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Salinger was...ok, but it definitely hinged on a mystery that simply wasn't that mysterious. Senna was fantastic and a great example of what you can do with just archival and interview. We'll probably cover it on an episode of documentality once my documentary stops eating my soul.
Senna is really fantastic. Much better than that Rush movie, which is about a very similar rivalry.
Speaking of documentaries, did anyone catch that espn 30 for 30 on the Nancy Kerrigan / Tonya Harding drama? Man, Tonya's let herself goooooooo. Pretty basic documentary with a glaring non-appearance by Kerrigan, but it still works all the same. Tonya still hangs onto saying she had no knowledge of the attach prior to it happening and, basically, we either believe her or don't, although the evidence is piled high against her.
It's always been hard to believe Tonya Harding. I doubt she'd pass a polygraph.
Some of the espn 30 for 30 docs are quite good. They get good filmmakers to do them.
Nothing explained. Inconsistent (is she a fish out of water? She seems to know just what she's doing). Last half is suddenly shot on video - looks cheap. Lots of padding. Shots go on far too long of boring Scotland life. Drab landscape. You keep waiting for something to happen, something to be explained.
No real redeeming features. Score sounds like nails on chalkboard.
Three sequences are striking, but are left unresolved, raising more questions than answers.
The gimmick is that Scarlet drove around with a wig and talked to strangers while the director secretly filmed it. While that may have been hilarious for the crew at the time, the joke doesn't translate to the audience. So what?
In the end, it's just another sub-category of the "Vampire" genre with nothing new to add to all the tropes. It doesn't have the budget to add anything new even if it wanted to.
A cheap-looking Species crossed with Let the Right One In with the look and feel and tone of Inland Empire.
3/10
12 Years A Slave
I probably have an unpopular opinion on this one, but I wasn't really that amazed by this flick, aside from the acting which is pretty good if not a bit scenery-chewy in some of the earlier bits. The writing seems very off to me, tho. I've never read the book, so I don't know how much they took from it vs how much they tarted up for cinematic purposes, but it feels like they tarted it up a lot.
They do a lot of things in this flick to heighten the emotional impact of events. The way things are shot, the way things are timed. Big swelling music bits with Zimmer playing his inception BWAM sounds a lot earlier on. It feels really movie. I don't know how best to say that. Fake, I guess.
I think would have been better to have written and shot it more starkly, without some of the weirder scenes. Some of the shit that happens, while it may be 100% absolutely positively accurate as fuck, comes off as ludicrous because the films is nothing but horrible shit happening to the main character or the people around the main character. It's stacked so high with atrocities and evil people that it almost started being funny. The next scene is going to be something horrible happens and they cut to a lot of Chiwetel reaction shots. There's always this threatening thing going on in every scene. There's a scene where he's talking to Brad Pitt, and one of the other guys is over at the house and for some reason decides that he doesn't like these two talking. He's not just walking over there. He's walking over because he's suspicious of something. There's no reason for that moment. It's only there to keep the pressure on, like there's some huge risk going on right now in this very scene of being caught. What was the guy's plan? Walk up and say "Hey, you planning on freeing this slave or something?"
20 or 25 years ago this would have been a much classier flick. More subtle and patient. I would have forgotten at some point that I was watching a movie. I was constantly thinking about how they were shooting this flick and how it was being staged and the way people were telegraphing things. There was no subtlety here at all.
And then the last five or ten minutes happened, and i knew why it got nominated for best picture. That's some nice acting there in the final chunks of the film.
It's all directly from the book, which means it's all directly from real life. So criticizing it on that basis is a little shaky.
You know the old saying. Fiction has to make sense, reality doesn't. Plus, while the book is an autobiography, that in no way means it is accurate. Bad memory and unconscious embellishments undoubtably had an effect, and what is striking on the page and in your mind may just not work up on the screen.
What's striking about Ridley's screenplay is that he doesn't embellish the book. Northup was a real person who wrote down what happened to him. The film attempts to dramatize his experiences in a mostly unadorned way. That constant sense of dread and looming threat is present in the book.
The slaver didn't want his slave speaking to Pitt's character because slaves weren't supposed to have conversations. They were supposed to work. Slaves often ran away or were smuggled into freedom by abolitionist white people (or by other slaves). The slaver in that scene had good reasons to not want Solomon conversing too freely with some free-spirited Canadian guy who's probably an abolitionist. They suspected Solomon was learned. Those were the slaves they needed to keep an extra close eye on. That field overseer's job was to make sure the slaves did their work and nothing else.
