whiplash

it's also a movie, and i believe we're led to assume that in the time jumps jk occasionally said something to them other than "not my tempo"

i respect if folks familiar with the drum world are distracted by implausibilities and technical errors, but imo the film wasn't trying to be a documentary about jazz drumming

Well yes, but saying "what type of high-level instructor focuses on chops" seems like a wholly absurd thing to say to me, given the exposure I've had by proxy to music performance programs and the people who have gone through them

I think goole's point was, what kind of high-level instructor focuses on chops to the exclusion of every other aspect of music instruction?

Isn't that kind of the point though? He's not really a very good "instructor".

exactly. he takes a crop of students already good enough to attend a conservatory, and puts them through a death march, believing this will give them the discipline to succeed (and it focuses on an easy-to-grasp aspect of their training, rather than giving a thorough portrait of life in a conservatory, as a thorough portrait of life in a conservatory isn't really the goal). if one's response to this is "woah, that's a horrible way to make great musicians" - congrats! people in the movie agree with you and he loses his job.

I am waiting for someone to make a moving like Whiplash about the Magic Band. That would probably be a great movie.

uh did you see Frank

you should, it's really good and you can completely disregard the fucking terrible article written about it and whiplash that got reposted here a while back

I did see Frank and I thought it was great.

I don't think that's a doc about Magic Band.

oh a doc, jeez, lol

hmmm Frank got pretty grouchy reviews from the crix i follow (as did Whiplash)

Really? I thought it was pretty well received.

I love Miles Teller but have been avoiding this movie bc everything I've seen/read indicates it's a work of pro-abuse meninist bullshit tell me I'm mistaken?

ur not gonna like it if that's your attitude

good to know thx

yeah i'd say it's definitely not an outright rebuke of pro-abuse meninist bullshit

and it's definitely about pro-abuse meninists

*watches "I Am Love" again*

saw the word 'meninist' somewhere else recently but this is the first ilx usage - did someone coin it recently?

srs answer to owen:

i think it's as 'complicated' as it needs to be about abuse without endorsing it. as alfred says its singlemindedness of purpose is a strength, it's really contained within their relationship and there's barely any outside perspective, aside from the dad, girlfriend, and a lawyer pushing neiman to sue, and from the perspective of the two main characters they're all seen as 'just not getting it.' the abuse-ey scenes are fucking harsh but you also get a feel for why people get sucked into that dynamic, the manipulation, the seductiveness. i guess the ending would seem to vindicate simmons' methods, but imo it was more about overcoming his fear of simmons. don't get where 'meninist' comes into it

I think there are a lot of ways to read the end. I don't think it's necessarily a vindication of Simmons' methods. It's definitely a "triumph" for Teller, but I don't necessarily it's one that makes you like or necessarily even respect him more for achieving.

For the record I liked Frank more than I liked Whiplash.

yeah i loved the ending for allowing that critical distance from his accomplishment without denying it from him to make some kind of point

i also love imagining the viral madness that would have followed that performance hitting the interne

t.

WHAT THIS DRUMMER KID DOES NEXT WILL BLOW YOUR MIND

the title tune is such a mediocre piece of music imo

title track = Metallica?

Don Ellis/Hank Levy

I assumed it was the "Star Wars" theme, with the lyrics, "Whiplaash...nothing but whiplaash...drummers get whiplaash...yeah..."

missed opportunity. also i bet it would be an illuminating character moment to see him shedding to Metallica in his parents' basement before heading off to big band school.

xp

I found this quite exhausting by the end, there should be warnings about sustained shots of profuse sweating. Whilst I appreciate this is not strictly about music, this world of technically whizzo players competing in a jazz pageant seems about as high stakes as the X Factor. All I could think at the end was Pah! the Napalm Death drummer is better than this fucker!

I don't think Miles Teller's gotten enough credit; he was impressive in The Spectacular Now too.

I enjoyed this quite a lot. From the interviews I saw, the creators clearly wanted people to not just see the whole process as a worthwhile triumph but discuss if it was really worth it and the validity of that sort of teaching.
I think the lack of women may have been deliberate, along with the homophobia, fat-shaming and perhaps showing that this hostile prejudiced environment excludes a lot of people.
But I'm not too sure. Definitely not boring though.

I kind of wanted to argue with Simmons that Charlie Parker wouldn't have necessarily agreed with people who told him that he was merely good enough or that he wouldn't have realised when he wasn't up to scratch (not that I'm saying he wouldn't have benefitted from help).

Maybe Simmons' character says things like that to justify his harshness.

this film was a big 'So What'

I am waiting for someone to make a moving like Whiplash about the Magic Band. That would probably be a great movie.
― One bad call from barely losing to (Alex in SF), Thursday, 15 January 2015 18:56 (4 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

OTM. Casting would be fun.

zlatan imbrahimovic as zappa

I loved the sticker in the kid's room, something about if you can't cut it as a jazz drummer, you end up in a rock band.

Generally true that there are some great rock drummers with serious jazz chops.

i really enjoyed this movie. there were some real filmmaking 'chops' on display.
kid millions article is OTM though-'drumline' is better.
and as he pointed out, this is really a sports movie, it's not about art at all.

i totally believed that the teacher would torpedo that performance to fuck over the kid, just this once. he cost him a really prestigious job at fake juilliard! that's got to be up there in jobs for jazzbos in 2014.

I really liked it too. It had a certain narrative tension and energy that most other films I've seen recently are lacking.

I don't think it's a particularly deep film however - but I don't hold that against it.

It had a certain narrative tension and energy that most other films I've seen recently are lacking.

