Daily Dose of George Clooney!
Solaris News 3
 Soderbergh's 'Solaris' Sizzles in Russia
3/14/03
Tom Birchenough
Moscow (Variety) - Steven Soderbergh's "Solaris" is a hit in Russia, despite drawing some flak for remaking local director Andrei Tarkovsky's 1972 sci-fi classic.

Russian distributor Gemini released the psychological sci-fi drama starring George Clooney on Feb. 20 on 41 prints. In its first four days in Moscow, the film ranked No. 3 at the box office, grossing about $147,000. By comparison, "Catch Me if You Can" garnered $391,000 on 109 prints.

By March 9, the tally for "Solaris" in Russian territories had risen to $437,000. That was a good showing for a film that garnered poor reviews. As one local critic wrote: "The new film resembles the original about as much as an anatomical plaster cast resembles a living human being."

Reaction from those who worked with Tarkovsky on the original has been kinder. Local performers Natalya Bondarchuk (daughter of the classic Soviet director) and Lithuanian Donatas Banionis both made positive comments.

Tarkovsky's set designer, Mikhail Romadin, who created the unforgettable rain-swept scenes at an out-of-Moscow dacha and the chaotic space station interiors, also was generous.

"Soderbergh has made a film about love," he said. "I'm glad that the new version did not become a typical Hollywood action movie."

However, Stanislaw Lem, the octogenarian Polish author of the novel on which the film is based, said he did not approve of the original and feels little better about Soderbergh's version. Tarkovsky died in Paris in 1986.
 Heart-throb Clooney bares bottom
1/7/03
Berlin (Reuters) - Hollywood heart-throb George Clooney has bared his bottom in the movie "Solaris" to stir-up excitement and promote the film, he was quoted telling a German magazine.

"If my ass helps the film, I don't have a problem with that," Clooney, 41, told the German edition of Playboy magazine in its February issue.

Clooney said the film's promoters found it hard to sell "Solaris" because it was a hybrid of sci-fi and romance.

"It's a serious film without any spectacular special effects and, in times like these, these sorts of films can be difficult to promote," he said.

Clooney plays a psychologist, Chris Kelvin, sent to a space station orbiting the energy-rich galactic sphere, Solaris, to investigate a string of mysterious deaths. He learns people who travel to Solaris can contact people important to their lives.
 Holidays Conjure Images of Oscar as Well as Santa
Bob Tourtellotte
11/29/02
Los Angeles (Reuters) - It hardly seems like a year since Halle Berry (news) lit up the Hollywood night with her historic Oscar win for best actress in "Monster's Ball."

And there's a reason: It has been just eight months.

But for all those fans watching 2002's race to Hollywood's top film honors awarded in March, the starting gun pops off this U.S. holiday weekend when the studios start unveiling what they think are the year's best films -- movies such as "Solaris," directed by Oscar winner Steven Soderbergh (news) and starring George Clooney (news).

That is not to say the studios won't serve up a little light and fluffy type of fun, too.

After all, the holidays are second only to the summer for ticket sales, so there are action flicks like "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers," comedies such as "Analyze That" and kid movies like "Treasure Planet" to goose the box office.

Last year, Soderbergh and Clooney teamed up for an action-adventure film with "Ocean's 11," but "Solaris," which debuted on Wednesday, is a far different movie with serious Oscar buzz.

In the science fiction film, Clooney plays a man sent to a space station after a series of strange deaths. When his dead wife re-appears, he must decide whether she is real or whether his love for her has overpowered his judgment.

"I felt way out on a limb with this," said the jovial Clooney about his deadly serious role. "If we fail, I'll end up back on (game show) 'Hollywood Squares."'

Hardly. Talk is Clooney may have an outside shot at the best-actor Oscar.
 Video Feature: Behind the Scenes of Solaris
On set with George Clooney, Natasha McElhone, Jeremy Davies and Steven Soderbergh.

