movies

[The Third Man]

Eh... with only one obvious exception off the top of my head (and maybe more if I thought about it, but not many more), I HATE musical numbers in movies. It's a pet peeve of mine. Even if it's a song I like, if I wanted to listen to people singing, I'd pull out my iPhone. And in Nashville's case, it was such a huge part of the movie. I say "an hour" out of hyperbole, but it probably wasn't that far off of a full hour of musical numbers. It reached a point where I found myself saying "Are you [expletive] kidding me? Another goddamned musical piece?!?!"

But all of the things you say about the movie are true.

There actually is an hour or more of music from what I remember reading. Can't begrudge anybody for having that as a sticking point. Saturday Night Fever is a good movie, but since I don't exactly go nuts for disco...

Another thing I loved: the camerawork. It was so unobtrusive and effective all at once. In several different scenes he'd introduce multiple characters in a single shot without ever radically changing the focus, and when I'd notice, I'd go, "Wait, how the hell did he do that?" and realize it was something as simple as a pan and a zoom into the background (example: when Ned Beatty's character picks up Michael Murphy at the airport, and then we're focused on Shelley Duvall meeting her uncle). Or he'd zoom back and forth during a musical performance without ever making a big point of it and I wouldn't notice until after the fact because it was so appropriate (the best example I can remember is Ronee Blakley's performance of "Dues" around 2 minutes in: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSEP9oeUvJ8 But if you're not as appreciative of the song like I am, I'm sure it becomes a lot more noticeable).

[The Third Man]

I've seen MASH, Brewster McCloud, Nashville, "Come Back to the Five and Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean", Popeye, The Player, Pret a Porter, Short Cuts, and parts of Gosford Park.

Out of those the only one I liked was The Player, and Gosford Park seemed okay despite not being a genre I usually care for.

Short Cuts was like torture, except for Lyle Lovett. Julianne Moore walks around bottomless for about 5 minutes, but there's absolutely no joy in it.

I'm not a big fan of his style. The whole meandering between conversations thing I can deal with, and I'm not a stickler for formal plot structure, but he just carries on that way for too long. For my taste anyway. The Player forced him to stick to the plot more, so it's probably why I like it more than the rest.

Hah, are you some kind of sadomasochistic filmgoer? Or is somebody crossing out the names of the directors on all the DVDs you buy? The only directors I've seen that many films by without liking most of them are guys like Tony Scott who you're bombarded with on TV as a kid so they're inescapable pop culture.

[JL21]

I'm not a big fan of his style. The whole meandering between conversations thing I can deal with, and I'm not a stickler for formal plot structure, but he just carries on that way for too long. For my taste anyway. The Player forced him to stick to the plot more, so it's probably why I like it more than the rest.

That's understandable. You cut right to the chase with Altman. I'm a fan of the overlapping conversations and his overall style but I can definitely see how it'd piss a viewer off.

Check out "Secret Honor". Ok, it meanders- in fact, there is no real plot structure whatsoever- but there's only one character (Nixon), so there's no overlapping dialogue, etc. And it's quite different from his other films.

[The Third Man]

I also got a kick out of Scott Glenn popping up as the star-struck soldier. He's always memorable; the AWOL mercenary in Apocalypse Now, Clarice's teacher/boss in Silence of the Lambs, Roger the drug dealer in Training Day all spring to mind.

[JackofDiamonds]

Eh... with only one obvious exception off the top of my head (and maybe more if I thought about it, but not many more), I HATE musical numbers in movies. It's a pet peeve of mine. Even if it's a song I like, if I wanted to listen to people singing, I'd pull out my iPhone. And in Nashville's case, it was such a huge part of the movie. I say "an hour" out of hyperbole, but it probably wasn't that far off of a full hour of musical numbers. It reached a point where I found myself saying "Are you [expletive] kidding me? Another goddamned musical piece?!?!"

But all of the things you say about the movie are true.

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Just sayin.

[JL21]

That's a perfect example of an exception, JoD. But there aren't many.

[ghostrunner]

Combination of factors, but basically I tried very hard to like him.

[The Third Man]

I haven't seen The Blues Brothers. I'm not going to lose my cool-movie-person pass again, am I?

[JL21]

I haven't seen The Blues Brothers. I'm not going to lose my cool-movie-person pass again, am I?

Hmm... No, but, you should probably hit it up some time. Hell, I was 30 or 31 before I ever saw it start to finish. Have you seen any of the other Belushi films?

[JackofDiamonds]

I haven't seen The Blues Brothers. I'm not going to lose my cool-movie-person pass again, am I?

Does not compute.