Serious Movie Discussion XXXVIX

[Flemmy Stardust]

I loved that cloudy, misty, rainy, and oppressive Southern suburban environment.

Wasn't it Pennsylvania? That's the sad, white north.

 

[Bullitt68]

Wasn't it Pennsylvania? That's the sad, white north.

I just looked it up and it says it takes place in Pennsylvania but I loved the feel of it early on and I quickly went to IMDb and saw they filmed in Georgia. I don't know why they went to the South to portray the North :icon_neut

 

[Flemmy Stardust]

This is why Vision Quest is one of my favorite movies. Louden just has it, he's completely on his own driven by nothing but some strange drive inside of himself that pushes him further than anyone else is able to push themselves and further than any coach could ever push them. In every walk of life, there will come a point where you're out there on your own and you have no safety net and nothing and no one to rely on but yourself and your own will. That's why that scene near the end of Vision Quest of Louden warming up alone in the gym is so powerful.

[YT]uRfeK7jtvq0[/YT]

That's just the greatness of lunatic fringe.

 

[Flemmy Stardust]

I just looked it up and it says it takes place in Pennsylvania but I loved the feel of it early on and I quickly went to IMDb and saw they filmed in Georgia. I don't know why they went to the South to portray the North :icon_neut

Me neither but I live 40 minutes from PA and that's what it's like. Even my buddy who went to PSU complained that it always seemed like there was overcast.

 

[Flemmy Stardust]

Obviously, Collateral was the first thing I thought of with the nocturnal LA adventure, but in terms of the way I analyzed Collateral, I wouldn't analyze Nightcrawler the same way.

For starters, all the shit I had to say about incoherence in Collateral, that didn't seem to be there in Nightcrawler. For Robin Wood, incoherence in a film is marked by the defeat of the filmmaker's attempts to order the narrative experience and by their inability to maintain a consistent moral position with respect to their protagonist. As I saw it, the way the film was told made it pretty clear that Gilroy did not find any redemptive value in Gyllenhaal's obsession, that he was incapable of being seduced by anything in his personality (unlike Russo's character, whose instincts for self-preservation allowed her to all too easily throw morality out the window) and had no problems keeping Gyllenhaal at arm's length. In fact, he seemed to shield the outside world from Gyllenhaal (morally speaking) whereas Vincent was like a cancer infecting the world of Collateral and throwing Max into chaos. Additionally, whereas Mann seemed to be forcing his viewer to oscillate between Vincent and Max, essentially pitting two worldviews against one another, Gilroy stood more on the outside from his own stable ethical position intent solely on following this crazy guy's disconcerting success in a world that was lazier than it was deleterious. Not only was Gyllenhaal incapable of the kind of introspection that make the conversations between Vincent and Max so resonant, Gilroy himself felt no need for competition between worldviews as the moral anchor to the film was himself, whereas in Collateral, Mann ambitiously cast his characters - and us - into the world with no moral anchor and left it to us to decide where we stood.

See, I found a lot of incoherence, although I admittedly never quite understood exactly what incoherent text means in wood's specific theory.

To me, the movie was a wholesale condemnation of modern society. You get ahead by fucking people over, the invasive, vicarious nature of our interests, how we allocate our energy and intelligence, our materialistic goals...

But then the only sane characters are the pushover moral geek at the news station and the gullable dude that rides shotgun with Gyllenhaal...who's only doing this out of desperation.

Gyllenhaal, on the other hand, while he's nowhere near as suave as Vincent, has this undeniable charisma. When he's being underhanded, it has this weird admirable quality because of his confidence and eloquence. He wasn't an antihero, but I kind of felt like it subconsciously glamorized being shitty in some weird "being eccentric is the new cool" kind of way -- which I do think is a real life phenomenon. Being 80s cool doesn't sit well with people anymore.

 

[Shot]

And this is purely subjective, but I could never respect him as much as people like Big Nog or Mark Hunt, psychos who just don't know fear and who don't know how to quit. That guy trained himself to be tougher than he was. Nog and Hunt just are tough. And that's a distinction with a very big difference to me.

