Currently without a U.S. distributor, the only hope “Adam” has of finding an audience is via the Jewish Film Festival circuit.

Jeff Goldblum Loves Organization

Jeff Goldblum Loves Organization
Original: Jeff Goldblum is Enjoying Divesting His Life
September 18, 2008
www.organizingla.com

Ask any professional organizer their view of their business before they began, and a few years later. Working as a professional organizer is difficult when emotions run high, decisions come slowly and patience on the part of the organizer is prudent, or they won't be coming back. The act of organizing might seem thrilling to some. The reality is it's tough to actually move someone through the organizing process.

So take Jeff Goldblum for instance. Mr. Goldblum may be like Matt Lauer of The Today Show fame. They both seem to like organizing so much, they could do it as a profession.

In an interview earlier this year with TV Guide and Jonathan Small, Goldblum talked a little bit about his passion for purging. Unfortunately, the article is offline, presumably because his show Raines was canceled from NBC. One of our readers sent it to us, snail mail:

TV Guide: Apparently you are an expert pianist... Do you have any other hidden talents?

"I do a version of spring cleaning, which is sort of recycling, streamlining and divesting myself of unneeded accumulation. Every year I give away clothes and get down to the minimal thing. I would be very good at going into someone's house who needed help getting it cleaned. I would go through their closets and say "Why are you keeping this?" I'd be good at organizing people's lives."

We love that he recycles the things he doesn't need anymore. So, what are your experiences organizing someone else? Perhaps a college dorm roomate, a parent, your uncle or your children's homework. Did you smell success or did you bomb big time?


*Okay. Jeff doesn't have children. I think the poster should have done more research before posting this article. AND Jeff has never bombed!*

Adam Resurrected / TIFF Review

Adam Resurrected / TIFF Review
By Kathleen Murphy
September 18, 2008
MSN Movies / www.moviesfilter.spaces.live.com / TIFF Dispatch 4

As I lounged, bleary-eyed and movied-out, in a fast-food joint at the Toronto airport, a tall fellow all in black caught my eye. Over my years in the biz, I've observed that screen stars somehow always look as if they're on camera even when they're not — or maybe it's just that we ordinary folk can't help but frame them that way. So even though this long drink of water lacked entourage and looked a bit worse for wear — too much festival partying the night before? — I knew he was Jeff Goldblum.

Just a few days before, this wonderfully quirky actor had shown up on the "Today" show for a reunion of the cast of "The Big Chill." Subsequently, he'd been at the Toronto International Film Festival to promote "Adam Resurrected," Paul Schrader's oddball holocaust tragicomedy.

Complimenting him on his performance as a Jewish comic who survives the camps at great cost, I savored Goldblum's grizzled physog, always the antithesis of movie-star handsomeness. Even before age gaunted and lined this 6-footer-and-then-some's face, his overgenerous mouth and startlingly intelligent eyes suggested a kind of slightly mad bird, part raptor, part dodo. (Remember his superb performance in "The Fly"?)

Why am I going on about this eccentric actor's face? Because, strangely enough, that's one of the great pleasures of any film festival worth its salt: the opportunity to enjoy the amazing diversity of human appearance.

Like it or not, the majority of American movies feature stars whose flesh is buffed, Botoxed, cosmeticized, perfected to a fare-thee-well. And a steady diet of such unreality can't help but get boring, no matter how hooked you are on faces that look like they've never been lived in. Worse yet, most of the stories these mythical creatures inhabit are just as unreal.

Fantasy's fine, but sometimes you really want to sink your teeth (and eyes) into faces and places weathered by experience and maybe even wisdom.

Reminder: Adam Resurrected at MVFF

On Tuesday, October 7, the Mill Valley Film Festival will present a tribute to Paul Schrader, featuring clips, conversation with the man himself followed by a screening of his newest film, ADAM RESURRECTED. I'm sure Jeff will be there as well!

Video: Jeff at TIFF 2008

Jeff Goldblum attends 2008 TIFF premiere for "Adam Resurrected". Jeff greets fans and ECO protester.
Posted by ShoVine editor
September 17, 2008
www.tiff.shovine.com

You can also see the fan that had the Jeff Goldblum shirt on (just the back of her head)!




There's more Jeff and a protester (dude, shut up!) on this video:

Mmmm... Delicious

Mmmm... Delicious

I was just browsing through Getty Images, and I discovered these stunning photos:











Isn't he handsome? More photos can be found at GettyImages.com.

Possibly the worst "AR" review yet!

Possibly the worst "Adam Resurrected" Review Yet!
This was taken from this blog:

Adam Resurrected—There's no question that surviving the Holocaust—however one must—is a commendable feat. However, directing Jeff Goldblum to channel Cesar Romero's Joker hardly intrigues and barely suffices. Schrader should bury this film in the back yard with the other dog bones. I have enough barking dogs on Bernal Heights, thank you.

TIFF 08: Everyone likes the circus ... Adam Resurrected

TIFF 08: Everyone likes the circus ... Adam Resurrected
Monday, September 15, 2008
Credit: Jared's Blog (original review)
www.jaredmobarak.com
*A big thanks goes out to Jared for letting me post this!*



Paul Schrader’s film Adam Resurrected truly caught me off guard at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. I literally had no clue for what was in store, no knowledge of the plot or anything. The credits unveil Jeff Goldblum and Willem Dafoe, two character actor stalwarts, making me think that this thing could be interesting. And then came the disturbing yet stunning close-up of Goldblum’s eyes, both staring straight at the audience. With voice-over narration, his left eye goes sideways while the right stays static. I don’t know if this was a camera trick or something he can actually do, but either way it hooked me. This man rises from bed, nicely dressed in a suit, as a woman comes in with breakfast. She soon apologizes to her boss once two other men walk up the stairs, ready to take Adam Stein away, back to the mental hospital from which he was discharged—a Israeli sanctuary for Holocaust survivors to live and interact, unable to assimilate back into society. We never really get the full story as to what Goldblum’s Stein did to warrant his return—an attempted murder is alluded to—but it is an auspicious one as we soon see how important this man was to all those staying there, patients and doctors alike.

It all begins rather straight-forwardly. Stein was a clown and stage performer in Berlin, a man without politics, working with his wife and children to bring joy to those who attended his shows. Through flashbacks we see how his audience slowly becomes more and more Nazi, going from one stray soldier with swastika to a barroom full of military. He is eventually told he can no longer perform and, being Jewish, it is only a matter of time before he and his kin are placed on a train out of the ghetto and into a camp. Back in the present, however, his affable nature and overabundance of intelligence show a seemingly well-adjusted man, one the patients relate to, the doctors rely on to bridge the gap between them and the survivors, and who has seduced the head nurse, a woman half his age, into an affair that the head doctor knows about and turns the other way. You see Dr. Nathan Gross (Derek Jacobi) feels he can help Stein, knowing that there is something buried deep down inside him, a guilt we can only assume stems from the fact that his family is nowhere to be seen. It appears he has survived while the rest disappeared. Only by giving him some freedom and trust can he begin to try and help.

What follows is a somewhat One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest scenario, only flipped on its head. Rather than have McMurphy rioting against the establishment, causing trouble, Stein acts as though he is a doctor, brought in of his own recognizance, there to help. Some doctors feel this is a bad idea, but it is not up to them. Stein uses his charm and charisma, that which made him such a success on the stage in Germany, to become the favorite of all—laughing with the patients, not at them; engaging in his love affair with Ayelet Zurer’s Nurse Grey; partaking in his secret stash of alcohol hidden away in every vent around the building; and just making the most of his stay, as though it’s all a vacation. That is until one morning when he hears a distant barking. Discovering there is a dog in the hospital—something he was promised from day one would never occur—he begins to seek it out. Finally stumbling across the room with the animal, he gets down on all fours and turns into a canine himself. Barking, drooling, lashing out at the staff, Stein is not as put together as we had once thought.

This all now leads to the true nature of the film. I believe it is the most original tale of WWII and the Holocaust that I have seen. While most these days focus on the camps and the battles and how much they affect those involved at the present, Adam Resurrected shows us the long-lasting ramifications being treated as an inferior, as an animal, that the experience had. The film is all about the psychological scarring the war left on these survivors, from the abuse, the torture, the separation from loved ones, and even the fact that they are alive while so many are not. One may call Adam Stein a lucky man for the series of events that transpired to him. Lucky that he was seen by a man for whom he read the mind of during one of his acts in Germany, a Commandant played by Dafoe who took Stein under his wing to make him laugh and forget about the horrible things he was doing; lucky that all he had to do was pretend to be a dog, doing tricks for his master while all the other Jews worked outside biding their time until death. Only when you see the toying that went on, Stein desperately attempting to save his family, doing everything he is asked for by this man he saved from committing suicide not long ago, do you see how much easier it would have been if he had just been killed.

Goldblum’s Stein is a tour de force, a performance he spent a year researching and preparing for. This broken man has all his armor stripped away by the barking of some thing hidden under a sheet in a room. It is either a dog or maybe someone like him, someone degraded so much that he has become an animal in appearance as well as in spirit. Goldblum plays the magician to perfection, his quirkiness lending itself to the clownish way he goes about his life, but portrays the tortured soul to great effect too; a man able to control his own body, making it bleed, making it get sick, destroying himself over and over again as he does his best to help those around him, not yet in a healthy enough state to help himself. Utterly believable and completely transformed in his character, Adam Stein is whom we see onscreen. A Holocaust survivor only starting to overcome the pain and sorrow inflicted upon him during the war and after, a man coming to grips with the fact that his name is not Stein but the number burned into his arm.

