I can watch "Wild Strawberries' repeatedly, for years but 10 minutes of Ordinary People or The Ice Storm makes me want to drink cheap bourbon and play hacky sack in traffic. This sounds interesting though. I find with films like this (modern, foreign usually European) if the plot loses me I can always look at the furniture.
True! But... there was a discussion about "haptic" cinemtography changing to one that's optimized for green-screening, so maybe even that's being enshittified. What a world
If the backgrounds are all just put in by a computer, why not let the audience pick the furniture? Click a few boxes on your NetFlix profile, you're watching Casablanca in Scandinavian Modern!
There must be a chunk of our population for whom Ordinary People is just the thing, it speaks to such a specific millieu (in film criticizin' I like to use a lot of French). Is there an Ordinary People Film Fest in Lake Forest? Films tailored to affluent White people who live in the Chicago suburbs? Ordinary People/Ferris Bueller/Risky Business, that sort of thing.
"Films tailored to affluent White people who live in the Chicago suburbs? Ordinary People/Ferris Bueller/Risky Business, that sort of thing."
This right here is why I don't watch John Hughes films. Because I was living in the city itself when he was making them; those films might have been made on the moon for all the relevance they had to me.
I wonder what significance "Chicago Suburbs" has in movie language? Different from "California Suburbs", right? The latter seems more middle-class, seems like film-makers are trying for something else with Chicago Suburbs. And try they do, I just remembered Home Alone was set there too. Add it to the list!
Might be wrong but I think Albert played himself in that flick. Buddy was playing an actual role - that’s what made it special. Like Dexter Gordon in Round Midnight.
See, just about everyone who doesn't like That Kind of Thing has an exception that is very much TKOT. For me it's the Marsha Norman play 'Night, Mother. Never saw the film but saw the play on Broadway twice with Kathy Bates. Broke my heart each time.
Collaborating or trespassing. That could be my tag line for my role in life. Fam films should be viewed through that lens. At what point in our lives do we outlive our central role in social relations? We seem to age out of relevance or is it just me?
Maybe you're subconsciously responding to the deeper things going on in Sinners. The Black Panther, Wakanda Forever, and Sinners all dramatize the prominent 19th and 20th century black intellectual movements including W.E.B. Dubois, Booker T. Washington, Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, MLK, Frantz Fanon, the Black Panthers, and others. I'm not a scholar, but between my time in D.C. and NYC I've picked up quite a bit of it and it's glaringly obvious when you are tuned in. It's not a subtext in Coogler's films, it's the text. What I find really interesting is how next to nobody has picked up on that, and as far as I can tell nobody at all among top critics like Richard Brody. How could he miss it? Or if he didn't, why didn't he mention it? And Coogler himself has said nothing about it whatsoever, but when you look at his background, there's no way he didn't know what he's doing. His family's from friggin Oakland and they are all community activists, he and his father working in prison outreach straight out of the Panther's playbook, not to mention he produced the Fred Hampton biopic. The way he takes radical black thought and presents it to blockbuster audiences has to be one of the greatest hoodwinks in cultural history. Of course concessions are made, but still, it's an astounding feat.
Well, you did mention Sinners and how you were surprised you liked it due to its genre. And yes, separatism vs integration is one of the key themes of both the historical black intellectual debates and Sinners. It is explicit, and similar in the Black Panther movies as well. I haven't seen Sentimental Values and no doubt won't until it's on some streaming service I'm getting for free. Sounds good though, Ibsen-ish.
I can see it's a separatist critique but not sure it prescribes a separatist solution. Sammie knows you can't get away from white people without unobtainium or whatever it's called.
Well, let's put it this way: a lot of us would like to be more separate than we currently are, but the logistics don't allow for it. Were it implemented we suspect it would be like apartheid South Africa--property seizures, concentration camps and being stripped of citizenship, *without* being a majority of the nation.
White people who've constructed their whole lives to be separate, so that they never see a person of color unless he's mowing their lawn, can nevertheless be thrown into a fury because the man on their TV is singing in Spanish. Dammit, now they're sneakin' into the living room!
