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Still on season 2 of Miami Vice and I'm noticing Tubbs and Crockett each represent different ways a cop can abuse their place in the cultural power dynamic. Crockett roughs up the suspects to get the results he wants, and Tubbs fucks every other female related to a case. The last episode I watched was an especially weird Tubbs one (Little Miss Dangerous). Rather than just banging the serial killer sex worker, Tubbs brings her to an upscale "safe house" and keeps her like a pet until she eventually drugs him and blows her brains out. All throughout the episode various characters seem pretty uneasy about what he's doing but don't intercede, like it's understood that Tubbs' two jobs on the team are 1.) sticking his dick in crime, and 2.) doing that really bad Jamaican accent, so just let him do his thing. If one of them also had a problem with hard drugs and gambling, they could fusion dance and become the Bad Lieutenant. Also, is anyone ever gonna do a wellness check on Detective Zito? Dude's been skulking around the background of most episodes this season looking disheveled, having emotional outbursts, getting mysterious limps, etc. I think he's still living with Switek since his apartment burned down, or maybe he's homeless? Whatever the hell is going on with that character has been the low key most interesting element of this season.
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Dec 6, 2023 17:07
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i watched The Killer (2023) and it is one of the worst action thrillers ive seen in a long time. i wanted to like it because im a huge trent reznor fanboy but he could not save it but a lot of the reason its so bad is because of the horrible and constant voiceover narration which makes the protagonist into an ultra cringe character, there was some good stuff in the cinematography and sound etc seems like it could be fixed somewhat by just deleting a lot of that crap
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Dec 6, 2023 17:48
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mysterious frankie posted:Also, is anyone ever gonna do a wellness check on Detective Zito? Dude's been skulking around the background of most episodes this season looking disheveled, having emotional outbursts, getting mysterious limps, etc. I think he's still living with Switek since his apartment burned down, or maybe he's homeless? Whatever the hell is going on with that character has been the low key most interesting element of this season. Keep going. You're in for a shock with those two.
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Dec 6, 2023 18:05
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Earwicker posted:i watched The Killer (2023) and it is one of the worst action thrillers ive seen in a long time. i wanted to like it because im a huge trent reznor fanboy but he could not save it as much as i like Michael Fassbender, he was not the right lead for that movie. I read somewhere that Brad Pitt was originally the lead but dropped out because of the violence or something?  also the character is a 100% false narrator, and the droning dialogue about being the best and so calculated is complete bullshit - everyone in the movie sucks at their job. Fassbender missing the shot in the opening is a pretty big tell I dunno if its the editing or what, but the movie plays that straight and it just gets lost. Also IMO there's some weird commentary about the gig economy and they're all just capitalist cogs phoning it in for a paycheck, but it feels like its another idea that was lost on the cutting room floor Take Tilda Swinton's arc she was obviously well known at that restaurant, and she was armed the entire time. There's literally a hundred different things she could've done differently, but she wanted the ~cHaLlEnGe~ of turning the tables on My Dinner With Michael.
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Dec 6, 2023 18:17
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Jose Oquendo posted:Keep going. You're in for a shock with those two. Niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice!
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Dec 6, 2023 18:19
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Vampire Panties posted:also the character is a 100% false narrator, and the droning dialogue about being the best and so calculated is complete bullshit - everyone in the movie sucks at their job. Fassbender missing the shot in the opening is a pretty big tell I dunno if its the editing or what, but the movie plays that straight and it just gets lost. i think it's the writing of those monologues, and his delivery. i like fassbender in other stuff too but it seemed like he had absolutely no idea what to do with that character brad pitt would have probably added a much more comedic element, which would have helped for sure, tho also been kind of at odds with the overall atmosphere of the movie. i enjoyed him in bullet train tho
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Dec 6, 2023 18:39
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For me a lot of the humor came from how serious Fassbender's character took himself, which contrasted with his constant gently caress-ups and doing things like checking into hotels using Nick at Nite names. Then in the end he realizes that he doesn't need to be such a serious weirdo, he can just go home and be with his girlfriend
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Dec 6, 2023 19:30
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Extra Large Marge posted:For me a lot of the humor came from how serious Fassbender's character took himself, which contrasted with his constant gently caress-ups and doing things like checking into hotels using Nick at Nite names. Though if I remember correctly, he looks a little lost and miserable while chilling on his deck chair in the final shot. I think there are going to be a looooooot of complicated hobbies in that man's future.
