Olivier Assayas Poll

stoked to see, love this guy

yes, stoked for the madness.

I liked it quite a bit more the second time I saw it, but I don't think I'll ever be a big Assayas fan.

Did not even know about this. Like the Film Experience blog post above says, I love Assayas, Binoche and Petra von Kant, so I am favorably disposed. Can totally see Binoche in that role.

should I have seen pvk before seeing this

I should really get around to it anyway

Everyone should see PVK! It's great.

ya but do I need to have

iyo

I haven't seen the Assayas, so I don't know. Probably be interesting to compare the two no matter what order you see them in.

i doubt there's a strong stylistic similarity

Affecting, and in the last half hour shrewd. Assayas' use of a Rohmer-indebted natural wonder as conceit and structural framework is better than his leaden dialogue, which often sounds like Woody Allen thinks his intellectuals in the eighties sound like. Stewart is never not boring.

ya but do I need to have

― nults of 2 ppl don't amount to a will have beens in this crazy (wins),

No. This turned out to be a publicity MacGuffin.

was v impressed by its world creation, & also what it withholds -- ie the "new" pages of the play & what binoche's perf of the younger role was like

Are we ready for spoiler-discussions of this film? I have a biggie I want to ask about.

Go for it.

saw Mia Hansen-Love's Eden recently, and was struck by how reminiscent it was of Something In The Air. In fact it's basically the same film with the (in)action transposed to the French house scene in the 90s/00s

I was grousing about this to my viewing companion who slightly blew my mind when he told me that she and Assayas are married

Ok. SPOILER WARNING!

Does Valentine kill herself? The first time I saw it, I just thought that she waited a bit, and then left the other way, but right before she dissapears, she and Maria discuss the ending of 'Maloja Snake' and how Helena's suicide is never shown, but just intuited because the actress disappears from the stage. And more to that, what happens between Valentine and the photographer? There are hints of something really dark going on with Val, which nobody seems to bother figuring out, while every little detail of Jo-Ann's life is blown-up and magnified.

I thought it was an Antonioni-esque reminder of Valentine's unimportance. She's an employee. She can be replaced at any time. She may have died, wandered off, who knows.

I didn't care much about her fling w/the photographer -- not enough information.

Jo-Ann's novelist boyfriend? Rowr.

you probably wnted to read an analysis of this film AND Furious 7 in the context of poptimism, right?

http://filmcomment.com/entry/bombast-pop-pop-pop-popular

LOL at that:

I detect something like the language which has been used in the discussion around the by-no-means-new issue of rockism vs. poptimism, one of the defining dichotomies of the last decade of pop writing. To recap: the rockist is a devotee of small-band guitar/bass/drum music; he is also, the grievance goes, usually a “he,” and touts the authenticity of the music that he listens to over that of the poptimists. The poptimist is open to various pop/hip-hop/electro/R&B/dance idioms which invite an ethnically diverse/female/LBGTQ fan base, idioms dismissed as synthetic by the rockists who, until relatively recently, at least, held all of the most important positions in music journalism.

Don't they teach anything at school these days!

I live in fucking envy of ppl who need the recap

whoa nice

Mess of a piece.

tl;dr but how many Furious films are better than Nick Jonas?

How many Assayas films are?

Its barely literate but at least history will validate his opinion that Assayas > Fast and Furious 7. In the end, this is all that matters.

well i'm pretty sure Best Coast > Demonlover

xp

Nick Jonas >>>>> Changing Gates

er Boarding Gate, although I did want to change gates.

we need a comprehensive poll of alfred's always-marketable malaprop titles

as soon as I rescreen the real ones

It seems inevitable that Pinkerton's column will eventually conclude that everything is pointless and we should all just give up. He might be right.

Sils Maria kiiinda sucks!

Nah. My complaint is how rubbish Assayas' ear for dialogue gets when he gets thematic.

Only liked the scene where Binoche laughs hysterically when Stewart tries to convince her of the depth of X-Men movies.

He's thematic for 124 minutes!

Most of the outdoor scenes with Binoche and Stewart have a nice snap, and it's a relief to watch a director find ways to avoid static two shots. And the hotel bar scene with Jo-Ann was particularly elegant.

For all the didactic dialogue Assayas does allow himself the escape valve of letting Binoche express contempt for the shitty play she starred in all those years ago.

but not the shitty movie we're watching her in.

I wouldn't say 'sucks', there's a bunch of things I like in it. Better than Something in the Air. There are def things in it that sucks, though, the biggest one for me is all the unconvincing footage from the things Jo-Ann has been in. The unconvincing laughter in the interview is particularly cringeworthy.

SITA is much better, but I suppose I prefer Assayas movies that keep more of a distance between the characters and me.

on second-plus viewing, sils maria still isn't summer hours, but have started to feel similar affection for it (or is it just the leads?).

y'all didn't get it btw. it's ok, i didn't quite the first time either.

really need to see more from him

love how female/adult it is compared to the male/adolescent Nolanworld it's partly telling off

CGM makes me cringe but she's kinda supposed to. That she might not yield the same reaction from the four people she drew to see this is also kinda the point.

My favorite working filmmaker, I think.

Anyone seen Something in the Air yet?

― the little prince of inane false binary hype (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, April 25, 2013 8:34 AM (2 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I voted for Summer Hours. That offhand, "slight" little thing kills me.

― the little prince of inane false binary hype (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, April 25, 2013 8:36 AM (2 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm

New one looks interesting.

http://gu.com/p/4j9hv?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Bit of a spidery review there btw, as is Bradshaw's way.

Eh, spoilery

Clouds of sils Maria is embarrassingly bad, no? Holy shit, tottally cringing here.

you & i are in the minority it seems.

I'm closer to "not very good" after a second viewing