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Slim Killington posted:That's just it, Boyhood's gimmick does not work. It does not make the film anything greater than a mundane film. Without it, you still have the same product at the end of the day. Using different actors at different ages would not harm or change Boyhood in any way, and that's why its gimmick is worth nothing. Well, how's it supposed to "work"?
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Feb 23, 2015 21:37
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FreudianSlippers posted:They should have called 12 Years a Boy though. I think they were going to call it 12 Years but then 12 Years a Slave happened.
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Feb 23, 2015 21:41
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Double Bill posted:The RLM dual review of Jupiter Ascending and Battlefield Earth is appropriate. Though the latter at least functions as a comedy, while JA is just bad in everything. Battlefield Earth is tedium even if you watch it for camp value. It's also utterly hideous, while JA looks great and has a light fairy tale quality.
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Feb 23, 2015 21:51
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:Well, how's it supposed to "work"? Well, ask what the significance is of having the same actors filmed throughout 12 years of their lives. Why do that thing? I can't tell you the answer, but I can tell you that if you can remove it entirely from a project, it doesn't mean anything. "Because nobody does it or has ever done it" is certainly a point, but does it improve the film in some significant way? I don't know how it supposed to "work," only that it has to do something. I said, "It does not make the film anything greater than a mundane film." A good gimmick, for starters, might do that.
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Feb 23, 2015 22:07
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Slim Killington posted:Well, ask what the significance is of having the same actors filmed throughout 12 years of their lives. Why do that thing? I can't tell you the answer, but I can tell you that if you can remove it entirely from a project, it doesn't mean anything. "Because nobody does it or has ever done it" is certainly a point, but does it improve the film in some significant way? I don't know how it supposed to "work," only that it has to do something. I said, "It does not make the film anything greater than a mundane film." A good gimmick, for starters, might do that. Except it does improve the film, IMO, because it adds a sense of defined progression to the characters' lives and casting seven or eight different but kinda similar-looking child actors just wouldn't feel the same, and also the film is about growing up and the major events that shape your life so watching the characters literally grow up and grow old actually directly ties into the film's main thematic elements.
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Feb 23, 2015 22:15
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I do certainly get making that argument, but we as audiences have not had a problem with character progression in films where characters grow up via different actors for oh, about fifty years now, so I can't agree with it. I get it though because doing something for real in cinema is universally almost always better than faking it. Almost certainly always. JK Simmons smacks the everloving gently caress out of that mini Shia Lebouef-looking kid in Whiplash, and that's a necessary thing that makes that scene, his character, and their entire relationship. I don't see Boyhood the same way, I think the film would still play exactly how it does whether they filmed the same people or not. Slim Killington fucked around with this message at 22:27 on Feb 23, 2015 |
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Feb 23, 2015 22:24
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Slim Killington posted:I do certainly get making that argument, but we as audiences have not had a problem with character progression in films where characters grow up via different actors for oh, about fifty years now, so I can't agree with it. People didn't have a problem with silent films, therefore talkies are an unnecessary gimmick. QED
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Feb 23, 2015 22:28
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Devil Wears Wings posted:People didn't have a problem with silent films, therefore talkies are an unnecessary gimmick. QED Slim Killington is wrong to dismiss what was done with Boyhood as a worthless gimmick, but this is a stupid enough analogy that I feel the need to quote it and say so
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Feb 23, 2015 22:31
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This "MY GIMMICKRY" poo poo all started as thinly-veiled sour grapes and that is what it still is.
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Feb 23, 2015 22:35
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Yeah this gimmickry thing just seems inert as an argument. 3D is a gimmick, smell-o-vision is a gimmick, making something appear as a long take seems more like a stylistic choice that a gimmick and Boyhood only seems like a gimmick if you're completely unaware of Linklater as a filmmaker.
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Feb 23, 2015 22:42
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Slim Killington posted:I do certainly get making that argument, but we as audiences have not had a problem with character progression in films where characters grow up via different actors for oh, about fifty years now, so I can't agree with it. I think you're really underestimating how difficult it would be to find quality child actors who look alike and can put on the same sort of accent and etc etc etc. For me it worked to create the purest distillation of a coming-of-age -- a style I love -- film ever made, by a director whose humanist style I love. If it didn't for you then alright, fair enough. But any film made by, like, 3~ kids covering 4 years each (which would be a stretch, imo, you'd probably need a fourth) is gonna look comical trying to put the same script on screen. And it may very well have also destroyed any chance of chemistry -- I love the way you see Mason Sr and Mason Jr interact because of the bond that you can see Hawke/Coltrane developed. All of them, really. The performances embodied something super personal.
