Jump to content
Bellazon

Leonardo DiCaprio - (Please Read First Post Prior to Posting)
Thumbnail


moiselles

Recommended Posts

LA Times article about Leo's  Before the Flood documentary

 

 

In Toronto, Leonardo DiCaprio delivers "Before the Flood" , a documentary rallying cry about climate change

 

 

la-1473718177-snap-photo.jpg

 

 

About six years ago, Leonardo DiCaprio and the actor-director Fisher Stevens found themselves on a TED-sponsored trip to the Galapagos Islands.

 

The two had known each other from L.A. pickup basketball games, but they soon were down to more serious matters: the dangers facing the environment. And then, shortly after, to graver affairs still: What if they made a movie about those dangers?

 

"I thought, 'Oh great. Now Leo is all excited and we have to make this movie,'" said Stevens, a producer on the environmental documentary "The Cove" and a generally wry presence. 'But it was clear this guy has been feeling it in his gut for a long time. I was blown away with how much he knew. I thought, 'We really could have something here.’”

 

This past weekend at the Toronto International Film Festival, those conversations amid the marine iguanas and sea snakes reached their culmination. "Before the Flood” (directed by Stevens and starring DiCaprio) is a documentary that offers a look, via some of the world's most famous names, at the threats posed by climate change — a more modern, globetrotting "An Inconvenient Truth." The film played to a hooting audience more befitting a “Titanic” premiere than an exploration of the dangers of greenhouse gas emissions.

 

 

"The origins of wanting to do this movie is to give the scientific community out there a voice," DiCaprio said before the screening, to more cheers in the packed house, at the city’s giant and august Princess of Wales Theater. "Because we have ignored the predictions of the scientific community for way too long."

 

"Flood" follows the Oscar winner, in various stages of facial growth, on a kind of tour of global environmental hot spots. He goes from the Canadian Arctic to Indonesian forests to melting portions of Greenland to the homes of American scientists and economists and back to the Canadian tundra. So called climate change deniers, including Sen. James Inhofe (R.-Okla. are given air time, then debunked. On-set scenes of "The Revenant" figure in too; that movie's themes about harsh natural conditions, shot in Alberta, Canada, fit in easily with the ideas in this film.

 

 

(“Flood,” incidentally, also benefited from the guidance of Martin Scorsese, who executive produced and offered some key notes, including adding more of the deniers and opening on a more swelling note involving a painting that hung over DiCaprio's crib as a child.)

 

Though much of the science explained in the film will be well known to the many who follow such issues, telling details are nestled within: the destructive effect of raising cows for beef given the methane they release, for instance, or the way that fully 99% of the Sumatran forest has been destroyed in the bid to harvest cheap palm oil for processed snack foods.

 

What could seem lecture-y or ponderous becomes a lighter, more watchable affair thanks to DiCaprio. In addition to the many scientists he interviews — he serves as a kind of audience surrogate--"Flood" also features scenes of the "Wolf of Wall Street" star talking to the likes of Secretary of State John F. Kerry, President Obama and Pope Francis (even if the film is hampered by the crew receiving only a small percentage of the video shot by the Vatican during the meeting).

 

"There have been a lot of great climate docs, but they've been heady," said Stevens, also a well-known character actor in a host of TV series and films. (See if you can spot him in “The Night Of.”) . "We wanted to do something different — something palatable and entertaining. Not anti-intellectual, just accessible."

 

Financed by the documentary division of Brett Ratner’s Ratpac, “Flood” will air on TV’s  National Geographic Channel in the U.S. and around the world at the end of October. The timing is not accidental: With the U.S. election approaching, filmmakers want to motivate votes for green candidates up and down the ticket. (There will be a small theatrical run as well.)

 

Like many such films, "Flood" aims to start a movement as much as attract an audience, and the end-credits are preceded by calls to action on such issues as a carbon tax.

 

“I know it’s not the most exciting thing to see in a movie — get out, make a difference, that kind of thing” Stevens said. “But if you infuse it with emotion — that if we don’t change, then the world as we know it will become a much darker place — I think people begin to understand.”

 

 

The director admitted that prevailing on DiCaprio to focus on prospects for change as much as current bleakness was a challenge. "I'm more optimistic, and Leo's more pessimistic,” he said. “But I think that combination worked well.”

 

One model for all this, of course, is "Inconvenient Truth," which more than a decade ago was widely seen and, in the process, altered popular perception. Then again, Davis Guggenheim's Al Gore-centric film came at much earlier moment in our understanding of climate change — audiences informed or jaded now were still learning then. And it came at a much earlier point in the development of environmental films; the last decade has seen dozens.