Absolutely subjective. I was more noting how important the student/teacher relationship was in that example. And I think the teacher is a huge influence on the student and it's there job to properly "fan the flame" so to speak. The teachers often can see the students that are the most gifted, but not all of them thrive under the same conditions. We see this all the time in sports, especially one like boxing where the relationship between student and teacher can often times become very volatile. Or you can look at an example like Mike Tyson, a tremendously gifted athlete who collapsed before the age of 24 due to the loss of his mentor.

If we're talking pure prodigy level, that X factor that separates one of the greatest from the greatest, then no, I don't believe this. Teachers may provide some help and some direction, but Bruce Lee was Bruce Lee, Muhammad Ali was Muhammad Ali, Michael Jordan was Michael Jordan. These people had something in them that drove them to heights that no teacher, coach, or mentor could've known even existed.

They all had a talent for what they did, no doubt about that, but they also put an absurd amount of time and effort to master their skills. I also don't think it's a coincidence that Bruce Lee trained under Yip Man (a martial arts legend in his own right), Ali trained under Angelo Dundee, and Jordan credits Dean Smith as his own mentor.

I'm not saying these guys didn't have a natural ability, I'm just pointing out that it was a culmination of their natural gift + their determination + a special relationship with the perfect teacher that fits their needs.

 

[Bullitt68]

Southpaw sucked. The boxing scenes were garbage and I was just never invested in Gyllenhaal's plight. The whole thing seemed so empty and contrived. And the character's fucking name was Hope.

That's just the greatness of lunatic fringe.

That soundtrack is amazing. My '80s music bias surely helps, but even alongside other '80s movies, the music in Vision Quest stands out.

I admittedly never quite understood exactly what incoherent text means in wood's specific theory.

From the man himself

To me, the movie was a wholesale condemnation of modern society. You get ahead by fucking people over, the invasive, vicarious nature of our interests, how we allocate our energy and intelligence, our materialistic goals...

I'd agree with this. However, in terms of putting Nightcrawler alongside Collateral, saying that the former is a condemnation (or a validation for that matter) of anything already separates it from the latter inasmuch as the latter is less subjectively geared towards its authors' perspective.

To bring in my earlier references to Taxi Driver and Network, Collateral has the objectivity of the former while Nightcrawler has the subjectivity of the latter.

But then the only sane characters are the pushover moral geek at the news station and the gullable dude that rides shotgun with Gyllenhaal...who's only doing this out of desperation.

And Russo and Gyllenhaal respectively walk all over them. This speaks to what I said about the world of Nightcrawler seeming lazy and complacent whereas the world in Collateral seems far more dangerous and hostile.

Gyllenhaal, on the other hand, while he's nowhere near as suave as Vincent, has this undeniable charisma.

I saw that character more like Travis Bickle. When they talk, you know that what they're saying has a certain validity to it, but all the same, they both very clearly have some screws loose and the longer characters in both movies stay around those two, the creepier they reveal themselves to be.

Travis is more sympathetic IMO because he's just mixed up, whereas Gyllenhaal's character is the scarier of the two because he thinks he's on his game. Where the one knows he's mixed up and feels himself slipping and is trying to straighten himself out, the other doesn't think any such effort is necessary because he already thinks he's at the top of the food chain.

When he's being underhanded, it has this weird admirable quality because of his confidence and eloquence. He wasn't an antihero, but I kind of felt like it subconsciously glamorized being shitty in some weird "being eccentric is the new cool" kind of way -- which I do think is a real life phenomenon. Being 80s cool doesn't sit well with people anymore.

This is all you here, as I didn't feel any of this. I thought he was totally whacko and never had any of the perverse respect or strange vicarious thrill as I did with Vincent. When Travis kills Sport and massacres the brothel, he's the hero. It's fucked up, but in terms of picking sides, his is the right one however fucked up that makes things. Same with when Vincent kills the guys who rob Max, he's the hero, we're on his side. Never once did I feel that I was on Gyllenhaal's side. I wasn't rooting for him when he snuck into the people's house early on, I wasn't cheering him on as he ran through the horror house, I wasn't proud of him when he got away from the cops, and I wasn't fist-pumping at the end when the vans drove off. I enjoyed the film and I found the character fascinating, but it was a very different relationship that I had with Gyllenhaal's character than the ones I had with Travis or Vincent.