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Feb 23, 2015 22:42
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DrVenkman posted:Yeah this gimmickry thing just seems inert as an argument. 3D is a gimmick, smell-o-vision is a gimmick, making something appear as a long take seems more like a stylistic choice that a gimmick and Boyhood only seems like a gimmick if you're completely unaware of Linklater as a filmmaker. Exactly. Every single Linklater film is similarly gimmicky.
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Feb 23, 2015 22:43
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I think Boyhood would definetively lose something by just being filmed in a year with different actors. The main appeal is that you see the different phases not only the kid but his whole family goes through, and the fact that they are always the same people helps the feeling of the passing of time, which wouldn't work nearly as well by just putting someone else in it. gently caress, Marley and Me was about the life of a dog, and you could easily differentiate the individual dogs they used to represent his different phases. (Maybe it's not the best comparison, but whatever). Now, if it wasn't effective for a lot of people, that's fair. But to say there is no reason to try it is just weird. The Unnamed One fucked around with this message at 22:47 on Feb 23, 2015 |
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Feb 23, 2015 22:44
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I do think you lose something when you swap out actors. I couldn't even accept Omar Epps as Willie Mayes Hayes in Major League 2, and its a serviceable sequel which sadly, because of one recast, will forever have that mark against it in my eyes.
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Feb 23, 2015 22:59
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Well of course you're gonna lose something when you swap out Wesley Snipes for anybody, much less Omar Epps. Dennis Haysbert subbing for the dear departed Michael Clarke Duncan was a similarly sad moment in Sin City 2.
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Feb 23, 2015 23:00
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DrVenkman posted:Yeah this gimmickry thing just seems inert as an argument. 3D is a gimmick, smell-o-vision is a gimmick, making something appear as a long take seems more like a stylistic choice that a gimmick and Boyhood only seems like a gimmick if you're completely unaware of Linklater as a filmmaker. It could be argued that the "one-shot" style of Birdman is a gimmick . Like filming over 12 years for Boyhood, I think that this decision serves the narrative and general "feel" of the movie. If a "gimmick" can be used to make a quality film, I don't really see what the point of that criticism is.
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Feb 23, 2015 23:57
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The difference between gimmick and artistic tool is a fine one, requiring a subtle appreciation of the artist and their artform... Or you can just do this. The outcome is really similar.
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Feb 24, 2015 00:04
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Namirsolo posted:It could be argued that the "one-shot" style of Birdman is a gimmick . Like filming over 12 years for Boyhood, I think that this decision serves the narrative and general "feel" of the movie. If a "gimmick" can be used to make a quality film, I don't really see what the point of that criticism is. I agree, but behind the gimmick you need some talent to execute it, as well as a solid story and characters. That's where I think Boyhood fell flat for a lot of people. It could be an amazing thing to use for the right script, but it just came out mediocre. Otherwise the gimmick isn't supporting anything else and it comes across as pretentious. You seem to be doing that thing just for its own sake at that point, with the rest of the movie as an afterthought that's just an excuse to show off something you thought was cool.
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Feb 24, 2015 00:06
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Slim Killington posted:I do certainly get making that argument, but we as audiences have not had a problem with character progression in films where characters grow up via different actors for oh, about fifty years now, so I can't agree with it. Please don't insult Miles Teller
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Feb 24, 2015 01:34
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on an online forum. Do it in real life so you can actually get at him.
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Feb 24, 2015 02:32
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Feb 24, 2015 04:33
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"More money = better than" is even leaking its way into the New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/24/movies/awardsseason/oscars-show-growing-gap-between-moviegoers-and-academy.html?ref=movies&_r=0
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Feb 24, 2015 08:34
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Just add a new award for "Best Enabler of Purchasing All These Fancy Dresses and Golden Statuettes". Problem solved.
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Feb 24, 2015 08:48
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Finally caught up with Boyhood tonight and it felt like it could have been a satire titled Independent Film for White People and remained unaltered. Then the scene where the Hispanic kid who previously had a horrendously fake and stereotypical accent comes up and personally thanks Patricia Arquette, in perfectly articulated English, for telling him he is smart and could do better than working on septic systems, would have been a funny intentional jab at the condescending and patronizing attitude white people often have toward racial minorities and not the hilariously misguided racist and classist horseshit that it was.
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Feb 24, 2015 10:12
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mr. mephistopheles posted:Finally caught up with Boyhood tonight and it felt like it could have been a satire titled Independent Film for White People and remained unaltered. Then the scene where the Hispanic kid who previously had a horrendously fake and stereotypical accent comes up and personally thanks Patricia Arquette, in perfectly articulated English, for telling him he is smart and could do better than working on septic systems, would have been a funny intentional jab at the condescending and patronizing attitude white people often have toward racial minorities and not the hilariously misguided racist and classist horseshit that it was. Hi I am from Texas and the border and I can assure you that accent was not fake. Thanks!
