Anticipate LA LA LAND, the musical starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/3b02f4d46e38f0b1b9d397617fd1f6024cdb2d65/0_219_3600_2159/master/3600.jpg?w=620&q=55&auto=format&usm=12&fit=max&s=d4366dbb58c65b738a83f6a3ec28092e

Written and directed by Whiplash's Damien Chazelle, it stars Gosling as a struggling jazz purist and Stone as an aspiring actress/writer, both in El Lay.

I'm still sorting my thoughts, but this admixture of Demy and An American in Paris has charm, and the actors have never looked better.

writ/dir is a friend of max!

i skipped Whiplash but liked his first film i think. (A much lower-budgeted musical.)

whiplash was terrible tbh, but gosling and stone had genuine chemistry in crazy stupid love so i'm cautiously optimistic

i fucking hated WHIPLASH, i have a physical, gut-level aversion to Miles Teller and his mouthy douchebag ways. but also the depiction of a music teacher as a sadistic drill master and that absurd car crash at the end just put me over the edge. anyway this looks cool, i love Singin' in the Rain so hoping for the best.

it stars Gosling as a struggling jazz purist

Is there any other kind?

there's woody allen

ethan hawke, mayhaps

I couldn't tell whether casting John Legend as the sellout pushing Gosling into a pop direction was Chazelle's idea of a joke.

I'm not fond of Whiplash either.

Nick Pinkerton:

ver since the movie musical’s decline as a popular form, there have been periodic attempts to revive it. Some of these have been artistically successful, others have been Les Misérables (2012), but almost all have conceded to the fact that they don’t make them like they used to because you can’t make them like they used to, and that the musical needs to exploit new forms, new technologies, and new subject matter in order to reach a new public. In this La La Land is an exception—it doesn’t want to bridge the last sixty-odd years so much as pretend they never happened, to return to an imagined Eden of old-fashioned razzle-dazzle and audience innocence. This is perhaps the film’s best claim to contemporality: while it styles itself as a throwback, its revanchism is very much of the moment. And if I really believed that such neo-naivete was necessary to save the beset, beleaguered movies, I’d just as soon see them go peacefully

Drudge and Bret Easton Ellis hated it. May sound like an obvious statement, but they were both looking forward to it.

Former NY Times music critic Ben Ratliff is critical of the movie

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2016/12/la_la_land_s_clich_d_confused_depiction_of_jazz.html

The film doesn’t deal with race, probably because there aren’t a lot of people of color in it, aside from musicians and others seen in passing. Nor is it any kind of referendum on jazz: The main duet numbers have nothing to do with it. There are many clichés in speech and thought in La La Land, a movie that keeps shifting between high camp and inspirational romance. But a cliché, repeated often enough, can come to seem like a truth. I’ve met a few musicians who could be caricatured into Sebastian. It would be a drag if he became as real and commonplace as the joke about hating jazz.

http://pitchfork.com/news/70544-rostam-criticizes-la-la-lands-problematic-narrative-lack-of-queer-characters/

Rostam (ex-Vampire Weekend) tweets:

“Black people invented jazz but now we need a white man to come save/preserve it? Sorry, this narrative doesn't work for me in 2016.”

In another tweet, he criticized the lack of queer characters in the film, saying, “La La Land didn't have a single gay person in it #NotMyLosAngeles.”

i dunno i heard there were a slew of sodomite extras

I wasn't expecting to dig this, but I thought it was really good, and the ending was one of the best things I saw at the movies this year. Really incredible. Made me sob.

My review.

the transgender bathroom scene was so poignant

Pinkerton's take is hot fire.

this chazelle fellow seems to be shaping up as the hot new enemy of good film

Jason Reitman still lives

From Pinkerton:

Ever since the movie musical’s decline as a popular form, there have been periodic attempts to revive it. Some of these have been artistically successful,

Which?

Dancer in the Dark, ugh.

various Disney

South Park
Scott Pilgrim, kinda

Oh right I always forget that Disney stuff counts. The Disney Musical is really a genre unto itself though

this chazelle fellow seems to be shaping up as the hot new enemy of good film

It's early yet. I hated Whiplash way worse than this one.

ah ok! i detested whiplash so he'll have to go some to win me around

I hated Whiplash too, this is so much better than that misery of a movie

Which?

