The Lives of Others - (Das Leben der Anderen): Microphone? What microphone?

croupier i guess my point is that it's easy to praise something hypothetical... which is why this kind of crit gets on my nerves.

personally i thought it was kind of cheap to show weisler getting it on with a fat, old prostitute; maybe he would never have turned if he'd had access to the a-list?

Is the objection here that The Lives of Others is cheezeball? The ending too unreservedly (undeservedly) upbeat, the puppy-dog Stasi officer too sentimentally deified?

Okay, I can see that, but a lot of the other objections sound misplaced.

Fat prostitute was a really nice gal.

Totalitarian regimes: Want to hold onto your empire? Keep your shock troops satisfied with only the most top-notch booty

of course its easy to praise the hypothetical, slocki! No reason for us to make it harder on ourselves and pretend that what we're getting is as good as it could be (unless we're getting paid too, which I'm not yet).

without financial compensation there's no reason to claim satisfaction with the current cinematic output

the other thing is you kind of need a character to change in some way to make a drama that's effective at all. i guess you could dramatize nice guy into faceless bad guy. maybe that would be more interesting. but if you start with him as a soulless agent of totalitarianism there isn't really any way to go but up.

its not important that films teach a lesson, just that evoking how oppressive systems work would be more interesting (feel free to disagree or give examples of Oscar winning films that do this) than another film about how light always shines through.

It's a documentary, but The Sorrow & the Pity does this, to a degree. And Black Book does a good job of showing how totalitarian systems need double-crosses, whores, and champagne to work (for a while).

without financial compensation there's no reason to claim satisfaction with the current cinematic output

-- da croupier, Thursday, February 14, 2008 4:53 PM (44 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

?

i guess you could dramatize nice guy into faceless bad guy

that's why i brought up hbo!! not that i've actually seen the wire yet. but my gut reaction is that this happens more often on television.

i'm just saying that one shouldn't pretend they can't imagine movies better than what they're getting out of principle alone, slocki.

like when some critics talk about how if you HAVE to see a movie this week, then see movie x. As if anyone other than someone getting paid to see movies every week HAS to.

i only ever see critics say 'if you ONLY see 1 movie this week/month/decade"

those imdb sum-ups often have some hack saying "its the best thing out this week" about some modest romcom or whatever

ah ok

speaking of oppressive systems and faceless bad guys: the critics seem to like "definitely maybe"!!

It's the best romcom since Annie Hall, apparently!!!

And that's a lotta romcoms.

it's the princess bride meets when harry met sally.

not a big ryan reynolds fan myself.

The Third Man would have been in the running if only they had kept the original ending where Joseph Cotten goes off with Alida Valli.

for best romcom?

I love that the "ryan reynolds: more than wilder!" article in ew actually had him holding his chin and looking to the side thoughtfully.

i loved his cameo in harold & kumar but worry about all this heavy lifting

more than VAN wilder, in case you thought they meant gene.

And it turns out the hotel porter wasn't really dead, he just got a little carried away playing hide and seek with his kid!

for best romcom?
yes

more like the third wheel.

Last shot is the ghost of Harry Lime smiling down on them from the top of the Prater Riesenrad.

That's the Vienna Big Wheel to you.

this thread has that problem where only your serious movie motherfuckers went and saw it.

I went and saw it.

ok well it also has that problem then.

well i tried to get a discussion started about east german prostitutes but nobody went there with me

well the one in this film isn't going anywhere good before the wall comes down but as far as that's concerned we could just as well as be talking about that clooney/soderbergh noir number

and you know not to holla but I couldn't give a shit less for a minute about how the "stasi creep" is "sanctified" or whatever, lots of antiheros have gotten by with much much more in the way of redemption for a lot less sand

i think part of it is that most brits and americans know jack shit about east germany and so this film functions as a de facto history lesson whether it likes it or not; it fails in this regard i think, but it's not fair to look at it only from that pov

my biggest complaint: no musical numbers

which is where "top secret" really pulls away from the pack

this movie really needed Omar Sharif.

And Hildegard Knef.

most brits and americans know jack shit about east germany and so this film functions as a de facto history lesson

right, and I think it's especially cheeky to complain about the treatment of the protagonist here when like 2/3rds of the entire anglophone cinematic tradition is about those colorful rapey blood-soaked sociopaths who built our respective countries into what they are today, america esp. with all them westerns (also I finally watched gangs of ny lol)

i complain about those too!

though the usual western trope is the exact reverse, right? the law-abiding man of peace who circumstances force to become a killer in order to protect his family/town/etc

"You are a good-looking boy. You have big, broad shoulders. But he is a man. And it takes more than big, broad shoulders to make a man."

right, and I think it's especially cheeky to complain about the treatment of the protagonist here when like 2/3rds of the entire anglophone cinematic tradition is about those colorful rapey blood-soaked sociopaths who built our respective countries into what they are today, america esp. with all them westerns (also I finally watched gangs of ny lol)

what the fuck does this have to with the fact that the protagonist's evolution into a Rilke-loving quasi-softie is convincing?

I saw it. I liked it, though I had a little more trouble with the believability of Dreyman, rather than Wiesler.

fukk all y'all i CRIED REAL TEARS at the end of this

so this is showing on the big screen here soon - worth seeing? didn't want to go through the thread for fear of spoilers. should be noted I'm not a big fan of calculated shmaltz (I did cry in theaters during A.I. though)

it's pretty good, looks really nice, and obv the historical setting is fascinating. but maybe leave 10 mins before the end if you don't like schmaltz :)

haha - not sure how the people I would be seeing it with would take it. I'll tell them I need to make some stock trades

yes it's good. leave when they stop steaming envelopes because maybe you are allergic to envelopes.

i liked this a lot, saw it in the cinema and really loved it until the end, which is pretty shit. But apart from that enjoyable.