A thread for David Fincher's adaptation of GONE GIRL

weird since the movie seemed to have a low level but steady contempt for his character.

tell you what, his episode of Inside The Actor's Studio was great; it was right in the depths of his Bennifer/Gigli era and he was self deprecating and smart and funny. he made out that Matt Damon was the brains of the operation when they were writing Good Will Hunting, while MD himself was sat a few feet away chuckling in the audience. some people have looked like right self-important windbags on that show but he really came across unexpectedly as a decent cat and i've liked him ever since.

I hold nothing against him as a person, and his ranting at Maher a couple days ago re his Islamophobia was great

I saw that "Actor's Studio" ep at the time, and, yeah, thought the same. He also looked like he'd had a couple in the green room.

Amazed at the hype surrounding this. I thought it was okay; it starts off very badly, improves, then gleefully shoots off a cliff into complete ridiculousness. Fincher's underlit sombre mood sits awkwardly with the trashy pulp of the story, but he clearly loves this type of stuff. This is an improvement on Dragon Tattoo, but it still didn't completely work for me. Affleck is well cast, but Rosamund Pike steals it.

officially one of the '100 best films of all time' now according to IMDB rankings, at number 85. that's pretty nuts even for the already-nuts IMDB.

a fincher suspense with a zillion twists and turns, only inevitable

and probably compiled by men

Richard (Donnie Darko) Kelly has some thoughts:

GONE GIRL and EYES WIDE SHUT:
A Study of Psychopathy in the Heteronormative Patriarchal Occult

http://ronaldtaverner.tumblr.com/

continnuum of books every damn motherfucker reading on london underground: girl with the dragon etc -> 'One Day' by David Nicholls -> this
― intelligent, expressive males within the greater metropolitan (Bananaman Begins), Saturday, October 4, 2014 8:17 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

people be readin' popular books!

gonna see this tonight

i thought "side effects" was really pleasurable through the 2nd-to-last reel.

A shame that The Boiler Room aside he's never accepted a screen role that flatters his intelligence.
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, October 5, 2014 5:00 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the strange thing about affleck is that by all accounts he's a very smart guy but even when the character doesn't call for it, he comes across on screen as big boob!

My review was accused in a Facebook group that I will leave tonight of sending people on "an unsolicited neo-feminist guilt trip."

hahaha

i make sure to solicit my neo-feminist guilt trips

I need to feel guilty about something, whadayagot

Almost every new movie by the class of '99 auteur group of Fincher/PTA/Jonze/Payne/etc usually bounces into the IMDB top 250 immediately after it's released. But it's cool. Roughly half of them sink out of it with time.

payne, still? really?

yikes

And don't forget that every Chris Nolan movie is the greatest movie ever made for a couple weeks after they are released.

it hadn't occurred to me that those directors Eric named who attract the worst male brats in the universe all came of age/broke in '99.

From Alfred's review:

“He thinks Lolita is a cheese”

"He thinks velveeta is a cheese", I heard. A better gag, though I am not directly familiar with your American processed dairy products. Rest of the review otm.

You're probably right -- the sound mix was a problem for the first 30 minutes. The movie was American-processed product though.

I'm pretty sure NEBRASKA went top 250 for at least a little while.

Vel-vee-tah

Vel-vee-tah: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth.

"Look at this sandwich of ham."

velveeta mac n cheese is delicious go america

enjoyed that richard kelly piece though now i feel the need to rewatch EWS more than i do to see gone girl.

Like a lot of these things nowadays this fell apart in the tenth act

this maybe couldve worked as a black comedy, that's interesting if the novel reads that way, the movie def does not

like, i couldnt sufficiently suspend my disbelief that amy was a real person no matter how many childrens books her parents wrote abt her; also NPH's character is so convenient idk also not believable to me…1 of the more/most? compelling moments was after amy got robbed, like honestly wtf would she do had she not had him to call?

still had some fun stuff abt the media frenzy and it is mostly engaging, like keeps you thinking abt the holes w/ each twist, plus tyler perry was actually p good as the lawyer

oh and i think that early memory scene was supposed to have the dialogue mixed p low cuz 1). you really didnt need to hear what was being said, everything is in their body language, etc & 2) it was like adult-juno speak, something abt scrimshaws idk id actually like to see a trascription of that exchange cuz it was so fuckin bad

his student love interest is creating a bomb c.v. -- iCarly, blurred lines vid, entourage movie~

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Ratajkowski

one of the appealing things about the novel to me was the slow revelation that the story, which starts off more or less straight, is a nightmarish black comedy. I think the very very final twist is what sorta puts everything that came before in a new perspective (ie, that they are both totally fucking crazy, that relationships only make sense from the inside, etc),

yeah this is not a nightmarish black comedy

it's nightmarish

i thought it was pretty funny but not a black comedy, no

I mean----SPOILERS----

...it's a happy ending for the relationship at least!

still haven't seen the movie.

It was half an hour of everyone talking buffy the vampire slayer alternating with did the dead eyed sociopath lookin sociopath do a murder then the woman from the diary says that thing from the trailer then like an hour of a blue shirt adrift in a sea of orange and then the film starts

i was def going wtf at some of the early dialogue but i think i'm finding it useful to treat a lot of the movie as something that's highly artificial.

i read the early dialog as very self-conscious show-offy I Am [trying to convince myself that i am] A Literary New Yorker seduction crap.
she says "scrimshander" to all the guys. this one happens to pass that test, etc etc.
they're both casting a part and it's sort of clear that's only gonna take either of them so far.

i dunno i didn't think this was totally successful but it did what it set out to do and the last 45 minutes had some good chuckles. honestly I give it like 3 stars but somehow you guys are gonna make me defend it huh.

my review btw: http://humanizingthevacuum.wordpress.com/2014/10/04/pedantry-and-pulp-gone-girl/

Xp that reading works for the flashback scenes but in the 1st half hour EVERYONE talks like that. His sister, the cops - it really is like Juno or some shit. anyway this was fine it just went on for fucking ever

It certainly kept me guessing - when it was going to end!!!!

interesting that they changed this from the novel -- Later the police find boxes of violent pornography in Nick's woodshed, further implicating him.

There was porn in the shed in the book, too, which I thought just added to the surreal ridiculousness of the scene: presumed to have murdered his wife, Nick goes on a shopping spree and fills a shed with porn and golf clubs? At least that's how I remember it. Is this not in the movie?

This was ludicrous and fun and basically just a really well-shot Lifetime Original Movie. Rosamund Pike was fantastic. "Pulpy crime stories that don't quite hang together, anchored by a wonderful performance by the lead actress" is on its way to becoming a subgenre at this point (see also: the Fargo series, Broadchurch).

xp in the movie its just man cave shit, no porn

If you look carefully in the corner of the shed, you'll see Jonah Hill holding a bong.

the violent porn stuff struck me as kinda important in the book--too bad they left that out.

SPOILERS

In the book, it's made to look like he bought the golf clubs etc and the porn before Amy disappeared (and the particular porn she frames him with is meant to suggest that he's always been something of a sexual sadist).

I hated Pike's performance - it didn't even work as a metacommentary on how men can go all AAOOOOGAAA at the sight of a pretty lady. But then again I'm one of those people who likes reminding "cool girl" speech-quoters that said monologue is from the perspective of a psychopathic narcissist.

^^^^ this. Only a (male) director with such little talent for the erotic could have directed that performance.