Velvet Goldmine

Everyone Says I Love You is p charming

Chicago was occasionally okay but mostly garbage

If you're including film adaps of Broadway, then i quite like Burton's Sweeney Todd. But that's not what LLL is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_musical_films_by_year#2000s

Slim pickings once animated movies are taken off the table.

Ever since the movie musical’s decline as a popular form

As erstwhile ilxor KJB could tell you, this happened a long time ago, beginning no later than the early '60s probably. Fosse's film version of Cabaret is certainly post-decline, a revisionist musical.

I need to find an article I read several years about the making of Star and Darling Lili

wait, this is by the Whiplash guy? he seriously needs to stop making jazz movies.

(i have not seen this jazz movie yet but it sounds cornball)

his first feature, which has been relegated to nonexistence because it had no famous actors in it, was also a musical.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJUzALdI--k

both recent Muppet films were great, with actual memorable songs, esp Muppets Most Wanted

I'm generally fine w recursive Hollywood musicals but this looks so fucking dire, the modern version of H'wood slapping itself on the back for its rich history or whatever (cf. The Artist) is just gross

la la land is strange to me because it takes Miles Teller's vices from Whiplash (ridiculous ideas of what pure art is, unwillingness to ever collaborate with anyone, streak of self-punishment) and portrays them as virtues

this is definitely better made than the artist fwiw, it has some interesting moments and i think gosling in particular is really good, particularly given what the material he has to sell. but it's pretty far from great imho

What I find weird about this movie (having not seen it) is that it's garnering all these accolades but no one seems to find the music noteworthy.

la la land is strange to me because it takes Miles Teller's vices from Whiplash (ridiculous ideas of what pure art is, unwillingness to ever collaborate with anyone, streak of self-punishment) and portrays them as virtues

― intheblanks

if the movie had goofed on his seriousness I would've had a better time.

or if the movie acknowledged that there are plenty of jazz musicians under the age of 45 that make up local scenes, including in the very city where the movie takes place!

aw cmon everyone knows there's no modern LA jazz scene!

Muppets Most Wanted might get my vote for the best musical of the last 10 years, truly.

i've learned on ILX this week that the ppl Hitchcock called "the Plausibles" now expect hardcore realism from James Bond movies and musicals.

well, we've got people whom Hillary called the Deplorables expecting steel jobs and black lungs from Donald Trump.

ha, morbius maybe otm. fwiw though i think it is worth noting how the film views pure artistic expression as a solely individualistic act--the way that emma stone's big thing is a one-woman show, the multiple times that everything goes dark except for a spotlight on one of the two main characters, the ways in which they continually refuse collaboration

in sharp contrast to say, 'the young girls of rochefort,' where people's artistic dreams and how they express them are in continuous interaction with their community

excellent points

for all the comparisons i'm seeing to the demy musicals, i think that chazelle's ideas limit him a lot more, and not necessarily in interesting ways

re: solely individualistic act, LLL is the ultimate h.s. theater geek fantasy

amazing quote from the wiki about Miles Teller being passed over for Gosling:

Teller was offered to play the leading role by Chazelle when the two were in the midst of filming Whiplash in 2013. He even passed up the chance to star in War Dogs because the film would have conflicted with La La Land (although he later went on to star in the film). But one day, Teller got a call from his agent saying that Chazelle had told Lionsgate that he no longer thought Teller was "creatively right for the project" and that the director was moving on without Teller's involvement. Teller responded by texting Chazelle "what the fuck, bro?"

Teller when Chazelle wins best director next February:

http://images.gawker.com/19hd1ile09il9gif/c_fit,fl_progressive,q_80,w_636.gif

What I find weird about this movie (having not seen it) is that it's garnering all these accolades but no one seems to find the music noteworthy.

this is, as they say, a red flag

many xps I quite liked hedwig

I figured that the scene where Gosling takes Emma Stone to the jazz club and frenetically mansplains jazz to her was self-aware and as real a character as I could imagine. I laughed out loud in the theater.

That whole scene, more or less

Gosling: Listen! Jazz. Jazz. Jazz. Jazz.
Stone: Kenny G?
Gosling: Listen!

