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| inlareviewer |
 Posted: Fri Jan 15, 2010 8:10 pm |
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Joined: 05 Jul 2004
Posts: 1949
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Mumblescore, Mumblecore, it's just too much for me to keep up with.
Now, Dumbledore....
On (500) Days of Summer: obviously, am in the Loved It category,
Cannot speak for its POV, never having had a bad break-up with a female personage.
(The same cannot be said for the male of the species. But I'm not bitter. I'm Bette.)
Wasn't post-able when The Soloist came out, liked it more than I didn't, especially its overall avoidance of telemovie techniques and certainly Mr. Downey Jr. (though he is about as much like Steve Lopez as I am like Payton Manning). Found Mr. Foxx tolerable, if a tad too self-consciously A-Lister for the best interests of the role. Ultimately, it was impossible for me to even pretend to be objective -- that story unfolded in stages on the pages of the employer at the time it transpired, and it had the whole town talkin' about it. Incidentally, several actor acquaintances who played homeless folk amid the atmosphere peeps raved about the working ethic and general menschness of director Joe, so that's all Wright. |
Last edited by inlareviewer on Fri Jan 15, 2010 8:34 pm; edited 3 times in total
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"And take extra care with strangers/Even flowers have their dangers/And though scary is exciting/Nice is different than good." --Stephen Sondheim |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Fri Jan 15, 2010 8:26 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 14498
Location: Houston
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inlareviewer wrote:
Cannot speak for its POV, never having had a bad break-up
Rub it in, why don't you? Geesh!
inlareviewer wrote: with a female personage.
Oh. Yeh, me neither.
inlareviewer wrote: The same cannot be said for the male of the species.
Whew! I don't feel so inadequate anymore.
inlareviewer wrote: But I'm not bitter.
Must work in that, myself. |
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| inlareviewer |
| Posted: Fri Jan 15, 2010 8:29 pm |
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Joined: 05 Jul 2004
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Location: Lawrence, KS
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Joe Vitus, use it with my blessings.
Just don't tell my last ex, eternally referred to as Mud. |
Last edited by inlareviewer on Fri Jan 15, 2010 8:37 pm; edited 1 time in total
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"And take extra care with strangers/Even flowers have their dangers/And though scary is exciting/Nice is different than good." --Stephen Sondheim |
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| whiskeypriest |
| Posted: Fri Jan 15, 2010 8:35 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: "It's a Dry Heat."
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Joe Vitus wrote:
inlareviewer wrote: But I'm not bitter.
Must work in that, myself.
Which reminds me of the one thing I didn't like about the movie: the precocious preteen delivering real world adult wisdom to the emotionally juvenile adult. Sigh. Perhaps it would have worked better for me if Abigail Breslin had been available. |
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I ask you, Velvel, as a rational man, which of us is possessed? |
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| inlareviewer |
| Posted: Fri Jan 15, 2010 8:41 pm |
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Joined: 05 Jul 2004
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Location: Lawrence, KS
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| Okay, I do have to agree a bit about the use of the kid sister in (500) Days, it was sorta kinda irritating. All the same, was wholly captivated by the Gordon-Levitt/Deschanel interplay, and the structure quite sent me. |
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"And take extra care with strangers/Even flowers have their dangers/And though scary is exciting/Nice is different than good." --Stephen Sondheim |
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| whiskeypriest |
| Posted: Fri Jan 15, 2010 8:44 pm |
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Location: "It's a Dry Heat."
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Anyway, I really did enjoy the gender switching of the roles in the movie. The woman being the one who retains the emotional disconnect, the man the one who is hurt by the ultimate rejection. There are a lot of movies that show us this from the woman's side, with the man being described as "Either she's an evil, emotionless, miserable human being, or... she's a robot" or the like. But the truth is, even in those movies, the people we fall in love with have no reciprocal duty to fall in love with us. That does not make them heartless:
Quote: Summer: I woke up one morning and I just knew.
Tom: Knew what?
Summer: What I was never sure of with you.