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Feb 24, 2015 10:25
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Actually, the more I think about Birdman, the more it kinda annoys me. The phrase that keeps coming to mind is "Deliberately difficult" and I don't know why that's a good thing. Apologies for the wall of black text, but I don't know if spoilers are cool, so I'll play it safe. First of all, the whole one-shot thing I actually found to be...kinda claustrophobic? When there is the cut in the dream sequence when he attempts suicide, it actually felt like a relief. Sure that kinda plays into the relief the character felt, but it gives the movie a feel like it's one big run-on sentence. If he was just trying to make you feel relief when the character attempts suicide...well...okay? But he just did a metric FUCKLOAD of work for that one payoff at the end. It was deliberately difficult for a payoff that wasn't really worth it. I mean there's a lot of transitions in this movie where the camera just pans to a wall or to the sun, then when it pans away we're in some other location. That was cool the first few times, but it would have actually improved the pacing of the movie to just do a few cuts instead. "THAT WOULD RUIN THE FEEL OF THE MOVIE". Bite me. I didn't like the feel of the movie. I get it, I don't like it. It comes across to me as difficult for the sake of being difficult rather than making the film more engaging. Secondly, there's a shitload of ambiguous scenes in this movie where it's not really clear what the gently caress just happened. Some of them are fun detours but it feels like a lot of the time, the movie is deliberately trying to confuse the audience. AKA: Being deliberately difficult. Best case in point is the ending. Not to mention the telepathic stuff. It's easy enough to figure out half to 3\4s of the way through the movie that it's all just his delusions, but why did the movie have to be so drat ambiguous about it? It's like it was a big joke and they were hiding the punchline from the audience the whole time. The audience probably could've had more fun with that if the movie wasn't so deliberately difficult about the whole thing. It was trying to be clever for the sake of being clever and to hell with the audience. Thirdly: The soundtrack. Well...the drums. We get it. You've got off-beat drums because it's an off-beat movie. Very clever. Good boy, have a cookie. What say we occasionally get some music going on here? The drums were used in many of the above-mentioned transition shots where a cut probably would have improved the pacing of the movie. Hell come to think of it, if they used a cut and didn't have the wanky transition, the lack of music entirely would've made things feel more "real" I think it really DOES work against the movie that it took me so long to figure out it was a black comedy and that I didn't have a clue what the gently caress was going on for the first half. The problem here so much isn't whether or not using gimmicks is bad. The problem here is that the movie was clever for the sake of being clever. The movie had its head stuck so far up it's own rear end the audience was forced to pry apart butt-cheeks to see if anything decent was actually going on. When I DID figure out what was going on, I just thought: "Oh. Is that all you're doing? Right...well that was worth being ambiguous over" I kept waiting for the movie to suddenly develop an extra layer and do more with what it was doing, but it didn't. Being ambiguous doesn't make you clever. The movie is the equivilant of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wniXxeTJlyM Yes. You're awfully clever. Well done. That took lots of practice to get that good at the things you do. Pity you forgot to be entertaining at the same time. There's nothing BAD about the movie in itself. What it does, it does very well. Personally though? I hate what it does and wish it wouldn't. H13 fucked around with this message at 14:11 on Feb 24, 2015 |
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Feb 24, 2015 14:08
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:"More money = better than" is even leaking its way into the New York Times. Well, the way I see it with eight slots for Best Picture they could have at least nominated Guardians of the Galaxy or Interstellar as fig leaves or something. Both were great movies. But instead we got yet more prestige biopics.
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Feb 24, 2015 14:09
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JohnSherman posted:"Hey everyone, I wasn't here to give my retarded opinion on Inception four years ago, so I'll just reuse it." how is that a retarded opinion. There are genuinely people out there who thinks Inception is "mind blowing" and Interstellar is flawless, usually while accusing people who criticize nolan movies as needing to "Go back to watching Transformers cause they're IQ is too low to understand Interstellar which is based on "REAL SCIENCE"". While making a statement about how Interstellar is better than Gravity when they're completely different movies. Hell i wouldn't' even call Gravity scifi. Lets not forget Nolan is the guy who directed TDKR astupiddvdcase fucked around with this message at 14:55 on Feb 24, 2015 |
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Feb 24, 2015 14:50
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Namirsolo posted:It could be argued that the "one-shot" style of Birdman is a gimmick . "Mock virtuosity" is the phrase I've seen used.
