Two weeks from tomorrow I'll be flying back to the States for Thanksgiving through New Year's. This will probably be my only mega post until I'm back in Chicago - which I hope will still be full of people celebrating what is going to be a historic World Series win for the Cubs
- so I'm going all in.
For starters, I'm done with my Sorkin kick. I genuinely love
The West Wing, but I never have and I probably never will watch the non-Sorkin seasons. It just feels...wrong. Since I wrapped
The West Wing, I've caught up with all of my shows currently airing new seasons -
Brooklyn Nine-Nine, which is just so much fun to watch;
New Girl, which still surprises me with how funny it is and which has become my favorite sitcom on the air;
Elementary, still one of my favorite procedurals (not to mention the ageless Lucy Liu); and SVU, which is remarkably still going strong, not just limping to the finish line but full-on sprinting.
Nothing in the way of new movies, although
@HUNTERMANIA, you still haven't given me my list of movies to watch to pay you back for
Burn Notice. I'd like for that to be my first order of business when I get home. I can run to my library and grab
Black Swan and whatever else you want me to watch. My no animation rule still holds but I'll watch literally anything else.
Just for the record --
Hercules in New York is by far Arnold's best comedy.
Saunders likes that movie a lot more than I do. For me, it's little more than a historical novelty that's fun for Arnold's presence but nothing more. As far as pre-Conan stuff goes, I much prefer
Stay Hungry. It's pretty fucking bizarre in its own right, but it's got more going for it IMO.
Oi, Bullit! You are a fancy typist. What is a word that describes something in-between "very good" and "great"? I need it to describe Whirlpool and Angel Face!
It might be too much for you, but I'd call them "splendid."
I definitively see the similarities between Angel Face and Gone Girl. Jean Simmons certainly has that devilish manipulator thing going. That said, it was noteworthy how relatively ineffective she was as a villian compared to Amazing Amy.
I agree with you that Simmons wasn't as cunning, but she was sure as hell vicious. That look on her face when she gives her stepmom her gloves, I know Igor is Ice Cold, but Simmons literally has ice in her veins there.
It feels like Mitchum always managed to keep her at arms-lenght. She never really managed to ensnare him in her web like Amazing Amy did or Joan Bennett in Woman in the Window. Hell, even Mitchum's girlfriend sees right through her and calls her out on it when they're having their dinner.
For me, in a strange way, this makes the movie even more frustrating. Mitchum hasn't been deceived, he hasn't had the wool pulled over his eyes. He sees right through her, he knows exactly what's going on, but she
still brings him down.
The motorcar "accidents" where a riot though. Dat ending man.
At most times, Preminger is the master of the small and the subtle. At other times, it's like he's daring people to come up with a description more extreme than "over the top."
I would rate Whirlpool a tad below Angel Face.
Whirlpool is quite a few steps out in front of
Angel Face in my book. Aside from the presence of Gene Tierney, you've also got, as you yourself noted, José Ferrer playing with expert wickedness one of the most brilliantly conceived villains in all of classical Hollywood. The clincher, though, is Preminger's cinematography. The aesthetics in
Whirlpool are the most sophisticated in Preminger's entire career, even more sophisticated than
Laura IMO.
Part of me wondered if this was just Bullitt's fiendish attempt to lure me into the Gene Tierney = Aphrodite cult that he's running
.
It wasn't
just that
Normally I hate the word "dated" in film and think that people who use it simply arn't capable of engrossing themselves into the world of the movie they're watching... but I thought the hypnosis stuff felt a bit... dated.
A lot of the stuff from that era when Freud and psychoanalysis was catching on has dated really badly (
Spellbound is another example). Ferrer's character is so great, though, and he plays him with such devilish gusto, that I'd buy anything that he was selling
Jose Ferrer man, you don't get villian performances like that anymore. There was some sort of auditory acting back then that has just been lost in today's industry.
True, but even with that, Ferrer is in a class by himself. After the initial influx of stage actors in the 1930s upon the coming of sound, Ferrer was sort of at the head of the class as far as 1950s-era stage-to-screen talent was concerned. He'd win his Oscar the following year for
Cyrano (legitimately beating Spencer Tracy, which is no easy feat) and in pretty much every role, whether as a leading man or a supporting player, he always brought his A-game and elevated whatever he was doing. Hell, in
The Caine Mutiny, once it shifts from being the Humphrey Bogart show to a courtroom drama, Ferrer is the one who comes in to keep the heat on.
