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| grace |
 Posted: Fri Jan 27, 2012 3:43 pm |
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Joined: 11 Nov 2005
Posts: 3214
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Befade wrote: I rate it high........I just don't understand the ending........(did she rescue him, revive his career or just dance with him?)
I think the ending was intentionally left open to interpretation. Just in case this constitutes a spoiler - I can see them becoming a dance team - just because he didn't initially buy into talkies doesn't mean he can't join up a little later. Or, her kindness gave him the hope to face life, whether the future includes movies or not. End potential spoiler
Befade wrote: and why French actors in a love letter to Hollywood?
Because American actors wouldn't do it. (Just kidding, of course.) |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Fri Jan 27, 2012 4:02 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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I thought the ending was pretty obvious: SPOILER They made it big as an Astaire-Rogers-style dance duo. No biggie, just a sweet ending. END SPOILER
Nobody argues that it isn't a pleasant movie. But Oscar-worthy??? No way in the world.
The Vertigo channel was that they just sampled at least five minutes of the Bernard Herrmann soundtrack during the climax. Nonsensical, since it had no relevance to the style of The Artist. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Fri Jan 27, 2012 4:07 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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Just noticed this headline on line:
Kim Novak Calls The Artist's Use Of Vertigo's Score 'Rape'
That might be taking it a tad too far. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Fri Jan 27, 2012 4:08 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12921
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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| Because it's a French film. Which I guess would make it the first Best Picture from a non-English speaking country. Slumdog Millionaire was considered a British film despite being partly in Hindi, filmed in India and having an Indian cat. |
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| grace |
| Posted: Fri Jan 27, 2012 4:47 pm |
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Joined: 11 Nov 2005
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I like Kim Novak well enough, but I also wonder why she didn't feel raped when the same music spilled over into a scene of 12 Monkeys.
Plus, the music was credited in The Artist, and the director openly stated that the flick was an homage to numerous things in the history of the industry. The scene of the stairway at the studio, with people running up and down them like ants is from something classic - I just can't recall for the life of me what (and yeah, I'm embarrassed about that). The breakfast scene with Valentin and his wife is totally Citizen Kane. The dog sidekick is Asta (or even Lassie or Rinty, if you overlook size/breed). Throw in A Star is Born, unless that's technically the sequel to The Artist. The movie they're making at the start of The Artist seems like a compilation of about five classics - and I can't help it, but Valentin's lines for that scene crack me up without fail because of the subject of the movie. (I hope these aren't spoilers.)
But anyway, with the director having given credit where credit is due, I can't help feeling like Ms. Novak is desperately trying to be relevant at his expense. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Fri Jan 27, 2012 5:34 pm |
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| I think that I'll like The Artist, but who knows? It does sound like my kind of movie. |
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| Befade |
| Posted: Fri Jan 27, 2012 9:05 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 3784
Location: AZ
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Grace............You're right. It would be interesting to know all the connections to past movies in The Artist.
Billy........I didn't pick up that music at the end.......I see the Astaire/Rogers connection......I just wondered whether he would become a talker in his future career (not just a dancer).
Gary.......You'd probably get a kick out of it. It is worth seeing.
As to Academy winning picture.......is that really equal to Best Picture?
Inla.......if you're around........I was in LA recently and stayed at the Hotel Roosevelt where the first Oscars were passed out in 1929. What a grand hotel!! With cutting edge/modern redone rooms. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Fri Jan 27, 2012 10:51 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12921
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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The Artist is starting this weekend in three theaters in the Oklahoma City area, one of which happens to be the one in Norman.
The Descendents is only showing in north Oklahoma City. |
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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
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| jeremy |
| Posted: Sat Jan 28, 2012 12:33 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 6794
Location: Derby, England and Hamilton, New Zealand (yes they are about 12,000 miles apart)
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Syd wrote: Because it's a French film. Which I guess would make it the first Best Picture from a non-English speaking country. Slumdog Millionaire was considered a British film despite being partly in Hindi, filmed in India and having an Indian cat.
I don't remember the cat, but I would support the implication that the 'nationality' of any animals in a film should be an important criterion in the determining the country of origin of a film. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sat Jan 28, 2012 1:01 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12921
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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| Typo for "cast." |
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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
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| Marc |
| Posted: Sat Jan 28, 2012 2:46 am |
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Joined: 19 May 2004
Posts: 8424
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| Best picture of the year: Drive. Fuck the Oscars! |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Sat Jan 28, 2012 7:13 am |
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That's a movie I want to see. It's not here but it might get here next year.  |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Sat Jan 28, 2012 8:15 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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Marc wrote: Best picture of the year: Drive. Fuck the Oscars!
Though I don't quite agree on the "Best Picture" comment, I am incensed that Drive got so little love from the Academy. It's absurd that a movie this superb should be shut out when clunkers like Extremely Incredibly Annoyingly Insufferable are recognized. Where are Drive's Gosling, Brooks, direction, cinematography, music--not to mention the scene-stealing Oscar Isaac? Yeah, sound recording (deserved, but a non-winner for sure). Oscars suck!
(I can't restrain myself from citing Hugo as another non-deserving multi-nominee, even though Marc and I are poles apart on that one.) |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Sat Jan 28, 2012 11:48 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
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Location: Black Hills
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Saw The Artist last night and agree it's a well-made charmer, but maybe not enough to throw bald statues at it. OTOH, had about as much fun last night as I've had at the movies this year.