November 27, 2002 - Opening today, Wednesday, November 27th, in a few thousand theaters is director Steven Soderbergh and producer James Cameron's Solaris (official site: SolarisMovie.com) – a new take on the avant-garde Russian film by Andrei Tarkovsky, which in turn is based on the novel by Stanislaw Lem. Set in the not-too-distant future, the movie's drama centers around the space station Prometheus as it orbits the planet Solaris. Not long after entering Solaris' atmosphere, the psychological stability of the crewmembers is questioned when they experience visitations (hallucinations?) from people in their past. A psychologist, Dr. Chris Kelvin (played by George Clooney), is called upon to visit the Prometheus and study the crew, only to find that he, too, is subject to the bewildering irony of these visitations – his deceased wife, Rheya (played by Natascha McElhone), appears in flesh and blood on the Prometheus.

For Soderbergh, conveying the claustrophobic environment of the space station was key to the film's tension: "Real estate is valuable in these situations, just like it is on a submarine or battleship. The sense of being closed off and isolated would be diminished if you were constantly aware of what was outside. I really wanted a sense of being trapped in a somewhat oppressive environment."

Production designer Toscano Messina notes: "We wanted the colors of the Prometheus to be soothing in both a realistic and dreamlike way. We used a lot of color, but all within the blues and greens – and even they are 'grayed' out except for the Cold Room, the station's computer center, which we gave more intense blue color. Wherever I used blues, I also added some gray. I wanted the background to have a more homogeneous feeling so the characters would stand out. There are a lot of textures, but what you see is light and shadow and not lots of colors."

In this first video, follow director Steven Soderbergh as he tours the Prometheus space station set under construction.
Click here to watch clip 1: (right click to d/l) Steven Soderbergh's Tour (QuickTime, 9 MB)
For the scenes on Earth, "What helped us was that the look today is already futuristic," says Messina. "Even at Target and K-Mart, everything is designed to the n-th degree. (Chirs and Rheya live) in a New York brownstone, which we wanted to have a timeless look. So we mixed in a lot of different periods, from an antique secretary to Art Deco accessories and some contemporary fixtures. We designed our own refrigerator and stove and tried to make them a bit more forward thinking."

In these next two videos, look over George Clooney's shoulder during one of the rainy exterior scenes, and get a behind-the-scenes look at the filming of the train station sequence – note, however, that there is no soundtrack to these two clips.

Click here to watchBehind-the-Scenes Clip 2(right click to d/l) (QuickTime, 7 MB)
Click here to watch Behind-the-Scenes Clip 3(right click to d/l) (QuickTime, 8 MB)
Each video runs approximately two minutes.
 GEORGE SWOONY
Jonathan Foreman
11/27/02
Rating
THE best performance of George Clooney's career so far is only one of the pleasures of Steven Soderbergh's melancholy, haunting but slow-moving "Solaris."

A remake of a celebrated if exhausting Soviet film by Andrei Tarkovsky, itself based on a novel by Stanislaw Lem, "Solaris" is described by the filmmakers as a love story set within a science-fiction framework.

It would be more accurate to say that it uses a science-fiction template to meditate on grief, love and redemption, gradually blooming into the kind of Christian religious allegory that was a dissident form in the old Soviet Union and is daring enough in America today.

"Solaris" is filled with visual and thematic homages to Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" (slowly spinning space vistas, a deep space encounter with the apparently supernatural), Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner" (a rain-soaked Earth, humans struggling to distinguish themselves from humanoid copies) - and to a lesser extent Scott's "Alien."

There is even something of "Vanilla Sky" in the way Soderbergh makes it hard to tell the difference between dream and reality.

But "Solaris" is more of a self-conscious art film than any of these. And there are times, especially in its beginning, when this film feels like a exercise in seriousness without depth.

There are at least two "Oh, please!" moments (including a sequence featuring the exhausted hands-meeting motif from the Sistine Chapel), and you are occasionally reminded of "Star Trek" episodes that deal with similar themes.

Still, "Solaris" is so beautifully made (everything in it is understated except the gorgeous good looks of its stars) and turns out to have such real cumulative power that it is worth holding out to the end.