 

[Rimbaud82]

Just watched State of Siege by Costa-Gavras, since it was September 11th (Chilean coup, as well as 9/11 obviously). I thought it was a very good film, definitely gonna look for more of his films (Already have The Confession downloaded), it wasn't as tense as I would have expected from a political thriller but it was just the sort of film that told an honest story very effectively. I liked the way the whole thing wascshown to be 'pointless', trapped in a kind of endless struggle between Left and Right.

 

[Ricky13]

Shot - I can't reply in great detail but will say I see where you're coming from. I don't, however, see this in the text. Fletcher only ever talks his protege having to be "great". I'm of the belief that the film believes technical mastery = greatness, especially given the dramatic choice to reduce Bird, an incredibly melodic, influential player, to one whose path was determined by sacrifice to develop great technique, by lying about an anecdote, no less. From the little I know about Bird, his greatest contribution to jazz (and the same goes for Miles and Coltrane) was his innovation, not technique.

To be fair I've heard stories about how Jimi never didn't have a guitar strapped on, Eddie Van Halen was an actual recluse, and so on.

I don't deny that practice is required, and that sacrifice is often a way that some artists handle the amount they have to practice. I only disagree that it is inevitably anhedonic (see what Bullitt said to me), which is what I believe the film is saying. There's countless stories of greats leaving more structured environments, liked Miles leaving Juilliard, or Brian May hating childhood music practice before finding the guitar, from which point he was obsessed with figuring the weirdest things out.

That dinner scene I kind of took the other way. Andrew tells them it's not subjective, but can't really defend his position further than a "no". To me it read like an attempt to make him seem pretentious, as jazz cans always are.

I read it the same as you. I just said that the movie does this grudgingly, given the ambiguity of the scene's ultimate aim. You and I know from that scene that he's being a kind of jazz/prog dick, probably because we know instrumental nerds, but to most others, that scene looks like someone who was being ganged up on.

That's kind of my problem with the film. By being ambiguous at all about whether it is condemning or celebrating the extents to which Fletcher and Andrew go, it makes the base assumption that one needs to not enjoy the process pretty profoundly at some point to see if you can reach a point of greatness. Like hard practice stops being fun, and becomes this vorticose grind.

In my limited experience, in sport or art or academics, this approach has seemed ass backwards.

 

[theskza]

And even the torture was bitchy. Just punching him in the face for five days? At least break something. If that was my daughter, that little fucker would've had at least a dozen broken bones and been missing at least a couple of fingers and maybe a foot. For a rough-and-tough hillbilly who's always ready for the shit to hit the fan, he was a real beta.

Yeah, Hugh sure went easy on him.

Pretty obvious he was conflicted about it, btw.

 

[Bullitt68]

I didn't think Zodiac was a great film, but I really enjoyed it all the same. That opening with Hurdy Gurdy Man was outstanding, Fincher created a haunting atmosphere that permeated the whole rest of the film (I've been obsessively listening to that song all day as I've been working ). Ricky, you've talked a lot about Fincher's eye, and his visual sensibilities are really flawless in this one. Back in the day, mise en sc

 

[Shot]

I didn't think Zodiac was a great film, but I really enjoyed it all the same. That opening with Hurdy Gurdy Man was outstanding, Fincher created a haunting atmosphere that permeated the whole rest of the film (I've been obsessively listening to that song all day as I've been working ). Ricky, you've talked a lot about Fincher's eye, and his visual sensibilities are really flawless in this one. Back in the day, mise en sc

 

[chickenluver]

Oops, I was mistaken, I meant to post a picture of this red panda

 

[chickenluver]

Shot I'm of the belief that the film believes technical mastery = greatness, especially given the dramatic choice to reduce Bird, an incredibly melodic, influential player, to one whose path was determined by sacrifice to develop great technique, by lying about an anecdote, no less. From the little I know about Bird, his greatest contribution to jazz (and the same goes for Miles and Coltrane) was his innovation, not technique.

