Gone to the movies lately?

[Richard B]

Originally Posted by dissention

I think there are plenty of fabulous American filmmakers who bring a lot to the table, too, it's just that the general output over the past few years has left me quite cold when compared to the output of many foreign filmmakers. Even people whose work I love have just been grasping in the air for decent ideas lately (i.e. Todd Solondz's "Palindromes") and the general attitude that I've observed becoming even more prevalent than before is that because a movie is outside the norm and non-commercial, then it automatically has some merit. I think that's true with a lot of stuff when it's good, like Miranda July's "You and Me and Everyone We Know" and Larry Fessenden's "Wendigo," but that kind of stuff has become harder to find in recent years, imo. I'm disenchanted with a lot of American filmmaking. That isn't to say that I don't enjoy the movies (I admit to loving Flightplan), but my passion for American movies has waned a bit. The seventies are done and over with, but I sure wish the state of filmmaking from back then was still here today.

I think these movies are out there...it's just you have to dig harder. Funny you mention 'Wendigo' because I thought I was the only person who actually liked it. 'You and Me and Everyone We Know' was also a pleasant surprise.
Keep an eye out for Brad Anderson (The Machinist, Happy Accidents). I've enjoyed everyone of his films. I also really enjoyed Shane Carruth's 'Primer.' Let's see where he goes next...

[dissention]

Originally Posted by Richard B

I think these movies are out there...it's just you have to dig harder. Funny you mention 'Wendigo' because I thought I was the only person who actually liked it. 'You and Me and Everyone We Know' was also a pleasant surprise.

Wendigo is one of my all time favorite movies. I think everything about it is perfect. Maybe that's an indication that I'm quite crazy, who knows.

Originally Posted by Richard B

Keep an eye out for Brad Anderson (The Machinist, Happy Accidents). I've enjoyed everyone of his films. I also really enjoyed Shane Carruth's 'Primer.' Let's see where he goes next...

As a movie, I thought The Machinist was quite piss-poor, but it was certainly a fantastic showcase for Christian Bale (who I absolutely love) and anything with Jennifer Jason Leigh is watchable at least once. I loved Happy Accidents, though.

I've seen Primer in the video store, but I never grabbed it. Maybe next weekend.

[Richard B]

Originally Posted by dissention

As a movie, I thought The Machinist was quite piss-poor, but it was certainly a fantastic showcase for Christian Bale (who I absolutely love) and anything with Jennifer Jason Leigh is watchable at least once. I loved Happy Accidents, though.

Yeah, Happy Accidents is wonderful. I first discovered Brad Anderson with Session 9, then Next Stop Wonderland.

I really liked The Machinist (not my favorite film by Anderson though). Christian Bale really immersed himself in that role. Losing 65 pounds just to play this walking skeleton of a man. It was hard to watch sometimes and they sure played up that 'shell of man' idea. Bale only ate (1) can of tuna a day and I think a yogurt to drop the weight. Frightening.

[dissention]

Originally Posted by Richard B

Yeah, Happy Accidents is wonderful. I first discovered Brad Anderson with Session 9, then Next Stop Wonderland.

Session 9 scared the living **** out of me! I'm not courageous enough to watch it again. It didn't help matters that it was shot at Danvers State here in Massachusetts. Crikey, that place is scary. I get goosepimply just thinking about that place; the stories of abuse from that place are legendary.

Originally Posted by Richard B

I really liked The Machinist (not my favorite film by Anderson though). Christian Bale really immersed himself in that role. Losing 65 pounds just to play this walking skeleton of a man. It was hard to watch sometimes and they sure played up that 'shell of man' idea. Bale only ate (1) can of tuna a day and I think a yogurt to drop the weight. Frightening.

I read that he ate apples for awhile too, but stopped eventually because he didn't have the energy to chew them. He's one of the best actors out there. His talents are sometimes surreal to watch because he's so good.

[Richard B]

Originally Posted by dissention

Session 9 scared the living **** out of me! I'm not courageous enough to watch it again. It didn't help matters that it was shot at Danvers State here in Massachusetts. Crikey, that place is scary. I get goosepimply just thinking about that place; the stories of abuse from that place are legendary.

Did it ever scare me too. Just an unsettling film all around. And Danvers State is indeed a character all to itself...looming, brooding and wicked. I've been reading that it maybe demolished soon. I guess this issue is back in court on 10/26 since MA has blocked the sale of it.

When I first saw it I was so creeped out that I had to stop the film and call 2 friends. It was in that part where the one guy goes back at night to pilfer those coins and stuff and is going through that tunnel and sees the figure. Whoa. Unrelenting. I own it on DVD and the commentary is pretty great. Here's some trivia from IMDb:
This was one of the first feature films shot using Sony's 24P HD video, which shoots at 24 frames per second, like film, as opposed to the 30 frames per second of conventional NTSC video. Using this technology, Anderson and director of photography Uta Briesewitz were able to produce the uniquely effective, deep-focus images using mostly natural light.

"Hello Gordon"

[strandinthewind]

Capote was magnificent. Like the book "In Cold Blood," around which the movie is centered, the movie is paced in such a deliberate manner that you are taken in from the start. Philip Seymour Hoffman is one of the treasures of our time. The emotion he portrays is palpable in its depth.