As an added bonus, I saw a third Preminger film, River of no Return.
A few weeks ago, I got to do a lecture for our weekly PhD meetings where I analyzed
Whirlpool and I had occasion to bring up
River of No Return, so I actually rewatched that recently myself. It's nowhere near Preminger's best, but it's a pretty good movie. And it's one of my favorite of all of Mitchum's performances.
On the script and acting front it definitively felt like a phone-in.
I'll grant you that the script isn't the best - the perfunctory follow-up conversation after what can only be described as Mitchum's attempted rape of Monroe didn't even come close to justifying that weird narrative detour; I got what they were going for what with Mitchum's distrust of women and trying to push past Monroe's fakeness to see what she's really about, but it's such an objectionable route to take if that's your goal that unless you have a clear plan of attack it's best not to try to traverse that minefield - but I thought Mitchum was on-point with his acting. I also really liked Rory Calhoun. For a villain, he's so not villainous, yet I hate him anyway. He actually had a difficult task and I thought he pulled it off impressively.
Marlin Monroe is drop-dread gorgeous.
You can have her. I'll take Gene Tierney any day.
On the Cagney front, I dug into his early carrer and pulled out The Crowd Roars (which is definitively one of those titles that feel like it should be followed with an exclamation mark!).
Cagney should've borrowed the exclamation point from
Taxi! And I saw
The Crowd Roars on Turner Classic Movies a while back. You're right that it was cool to see Cagney in the Hawks world, but I wasn't as impressed as you appear to have been. Kind of interested to rewatch it now to see if I missed something.
To go back even further in time, I had never actually seen Chaplins Goldrush before. Honestly, I expected a bit more.
Yeah,
The Gold Rush is Chaplin's most overrated silent film IMO. It's Chaplin, so it's great, but alongside
The Circus,
City Lights, or even
Modern Times, it's quite clearly a step or two behind.
To jump forward about a 100 years in the future, I finally saw The Conjuring.
For Halloween last year, I went on a big horror movie kick, and of all the new(er) horror movies I watched, I thought
The Conjuring was the best of the bunch. Familiar territory but executed very well.
I saw Roman Holiday for the first time. Honestly I did not fall for the Hepburn allure.
Not one of my favorite movies, nor one of my favorite actresses, but I love that movie all the same. It's just too much fun and told too well for me not to like it. As far as Hepburn goes, though, I feel like
Charade would be more to your liking if you haven't already seen it.
I'm pretty decided that the top does fall, but I believe that could still entail different conclusions about Cobb's final reality.
Don't fuck with my head,
Caveat. If that ending isn't an either/or (reality or dream) situation, then what different conclusions are there to be reached?
The top is a shitty totem, that's the clue.
Pretend it's the end of a Scooby-Doo episode. Walk me through all the clues beginning to end.
Sorkin is great too, minus Steve Jobs which I found utterly bland.
Finally got round to seeing Paths of Glory last night, what a film...
"What a film"? You write paragraphs about your weirdo movies nobody but
europe watches and then you watch a bona fide masterpiece from the GOAT and all you have to say is "what a film"?
Not reading this because I haven't seen it.
Fuck, I never spoil shit. I could've sworn I read in your previous post that you'd already seen it and were rewatching it.
Sorkin's women aren't influential enough to cause narrative propulsion. They're vehicles for change, never agents.
Hmm. I think this depends on what we're applying the concept of change
to. In
Studio 60, Sarah Paulson doesn't write the sketches, she's not changing the trajectory of the show, but she's the one who has the impact on Matthew Perry that allows him to write what he writes. In
Steve Jobs, Fassbender is clearly a deficient human being, and while he appears to be king of the world, he's able to (in some measure) shore up his personal difficulties almost entirely on the basis of Kate Winslet. The most interesting cases are Amanda Peet's character in
Studio 60, the network president who is spearheading a push to elevate the way TV is produced and marketed and doing it on her own against all (male) opposition, and Emily Mortimer's character in
The Newsroom, who is a lot like Paulson in
Studio 60 except she also literally runs the show and has the weight as far as the TV politics are concerned of Peet's character.
I guess what I'm saying is that, if by "vehicle" you mean that, rather than being the leads, they're the ones who inspire the leads, then yes, they're often cast in that supportive/subordinate role. The vehicle/agent binary, however, makes me uneasy. I don't think you can make a case for denying that Paulson's, Peet's, Winslet's, or Mortimer's characters have agency and in many cases absolutely cause narrative propulsion.
