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Denis Villeneuve and Blade Runner 2049

Today’s Montreal Gazette has Blade Runner on the front page, and more inside.

Below, the interview with Denis Villeneuve.

Click here to read an interview with Festival du nouveau cinéma  co-founder, Claude Chamberlain speaking on how Denis Villeneuve helped get one of the two premieres of  Blade Runner 2049. It’s on Wednesday, but by  invitation only. And we weren’t invited, sigh.

ON THE CUTTING EDGE
How do you follow in the footsteps of a sci-fi masterpiece? Montreal director Denis Villeneuve says he’s ‘serene’ now that Blade Runner 2049 — perhaps the most anticipated release of the year — is done. And he’s happy its Canadian première will be at the FNC.
  • Montreal Gazette 
  • T’CHA DUNLEVY tdunlevy@postmedia.com

WARNER BROS. WENN.COM. On the set of Blade Runner 2049: “One thing that’s important, and I don’t say this lightly, is that Ridley Scott liked the film, and Harrison Ford, too,” Villeneuve said. “The two fathers (of the original) liked the film. From the moment (I heard that), I was OK.” Below: Ryan Gosling, right, in a scene from the stylish, esoterically paced noir Blade Runner 2049.

Blade Runner 2049 opens the Festival du nouveau cinéma at an invitation-only screening on Wednesday, Oct. 4 and previews in theatres on Thursday night before opening wide on Friday.

Denis Villeneuve was in a good place Thursday morning — and not just because he was home in Montreal.

He seemed remarkably calm less than a week before the world première of the biggest film of his career — the long-awaited sequel of one of his all-time favourite movies and perhaps the most anticipated release of the year: Blade Runner 2049.

“I feel serene because the movie is made,” he said, sitting on a couch on the top floor of an Old Montreal boutique hotel, clad in a smart black suit, speaking just above a whisper.

“From the beginning, I made peace with the idea that my chances of success were very small and that I couldn’t make this film expecting results or the approval or affection of the film community or the public.

“I had to make this film only as a gesture of creation.  If not, if I had put pressure on myself linked to the fact that (the original) is a masterpiece, I wouldn’t be here today. I wouldn’t have found freedom or joy.  When you make cinema, there’s a profound joy of creation, which you have to be in touch with.”

Villeneuve’s freedom is on full display in Blade Runner 2049, a visually spectacular, tonally haunting, dream-like epic that conforms only nominally to Hollywood norms. Continue reading Denis Villeneuve and Blade Runner 2049 →