I think would have been better to have written and shot it more starkly, without some of the weirder scenes. Some of the shit that happens, while it may be 100% absolutely positively accurate as fuck, comes off as ludicrous because the films is nothing but horrible shit happening to the main character or the people around the main character. It's stacked so high with atrocities and evil people that it almost started being funny. The next scene is going to be something horrible happens and they cut to a lot of Chiwetel reaction shots. There's always this threatening thing going on in every scene. There's a scene where he's talking to Brad Pitt, and one of the other guys is over at the house and for some reason decides that he doesn't like these two talking. He's not just walking over there. He's walking over because he's suspicious of something. There's no reason for that moment. It's only there to keep the pressure on, like there's some huge risk going on right now in this very scene of being caught. What was the guy's plan? Walk up and say "Hey, you planning on freeing this slave or something?"
Welcome to the Antebellum. Without a doubt, my favorite piece of American history to study, often in horror, is the Antebellum South and The American Civil War. The sad thing is, in terms of atrocity and "I can't believe this shit actually happened," Solomon Northrup's story is at best, typical of the time. The Fugitive Slave Act, which allowed Northrup to be legally taken from his home, was enacted some ten years prior to the Civil War (as McPhereson cites in Battle Cry for Freedom the FSA was part of an earlier negotiation, along with westward expansion of slavery, to keep the southern states part of the union) so Norhtrup's story is merely one of thousands like it.
If you ever think that the truth is too bizarre to be real, I highly recommend reading any of the hundreds of letters preserved by history that illustrate the correspondence between former slave and former slave owner. This is one of my all time favorites. Jourdan Anderson is asked by his former Slave Owner to return, and if he does, he will be promised his freedom.
"To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee
Sir: I got your letter and was glad to find you had not forgotten Jourdon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never heard about your going to Col. Martin's to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable. Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living. It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again and see Miss mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this. I would have gone back to see you all when I was working in the Nashville hospital, but one of the neighbors told me Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a chance.
I want to know particularly what the good chance is you propose to give me. I am doing tolerably well here; I get $25 a month, with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for Mandy (the folks here call her Mrs. Anderson), and the children, Milly, Jane and Grundy, go to school and are learning well; the teacher says grundy has a head for a preacher. They go to Sunday- School, and Mandy and me attend church regularly. We are kindly treated; sometimes we overhear others saying, "The colored people were slaves" down in Tennessee. The children feel hurt when they hear such remarks, but I tell them it was no disgrace in Tennessee to belong to Col. Anderson. Many darkies would have been proud, as I used to was, to call you master. Now, if you will write and say what wages you will give me, I will be better able to decide whether it would be to my advantage to move back again.
As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that score, as I got my free- papers in 1864 from the Provost- Marshal- General of the Department of Nashville. Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you are sincerely disposed to treat us justly and kindly- - and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future. I served you faithfully for thirty- two years and Mandy twenty years. At $25 a month for me, and $2 a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to $11,680. Add to this the interest for the time our wages has been kept back and deduct what you paid for our clothing and three doctor's visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to. Please send the money by Adams Express, in care of V. Winters, esq, Dayton, Ohio. If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past we can have little faith in your promises in the future. We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations without recompense. Here I draw my wages every Saturday night, but in Tennessee there was never any pay day for the Negroes any more than for the horses and cows. Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire.
In answering this letter please state if there would be any safety for my Milly and Jane, who are now grown up and both good- looking girls. You know how it was with Matilda and Catherine. I would rather stay here and starve and die if it comes to that than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters. You will also please state if there has been any schools opened for the colored children in your neighborhood, the great desire of my life now is to give my children an education, and have them form virtuous habits. <>P.S. -- Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.
From your old servant,
Jourdon Anderson"
What I love about it is that it holds that oldest of southern hospitalities while using logic as a scalpel to just eviscerate not only his former master, but the concept of slavery itself.
This back and forth, however, is absolutely breathtaking. I'll just link this one, but I can't recommend this enough if you ever doubt that American History, incubated by white supremacy and midwifed by slavery, is more bizarre than any fiction.
http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/11/wr … woman.html
Last edited by Eddie (2014-03-18 18:36:30)
+1
Jarm Logue, the author in that second letter I linked to, endured far worse than Solomon Northrup. The following is pretty disturbing, and 100% historically accurate. Jarm was 14 when this particular event occurred.
"Blazing with alcohol and Hell within, he picked up the long wedge, and swore the boy should swallow it. As if to compel him to do so, he ordered Jarm to open his mouth. Jarm instinctively demurred to the absurd proposition, but Manasseth was inflexible. So soon as Jarm hesitated, his enemy struck him a blow on the side of the head, with his fist, which brought him to the ground.
The brute, with increased passion, leaped on him, and held him down--and in that condition charged the boy to open his mouth, on peril of his life--at the same time pressing the wood against his lips and teeth. Jarm, fearing he would break in all his teeth, opened his jaws, and the wretch immediately crowded the wedge in until it reached the roof of his mouth, before he could stop it with his teeth. He began to pound it in with his heavy fist. Not withstanding Jarm held on with his teeth, the wedge driven into the roof of his mouth, and mangled it frightfully. The blood flowed down his throat, and profusely from his mouth.