I credit Schrader for directing a stellar film, allowing Goldblum to really perform his heart out for the duration, a time span for which he is in frame almost 100% of the time. The attention to detail is impeccable, right down to the toy train at the hospital, a locomotive that gets under Stein’s skin, perhaps a little too much until we are shown the flashback to the train that transported the Jews, both exact replicas of each other, making that toy a symbol of his incarceration. Even a moment reminiscent to one in Schrader’s earlier Hollywood script, The Last Temptation of Christ, with a burning tree and a revelatory encounter in the desert with his demons works despite walking a thin line towards going too far. Adam Resurrected is truly a story of his journey to find salvation, for himself and those around him. A great line comes from a response to one man’s quest for God as follows, “God is out to lunch. He left a note; it’s on your arm.” Maybe God abandoned them all as he sat back and watched the atrocities occur, but these people, the doctors, patients, and Stein especially, won’t give themselves that luxury. They are there for the long run, doing their best to survive and cope with the fact that they still have the gift of life, hopefully with enough time to make something of it.

Adam Resurrected 8/10

Thank you, Michelle!

I would just like to give a shout out to my sister-in-Goldblum (lol), Michelle. She was nice enough to wish me a happy birthday and posted it into her blog. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Not only have you been just a sister-in-Goldblum, but also a great friend. Thank you for everything!

Thank you to everyone else who wished me a happy 22nd birthday as well!

TV Guide: September 15 - September 29, 2008

SHOe - Mon, Sep 15, 4:45 PM - Earth Girls Are Easy
IFC - Tue, Sep 16, 6:40 AM - Dallas 362
IFC - Tue, Sep 16, 4:35 PM - Dallas 362
STRZ1 - Thu, Sep 18, 3:35 PM - Nine Months
IFC - Thu, Sep 18, 6:45 PM - Igby Goes Down
IFC - Thu, Sep 18, 9:00 PM - The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
IFC - Fri, Sep 19, 3:30 AM - The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
FMC - Fri, Sep 19, 8:00 PM - Independence Day
TVLAND - Fri, Sep 19, 10:00 PM - The Right Stuff
FMC - Fri, Sep 19, 11:00 PM - Independence Day
FMC - Sat, Sep 20, 2:00 AM - Independence Day
USA - Sat, Sep 20, 2:00 PM - Jurassic Park
ENCR1 - Sun, Sep 21, 5:40 AM - Independence Day
TCM - Sun, Sep 21, 4:15 PM - Annie Hall
ENCR1 - Sun, Sep 21, 5:35 PM - Independence Day
ENCR1 - Mon, Sep 22, 1:50 AM - Independence Day
ENCR1 - Mon, Sep 22, 4:20 PM - Holy Man
AMC - Mon, Sep 22, 11:15 PM - Silverado
AMC - Tue, Sep 23, 5:00 PM - Silverado
HBOSGe - Wed, Sep 24, 2:50 AM - The Fly
AMC - Thu, Sep 25, 6:00 AM - Movies That Shook the World
ENCR1 - Thu, Sep 25, 8:20 AM - Powder
FMC - Thu, Sep 25, 6:00 PM - Nine Months
MOMAXe - Thu, Sep 25, 7:00 PM - Man of the Year
FMC - Thu, Sep 25, 10:00 PM - Nine Months
IFC - Thu, Sep 25, 11:00 PM - The Player
IFC - Fri, Sep 26, 1:45 PM - Dallas 362
STRZ1 - Fri, Sep 26, 3:20 PM - Nine Months
IFC - Sat, Sep 27, 5:05 AM - Dallas 362
TVLAND - Sat, Sep 27, 2:00 PM - The Right Stuff
HBOSGe - Sun, Sep 28, 4:30 AM - The Fly
SHOe - Sun, Sep 28, 10:25 AM - Earth Girls Are Easy
FMC - Sun, Sep 28, 8:00 PM - Independence Day
SHOe - Mon, Sep 29, 3:15 AM - Earth Girls Are Easy

And Yet Another Not-So-Good "AR" Review

And Yet Another Not-So-Good "AR" Review
The Toronto Film Festival Wrap-Up
Source: Edward Douglas
September 15, 2008
www.comingsoon.net

Snippet:

My tolerance for Jeff Goldblum tends to run out after 45 minutes so I only lasted about fifteen minutes more for Paul Schrader's Adam Resurrected in which Goldblum plays a Jewish entertainer who quite literally was treated like a dog by a Nazi officer, played by long-time Schrader collaborator Willem Dafoe. The film mostly takes place in Israel years later, when Adam has been institutionalized with other survivors of Nazi concentration camps, and it deals with his antics and womanizing ways. Goldblum's performance is just too strange and eccentric even by his standards and all the jumping back and forth (with the flashbacks shown in black and white), and it really isn't that much more entertaining than Schrader's last film The Walker.

Larger Than Life Photo Exhibition Charity

Larger than Life photo exhibition to benefit Trinity Hospice
By Howardlake on September 13, 2008
www.trinityhospice.org.uk/largerthanlife


Jeff Goldblum - £450 (+£25 p&p to UK)
Quote: “‘What Are You?’ - David Mamet”
Usually ships within 10-14 business days.



Stars of stage, comedy and sport such as Kevin Spacey, Jeff Goldblum, Ricky Gervais, Jack Dee, Barry Humphries, Martin Johnson CBE, and Willie John McBride are featured in 'Larger Than Life', an exhibition of unusual photographic images designed to raise funds for South West London's Trinity Hospice.

The project is due to run for two years and more stars are signing up, including Russell Brand, Paul Merton and Ian Hislop.

Portrait photographer Rich Hardcastle is creating a series of black and white photographs on the the theme of 'life and laughter' that capture the personality of the sitter in an off guard, reflective moment.

The celebrity then adds his or her personal message such as a quote, a witty remark, or philosophical comment, to the original photograph and hand-signs each of the 50 large (32 x 32 inches) limited edition prints that are subsequently produced.

The limited edition prints, range in price from £400 to £500, are hand-signed and come mounted, ready for framing, and with a certificate of authenticity. They can be viewed bought online at Trinity Hospice's website.

The photographs will also be on public exhibition, and available for purchase, across London for the remainder of 2008 and during 2009.

Studio Portraits from TIFF

Studio Portraits from TIFF
Friday, September 12, 2008
Credit: Saint Vianney (here)

SpreeBlog.com: TIFF Adam Resurrected Review

SpreeBlog.com: TIFF Adam Resurrected Review
September 12, 2008
Original title: TIFF: Early day two update–enjoyed the continental breakfast
Original post: here.


I saw this on the www.spreeblog.com (the blog for Buffalo Spree Magazine). It was posted by Chris Schobert and the response is from his friend Jared (I hope you guys over at SB don't mind me posting this):


Chris:
The movie? Not so much. Well, I didn’t enjoy Paul Schrader’s Adam Resurrected very much; Jared, on the other hand, did. It’s a Holocaust tale, in a sense, and a bold, ambitious one, but I think Schrader has once again fallen, hard. His cast, especially Adam himself, Jeff Goldblum, do what they can with what is at best a very strange film, and one unlikely to ever make it to Buffalo.

Yet I would give it a 4 out of 10 for ambition, and for never boring me. It truly is a difficult one to describe, and at many points, to watch. I’m still not quite sure what it was, exactly …

Jared:
Ah yes, I did enjoy Adam Resurrected much more than Chris. It is a film that you have to buy into in order to really be taken with it. There are definitely some things that fall flat, I agree with that statement, but I think there is so much more that works. Either way, though, this is the most original view of the Holocaust that I have seen on film. It doesn’t just pull the heartstrings with concentration camps but instead shows the psychological aftermath of what occurred. And I think Goldblum is fantastic, a feat that doesn’t happen from him often in my mind. He embodies this role of a man that was beaten and broken psychologically that sees himself in a little boy detached from reality. The cuts to WWII and his own personal demons show his inner thoughts and how he is able to try and help those around him … other survivors that were never the same mentally afterwards. I give it an 8/10 and mark the screening as a first in our Toronto Film fest travels. Spanning back from last year, this is the first film we have differed on … maybe more will be coming, it definitely makes for good conversation here between films.

TIFF Adam Resurrected Q&A Photos

Thanks to Very Frank for letting me use these photos on my blog!

Adam Resurrected + Q&A

Adam Resurrected
By: James McNally / TIFF
September 11, 2008
www.torontoscreenshots.com

Adam Resurrected (2008, Director: Paul Schrader): Let me begin by saying I have a lot of respect for the work of Paul Schrader. Anyone who has been both a screenwriter and a critic before becoming a director is bound to have my respect. Which is why I felt so miserable leaving the screening last night. Adam Resurrected is an out-and-out stinker, and I’m sorry to say it.