Like all these criticisms that the movie wasn't woke enough are ridiculous. If he wasn't a white doofus stumbling through the "purity of jazz," it would be an entirely different movie.

fwiw, the music isn't that bad or even particularly unmemorable in this; it's got much bigger problems

i really liked "City of Stars," i had fun plunking out the melody when i got home from the theater.

xp whiney otm, i thought Rostam's (since when is he a one-name celebrity?) criticisms were absurd, the thing I kept thinking during the movie was "Make America Great Again," it's a nostalgia piece, and it wouldn't make any sense for either Stone or Gosling's characters to be anything but navel-gazing caricatures of old Hollywood icons.

how many Rostams are there who traded a band for solo oblivion?

yes I think (ex-vampire weekend) clarifies things in a way that whatever his first name is would not for virtually anybody

lol surname apparently

this is ok but only ok. emma stone is the best thing in it as usual with movies she is in. nice color palette. I don't necesarilly demand that all films address race and gender, but I did think "white people movie" 1000000x while watching it

that ending though :'(

I liked this movie. I suppose there are ways it could have been "better," but it would be a different movie. I've seen a few criticisms of, say, the choreography or singing or whatever, but I liked the amateurishness. I even liked the underpopulatedness of its Los Angeles, which helped give it some of its dreamy qualities.

la la land is strange to me because it takes Miles Teller's vices from Whiplash (ridiculous ideas of what pure art is, unwillingness to ever collaborate with anyone, streak of self-punishment) and portrays them as virtues

― intheblanks

Re collaboration, the 2 of them were at one point encouraging one another to achieve their solo artistic dreams (do the one person show, open a club-albeit with a band) but then he suddenly decides that they can't achieve these soloish artistic dreams together and simultaneously be in love at the same time. Ultimately their artistic successes (his club with house band, her acting as a movie star) do involve some collaboration but with others though. A flawed take on art and love imho.

Iirc overhears her discussion with her mom, who implies she is disappointed that he has no steady income. So he takes the big income sell out while she works on the low income pipe dream. By the end the roles have reversed, with her the famous movie star, and him the impoverished artist. There's a nice symmetry to it.

Nah

i liked the ending well enough. it was nice to see a romance that didn't end up with the principals together and it was still ok.

I dunno. Ryan Gosling wasn't nude enough for my taste imo

ty for warnings that this is not great, mainstream press had me potentially hyped

Muppets Most Wanted and the two eps I've seen of Crazy Ex-GF are delightful but that list is p horrifying

The Artist comparisons are very apt I think. Like The Artist, watching this movie in theaters is probably a completely different experience than watching it at home (I saw The Artist at The Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor, an old school movie house built in 1928, so I imagine I remember the film more fondly than most people). I believe La La Land is better filmmaking, and probably stands on its own merits a bit better. The opening sequence was a spectacular piece of choreography and I was invested enough in Gosling and Stone's performances and their characters' relationship for the ending montage to hit me like a ton of bricks.

Somebody on twitter said something to the effect of "La La Land is as much about jazz as The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is about umbrellas"

It's winning a bunch of Golden Globes. Ugh

Hollywood loves musicals, except when it comes to making them any more. Critics love musicals, too, and rarely get the chance to love them nowadays. So they go overboard when a halfway decent musical gets made.

“Damien Chazelle and his La La Land star Ryan Gosling are officially set to reteam on Chazelle’s Neil Armstrong biopic First Man,” reports Variety‘s Justin Kroll.

http://variety.com/2016/film/news/damien-chazelle-ryan-gosling-neil-armstrong-biopic-first-man-1201949407/

weird as hell -- no wait, more guaranteed awards attention!

i mean, i knew as much about Neil Armstrong at age 7 as i could, and given his historic achievement i think the fact that his sparkling Ohio-guy military personality resulted in no biopic til 50 years later speaks volumes....

with J.K. Simmons as the crusty but benign NASA head

well yeah, he's too old for Buzz Aldrin alas

Hollywood loves musicals, except when it comes to making them any more. Critics love musicals, too, and rarely get the chance to love them nowadays. So they go overboard when a halfway decent musical gets made.

Muppets Most Wanted bombed at the box office and won a grand total of 0 awards

i mean, i knew as much about Neil Armstrong at age 7 as i could, and given his historic achievement i think the fact that his sparkling Ohio-guy military personality resulted in no biopic til 50 years later speaks volumes....

