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grace

Posted: Fri Dec 02, 2011 1:28 pm

Joined: 11 Nov 2005 Posts: 3214

Speaking of Spielberg, here's Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln (currently shooting).

(John Hawkes, in a solid bid to take title as The New Jessica Chastain, is also in Lincoln.)

inlareviewer

Posted: Fri Dec 02, 2011 2:03 pm

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

Hmmm. Will that make Michael Fassbinder the New John Hawkes, or merely a contender for the Chastain Crown of Ubiquity?
Have had Hugo inked in on my calendar since it was announced -- Scorsese! --and Coriolanus , though it's not exactly my favorite Shakespeare, is mandatory, not just because of Rayfe and Her Vanessatude, but so I can smile enigmatically while drama critics circle colleagues dissect it, as they most assuredly will.

Relayed Deaction Department:

For the record, I can never have too much Muppet in my life.

_________________
"And take extra care with strangers/Even flowers have their dangers/And though scary is exciting/Nice is different than good." --Stephen Sondheim

daffy

Posted: Fri Dec 02, 2011 3:03 pm

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 1939 Location: Wall Street

I had a lot of big problems with Margaret Thatcher, but this performance looks fabulous:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDiCFY2zsfc

Has this one been talked about here at all? I can't wait.

_________________
"I have been known, on occasion, to howl at the moon."

http://www.rugbyworldcup.com/index.html

inlareviewer

Posted: Fri Dec 02, 2011 3:21 pm

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

daffy: Talked about? Not so much. Alluded to, inserted into other-topic posts, tacitly and openly anticipated? Absolutely.

Even if Mrs. Gummer hadn't just taken the NY Film Crix actress prize, or the Society of Avid Solipsistic Streepian Yoyos (SASSY) didn't mandate my attendance, merely something as relatively benign as this

ensures that I'll be there. Indeed, at some level, I already am there, being a proactively unrelenting Merylite, after all.

_________________
"And take extra care with strangers/Even flowers have their dangers/And though scary is exciting/Nice is different than good." --Stephen Sondheim

carrobin

Posted: Fri Dec 02, 2011 6:06 pm

Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 7795 Location: NYC

bartist wrote:

Carro, I was feeling tepid about Hugo, but you are pushing me to the tipping point with your dazzled response. I don't get excited about 3D, but hoping local theater will offer the 2D option at some point (it opened without the option).

I'm no fan of 3D either, but it's quite natural-looking in "Hugo," and the glasses don't darken the screen (I had a problem seeing "Harry Potter etc. Part 2" clearly). The only time it's really impressive is when one is looking down from a height, so it's not really necessary, but it's not intrusive.

The trailers for upcoming films--all kid-oriented, like "Tintin" and "The Pirates"--were 3D, and there were trailers for some older films, like "Beauty and the Beast" and "Star Wars Part I" that are being re-released in 3D. Maybe I'll check out the Star Wars, since it came out before I adequately appreciated Ewan McGregor.

Ghulam

Posted: Fri Dec 02, 2011 9:36 pm

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 4742 Location: Upstate NY

Exquisite direction by Jeff Nichols in Take Shelter, a superb psychological/existential drama. Both Michael Shannon and Jessica Chastain deserve Oscar nominations.

billyweeds

Posted: Fri Dec 02, 2011 11:07 pm

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

Ghulam wrote:

Exquisite direction by Jeff Nichols in Take Shelter, a superb psychological/existential drama. Both Michael Shannon and Jessica Chastain deserve Oscar nominations.

Couldn't agree more. Film acting simply doesn't get any better. But they're promoting Chastain as a supporting actress, which is imbecilic.

bartist

Posted: Sat Dec 03, 2011 12:24 pm

Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6958 Location: Black Hills

Wpriest: didn't mean to imply Manhola's praise was a good thing. Still untutored in the ways of ironic and mocking emoticons, am I. Maybe a wink would have served. Her review shows even a broken clock can be correct twice a day. Or something like that. I'm not a fan of jerky cam either, and wholeheartedly agree that just listening to the Bard-man is a feast in itself.

Saw The Descendants yesterday and liked it about as much as any other Payne film, though Sideways remains my favorite. Pathos and humor, well-mixed. Payne is a master at creating character and keeping it front and center, even with the glory of Hawaii in the background.

_________________
He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days.

billyweeds

Posted: Sat Dec 03, 2011 5:42 pm

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

War Horse is one of Spielberg's very best, right up there with Schindler's List, Jaws, and E.T., and ahead of Saving Private Ryan and Close Encounters. It's the best movie of the year (that I've seen so far). The photography, the music, the editing--all by the usual SS suspects--are beyond top drawer and the emotional effect is gargantuan. I have not cried this much in a movie since 1954 when I first saw Gone With the Wind. True, you must suspend disbelief over some huge coincidences (the story, though mightily effective, is basically a rewrite of the old one about a possession being passed around from person to person--cf. The Yellow Rolls-Royce and Tales of Manhattan); in this case it's a horse named Joey, who is the hero of the story. But suspending disbelief has seldom been this easy. It's a magnificent film.

Acting is fine all around--probably the ensemble of the year--but it's Spielberg's triumph and that of his brilliant team.

gromit

Posted: Sat Dec 03, 2011 9:54 pm

Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9010 Location: Shanghai

If you told me that you thought you were a horse for an hour after the credits rolled, and your wife rode you home, I might consider seeing it ...

_________________
Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number.

bartist

Posted: Sun Dec 04, 2011 4:37 pm

Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6958 Location: Black Hills

Damnit. Too many good films this year.