In a gloomy, rain-soaked near future, Dr. Chris Kelvin (Clooney) is a widowed psychologist who specializes in grief.

When a remote space station suspended above the mysterious planet of Solaris cuts off contact with Earth, Kelvin is sent to investigate.

His friend, Gibarian (Ulrich Tukur), was the mission commander, and in his last message to Earth specifically asked for Kelvin's help.

When Kelvin arrives at the gigantic, gleaming station, he finds it empty of life - except for two crew members, Dr. Gordon (the terrific Viola Davis) and young Snow (the often irritating Jeremy Davies, channeling Dennis Hopper in "Apocalypse Now"), who've both been shattered by encounters which they will not or cannot explain.

That night, Kelvin is dreaming of his beautiful dead wife, Rhea (Natascha McElhone), when she - or something that looks and sounds exactly like her - appears in his cabin.

This Rhea has no memory of how she got to the station, but believes she really is Rhea and even shares her DNA.

Without giving too much away, just as Kelvin seizes on Rhea's miraculous arrival as a way to redeem the behavior that apparently led to her death, she begins to realize that her memories of their life on Earth - and his - may be unreliable.

At the same time, Dr. Gordon plans to eliminate Rhea as a dangerous non-human manifestation of Solaris.

Soderbergh makes the most of McElhone's big-featured beauty and physical presence - even her deep blue eyes are eloquent.

Davies restrains his tendency to mannerism, while Clooney takes his acting to a whole new level.

"Solaris" also features a wonderfully sexy scene of mutual seduction that recalls similarly superb flirtations in Soderbergh's "Out of Sight" and "sex, lies, and videotape.
SOLARIS...Slow but haunting.Rated PG-13 (sexuality, brief nudity). Running time: 98 minutes.
 GEORGE CLOONEY'S TRANSMISSION FROM 'SOLARIS'
Interview by Sean Chavel
I recently attended the press junket for Solaris having seen the movie the night before. The movie is not like anything you have ever seen. Producer James Cameron sat down with a table full of journalists and I try to sell him my thoughts as quick as I can. "Mr. Cameron, this is like, um, the most daring and abstract film to come out of a Hollywood studio in nearly a decade." Before I have a chance to complete that statement, he blurts out, "Thank you! Thank you! I'm glad somebody finally said that!" He takes a breath. "Because we knew we were doing that. But everybody sort of treated this like it's another studio science-fiction movie which it really isn't by any stretch of the imagination."

George Clooney lobbied to get the complex lead part where he plays a psychologist who is asked to investigate the mysterious behavior of an astronaut team that has exhibited bizarre measures of aggression and paranoia. Clooney worked with director Steven Soderbergh twice before in Out of Sight and Ocean's Eleven, and at this point they have become congenially obligated to each other. In the film, his character's assignment leads him to a space station which is orbiting a planet called Solaris, which is seemingly causing scientists that have studied it to experience extreme amounts of stress.

The movie meticulously plays with our perception, deceiving us with what we see and then challenging us to interpret what we think we saw whether it be dream or reality. Soderbergh noted that the movie adheres to a very precise visual pattern to attain this hallucinating effect. "It's like a binary equation. Sometimes you're working on scenes and you think, 'Oh, there's six different ways to do this.' This [movie] felt like there was only one way. More often than any other movie I went back and decided to do things over again," he said.

Often actors come to town to discuss with journalists about themselves and their careers. But Clooney has something else in mind when he sits down to speak to the press. He has not come to promote himself necessarily. He has come to answer the question, "Why Solaris?" Clooney believes that from the start that the project was different, something special. He wants the film to be remembered for more than just being the movie in which he is featured nude. Its' distributor, 20th Century Fox doesn't mind if the nudity is sensationalized because they can't figure out how to market the film and present it truthfully. They prefer to let Clooney do the talking anyway.

Can you discuss with us how your relationship with Mr. Soderbergh has evolved over time?
The partnership has been great. We're both in a really great part in our careers, and we're in the position right now where we feel we can keep pushing things, and trying things. And if we blow it, then [Hollywood] will take it all away and not let us do it anymore.