Donna (The West Wing) plays audience surrogate, Miss Landingham a motherly figure (and it looks, from your post, like the best way she can influence act change is by dying!).
First things first: As will be revealed later (or, depending on how much you've watched since this post, what's already been revealed) Mrs. Landingham is a big sister to Sheen, not a mother (I'm not telling you what happens, though, lest I spoil more shit for you).
In any event, why does this constitute sexism? Is the bar really that low for that term? If the audience surrogate is a woman, then it's sexism? Is Nolan sexist for using Ellen Page as an audience surrogate in
Inception? What about T.J. Miller as the audience surrogate in
Cloverfield? Is it sexism if it's a female character but just a plot point if it's a male character? And what about Seagal in
Executive Decision? The only way he can influence act change is by dying, too. Is
Executive Decision anti-men?
This is the type of PC shit that makes me wish I had hair so I could pull it out.
What I anticipate most about C.J. is hers and Danny's sexual tension. When she fucks up, it's secondary to some truth being concealed from her by the boys club. When she does something cool, like making poll predictions correctly, her analytical skill is left undepicted. She insists it isn't flowery "female intuition", but Sorkin doesn't bother to write her insight into the narrative. You can't have complexity of character without complexity of action.
I love the way he writes for that character, and I've never really noticed Allison Janney in anything other than this, but she's phenomenal here. The "seduction" scene with Danny is fantastic.
However, I'd be more interested in your thoughts about Ainsley Hayes, particularly the scene where Sorkin explicitly addresses the issue of sexism (a scene, moreover, that has a corollary in
The Newsroom when Maggie talks about "sluts"):
Solutions: 1) Have C.J. fuck up something that has them scrambling. 2) Have the White House fuck up something that she heroically tones down during a press briefing - then have them all contemplate whether that was a good thing.
Based on these points, I'd be interested to get your thoughts on the following plotlines:
1) Season 1, Episode 15 - Celestial Navigation - C.J. can't do the press conference so Josh does it and chaos ensues.
2) Season 2, Episode 11 - The Leadership Breakfast - C.J. is very clear on an important issue but Toby blows past her and the shit hits the fan.
3) Season 2, Episode 13 - Bartlet's Third State of the Union - C.J. uncovers a huge bombshell and takes point on handling it.
4) Season 3, Episodes 1 and 2 - Manchester - C.J. fucks up.
5) Season 3, Episode 3 - Ways and Means - C.J. comes up with and executes a major political play.
6) Season 3, Episode 8 - The Women of Qumar - C.J. resents Sheen's (and everyone else's) attitude towards Qumar.
7) Season 3, Episode 18 - C.J. ignites a backlash that leads to an important storyline for her (one that Sorkin would return to in
The Newsroom for Daniels' character).
Charlie determines the direction of his relationship with Zoe. When he decides to ignore the Secret Service's advice, it's because "a man stands up". When he decides not to, it's because he is convinced by Danny that Zoe has a hard enough time with daddy already.
Solutions: 1) Have Zoe break up with Charlie. 2) Have Zoe side with Charlie to complicate her relationship with dad.
I'll be interested to get your thoughts on the Charlie/Zoey storyline in Season 4.
Sam Seaborn rescues his women. His relationship with the call-girl comes from a place of righteousness. This is tone deaf. She was doing fine before he showed up. The throughline of that sub-plot is thus propelled by defence of the rights of a powerful white man.
You realize that this is Sorkin's point, right? That's why they all make fun of Sam and tell him not to rescue her. The same thing happens in
The Newsroom with the "mission to civilize." Now, it's not quite the same in
The Newsroom, as in that case, those women actually do need to be civilized (but not
because they're women). In
The West Wing, that character might be a (massive if not preposterous) hypocrite but she's certainly not stupid.
Added to which, if I may be permitted to generalize from your criticism here: This seems, in a nutshell, the problem with people's criticisms of Sorkin's alleged sexism. So many people - and maybe this isn't you, but even if it isn't, it's worth stating - are so on the lookout for sexism that, as soon as they get even a hint of it, they pounce. Nevermind the fact that the content of their criticism is the
point of what they're criticizing. Who cares about context when political correctness is at stake?
Later, Ainsley Hayes defeats him during a TV debate. However, it is he who ends up firing the guys that harrass her.