― Supercreditor (Dr Morbius), Monday, January 9, 2017 5:09 PM (six hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah wait a minute wtf why are there no Armstrong biopics

generally speaking history is full of incredibly boring heroes you've heard so much about that an original, entertaining narrative about them is basically a fool's errand

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_depictions_of_George_Washington#Films

i'm not proud of it but for uninteresting personal reasons i wish ill on this filmmaker

so, v pleased to hear about the armstrong biopic

generally speaking history is full of incredibly boring heroes you've heard so much about that an original, entertaining narrative about them is basically a fool's errand

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_depictions_of_George_Washington#Films

― The beaver is not the bad guy (El Tomboto), Monday, January 9, 2017 11:30 PM (eighteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

morbs blew my mind and then u split it in two

this was disappointing. really clumsy story - so many things were so abrupt and unearned. Like what was the point of giving Mia's character a boyfriend that she dumps within 2 minutes of his first screen appearance. Why couldn't you have just made her single, avoided the really clumsy dinner scene (which lazily suggested "omg they're too posh and out of touch with real people unlike Sebastian"), and found another excuse for her to be late which would have achieved the same goal.

music wasn't very memorable either, outside the main theme. I did like the ensemble scenes, though. Seb's character was insufferable for a while though I almost applauded when John Legend's character put him in his place.

There's just weird incongruities in the character too, I mean Gosling's character doesn't mind taking shitty gigs playing 80s covers at parties to help pay the bills, but suddenly takes a moral stand about the purity of jazz when offered an actual gig that involves getting to play something closer to (if not exactly) what he likes and earn a comfy living. The overheard phone convo scene was so cliched (who really has convos like that within earshot of their significant others, seems like an 'only in movies' thing), and the conflict just kind of arrives out of nowhere. and Mia seems to be unaware of his long term commitment, like she thought he could go on tour one year and afford to buy a nightclub? It was just weird, the whole "I thought you were an ARTIST" stand that she takes when she's been auditioning for completely garbage television shows that the film itself is leering at, that she would have taken without hesitation.

Relies way too much on the novelty of being a movie musical, and it doesn't help that few people in the damn thing can actually sing.

I didn't hate it though - it did have some nice visuals, and I'm glad they didn't completely go retro with it, but I feel like if a musical like this opened on Broadway, nobody would give a shit about it. Style over substance isn't inherently bad (Broadway's "In the Heights" was an example of that but I loved it), but I didn't really connect with the characters so the final scene didn't really have the payoff it should have.

O well, I paid two bucks - thanks T-Mobile Tuesdays.

(I did love Whiplash though so *shrug*)

with J.K. Simmons as the crusty but benign NASA head

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, January 9, 2017 5:10 PM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"OK Armstrong, let's try this again. 3, 2, 1, blastoff."

[cuts off launch]

"Too high. Again, 3, 2, 1, blastoff."

[cuts off launch again]

"My altitude. Again, 3, 2, 1, blastoff."

[throws chair at Armstrong]

After watching Whiplash and reading about this I think I just find Chazelle's take on music & artistic pursuits pretty juvenile and distasteful.

I was a little bothered by the film's occasional insinuations that the Golden Age (*mimes jerk-off motion*) perfected things and we've since "lost our purity" re: the arts

Why? The movie is proof positive.

i'm not proud of it but for uninteresting personal reasons i wish ill on this filmmaker

― difficult listening hour, Tuesday, 10 January 2017 04:35 (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

be proud. the guy's obviously an artless menace

is this in it? a Green Velvet musical would be beautiful actually

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-NX3OFlKAE

for all the slightly dumb 'white people movie' stuff ive seen people say ('its not like real LA!', 'its trying to resurrect old white hollywood!'), i was surprised by how many non white people fill its scenes, one after the other.

the stupidest/funniest part of it might be john legends character sitting with gosling one minute, and giving him a slightly annoyed 'this is how it is' talk about modernising JAZZ, then the next thing we see, how this 'modern jazz' band has become, a bruno mars type group. the jump is almost too obvious. the jazz purist/kenny g convo was funny but almost TOO archetypal in terms of conversations most ppl have about jazz, but i give chazelle some credit for making two popular films in a row where jazz plays a key presence.

chazelle is a pretty rough around the edges director when it comes to narrative/character, hes not someone with a delicate touch, so i liked the balance in this between old hollywood musical unreality, and the rougher sort of alt-musical stuff weve seen in the last decade, though it didnt go quite far enough.

but i give chazelle some credit for making two popular films in a row where jazz plays a key presence.