To be completely honest, I was a bit nervous going in. Films that try to see the comedy (black or otherwise) in the Holocaust have rarely fared well. Jerry Lewis shelved his film The Day The Clown Cried (1972) after critical outrage, and Roberto Benigni’s Life is Beautiful (1997), despite a rapturous reception here at TIFF (one I witnessed in person) fell out of favour pretty quickly as well. Schrader’s film differs in that he presents the “clown” character, Adam Stein (Jeff Goldblum) as insane. When we meet him, it’s 1961 and he’s being escorted back (after an unsuccessful discharge) to a “progressive” asylum in the Israeli desert specifically for survivors of the camps. He’s clearly the star patient, entertaining the other patients and even the staff with his quick wit, and carrying on a love affair with a gorgeous nurse. The head doctor (Derek Jacobi) indulges him endlessly.

Through flashbacks, we discover that he lost his wife and daughters in a concentration camp while he himself was spared. The camp commandant (Willem Defoe) recognizes him from his nightclub act and decides to keep him as his pet. And I mean this quite literally. He forces Adam to act as his dog, barking and walking around on all fours. Since he’s also a talented musician, he’s also used to soothe the inmates with violin music on their way to the gas chambers.

The plot becomes even more bizarre when a boy shows up at the asylum thinking he’s a dog. Adam gradually reaches out to him, based on his own memories, and brings both the boy and himself back to life (hence the portentous title). That’s the psychological resurrection, anyway. Physically, Adam appears to be invulnerable. He seems to be able to bleed at will, and to heal himself of tumours. It’s no wonder that one of the inmates considers him the Messiah.

The film is based on a famous and rather controversial Israeli novel by Yoram Kaniuk, published in 1971. Significantly, Schrader said the book came out in the same general era as Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 (1961) and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five (1969), two other challenges to the typical depiction of wartime experiences. Famously, both of those novels were called unfilmable, and the films made from them have never really been considered successful.

Goldblum, as always, jumps in with both feet, but his strange accent and tendency to mutter left much of his dialogue indecipherable. Defoe and Jacobi are just wasted in paper-thin roles, and the film is further marred by an abundance of shaky handheld camerawork. In the end, I just didn’t care about this strange character, and I found myself rolling my eyes more than once at the hamfisted metaphors.

Here is the Q&A with director Paul Schrader, actor Jeff Goldblum, screenwriter Noah Stollman and producer Ehud Bleiberg from after the screening:
click to listen.

Charting the Course of Adam

Charting the Course of Adam
After briefly dallying with the NBC-TV series Raines, actor Jeff Goldblum ambitiously steps into the shadow of such films as Life Is Beautiful and The Pianist.
Friday, September 12, 2008
By Pam Grady / www.filmstew.com

For Jeff Goldblum, playing a Holocaust survivor in Paul Schrader's adaptation of Yoram Kanluk's 1968 novel Adam Resurrected turned out to be one of the most challenging and rewarding experience of his career. In fact, it was such an emotionally complicated part that prior to shooting, Schrader prepared a graph for Goldblum to use as a kind of map to keep track of Stein and his many shadings. "I'd never seen [anything like it] before," Goldblum remembers during a one-on-one interview with FilmStew at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival, where Adam Resurrected had its world premiere. "Paul had a piece of paper and it was very meticulously done - 'Adam Stein. Adam the Performer. Adam the Lecturer. Adam the Mad Man. Adam the Wounded, Grief-Stricken,' etc., etc.’ [It showed] where in the script, using different colored pens.'" Stein is a one-time Berlin cabaret star and a Holocaust survivor and patient in a mental ward in Israel in the early 1960s, where at times, he seems saner than his doctors, while at other times, the damage to his psyche is only too evident. The arrival of a new patient, a young boy who is convinced that he is a dog, reopens old wounds for Adam as he recalls his life, happy days as an entertainer and family man giving way to the horrors of the concentration camp and his memories of the devil's bargain he made to survive.

The always provocative Schrader
"Paul said, 'There's only one fellow to play this part,'" Goldblum reveals, on how he happened to be cast. "I'm not tooting my own horn, I'm just saying what he said. That's how it happened. So it's to Paul Schrader that I owe everything in the world having to do with Adam Resurrected." In the year before production began, Goldblum immersed himself in the challenge before him, visiting Germany to research the Weimar Republic, the former Majenek concentration camp in Poland, Jerusalem's Yad Vamshem Memorial, and the Museum of Tolerance and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum back home. He talked with Holocaust survivors and very early on, spent a few days with Schrader analyzing the script. "We went over all manner of details, starting with my accent,” says Goldblum. “I said early on, 'I want to get on the right track, so that I don't slog with some work that's going to have to be undone.’” "It's like those routines, degree of difficulty, this could go off the rails in a thousand different ways," he continues. "Paul Schrader, again, I give all the credit to. Paul knew there were many traps and difficulties in the script, but he's as smart and sophisticated as they come and he helped me."

The character required Goldblum to constantly shift emotional gears. In the Weimar Republic scenes, he is an ebullient performer, a clown and a mentalist, the smile remaining on his face even as his audience begins to fill with Nazi soldiers and the political climate becomes more and more frightening. Then his heart and soul are ripped out by his experiences in the camp where Commandant Klein (Willem Dafoe), a fan in the old days, makes Adam into a kind of pet. The emotional annihilation eventually leads Adam to that hospital in the Negev Desert where his mood and mental state veer wildly from moment to moment. Before moving from one scene to the next set up, Schrader would always ask Goldblum if he was satisfied or if there was something else he wanted to try. But Schrader could be challenging, as well, as on the day the production shot a scene in which Adam eats a flower. The director decided he wanted more, asking Goldblum to actually eat a handful of dirt, as well. The actor expressed reservations, reasoning that there could be any number of bad things in the dirt, such as bugs, germs, glass, or excrement. "He said, 'Jeff, come on, don't be a sissy. Eat the dirt. Look here, watch this,'" Goldblum marvels. "And he scooped it up and put it in his own mouth and he ate the dirt. I said, 'Watch me go! Watch this! Let's go!' We both got down to our most raw, primitive, basic selves – as per the theme of the movie." "It's ambiguous and poetic and complex, in my humble opinion," he says of the finished film. "I like it a lot. It's about survival, but finally I think it has to do with what happens when shocking, awful loss and death occurs around you. It's of course upsetting and horrifying, but there’s also an opportunity, a doorway, a portal into dis-identifying yourself with the physical arrangement of the world around you. And asking the most important question, according to some - 'Who am I?'” “And the answer can be at that point, something mysterious and the only real source of love, peace, joy, and connection with others."

Goldblum Gets Deep into Role

Goldblum gets deep into role
Reuters
Friday, September 12, 2008

Tiff - To play a role some are already calling a tour de force in the film Adam Resurrected, Jeff Goldblum visited Nazi-era concentration camps and spoke to Holocaust survivors.

He also had to deal with the emotional toll of playing former nightclub clown Adam Stein, a man driven mad by the loss of his family in the Holocaust.

"It's emotional and I knew I had to try to tell the story authentically, which depicts the worst thing that a fellow can go through, but which people have gone through," Goldblum said in an interview at the Toronto Film Festival, where the film had its world premiere this week.

"I was crying a lot for much of the filming."

The movie is adapted from an acclaimed 1968 novel by Yoram Kaniuk and Goldblum spent a full year preparing to play Stein, who drew packed crowds in pre-Second World War Berlin to shows in which he read minds and threw knives blindfolded.

Goldblum, who is Jewish, said he felt a responsibility to do justice to the material, which deals heavily with "survivor guilt" experienced by many of those who survived Nazi death camps during the war.

Jeff's Name on L&O: CI is Confirmed!

Jeff's Name on L&O:CI is Confirmed!

His name on Law & Order: CI will be Detective Zach Nichols.

Law & Order: CI News

IT'S CONFIRMED!!!

TiVo Time! Mark your calendars!

Law and Order: CI will start Thursday, November 6, 10 PM-Eastern (9 Central-EST) on the USA Network.



Jeff's Name
According to Roger Catlin (TV Eye), Jeff's name on Law & Order: CI will be...

Detective Zach Nichols. This is not yet confirmed.


Be sure to take the poll @ USA Network: What quality would you like Jeff Goldblum to bring to the Major Case Squad? Take the poll.


Be prepared to get Goldblumrized!

A Bad "Adam Resurrected" Review!?

Adam Resurrected
Rating: **

There was a time when Paul Schrader was one of the most important filmmakers in America, but sadly those days are over. Adam Resurrected is the latest disappointment by the Taxi Driver scribe, starring Jeff Goldblum as former clown and holocaust survivor struggling to deal with his past and his sanity. Goldblum delivers a solid performance through a sketchy German accent, but Schrader’s direction and use of symbolism are about as subtle as a sledgehammer to the face and just as enjoyable.

– Phil Brown/For Metro Toronto

The Goldblum Method

The Goldblum Method
TIFF 2008 / Fest Watch / Staff, AP
September 11, 2008
www.theglobeandmail.com

Snippet:

The Goldblum Method
Jeff Goldblum has an eccentric way of promoting his TIFF film Adam Resurrected, a surreal Holocaust drama that is pretty challenging to sit through. "[In life], we all lose our looks, our health, our friends, our professions and finally our lives, I'm sorry to say," he said, laughing. "But the way one accepts that can be an opportunity. That's what the movie hits on that can be nourishing."

