Anticipate LA LA LAND, the musical starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone

What I find weird about this movie (having not seen it) is that it's garnering all these accolades but no one seems to find the music noteworthy.

la la land is strange to me because it takes Miles Teller's vices from Whiplash (ridiculous ideas of what pure art is, unwillingness to ever collaborate with anyone, streak of self-punishment) and portrays them as virtues

― intheblanks

if the movie had goofed on his seriousness I would've had a better time.

or if the movie acknowledged that there are plenty of jazz musicians under the age of 45 that make up local scenes, including in the very city where the movie takes place!

aw cmon everyone knows there's no modern LA jazz scene!

Muppets Most Wanted might get my vote for the best musical of the last 10 years, truly.

i've learned on ILX this week that the ppl Hitchcock called "the Plausibles" now expect hardcore realism from James Bond movies and musicals.

well, we've got people whom Hillary called the Deplorables expecting steel jobs and black lungs from Donald Trump.

ha, morbius maybe otm. fwiw though i think it is worth noting how the film views pure artistic expression as a solely individualistic act--the way that emma stone's big thing is a one-woman show, the multiple times that everything goes dark except for a spotlight on one of the two main characters, the ways in which they continually refuse collaboration

in sharp contrast to say, 'the young girls of rochefort,' where people's artistic dreams and how they express them are in continuous interaction with their community

excellent points

for all the comparisons i'm seeing to the demy musicals, i think that chazelle's ideas limit him a lot more, and not necessarily in interesting ways

re: solely individualistic act, LLL is the ultimate h.s. theater geek fantasy

amazing quote from the wiki about Miles Teller being passed over for Gosling:

Teller was offered to play the leading role by Chazelle when the two were in the midst of filming Whiplash in 2013. He even passed up the chance to star in War Dogs because the film would have conflicted with La La Land (although he later went on to star in the film). But one day, Teller got a call from his agent saying that Chazelle had told Lionsgate that he no longer thought Teller was "creatively right for the project" and that the director was moving on without Teller's involvement. Teller responded by texting Chazelle "what the fuck, bro?"

Teller when Chazelle wins best director next February:

http://images.gawker.com/19hd1ile09il9gif/c_fit,fl_progressive,q_80,w_636.gif

What I find weird about this movie (having not seen it) is that it's garnering all these accolades but no one seems to find the music noteworthy.

this is, as they say, a red flag

many xps I quite liked hedwig

I figured that the scene where Gosling takes Emma Stone to the jazz club and frenetically mansplains jazz to her was self-aware and as real a character as I could imagine. I laughed out loud in the theater.

That whole scene, more or less

Gosling: Listen! Jazz. Jazz. Jazz. Jazz.
Stone: Kenny G?
Gosling: Listen!

Like all these criticisms that the movie wasn't woke enough are ridiculous. If he wasn't a white doofus stumbling through the "purity of jazz," it would be an entirely different movie.

fwiw, the music isn't that bad or even particularly unmemorable in this; it's got much bigger problems

i really liked "City of Stars," i had fun plunking out the melody when i got home from the theater.

xp whiney otm, i thought Rostam's (since when is he a one-name celebrity?) criticisms were absurd, the thing I kept thinking during the movie was "Make America Great Again," it's a nostalgia piece, and it wouldn't make any sense for either Stone or Gosling's characters to be anything but navel-gazing caricatures of old Hollywood icons.

how many Rostams are there who traded a band for solo oblivion?

yes I think (ex-vampire weekend) clarifies things in a way that whatever his first name is would not for virtually anybody

lol surname apparently

this is ok but only ok. emma stone is the best thing in it as usual with movies she is in. nice color palette. I don't necesarilly demand that all films address race and gender, but I did think "white people movie" 1000000x while watching it

that ending though :'(

I liked this movie. I suppose there are ways it could have been "better," but it would be a different movie. I've seen a few criticisms of, say, the choreography or singing or whatever, but I liked the amateurishness. I even liked the underpopulatedness of its Los Angeles, which helped give it some of its dreamy qualities.

la la land is strange to me because it takes Miles Teller's vices from Whiplash (ridiculous ideas of what pure art is, unwillingness to ever collaborate with anyone, streak of self-punishment) and portrays them as virtues

― intheblanks

Re collaboration, the 2 of them were at one point encouraging one another to achieve their solo artistic dreams (do the one person show, open a club-albeit with a band) but then he suddenly decides that they can't achieve these soloish artistic dreams together and simultaneously be in love at the same time. Ultimately their artistic successes (his club with house band, her acting as a movie star) do involve some collaboration but with others though. A flawed take on art and love imho.