Why does it feel like such a privilege to make this film?
It's a compliment that 20th Century Fox was willing to do this. They read the script and knew what they were in for, and it's certainly not a standard studio film. That's the fun of it though. We're just trying to raise the bar, not just for ourselves but for everybody we're working with saying, ÔWhat's your legacy going to be?' And hopefully, stuff like Solaris will be one of them.

Why is there a frenzy at 20th Century Fox when it's come to marketing this film?
This is a hard film to sell. It doesn't fit into any category that you can sell in a sound byte. It's not a film you can wrap up in a box, label it and sell it. It's less neat than that.

Why is Solaris such a unique case?
The problem is that studios used to make Harold and Maude, for instance. They don't make them anymore. It's not quite as easy for them as it was before to say, 'This is a film aboutÉ' and challenge people to think as opposed to just viscerally react. It's not like [Fox] isn't backing it. They're throwing money at it. They believe in the film and they do like it. They're as confused as anyone as to how to sell it. Which is interesting, I think.

Could you tell us why this has become the film you were dying to make?
First of all, if you were in my position -- (To the press) In a way you are because you have to see so many films -- you understand that there are no good scripts out there. Let's face it. I thought when I got to the position where you get to green light films that it should be plum pickings. But the truth of it is that it's a script a year if you're lucky where you say, 'God, that's great.' This was a project by a great filmmaker with great material that wants to push himself further from anything he's ever done.

Were you surprised by the hype before the film was finished about your 'naked butt' shot?
Yeah, I was. What happens is such a non-event. Fox is struggling to find things to get ink on. That was a leak to sort of getting [hype] going. I think the trick is going to be, for those of you who like the film, (To the press) your responsibility is going to be in challenging people, 'Are you willing to come see a film for adults that requires thinking and asks questions that it doesn't answer?'

What films was it in your childhood that influenced you in taking your career route?
It's really the filmmakers I was turned onto. Obviously Stanley Kubrick. And Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola and Mike Nichols, especially with what he did with Carnal Knowledge, Catch-22, The Graduate. You can't get away from the run that Alan Pakula had with Klute, The Parallex View and All the President's Men. You can't get away from those guys because they were all just beating each other up trying to outdo themselves. The difference is that those were all studio films then.

What is one of the reasons why you think the studio system has changed?
Part of it is my responsibility. When actors are making $15-20 million, you're forcing a film to make more money than it necessarily is designed to do. The films that I've been doing, from Three Kings, Out of Sight, O Brother Where Art Thou?, you take a big cut. If a studio is truly fair and gives you money if a movie makes money, you can make movies much cheaper. I can and that's been a big advantage to help get Solaris done.

What's your final prophecy with Solaris?
The trick with this film is that we'll be glad we made it, and it will hold up well past opening weekend. People that like the film will always remember it.
Thanks to Lynne
'Solaris' Review...SOLARIS" OFFERS A SECOND CHANCE
"Soderbergh's film is about second chances, but it's also about making choices that are neither right nor wrong."
Review by Sean Chavel
Steven Soderbergh's brainy science-fiction film Solaris is open to many interpretations and analysis. At its core, it is extremely well-made and sensitively acted. George Clooney, so dominating and virile in so many roles is this time with his character persuasively bewildered and emotionally disturbed by the death of his wife. Soderbergh's film is about second chances, but it's also about making choices that are neither right nor wrong. Together as director and star, Soderbergh and Clooney have ardently collaborated on a project that is puzzling, haunting and bereft of complete answers. Second chances in life are wished upon, but this film possibly concludes that love can become an obsession that can permanently detour one's own well-being.

Clooney is a psychiatrist named Kelvin who takes a mission to board a space station orbiting a planet called Solaris in a far off solar system. Inside the cavernous spacecraft, the crew has disappeared with the exception of two remaining who decide to lock themselves inside their own quarters. Clooney's obligation is to find out what happened to the crew and to return the remaining crew members to Earth. Before he can take the first steps of fulfilling his duty, he begins to have the same kind of hallucinations that has plagued the ship. This becomes a permanent distraction that he is never able to overcome, and the pragmatic and cogent doctor becomes the one most cared after.

