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| Joe Vitus |
 Posted: Tue Sep 22, 2009 12:55 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 14498
Location: Houston
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Syd wrote: Affleck really nailed his character in Changing Lanes, too.
Haven't seen it. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Tue Sep 22, 2009 1:04 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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Joe Vitus wrote: Syd wrote: Affleck really nailed his character in Changing Lanes, too.
Haven't seen it.
Possibly his best performance. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Tue Sep 22, 2009 1:06 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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Ghulam wrote: As A.O.Scott implies in today's NYT, people need to be told before they see Informant! that it is a comedy! But casting all those comedic actors in bit roles and putting an exclamation mark in the title does not do it. SPOILER: The first two thirds of the movie is Erin Brockovich, but then it morphs into an Ealing Studio comedy with Alec Guinness! END OF SPOILER.
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I found it closer to Michael Clayton than Erin Brockovich, even though it's about whistle-blowing. The Burn After Reading/Clayton comparison was for me right on the money.
That article by A.O. Scott in today's NYTimes is a fine antidote to the "it's not very funny" posts I've been reading here. It's better, way better, than a lot of "laff riots" around. Like, for instance, The Hangover. |
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| Marj |
| Posted: Tue Sep 22, 2009 1:19 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 10497
Location: Manhattan
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That's interesting because I saw A.O. Scott review The Informant! on At the Movies and he said the the film was not a typical comedy. That it's humor was indeed very subtle. So not to go in thinking that this is a laff riot.
One more thing I wanted to add about Matt Damon. Perhaps this is what I appreciate the most about him. You never can see him working. He just is. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Tue Sep 22, 2009 1:23 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: New York City
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Marj wrote:
One more thing I wanted to add about Matt Damon. Perhaps this is what I appreciate the most about him. You never can see him working. He just is.
You nailed it, and that's part of what makes his Informant! performance so perfect. If he were "actorish" in the slightest, the whole house of cards would collapse. |
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| Ghulam |
| Posted: Tue Sep 22, 2009 1:39 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 4742
Location: Upstate NY
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Burn After Reading is brilliant because of its masterly and quirky characters, both in major and minor roles. In the Informant!, even Mark Whitacre and Brian Shepard do not have any distinctive or Dickensian characteristics. It is a decent movie, but its genre confusion drew my attention. SPOILER: The denouement precluded a straight Michael Clayton kind of a movie, but what precedes it does not lend itself to comic treatment even with the voice-overs. END OF SPOILER. Perhaps Soderbergh and Burns decided not to deal with this paradox, and perhaps that was wise.
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Tue Sep 22, 2009 1:51 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: New York City
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Ghulam and anyone else who has seen The Informant! SPOILER IN WHITE
The nature of Mark Whitacre's disease--whatever you call it, bipolar disorder, multiple personality disorder, sociopathology, pathological lying--does not indeed lend itself to comedy. But the way it was done using Damon's precisely calibrated performance and Bakula's deadpan reactions, was entirely consonant with the "human" comedy of delusion. Whitacre's narcissism was of such an "opera bouffe" quality that it seemed appropriate, and Hamlisch's score underlined it beautifully. What can I say? The movie is a genre-bender, and more power to it. |
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| Ghulam |
| Posted: Tue Sep 22, 2009 2:05 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: Upstate NY
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SPOILER: He does not have either bipolar or multiple personality disorder. Greed and lying, yes. I agree with you that it does not lend itself to comedy, more because of the story than because of the character.END OF SPOILER. (I do not know how to do whiteouts!).
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| lady wakasa |
| Posted: Tue Sep 22, 2009 3:04 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 5911
Location: Beyond the Blue Horizon
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Ghulam wrote: (I do not know how to do whiteouts!)
:Averting her eyes like a vampire in the sunlight: You can highlight the text to white out, then select the dropdown from "Font colour" (that Lorne must be Canadian or something) and select white.
Like this, except using white. |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Tue Sep 22, 2009 3:11 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: Houston
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billyweeds wrote: Joe Vitus wrote: Syd wrote: Affleck really nailed his character in Changing Lanes, too.
Haven't seen it.
Possibly his best performance.
Will have to look for it. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Tue Sep 22, 2009 3:21 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: New York City
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Ghulam wrote: SPOILER: He does not have either bipolar or multiple personality disorder. Greed and lying, yes. I agree with you that it does not lend itself to comedy, more because of the story than because of the character.END OF SPOILER. (I do not know how to do whiteouts!).
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Ghulam--Your spoiler is whited out above. (NOTE: to do whiteouts, highlight the text, go to the "Default" pull-down menu, go to "White" and do the same as you do with Italics or Boldface.)
Now here's my SPOILER:
I beg to differ with you about Whitacre definitely not having bipolar or multiple personality disorder. One does not have to be Sybil or The Three Faces of Eve to suffer from MPD, and bipolarity is the same as manic depression, which Whitacre seems to have in spades. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Tue Sep 22, 2009 3:22 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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| Now what is with that large-size type? That joke's on me. |
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| Trish |
| Posted: Tue Sep 22, 2009 3:26 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 2438
Location: Massachusetts
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billyweeds wrote: It's also his own company.
I should add that Trish's post is really in the nature of a huge SPOILER and should be marked as such.
sorry I just fixed it  |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Tue Sep 22, 2009 3:35 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: New York City
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Trish wrote: billyweeds wrote: It's also his own company.
I should add that Trish's post is really in the nature of a huge SPOILER and should be marked as such.
sorry I just fixed it
Thanks. It's one of those iffy situations and I certainly can understand why you wouldn't necessarily consider it a spoiler. |
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| Trish |
| Posted: Tue Sep 22, 2009 3:36 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
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Location: Massachusetts
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billyweeds wrote: Joe Vitus wrote: Syd wrote: Affleck really nailed his character in Changing Lanes, too.
Haven't seen it.
Possibly his best performance.
there other "moments" of greatness in films like: Dogma and Bounce and well I love Dazed and Confused and Chasing Amy
He was also not bad in Hollywoodland
his performances can very very uneven within an individual film however |
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