 

Still, filmmakers see reasons why this movie is different.

 

"You have the most global issue in the world with one of the most famous movie stars in the world and one of the biggest networks in the world," Ratner said in an interview. "I think it's all lined up nicely.” Indeed, National Geographic has local channels in more than 170 countries and a massive social media presence. DiCaprio, meanwhile, will help test the notion of whether a star’s fan base is so devoted it will follow him even to places it normally wouldn’t go.

 

“Flood” was set to end with a street speech DiCaprio was to give at a rally outside talks on the Paris Agreement on climate change late last year. However, that event was canceled in the wake of terrorist attacks in Paris. The filmmakers then pivoted and arranged a speech at the United Nations, where DiCaprio talked about the grave threats before a bevy of world diplomats, offering a kind of rallying-cry end to the film. The moment epitomizes the hybrid quality — Hollywood meets wonkiness — of “Flood” itself.

 

"It's almost this insane science fiction film playing out before our very eyes, and we’re the root cause,” DiCaprio said in Toronto. “I don't want to look back in 20 or 30 years and say I didn't do anything."

 

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Some Leo/NY sightings from earlier today

 

@LeoDiCaprio just walked up next to me. Best part of my lunch break lol

 

 

Law Belle In NYC @theycallmeivy20 3h3 hours ago

I just ran into Leonardo Dicaprio & he looked completely normal & not in one of his disguises, which was mildly upsetting #WheresUrUmbrella

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Cute blog entry from woman who went to the Before the Flood screening,  I liked her comment about his hair , like me,  she likes the more relaxed look :D

 

I remember the exact moment I fell in love with Leonardo DiCaprio. It was in my Grade 8 English class, when I watched Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet. I’m not sure if it was the poetry, blonde bangs or bad-boy attitude, but I became enraptured by Leo after I saw that movie.

By the time Titanic hit theatres and later, The Beach, I carried a keychain with Leo’s face on it everywhere I went and had a three-foot Leo poster hanging by my bedside (and a smaller one in my school locker). My love for Leo was serious. And most of all, it was pure and real.

So when TIFF announced its documentary program a few months ago, I stopped short at the words Before The Flood: Leo’s handsome face, shielded by sunglasses, appeared below them on the press release. Would he come to Toronto for the film? I didn’t want to get my hopes up, and my suspicions were correct when a list of expected Hollywood celebrities attending TIFF was released: No Leo.

I pushed Before The Flood out of my mind. The climate change documentary featuring Leo intrigued me, but it didn't make my list of must-sees – until TIFF took to Twitter to make a very important announcement on September 8.

Plot twist! Leo was coming. The film’s premiere was September 9 and it was a public screening, so I biked as fast as I could to the TIFF box office and scored a ticket.

The next day, I arrived at the Princess of Wales theatre around 45 minutes early, but the ticket-holder’s line had already wrapped around the block. When I finally made it inside, I ran up to the front of the theatre in hopes of finding a seat, and there was one: front-and-centre in row three. It was meant to be.

The energy inside the packed theatre was closer to that of a pop concert than a documentary film. The crowd – mostly young women like myself – squirmed in their seats with anticipation, eyes darting around the room like rabid squirrels. At one point, the young woman seated next to me started frantically fanning her face with her hands. “I’m so excited,” she exclaimed to her friend beside her. Her friend gave her a tight squeeze.

Before Leo appeared on stage, we were greeted by director Fisher Stevens. Most people know Stevens as one of the producers for The Cove, the controversial 2009 documentary about dolphin hunting in Japan. As a director, he made Another World in 2014, a film about Occupy Wall Street, and before that, he directed Al Pacino and Christopher Walken in crime-thrillerStand Up Guys. Stevens came out on stage first, thanking all the people who helped him make Before The Flood and revealing the film had only been completed a week ago. He also announced that the film would be distributed by National Geographic prior to the U.S. election – where one candidate has actively denied the reality of climate change.

A few minutes passed and then Stevens said the words everyone was waiting for.

“I’d now like to present to the stage, Leonardo DiCaprio!”

The crowd roared and clapped enthusiastically. Actually, that roar was more of a shrill “wooooooh” sound. Turns out, I wasn’t the only super-fan there to see Leo. The man looked perfect – perhaps a little too perfect in a tanned wax statue sort of way – but to me, he looked like the Romeo I had dreamed about all my teenage years.

