Aw, My Favorite Year! I remember being enthralled by O’Toole’s wonderfully sad performance and now with the benefit of age morbidly fascinated by it. Can’t decide if the tone shifts of the film work or are so discordant they make it. Thanks for the reference and the new recommendation!
Altman is like Manet, a transitional figure. He was old-fashioned to his bones about character and theme, but for whatever reason (genius, I'd say, or maybe just annoyance at Hollywood nudniks) aggressively challenged the formulas he was expected to fit. Improvisational feel was where it started, maybe because that was where a big change was already happening in the representational arts... I could go all day about this. What do you think?
Gosford Park, The Player. Big plots.Raymond Chandler is famous for his rather inexplicable plots yet Altman's Long Goodbye is pretty straightforward. OTOH
there is Images, Buffalo Bill and the Indians and Thieves Like Us. Big Time vibes there.
I think Ebert does a good job explaining what I'm trying to get at.( back when I was young and all hoity toity about serious film criticism I would have laughed in your face if you suggested Mister Thumbs up /Thumbs down would be my go-to guy)
As seems to usually be the case he seems very right about this-
It's funny but I got a craving yesterday to watch La Notte. But I've also been meditating on what a movie shot in just closeups and half shots with maybe the occasional establishing shot would be like. I suppose there's stuff like that out there to be found. OTOH, a long time mystery is why independent cinema like from the 60s and 70s is essentially dead when production (phones) and distribution (YouTube, Vimeo) is so inexpensive. It's almost like there's mass psychosis to anything like that amongst the filmmaker set. Weird. Or maybe it's me.
I esteem Antonio’s “alienation trilogy,” but among these it’s 𝘓’𝘢𝘷𝘷𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘢 that I return to almost every year. I’d love to catch it on the big screen someday, but alas—repertory cinemas are practically extinct.
I always had a soft spot for PTA: my sister & I nearly wore through a copy of the 2-cassette VCR version of his Magnolia (1999). Such a messy sprawl that strains to connect its storylines just as those characters strain for connection themselves. And what could be a better expression of an excess of "vibe" (love this term, Roy) than a mystical & totally random rain of frogs?
It's like PTA needed help finishing the screenplay & dialed up Robyn Hitchock...
No, I understand that there's a tracing of imagery that connects it all -- and I understand what the movie is about. I say "random" because that cathartic moment stands for how tenuous & arbitrary it can be to seek connection among a jumble of entropic data points of human lives, or for those human data points to find a connection amongst themselves to bind their experience into something coherently comforting.
Why frogs?
A better question is: Why not frogs? It's like any ideology or system of beliefs, fairly arbitrary at its core, though based in some exception to the usual course of events.
I got rained on by fish once...coastal bluff, nice sunny afternoon, and suddenly I'm flounderin' with the sardines. Can only guess there was a rogue wave that hit the face of the cliff just right...
Golly. I hadn’t wanted to see this, but now I sure do. Your theory is genius, BTW. Now I’m thinking of all my favorite movies and trying to decide: vibe…or plot? In my book, Fargo (one of my very faves) has both.
Good one! All the Coen Brothers movies are like that, I think. Shoot, the first half of No Country for Old Men is practically an Alfred Hitchcock movie.
In the early nineties the local PBS affiliate screened 𝘊𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘢𝘥𝘦, which my visiting younger brother, then about thirty, had never seen. You’re in for a treat,” I assured him. At one point—I wish I could remember which exchange had occasioned this—I turned to him and was about to say “Boy, they don’t craft dialogue like this anymore!” when he pre-empted me: “I can’t believe that audiences used to sit still for this kind of corny dialogue.”
He’s sixty-one now, and I’m happy to report that his tastes have considerably matured.
The frau and I watched the Coen 𝘔𝘢𝘤𝘣𝘦𝘵𝘩 the other night on the strength of your review. Tell you, having Frances McDormand play the role in the key of “Minnesota nice” à la 𝘍𝘢𝘳𝘨𝘰 was sheer genius: “Ya know, Mac, sometimes ya just gotta just screw your courage to the sticking place.”
Excuse me while I struggle into my Captain Bringdown costume...damn thing's getting tight...that's better.
I really, really wish Cooper Hoffman went to college to become a Certified Public Accountant, or apprenticed with a cabinet maker. The stage is in his blood, but the past does not bode well. I think his family has suffered enough for my entertainment.
Didn't make the connection at first; thanks. (But then again I keep thinking about Jeannie C. Riley's "Harper Valley PTA", which shows how my brain works.)
Roy, thanks for your well written discussion of movies I’m almost certainly never going to see, but which I enjoyed learning about, and more importantly enjoyed the discussion about what makes them work as art.
'Seeing whether the proper pair[s] will mate or not is all that is needed for a minimal plot, which is why they are known as the "Eugenics Dramas of Sol III".'