Iirc overhears her discussion with her mom, who implies she is disappointed that he has no steady income. So he takes the big income sell out while she works on the low income pipe dream. By the end the roles have reversed, with her the famous movie star, and him the impoverished artist. There's a nice symmetry to it.

Nah

i liked the ending well enough. it was nice to see a romance that didn't end up with the principals together and it was still ok.

I dunno. Ryan Gosling wasn't nude enough for my taste imo

ty for warnings that this is not great, mainstream press had me potentially hyped

Muppets Most Wanted and the two eps I've seen of Crazy Ex-GF are delightful but that list is p horrifying

The Artist comparisons are very apt I think. Like The Artist, watching this movie in theaters is probably a completely different experience than watching it at home (I saw The Artist at The Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor, an old school movie house built in 1928, so I imagine I remember the film more fondly than most people). I believe La La Land is better filmmaking, and probably stands on its own merits a bit better. The opening sequence was a spectacular piece of choreography and I was invested enough in Gosling and Stone's performances and their characters' relationship for the ending montage to hit me like a ton of bricks.

Somebody on twitter said something to the effect of "La La Land is as much about jazz as The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is about umbrellas"

It's winning a bunch of Golden Globes. Ugh

Hollywood loves musicals, except when it comes to making them any more. Critics love musicals, too, and rarely get the chance to love them nowadays. So they go overboard when a halfway decent musical gets made.

“Damien Chazelle and his La La Land star Ryan Gosling are officially set to reteam on Chazelle’s Neil Armstrong biopic First Man,” reports Variety‘s Justin Kroll.

http://variety.com/2016/film/news/damien-chazelle-ryan-gosling-neil-armstrong-biopic-first-man-1201949407/

weird as hell -- no wait, more guaranteed awards attention!

i mean, i knew as much about Neil Armstrong at age 7 as i could, and given his historic achievement i think the fact that his sparkling Ohio-guy military personality resulted in no biopic til 50 years later speaks volumes....

with J.K. Simmons as the crusty but benign NASA head

well yeah, he's too old for Buzz Aldrin alas

Hollywood loves musicals, except when it comes to making them any more. Critics love musicals, too, and rarely get the chance to love them nowadays. So they go overboard when a halfway decent musical gets made.

Muppets Most Wanted bombed at the box office and won a grand total of 0 awards

i mean, i knew as much about Neil Armstrong at age 7 as i could, and given his historic achievement i think the fact that his sparkling Ohio-guy military personality resulted in no biopic til 50 years later speaks volumes....

― Supercreditor (Dr Morbius), Monday, January 9, 2017 5:09 PM (six hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah wait a minute wtf why are there no Armstrong biopics

generally speaking history is full of incredibly boring heroes you've heard so much about that an original, entertaining narrative about them is basically a fool's errand

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_depictions_of_George_Washington#Films

i'm not proud of it but for uninteresting personal reasons i wish ill on this filmmaker

so, v pleased to hear about the armstrong biopic

generally speaking history is full of incredibly boring heroes you've heard so much about that an original, entertaining narrative about them is basically a fool's errand

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_depictions_of_George_Washington#Films

― The beaver is not the bad guy (El Tomboto), Monday, January 9, 2017 11:30 PM (eighteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

morbs blew my mind and then u split it in two

this was disappointing. really clumsy story - so many things were so abrupt and unearned. Like what was the point of giving Mia's character a boyfriend that she dumps within 2 minutes of his first screen appearance. Why couldn't you have just made her single, avoided the really clumsy dinner scene (which lazily suggested "omg they're too posh and out of touch with real people unlike Sebastian"), and found another excuse for her to be late which would have achieved the same goal.

music wasn't very memorable either, outside the main theme. I did like the ensemble scenes, though. Seb's character was insufferable for a while though I almost applauded when John Legend's character put him in his place.

