Martin Scorsese

Martin Scorsese has reportedly been trying to make an English-language adaptation of Shūsaku Endō’s novel Silence for upwards of 25 years. Watching the finished movie, it’s easy to see why he fought so hard to make it — and why it took so long to get someone to finance and distribute it. Silence encapsulates many of Scorsese’s most deeply felt themes; ideas about faith, sin, and guilt he’s considered in film after film for decades. But it does so in a package that is slow, dry, and a little monotonous. Fans (there will certainly be some, and not without reason) will hail Silence as a passionate and perceptive career summation. Silence’s critics will likely agree — while wishing that summation wasn’t such a slog.

It’s one of the most famous lines in movie history: “You talkin’ to me?” But did you know that signature dialogue from Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver wasn’t even in Paul Schrader’s original script? Robert De Niro improvised it on set, after hearing Bruce Springsteen of all people say it at a concert a few days before shooting the scene. At the concert, during a particularly loud burst of applause, The Boss feigned humility and joked “You talkin’ to me?” De Niro remembered the moment and used it in the film to make history. That’s just one of the facts featured in the newest episode of You Think You Know Movies!

As Silence prepares to hit select theaters this weekend (the rest of you will have to wait until January), Paramount has unveiled a new international trailer for Martin Scorsese’s long-developing passion project — an epic drama based on Japanese author Shusaku Endo’s acclaimed novel. There are a couple of notable things about this trailer for Silence: For one, it’s a bit more intense than the domestic versions, and because it’s a Japanese trailer, the Japanese cast members are more prominently featured.

A helpful mantra to repeat to yourself while reading this article might be “I trust Martin Scorsese. I trust Martin Scorsese. I trust Martin Scorsese.” And whatever you do, try to envision Benjamin Button and not, say, a certain baffling posthumous CGI rendering featured in Rogue One. That said, here’s the news: Martin Scorsese is planning to use advanced CGI technology to de-age Robert De Niro in The Irishman — come to think of it, they’ve been planning this movie for so long that de-aging De Niro seems reasonable.

There are a lot of things that come into play when you put together a film. You have to have a script, a director, actors, and then you have to find locations and build sets and get costumes and essentially build an entire world within which the actors operate. Production design and costume design go hand-in-hand: you don’t want actors in a film set in the 1800s to be wearing clothes from the 1600s, and you want your costumes to be in constant dialogue with your sets. If an environment is wet, or dry, or cold, or inside, or outside, the clothes reflect that. Because of this, the Oscar-winning production designer for Martin Scorsese’s epic Silence, Dante Ferretti, also acted as its costume designer.

Paramount hasn't been historically known for their baller moves, but when it comes to their bold anti-promotional campaign for Martin Scorsese's Silence, game must recognize game. Keeping a major awards horse almost entirely on the down-low until one month before its December 23 release is one thing; when that movie also happens to be a passion project decades in the making from what very well might be our greatest living filmmaker — American or otherwise — well, that's just showing off. A Martin Scorsese movie sells itself, and Paramount has now reminded the moviegoing public of why that is.

At this point in the year we’re getting closer to making Oscar predictions and finalizing our Top 10 lists, but there’s still a few highly-anticipated films that have yet to screen for critics. One of those is Martin Scorsese’s Silence, a religious epic that that director has managed to trim down to just under three hours – it sounds long now, but you’ll be thankful come Christmas when there’s an

Given how much space physical media takes up, it’s hard for movie buffs to say no to the great promise of “cloud storage,” and the idea that we could summon anything we want to watch with just a couple of clicks. But so far, reality hasn’t matched the hype. Streaming services have been focused on exclusives and original programming, to the extent that the only way to have access to everything available is to spend hundreds of dollars a month on subscription fees. Meanwhile, older films keep disappearing from the digital archives; and even items that cinephiles “own” sometimes become inaccessible whenever software updates or a site shutters.

Martin Scorsese has been peculiarly secretive about his long-brewing religious epic Silence. There have been no festival premieres, no advance screenings, not even a real trailer to speak of. Paramount talks a big game about an Oscar-qualifying limited release on December 23, but apart from a sizzle reel of upcoming films that the studio showed to select media types late last month, it’s been mostly rumors and hearsay. Whispers of Silence, if you will.

Martin Scorcese’s Silence, which pretty much everyone was completely unaware of until it announced a release date coming up later this year, has a mysterious plot, and a hugely talented cast. With Liam Neeson, Andrew Garfield, and Adam Driver in starring roles, it would be very difficult for this movie to be a miss. We’ve seen stills of Neeson and Garfield so far, but Driver’s look has been kept under wraps — until today, when Paramount released a new still.