I've always thought of "Boogie Nights" as both an evocation of a time and place and a thorough exploration of self-delusion. See esp.: Buck thinks he needs a gimmick when, as a black man in mainstream pornography, he _is_ a gimmick, Jack believes he could make a great porn film if circumstances would only let him, and Eddie (first among many delusions) thinks that he's a star when at best he's carrying a star around crom scene to scene.
(At least Rollergirl and Amber know they aren't mother and daughter once they come down, and arguably they end-up best, or at least most improved.)
Nice take, but here's where I suffer Anderson confusion.... like, is it Wes or Paul? Like which one made Rushmore, which, didn't it also feature a sort of romance between a 15 year old kid and an adult woman? I tell ya, this aging thing is a bitch.
I passed most of my formative years in the Valley, fleeing as soon as I’d attained my full growth (“I come from suburbia…and I don’t ever want to go back. It's the one place in the world that’s further away than anywhere else.” —Frederic Raphael), about three years before the film is set, but if I am to judge from the trailer, Anderson has captured the milieu pretty faithfully.
Aw, My Favorite Year! I remember being enthralled by O’Toole’s wonderfully sad performance and now with the benefit of age morbidly fascinated by it. Can’t decide if the tone shifts of the film work or are so discordant they make it. Thanks for the reference and the new recommendation!
Stunt Man!
"love, wherever it happens and whatever form it takes, is big enough"
Your work here is done.
Great review!
Could you talk a little bit about where you see Altman's on the vibe scale?
Altman is like Manet, a transitional figure. He was old-fashioned to his bones about character and theme, but for whatever reason (genius, I'd say, or maybe just annoyance at Hollywood nudniks) aggressively challenged the formulas he was expected to fit. Improvisational feel was where it started, maybe because that was where a big change was already happening in the representational arts... I could go all day about this. What do you think?
Vibe in service of story, mostly.
Gosford Park, The Player. Big plots.Raymond Chandler is famous for his rather inexplicable plots yet Altman's Long Goodbye is pretty straightforward. OTOH
there is Images, Buffalo Bill and the Indians and Thieves Like Us. Big Time vibes there.
I think Ebert does a good job explaining what I'm trying to get at.( back when I was young and all hoity toity about serious film criticism I would have laughed in your face if you suggested Mister Thumbs up /Thumbs down would be my go-to guy)
As seems to usually be the case he seems very right about this-
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/thieves-like-us-1974
It's funny but I got a craving yesterday to watch La Notte. But I've also been meditating on what a movie shot in just closeups and half shots with maybe the occasional establishing shot would be like. I suppose there's stuff like that out there to be found. OTOH, a long time mystery is why independent cinema like from the 60s and 70s is essentially dead when production (phones) and distribution (YouTube, Vimeo) is so inexpensive. It's almost like there's mass psychosis to anything like that amongst the filmmaker set. Weird. Or maybe it's me.
"But I've also been meditating on what a movie shot in just closeups and half shots with maybe the occasional establishing shot would be like."
Looks like most of the opera videos I've seen.
With the Met's Live in HD series, they've gotten better.
Dreyer's Passion Of
Joan of Arc is mostly close -ups.
Persona, a lot of Ozu and Mizoguchi.
Last opera movie (forget videos) I saw was La Traviata with Teresa Stratas. I was young and callow and stupid and loved her performance.
Now that I reconsider, that’s the one I probably would enjoy more. Got a thing for JM, tho’.
I esteem Antonio’s “alienation trilogy,” but among these it’s 𝘓’𝘢𝘷𝘷𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘢 that I return to almost every year. I’d love to catch it on the big screen someday, but alas—repertory cinemas are practically extinct.
I always had a soft spot for PTA: my sister & I nearly wore through a copy of the 2-cassette VCR version of his Magnolia (1999). Such a messy sprawl that strains to connect its storylines just as those characters strain for connection themselves. And what could be a better expression of an excess of "vibe" (love this term, Roy) than a mystical & totally random rain of frogs?
It's like PTA needed help finishing the screenplay & dialed up Robyn Hitchock...
Random? Um, frogman scene, lots of other stuff, rain of frogs. “Magnolia” is all about connecting arcs.
No, I understand that there's a tracing of imagery that connects it all -- and I understand what the movie is about. I say "random" because that cathartic moment stands for how tenuous & arbitrary it can be to seek connection among a jumble of entropic data points of human lives, or for those human data points to find a connection amongst themselves to bind their experience into something coherently comforting.
Why frogs?
A better question is: Why not frogs? It's like any ideology or system of beliefs, fairly arbitrary at its core, though based in some exception to the usual course of events.