Give Goldblum credit for his full year of research: To play Adam, a Jewish comedian in 1930s Berlin who loses his family and his mind, he took violin lessons; met with a creator of the Holocaust Museum in Washington; went to Germany for a month to work on his accent; visited the Majdanek concentration camp in Poland to peer into the still-intact gas chambers and barracks full of shoes; went to Israel and floated in the Dead Sea; interviewed survivors in Los Angeles; and studied with Cesar Millan, the so-called Dog Whisperer.

"From the day I get any part I consider myself on the job," Goldblum said. "But for this one I felt a particular responsibility to be worthy of the material."

To brighten up your day....

Ahh... relax, inhale, and take it all in ladies...

True Fan

One true fan...



You can view more photos from here.

Goldblum Doesn't Clown Around in Holocaust Film

Goldblum doesn't clown around in Holocaust film
September 11, 2008
Source: Reuters
By: Cameron French

TORONTO, Sept 11 (Reuters) - To play a role some are already calling a tour de force in the film "Adam Resurrected," Jeff Goldblum visited Nazi-era concentration camps and spoke to Holocaust survivors.

He also had to deal with the emotional toll of playing former nightclub clown Adam Stein, a man driven mad by the loss of his family in the Holocaust.

"It's emotional and I knew I had to try to tell the story authentically, which depicts the worst thing that a fellow can go through, but which people have gone through," Goldblum said in an interview at the Toronto Film Festival, where the film had its world premiere this week.

"I was crying a lot for much of the filming."

The movie is adapted from an acclaimed 1968 novel by Yoram Kaniuk and Goldblum spent a full year preparing to play Stein, who draws packed crowds in pre-World War Two Berlin to shows in which he read minds and threw knives blindfolded.

By the time film viewers meet him in an Israeli insane asylum in the 1960s, Stein can still dazzle a crowd and can seduce a pretty nurse half his age. But he has lost nearly everything that really matters to him: his family, freedom and sanity.

Goldblum, who is Jewish, said he felt a responsibility to do justice to the material, which deals heavily with "survivor guilt" experienced by many of those who survived Nazi death camps during the war.

The commitment appears to have paid off for Goldblum, who has been known for playing quirky, intellectual sidekicks in a hot-and-cold film career. Early reviews for his "Adam Resurrected" performance have been overwhelmingly positive.


SURVIVES AS DOG
Through flashbacks, we see Stein in his days as a Jewish entertainer, performing alongside his wife and daughters. They are arrested as the net closes around Germany's Jews and taken to a concentration camp, where Adam catches the eye of a Nazi commandant played by Willem Dafoe.

While his family is hauled away, Adam is forced to act as the commandant's "dog" to take the Nazi's mind off what is going on around him. Goldblum took lessons on how to act like a dog to prepare for that aspect of the role.

Adam survives the concentration camp but emerges a haunted man, beginning a descent that lands him at the asylum, where his memories are sparked by the arrival of a young boy who also believes he is a dog.

The film is sometimes hard to watch, particularly as Adam deals with the guilt of surviving the camp and questions if he could have done more to help his wife and daughters.

Asked if Adam failed his family, Goldblum's connection to the material is evident as he tears up before answering.

"I think ... that there were no good choices, that the circumstances were so landmark horrible that often times people were faced with a bad choice and a worse choice, and morality became blurry," he said.

The film comes after Goldblum's short-lived outing in the TV series "Raines," which was canceled after only a few episodes last year.

The actor is set join the cast of the highly successful "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" this fall.

(Reporting by Cameron French; Editing by Janet Guttsman and Bill Trott)

TIFF 2008 Adam Resurrected Review

TIFF Adam Resurrected Review
By: Very Frank
TIFF 2008 Reviews: Adam Resurrected
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Credit: www.veryfrank.blogspot.com

From the ridiculous to the sublime…Plastic City finally (FINALLY!) ended and I raced up the aisle in the dark to line up outside the Isabel Bader theatre again for one of my absolute cannot-miss screenings of the festival, Paul Schrader’s Adam Resurrected. Okay, truth be told, I had no real idea what the movie was about going in; I knew there was a holocaust theme, and both Jeff Goldblum and Willem Defoe were in it, but beyond that I was in the dark. I was there for the man himself: Paul Schrader, the main reason I went to the AFI; the man from whose frontal lobe sprung Travis Bickle and Julian Kay and John Letour; the man who got career-best performances out of Richard Pryor, Michael J. Fox, Dana Delaney; one of the icons of the seventies golden age of American cinema. So he really could have brought Bio-Dome 2: Still Domin’ to town and I would have show up with bells on. Indulge me, I have so few heroes left.

So anyway, the movie’s an adaptation of a novel which I haven’t read but which I learned in the Q&A is a major part of the cultural lexicon in Israel, and while it seems strange at first for Schrader to be taking on such a subject, considering his religious background both biographical and filmographical (raised strict Dutch Calvinist and made his name writing for the most Catholic of all American directors) but then again he did write the definitive movie on the most famous Jew in history, so maybe it’s not a stretch. Adam Resurrected, as a film, is at times even more powerful that Schindler’s List as it tackles some of the same horrors, though the events in this film are entirely fictional. In his B&W flashbacks to the camps, Schrader focuses not so much on the visceral evil of the Nazis but on the violations of the soul and dignity that they perpetrated. It’s a subtle distinction, but essential for Goldblum’s arc. Since we’re on the subject of career-best performances…yeah. This is his. It’s still Goldblum, he does that rapid-talking thing and that move where he’s unloading sly witticisms while his eyes are already moving on across the room and he’s no longer paying attention to his listener, and throws in a Yiddish accent on top. During the Q&A, he was asked about preparation for the role and he brought the house down; apparently that babble that’s become his onscreen trademark is basically how he talks in real life.

In fact, the Q&A seemed oddly jovial for such a serious film, though truth be told the film itself has more moments of levity than one might expect. Partly it’s a “laugh that we not cry” thing, but Schrader explained right off the bat that one thing that attracted him to the script was that it violated two key rules about holocaust movies, namely the story is entirely fictional, and it’s irreverent. I’ve seen the man come off as incredibly dour in interviews (in the Taxi Driver documentary he’s positively mopey) but he was a cheery delight tonight. And (swoon) I raced out behind the theatre and caught the delegation as they were piling into the limo, and he signed my Light Sleeper poster (“Oh, I like this one!” he commented cheerfully as he scrawled his name and I promptly dropped the poster on the ground twice). Sweet. (***1/2)

Tiff Photos

TIFF Photos
Jeff on the red carpet of the Toronto International Film Festival and studio portraits.





WireImage.com

"Adam Resurrected" Portraits (yum!)

"Adam Resurrected Arrivals

"Adam Resurrected" - Premiere


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Strike a Pose!

Jeff Goldblum and director Paul Schrader pose for a portrait during the 2008 Toronto Film Festival

Video: Cast of TBC on the Today Show - 9/8/08

The cast of "The Big Chill" re-unites on the Today show (NBC), September 8, 2008.

Jeff Eats Breakfast with Fellow TBC Cast Members

Jeff Eats Breakfast with Fellow TBC Cast Members
September 8, 2008
Credits:www.newyorksocialdiary.com



William Hurt, Glenn Close, Mary Kay Place, JoBeth Williams, and Jeff Goldblum eating breakfast yesterday morning at Michael's in NYC.

HollywoodRepoter.com: Adam Resurrected Review - TIFF

HollywoodRepoter.com Adam Resurrected Review
Film Review: Adam Resurrected
By: Kirk Honeycutt / HollywoodReporter.com / Toronto International Film Festival
Sep 9, 2008

Bottom Line: Jeff Goldblum gives a dazzling performance as a clown spared the Nazi ovens for his talents only to find himself the star attraction at an Israeli mental institution.


Paul Schrader's "Adam Resurrected" doesn't lack for ambition. Based on Yoram Kaniuk's highly imaginative though controversial Holocaust novel, the story has echoes of "Catch-22" crossed with "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and the film "King of Hearts."

The madness of Holocaust survivors is here played mainly for dark comedy. The film's dazzling central performance in a mental institute finds Jeff Goldblum in the role of his career as a former German-Jewish circus clown and nightclub performer who still can't resist performing a magic trick or seducing a nurse. You might rub people the wrong way with this approach, but the challenge of finding the right tone for each scene -- in the clown's interaction with nurses and doctors dazzled by his undoubted brilliance; the flashbacks to his Berlin career and the degradation of the camps; his descent into madness and confrontation with a feral boy who believes himself to be a dog -- doesn't seem to daunt Schrader in the slightest.

The film is not a complete success. Somehow the clown and dog-boy are too easily cured, at least in a 106-minute movie, and for all the true virtuosity of Goldblum's performance, the character seems more of a metaphor for survivor's guilt than a flesh-and-blood man. Still you've got to hand it to Schrader: He pulls off enough of this impressionistic comedy to provoke passions and arguments anew about a topic that seems done to death.

The film should cause a stir at festivals and in adult specialty venues, though grosses probably will be modest. Other than "Schindler's List," the Holocaust does not usually light up the boxoffice. Nevertheless, the film will strike responsive cords in North America, Europe and of course Israel.

