A thread for David Fincher's adaptation of GONE GIRL

Believability/plausibility are completely beside or even against the point of this movie

There are people that liked Side Effects?

this movie's going to be obnoxiously huge

also rosamund pike reminds me so much of laura linney

As high pedigree twisty pulp trash, yeah, I thought "Side Effects" was great. Given I've read "Gone Girl," and given the movie apparently doesn't deviate from the book much if at all, I would be absolutely shocked if the film were anything but high pedigree trash as well. I'm really curious now what folks think "Side Effects" did or got wrong that this film does not.

Believability/plausibility are completely beside or even against the point of this movie

Well, that's not entirely true. When you watch a prison escape movie, you don't want someone cutting their way out with a special laser saw they conveniently assembled. These sorts of stories are set in the real world, and while they do require some degree of suspension of disbelief, when your central conceit is essentially "how'd they do it?" you want the answer to be at least somewhat reasonable. The book I thought twisted and turned itself so much to demonstrate the apparent omniscient plan for every contingency super-genius deviousness of its protagonist that it got a little silly and fridge logic started to overtake the plot (at least in my experience). Has nothing to do with enjoying yourself at the movies, though!

he sound was kinda crappy in the flashback-y early scenes especially one, in the bar when they meet first time. was almost incomprehensible at points. some people are suggesting (on IMDB etc) that it's *intentionally* bad in that scene!

noticed this too, especially when Aflac spoke.

this is the legit clip i was talking about. still sounds a bit muffled even here but in the cinema it was as good as inaudible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7z45e-XIVQ

gaaaaah I have to look at Aflac's face

well this is kinda weird. http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/goldstandard/la-et-mn-gone-girl-academy-oscars-20141004-column.html

I'm not sure I've ever seen something like that before: a mainstream newspaper piece on muted snap-judgement reactions to a movie that I hadn't even realized had Oscar buzz. Talk about "so what?" The Oscars are lame enough. Who cares what some prospective Oscar voters think about a the Oscar-worthiness of a movie? That piece read like the sort of thing that runs when people are trying to sink a movie that's already been nominated.

Tyler Perry for Best Supporting Actor or gtfo

author's twitter bio

Los Angeles Times writer, covering movies and television. When the leaves change color, focus turns to the Oscars.

plus, Josh: it's the L.A. Times.

Oscar odds:

http://i62.tinypic.com/f53vid.png

Ugh, Unbroken. Trailer looked like boilerplate then I saw it was directed by Angelina Jolie.

Written in part by the Coens tho I think?

Fincher NPR interview. Totally forgot about Bennifer et al.

He's been through this, yeah. Ben is extremely bright and he's been through situations that are very similar to this, and he has a, he has a great sense of humor and great wit about what this situation is and how frustrating it is, and he was able to, obviously, draw on that stuff to be able to portray somebody who, you know, puts one foot in his mouth and then goes another two days and puts the other one. And that was, I think, sort of a key to empathizing, and I don't know that it made the character more likeable, because he is kind of frustrating in a certain way, but he's very human.

A shame that The Boiler Room aside he's never accepted a screen role that flatters his intelligence.

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