_________________
He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days.

inlareviewer

Posted: Sun Dec 04, 2011 6:18 pm

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

bartist: You said it. I'm not remotely up to speed on either Foreign Language or Documentary -- my favorite genre, to boot. I must investigate surrogate viewers, or remote feeds, or maybe cloning.

willybeeds: Have no doubt that War Horse is an exceptional piece of filmmaking. As previously noted, the trailer was most intriguing, am already planning to see it, and your encomium ups the ante. It would have to, since I share carrobin's uncertainty as to how any film version, however magnificently rendered, can withstand the indelible impact of the iconically meta-theatrical staging of the source material. Obviously, stage and screen are two different animals, and though the decades have left me at once inured to and wary of Spielin' Steveberg's innate, reflexive manipulation of medium and audience, he is a master storyteller, with a nonpareil knack for combining artistic grandeur and popular sentiment. It's all so subjective. Will reserve judgment and hope for a felicitous reaction.

The same, alas, cannot be said for J. Edgar, which just ended on the DiViD. East Clintwood is, despite my periodic teasing, an ace filmmaker. There's no denying his technical proficiency here, helming a non-linear narrative -- that spans some 6 decades in almost stream-of-consciousness zigzags -- while keeping timeframes and eras in trim, with first-rate decor and costume contributions. The cinematography by Tom Stern is remarkable, a medley of near-Stygian chiaroscuro, grainy sepia that recalls Ansel Adams and glowing, vintage Hollywood color (nearing my current top contenders for lensing, The Tree of Life, Melancholia and Midnight in Paris). Leonardo DiCaprio, digging way deep, selflessly givies himself over to the challenges of accent, varying ages and prosthetic/body-modification in a superlative performance as J. Edgar Hoover, never overdoing the reactionary flaws and righteous zeal, just embodying them in one internally agitated, emotionally inarticulate and contradictory persona. It may be his most emotionally acute, unflinchingly brave characterization since Revolutionary Road, certain to be a formidable entry at the You-Know-Whats.

That's the good part. What isn't, so much, is the film. One problem is the pallid, historical-highlights-reel thrust of Dustin Lance Black's screenplay. This, unlike the largish quota of unintentionally risible lines that wouldn't be out of place in an RKO programmer from the 30s, isn't entirely Mr. Black's fault. It's a huge, complex subject to tackle in 2 hours and 17 minutes, and a perfunctory, pick-and-choose aura permeates the whole. Moreover, the Hoover files are, as the final credits card reminds us, sealed from public view, so the script can only imply and hint at what is, in theory, a natural fit for Mr. Black's specific purview: the much-speculated-about relationship between Hoover and longtime second-in-command/companion Clyde Tolson.

Which brings us to another problem: Armie Hammer, though capable and sensitive in manner, and trying his darndest to create an interior life, seems wildly miscast, most notably in the old-age scenes, where he's hobbled by as unhelpful a make-up job as any I can recall since poor Bette Midler was turned into a veritable Claymation cartoon in For The Boys. I tried in vain not to snicker during the climactic bust-up over Hoover's intent to marry, which cannot have been the intention of either the actors, the director or the writer.

And, despite the evident sincerity and skill on tap, couldn't help finding the bulk of the cast of notables and journeymen wasted, particularly Naomi Watts, in this context luxury casting, as Hoover's tacitly adoring secretary --her brown dye job suggests a fuller-faced Karen Morley -- with many reaction shots that contain more nuanced layers than the film does; and certainly Judi Dench as J. Edgar's martinet mother, saddled with a sizeable number of Mr. Black's most flagrant eye-rollers, my favorite being "I'd rather have a dead son than a daffodil for a son." It's not a horrible movie, just an overly muted, conventional, thematically inchoate one. Thus, when it was over, I rather wished I'd just put on Milk again and had a good cry.

_________________
"And take extra care with strangers/Even flowers have their dangers/And though scary is exciting/Nice is different than good." --Stephen Sondheim

billyweeds

Posted: Sun Dec 04, 2011 10:45 pm

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

inla--J. Edgar may not be a horrible movie, but when it's bad it's horrible enough for my purposes. Hammer's (and Watts's) makeup alone qualifies it for a Razzie of some sort.

billyweeds

Posted: Sun Dec 04, 2011 11:24 pm

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

Hugo is beautiful to look at, has a lot of photographic virtuosity, and uses 3D really well, but it doesn't do it for me. It's paced like a snail and goes in too many directions at once. It's the heart-wrenching story of a little orphan boy who lives in a clock! It's a neo-Jacques Tati French comedy, with a little Pagnol thrown in! It's a movie about Martin Scorsese's obsession with film restoration! But it never connects with me emotionally.

I think movies about movies are like navel-gazing for the most part, with the rare exception like Singin' in the Rain and Sunset Boulevard. Here Scorsese gambles that we'll get all choked up over the partially fictionalized, partially true story of Georges Melies and his movie A Trip to the Moon, but I think Scorsese has unrealistic hopes. And I predict kids will be bored.

With a couple of exceptions, the acting is okay at best. As Hugo, Asa Butterfield is blandly, blankly uninteresting; the often great Ben Kingsley as the old filmmaker falls back on acting cliches; Sacha Baron Cohen as a Pagnolesque comic villain is fitfully amusing but one-note; Michael (A Serious Man) Stuhlbarg is unrecognizable under a full beard and a dull part as a film scholar and Scorsese surrogate. Chloe Grace Moretz is charming, but the only performance that really resonates for me is the cameo as Hugo's father by Jude Law, who creates an intensely likeable man in just a couple of scenes.

The movie is far from "bad." It's just borderline snoozeworthy and egregiously overrated.

carrobin

Posted: Mon Dec 05, 2011 11:04 am

Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 7795 Location: NYC

That's what makes horse races, I guess. I was emotionally involved with "Hugo" from the start, and his clockwork home fascinated me. I wish it were doing better at the box office--maybe it needed a couple of vampires in the station.

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