Goldblum's Adam Stein survived the death camps not only because he could play the violin while fellow Jews including his own family marched into the crematoriums but because a sadistic camp commander (Willem Dafoe) wanted Adam's entertainment to take his mind off an arduous job. A broken man after the war, he lives off the commander's own stolen money in Berlin for a while. By the time he arrives in Israel, looking for his daughter, he is quite insane.

At an asylum in the Negev Desert populated solely by Holocaust survivors, he still is the main attraction, drawing cheers from fellow inmates, making love to a beautiful nurse (Ayelet Zurer) and most definitely the pet project of its head doctor (Derek Jacobi). Hard to say what impresses everyone more -- his comic temperament or his shattered psyche.

Do the doctors and nurses need a destroyed Adam to justify not only their work but also the very existence of the Zionist state? Do the inmates sense a kindred though more flamboyant spirit in Adam? Is he their messiah?

Against the institution's stated mandate, the head doctor brings in a boy raised on a chain who believes he is a dog. (Romanian newcomer Tudor Rapiteanu is a striking presence in the role.) What shatters Adam about the dog-boy's abrupt appearance stems from his past: The Nazi commandant demanded that Adam stay on all fours, play with his Jew-hating German Shepherd and even eat from a bowl for several years in his office to save his life. So a man treated as a dog meets a youth convinced he is a dog.

Only a fellow canine can reach the dog-boy, who gradually emerges from his isolation cell into the desert yard to confront his humanity. Thus does Adam find a kind of redemption for his sin of survival.

Israeli-born screenwriter Noah Stollman adapted Kaniuk's stream-of-consciousness into a cinematic three-ring circus. The emphasis here, as it was with Philippe de Broca's "King of Hearts," is more on comedy and entertainment than on truly disturbing psychoses. The institution stranded in the desert should be a devastating modern version of hell. But Stollman and Schrader pump for edgy comedy and in scenes between Goldblum and Zurer a mildly sadomasochistic eroticism.

Gabriel Yared's jazzy, impressionistic music nicely underscores the constant movement of patients and doctors within the institution. Designer Alexander Manasse's massive set of the institute's interior, built on a Bucharest soundstage, provides all the risers and levels, all the expansive rooms and tiny hiding places where the story might wander as it pleases.

There will never be a final word on the Holocaust in books or in moves, but "Adam Resurrected" opens a new and exciting window into the world of survivors who refuse to throw off their chains.

Adam Resurrected at Mill Valley Film Festival

Adam Resurrected at Mill Valley Film Festival - October 2-12, 2008.
Credits: www.mvff2008.com, www.sfgate.com

Adam resurrected will be showing at Paul Schrader's Filmmaker tribute. (More info).

Snippet from www.sfgate.com

"As always, Mill Valley has an impressive lineup of tributes. Writer-director Paul Schrader, actresses Alfre Woodard, Harriet Anderssen and Sally Hawkins and screenwriter Eric Roth will be honored this year, and will attend the festival for onstage interviews and conversations".

"Schrader's latest, "Adam Resurrected," a Holocaust drama starring Jeff Goldblum and Willem Dafoe, will be screened at the filmmaker's tribute. Anderssen is noted for her work with Ingmar Bergman, and her tribute will include the director's intense 1961 drama "Through a Glass Darkly." Hawkins ("Cassandra's Dream") won the top acting award at this year's Berlin International Film Festival for her work in Mike Leigh's "Happy-Go-Lucky," which will be shown at her tribute".

Possible Law and Order: CI Airing Date?

Possible Law & Order: CI Airing date?

A few online sources have said that the new Season 8 of Law & Order: CI, featuring Jeff Goldblum replacing Chris Noth, will begin on Thursday, November 6, 2008 at 10:00PM-Eastern time.

This date is not yet confirmed. Any updates to this will be added as more information comes through.

Jeff at National Arts Club at Gramercy Park

Jeff at National Arts Club at Gramercy Park
Linda Yablonsky on New York's fall season openings
September 09, 2008
www.artforum.com






Neither fire nor wind nor rain can keep the intrepid gallerygoer from diving into a new exhibition season. On Wednesday night, even piracy came to the table, as Tim Nye brought seventy hearties to toast the indefatigable New Imagist Joe Zucker at a dinner for “Plunder from 1977 to 2008,” his show of square-rigger paintings at NYEHAUS in the quaint National Arts Club on Gramercy Park....

TIFF Adam Resurrected Review

Adam Resurrected
David D'Arcy in Toronto
September 28, 2008

The drama will play widely on the festival circuit before a theatrical run. In the US, the film should rally Jewish audiences and fans of Jeff Goldblum, in the lead role of an entertainer who survives by playing a dog for a Nazi. As a German co-production, interest in Germany could be strong. The adaptation of Kaniuk's 1968 classic should give the picture a firm berth in home video and revive interest in the original book.

The films begins as medical attendants escort Holocaust survivor Adam Stein out of a Tel Aviv boarding house where he tried to kill a woman. They bring him to a Bauhaus-style rehabilitation center for survivors in the Israeli desert with modern art on the walls, endowed by an American philanthropist and run by a Dr. Gross (Derek Jacobi). The asylum is full of survivors with endearing quirks, but the story flashes back to Berlin, where Stein's popular cabaret clown act is shut down by the Nazis and his family is sent to a concentration camp, where he is separated from them.

Camp commander Klein (Willem Dafoe), the butt of a cabaret joke years before, has a special job for Stein, whom he forces to walk on all fours and live as a dog, which enabled the humiliated clown to survive. Back in the asylum the affable and amorous Stein discovers young David (Tudor Rapiteanu), who barks and lives in filth. His mission is to save the dog/boy, while haunted by his days in the camp and the loss of his family.

The Holocaust is a new subject for director Paul Schrader, a Calvinist from Michigan, who infuses drama and physical comedy into Yoram Kaniuk's matter-of-fact tone in the novel. Yet the subject is not entirely foreign. As with the protagonists of Taxi Driver and Affliction, Adam Stein is consumed by grueling inner turmoil – in this case, by the guilt of a survivor whose family perished. Shrader navigates this emotional territory effectively.

The script by Noah Stollman (preceded by decades of unmade scenarios for the story) distills a complicated novel, preserving the dark humor while considering the darker ordeal that has driven these survivors insane.

The story of a clown who survived by playing a dog to entertain a camp commander gets the odd laugh, especially in flashbacks and in Stein's romps with sexy nurse Grey (Ayelet Zurer). Yet comic moments never fall into the facile blandness of Roberto Bennigni's motivational Life Is Beautiful.

As Stein, Goldblum has echoes of Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, with some generic movie insanity from the supporting cast. Yet his performance expands as the film tells its story, with surprisingly few false notes, given the character's complexity. This role will bring the versatile actor new job offers, even from those who aren't won over by Adam Resurrected.

Dafoe, who played a Jewish boxer in Auschwitz in Triumph of the Spirit, brings a nasty sadism to his character, who rules over a camp created for the production in Romania. The film's credible look – Romania as Germany and Israel -- is the work of production designer Alexander Manasse.

Video: Jeff Goldblum and Paul Schrader Interview

Video: Jeff Goldblum and Paul Schrader Interview
September 3, 2008
Variety.com


View the video.

What Glenn Close said about Jeff Goldblum

What Glenn Close said about Jeff Goldblum

"Those lips - he looks exactly like SOPHIA LOREN." Actress GLENN CLOSE is convinced actor JEFF GOLDBLUM resembles the 1960s sex symbol.

"The Big Chill" Casts To Reunite

"The Big Chill" casts to reunite
September 6, 2008
www.movies.moldova.org


The casts of the classic 1980's movies "The Big Chill", "Footloose", and "Airplane!" are scheduled to reunite on the "Today" show in New York, NBC said Friday.

The actors are assembling to discuss their experiences making the films, as well as what it's like to reunite after more than 20 years, the network said.


Glenn Close, JoBeth Williams, Mary Kay Place, Jeff Goldblum and William Hurt are slated to talk Monday about their Oscar-nominated movie "The Big Chill" and the impact it had on their generation.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Robert Hays, Peter Graves, Leslie Nielsen and Jill Whelan are set to reunite Wednesday to chat about their big-screen comedy, "Airplane!"

Kevin Bacon, John Lithgow and Lori Singer are to appear on the show Friday to talk about their dance-themed flick, "Footloose."

Singer Kenny Loggins is to make a special appearance and perform the movie's title song, NBC said.

"Easy To Assemble" Launch Party Invitation - damn!

I got this invitation to the launch party of "Easy To Assemble" just for writing about it:





Sadly, I won't be able to attend... It's in California and I live in Florida. Damn!
This might have been my chance to meet The Blum. Plus, I have college and work. So that cancels everything.

Thanks to T.B. for the invite anyway! Oh, well. Maybe next time.

*Sigh*

Adam Resurrected to be Shown at AFI FEST 2008

According to Variety.com, Adam Resurrected will be premiering at the AFI FEST 2008 October 30 - November 9. There is no more confirmed information at this time.

19 Minute Interview with Paul Schrader

19 Minute Interview with Paul Schrader

Highlights from the Telluride Film Festival. From Spout.com's Blog - Film Couch 86 Podcast - Interview with Paul Schrader (19:52). You will need Apple Quicktime (it's free) to hear it.

