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knox

Posted: Thu Dec 23, 2010 1:12 pm

Joined: 18 Mar 2010 Posts: 1246 Location: St. Louis

deleted (see last post on previous page)

Befade

Posted: Thu Dec 23, 2010 2:34 pm

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 3784 Location: AZ

Quote:

A Serious Man...these are quintessential Coen for me, where the comic intertwines with the tragic so seamlessly you don't know where one starts and the other ends.

Billy......I really like that insight. and a serious man was my favorite......I think what you describe is rare in a film.

When are some women going to see The Portman Swan? I'd forgotten that lesbian scene.......I guess guys put that upfront whenever it happens. Now was that scene in The Kids are All Right......2 lesbians watching male gay porn.......was that supposed to be a turn on?

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whiskeypriest

Posted: Thu Dec 23, 2010 3:39 pm

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 6916 Location: "It's a Dry Heat."

Befade wrote:

Quote:

A Serious Man...these are quintessential Coen for me, where the comic intertwines with the tragic so seamlessly you don't know where one starts and the other ends.

I third the praise of A Serious Man. Someone should start a Coen Brothers forum so we can discuss that movie in full.

Yeah, why is it lesbian sex is viewed as a turn on for males, but gay sex is not a turn on for women?

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lshap

Posted: Thu Dec 23, 2010 4:13 pm

Site Admin Joined: 12 May 2004 Posts: 4248 Location: Montreal

One the little things that made The Kids Are All Right so good was how the two women dug watching gay male porn. It was a turn-on for them and I liked how it turned the stereotype on its ear.

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lshap

Posted: Thu Dec 23, 2010 4:21 pm

Site Admin Joined: 12 May 2004 Posts: 4248 Location: Montreal

It pisses me off that I'm one of the few who didn't love A Serious Man. It was really well-written and there were some great moments, but the lead actor's relentless self-destruction was like a pebble in my shoe that kept distracting me. His wimpy-ness was more frustrating than entertaining.

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whiskeypriest

Posted: Thu Dec 23, 2010 5:02 pm

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 6916 Location: "It's a Dry Heat."

lshap wrote:

I didn't find him wimpy at all - he was trying to make some sense out of, and find some order in, a world where the main props of his life were being kicked out from under him - but we should have this discussion in the proper forum.

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inlareviewer

Posted: Thu Dec 23, 2010 5:13 pm

Joined: 05 Jul 2004 Posts: 1949 Location: Lawrence, KS

I didn't love A Serious Man, either, though I thought more of Michael Stuhlbarg than not, duly admired the intent and execution, but it didn't exactly stick.

Speaking of sticking (as in jabbing, slashing, picking and cutting), am a tad hesitant to speak of Black Swan, seen at the cinema on Monday, watched again last night on a screener to verify that initial reactions accurately reflected post-viewing thoughts. Yet, must recklessly swan-dive in: I neither loved nor hated Darren Aronofsky's hypnotic, psychotic and narcotic mash-up of Polanski, Grotowski and Tchaikovsky (with nods to Argento, Freud, Hitchcock, Jung, Powell and Pressburger). I find myself pitched directly between those extremes.

Mr. Aronofsky remains at once a vivid iconoclast and undisciplined auteur, sometimes in the same shot. For sheer physical investment and overall application, Natalie Portman comports herself as possibly unhinged ballerina Nina with titanic determination, concentration and zero vanity. Barring some double/digital-aided shots where she (and Mila Kunis, perhaps the single most spontaneous performer in the film) remain en pointe for longer than a non-professional and many an ABT soloist could sustain, La Pirouetteman's replication of glissades, bourees, arabesques, attitudes and such, coupled with the behavioral details of a career dancer's lifestyle, from endless warm-ups and held postures to self-induced bulimia and religious reverence for the competitive code, strike me as absolute and impressive.

So is Matthew Libatique's cinematography, splendidly evocative in focalizing Mr. Aronofsky's unwavering color scheme (black, white, pink and enraged blood-red) and driving the character-study-meets-horror-movie ambience. From the arresting opening sequence -- a Romantic-tutu-clad, Marie Taglioni-reminscent star tremulously bourees before a field of black to the melancholy strains of Swan Lake's opening bars, the agitato section revealing an ominous partner who becomes that ballet's villain von Rothbart, and, in a swirling jump-cut that recalls Moira Shearer's Red Shoes dance with the newspaper that becomes Robert Helpmann, lovely, fragile Natalie Port-a-bras turns into a pancake-tutu-ed, wing-crowned Swan Queen -- this is only nominally a "ballet" movie, essentially a gradiloquent psychosexual examination of the doppelgänger principal (Nina's increasingly glimpsed animus, Ms. Kunis' ambiguous Lily, ill-used Winona Ryder's fading star, mega-intense Barbara Hershey as Nina's over-protective sMother, the female corps), darting like a triple entrechat above a demented fantasia on the perils of ambitious perfectionism.