Meanwhile, Don Cheadle had to partially crowdfund his Miles Davis biopic, and even then the studio wouldn't put up a cent unless a white character was written into it (the crux/cause of the awfulness of the story). And after all that, the studio didn't do shit to promote it.

It's understandable, though; Miles is no Buddy Rich.

i mean, obviously, that was dire (and casting ewan mcgregor, of all people), but still, i give ANYONE credit for making two popular films in 2016 where jazz is a key theme (and yes, even if the main character/jazz musician has to be a white dude... though why this surprises anyone, i dont know. in chazelle's favour however, the male lead in his first indie feature was a black actor, whether as a pre-emptive atonement for what he assumed he would have to do later, i dont know, but hey, it is there), even if don cheadle cant get his miles biopic made the way he deserves to get it made.

in 2036, i fully expect there to be a new version of la la land with the gosling character a white hip hop backpack nerd.

im going to see LLL again, though do wish it didnt have the obvious 'look! homage!' moments, glorious though they might be. i wish they just repurposed it all, and made it of the moment. but oh well, hopefully there will be other musicals to follow.

I do love that Mia's family literally surfaces only long enough to be cheap plot devices

I'm surprised more people aren't talking about how good the music is, tbh! How it skips over the last thirty years of megamusical history and instead successfully attempts to revive the classic style, how there are a scant six songs and they're all great.. beyond that I thought the movie was trash but I def was impressed with the composer

video: what does it owe to Scorsese's NYNY?

https://www.fandor.com/keyframe/tale-two-musicals

xp I agree the music (except probably the first song) is surprisingly excellent, and it's a pity the staging isn't remotely in the same league

thus was cute the music was shit the jazz stuff was a joke but it was a love story and i loved them and it was funny

all in all actors in a musical arent as good as singers/dancers in a musical but the acting is better thats that

i think the music fuckin blows

two memorable songs, the rest rote

City of Stars is good

thus was cute the music was shit the jazz stuff was a joke but it was a love story and i loved them and it was funny

all in all actors in a musical arent as good as singers/dancers in a musical but the acting is better thats that

otm

i do not like city of stars its plodding and rg's voice sounds like a fat baby

yea his vocals are shit but it's a nice melody

I haven't seen this but Gosling's vocals on "City of Stars" sound like the dying HAL 9000 singing "Daisy."

Does ‘La La Land’ Get Jazz, or Exploit It?
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/25/arts/music/la-la-land-damien-chazelle-jazz.html?_r=0

i dont think this article quite justifies the hate for la la land based on the premise that it tackles its biggish jazz question poorly. is JL's keith really that much of a 'threat'? i get that gosling doesnt like him, but yknow, wynton marsalis didnt care that much for what miles davis was doing half the time either. my main issue is that JL's band in the movie a) have a terrible song b) the terrible song isnt really jazz, not even by fusion standards, which renders the what-is-jazz tension in the movie more or less totally moot, and makes the frisson not so much frisson, as a gigantic gulf, making it far too easy for non jazz savvy ppl watching it to leave the cinema even less informed than those who partake in the usual 'isnt jazz kenny g? whats so bad about kenny g jazz?' conversations.

but i still dont find it 'offensive' per se. white purists like gosling are there in every black music genre. the films main flaw might not be making this phenom of the white black music purist explicit, but then, la la doesnt make much of any of the 'issues' that are in there.

Yeah, I really am getting tired of this criticism tbh considering jazz exists in La La Land as the fantasyland of a solipsistic obsessive. It's like asking if High Fidelity gets Brian Eno right

And also, it's not really that hard to imagine that some depressive, starving Thelonious Monk stan might just stay in his weird little lane instead of constantly running into Kamasi Washington and Thundercat at Amoeba like when the Red Hot Chili Peppers walked into Moe's Tavern

we want chilly willy!

whiney otm omg

ppl acting like this movie is called the history of jazz ffs

yeah. the movie was mediocre for other reasons

Enh, the music is amazing, you guys are insane. I'm not just talking about the songs, I mean the whole score, especially the ending fantasy sequence.. and I even liked-loved the songs, at least three of them I could still hum today after one viewing, and Emma Stone's audition song was REALLY good, idk