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Dec 6, 2023 19:35
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mysterious frankie posted:Though if I remember correctly, he looks a little lost and miserable while chilling on his deck chair in the final shot. I think there are going to be a looooooot of complicated hobbies in that man's future. The Killer 2 should show Fassbender getting loving destroyed at a Warhammer 40k tournament and deciding to go back to work
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Dec 6, 2023 19:37
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thinking about it more, brad pitt would have been fine, but i think actually the ideal actor for that part is jon hamm
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Dec 6, 2023 19:40
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Brad Pitt can't top his character in Bullet Train so he should be done with playing killers in movies 
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Dec 6, 2023 19:41
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Earwicker posted:thinking about it more, brad pitt would have been fine, but i think actually the ideal actor for that part is jon hamm What about H. Jon Benjamin? I think it would improve the voice overs massively
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Dec 6, 2023 20:17
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Earwicker posted:thinking about it more, brad pitt would have been fine, but i think actually the ideal actor for that part is jon hamm I don't feel they have the right intense weirdo insect man energy. I'll always imagine Jon Hamm or Brad Pitt getting up to stuff with friends outside of work, growing restless, wanting to live a little, and that doesn't jibe with what I like about the character, and what makes the movie work for me as a meanspirited procedural comedy. Fassbender's killer believes his many interlocking rituals are what make him good at his job, but what made him good at his job had more to do with unique physical capabilities that are destined to fade with age. We meet him at the moment where they've faded juuuuuuust enough that he can't do his job anymore and all he's left with are his many affectations and a growing awareness that they don't do anything besides make him feel cool. Dude spent his entire life sitting in quiet rooms trying to control his pulse while listening to The Smiths and eating the guts of McMuffins because he thought that was the secret to his success as a professional murderer; I just don't buy Hamm or Pitt as that kind of overly serious, inadvertently ridiculous, process-obsessed loner. They're too warm and human.
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Dec 6, 2023 20:19
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mysterious frankie posted:Fassbender's killer believes his many interlocking rituals are what make him good at his job, but what made him good at his job had more to do with unique physical capabilities that are destined to fade with age. We meet him at the moment where they've faded juuuuuuust enough that he can't do his job anymore and all he's left with are his many affectations and a growing awareness that they don't do anything besides make him feel cool. I don't think it's even his physical capabilities. He doesn't demonstrate much physical prowess at all in the film, from what I remember, other than controlling his heart rate. I thought, while watching it, that the movie was pretty dull especially in it's pacing. But something I enjoyed even as it was happening was that the tedium of the first twenty minutes - during which he is monologuing about how he's not even a great killer, he just has the temperament for a good one - was exactly masturbatory enough to drive home how unreliable he is as a narrator. Because here he is still talking himself off as he's following his target with his cross hair for long enough to have taken a dozen perfect shots only to then gently caress it up in the worst way possible. As such I didn't read the movie as about an aging killer losing his edge at all. My understanding was that he hosed up hard, and then continued to gently caress up and contradict his mantra at every turn which leads to more gently caress ups. In the end his experience and the hubris of his enemies secure him the win, but I think the last shot of him in the chair is him grappling with the realization that maybe he actually wasn't as good as he thought.
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Dec 6, 2023 22:21
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Saganlives posted:I don't think it's even his physical capabilities. He doesn't demonstrate much physical prowess at all in the film, from what I remember, other than controlling his heart rate. I want to agree, because it's funnier, but the sheer number of resources he has at his disposal makes me predisposed to think at one point he really was some kind of murder savant.
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Dec 6, 2023 23:04
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mysterious frankie posted:I want to agree, because it's funnier, but the sheer number of resources he has at his disposal makes me predisposed to think at one point he really was some kind of murder savant. Oh, I think he was tremendously successful but it took this incident for him to realize that luck played a far mightier part than he had previously considered. And a relatively small field of professionals potentially inflating his sense of status. In any case, I enjoyed the movie more than I thought I would and I've thought about it a lot more than many other movies I've seen this year. Still one of Fincher's weakest tho.
