Cast Away (2000)

Plot:  A man working for FedEx, in charge of insuring their speed and ultra-fine scheduling, is suddenly imprisoned on a desert island when his plane crashes.

News:

12 December, 2000

Would you believe that the movie is still being worked on? That's the news from Daily Radar. Apparently a last minute reshoot took place shortly after Thanksgiving. The shot was designed to improve the ending of the movie which hasn't been going over well with test audiences.

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30 November, 2000

The website French Premiere has just posted up the international version of the trailer along with numerous shots from the movie.

• 3.7MB MOV Lo-Res (180x105)
• 9.4MB MOV Med-Res (240x140)
• 14.9MB MOV Hi-Res (320x187)
• 27.1MB MOV Hi-Res (480x280)

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15 November, 2000

The full trailer for the latest collaboration from Tom Hanks and director Robert Zemeckis is now online. The movie is about a FedEx executive (Hanks) who is in a plane crash that leaves him stranded alone on a desert island for four years. The movie was shot in two parts. The first focused on Hanks' before the crash and shortly after it. Filming then stopped for several months while Hanks went on a diet to drop forty pounds to more accurately depict the character after being stranded for so long.

Click on any of the pictures below for a larger still from the trailer or click one of the links below to download the entire trailer.

• Lo-Res MOV (240x180)
• Med-Res MOV (320x240)
• 28.6MB MOV (480x360)
• Full Screen MOV (640x480)

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27 September, 2000

Joshua over at MovieHeadlines got his hands on the script for the movie and reported back with his opinions. He's more than a little happy with it.

When the plane crashes leaving the man alone on the island, he becomes a modern day Robinson Crusoe. He has all of the time he needs, but nothing to survive on. No water, no food, helpless except for a few dozen Fed Ex packages that washed ashore with the hopes and dreams of his real-worldlife.

Looking for help, there is none to be found. His mind begins to play tricks on him and to stay sharp he must do something to pass the time. Or he will go mad - perhaps that is inevitable. This is where the script begins to explore the man from the inside, what keeps us sane, what makes us go crazy.

While Chuck does talk to himself, there are large portions of the film that are without dialogue, leaving only the powerful score and on screen images to tell the tale of the Cast Away. There are physical demands on the title character as well, from an affluent upper-crust member of society to nothing more than a beggar in a completely isolated island. The sun, hunger and thirst are all primary concerns for the marooned.

Read the entire review here.

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11 August, 2000

Click on the image to the left to see one of the first pictures of Tom Hanks' character toward the end of the movie. He is scratching a message onto a rock before he attempts to escape the desert island that has imprisoned him for 1,500 days. It's a fairly startling image. Hanks' is gaunt and long haired with a wild eyed look about him that indicates he doesn't have too firm a grip on his sanity anymore.

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9 May, 2000

Time magazine got to do an on set interview with Tom Hanks while filming the desert island survivor film Cast Away. The scene being filmed was one where Hanks character is trying to escape from the island he has been trapped on for four years. Hanks is struggling against big waves to get a makeshift raft to sail away from the island. Wearing only a loincloth and a mouthpiece that looks like rotting teeth, Hanks drops from a command ship to the raft for repeated attempts at the scene.

The entire production has been tough on him. He had to drop 60 pounds for the desert island sequence so he would look properly emaciated from years of malnutrition. He's had to eat raw fish for scenes. He was downed for three weeks when a blister became infected and now he's getting beat up by the surf.

According to Hanks the physical demands aren't the hard part. Acting alone is the hard part. "It makes you crazy," he says. "You're not sharing the storytelling lifting with someone you can react off of. It's almost like making a silent movie; you have to tell every aspect of the story physically, being totally alone." He isn't totally alone onscreen though. His character adopts a washed up volleyball as his friend. "I've worked with kids and dogs," says Hanks. "Now I can add volleyballs."

The movie is meant to be a realistic look at surviving on a desert island, not another Gilligan's Island type of thing. Screenwriter William Broyles worked with survivalists in Mexico to learn what he needed for the script.

Hanks' character is a Federal Express efficiency expert. "We took this guy who is modern man to the nth degree," Hanks says, "whose life had been computers and 747s and packages, and reduced him to lapping water that he's collected in a rainstorm from a leaf."

The big question he faces is how this affects his character. "Are the changes consciousness altering?" Hanks asks. "Or is he just the same guy, with his vision altered five degrees, and those five degrees make all the difference in the world? It's a bad analogy, but what do you learn as a cancer survivor? You've learned life is precious. Maybe you eat less red meat. It's not like you glow with an otherworldly wisdom."

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28 March, 2000

The first images have appeared from the film Cast Away starring Tom Hanks. The movie is being shot in two parts. The first part shows Hanks, as an extraordinarily busy man who is marooned on a desert island. Hanks gained a bit of weight for the first part of filming. There was then a period where filming stopped so that he could lose 40 pounds. This is how he will appear after being on the island for a long time. The second half of shooting is currently underway in Fiji. The film should be released for Christmas.