Solutions: Stop rescuing women who don't need it. They got to where they are by kicking ass.
See above clip.
In terms of character traits: Sorkin's females are never feminine.
This is just way too wrong for me to defend with a lengthy rebuttal or a series of clips. It's so astronomically wrong that there's nothing short of a wholesale change in perspective that'll do the trick. I will ask, though: Do you see any connections between the way Sorkin's women act and the way the women in films from classical Hollywood like
His Girl Friday or
Adam's Rib act? Are they more or less feminine? In what way(s)?
Argumentative Mandy goes down in flames, and never wins an argument with Josh (Sorkin surrogate).
Now compare Mandy in
The West Wing to Reese in
The Newsroom. They serve pretty much the same function as thematic scapegoats. Or hell, compare her to Brian in
The Newsroom. That might be even more accurate since his relationship with Mortimer's character is very similar to the Josh/Mandy relationship, only inverted to where the female character is in the right and the male character is only there to be wrong. When and how many times are male writers allowed to have female characters who are wrong about shit? And does having male characters who are also wrong about shit count as a mitigating factor? How should this be adjudicated?
The show picks and chooses the issues relevant to its fictional world, but when the First Lady champions child labour reform, the show proclaims it a non-issue via Seaborn. The implication: lady Bartlet was letting her motherly nature make a mountain out of a mole hill.
You're cherry picking here. The point wasn't that child labor was a non-issue. The point was that she wasn't schooled on politics. It was also, dramatically, a way to get to the "first fight in the Oval Office" angle. Now, if you object to child labor being used as merely a dramatic tool to the end of orchestrating a marital spat, you'd be on solid ground, but as far as trivializing the First Lady or the issue of child labor, that just wasn't what Sorkin was doing.
Sorkin in fact thinks very little of smart women.
I honestly never would've pegged you as part of the PC police, but Jesus Christ with some of these. Can you still stand by this unbelievably wrong statement after watching this?
I almost threw something at the screen at the end of this clip
I'm sure that reaction makes perfect sense to you but I'll never understand it.
The effect of all this is that dramatically, Sorkin's women are boring.
Literally the last word I'd use to describe them.
Letting women be women might sound odd to our male-world attuned ears
Be honest,
Ricky. You chose
Death Proof of all the possible examples just to piss me off, just to get that extra little bit of indignation out of me. Moving past my rage, why is it that, to your ears, Sorkin's female characters aren't "feminine" and since they sound just like his male characters are being robbed of their gendered essence yet Tarantino's women presumably
are "feminine" and
don't sound just like the
Reservoir Dogs team and thus are
not being robbed of their gendered essence?
All that said, I love the show. It's full of this stuff, but there's tons to admire. Like you, Whitford is probably my favorite person on it.
It also freaked me out when Matthew Perry showed up. Seeing him and Whitford together pre-
Studio 60 was really weird. I loved Perry's big episode, though. That's got to be tough just jumping into a well-oiled Sorkin machine like that and having to do so much heavy lifting but he smoked that episode.
I wached The Hustler and really enjoyed it but I couldn't help but compare to The Cincinatti Kid which i thought was way better.
It's going back a ways for me now, but I definitely felt the same way comparing the two.
The thing about CK is how cool Edward Robinson is in it. There's a great word of mouth build up to their game, and it means something for them to play. Also conceptually, poker is understood you don't play for just one hand. You play until you're out of money. Pool is an easy game to be cinematic, since there is a definitive winner and loser at the end. That's why it's a little hard to give a shit that Eddie ends up broke, after he beats Fats so much through their first duel. Who the fuck plays for 40 hours straight?
QFT for two old school SMDers
I finally got around to watching Jackie Brown.
I absolutely adore that movie. Keep going back to it over the years and I expect you'll find it grows on you, especially if you're already a big Tarantino fan.
Reservoir Dogs and
True Romance are in-your-face, they're intense and they grab you right off the bat.
Pulp Fiction is too cool not to like, and the characters are so awesome that you just have to go along for the ride.
Jackie Brown is definitely different. It's more laid back, it has a different atmosphere that slowly draws you in until you realize you're completely enveloped in that world. And, as the video you posted confirms, the soundtrack plays a huge part in creating the vibe for that movie.
It's a weird way to describe a movie, but if I had to pick a single word to describe
Jackie Brown, I'd pick
smooth.
I hope you die slowly.
youre out of your fucking mind man