I'm Too Sexy....

Mr. Goldblum, strut your stuff! It looks (to me) that Jeff's modeling. Ha ha! Tyra, I think I found America's Next Top Model - over 50! LOL!

Shameless Plug

Just a random blog here. If you are a fan of the comedian/actor/Deal or No Deal host Howie Mandel, visit: The Daily Mandel. All of the latest updated and daily news, photos, video, and more! Howie Mandel Online - serving you for 2 years.

The Daily Mandel

Today, Howie was rewarded for a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, so congratulations! It would be complete if another famous Hollywood actor would be added to it. I think his name is Jeff*ahem*cough*Goldblum...

Jeff Goldblum, Illeana Douglas and Celebrity Pals Debut Groundbreaking New Web Show!

Jeff Goldblum, Illeana Douglas and Celebrity Pals Debut Groundbreaking New Web Show!

Starts September 22!

First Look Now Available Exclusively on Metacafe – “Easy To Assemble” Training Videos, Teasers to Upcoming Short-Form Series

Now live on Metacafe®, the world’s leading short-form video entertainment site, is the first of 10 spoof training videos featuring celebrities learning the tricks of the trade at an IKEA store in Burbank, California. Available exclusively on Metacafe for one week, these training videos are teasers to the upcoming scripted web series “Easy To Assemble,” which will launch later this month.

“Easy To Assemble” is created by and stars Illeana Douglas with Jeff Goldblum, Tom Arnold, Craig Bierko, Kevin Pollack, Greg Proops, Robert Patrick, Justine Bateman and Ed Begley Jr. SXM, a Metacafe content partner, is the production and distribution company behind the show, which is co-produced by IKEA.

“These spoof training videos really capture the flavor of the main episodes of ‘Easy To Assemble,’ which will be launched later this month,” said Thomas Bannister, CEO of SXM. “On the Internet you can create storylines and characters in a non-traditional, non-linear way. It’s less like creating a product for a slot on the shelf and more like creating a universe to diffuse through cyberspace. Metacafe’s large audience and exclusive focus on short-form video entertainment makes it a great place to launch this type of entertainment.”

The training videos are each approximately three minutes long, and one to two per week will be prominently featured on Metacafe from now through late October. Viewers can watch the celebrities-turned-retail employees learn about everything from the beauty of the allen wrench to dishing up Swedish meatballs at www.metacafe.com. More information about “Easy To Assemble” at www.easytoassemble.tv.

"Resurrected" Folks

Photo by Eugene Hernandez (September 4, 2008)/ IndieWire.com

On the road to the Toronto International Film Festival this week, the folks behind Paul Schrader's "Adam Resurrected" joined the filmmaker at the Telluride Film Festival. Pictured over the weekend are (left to right) producer Ehud Bleiberg, writer Yoram Kaniuk, and the film's star, Jeff Goldblum.

TV Guide: September 5 - September 17

TV Guide: September 5 - September 17

MOMAXe - Fri, Sep 5, 3:00 AM - The Sentinel

IFC - Fri, Sep 5, 8:30 PM - The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

SHOe - Sat, Sep 6, 12:45 PM - Earth Girls Are Easy

MOMAXe - Sun, Sep 7, 10:00 AM - Man of the Year

IFC - Sun, Sep 7, 7:45 PM - The Player

FMC - Sun, Sep 7, 10:30 PM - Independence Day

IFC - Mon, Sep 8, 3:00 AM - The Player

FMC - Mon, Sep 8, 3:00 PM - Independence Day

FMC - Mon, Sep 8, 8:00 PM - Independence Day

USA - Wed, Sep 10, 1:05 AM - Law & Order: Criminal Intent (season 8 doesn't start until November)

STRZ1 - Wed, Sep 10, 7:00 AM - Nine Months

SHOe - Wed, Sep 10, 11:15 AM - Earth Girls Are Easy

TBS - Wed, Sep 10, 11:30 PM - Friends

FMC - Thu, Sep 11, 3:00 PM - Nine Months

FMC - Thu, Sep 11, 8:00 PM - Nine Months

AMC - Fri, Sep 12, 6:15 AM - Movies That Shook the World

ENCR1 - Fri, Sep 12, 8:30 AM - Holy Man

MOMAXe - Sat, Sep 13, 11:30 AM - Man of the Year

AMC - Sat, Sep 13, 8:00 PM - Silverado

AMC - Sat, Sep 13, 11:00 PM - Silverado

AMC - Sun, Sep 14, 7:00 AM - Silverado

IFC - Mon, Sep 15, 12:00 AM - The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

SHOe - Mon, Sep 15, 4:45 PM - Earth Girls Are Easy

IFC - Tue, Sep 16, 6:40 AM - Dallas 362

IFC - Tue, Sep 16, 4:35 PM - Dallas 362

STRZ1 - Thu, Sep 18, 3:35 PM - Nine Months

Student Poses with Jeff Goldblum at TFF

I liked the photos, so I'll post this and share:

Jeff poses with S. B. Prime, a student of Theater, Film & Media Studies at Northwestern U. He had the opportunity to attend the 2008 Telluride Film Festival, and he got to post with the one and only. I'm not going to post his photos in this blog, but you can view them on his blog.

Dude, you're so lucky!

Another Adam Resurrected Review

owallacepeckville.blogspot.com
Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Nothing too huge. Just something I though I'd add.

Snippet:
But Telluride also will unveil several new films, including Paul Schrader's modish feature, "Adam Resurrected," an adaptation of Yoram Kaniuk's novel in which Jeff Goldblum plays a troubled concentration camp survivor. "It will split audiences correct down the middle," Meyer (Gary Meyer serves as fest director) predicted. "We had a small screening of it, and multitude stood about in the lobby for over an hour discussing it."

Goldblum Style: Goldbama

Here's a photo of Jeff showing his support for Obama. He's pictured with Maribeth Clemente, a local Colorado travel writer. His hat, he said he went shopping with his sister Pamela, and she pick it out for him. She said: "It suited him", and he's been wearing it around ever since. I think Pamela has good taste.



Thanks to PlumTV.com for the photo(s).

Adam Resurrected Toronto Film Festival Page

You can view the 2008 Toronto Film Festival Adam Resurrected page for more information.

You can also view the schedule from last month's blog post.

Telluride Review: Adam Resurrected

Telluride Review: Adam Resurrected
by Kim Voynar Sep 3rd 2008 // 8:02PM
Cinematical.com

Adam Resurrected, adapted by Noah Stollum from the book of the same name by Yoram Kaniuk and directed by Paul Schrader, is a darkly abstract and haunting film featuring Jeff Goldblum in his finest, most layered performance ever. Goldblum portrays Adam Steiner, a tragic clown shattered by the horrors of the Holocaust. A clown and ringleader of his own highly successful circus act in pre-War Berlin, Adam finds himself, his wife, and their two young daughters caught in the roundup of Jews. Ironically, his audience was once full of soldiers in Nazi uniforms; now the very people Adam spent his life making happy are just as happy to see him and his family exterminated.

Adam in the present is a prisoner of his memories of those terrible years, and now resident ringleader of a fictional asylum for Holocaust survivors in the Israeli desert. He's a man with a fractured soul, and as a result of his unrelenting anguish and guilt, he astounds the doctors in charge of the asylum by the ability of his mind to make his body bleed and even grow malignant tumors as he repeatedly dies and is reborn.



Among the worst of the memories that haunt Adam is the time he spent in the concentration camp under the thumb of Commandant Klein (Willem Dafoe, in a great performance), whose life Adam once saved when he read Klein's mind at a circus performance and foresaw -- and prevented -- the man from committing suicide. Perhaps because he's paradoxically both grateful that Adam once saved his life and repulsed with himself for feeling gratitude toward a Jew, Klein forces Adam, who as a performer had a remarkable gift for working with animals, to become his "pet" for his own amusement.

Adam, in the desperate hope that if he pleases the Commandant his wife and daughters will be spared, lives in a pen with Klein's German Shepard and grovels obediently on all fours with a dog chain around his neck. To further degrade and humiliate Adam, Klein obtains for him a violin, which he forces him to play to entertain his fellow prisoners as they are marched to their deaths.

Stylistically, Adam Resurrected reminds me greatly of Schrader's film Mishima, which I had the privilege of seeing for the first time on a big screen at Roger Ebert's Overlooked Film Festival earlier this year; both films are highly abstract and filled with symbolism, leap back and forth in time, and make brilliant use of color, light and shadow to set the tone of particular scenes. Also like Mishima, which tells the story of the tragic Japanese playwright and poet Yukio Mishima largely through metaphor and imagery, Adam Resurrected relies heavily on those literary techniques to evoke a frenetic and deeply unsettling mood as Schrader unfolds this evocative tale of evil, insanity and inhumanity as seen through the eyes of a clown, a non-political entertainer caught up in political and social horror.

Adam Resurrected isn't a conventional film about the Holocaust; rather, it's a complex tale about the shattering effect on the human psyche when a man is faced with moral wrongs that defy understanding, and the fire of guilt that Adam, as a survivor, must walk through it he's ever to be whole again. What's most remarkable about the film, though, is that all of it is symbolism and metaphor wrapped in the trappings of an tale that interweaves dark comedy and darkest tragedy to explore human nature on a deeply philosophical level.