I grew up in a 50’s family and any family comedy or drama that looks into a family that isn’t mom, dad, brother, sister, and grandmother/mother-in-law interests me the way documentaries about the Yanomami of the Amazon jungle do. The tropes are often overdone: dead mother, dead father, divorce, adolescent angst, so I’m partial to variants when they come along, like “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape.” I saw a trailer for a coming of age dramedy about a girl raised by special needs parents which would be right up my alley, if I could remember the name. I, too, have watched “Wild Strawberries” several times; Victor Sjöström is a dead ringer for my dad. All Bergman family films fascinate me. Isn’t Scandinavia supposed to be the happiest place on Earth?
I'm back here to say our film club voted Sentimental Value the March meeting subject, and I watched it last night. The thing that I dug out was how charmingly manipulative the father is in wheedling people into furthering his craft. There's the Great Struggle to get his daughter to Just Read The Script, Dammit! And immediately after watching the film I found this quote from Treier's co-writer Eskil Vogt: "“It’s a movie about how hard it is to get someone to read your script”.
I'mo pretend I now know something about the movie biz.
"We won't need dolly shots" is the epitaph I desperately wish to curtail...
Stoli shots, on the other hand...
Thanks Roy, you are tireless and I appreciate you. This one is also on my list.
I can watch "Wild Strawberries' repeatedly, for years but 10 minutes of Ordinary People or The Ice Storm makes me want to drink cheap bourbon and play hacky sack in traffic. This sounds interesting though. I find with films like this (modern, foreign usually European) if the plot loses me I can always look at the furniture.
Good review!
"[I}f the plot loses me I can always look at the furniture."
Something which you can't say about 95% of today's film output.
True! But... there was a discussion about "haptic" cinemtography changing to one that's optimized for green-screening, so maybe even that's being enshittified. What a world
If the backgrounds are all just put in by a computer, why not let the audience pick the furniture? Click a few boxes on your NetFlix profile, you're watching Casablanca in Scandinavian Modern!
2 solid marks.
(Pro tip: you can’t hide behind Scandinavian Modern)
And where do you conceal your Letters of Transit?
In the lur. Just don't blow it.
"10 minutes of Ordinary People or The Ice Storm makes me want to drink cheap bourbon" well then you understand!
"10 minutes of Ordinary People"
There must be a chunk of our population for whom Ordinary People is just the thing, it speaks to such a specific millieu (in film criticizin' I like to use a lot of French). Is there an Ordinary People Film Fest in Lake Forest? Films tailored to affluent White people who live in the Chicago suburbs? Ordinary People/Ferris Bueller/Risky Business, that sort of thing.
"Films tailored to affluent White people who live in the Chicago suburbs? Ordinary People/Ferris Bueller/Risky Business, that sort of thing."
This right here is why I don't watch John Hughes films. Because I was living in the city itself when he was making them; those films might have been made on the moon for all the relevance they had to me.
I wonder what significance "Chicago Suburbs" has in movie language? Different from "California Suburbs", right? The latter seems more middle-class, seems like film-makers are trying for something else with Chicago Suburbs. And try they do, I just remembered Home Alone was set there too. Add it to the list!
Side note, since I hadn’t seen Sinners when REBID covered it: Seeing Buddy Guy in the epilogue made wading through the vampire carnage worth it.
That's a pretty poignant ending, isn't it?
It turned on the waterworks
Albert Collins in Adventures in Babysitting was one of the few times a real blues man got even a cameo in a Hollywood film.
Might be wrong but I think Albert played himself in that flick. Buddy was playing an actual role - that’s what made it special. Like Dexter Gordon in Round Midnight.
I also don’t really go for family dramas, also.
Not sure if it counts as fam dram, but my one exception would be Steel Magnolias. Just great performances, and Julia Roberts dies as a bonus.
See, just about everyone who doesn't like That Kind of Thing has an exception that is very much TKOT. For me it's the Marsha Norman play 'Night, Mother. Never saw the film but saw the play on Broadway twice with Kathy Bates. Broke my heart each time.