Me I'm allergic to all musicals since, like, West Side Story-- occasional Disney and Sondheim aside-- and this was the first time I thought "oh wow somebody is treating The American Musical as this anachronistic form that peaked some 70 years ago, instead of this grab-bag of opera/rock/Hair-Chorus Line-Chicago-Elton-Webber-Schönberg post-modernity that is insulting to everything and everyone". After years of hearing "oh you MUST see Billy Elliott/The Producers/Book Of Mormon/Hairspray/Kinky Boots/Wicked/Hamilton" and feeling nihilist and angry afterward and basically swearing off the genre entirely, I was really into this thing. But I'm like.. comparing it to other musicals. I'm comparing it to Les Miz and Cats and whatever

i feel like a lot of these but what-about-the-jazz complainers a) dont really know much about jazz (SORRY) b) just hate the film and need to pin their irrational hate onto something that makes them feel they have a genuine, worthwhile cause to explain their hate c) just want to dig their heels into the ground about something cos its such a big deal release right about now. ashley clark, who i usually find has tons of interesting stuff to say, seems to take umbrage with the idea of JL as being a 'threat' (is he? really? to what?) but i just see it as two people who love a genre but have v different views for it. like robert glasper for example vs kamasi washington (who is great, but im not 100% sure he is doing anything 'new', apart from introduce a lot of younger, non-jazz ppl to a certain strand of the music). this whole thing about chazelle/gosling supposedly depicting a model of jazz as ossified i think also is a problem as it almost suggests that 'traditional jazz' is actually dead, and that no young players have an interest in keeping it going.

like, if there were a million amazing jazz innovators taking the music in hitherto undiscovered directions in 2017, that the film was denying and ignoring, i could see the issue.

here you guys go

https://twitter.com/1000timesyes/status/825017398973562881

1000 times no!

saw this trailer when i went to see Arrival - a movie that really GOT the 4AD label in a big way - and thought it looked terrible. like one of those Baz things i avoid. but watching the trailer i figured it would win awards. mostly i am just really excited to see the final Resident Evil movie this weekend which i also saw a trailer for that night. talk about an underrated director! though his three musketeers steampunk movie sucked....

anyway, that trailer had MUST TO AVOID all over it. i wonder if ewan mcgregor gets sad that his roles go to younger people now. he must be used to it.

lol whiney

I disagree tho, the film really wants the audience to think that Seb is a misunderstood talent, the whole big conflict was about him "giving up on his dreams" or whatever, this a isn't High Fidelity-style "look and lol at the adult baby" movie

i disagree for sure. i def got the feeling they were dreamers whose ambitions outweighed their actual talents, which i think is telegraphed by the fact that Emma and Gosling are two actors who can't since like Idina Menzel or whoever

i do love that her movie break comes after staging a poorly received glorified Fringe Festival one woman show

wonder what robert townsend thought of her screentest with the lines 'no YOU be trippin jamal'

i expected more thinkpieces for that line then digging into the cultural appropriation well re: The Jazz Question

idina menzel is awful tbh

fgti thats interesting because i really do think we have a clear path to watch this and consider it a lol @ the adult baby story!

xp the thinkpiece for that line was lol dangerous minds reference i mean cmon

I do love the scene where Ryan is jamming w/ his new band and suddenly the electronic/"impure" sounds start up and he stops playing, paralyzed, as if he's seen a live gorilla

never seen DM so that passed me by haha

darragh i didn't want to fp you for the Idina Menzel dis but i feel like my daughter would never forgive me if i didn't

but im sure someone could get some thinkpiece mileage out of how la la land illustrates the problem with hollywood casting agents in 2017

the best routine in the whole film btw is ES dancing to I Ran

xxxpost well it was more that subgenre really, as after DM, a lot of similar movies came out afterwards riding the same wave

she sure lived in a nice place for being a barista

its fair nv i got a challop and its a price you own

she sounds bad and hits bad notes. its a thing.