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Dec 6, 2023 23:09
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"Oh these Annie Oakley jobs, how I long for the closeness and intimacy of an in-person job, anyway" *proceeds to flub his shot exactly like I do in a FPS*
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Dec 6, 2023 23:54
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deep dish peat moss posted:Brad Pitt can't top his character in Bullet Train so he should be done with playing killers in movies
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Dec 7, 2023 00:02
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Shumagorath posted:I passed on that in theatres for whatever reason. Does it get within shouting distance of this thread’s content? its not that kind of movie. its more like a guy ritchie style movie from the lock stock/snatch era (but his character is very different from his snatch character) but more cartoonish and over the top violence i enjoyed it a lot but its not the same caliber as heat or collateral etc
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Dec 7, 2023 00:07
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It's like watching someone trying really hard to do a Guy Ritchie movie. Some of the characters are fun (especially Brad Pitt) and it's pretty visually stylish but it's not a great movie or plot by any means. It's worth watching for free in the comfort of your own home on Netflix but not worth going out to see in a theater IMO
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Dec 7, 2023 00:07
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its a perfect airplane movie imo
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Dec 7, 2023 00:08
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Shumagorath posted:I passed on that in theatres for whatever reason. Does it get within shouting distance of this thread’s content? best I can say for bullet train is that michael shannon is in it everything about it is very stupid but michael shannon is in it
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Dec 7, 2023 00:09
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Turpitude posted:everything about it is very stupid it's the kind of stupid that John Wick is imo. the teeming underground economy of professional murderers
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Dec 7, 2023 01:32
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Saganlives posted:Oh, I think he was tremendously successful but it took this incident for him to realize that luck played a far mightier part than he had previously considered. And a relatively small field of professionals potentially inflating his sense of status. In any case, I enjoyed the movie more than I thought I would and I've thought about it a lot more than many other movies I've seen this year. Still one of Fincher's weakest tho. I wonder if maybe the movie was commenting on how weird years of Covid lockdowns and modern alienation has made us. For instance, he passes up a ton of easy shot opportunities during the initial assassination because he’s showing off what a perfectionist badass zen psycho he is to his imaginary audience (us). Maybe it’s not that he’s gotten weak with age, but that he’s gotten too eccentric after spending way too much time alone. —- Tonight’s Miami Vice episode stars Leonard Cohen as a French crime lord wtf, this show.
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Dec 8, 2023 01:04
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Cactus Ghost posted:it's the kind of stupid that John Wick is imo. the teeming underground economy of professional murderers john wick changed what kind of stupid it was over the course of the series like the first movie is just john wick killing a few hundred russians because they killed his dog, thats the entire plot, and the whole "society of gentleman assassins" or whatever is just a silly aesthetic they came up with to flesh out poo poo like where he stays to rest up and how he gets his weapons. by the third movie it had become about all that stuff. i like the second one the best because its got a good balance between those elements, and i loved common in it. still haven't seen 4 tho. bullet train is more like the first john wick. it has hints of that kind of worldbuilding especially with sandra bullock's character, but its just kind of window dressing really and hopefully stays that way (if they make more) Earwicker fucked around with this message at 01:11 on Dec 8, 2023 |
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Dec 8, 2023 01:08
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John Wick 4 was good enough to redeem 3 feeling over-long. Donny Yen’s character was ludicrous but only an order of magnitude more than Wick himself I suppose. The sequence that really stood out on the big screen was a top-down long take involving white phosphorous shotguns. It will appeal to a very specific era of gamer. Back to The Killer: I saw it within days of WeWork filing for bankruptcy and that was pretty funny.