Collaborating or trespassing. That could be my tag line for my role in life. Fam films should be viewed through that lens. At what point in our lives do we outlive our central role in social relations? We seem to age out of relevance or is it just me?
We age out of something, or into something. Prefer to think the latter.
Good point. I feel better already.
In my experience, most people never age out of high school, or possibly junior high.
"Give me the boy at age seven and I'll show you the man" is Aristotle, I think, or maybe Jeffrey Epstein.
Maybe you're subconsciously responding to the deeper things going on in Sinners. The Black Panther, Wakanda Forever, and Sinners all dramatize the prominent 19th and 20th century black intellectual movements including W.E.B. Dubois, Booker T. Washington, Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, MLK, Frantz Fanon, the Black Panthers, and others. I'm not a scholar, but between my time in D.C. and NYC I've picked up quite a bit of it and it's glaringly obvious when you are tuned in. It's not a subtext in Coogler's films, it's the text. What I find really interesting is how next to nobody has picked up on that, and as far as I can tell nobody at all among top critics like Richard Brody. How could he miss it? Or if he didn't, why didn't he mention it? And Coogler himself has said nothing about it whatsoever, but when you look at his background, there's no way he didn't know what he's doing. His family's from friggin Oakland and they are all community activists, he and his father working in prison outreach straight out of the Panther's playbook, not to mention he produced the Fred Hampton biopic. The way he takes radical black thought and presents it to blockbuster audiences has to be one of the greatest hoodwinks in cultural history. Of course concessions are made, but still, it's an astounding feat.
Are you taking about separatism? Also, did you mean to put this in this thread?
Well, you did mention Sinners and how you were surprised you liked it due to its genre. And yes, separatism vs integration is one of the key themes of both the historical black intellectual debates and Sinners. It is explicit, and similar in the Black Panther movies as well. I haven't seen Sentimental Values and no doubt won't until it's on some streaming service I'm getting for free. Sounds good though, Ibsen-ish.
I regret to inform you it's not as good as Ibsen, but the girls are like something out of Ibsen for sure.
I can see it's a separatist critique but not sure it prescribes a separatist solution. Sammie knows you can't get away from white people without unobtainium or whatever it's called.
Well, let's put it this way: a lot of us would like to be more separate than we currently are, but the logistics don't allow for it. Were it implemented we suspect it would be like apartheid South Africa--property seizures, concentration camps and being stripped of citizenship, *without* being a majority of the nation.
Besides, this is our country, too.
White people who've constructed their whole lives to be separate, so that they never see a person of color unless he's mowing their lawn, can nevertheless be thrown into a fury because the man on their TV is singing in Spanish. Dammit, now they're sneakin' into the living room!
This country has attempted, on at least three occasions *before 1900*, to get rid of all its Black people. I am, shall we say, skeptical of motive.
I grew up in a 50’s family and any family comedy or drama that looks into a family that isn’t mom, dad, brother, sister, and grandmother/mother-in-law interests me the way documentaries about the Yanomami of the Amazon jungle do. The tropes are often overdone: dead mother, dead father, divorce, adolescent angst, so I’m partial to variants when they come along, like “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape.” I saw a trailer for a coming of age dramedy about a girl raised by special needs parents which would be right up my alley, if I could remember the name. I, too, have watched “Wild Strawberries” several times; Victor Sjöström is a dead ringer for my dad. All Bergman family films fascinate me. Isn’t Scandinavia supposed to be the happiest place on Earth?
"Isn’t Scandinavia supposed to be the happiest place o̶n̶ ̶E̶a̶r̶t̶h̶ in its own mind?"
Sure. My distant heritage affirms. If everybody leaves everybody else alone.
"Scandinavian happiness" might be a variation on "Minnesota nice"
I'm back here to say our film club voted Sentimental Value the March meeting subject, and I watched it last night. The thing that I dug out was how charmingly manipulative the father is in wheedling people into furthering his craft. There's the Great Struggle to get his daughter to Just Read The Script, Dammit! And immediately after watching the film I found this quote from Treier's co-writer Eskil Vogt: "“It’s a movie about how hard it is to get someone to read your script”.
I'mo pretend I now know something about the movie biz.