Kelvin experiences visitations from his dead wife Rheya (Natascha McElhone). She is alive in flesh but has dementia when it comes to recalling her past. Kelvin's response to the situation is extremely cruel the first time, acting out of panic. But she returns a second time, and every additional time he awakens from sleep. Kelvin confronts his most inner guilt, believing that this second chance could mean succeeding with his relationship with his wife when it failed the first time on Earth. McElhone's pitch-perfect disorientation is crucial to the film in the way that she suggests Kelvin's wife without actually necessarily being the same woman that she is supposed to be.

The two crew members, played by Jeremy Davies and Viola Davis, prompt a debate with Kelvin that she may not be human. He doesn't want to believe otherwise that she is anybody but his wife. Kelvin wants to return to Earth with her against all rationale. The irony in his character is that he selfishly wants to make the decisions, but wants to make them without adhering to sane judgment. "If she were ugly you wouldn't want to take her," Davis says. Kelvin returns to sleep again and again, and his recurring sessions with his wife come to prove that he doesn't know her as well as he thought he did, if she indeed is real.

The movie is a tour de force in style and tone. There is a grim melancholy that is quietly effecting. The madness and hysteria feels more resolute than it did in the original Russian film Solaris in 1972, and the character's clouded judgment feels more inevitable and inescapable. The scenes on Earth even have a somber mood to them. An early scene where the psychiatrist is moderating a group therapy session there is a cold detachment that looms over the proceedings. This understated mood is a deliberate choice by the filmmaker, suggesting that the technological progress of the future has also alienated and desensitized our social interaction to a state of impotence. A flashback reveals that Rheya was the aggressor in the early stages of the relationship with Kelvin and that is an interesting choice. Kelvin is not a character that creates his own destiny.

Do we know the person we love as well as we think we know them, or do we try to modify our perspectives and attitudes to mold our soulmates into the person we'd like them to be? That is a cold and cerebral question, but this is the kind of film that will provoke that kind of lobby discussion. Clooney's character is fated to repeat the same mistakes the second time around, as he orbits perpetually around Solaris, and the film twirls and coils in circles to the point that we experience the same hallucinations as his character so we can't focus on what is real, a dream or a hyperextended sense of reality. The film concludes in an alternate state of reality, but the characters are still left to grapple with making more choices, neither right nor wrong.
 George Clooney's star power keeps shining, next in 'Solaris'
Ivor Davis
11/26/02
After a long struggle, George Clooney hit it big in his early 30s, as the handsome womanizing pediatrician Doug Ross on television's "ER."
His timing was perfect. He bowed out of the hit medical series at its height and hit the ground running into the above-the-title spot in big-screen movies like "Batman and Robin," "The Peacemaker" and "The Perfect Storm."
Today, Clooney -- once the star of such epics as "Sunset Beach" and "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes" -- has his pick of major movies. He's the star and best hope for success for the $47 million movie "Solaris" (opening Wednesday) for Steven Soderberg, his partner in the moviemaking company Section Eight and the man who directed him in "Ocean's Eleven" and "Out of Sight."

In order to get his next film, "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind," made, he agreed to direct it for peanuts, and then roped in pals Drew Barrymore and Julia Roberts and, just for fun, stepped in front of the camera himself for a cameo role.

The $28 million movie tells the frenetic life story of "Gong Show" creator Chuck Barris (played by Sam Rockwell), who claimed in his autobiography that he moonlighted as a CIA assassin.

Next Clooney wraps up "Intolerable Cruelty" for Joel and Ethan Coen -- a thriller in which he plays a slick divorce lawyer who gets embroiled with a much divorced gold-digger played by Catherine Zeta-Jones.

In "Solaris," Clooney is a doctor/astronaut who feels guilty over the suicide of his wife, played by Natascha McElhone. After going into space as a result of a freak event in the solar system, he is able to reconnect with his late wife.