I thought this review from Rolling Stone was accurate despite the source:

Philip Seymour Hoffman's unmissable and unforgettable performance as Truman Capote should make him the front-runner for every Best Actor prize in the book. Great acting is quicksilver, impossible to pin down in words. But you know it when you see it. And you see it with dazzling clarity in this landmark portrayal. Hoffman gets the flamboyantly gay public image of the whiny-voiced gadfly who swanned through New York literary circles. But his real triumph is inward, the way he finds the stillness in Capote and the emotions roiling in his eyes when what he sees in the world reduces him to awed silence. Nothing awed Capote more than the years (1959 to 1965) that he spent researching and writing In Cold Blood, his pioneering nonfiction novel about the murder of the Clutter family from Holcomb, Kansas, and the two ex-convict drifters who killed them.
It's the riveting focus on that period that lifts Capote above the herd of biopics. First-time feature director Bennett Miller won praise for his 1998 documentary The Cruise, about a Manhattan tour guide, but nothing about that romp prepares you for the dramatic fireworks of Capote. Credit actor Dan Futterman, in a vividly impressive screenwriting debut, for carving an astutely narrowed script out of Gerald Clarke's 1988 Capote biography.

From the moment Capote arrives in Kansas to start his research with the help of his writer friend Harper Lee (a terrific, no-nonsense Catherine Keener) -- her first and only novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, depicts their Alabama childhood -- this haunted and haunting film holds you in its grip. The two writers charm Alvin Dewey (a superb Chris Cooper), the agent in charge of the case, and his wife (Amy Ryan) into giving them invaluable access. Capote finesses interviews with the killers, Dick Hickcock (Mark Pellegrino) and Perry Smith (Clifton Collins Jr.), establishing a rapport with the latter that borders on sexual fixation. The film leaves no doubt that Capote is exploiting these men for the sake of a book that he knows will make his career. But his kinship with Perry cuts to his own parental traumas. As Capote said, "It's as if Perry and I grew up in the same house, and he went out the back door while I went out the front." Collins is mesmerizing, as Perry opens up to the writer whose languorous photo on the jacket of his first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms, is called "undignified" by the convict.

Capote's manipulation doesn't come without a price. He relies on alcohol to dull the pain of offering comfort to the killers while wishing for their deaths by hanging so he can finish his book. Hoffman makes you believe Capote was sincere on both counts. He also makes you believe in his talent. Early on, we see Capote sneak into a Kansas funeral home and covertly open the caskets of the Clutter family. Later, at a New York reading of the unfinished In Cold Blood, Capote recites the words that turn the reality of that immoral action into transcendent art. Capote is a movie that doesn't pull its punches. It's a knockout.


PETER TRAVERS
(Posted Sep 22, 2005)

http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/...on=6.0.12.1069

________________________________________________________

[dissention]

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

Capote was magnificent. Like the book "In Cold Blood," around which the movie is centered, the movie is paced in such a deliberate manner that you are taken in from the start. Philip Seymour Hoffman is one of the treasures of out time. The emotion he portrays is palpable in its depth.

I thought this review from Rolling Stone was accurate despite the source:

Philip Seymour Hoffman's unmissable and unforgettable performance as Truman Capote should make him the front-runner for every Best Actor prize in the book. Great acting is quicksilver, impossible to pin down in words. But you know it when you see it. And you see it with dazzling clarity in this landmark portrayal. Hoffman gets the flamboyantly gay public image of the whiny-voiced gadfly who swanned through New York literary circles. But his real triumph is inward, the way he finds the stillness in Capote and the emotions roiling in his eyes when what he sees in the world reduces him to awed silence. Nothing awed Capote more than the years (1959 to 1965) that he spent researching and writing In Cold Blood, his pioneering nonfiction novel about the murder of the Clutter family from Holcomb, Kansas, and the two ex-convict drifters who killed them.
It's the riveting focus on that period that lifts Capote above the herd of biopics. First-time feature director Bennett Miller won praise for his 1998 documentary The Cruise, about a Manhattan tour guide, but nothing about that romp prepares you for the dramatic fireworks of Capote. Credit actor Dan Futterman, in a vividly impressive screenwriting debut, for carving an astutely narrowed script out of Gerald Clarke's 1988 Capote biography.

From the moment Capote arrives in Kansas to start his research with the help of his writer friend Harper Lee (a terrific, no-nonsense Catherine Keener) -- her first and only novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, depicts their Alabama childhood -- this haunted and haunting film holds you in its grip. The two writers charm Alvin Dewey (a superb Chris Cooper), the agent in charge of the case, and his wife (Amy Ryan) into giving them invaluable access. Capote finesses interviews with the killers, Dick Hickcock (Mark Pellegrino) and Perry Smith (Clifton Collins Jr.), establishing a rapport with the latter that borders on sexual fixation. The film leaves no doubt that Capote is exploiting these men for the sake of a book that he knows will make his career. But his kinship with Perry cuts to his own parental traumas. As Capote said, "It's as if Perry and I grew up in the same house, and he went out the back door while I went out the front." Collins is mesmerizing, as Perry opens up to the writer whose languorous photo on the jacket of his first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms, is called "undignified" by the convict.

Capote's manipulation doesn't come without a price. He relies on alcohol to dull the pain of offering comfort to the killers while wishing for their deaths by hanging so he can finish his book. Hoffman makes you believe Capote was sincere on both counts. He also makes you believe in his talent. Early on, we see Capote sneak into a Kansas funeral home and covertly open the caskets of the Clutter family. Later, at a New York reading of the unfinished In Cold Blood, Capote recites the words that turn the reality of that immoral action into transcendent art. Capote is a movie that doesn't pull its punches. It's a knockout.


PETER TRAVERS
(Posted Sep 22, 2005)

http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/...on=6.0.12.1069

________________________________________________________

I don't want to read that hack Peter Travers' review, I want to read yours, babe.