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Dec 8, 2023 01:23
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Vampire Panties posted:as much as i like Michael Fassbender, he was not the right lead for that movie. I read somewhere that Brad Pitt was originally the lead but dropped out because of the violence or something? Yeah overall I liked it ok but felt like they could have done a lot more considering the actors & director. Like you said having the killer miss at the start could have been expanded on and been more of an ongoing theme, but it felt inconsistent. Like how his island estate, storage containers, and fake ids always seem to be in good order. Would have been more interesting if he had unresolved issues with his estate like there are tourist boats cruising by because he sited it poorly, if he shows up at one of his storage boxes & sees the contents being sold because he screwed up autopay, and if forgetting about Brexit messes up a visit to the UK if he had the wrong ID. I know Barry already exists and covered a lot of that ground but it could have been more subtle like in Pulp Fiction when it’s fun to realize despite being cool & likable, Vincent and Jules (especially Vincent) are terrible at their jobs & cause their own problems, like pointing a gun at an ally in a car for no reason or antagonizing the Wolf out of pride. For the Killer also seemed weird it used the girlfriend as a lazy plot device to motivate revenge after she’s harmed, & she has zero characterization or anything to do otherwise. Deadpool 2 also had that problem, I know they gotta motivate the lead character but c’mon try harder.
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Dec 8, 2023 15:12
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CannonFodder posted:Interesting thing about the audio during that gunfight: During filming there were microphones all around the area getting the noises of the blanks being fired so that in Post they could time the foley gunshot sounds with the visual flashes of the blanks being fired. Michael Mann listened to the foley work and said "This sounds nothing like how it was on set. It sounds artificial" so then they just used the sounds of the blanks from the original footage. That was one of the best decisions in movie history, because Heat had the best and most realistic gun sounds I've ever heard in a movie. I watched the movie yesterday for the first time after a friend kept gushing about it, and it was really good. Weirdly enough despite being almost three hours long, it still felt like we were missing half the movie. Then again, the parts that felt skipped over didn't ruin the logic of the movie; so for instance when Pacino's stepdaughter went from zero to attempted suicide in 4,8 seconds, it was still obvious that she was doing it because her real father was an absentee piece of poo poo, and now she felt like she was losing the father she had found in Pacino even without the movie spelling it out for us.
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Dec 29, 2023 09:11
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I knocked some more Mann movies off my list this weekend. Saw The Insider and Collateral. Liked both a lot! One of the most interesting things I noticed, due to watching them back to back, is that he used the protagonist’s cars, or specific rides in cars, to cleverly express a poo poo ton about the protagonist in relatively short scenes. Early on in Collateral we get a montage of Max going about a day as a cabbie and the car is shot from way back using crane or helicopter shots of hazy, slightly askew and mostly empty seeming, stretches of LA. The music diagetically playing through his radio over the montage is echoey and slightly distorted, as if the radio represents a connection to everyone else that is distant and strained because of his job and frustrations. It does a great job of communicating how alienating and routine Max’s life is. When we finally pull into the car for his big scene with Annie, the radio is playing soulful R&B music and the colors get warm and comforting; he’s in the moment and feeling a strong connection to his humanity through this woman. I thought it was interesting too that Mann’s one example of the shore in Collateral is Max’s photo of the Maldives; unlike other characters in Mann films, who are deep in situations and forced to make decisions, Max is living life from a distance, dreaming about the day where he starts living enough to be on a Michael Mann beach making a tough decision that will change everything forever (he also gives the photo to Annie, like he’s symbolically saying their interaction inspired him to take some chances, which he’s shortly thereafter forced to do when Vincent enters his life). Then, in The Insider, Jeff Wigand’s car is shot mainly from the interior and is deep blue even when it’s sunny out, and he’s never playing any music. He’s unhappy and completely isolated from everyone, which plays out in the choices he makes, which seem mainly to serve his bruised ego and self-admitted anger issues, rather than the welfare of his family or the American public. Mann even uses trees during the shoreline decision scene in The Insider to divide him from Lowell, like, this guy does not let people in, ever (and what’s in there is low lights and intense silence, mostly). I also thought it was funny how Lowell got banished to The Beach Dimension after ratting on CBS to the Associated Press. I wonder his neighbors were a turtle-raising couple who look like they stepped out of a Roxy Music album cover from the 80s. Then, finally, I wonder how inspired Vince Gilligan and Bryan Cranston were by Crowe’s Jeff Wigand when creating and embodying Walter White. They’re very similar characters, though Wigand is morally flawed where White is a straight up piece of poo poo. I liked both movies, but I think I got more out of The Insider. Collateral was great, but was very much a by the book brooding Hollywood action thriller (albeit impeccably executed and entertaining as poo poo), and I sort of wish he hadn’t moved to digital for this one, because shots looked cheap at times and the visual representation of one intense night in LA would have really benefited from being shot on film instead of whatever digital cameras they had in 04. I think I have five movies left now? I meant to watch them in order, but missed Ali, so I have to swing back and see that before continuing on to Miami Vice and beyond. Honestly, I’m not really looking forward to anything after Ali, though I am perversely curious about what he’ll do with a Miami Vice.