There's just weird incongruities in the character too, I mean Gosling's character doesn't mind taking shitty gigs playing 80s covers at parties to help pay the bills, but suddenly takes a moral stand about the purity of jazz when offered an actual gig that involves getting to play something closer to (if not exactly) what he likes and earn a comfy living. The overheard phone convo scene was so cliched (who really has convos like that within earshot of their significant others, seems like an 'only in movies' thing), and the conflict just kind of arrives out of nowhere. and Mia seems to be unaware of his long term commitment, like she thought he could go on tour one year and afford to buy a nightclub? It was just weird, the whole "I thought you were an ARTIST" stand that she takes when she's been auditioning for completely garbage television shows that the film itself is leering at, that she would have taken without hesitation.

Relies way too much on the novelty of being a movie musical, and it doesn't help that few people in the damn thing can actually sing.

I didn't hate it though - it did have some nice visuals, and I'm glad they didn't completely go retro with it, but I feel like if a musical like this opened on Broadway, nobody would give a shit about it. Style over substance isn't inherently bad (Broadway's "In the Heights" was an example of that but I loved it), but I didn't really connect with the characters so the final scene didn't really have the payoff it should have.

O well, I paid two bucks - thanks T-Mobile Tuesdays.

(I did love Whiplash though so *shrug*)

with J.K. Simmons as the crusty but benign NASA head

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, January 9, 2017 5:10 PM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"OK Armstrong, let's try this again. 3, 2, 1, blastoff."

[cuts off launch]

"Too high. Again, 3, 2, 1, blastoff."

[cuts off launch again]

"My altitude. Again, 3, 2, 1, blastoff."

[throws chair at Armstrong]

Have you seen the film, darragh?

the ending undermines the Hollywood comedy musical romance-ness of the film so it makes sense to ask to what end was it deployed against the more obvious happy ending. is it just bc at the last moment the filmmakers had a failure of nerves and thought audiences wouldn't buy something without a downer ending? i.e. too saccharine sweet if they end up together? very superficially they develop once or twice the theme of their work superseding their relationship (when he misses her play for the photo shoot, when he is going to have to tour and be away from her, and maybe something she did too tho even tho i saw the film last night i can't remember) but hardly enough to necessitate that ending or give it any resonance. honestly it seems a bit like they didn't have much to say beyond the look and the music and so put it in for some unearned gravitas the tragedy of love lost.

their work superseding their relationship ... hardly enough to necessitate that ending or give it any resonance

it was this, it was enough to give it resonance (for me) ymmv. it was a good ending imo

SPOILEr, but there's kinda the same ending in Chazelle's first film. He likes that whole theme of what artists has to sacrifice. This time it seemed as something only Hollywood would find tragic: They get everything, fame, money, jazz bars, spouses, kids, they just don't get each other. Boo hoo. The really stupid thing is that it's modeled on Umbrellas of Cherbourg, where the melancholy comes from the Algerian War interfering. Not exactly the same.

Have you seen the film, darragh?

― Frederik B, Sunday, 16 April 2017 00:08 (forty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yep

It was good.

Thought the ending worked

Other endings would also have worked.

Not sure it can bear too much weight tho tbph

ya Mordy + Fred both overthinking it. it came as a surprise, but was emotionally v effective

Liked this so much I had to pause it and make popcorn.

I felt the ending was saying something like you can't have cake and eat it but you can always love the idea of cake and feast on the memory whenever you experience hollywood magic (or jazz?).

The opening number is so stupendous that I wish they'd somehow managed to end the film there. But I suppose a smile passing each other on the freeway would have been a bit impersonal.

Finally, the lighting was like an exact cross between Wong Kar-wai and the original Star Trek series.

I checked the DVD out of the public library and my wife and I watched it last night. I see most ilxors were pretty tepid about this one and I agree. Gosling and Stone were barely able to dance or sing at an acceptable level, let alone rise to the sort of magnetism of Astaire and Rogers. Other than Gosling being handsome, there was zero reason why Stone would have been attracted to him in the first place; he was an asshole. The tired theme of "fulfilling your dreams" was so exhausted in this as to be moribund.

otoh, it gave employment to a lot of dancers in the big production numbers. The candy-colored costumes, set design and cinematography were sort of fun, in a Disney kind of way. But its use of music was blandly safe and colorless, and no human motions were harmed in the making of this movie, because they were touched so lightly one never even noticed them.

Gosling and Stone did what they could with weak material. The script was at the heart of all the problems and Damien Chazelle's superficiality was all over the script.

er, human eee-motions