well she did say she only hits 75% of her notes so

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3g4ekwTd6Ig

listen to the awful last ten seconds of this lol

la la land songs are actually slightly less boring than the kamasi album imo

i feel like a lot of these but what-about-the-jazz complainers a) dont really know much about jazz (SORRY) b) just hate the film and need to pin their irrational hate onto something that makes them feel they have a genuine, worthwhile cause to explain their hate c) just want to dig their heels into the ground about something cos its such a big deal release right about now. ashley clark, who i usually find has tons of interesting stuff to say, seems to take umbrage with the idea of JL as being a 'threat' (is he? really? to what?) but i just see it as two people who love a genre but have v different views for it.

i think this is otm. i did a little jazz policing about it upthread, and though i'm still mixed on the LLL, i think hitting the movie for the crime of not recognizing LA's existing jazz scene is beside the point. i think this review addresses people mistaking gosling as a chazelle stand-in pretty well. This glenn kenny post touches on some of the same points and I think is a good take.

every new thing i hear about this movie makes it sound horrible. popping in here to see multipage arguments on Gosling as jazz nazi isn't exactly helping that situation.

sounds like Birdman 2.0, all style, no substance, jazz as lazy signifier of the authentic

thing is this is good and birdman is great so more fool you for avoiding based on people hanging shitty arguments they wanted to have on ninety minutes of entertainment

I have no idea what this movie is about.

butts

its 10 times better than birdman. and there is substance there. just dont expect it to be perfect. its like a slightly ramshackle (both in terms of the routines, the dancing, the characterisation and plot) indie musical with a studio budget.

and if anyone wants to make a white saviour argument for a new oscar hyped movie, lion is a far easier, and much, much, more deserving target.

It's better than Birdman but it's longer.

having trouble with LLL:

http://girishshambu.blogspot.com/2017/02/the-disenchantments-of-la-la-land.html

Better than "Birdman" (aka "Acting: The Movie") for sure (and don't forget, that film's score was just a long jazz drum solo). Lotsa "LLL" complaints revolve around its depiction of Los Angeles, and not what is pretty clearly a mythical, fictional "Los Angeles." So, like, on that front, who the fuck cares? It's La La Land.

it's a lazily written love story that relies too much on its novelty and whose characters' motivations aren't well illustrated.

definitely not a terrible movie, just kind of "meh" and unworthy of its hype among movie musical stans

I already forgot about this movie. I've seen most of the nominees by this point (still haven't seen Fences) and Moonlight is the best by a massive margin

Saw this on a plane today, checked out about 5-6 times (should've been 30 mins shorter) but was fair if not corny.

In the end, I think a mashup of Mulholland Drive & Ghost World (replacing blues with jazz) would be an interesting endeavor. Discus.

challop from Peter Labuza on "LLL-related" oldies

@labuzamovies Feb 12
AT LONG LAST LOVE (Bogdanovich, 75) If you can't sing and dance, take from a great repertory and make sure and be silly about it. Delovely.

At Long Last Love is also a huge stinker. One of the most difficult things I've ever sat through.

which version did you see though? http://www.indiewire.com/2013/06/at-long-last-the-definitive-version-of-at-long-last-love-131623/

the New Beverly did a double bill!

http://thenewbev.com/program/february-11-la-la-land-at-long-last-love/

the Bluray obv went out of print -- it's $180 on Amazon

A bunch of good, a bunch of bad, and I'm surprised at how much this wasn't for me.

For how much parts of it is a Demy ripoff (or homage or whatever) he fucks up the point of Demy. In Cherbourg the couple is condemned to mediocre lifes because of the Algerian war. Here, their ambition gets in the way, but they still both end up incredibly succesful. There's way too little darkness - even when Demy was at his lightest, in Demoiselle, there was an axe-murderer lurking at the periphery. Oh, and Seb is an asshole the first time they meet, the second time they meet, when they break up, and kinda when they temporarily reconcile. He just seemed like an asshole, so I was almost disappointed when he got his dream night club at the end. Also, the best musical moment is when John Legend turns on the EDM beats, that felt dangerous and fun, where most of the music - while catchy - became way too similar after a while. And for a film that keeps talking about 'crowds' and how the town and world is constantly moving on without them, everyone but them sure seems pointless. Her roommates, her parents, even her husband gets no personality at all. And John Legend just disappears as well all of a sudden, even if it's presumably through playing with him that Seb can afford his new club? Oh, and his sister has only one speaking scene, and then the rest of her story is told through montage, right?