How would you describe Solaris?
It's not a whizbang science fiction movie with light sabers. And it's not a traditional love story. And because of that, Fox has a hard time marketing it. They're confused and are selling it as a sort of pedantic love story. It was the same when the studio promoted "Out of Sight." They pushed it as an action comedy. Those kind of movies don't fit a box.

Then what is it?
It's an adult film. It's very much our attempt to make "2001: A Space Odyssey" for this generation. It makes you question your beliefs and faith in life. My character feels guilty and feels he pushed his wife to suicide. Then after what happens in space, he gets a second chance to confront those issues.

Can you talk about the death of your aunt Rosemary Clooney last May?
This will be a tough Christmas without her. I can't listen to "White Christmas" without thinking of her. My father (broadcaster Nick Clooney) spoke to her every single day. When I was 20, I used to drive her and her show business pals around when they were doing a touring show.

Was she helpful to you in the business?
I owe so much to her. She taught me so much about this business by example, and through conversations. She taught me there is no school for fame and until you've been initiated into celebrity, you have no idea how to handle it. She made all the mistakes along the way but her example showed me the pitfalls. Watching her helped me when I finally achieved my break at 33.

Were you around when she died?
The day she died I was at her bedside. Then when I jumped on my motorbike to go downtown to work, I knew there was no hope. That day on "Solaris," I had to do a lighthearted scene and it wasn't easy, knowing she was at death's door.

We keep reading that you are a confirmed bachelor. Is that still true?
My image got twisted and confused. Shortly after I got my divorce (he was married to actress Talia Shire for three years), I did an interview with Barbara Walters in which I foolishly said I'd never marry again. It probably wasn't the brightest thing to say. But I had been through a divorce and didn't want to do that ever again. But the truth is that I wasn't looking to be a bachelor my whole life.

Didn't Nicole Kidman make a bet with you about marriage?
She said I'd be married by the time I was 40. I'm past that and so she paid her bet -- $10,000. I sent the check back and suggested she bet me double or nothing that I would be married by the time I hit 50.

Of course you're aware of the stories that say you're hot and heavy with Renee Zellweger?
She's a very dear and very special friend and I have several very dear and special female friends. Renee just called me from location in Transylvania, where she's shooting "Cold Mountain."

Have you been invited to the Ben Affleck/Jennifer Lopez wedding?
I haven't been invited. I don't move in those circles.

Will you do a sequel to "Ocean's Eleven"?
Yeah -- "Ocean's Twelve." And if we get a good script, we'll go again, but this time outside Las Vegas. It will have to be a lean, mean and interesting story.

"Ocean's" was a fun movie to make. We didn't take much in salary but agreed to take points if the movie did well. Brad Pitt earned more on that movie than he ever did on any other film. I also did well.
 Clooney's Star Shines in Soderbergh's 'Solaris'
Todd McCarthy
11/22/02
HOLLYWOOD (Variety) - A brooding attempt at a metaphysical meditation on love lost and regained, "Solaris" is an investigation of primal emotions approached in an entirely cerebral manner.

Largely set aboard a spacecraft but a sci-fi entry in name only, this second screen version of Stanislaw Lem's novel is technically superb and features a strong, serious performance by George Clooney as a doctor sent to deep space to check out the strange fate of another craft's crew. But despite the setup, mysterious but suspense-free story here is a galaxy away from "Alien" territory and makes for a pure art film about which mainstream audiences won't have a clue, prefiguring distinctly modest box office in most situations.

As far as Steven Soderbergh is concerned, it's now evident that 2002 will go down as a year of experimentation after his remarkable commercial and artistic run that included winning an Oscar for "Traffic." Whereas the recent "Full Frontal" seemed to please almost no one, "Solaris" likely will develop a following among some critics and serious cinephiles who will value the intellectually ambitious and defiantly uncommercial nature of Soderbergh's undertaking more than they will mind its lack of genuine depth and profundity.

Despite its undeniably pure and earnest intent, "Solaris" is equally undeniably an arid, dull affair that imposes and maintains a huge distance between the viewer and what happens onscreen, and never successfully negotiates the paradox of being a study of the deepest emotions that doesn't engage the heart for a moment.