On those terms (meaning, Mr. Aronofsky's), when the film drives its feverish surrealism with grande jete propulsion across the cutthroat arena of the ballet studio/dressing room/stage, it carries significant, albeit blunt, impact, almost the film that The Turning Point might have been had it concentrated on Leslie Browne's emerging star, made Baryshnikov a martinet choreographer, and downplayed Mmes. MacLaine and Bancroft (alias, in Pauline Kael's notorious terminology, those two harpies from the soaps).

Some trivial quibbles that only an ex-dancer/lifelong balletomane would even notice: choreographers/company members don't describe the dual roles as "Swan Queen" and "Black Swan" while avoiding the character names of Odette and Odile. Nor is that bipolar prima role, however challenging, the sina qua non of classical virtuosity the film implies -- that would be Sleeping Beauty's Princess Aurora. This is, naturally, a minority/specialty viewpoint, and irrelevant; the swan's duality is what got the project first initiated 10 years ago.

Have other, more lingering caveats, mainly whenever the movie leaves the dance milieu to spin dangerously near the risible: Ms. Portman's strained, relentlessly pained mien flirts with one-note dolors, inadvertently telegraphing that which a more gradual reveal would keep us guessing about longer. It doesn't diminish her technical accomplishment, but it makes for a foreseeable outcome. Perversely found myself noting other stuff I shouldn't have been thinking about, such as wondering how a single mom could maintain even a claustrophobic Upper West Side apartment on an ex-chorine's income; why Vincent Cassel's gamely mannered, Massine-on-steroids-and-Viagra choreographer alternates his terrorizing/seducing with his choreographing (they typically do both simultaneously); and then, there's the contrary-to-the-laws-of-physics-and-arterial-flow conclusion, however metaphorically a propos it is.

Of course, the answer to such nitpicks is that Mr. Aronofsky is hardly concerned with pesky matters such as internal logic, narrative comprehension or existential naturalism. It's not his way, nor his metier, hence quibbles and caveats are futile, and, given his deliberately over-the-top, melodramatic vision, beside the point. Raising my eyebrows far more than anything previously cited, or the toe-curling self-mutilation, calculated grotesquerie and horror-movie-scoring (pallid by comparison to Pyotr Ilyitch's deathless orchestral licks): the triple-authored screenplay, neither purple enough to be darkly compelling kitsch nor possessed of the gravitas to ignite profound frissons, and sometimes just plain hamfisted (most blatantly in certain lines assigned to Mssr. Cassel).

Had a more quietly accepting reaction to the incessant hand-held, swooping camera moves and the opposite-of-subtle iconography (courtesy of art direction and sound design departments that follow Mr. Aronofsky's lead with single-mindedness, right down to Mom's Tchaikovsky ringtone, Nina's ultra-pink bedroom, stuffed animals, and the tinkly music box that I so hoped might finally reveal a tiny, twirly Nina). Again, impressive, though the hyper-visual control curiously affords the scary moments less shock than they have a right to convey. The much-vaunted Sapphic sequence offers its own conundrum, believably enacted yet less erotic, unpredictable or disturbing than the red-filtered, hallucinatory bar/rave scene and cab ride that precedes it.

That said, the film undeniably grabs and holds your attention, certainly looks grim/gorgeous, and has considerable value, insofar as glittering, artsy pulp goes. Even so, analogies to The Red Shoes meets Repulsion, clearly Mr. Aronofsky's reference points, feel faintly inaccurate upon comparative retroactive study of those masterworks. What Black Swan most resembles, to me, is a distaff remake of Specter of the Rose by way of The Tenant, adorned with scattered feathers, mirror shards, tulle swatches and lipstick smears pilfered from Black Widow, Single White Female, Carrie, All About Eve, Stage Fright, Persona and The Unfinished Dance. Withal, it is easily more visceral than something like The Company, nowhere as meretricious as, well, Nijinsky (admittedly, not a difficult task). To paraphrase the final lines: I felt it. I followed it. It wasn't perfect.

Edited for typos and clarification. If one must be overwritten, one might as well spell correctly and be distinct, by Degas.