The cinematography is good, though. Old fashioned, but good.

Not to rewrite the film, but I think a lot of criticism could have been avoided if Legends character had been at the club in the final scene. He loves jazz, he is Sebs friend, if he'd been there smiling and bobbing along it would seem as if they'd managed to navigate a tricky world together, instead of him just being a sellout and Seb being a hero.

not sure if she really deserves an oscar for this, but emma stone IS really good here. i would give her an award for most likeable/charming hollywood actress if that was an award.

wonder what miles teller is thinking at the moment...

Probably thinking about how he voted for Moonlight.

Miles Teller‏ @Miles_Teller

Congrats to Moonlight!!
5:28 am · 27 Feb 2017

Zizek!

http://thephilosophicalsalon.com/la-la-land-a-leninist-reading/

zizek?

L_ L_ land

what's the point of the ending? why after a film of hollywood fantasy now draw the line between the imagined happily ever after and their compromised relationship? just skip the new husband and have the dream sequence be the "true" ending the movie is too long already.

Well, if you didn't have the imagined ending, the film wouldn't be so Singing in the Rain. And if you didn't have the true ending, the film wouldn't be so Umbrellas of Cherbourg. You can't just stop the film when you still have films to rip off.

the point of the ending is that it's Sad, mordy

"the point of" ffs mordy

What's the point of a Hollywood comedy musical romance

U asked that

What's the point of a part of the plot of one

Ffs man

Have you seen the film, darragh?

the ending undermines the Hollywood comedy musical romance-ness of the film so it makes sense to ask to what end was it deployed against the more obvious happy ending. is it just bc at the last moment the filmmakers had a failure of nerves and thought audiences wouldn't buy something without a downer ending? i.e. too saccharine sweet if they end up together? very superficially they develop once or twice the theme of their work superseding their relationship (when he misses her play for the photo shoot, when he is going to have to tour and be away from her, and maybe something she did too tho even tho i saw the film last night i can't remember) but hardly enough to necessitate that ending or give it any resonance. honestly it seems a bit like they didn't have much to say beyond the look and the music and so put it in for some unearned gravitas the tragedy of love lost.

their work superseding their relationship ... hardly enough to necessitate that ending or give it any resonance

it was this, it was enough to give it resonance (for me) ymmv. it was a good ending imo

SPOILEr, but there's kinda the same ending in Chazelle's first film. He likes that whole theme of what artists has to sacrifice. This time it seemed as something only Hollywood would find tragic: They get everything, fame, money, jazz bars, spouses, kids, they just don't get each other. Boo hoo. The really stupid thing is that it's modeled on Umbrellas of Cherbourg, where the melancholy comes from the Algerian War interfering. Not exactly the same.

Have you seen the film, darragh?

― Frederik B, Sunday, 16 April 2017 00:08 (forty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yep

It was good.

Thought the ending worked

Other endings would also have worked.

Not sure it can bear too much weight tho tbph

ya Mordy + Fred both overthinking it. it came as a surprise, but was emotionally v effective

Liked this so much I had to pause it and make popcorn.

I felt the ending was saying something like you can't have cake and eat it but you can always love the idea of cake and feast on the memory whenever you experience hollywood magic (or jazz?).

The opening number is so stupendous that I wish they'd somehow managed to end the film there. But I suppose a smile passing each other on the freeway would have been a bit impersonal.

Finally, the lighting was like an exact cross between Wong Kar-wai and the original Star Trek series.

I checked the DVD out of the public library and my wife and I watched it last night. I see most ilxors were pretty tepid about this one and I agree. Gosling and Stone were barely able to dance or sing at an acceptable level, let alone rise to the sort of magnetism of Astaire and Rogers. Other than Gosling being handsome, there was zero reason why Stone would have been attracted to him in the first place; he was an asshole. The tired theme of "fulfilling your dreams" was so exhausted in this as to be moribund.

otoh, it gave employment to a lot of dancers in the big production numbers. The candy-colored costumes, set design and cinematography were sort of fun, in a Disney kind of way. But its use of music was blandly safe and colorless, and no human motions were harmed in the making of this movie, because they were touched so lightly one never even noticed them.

Gosling and Stone did what they could with weak material. The script was at the heart of all the problems and Damien Chazelle's superficiality was all over the script.

er, human eee-motions