Previous version of the book, directed in 1972 by Russian auteur Andrei Tarkovsky, was both a tour de force and, at 165 minutes, a chore to sit through. Too conveniently celebrated by some as a Soviet response to "2001," pic did offer a distinctive aesthetic and a genuinely mystical dimension that presented an inchoate but nonetheless intriguing challenge to prevailing Soviet philosophy and approved subject matter.

Working in his own way against conventional norms and the expectations of Hollywood commercial cinema (and gratifyingly cutting the running time by more than an hour), Soderbergh turns the material in a more personal direction to make it something close to a "Scenes From a Marriage in Outer Space." Grieving over the death of his wife, psychologist Chris Kelvin (Clooney) agrees to an urgent appeal to visit the distant space station Prometheus, find out why the crew has ceased communication and bring them back home; in a videotaped plea for his close friend to come to the rescue, mission commander Gibarian (Ulrich Tukur) cryptically cautions that he "can't be specific" about what's going on up there.

The early earthbound scenes are among the film's most beautiful. Dramatically composed isolated shots showing the doctor at home, in therapy and on the rain-swept streets of what is presumably a future Los Angeles possess richly resonant dark coloration, with some of the blackest blacks seen onscreen in recent memory. Without suggesting that he is becoming any less a director, it can be said that Soderbergh (working as usual under the nom de camera of Peter Andrews) is becoming an increasingly expert cinematographer; working mostly in close-ups with longish lenses, he keeps the focus tightly upon his actors as sets provide a lustrous but impersonal backdrop.

Arriving at Prometheus, which soars above the eponymous, gaseous-looking planet, Chris finds Gibarian dead and the two surviving crew members in a very strange state. Affected young scientist Snow (Jeremy Davies) jabbers on without managing to say anything coherent about what's afflicting them, while the formidable Dr. Gordon (Viola Davis), who has retreated to her room, warns Chris, "Until it starts happening to you, there's really no point in discussing it."

What happens to Chris on his first night there is a vivid dream about his entrancing first encounter and initial night of lovemaking with his wife-to-be, Rheya (Natascha McElhone). Upon awakening, he finds Rheya, or someone/something just like her, next to him, in the flesh. Thus begins a long, almost clinical inquiry into the history of their marriage paralleled with the attempt by both Chris and Rheya to figure out exactly what's happening between them on board the spaceship.

Flashes of intense intimate moments from the past delineate the quick, anger-fueled deterioration of the marriage, while the present soon becomes enshrouded in uncertainty as Rheya admits to suspicions that "I'm not the person I remember." Chris and Rheya hope to learn from their mistakes the first time around to make their relationship work now, but all the introspection and angst pay uncertain dividends amidst the anxiety over the reliability of memory and doubts as to whether the "new" Rheya is human at all. This makes the climactic stab at redemption a particularly murky matter that will leave most viewers wondering what the hell it was they just watched -- and it won't be their fault.

However cold and obscure the entire venture may be, individual scenes have been made with commendable rigor and dispatch and an unerring eye for texture. The piquant flashbacks leave no doubt as to the highly charged amorous nature of Chris and Rheya's relationship, and Clooney does a highly creditable job of carrying the film's freight on his shoulders even as the cargo becomes increasingly unwieldy. McElhone is very good in the direct verbal exchanges with her co-star, but it would no doubt lie beyond any thesp to transcend the confusion that overtakes the role in the late going.

Davis commands the screen whenever she's on, while the weirdly gesticulating Davies appears grubby and mannered. Production values are, in a word, stellar, with an understated emphasis on realism. Philip Messina's production design makes the technical world of this unspecified time in the future entirely plausible, while Milena Canonero's costume design takes similarly modest but creative liberties with current fashion. Cliff Martinez's resourceful score makes unusual use of steel drum and gamelan instrumentations, and sound mix is exceptional.
 The Blade Runner hangover
Steven Soderbergh promised an 'erotically charged' film but Solaris is melodramatic.