Schrader, who was raised a Calvinist, has brought a dark and moralistic outlook to most of the scripts he's written (and particularly the films he's directed), and there's something so deeply raw and visceral about this film that I haven't been able to get it out of my mind since I saw it. Schrader brilliantly evokes both the darkest corners of man's soul and the redemptive power of a man to heal himself through the deft use of metaphor, abstraction as a means to explore philosophical questions, and startling visual imagery; the result is like nothing you've ever seen before or likely will again.

Goldblum's performance as Adam is complex and engrossing to watch, and while I can't begin to fathom what it must have taken out of him to get inside this story and character to pull the performance off at this level, it's truly a wonder to behold onscreen. The Oscar buzz circulating Goldblum's turn in this film is far from hype; he educes the death and rebirth of a man's soul in such a way that I'd be hard pressed to compare it to anything I've ever seen onscreen. Adam Resurrected is hardly one of Schrader or Goldblum's more mainstream-accessible films, but for those who have the courage and patience to go down the rabbit hole with them, this is art and poetry at its highest level, a truly astonishing achievement.

Adam Resurrected plays at the Toronto International Film Festival, which starts tomorrow.

Adam Resurrected - The Book

Have you read this book? If you are anticipating for the movie like I am, and need something to occupy your time I recommend: "Adam Resurrected" by Yoram Kaniuk. It's a great book, and by reading it, I couldn't wait to see the film (something I forgot to mention in my fan blog post until I spotted it on the shelf).

I read it. In fact, I was so into it, I read it all 384 pages in 3 days and I read it 2x already. You can read it online or buy the book. I highly recommend the new book - Goldblum graces the cover. Grrr....

You can purchase it from Amazon.com for $11.90 USD.

New


Original


Images courtesy of Google Books.

Collection of Photos from Telluride Film Festival

Collection of Photos from Telluride Film Festival





You can view these images at: Wire Image or Getty Images.

Fan Blog: My 10 Ten Reasons Why I'm a Fan of Jeff Goldblum

I was bored and decided to dwell on 10 reasons why I'm a fan of Jeff Goldblum. There are a million (well, I can find a million) reasons to like Jeff. I mean, what other actor do you know that can wiggle his ears one at a time or can play the piano like it's nobody's business? Here are my 10 reasons (really in no particular order):

1. An overall wonderful person.
2. A wonderful actor.
3. Down to earth, passionate.
4. Handsome, sexy.
5. Classy, polite, smart.
6. Super funny!
7. Different from many different actors.
8. No overly popular (ex. like Paris Hilton)
9. Eccentric
10. Dorky, nerdy.

What's yours?

According to IMDB...

According to IMDB...
Adam Resurrected will be released in Germany on January 22, 2009. Does that mean November or December 2008 for us?

Fan Blog: The Anticipation for Adam Resurrected

I simply just can't wait.

I waited for Jurassic Park when I was 7 (1993). I waited for Independence Day when I was 10 (1996). I waited for the Lost World when I was 11 (1997). And I waited for The Prince of Egypt when I was 12 (1998). This is one movie that I can truly say that I've been anticipating on. I don't think the "Lion King" or Talking Barbie had this much affect on me. Well, I take that back.

I've been following this movie since Jeff was to have the leading role in 2006. Now with it being shown at film festivals and I'm hearing the great reviews for it, plus seeing videos, reading articles here and there, and hearing audio over the past 2 years. Who would have though that one day, Jeff Goldblum would be in a holocaust drama? Is this the role he's been destined to play all of this life? Since the day he was born? According to Paul Schrader, it is. He's had Goldblum in mind since he first wanted to start the production of Adam Resurrected. A dark comedy of drama of a man who once was a dog who meets a dog who once was a boy.

Jeff has said that this is one of the most challenging movies he has ever done. He had to study how to be a dog and how to play the violin. He's had to play a character that does multiple things - cabaret impresario, a father, a husband, circus owner, magician, fortune teller, musician. He also had to travel to places he's never been to (except for Germany - DYK? Jeff speaks a little German) like Romania and Israel. Not forgetting to mention the physical changes. He had to go skinny for a while, and nearly shave all of his hair off. And the Holocaust is a very touchy subject of all aspects. Over a course of one year, he visited Holocaust museums, concentration camps, and talked to survivors, and most likely done some reading and watched video footage.

I mean, as Jewish person (even though Jeff's grandparents immigrated to America before any of this happened), this would hit close to home. It's something that happened to your "own" people. Something that is apart of not only the Jewish people and history, but to the history of humanity. It's like if I were an actress and had to play a role of a slave. I wasn't there, but I know the history, and the stories. He said it was all, a very powerful experience.

I truly can't wait. I mean, I'm excited about Law & Order: CI. He gets another chance to prove that he can do TV and be a detective (he proved that in the short-lived TV show Raines). If you've seen or heard the way he talks about the movie, you can see the passion he has for this project. More than I've seen for any other movie that he's done. I haven't seen seen the first trailer for the movie yet, but I can tell, with the brilliance that Jeff Goldblum has brought to all of the other films and characters he's portrayed, Adam Stein is one character we'll never forget. And hopefully, this will be Jeff's moment. An Oscar? A star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, maybe? Things he should have been had if you ask me.

There's been talk that the movie hasn't been picked up by a studio yet. Let's hope that this changes. I'd hate to see a brilliant piece of work go to waste. Have you seen the crap that Hollywood is putting out lately - with the exception of a few good films? Adam Resurrected is funny, sad, and self-reflecting all at the same time. I think this is a movie that everyone should see, and not to be forgotten.

Video: USA Fall 2008 Preview with Jeff Goldblum

Okay. You can sum this video up in 2 words: (watch the video).

I'd like to sum it up in 3: OH-MY-GOD!

The Fly Takes Wing at L.A. Opera

The Fly Takes Wing at L.A. Opera
Howard Shore's new stage work preps for US premiere
By Jon Burlingame
September 2, 2008
www.filmmusicsociety.org


LOS ANGELES — "The Fly is an opera for the 21st century," says composer Howard Shore, referring to his newest work, which has its American premiere Sept. 7 at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion as part of LA Opera's 2008-2009 season.

Shore spoke from Paris, where LA Opera's partner, Theatre du Chatelet, debuted the two-hour work on July 2. He is now in Los Angeles, working alongside conductor Placido Domingo and director David Cronenberg to rehearse The Fly for its six performances (running through Sept. 27; visit http://www.laopera.com and http://www.theflytheopera.com).

"It's very respectful of the great tradition of opera, and in some ways it reaches from the 19th century to the 21st," the composer explains. "It does have arias, duets and trios, traditional forms. I wasn't trying to reinvent the world of opera. I just wanted to create something from my own heart and my own compositional creativity within that form that I love so much."

The Fly is based on the 1957 George Langelaan short story (which was faithfully adapted into the classic 1958 film) and Cronenberg's 1986 film remake that starred Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis and won an Oscar for its elaborate makeup effects. The opera is structured much like the Cronenberg film, although the libretto – by theater veteran David Henry Hwang – is a completely new work.

Bass-baritone Daniel Okulitch plays scientist Seth Brundle, who invents a teleportation system; mezzo-soprano Ruxandra Dunose plays Veronica Quaife, a journalist who decides to document his experiments and falls in love with him; and tenor Gary Lehman plays Stathis Borans, her editor and former lover. The story explores the tragic consequences when Brundle attempts to teleport himself, and a housefly happens to enter the transmission chamber.

Shore says he thought of turning the science-fiction tale into an opera years ago, and when offered the opportunity, enlisted both Cronenberg and their mutual friend Hwang (who adapted his own M. Butterfly for Cronenberg's 1993 film) to collaborate. In turn, they brought in famed production designer Dante Ferretti (Sweeney Todd, The Aviator) and costume designer Denise Cronenberg (who has done several of her brother's films and such others as The Incredible Hulk).

The timing was right for Shore, too. Having spent four years writing ten and a half hours of music for The Lord of the Rings trilogy, much of which involved vocalists and choirs – and which won three Oscars and four Grammys – "I wanted to extend my writing for the voice," he says. "Here was a way for me to work with really incredible artists and orchestra on a purely musical journey, setting the pace for a night of theater."

The composer has worked for most of three years on the project. After Hwang delivered his libretto, Shore created a vocal and piano score over about a year and a half. Another year of orchestration and staging followed. "It was a logical place for me to go with what I knew about theater and drama and music, orchestration and conducting. It was a natural progression."

A key difference between the 1986 film and the opera is the time period. The new work is set in the 1950s, and that is reflected not only in the costumes and colorful, lights-blinking and primitive-video-screens laboratory but in the music itself.

"I like to write to the period as much as I did in things like The Lord of the Rings – which was to illustrate a world of 5,000 years ago – or Naked Lunch or Ed Wood. So I'm influenced by the music and the culture of the '50s. It was after the war, when individual expression became very distinct. The music is of my own design, something I'm interested in, which has to do with contrapuntal relationships. It extends my compositional ideas further. It was one of the reasons I wanted to work in an extended form like this."

Shore also liked "the themes of transformation, dual personality, science gone wrong – such an interesting theme because it deals with genetics... the idea of the transformation of the man from one type of life to another, and the smaller story, how his love tries to save him from this horrible disease. It has grand themes and these smaller, more intimate moments."