BTW, burning acetate in an enclosed space will kill you in a minute. Very toxic smoke. Not important, but it did remind me I was watching a fable. Also not sure why it took him three years to figure out that talkies are just movies with sound and that he was clearly young and vigorous enough to make the leap. IOW, the character arc was sort of bogus and so I took it as a light-hearted poke at the preciousness of the artist temperament. |
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| inlareviewer |
| Posted: Sat Jan 28, 2012 6:12 pm |
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Joined: 05 Jul 2004
Posts: 1949
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Befadetsy: Ah, the Hwd-Roosevelt is one of those local buildings that always gives me comfort just seeing it while driving to a reviewing gig. Kewl.
Re: The Artist. POSSIBLE SPOILERS ALERT
It will likely take the Oscar for Best Picture, precisely because of its deceptive slightness, which contains some surefire elements: intelligent, crowd-pleasing accessibility, familiar story derivatives, an exceedingly endearing, carefully cast-to-era-specifics-without-losing-immediacy acting roster (Jean Dujardin carries viable 1920s and wholly contemporary energy, Bérénice Bejo equal parts Clara Bow, Leslie Caron and those lovelies seen at the Grove on any given day; John Goodman and James Cromwell might have been Photoshopped in from a Zukor two-reeler at points, etc.), whose facial/physical eloquence, antic or still, could permit the deaf to follow their process; a witty score that could permit the blind to chart the film's emotional/narrative temperature; imposing (on a relative-to-economic-realities-dime) photography, art direction, costuming, location choices, etc., -- all the while concealing another, even more invaluable ingredient. That is its layered, here surface, there embedded, quota of not just countless nods to classic and common-place silent films, helmers and stars, in direct lift and/or reconceived archetype, from The Cameraman and Our Dancing Daughters to Show People and A Woman of Paris, and early Hitch, and Lubitsch, and Lang, Sennett, Vidor, Harry Langdon, John Gilbert, Garbo and Gish, various Talmadge vehicles, everything Douglas Fairbanks ever did, ad infinitum -- but the innumerable visual, plot and subtextual references to iconic sound directors -- Jacques Tati springs to mind, as does Preston Sturges, for starters -- and films. Beginning with Singin' in the Rain (George Valentin and put-upon Mitzi at the opening premiere echoing Don Lockwood and Lina Lamont , George and Peppy Miller mirroring, then inverting Lockwood and Kathy Seldon's dynamic) and Citizen Kane (the Valentin marriage -- snickered at Penelope Ann Miller in the Ruth Warrick breakfast posture looking like Dorothy Comingore -- the Charles Foster-esque flavor of George's attack at the celluloid-burning pivot point, the post-Xanadu composition of George's auctioned-off effects). These, and the self-evident What Price Hollywood?/A Star is Born and Sunset Boulevard salutes, are but the easiest identified items in a virtual Halliwell's Film Guide come to life, Vitagraph shorts and early newsreels inclusive. As such, only Hugo rivals it in imaginative film-reference terms. Sift in the trigonometry-worthy degree of self-comment woven throughout the movie-history comment, such as the titles of George and Peppy's films during his decline and her ascent ("Guardian Angel" was maybe my favorite groan/snort-inducer); as expert a job of sound mixing and editing as I can immediately recall toward the film's objective of creating an illusion of aural effects from both within and outside of a silent-flickers perspective -- for example, the perceived roars of the audience at the premiere, without applause or cheering effects intruding on the soundtrack -- not to mention the surreal first audible noises in George's nightmare and the climactic appropriation of the Vertigo love theme. To this cineaste, Michel Hazanavicius' determined Film Buff's focus on sight-vs-sound-and-back constitutes an aesthetic absolute, of remarkable unity. That self-circumscribed integrity, the Love Conquers All Even When You Don't See Or Hear It Doing So message, and, of course, Uggie, is why the movie is causing such a stir among, you know, pitchah people, and, increasingly, Mainstream America (watch as the hardline rollout starts snowballing). It's a film that grandparents and Generation Next grandkids can see together (which the F-bombs in its predecessor last year faintly prohibited until the edited version); the Dujardin/Bejo chemistry makes it recommendable date movie fodder; the comedy quotient is high, 21st-century adjacent without being smarmy/snarky/gross-out; and, above all, it's an unabashedly charming, unapolegtically idiosyncratic feel-good film that arrives at precisely the moment this planet's denizens could use all the good feelings they can get. I lost myself in it, in part because I saw it first at the Vista, the glossily restored 20s movie theater and my college-years employer, but, while the combination of the film's pastiche/homage and my sentiment about that former art house was potent, it's not remotely the only factor. Certainly, will take whatever uplift comes my way, but that's tertiary to what grabbed me about The Artist, which, for sheer subjective response, joins Melancholia and A Separation ahead of Beginners, The Descendants and Win Win as 2011 Films That Caught Me The Off-Guard-est. Is it overrated? Probably so, few things aren't, including by me, but that didn't prohibit my enjoyment, nor, in all likelihood, will it do so for the Aclademy. The screener finally arrived, am prepared to watch it repeatedly, wiz plehzjaire (the final line is key). Less is more, content dictates form, God is in the details, and all are here on tap (literally so in the final sequence). In the immortal words of the late, great Selma Diamond on Night Court: I laughed, I cried, it became a part of me. Enchanting.
Will attempt to address The Descendants, Mrs. Gummer Transubstantiates Yet Again As Mrs. Thatcher, and other seen things when there's more time, except there's never more time, and seldom enough. Cue Joni Mitchell, I'm off to find a painted pony and go up and down. |
Last edited by inlareviewer on Sat Jan 28, 2012 8:17 pm; edited 1 time in total
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