Watching the press screening of Steven Soderbergh's new version of the classic sci-fi film Solaris was a little like watching a comedy in a foreign country. Members of the audience laughed throughout the screening. The laughter was especially loud at critical moments as George Clooney's character Kris Kelvin and his dead wife Rhea (Natascha McElhone) discussed morality, suicide and redemption.

The people who reacted in such a contemptuous fashion were critics, of course. No doubt they held Andrei Tarkovsky's 1972 version as the gold standard and any deviation as infradig. They were laughing at Soderbergh's too wordy script. Granted, there were parts that sounded juvenile.

Soderbergh promised an 'erotically charged' film but has delivered melodrama. Also, he has been quoted as saying his version of Solaris would be a cross between Last Tango in Paris and Stanley Kubrick's 2001. Those are hugely ambitious standards to live up to. Of course he fails. But if it fails, Solaris is a glorious failure. There are moments of genuine suspense and many beautifully shot sequences.

Soderbergh has based his version on the Polish writer Stanislaw Lem's classic book rather than Tarkovsky's clairvoyant Russian film. He wrote the screenplay, edited, photographed as well as directed. James Cameron, who owns film rights to the novel, is one of the producers of the movie. So is Jon Landau, Bruce Springsteen's producer and former journalist, the man who famously said, "I have seen the future and its name is Bruce Springsteen."

Kelvin is an astronaut and psychiatrist sent to investigate a space station orbiting an oceanic planet called Solaris. He arrives at the station to discover that the commander is dead, a suicide, and the station's remaining two crew members are almost crazy, labouring under the notion that the planet has mined their memories and is sending them visitors from their past. Soon enough, Kelvin receives a visit from his wife, who killed herself back on Earth. She has been restored to a facsimile version of herself, though she is nothing more than Kelvin's memories of her and has no independent existence of her own.

Soderbergh previously directed Clooney in Ocean's Eleven and Out Of Sight. Here, Clooney essays a workmanlike role. He is watchable, though he brings little flair to the character. The luminous McElhone plays an unstable wife who is unable to believe in herself as a complete person even before Solaris recreates her.

It is impossible to make a science fiction movie today without escaping the influence of 2001 or Ridley Scott's Blade Runner and Soderbergh does not even try. Like 2001 some of the key sequences of the space station has the frozen tranquil beauty of that seminal classic. The viewer may even find himself yearning for classical music to complete his experience.

Like Blade Runner the movie often takes place with rain falling over the landscape, drenching the actors as they attempt to negotiate their way through a hostile environment. Like Blade Runner Clooney even wears a trench-coat, reminiscent of Harrison Ford's, and cultivates a noir melancholy.

Jeremy Davies as Snow is the film's most delightful character. Last seen in Secretary this actor is fun to watch. He has a strangely offhand, slacker manner that illuminates rather than diminishes. And at times he seemed to bring genuine laughs to the proceedings, rather than sarcastic hoots of derision. He has a way of using his hands and mumbling that sometimes borders on annoying but always manages to pull itself back at the last moment.
 Clooney: 'Solaris' a Tough Acting Job
AP
11/25/02
New York -- George Clooney said his latest role in Steven Soderbergh's "Solaris" has been his toughest acting job to date.

But the 41-year-old star is afraid it's his derriere that will get all the attention.

"Fox leaked the story about the MPAA rating on 'Solaris,' how we got an R because I showed my (behind), but I think they're having trouble selling this film. They don't know what to do with it," he said in an interview from Los Angeles with Newsday.(The rating was later challenged, and changed to PG-13.)

Clooney anticipates that the most-often asked question during interviews promoting the film will be: "So you're naked. Did you work out?"

"I find it funny because we're trying to talk about things on a much grander scale, with a story that contains questions about the cosmos and it'll come down to a 30-second sound bite where I say, "Yeah, I worked out."

The film, which opens this week, is a remake of Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky's 1972 sci-fi epic. In Soderbergh's version, Clooney plays the role of a psychologist sent to investigate the mental state of the crew of a space station -- and winds up having hallucinations of his dead wife who committed suicide.