The music is not based on Shore's original dramatic score for the original 1986 film, although fans will notice two brief "tips of the hat" to the original: a musical reference at the start of the opera, and a brief quotation at the end, during the death-of-Brundle scene. Similarly, such Fly catch phrases as "help me" and "be afraid – be very afraid" make appearances in Hwang's libretto.

The LA Opera orchestra will consist of about 68 players, with a chorus of 44. Domingo will conduct four of the six performances; Israel Gursky will conduct the remaining two. Although it is sung in English, supertitles will be projected atop the stage and at the sides of the auditorium so that all of the lyrics will be clear to audiences.

Mixed reviews for the Paris performances didn't dim Shore's enthusiasm for the opera's Los Angeles opening. "The audience is what we're interested in," he says. "The audience is so warm and so involved in the piece. You see the concentration, the involvement in the story. It's wonderful. That's really the joy of it, in the creation each night of a new work."

Of equal interest to the composer was the notion of drawing on artists from many disciplines, many new to the opera world. "It's a very interesting combination. I think that's healthy. It's been a completely fun thing to do."

Interview: Adam Resurrected & Paul Schrader, Telluride 2008

Interview: Adam Resurrected & Paul Schrader, Telluride 2008
By: Paul Moore
Interview credits: www.blog.sprout.com
Audio credits: Sprout Blog Podcasts

To hear the audio interview, click here.

Adam Resurrected is the new movie by Paul Schrader (Affliction, Auto-Focus) premiering here at Telluride 2008. I was at the first screening which was also the first time Schrader ever watched the movie with an audience. “I realized watching it how exhausting it is, ” he told me right after the screening, “And it’s full of extremes. Literally, that old saying ‘you don’t know whether to laugh or cry’ is true here, and some scenes I think either emotion is fine with me.”

It’s in the navigation of extremes that my crush on Jeff Goldblum, who plays the title character, was born. I’m not one to get into Oscar buzz, but I will with Jeff and even add easily excerpted blurbs: Jeff Goldblum is magnificent. Jeff Godlblum’s peformance is a tour de force. I want to make out with Jeff Goldblum in the back of his Toyota Prius. Like how Daniel Day-Lewis’ character, Daniel Plainview (There Will be Blood), would have seemed flat or absurd in another actor’s hands, Jeff Goldblum’s wry delivery and velvet wit take the absurdity of Adam Stein and make him believable.

Based on the wildly imaginative novel by Yoram Kaniuk, Adam Resurrected begins in 1961 in Tel Aviv where an aging, witty and debonair Adam Stein has gotten a little too rough with his landlord/girlfriend and she has him committed again to the Seizling Institute out in the Negev desert. Founded by an American philanthropist, the institute is an asylum for concentration camp survivors living in Israel. It’s purpose is to somehow restore a reason to care about humanity and god when they carry the weight of being survivors to unspeakable horrors perpetrated on everyone they loved. Each patient is a walking abstraction of a type of survivor: A speechless woman carrying a babydoll, a young man who was a Nazi servant, a man who couldn’t protect his daughter.

Adam Stein is a susperstar in the asylum. The head nurse (Ayelet Zurer) is his mistress, Dr. Gross (Derek Jacobi) his biggest fan. A famous performer in Berlin, Adam was a one man circus who could throw knives, read minds, play violin, do magic, impersonate animals and, strangely, cause himself to bleed on command. Through flashbacks, we see his rise from a Cabaret performer in 1924 to a celebrity in 1936. One night as he works the audience, he reads the mind of an unstable audience member–played by Willem Dafoe–and makes him the butt of a joke. In 1945 when Adam and his family enter a concentration camp, Willem Dafoe has become Commandant Klein, head of the camp. He belittles Adam by getting him to impersonate a dog and charm his German Shepherd. From that night on, Adam literally becomes the Commandant’s pet: A dog whose a man.

At the asylum, he finds what he thinks to be a dog. As if lifted from some horrific parallel dimension, the dog is a boy brought to the asylum. If Adam can turn this dog into a boy again, then maybe he can put away his past as a dog, as the commandant’s pet who survived the camp where his wife and daughters were brutalized.

When I asked Paul Schrader what sparked his interest i the book he said, “Just the strength of the metaphor: The man who once was a dog who meets a dog who once was a boy. I’m not jewish, I’m not as invested as some others in issues of survival guilt and Jewish identity, but that aside, these are really universal themes.” It is universal. Dense with emotion and humor, Adam Resurrected is about the complicated path back from being treated as a dog, a non-human, to becoming a full person again. It’s a powerful metaphor that could have crushed another actor, but it’s the part Jeff Goldblum has been building up to his entire career.

Day Two at Telluride: Jeff Goldblum

Day Two In Telluride A Talk In The Park For Greg Kinnear, Jeff Goldblum
Written by Michael Bialas
Published September 01, 2008
Part of Show and Telluride
All credits: BlogCritics.org


This is the third in a series of stories from the 2008 Telluride Film Festival that is held over the Labor Day weekend. Offerings will include "Sneak Reviews," a quick look at a film screened the previous night; "High on Telluride," highlights of some of the group discussions and celebrity appearances; and "Festival Buzzwords," focusing on what's getting the most attention — good or bad — throughout the weekend.

What do Greg Kinnear, Jeff Goldblum, and David Fincher have in common?

No, they’re not following up Fincher's Se7en with Eig8t, although that could be an interesting premise for a buddy-cop movie. Figuring out who would play good cop/bad cop in the sequel might be more difficult, though.

All three were all on hand at the Telluride Film Festival on August 30, participating in an outside noon seminar in Elks Park, along with legendary actress Jean Simmons (Hamlet, Guys and Dolls, Spartacus) director Mike Leigh (Happy-Go-Lucky), and French actress Elsa Zylberstein (I’ve Loved You So Long).

While the subject matter seemed like every acting student’s nightmare — “The Director and The Actor: Cultivating Creativity” — the guests made an effort to make it entertaining, particularly Kinnear and Goldblum.

Kinnear (Little Miss Sunshine, As Good As It Gets) is in town (far left, with Goldblum) to promote Flash of Genius, one of the weekend's “sneak previews” added to the initial schedule. He displayed an easy-going, friendly demeanor, but had trouble getting a word in edgewise on the panel that was dominated by the long-winded Leigh and the equally verbose (but nonetheless hilarious) Goldblum, who talked up Adam Resurrected, his dark project directed by Paul Schrader that is showing here.

It was like a walk in the park for the casually dressed Kinnear, who put on a festival cap during the discussion, and Goldblum, whose tall, lean frame was accentuated by a pair of high-waisted blue jeans.

They now have something else in common — both have been directed by Schrader and co-starred with Willem Dafoe (Auto Focus). The pair seemed like buddies reuniting for the first time in 20 years, then went to sit on opposite sides of the stage.

Goldblum (Jurassic Park, The Big Chill), in rapid-fire fashion, told a story about Schrader motivating the actor to not only eat a flower, which was in the script,
but to “grab some dirt and eat it.” After questioning the sanitary value in doing so, Goldblum said Schrader got down and dirty. “Jeff, look at me, I’m eating the dirt; I’m eating the dirt. You eat it,” Schrader was quoted as saying. “So I ate the dirt,” Goldblum said.

Asked if he had any similar stories of motivation, Kinnear dropped his head down in mock disgust, saying, “You’re not gonna make me follow that.”

Kinnear did turn serious when asked to describe the difference between independent films and Hollywood films, saying it’s time — or the lack of it — that causes the biggest disparity between both worlds and that he “likes the process of moving forward and not getting stuck” when a director doesn’t rely on too many takes. On the other hand, he used James Brooks (As Good As It Gets) as an example of one who is "not afraid to get a few takes in," calling that "a luxury."

Goldblum, who has had his share of directing and teaching jobs, called Schrader “brilliant,” and said he spent a year preparing for the role of a clown turned concentration camp survivor turned mental asylum inmate. He and Schrader had “a very playful and creative time of it” during the preparation that took him on research missions to Israel, Poland, and Romania.

But finding the right person for a role doesn't always require so much work, said Fincher, who earlier in the day showed about 20 minutes of his you’ve-seen-nothing-like-it-before epic The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

Fincher, who also is here with a director’s cut of his gritty 2007 thriller Zodiac, recalled discussing who could play the role of Paul Avery, the hard-drinking reporter involved in tracking down the serial killer. Simple, he said.

“Who can play this guy?” Fincher remembers wondering out loud. “What about Robert Downey Jr.? Duh! Okay, call him.” ............






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There was more of the article, but not mentioning Jeff.

More photos can be seen here.

Adam Resurrected Showing at TFF - 9/1

Adam Resurrected Showing at TFF - 9/1

TBA
Galaxy 3:15 PM
4 - Adam Resurrected

Adam Resurrected at the Haifa Film Festival

Adam Resurrected at the Haifa Film Festival

Paul Schrader's "Adam Resurrected," based on a novel by Israeli writer Yoram Kaniuk, will make its Israeli debut at the Haifa Film Festival. The film's cast includes Jeff Goldblum, Derek Jacobi, Willem Dafoe and Ayelet Zurer.

YNetNews.com