So soon as Jarm found his teeth were likely all to be broken, and that there was no hope of sympathy from the intoxicated wretch, he obeyed the instincts of nature, and by a sudden and powerful effort, he seized the wedge and the hand that held it, and turning his head at the same time, delivered his mouth from the instrument, and turned it towards the ground--resolved, if he was to be murdered, he not be murdered in that way. The heartless man then commenced punching the boy with the sharp end of the wedge, on his head and mouth, making bloody gashes--Jarm dodging, as well as be could, to avoid the blows...
This experience was valuable to Jarm, for it revealed to him his positions and relations to slavery, which he ever afterwards remembered with perfect distinctness. He was now about fourteen years of age, of excellent strength and health, and saw there was no other way for him, but to bear his trials with all possible discretion --and if an opportunity occurred to escape, to embrace it at whatever peril--but if doomed to remain a slave, to die struggling with his tyrant, when driven to the last extremity. To this resolution he was always obedient--ever mindful of the occasion that induced him to make it."
And now for the Inception twist. The man that did that to Jarm? That was his uncle. The woman who wrote him asking him to return? His aunt.
This is why I will always say the Civil War is the greatest sic-fi story ever told.
The Hangover, Part II suffers from the Ghostbusters II syndrome - it's mostly a rehash of Part I. To be fair, that's probably what many fans of the first movie wanted to see. Like most sequels, it also suffers from the "sequel escalation" phenomenon - the jokes are more outrageous, but not necessarily funnier.
Part I was no masterpiece, but it was very watchable. Part II is still somewhat watchable, but it feels like a cash grab. To sum it up in one word: unremarkable.
It's also worth mentioning that most of Solomon's book has been independently verified by outside sources. And given what else we know about life for slaves on plantations, there's no reason to assume that he lied about anything.
It's stacked so high with atrocities and evil people that it almost started being funny. The next scene is going to be something horrible happens and they cut to a lot of Chiwetel reaction shots. There's always this threatening thing going on in every scene.
I mean, that's life as a slave. Of course there's no respite from the horror in this movie. There never was.
There's a scene where he's talking to Brad Pitt, and one of the other guys is over at the house and for some reason decides that he doesn't like these two talking. He's not just walking over there. He's walking over because he's suspicious of something. There's no reason for that moment. It's only there to keep the pressure on, like there's some huge risk going on right now in this very scene of being caught. What was the guy's plan? Walk up and say "Hey, you planning on freeing this slave or something?"
I really don't know what scene you're referring to, but Pitt's character was an outspoken opponent of slavery, and he wasn't shy about how despicable he found the institution. And he's a drifter, so no one knew him that well. If you're a plantation owner, there's reason to be suspicious when that guy is privately chatting up one of your slaves.
Last edited by Doctor Submarine (2014-03-18 23:31:03)
I didn't have an issue with the "suspicious guy" or the constant distress. I had a bigger issue with Brad Pitt in his role, and I thought the Inception sounds felt really off too. The effect for me was, "HEY YOU'RE WATCHING A MOVIE." The biggest thing for me was that they didn't really nail the sense of time passed. If it wasn't called 12 Years A Slave, I would have guessed it was more like a couple years. But overall I thought it was great.
The Wiggles - Apples and Bananas.
Genius.
+1
And the oscar for segue of the year goes to Marty J... for the brilliant jump straight from Eddie's meaningful posts, directly into Hangover 2.
+2
About Time - Yes, please, can I have another.
I've been meaning to see About Time.
+1
That is a fantastic film.
I've now seen both Vol. I and Vol. II. There's one big director's cut out there that's some five hours long. The US release versions of Vol. I and Vol. II are each about two hours long.
Charlotte Gainsbourg is a great, seemingly fearless actor. Stellan Skarsgard is also good. They are, however, quite low-energy. The copious sex scenes occasionally bring some liveliness to the otherwise mopey narrative, but at a total of four hours it's an under-caffeinated film.
There's stuff I enjoyed, though. LVT is always doing something off the wall. There's a couple really cool filmmaking flourishes in Vol. II that are memorable.
Some of the random-seeming casting choices work and some don't. Christian Slater is surprisingly compelling as the main character's father. But Shia LaBeouf does a laughable British accent and gives the most hopelessly off-target performance I've seen in a long while. But then Uma Thurman shows up out of nowhere and drops--I kid you not--one of her best performances. I mean, she brings it like you wouldn't believe.
I found the ending to be predictable and unsatisfying. But in all, I liked more than I disliked here. Gainsbourg held my interest.
Planning on seeing Volume 1 in theaters and Volume 2 on VOD, so that I can see them back-to-back and still see the uncut Volume 1.
I don't know anything about these movies. Convince me it's not 5 hours of porn.
Convince me it is.
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