I'm not really disagreeing here, but Bird was able to be so innovative largely because of his technical mastery

He had the imagination to take his solos to places no one had ever gone before, but also the chops to be able to execute those solos

I agree that the manipulation of the anecdote was a poor decision

 

[A Bird]

Van Halen was a master, he used to warm up with Bach

Jimi was maybe not a technical master, but he was a master of his own style

Jazz fans aren't pretensions, they just love the music

Cans =/= fans.

 

[theskza]

Zodiac is a close second behind The Social Network for my favorite Fincher movie. Bullitt prob won't like TGWTDT.

I feel like we hype up stuff for Bullitt to watch so much that he can only be disappointed. And this goes back to 08.

He doesn't watch a lot of new stuff, and when something great (Children of Men, True Detective, Mad Max) comes out, we all tell him he has to see this epic game changing show/movie to read his opinion. I watched The Godfather for the first time a couple months ago, and I was pretty disappointed at how underwhelming it was. So disappointed that I'm pretty sure I didn't share my opinion of it in here. I get it when a flick doesn't live up to the hype, but I guarantee that whenever I rewatch it I'll like it more.

Does that make sense? I'm drunk.

 

[Tycho- Taylor's Version]

I'm drunk too.

I think I like Red Dragon more than Manhunter. Should I keep drinking?

 

[theskza]

Eh. Manhunter was pretty slow. Drunk me picks Red Dragon.

 

[theskza]

Actually, the score for Manhunter is pretty dope. I change my mind.

 

[Ricky13]

Ricky, you've talked a lot about Fincher's eye, and his visual sensibilities are really flawless in this one.

I'm sure I've said something like that. I say a lot, when I do.

I should say I'm not much of a Fincher fan anymore. As a technician, he's up there, but I find some of his approach..... counter-productive. He likes his camera to be all-seeing, as if moving by a hand that isn't invested in the action. Like it's following his subjects. Funny thing is, he calls attention to his technique because being this camera, that is the atmosphere of the scene itself, requires flash. It's why sometimes you can't tell whether his rapid tracking shots are CG based or dolly or Steadicam or whatever.

Like this one:

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But the very fact that one notices that it's hard to tell that difference, ruins the idea that camera isn't present, know what I mean?

I also think Fincher's more recent films, they dead inside. I've liked Gone Girl most though, since Fight Club.

I'm not really disagreeing here, but Bird was able to be so innovative largely because of his technical mastery

He had the imagination to take his solos to places no one had ever gone before, but also the chops to be able to execute those solos

I understand this. All I mean is he wasn't a jazz player in the vein of Buddy Rich, and that becoming great doesn't go hand in hand with disliking the process for everyone.

I feel like we hype up stuff for Bullitt to watch so much that he can only be disappointed. And this goes back to 08.

You make sense, in that yes, sometimes we are let down by hype, and repeat watches can change things.

But Bullitt's a big boy. If this a pattern since '08, then I doubt very much it's anything to do with your hyping up of things.

From my interactions with him, I think Bullitt watches movies a certain way. I've said this to him. He watches Fincher and compares his technical ability to Kubrick. He watches animation but during he's thinking he'd rather see Spencer Tracy, a real person, acting a character. He can't take in the artwork telling the story, and if he did it's inferior by default, being animation. A movie's performances mean as much to him as its function.

In other words, as much as he's comparing things "objectively", he's exactly like us. He likes what he likes. That's all that's affecting his viewings.

I could never watch movies like he does. But it makes for interesting debate, his opposing approach.

I'm drunk too. I think I like Red Dragon more than Manhunter. Should I keep drinking?

No you should end it (life) right now. That preference is a death sentence.

I keed. But Manhunter. It be awesome.