I think, despite the movie being from Tom's viewpoint, we never really lose sympathy for Summer. In part it is because of <sigh> Zooey Whiskyprie... Deschanel </sigh>, but in part I think it is because she is a woman, and from what is traditionally viewed as being on the lower end of the relationship power scale (in movies that is, though anyone with real life experience knows that there is no such thing; it is all shifting ground), which softens the blow for us. And also because the movie lets us know, from the start, that she is always honest with Tom. |
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I ask you, Velvel, as a rational man, which of us is possessed? |
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| whiskeypriest |
| Posted: Fri Jan 15, 2010 8:45 pm |
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inlareviewer wrote: Okay, I do have to agree a bit about the use of the kid sister in (500) Days, it was sorta kinda irritating. All the same, was wholly captivated by the Gordon-Levitt/Deschanel interplay, and the structure quite sent me. |
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I ask you, Velvel, as a rational man, which of us is possessed? |
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| inlareviewer |
| Posted: Fri Jan 15, 2010 8:46 pm |
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Joined: 05 Jul 2004
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Location: Lawrence, KS
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Bingo. Also, there's the ending, which after 3 viewings still made me beamish and ticklefied.
Edited to undo a post-edit mal-quote, just because we care. |
Last edited by inlareviewer on Fri Jan 15, 2010 8:52 pm; edited 4 times in total
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"And take extra care with strangers/Even flowers have their dangers/And though scary is exciting/Nice is different than good." --Stephen Sondheim |
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| whiskeypriest |
| Posted: Fri Jan 15, 2010 8:47 pm |
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inlareviewer wrote: Bingo. Also, there's the ending, which after 3 viewings still made me beamish and ticklefied. |
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I ask you, Velvel, as a rational man, which of us is possessed? |
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| inlareviewer |
| Posted: Fri Jan 15, 2010 8:50 pm |
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Location: Lawrence, KS
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whiskeypriest wrote: inlareviewer wrote: Bingo. Also, there's the ending, which after 3 viewings still made me beamish and ticklefied. Yeah. Hope that relationship works out. SPOILER Not a whole lot of women named Winter out there.
Indeed. Nor SPOILER that many named Spring, unless you count Byington, alas long since departed. |
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"And take extra care with strangers/Even flowers have their dangers/And though scary is exciting/Nice is different than good." --Stephen Sondheim |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Sat Jan 16, 2010 12:08 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: New York City
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| Thanks for noting the weakness of the kid-sister scenes in DDoS. I had blocked them out, but they were really cliched and several notches below anything else in the movie. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Sat Jan 16, 2010 9:41 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
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Location: Shanghai
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I caught the kid sister stuff as a riff of sorts on Holden Caulfield (who knows, maybe they had Charlie and Sallie Brown in mind, by I thought they were doing shots of rye). The film tried a little too hard to be cute, and then piled on various stylistic devices in the last 20+ minutes for no discernible reason. And how/why did the narrator from Little Children get in on the intro and outro?
While I kind of liked the simple [date counter] conceit which allowed the film to go back and forth in time easily, it never really seemed to pay off.
I found both leads fairly annoying with their smug grins (him) and innocent smiles (her). I couldn't have taken one more laughing montage to twee indie pop. The film was okay, but seemed too derivative, and the idea of a woman acting in a guy role seems fairly worn and lazy by now -- yet the film still feels the need to telegraph the premise with a blatant, clunky line of dialogue, not to mention the guy encased in wimpy sweater vests the whole film. |
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| Marj |
| Posted: Sat Jan 16, 2010 2:19 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
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Location: Manhattan
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I so wish I had this film again or at least not as a late night tonic. Finally a discussion I can take part in and I can hardly remember the movie.
Btw, Gromit, the narrators weren't the same. Richard McGonagle did 500 Days and Will Lyman did Little Children. But thanks for mentioning it. I always think how narration is used in a movie, if it is, is so important. And I do think the narration in Little Children was an example of how it can be used to excellent advantage. |
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| ehle64 |
| Posted: Sat Jan 16, 2010 4:50 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 7149
Location: NYC; US&A
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Marc wrote: I've been watching the extended cut of The New World and am convinced more than ever that it is one of the great films of the past 20 years.Terence Malick has created something so cinematic and pure that it takes my breath away.
I've been wanting to see this extended cut for quite some time!
Count me as a 40-something who dug the hell out of (500)DoS. Chatted with sebrown the other day and he really liked it, too. Those other kids just ain't got no taste!  |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Sat Jan 16, 2010 8:00 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: New York City
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| The narrator in Little Children and DDoS had this in common: they were stentorian and self-important. Somehow it worked in both movies, even though both narrations annoyed me unreasonably. |
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