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Jan 1, 2024 18:38
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I'm debating if I care enough about Enzo to see Ferrari.
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Jan 1, 2024 18:55
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Shumagorath posted:I'm debating if I care enough about Enzo to see Ferrari. i think ferraris are cool but i could hardly give a poo poo less about the story and history behind the company. however, due to my tremendous amount of respect for michael mann (he's among my top directors easily) i will be seeing it in theaters probably
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Jan 1, 2024 20:36
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mysterious frankie posted:I knocked some more Mann movies off my list this weekend. Saw The Insider and Collateral. Liked both a lot! I did not have The Insider, and I have since corrected this problem. Thank you, I can't wait to see it. Been meaning to run Thief again too, gently caress that's a good movie.
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Jan 1, 2024 20:46
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Watched Tenet recently, it had a really good heist scene at an airport that involved a lot of goofy backwards stuff. I understood around 2/3rds of the movie, the last 1/3rd was kind of a blur and I kept thinking about that scene from "Freddy Got Fingered" where Tom Green puts on a suit backwards and sings a song about being the "Backwards Man".
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Jan 1, 2024 21:20
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One thing I always wanted to know is how the singer of Eurodance legends Snap! ended up in the movie as Mykelti Williamson's wife. It's a tiny background part but it's so random. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Io_B1svrSUw
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Jan 1, 2024 21:35
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speaking of The Insider i love that Mann uses Neubauten's Armenia again in that, as well as in Heat https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgXvzMCinog
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Jan 1, 2024 21:36
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Code Jockey posted:I did not have The Insider, and I have since corrected this problem. Thank you, I can't wait to see it. It’s pretty cool! I like how he coaxed out the hidden moral and financial complexities to something that should be a no-brainer (ratting on tobacco companies for being monsters). What do you owe to yourself, what do you owe to your family, and what to you owe to the public? If you know you’re going to potentially destroy your family financially and emotionally by doing the right thing, and you know you’re doing the right thing for petty reasons rather than ethical ones, and you’re making these decisions unilaterally without your spouse, is it still the right thing? Earwicker posted:speaking of The Insider i love that Mann uses Neubauten's Armenia again in that, as well as in Heat Yeah it worked really well. A lot of the soundtrack felt kinda vanilla, but then he’d throw something like that in, or a weird spidery acoustic guitar track that sounds like something from the original Diablo. The burning car scene sticks with me. Just this little thing, but he made it seem so otherworldly and upsetting.
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Jan 1, 2024 22:08
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iirc most of that soundtrack is by Lisa Gerrard, i.e. half of Dead Can Dance, who was launching a solo career at that time. she had one track on the Heat soundtrack as well, from her first solo album, then she did a bunch of stuff on The Insider, and then her really huge hit was the Gladiator soundtrack a few years later
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Jan 1, 2024 22:13
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i think the insider is the only mann (directed) film i have not seen. ive been kind of saving it. and it still blows my mind that thief was his first out the gate. that movie loving rules so hard.
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Jan 1, 2024 22:52
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Earwicker posted:and then her really huge hit was the Gladiator soundtrack a few years later  Pirates of the Caribbean won two oscars for using that soundtrackEDIT for content - Silent Night was a lot better than I anticipated. Its absolutely not Heat good, and maybe the weakest John Woo movie, but Joel Kinnaman puts on a fantastic performance
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Jan 1, 2024 22:55
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Joel Kinnaman is great. I actually really dug the Robocop remake, he was a good Murphy. And he's an absolute steroid elemental in Altered Carbon, which was also great.
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Jan 1, 2024 23:06
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