:)
I got rained on by fish once...coastal bluff, nice sunny afternoon, and suddenly I'm flounderin' with the sardines. Can only guess there was a rogue wave that hit the face of the cliff just right...
The Aimee Mann soundtrack is so good.
“Now that I’ve met you
Would you object to
Never seeing each other again?”
Golly. I hadn’t wanted to see this, but now I sure do. Your theory is genius, BTW. Now I’m thinking of all my favorite movies and trying to decide: vibe…or plot? In my book, Fargo (one of my very faves) has both.
Good one! All the Coen Brothers movies are like that, I think. Shoot, the first half of No Country for Old Men is practically an Alfred Hitchcock movie.
Yes! Now I have to watch that one again too. (I practically have Fargo memorized; some of the best dialog since All About Eve)
We (my wife and son and I) watched "All About Eve" the other day. First time for him. I had forgotten how good the dialogue was.
"Snappy" isn't the half of it! Did your son enjoy it?
Yes, very much.
"I need him like the axe needs the turkey"
The often-quoted "Fasten your seatbelts - it's going to be a bumpy night" is only like the ninth or tenth best line.
Your quote has the advantage that it's actually in the movie :)
Sorry, I got "The Lady Eve" mixed up with "All About Eve", my Barbara Stanwyck fixation showing through.
The better Eve. Stanwyck was fantastic. Then again, Sturges.
Throw a towel over it
In the early nineties the local PBS affiliate screened 𝘊𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘢𝘥𝘦, which my visiting younger brother, then about thirty, had never seen. You’re in for a treat,” I assured him. At one point—I wish I could remember which exchange had occasioned this—I turned to him and was about to say “Boy, they don’t craft dialogue like this anymore!” when he pre-empted me: “I can’t believe that audiences used to sit still for this kind of corny dialogue.”
He’s sixty-one now, and I’m happy to report that his tastes have considerably matured.
Hilarious!
The best Hitchcock movie not directed by him and better than some of his. Delightful, great cast.
No Country is one of the rare movies that's better than the book, and I generally love Cormac McCarthy.
Yes! I absolutely adore McCarthy. Adore the Coens too. So. Match made in heaven!
The frau and I watched the Coen 𝘔𝘢𝘤𝘣𝘦𝘵𝘩 the other night on the strength of your review. Tell you, having Frances McDormand play the role in the key of “Minnesota nice” à la 𝘍𝘢𝘳𝘨𝘰 was sheer genius: “Ya know, Mac, sometimes ya just gotta just screw your courage to the sticking place.”
Best boy meets girl during photo shoot since “Raising Arizona.”
Best boy...is that sorta like Key grip?
Whoever has a grip that key is the best lad in my book!
Excuse me while I struggle into my Captain Bringdown costume...damn thing's getting tight...that's better.
I really, really wish Cooper Hoffman went to college to become a Certified Public Accountant, or apprenticed with a cabinet maker. The stage is in his blood, but the past does not bode well. I think his family has suffered enough for my entertainment.
I dunno; the planet is littered with dead people but life seems to go on...
Didn't make the connection at first; thanks. (But then again I keep thinking about Jeannie C. Riley's "Harper Valley PTA", which shows how my brain works.)
Excellent. I had no plans to see this movie. But now I do.
“things were cool then and it’s too bad no one took a flamethrower to those damn hippies so it could have stayed cool”
Someone’s channeling about 1/4 of the commenters at LGM.
Roy, thanks for your well written discussion of movies I’m almost certainly never going to see, but which I enjoyed learning about, and more importantly enjoyed the discussion about what makes them work as art.
'Seeing whether the proper pair[s] will mate or not is all that is needed for a minimal plot, which is why they are known as the "Eugenics Dramas of Sol III".'
I've always thought of "Boogie Nights" as both an evocation of a time and place and a thorough exploration of self-delusion. See esp.: Buck thinks he needs a gimmick when, as a black man in mainstream pornography, he _is_ a gimmick, Jack believes he could make a great porn film if circumstances would only let him, and Eddie (first among many delusions) thinks that he's a star when at best he's carrying a star around crom scene to scene.
(At least Rollergirl and Amber know they aren't mother and daughter once they come down, and arguably they end-up best, or at least most improved.)
Thanks for the recommendation. Will definitely see it now.
Nice take, but here's where I suffer Anderson confusion.... like, is it Wes or Paul? Like which one made Rushmore, which, didn't it also feature a sort of romance between a 15 year old kid and an adult woman? I tell ya, this aging thing is a bitch.
I passed most of my formative years in the Valley, fleeing as soon as I’d attained my full growth (“I come from suburbia…and I don’t ever want to go back. It's the one place in the world that’s further away than anywhere else.” —Frederic Raphael), about three years before the film is set, but if I am to judge from the trailer, Anderson has captured the milieu pretty faithfully.