SHERDOG MOVIE CLUB: WEEK 122: Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

I liked it, but was definitely strange. I liked how the movie was all one-continuous shot. But I did get bored at times with this. Was nice to watch it again though. 7/10.
 
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind? that's sci fi perhaps but sci fi that remains deliberately ill defined to the degree it might as well be magic.

Seven Psychopaths I think goes over similar kind of ground to Birdman although I spose the whole thing is deliberately rather larger than life.
I suppose many Gonrdy, Jonze and Kaufman movies could be called MR.

I should watch Seven Psychopaths. The DVD cover is so boring, that I always forget, that it’s not just some romcom.
 
I'm glad most folks liked the movie. I thought we would have more discussion though....Maybe this is a good amount and I just don't realize it. I guess Eyes Wide Shut blew the forum open and I shouldn't expect that for all the movies....
I think part of it is just unfortunate line-up. The two blue guys loathe this film. Muntjac is busy with work. Yotsuya had seen it to soon to rewatch it. I was quite busy too and didn't really give it my full attentions. So there just wasn't that many grasshoppers in the discussion.

I'm sorry that I wasn't able to contribute to the discussion, Tufts, especially in light of how awesome and detailed your contributions were to my Bruce Lee week. Please don't hesitate to remind me when it's your turn next round that I flaked out on Birdman and that I owe you a good and properly scholarly write-up on your next pick ;)

Also, for the record, I didn't miss this week because I loathe Birdman. In all fairness, I did shut it off very quickly the first time that I tried to watch it and I suspect that I would loathe it, but I was eager to give it another chance this week. I just fell behind with work crap.

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For me it was too soon to watch Birdman again. :(

@Tufts Any other good films that you think fall under magical realism than Pan's Labyrinth and Birdman? I liked Gilliam’s Man Who Killed Don Quixote btw and I think it qualifies.

I'm actually more familiar with literature as I studied the movement when I got my masters. As far as movies, an oldie but a goodie was Like Water for Chocolate, although it is often characterized as a chick flick. I liked Big Fish. Life of Pi is definitely a favourite that is full of it. Another good oldie was The Milagro Beanfield War. Sucker Punch was a lot of fun, and I personally loved The Shape of Water. It is hard to define exactly how to seperate MR from films with fantastic elements....you could include a lot of Stephen King films if you aren't fussy about the classification. In that case I'd include the Green Mile.
 
How about this one?

I was thinking that how much emphasis one should put on the word ”realism” in MR, because as was mentioned, Birdman was kind of hyper realistic at times. Can comedic period piece be MR?
 
I'm actually more familiar with literature as I studied the movement when I got my masters. As far as movies, an oldie but a goodie was Like Water for Chocolate, although it is often characterized as a chick flick. I liked Big Fish. Life of Pi is definitely a favourite that is full of it. Another good oldie was The Milagro Beanfield War. Sucker Punch was a lot of fun, and I personally loved The Shape of Water. It is hard to define exactly how to seperate MR from films with fantastic elements....you could include a lot of Stephen King films if you aren't fussy about the classification. In that case I'd include the Green Mile.
Sounds like Birdman is actually purest example of Hispanic MR literary tradition in cinema. I think I’ve only read Aura by Carlos Fontes. I’ve had a Burges’ short story collection waiting for me to pick it up forever, but I’m pretty bad at getting started with short stories.

Now that I think about it, I saw an exhibition of Italian painters of magical realism school from 1920’s and 30’s this summer.
 
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Scott Pilgrim too....

The Cornetto's generally you could argue, especially Shaun and Worlds End.

I spose you could argue that that the classic bit of cinema Birdman is drawing on is Fellini's 8 1/2 , shift the production from film to stage and have a bit more of a question of mental illness around the directors flights of fancy. If its not already been done I would definitely suggest that for a movie club choice, dispite its vaulted rep it like Birdman makes for a very fun watch IMHO, not as testing as say Goddard post Breathless.
 
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I was thinking that how much emphasis one should put on the word ”realism” in MR, because as was mentioned, Birdman was kind of hyper realistic at times. Can comedic period piece be MR?

I guess I think it’s more the transposing of the magic w reality where u don’t highlight it, instead you see it as normal and it blends seem less LT into the narrative. It was labeled late 20th century but has been used in literature much longer than that.
 
I guess I think it’s more the transposing of the magic w reality where u don’t highlight it, instead you see it as normal and it blends seem less LT into the narrative. It was labeled late 20th century but has been used in literature much longer than that.
I mean that maybe the setting should realistic for the characters and for maximum effect for the reader too. If people are acting goofy and dress weird, then it loses something? I think naturalistic is the word I’m looking for.
 
