PRESS RELEASE
Opens Friday, February 3, 2011, Runtime: 1 hour, 43 minutes. Rated R. Language,
some violence and disturbing images.
Though it is one of the least-accessible cave systems on Earth, skilled diver Frank McGuire (Richard Roxburgh) has explored the South Pacific's Esa-ala Caves for months with his team Carl and Josh . When a flash flood cuts off their exit, suddenly they are caught in a life-or-death situation. With supplies dwindling, the divers must navigate a treacherous underwater labyrinth to find a new escape route.
http://www.sanctummovie.com/
http://www.sanctummovie.com/
TRAILER
ABOVE THE LINE
Christopher Baker, www.imdb.com/name/nm0048336/
Producer: James Cameron, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Cameron
Director: Alister Grierson, www.imdb.com/name/nm0340958/
Writers: John Garvin, www.imdb.com/name/nm2510763/
Andrew Wight, www.imdb.com/name/nm1337757/
STORYLINE
When a tropical storm forces them deep into the caverns, they must fight raging water, deadly terrain and creeping panic as they search for an unknown escape route to the sea. Frank's team, including 17-year old Josh (Rhys Wakefield) and financier Carl Hurley (Loan Gruffudd) are forced to radically alter plans. Soon, they are confronted with the unavoidable question: Can they survive, or will they be trapped forever?
Shot on location of the gold coast in Queensland, Australia, Sanctum employs 3-D photography techniques Cameron developed to lens Avator. Designed to operate in extreme environments, the technology used to shoot the action thriller will bring audiences on a breathless journey across plunging cliffs and into the furthest reaches of our subterranean world.
Shot on location of the gold coast in Queensland, Australia, Sanctum employs 3-D photography techniques Cameron developed to lens Avator. Designed to operate in extreme environments, the technology used to shoot the action thriller will bring audiences on a breathless journey across plunging cliffs and into the furthest reaches of our subterranean world.
BUZZ
It's going to be a while before James Cameron is back on our screens, so in the meantime the next best thing for fans of bleeding-edge 3D and SFX looks like James Cameron's Sanctum. This should be fully immersive 3D - the first time we've properly experienced Avatar strength 3D in a watery environment. Glug.
We're obviously not counting Piranha 3D here, although that wasn't too terrible. But vaulting underwater caverns, bubbling scuba gear and thrilling scenarios involving ticking clocks and emptying oxygen tanks should raise the bar substantially in Sanctum. Shot in Queensland but set in New Guinea's unspoiled Esa-Ala caves, the plot seems more relevant by the day, as a crew of underwater cave divers find themselves cut off by flash floods and running out of air. Serious claustrophobics look away now: James Cameron's Sanctum is out on February 4.
We're obviously not counting Piranha 3D here, although that wasn't too terrible. But vaulting underwater caverns, bubbling scuba gear and thrilling scenarios involving ticking clocks and emptying oxygen tanks should raise the bar substantially in Sanctum. Shot in Queensland but set in New Guinea's unspoiled Esa-Ala caves, the plot seems more relevant by the day, as a crew of underwater cave divers find themselves cut off by flash floods and running out of air. Serious claustrophobics look away now: James Cameron's Sanctum is out on February 4.
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INFORAMA COMMENT
Sometimes it's fun to speculate on how the screenwriter and director will steer a film. It's sort of like guessing which vehicles they will be driving. So Sanctum, it seems, has a delightful number of choices to develop the project.
There could be a Disney-like approach similar to that studio's film Journey to the Center of the Earth. The theme was scientists/adventurers were drawn to, then trapped in a part of the world never before seen. The adventurer had to tiptoe through uncharted and quite dangerous territory in order to reach safe haven and loved ones at home.
INFORAMA COMMENT
Sometimes it's fun to speculate on how the screenwriter and director will steer a film. It's sort of like guessing which vehicles they will be driving. So Sanctum, it seems, has a delightful number of choices to develop the project.
There could be a Disney-like approach similar to that studio's film Journey to the Center of the Earth. The theme was scientists/adventurers were drawn to, then trapped in a part of the world never before seen. The adventurer had to tiptoe through uncharted and quite dangerous territory in order to reach safe haven and loved ones at home.
The storyline may take a sci-fi slant. A kind of Alice in Wonderland vehicle. The protagonists figuratively and literally fall through a hole in this film. Again the principals must find their way home by matching wits against a pitiless adversary, nature.
Then again you could reasonably speculate that the film will do a 21st Century take on a theme that has been told and retold a multitude of times throughout the centuries. That of being lost in unfamiliar surroundings and seemingly unable to escape. From the Odyssey to Hansel and Gretel, this recurrent story of despair at being lost and the grit needed to survive persists and is inevitably entertaining and sometimes instructional.
To any of the above themes add the mixture of James Cameron's visual spectaculars. Cameron is a film Michaelangelo and he enriches the visual palette with equally spectacular special effects. Fine details are every bit as important to Cameron as the script itself. The icing on the cake will be the 3-D application to the film. Extreme sports addicts will get their fix with the combination of spelunking and scuba diving in a cave no less. The film will take on another facet, that of showing nature in the raw and how techno savvy individuals take on a duel to the death.
An interesting sideline will be the gamble the film producers are taking with the absence of top name actors in this project. But this has been done on occasion with great success. Remember three plus decades ago when a then unknown Mel Gibson caused a sensation in the first of a series of Mad Max movie adventures. He demonstrates that a complete unknown can become a superstar with the right vehicle. By coincidence, Sanctum is also being filmed in Australia. The gamble will be either wildly successful or a horrible disaster.
Regardless of how Sanctum is packaged and what themes are presented, the storyline and trailers indicate this will be a fun film. If you like movies, if you like water, if you like adventure this film is for you. It appears to have all the ingredients necessary for the principal job: to entertain the audience.
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