The new George Clooney movie, The Men Who Stare At Goats, has premiered at the Venice Film Festival, and our man Damon "Festival guru" Wise was there to see it. His full reaction is on our Words From The Wise blog over here, but here are a few tidbits.
"The Men Who Stare At Goats didn't fill me enthusiasm when I first heard about it. No disrespect to the book, but I didn't see how a fiction feature could be woven out of Jon Ronson's largely anecdotal history of the American military's covert experiments with psychic warfare – to be frank, I'd have been more excited about a documentary. Having seen it, however, I must admit that it does work. There are some obvious pitfalls – there's really not much of a central story, so it doesn't feel quite as emotionally satisfying a good movie should – but there are some great performances, a lot of very deft comedy and writer Peter Straughan (aided by Grant Heslov's tight direction) captures the deadpan, ironic style of Ronson's writing despite making major changes to the framework."
The film's directed by Clooney's long-term writing partner Grant Heslov, and also stars Ewan McGregor, Jeff Bridges, Kevin Spacey, Robert Patrick, JK Simmons, Stephen Root and Stephen Lang. It's out here on January 22, 2010.