"Margin Call" At Berlin Film Festival

After an exciting official premiere at the Sundance Festival, Before The Door's first film, "Margin Call" made its way to Germany for the 61st Berlin Film Festival this week!

The movie celebrated its international premiere at the festival, and is one of the 16 movies competing for the "Golden Bear Award" for best picture.

Zachary Quinto, joined co-stars Kevin Spacey, Jeremy Irons, Paul Bettany and first-time director, J.C. Chandor at the film festival. Together with him were also fellow BTD-ers, Neal Dodson and Corey Moosa.

At the red carpet though, Zachary's uneven make-up showed up in a rather unflattering manner in some press photos. I think the make-up artist should be given the boot. Preferably using a boot with a spiked heel. I mean, because when it comes to touching-up Zach, I would be very very conscientious, ya know?

I think he still looked swoonsome though - when the camera lights were at a good angle. His hair had grown out and he looked all lean and fit, dressed up in a simple dark suit and a maroon-ish tie.

In fact, the "Margin Call" men made an especially handsome-looking group at the photo call. Even when Jeremy Irons showed up in his arty, slightly more casual style.

The German and other European press have been fairly positive with the reviews of "Margin Call". There were a couple of mixed reviews and in those, their reservations about the movie weren't anything new.

Their concerns were already something that I had personally thought would be an issue. The subject matter about a financial meltdown itself. The layman movie-goer tends to shy away from movies that hinge too much on pure numbers, or something heavily statistical or financial.

The Guardian (UK) raised an astute observation on this question in their article here.

It's one reason you don't see a movie about hot, intelligent accountants, do you?

See... many of you probably don't even believe hot, intelligent accountants actually exist!!

Here are two of the "Margin Call" reviews that were published from the showing at the Berlin Film Festival:

- The Guardian
- GMX Net (in German), Click here for English translation by ZQC Steffi

There are more in German and some others in Norwegian and Italian but unless someone is able to translate them, I will not be putting up the links. Feel free to email me translations though!

In the midst of all movie reviews, I especially found this article from the Hollywood Reporter most insightful about the grilling the cast and production folks got from European press at the festival. (Click here for article.)

I like how the group can remain charming and tactful in the midst of such bashing. Very classy, indeed!

A ton of photos from Berlin have also surfaced. And together with my friend @eserei27, we noticed that those ZQ biceps look really nice together with the very lean Paul Bettany biceps. They do seem to have a buzzy-energy between them and it's showing up in the casual shots on the red carpet.

Oh, and Neal Dodson shot a beautiful 360 Panorama of the theatre at the festival. Click here to check it out!

It's definitely great to see "Margin Call" getting the limelight from both sides of the Atlantic with the Sundance Festival and Berlin Film Festival.

Let's see if there will be some more positive press when it ever gets released in the Asian continent!