I mean that maybe the setting should realistic for the characters and for maximum effect for the reader too. If people are acting goofy and dress weird, then it loses something? I think naturalistic is the word I’m looking for.

That makes sense. It can't seem fake. It has to be believable.
 
An ordered portrait of inner chaos. A fucking fantastic ensemble keeps an out of control story grounded and fascinating. An OUTSTANDING performance by Keaton. Great integration of CGI. The direction and its clever "meant to look like a one-take shot" approach was terrific to see unfold and added to the personal crisis of Riggan. I loved that Edward Norton is essentially making fun of his own ego here playing an obsessed super douche who can't get along with anyone. It's got one fucking brilliant drum-infused score. Emmanuel Lubezki is the truth.
 
Well I'm more of the "better late than never" crew checking in right about here. Been busy with some other forum matters lately, you might have bumped into one such new endeavor if you ventured into the heavies today. Got another coming tomorrow which should be very exciting. But really, Birdman.

It's not that I hate this movie, it's that I felt it was way too soon to watch it again. I still remember it pretty vividly, and although I love the players in it and the idea of it, I don't know, something was missing in it for me to love it. I've never been a fan of loose and unfinished plotlines, and even though I know that's something Inarritu loves to do (I remember how frustrating Babel was) it just feels like I'm being stabbed. It's one thing to leave things up to interpretation, but there is so much that Birdman left hanging and walked away. To me, it felt like the writers said "well we got all we can out from this storyline, so let's just drop it and move on." The way they left them, though, it irritates me to the point that I actively don't want to know. Kind of like the spinning top from Inception, they made it that way to toy with their audience. No sir, I don't like it.

Since this review is much later than I anticipated writing it up, I'll keep it much more brief. I won't deny that I dragged my heels, trying to think of if there was any work I could be doing instead of watching it, but I finally plowed through it and here we are.

The drumming to form the score was very distracting for me in several scenes when I was trying to pay attention to something. It wasn't that it drowned out many voices, but that it just felt like it took away from the scenes. Think of the typical distracting trumpet from crime/drama movies. Whiplash was one of my favorite films in recent memory, so it has nothing to do with drums (I have a family history of drummers, so that's something).

Something else that bothered me about Birdman is that it was billed as a comedy, albeit a black comedy. Now, I love dark comedies, like Fargo or Office Space or Beetlejuice or a ton of others. In Birdman, though, where was the comedy? They tried to throw in absurdity as a way of being so bizarre that it was comical, but did it achieve that? There were two scenes from Birdman that even struck me as funny - where he says to his daughter it felt like he was being hit repeatedly in the groin by a small hammer, and at the beginning where they made it seem like he dropped the light on the terrible actor's head. One was slapstick-ish but more funny to me because of his exasperated reaction and walking away, and the other because I could picture it. The rest of the scenes I think they intended to be funny, like Keaton and Norton fighting in the locker room, were just eh to me. They must have been too fresh in my mind, or I'm too desensitized to ridiculousness. It was a drama, and a mental health/family drama, and not a black comedy.

The play-within-a-play storyline always intrigues me, as a reformed drama buff, so I get where they were going with the cinematography and I don't hold it against them attempting to make it seem like the whole film (besides the dream sequence after the gunshot) was a single take. It didn't feel like a gimmick like Victoria did at times, and instead like they were actually trying to portray it like it itself was a play. I actively paid attention to the scenes where they had cuts, and kept track in my head of how long some of the scenes were with all the moving parts before they were done and went through a door and did a sneaky cut. Some of them took a long time to get through, and I wonder how many takes they needed.

Last thing: I will always be a fan of Emma Stone. Just saying.

I should be respectable and give this film a high mark, but I'll be petty and say 6/10 because of the issues described above. And then I'll limp through Stalker tomorrow before the big presser that I'm sure we're all looking forward to. Hoo boy.
 
You wanna hurt me? Go right ahead if it makes you feel any better. I'm an easy target.

Yeah, you're right, I talk too much. I also listen too much. I could be a cold-hearted cynic like you, but I don't like to hurt people's feelings. Well, you think what you want about me. I'm not changing. I like me. My wife likes me. My customers like me. Cause I'm the real article. What you see is what you get.
 
You wanna hurt me? Go right ahead if it makes you feel any better. I'm an easy target.

Yeah, you're right, I talk too much. I also listen too much. I could be a cold-hearted cynic like you, but I don't like to hurt people's feelings. Well, you think what you want about me. I'm not changing. I like me. My wife likes me. My customers like me. Cause I'm the real article. What you see is what you get.


 
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