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Feb 24, 2015 15:49
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:"Mock virtuosity" is the phrase I've seen used. Hah, what a load of poo poo
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Feb 24, 2015 15:58
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mr. mephistopheles posted:Finally caught up with Boyhood tonight and it felt like it could have been a satire titled Independent Film for White People and remained unaltered. Then the scene where the Hispanic kid who previously had a horrendously fake and stereotypical accent comes up and personally thanks Patricia Arquette, in perfectly articulated English, for telling him he is smart and could do better than working on septic systems, would have been a funny intentional jab at the condescending and patronizing attitude white people often have toward racial minorities and not the hilariously misguided racist and classist horseshit that it was. I don't think this is too off base, Boyhood was definitely white-myopic and its minority representation was awful. You could also be really cynical about the softballs of alcoholism and abuse to manipulate the emotions of the audience without saying anything really interesting. But I still really liked it. I know some people whose lives are like that (who aren't white, even) and that gave me an empathetic attachment to the movie. I thought it was beautifully shot and captured the wistful nostalgia of growing up.
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Feb 24, 2015 16:49
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mr. mephistopheles posted:Finally caught up with Boyhood tonight and it felt like it could have been a satire titled Independent Film for White People and remained unaltered. Then the scene where the Hispanic kid who previously had a horrendously fake and stereotypical accent comes up and personally thanks Patricia Arquette, in perfectly articulated English, for telling him he is smart and could do better than working on septic systems, would have been a funny intentional jab at the condescending and patronizing attitude white people often have toward racial minorities and not the hilariously misguided racist and classist horseshit that it was. If you're going to point out the strange behavior white people have towards race, you can't forget the door-to-door Obama campaign scene. "Do I look like I support Obama, son?" *confederate flag waves on his property* "God, I just love Obama, you know. I have, like, dreams about him and just, you know, he's going to be a great president. I mean, like, obviously. Why wouldn't you vote for him?"
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Feb 24, 2015 18:03
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Dr. Tough posted:Well, the way I see it with eight slots for Best Picture they could have at least nominated Guardians of the Galaxy or Interstellar as fig leaves or something. Both were great movies. But instead we got yet more prestige biopics. I feel like the problem with considering big-performing movies is that, while having a lot of people see the movie is a necessary condition for cultural power, it's not sufficient. It seems to me that Transformers, despite making a lot of money, doesn't have the cultural power and impact of a Star Wars or a Harry Potter. People wear Autobot t-shirts, but it seems like they're more likely to make a reference to the show or the animated movie than they are the recent ones. Of course, measuring such cultural power by awards night is tricky because I'm defining cultural power here as "ability to stay in the memory of the culture after some time."
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Feb 24, 2015 18:20
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Hammer Floyd posted:The phrase that keeps coming to mind is "Deliberately difficult" and I don't know why that's a good thing. The cute part is where you find "Birdman" really difficult.
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Feb 24, 2015 18:30
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wdarkk posted:I feel like the problem with considering big-performing movies is that, while having a lot of people see the movie is a necessary condition for cultural power, it's not sufficient. It seems to me that Transformers, despite making a lot of money, doesn't have the cultural power and impact of a Star Wars or a Harry Potter. People wear Autobot t-shirts, but it seems like they're more likely to make a reference to the show or the animated movie than they are the recent ones. Well I don't think that how much money a film made should be the sole deciding factor in whether or not it's nominated. It's just that it would be nice if a couple high grossing and well received movies got a nod.
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Feb 24, 2015 19:13
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I just think it's weird that they allow themselves "up to 10" nominees. Why wouldn't they just always go with 10? A podcast I listen to theorized that it might be because of backlash the first year they did 10 and now they are afraid to ever go with 10 again.
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Feb 24, 2015 19:17
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Timett posted:I just think it's weird that they allow themselves "up to 10" nominees. Why wouldn't they just always go with 10? I don't think the rules have changed since the first year they had 10 noms, did it? It's just a flat % of votes you have to get to be eligible. It's pretty much eh, whatever for me; just two fewer mentions of things that still wouldn't have won.
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Feb 24, 2015 19:20
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Dr. Tough posted:Well I don't think that how much money a film made should be the sole deciding factor in whether or not it's nominated. It's just that it would be nice if a couple high grossing and well received movies got a nod. I don't really think gross should factor in whatsoever. It's ostensibly an award show where industry professionals recognize other industry professionals, not a people's choice award (thank god). Saying the Academy is out of touch with the public isn't really scathing criticism. It's like getting angry that the Pulitzer didn't go to 50 Shades because everyone was reading it and "who has even heard of Donna Tart".
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Feb 24, 2015 19:25
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I for one am shocked that the movie awards the movie people give to other movie people aren't based on box office revenue and audience reactions.
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Feb 24, 2015 19:39
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Grizzled Patriarch posted:I don't really think gross should factor in whatsoever. It's ostensibly an award show where industry professionals recognize other industry professionals, not a people's choice award (thank god). Saying the Academy is out of touch with the public isn't really scathing criticism. It's like getting angry that the Pulitzer didn't go to 50 Shades because everyone was reading it and "who has even heard of Donna Tart". I'm not saying that Transformers should get nominated for Best Picture. What I'm saying is that the running should be more mixed than just stereotypical Oscar bait.
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Feb 24, 2015 19:47
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