OTM. It was somewhat ludicrous but you couldn't deny the momentum of the storytelling. Well-directed too, a very nicely maintained aesthetic. JK a shoe-in for Best Supporting, no?

if chazelle was announced as the new mission impossible movie helmer or something i would be excited. the whole car crash sequence is pretty silly but has a sense of pace and momentum and camera placement that's better than most current action directors.

enjoyed this film. part of me thinks it could have just as easily been about competitive running/baseball/eating instead of jazz drumming, and I agree with the Slate article that much of it conflates 'genius' and 'greatness' with technical proficiency. But who cares? It's a film full of feeling, it's brilliantly shot and scripted, and it's an incredibly compelling story.

Technical proficiency IS important, but that doesn't mean that throwing things, name calling, yelling, and other bad behaviors motivate someone to be technically proficient. At least some reviewers have bought into the film's tough love message, too, including Brian Tallerico, and I don't believe the message is as ambiguous as others itt have said. I'm willing to go the Deci/Ryan/Kohn route and favor descriptive feedback over empty praise, but only if that descriptive feedback is offered in the context of unconditional love. I definitely don't think, as Tallerico writes, that we're in an "era of praise" (this is rank recency illusion), I don't think kids are spoiled by encouragement, and I don't think "true talents (have) been left to wither because they were over-watered." What does this even mean: "He’s not 100% wrong when he says that the most dangerous two words in the English language are 'good job.'"? So he's 10% right that the most dangerous two words in English are "good job"? It's nonsensical. I don't need tough love propaganda, no matter how well made, and this movie is the second time in 12 months I've bailed on a movie or show for trying to justify this behavior.

Are you taking the film too personally? I think it's clear we're seeing someone with sociopathic behaviour not a role model.

The concepts of passion, inspiration, creativity, ideas, innovation etc. must be so difficult to represent on film. It's these factors which tend to be jettisoned, in terms of focus, from most music-based movies I've seen, often in favour of the artists' relationships and personal conflicts in the day-to-day world.
I've been so disappointed with films like Walk the Line, Control and others because they concentrated so little on the actual creative process. All too often the music itself becomes an ulterior soundtrack to a troubled love affair or drug abuse story. I get the commercial reasoning behind this, and of course it's all relevant to the life of the artist, but as a music fan I find these elements less interesting than the music itself.

So in a way, I found it refreshing that Whiplash was so brutal when it came to Niemann's relationship; to his girlfriend, his father, his family etc. He becomes, in a way, as cold and detached as his mentor (possibly more so - there is evidence that the tutor has a much warmer side in private). With Whiplash, we were spared any huggy 'win the competition, get the girl' narratives, and the rest of his family simply worked as a backboard for his anxieties.

Still, it's a shame that such a fantastic piece of cinema should again reject any narrative about the creative process in favour of technical mastery. I realise that this is a big part of what the film is about, but I also wonder when anyone will make a music movie that aims to honestly represent the creative process in an interesting way. Is it possible?

The creative process = hours of tedious noodling about until you hit on something with faintest wisp of potential to not be shite... ime.

Who's an example of an IRL talented person who required other people to bully them to accomplish anything?

If they are lazy, they need to develop willpower, which bullying isn't great at imo

I can't think of an example because it seems like "wisdom" that comes from excuse-making after someone is bullied rather than a legitimate strategy for achieving excellence. "He needed it to achieve his potential" -- that's essentially what my student said and I found it kind of surprising.

xp to NA - That's kind of a "prove a negative" problem in certain professions I can think of, music education certainly being one.

I think a lot of music educators - not one-on-one instructors much, but definitely bandleaders, conductors etc. use bullying and similar drill instructor techniques as a shortcut to get obedience out of small crowds of geniuses.

I should differentiate between the truly pathological, manipulative shit that JK Simmons does in this movie, and the shouting and belittling that are par for the course in marching bands and military training everywhere

Art Taylor published a book of interviews he conducted with (famous) jazz musicians, and none of the drummers in the book cite "tough love" as a motivator for being creative or improving their craft. The closest they come is one drummer describing how hard he studied and practiced, telling a story about being really competitive about who gets to the equipment for practice in the morning when he lived with another musician. Meanwhile, another drummer in another interview basically says jazz is about feeling and not technique, and a lot of the musicians from the period Art Taylor focuses on describe their experiences of learning to play by listening to and playing with musicians they like.

When I was reading the motivation literature as a prelude to entering a teaching credential program a few years ago, I learned that a lot of the motivation folk wisdom about, e.g., rewards and punishment is wrong, and those things are not particularly motivating and can in fact be demotivating. Even the "conservative" hardliners and dissenters in motivation literature like applied behavior analysis researchers and practitioners or Pritchard, Campbell & Campbell believe punishment is demotivating.

I think people espouse the virtues of tough love because it's easy. If someone isn't doing as well as you'd hope, or if someone seems disinterested, you can yell at them or force them to do something. It's easy to find anecdotal evidence of this having some effect on young people. You hold their feet over the coals and then they do the thing you asked, therefore your tough love made them into the intelligent and responsible adults they become, no credit due to having literature in the home, or to eating with them, or to giving access to the tools they need to think and be creative, or to the daily demonstrations we give of how to live in the world and get along with others.

Yeah, not disputing any of that. Interestingly I've come to realize the structured "tough love" I got in the service did more to bring out my work ethic and confidence than the previous nearly two decades of whatever my parents and teachers had been doing.

I am certain that almost no famous creative person would ever point to a disciplinarian as a prime motivator, though.