Last edited by inlareviewer on Sat Mar 19, 2011 4:21 am; edited 10 times in total
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Befade

Posted: Thu Dec 23, 2010 10:18 pm

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 3784 Location: AZ

Quote:

Ms. Portman's strained, relentlessly pained mien flirts with one-note dolors, inadvertently telegraphing that which a more gradual reveal would keep us guessing about longer

Inla........I'm happy to not be alone in my similar appraisal.......and comparison of the film to Carrie.

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jeremy

Posted: Thu Dec 23, 2010 10:22 pm

Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 6794 Location: Derby, England and Hamilton, New Zealand (yes they are about 12,000 miles apart)

She'll still get the Oscar though.

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inlareviewer

Posted: Thu Dec 23, 2010 10:49 pm

Joined: 05 Jul 2004 Posts: 1949 Location: Lawrence, KS

Befade wrote:

Inla........I'm happy to not be alone in my similar appraisal.......and comparison of the film to Carrie.

Well, the relationship between Barbara H.'s Erica and La Portmanteau's Nina seemed not without its Margaret/Carrietta White aspects. I respect and admire Nataleap's commitment, more than a little, but her non-ballet scenes, for at least the first half, seem overtly morbid, even neurotic, if not indeed neurasthenic (that became less pronounced for me after Every Straight Guy's Favorite Scene, and she tore into the final movement/coda). Obviously, that is in keeping with the character's bent, with the onus of responsibility for less than total nuance resting, from where I sit, at her director's feet.

jeremy wrote:

She'll still get the Oscar though.

It's highly possible, AMPASites do love their ingenues, but, as ever, I wouldn't bet on it until after the noms/GGs/SAGGYs make their annual directives of Industry thoughts known. After all, Glenn Close didn't win for I Boil Your Bunny, You Adulterous Pig, and she ought to have. Her Natality faces stiff competition, though at present, she's out-front alongside Mrs. Beatty on I Don't Have A Racso/How I Deserve One terms, La Belle Nicole on This Time I Did It Without A Fake Nose/One Third of A Single Tripartite Turn terms.

Last edited by inlareviewer on Tue Jan 18, 2011 7:48 pm; edited 4 times in total
_________________
"And take extra care with strangers/Even flowers have their dangers/And though scary is exciting/Nice is different than good." --Stephen Sondheim

Syd

Posted: Thu Dec 23, 2010 10:49 pm

Site Admin Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 12929 Location: Norman, Oklahoma

bartist wrote:

Quote:

It's a faithful adaptation of the book although I was wondering where those mountains came from in Oklahoma

Isn't there a range called the Wichitas in SW Okla, near Fort Sill? (haven't seen TG yet, so I'm guessing these are more rounded and understated than what you saw in the movie...)

Except for the opening scenes of the movie, which takes place in Fort Smith, Arkansas, on the Oklahoma border (at the time it was Indian Territory), the movie takes place in the Choctaw nation, so the mountains must be the Ouachitas, which are first cousins to the Ozarks. So the movie's right.

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Marc

Posted: Fri Dec 24, 2010 11:41 pm

Joined: 19 May 2004 Posts: 8424

The Fighter is stunningly good. Not a false note in the whole damn thing. Give the best supporting actress Oscar to Melissa Leo right now.

Befade

Posted: Sat Dec 25, 2010 12:59 am

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 3784 Location: AZ

I just saw it and want the best supporting actor to go to Christian Bale right now. A good movie. I liked it more because of him. Melissa Leo has range. I saw her play a completely different character opposite James Gandolfino in Welcome to the ____________ (memory loss).

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Marc

Posted: Sat Dec 25, 2010 2:04 am

Joined: 19 May 2004 Posts: 8424

Betsy,

Welcome To The Riley's. An undeservedly ignored film this past year.

I did not even realize I was watching Melissa Leo in The Fighter until I read the credits. She totally inhabits her characters and alters her appearance in an almost supernatural way. Same deal in Frozen River.

I agree, give the supporting Oscar to Bale. He may not get it because of his bad press for being a jerk. I hope that doesn't factor in. But, it probably will.

billyweeds

Posted: Sat Dec 25, 2010 6:47 am

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 20618 Location: New York City

Marc wrote:

The Fighter is stunningly good. Not a false note in the whole damn thing. Give the best supporting actress Oscar to Melissa Leo right now.

I'd say sooner give it to Amy Adams. And the amazing Mark Wahlberg tends to be the forgotten link in this unbroken chain. But they're all great.

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