I can’t entirely remember what Leo talked about. Of course, it was about climate change and the importance of the film, but in those five minutes he delivered a speech on stage, my world went quiet and all I focused on were his cerulean-hued eyes and slightly-chapped lips, likely from lying out too long in the Saint Tropez sun. His hair wasn’t slicked back the way he usually wears it to award shows, but more windswept and soft. He wore a navy suit and a blue shirt with the collar unbuttoned, as if to say, “Hey, I’m just like you.”

I must’ve taken over a dozen photos of him on my phone (he’s posed in the exact same position in every one, his mouth agape in mid-sentence). The woman beside me was in near-tears, the look on her face as if she was witnessing a true miracle.

As Leo ended his speech and waved to the crowd, the shrill “woooooh”ing sound returned louder. He half-smiled and walked off to exuberant applause.

The film ended up evoking just as much of an impassioned response from the audience. In it, Leo took viewers around the world, confronting the devastation of natural landscapes and discussing with world leaders and climate scientists what can be done. We collectively gasped when we saw the shrinking ice in the arctic and shook our heads at the palm oil industry in Indonesia. Perhaps most shameful was an aerial tour of the blackened landscape of Alberta's tar sands. I wondered what Leo thought of Canada.

Parts of the film featured only Leo's voice as narration. He described Hieronymus Bosch's The Garden Of Earthly Delights in great detail at the start of the film and that painting ended up playing a central role. But for the most part, Leo appeared – like an artwork himself – on screen. And every time he did, a faint, high-pitched "whoooop" from an audience member shot through the dark theatre. 

 

ttps://nowtoronto.com/movies/tiff-2016/my-first-tiff-leonardo-dicaprio-gets-me-hot-about-climate-ch/

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Article about Leo's recent visit to Toronto/climate docu

 

 

Leonardo DiCaprio comes to Toronto with an urgent warning about the climate crisis

 

 

One of the biggest stars on the planet turned up at the Toronto International Film Festival yesterday, and the planet was the reason behind his visit. Leonardo DiCaprio was here for the world premiere of Before the Flood, the documentary he made with director-actor Fisher Stevens (and completed less than 48 hours earlier, Stevens said). Both DiCaprio and Stevens have made ecology-minded films before; TIFF doc programmer Thom Powers said some people told him this latest warning about climate change would be preaching to the choir—but he retorted that DiCaprio has an awfully big choir. (Indeed, while waiting on the long line snaking beyond the Princess of Wales Theatre, you could hear Toronto fans screaming for the Oscar winner two blocks away.)

 

 

There have been many climate-change docs in recent years—most notably Charles Ferguson’s excellent and comprehensive Time to Choose—and Before the Flood doesn’t cover much new ground for anyone familiar with the particulars of our planet’s dire crisis. But the approach here is a personal one, essentially a portrait of DiCaprio himself and his longtime passion for the subject. Named a “UN Messenger of Peace” tasked with communicating the climate emergency in 2014, DiCaprio worried that they “may have picked the wrong guy,” so pessimistic was he about the world’s response. So he and Stevens embarked on this project, traveling the globe to examine flashpoints of climate upheaval like the Arctic Circle, the forests of Sumatra and frequently flooded Miami, Florida. But the film comes most alive when he meets with a great interview subject: an articulate President Obama; Indian environmentalist Sunita Narain, who scolds America for the example it’s setting; and astronaut and scientist Piers Sellers, who offers vivid illustrations of the Earth’s roiling weather systems but remains optimistic that we can collectively conquer this challenge.

 

 

The film pulls no punches in condemning climate-change deniers like Oklahoma senator James Inhofe (who is shockingly the chairman of the Senate Environment Committee), Sean Hannity, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and, yes, Donald Trump. Onstage, DiCaprio declared, “We cannot afford to have leaders in office who don’t believe in climate science.” The consequence, he warned, is “a tumultuous, terrifying future.” (And for those who take note of DiCaprio’s own high-flying lifestyle, he sheepishly admits in the film that “my footprint is probably a lot bigger than most people’s”; the production itself made charitable contributions to offset its own globetrotting footprint.)

 

 

DiCaprio and Stevens rushed completion of the project to get it out in the world before the U.S. Election Day. Distributed by National Geographic, it opens theatrically in New York and Los Angeles on Oct. 21, and will be broadcast in 171 countries on Oct. 30.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Quote

The woman beside me was in near-tears, the look on her face as if she was witnessing a true miracle.

 

 

This sentence above would probably be my reaction if I ever have a chance to see Leo in person... I guess a bit more hysterical, perhaps, LOL.     :rofl:

 

BTW, great articles you posted, ox. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...