Guillermo Del Toro Calls Alfonso Cuarón's 'Gravity' "Completely Mind-Blowing"

After months of delays, a very publicly drawn-out casting process and some rewrites and re-budgeting, Alfonso Cuarón is finally shooting his space-set thriller Gravity. The film features Sandra Bullock as an astronaut who, after a disaster, has to make her way back to Earth and safety. We've heard that the film is quite ambitious, possibly with a 20-minute+ opening shot and more than half of the film being created via CGI.

Other filmmakers seems to be wowed by the ideas going into the film. Guillermo del Toro is now on record saying quite a few enthusiastic things about Gravity, with the very del Toro-like summation that the project is "completely mind-blowing." All his comments are below.

Guillermo del Toro, who has a long personal and professional relationship with Cuarón, says of his friend's new film,

What is incredible about what they did is, they talked to David Fincher, they talked to Jim Cameron, I connected Jim and Alfonso for that. And what Alfonso is trying, is so insane. And Jim said, well, look, you're about five years into the future...it's too early to try anything that crazy. And they did it!

I think he would kill me if I reveal [what is so crazy about it], and in time it will be publicized, but I think that in the same way that he pushed the narrative in Children of Men...[they] are absolutely pushing a new boundary in filmmaking, completely mind-blowing. And they way they're making [Gravity] will I think foverever change certain types of productions. The engineering and the ingenuity of the machines they've created to film that way is fantastic. I"m amazed at Alfonso in the last few movies, because he has completely transformed himself.

Here's the full interview clip, courtesy of MTV:

Earlier this year Gavity producer David Heyman said,

We're using technology that's never seen before. This film will be more immersive, I believe, than anything you've seen before. You will really feel like you are in space. It will not be an objective view of space, it will be an immersive view of space. And you know as you say, with Children of Men, he loves these long shots. It's gonna be a really bold, bold film.

I'm still hoping that the core story and character come through with as much vivid detail as we'll evidently get from the depiction of space itself. Regardless, it sounds as if those who love to revisit the CGI-assisted long shot in Children of Men might end up with a new benchmark for technical achievement once Gravity is released.