I don’t know if you’ve ever seen MONGOL. It’s a superb film, well paced and full of the sort of cinematography that turns landscape into visual poetry. Well that film, an Oscar contender back when it was released, was directed by Sergei Bodrov. And for his first English language trick, Bodrov elected to direct Jeff Bridges and Julianne Moore in an adaptation of the Young Adult novel SPOOK’S APPRENTICE by Joseph Delaney. Retitled as SEVENTH SON, all we’ve seen from the supernatural action film thus far is a single peek at some concept art that did little but pique the interest and spark the imagination as to the project’s possibility.
But that has now changed with the release of two stills from SEVENTH SON, ones which showcase Bridges as a “Spook” named Master John Gregory, Ben Barnes as his apprentice Tom Ward (the titular Seventh Son), and Julianne Moore as the villainous witch Mother Malkin. In the plot, Gregory imprisoned Malkin centuries ago so as to keep her evil at bay and the world safe. But “Gregory’s getting into the twilight of his years and the apprentices he keeps trying to recruit don’t last very long, which becomes a serious problem for him when Malkin escapes and rounds up all of her followers for one momentous attack. A Spook’s apprentice can only be the seventh son of a seventh son, and after Gregory’s last one is killed, he finds new backup in Tom Ward to help him fend off their supernatural enemies.”
Said Bridges of his role: “He’s an interesting cat. He’s appreciated for keeping evil away, but he’s also a frightening figure to the townspeople. When you mess around with darkness, some of that gets in you, too.” And while we’re on the subject of Bridges saying things, regarding Moore (with whom Bridges co-starred before in THE BIG LEBOWSKI): “In real life, she’s gorgeous, and [in SEVENTH SON] she’s gorgeously grotesque.”
Which I can dig. I dig that a lot. And Jeff Bridges definitely looks the part, so I can dig that too. But what do you think? Is this a project that you’re interested in now that you’ve seen something from it?
Look for SEVENTH SON on October 18th, 2013.