Todd Haynes

I'd bring my damn mom too. . .

I hear he did really well at the Independant Spirit Awards, though.

I'd totally bring my mom if I ever made it to the Oscars.

Amie: [looks at watch] That was only two hours?!

INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY (UK) 23rd March 2003
THIS IS THE LIFE

A close friend of mine was a respected film critic for over a decade before packing it in to spend more time with her cat. While in situ, she was fascinating about the hypocrisy of her fellow preview-theatre troglodytes. She told of frequent occasions when the fraternity of critics (almost all film reviewers are male and look like badgers in glasses) had patently enjoyed a movie, only to retire and savage it in print.

I particularly remember her saying how there was an almost carnival atmosphere among the critics oogling Paul Verhoeven's kitsch go-go extravaganza Showgirls, but almost every reviewer slated the movie as offensive soft porn.

Showgirls is certainly a vulgarian's wet dream, but so is Moulin Rouge - it's just more socially acceptable (if marginally so) to like Elton John songs than to like strippers cat-fighting. If there's anything more annoying than critics being mealy-mouthed when a film's entertainment value exceeds its IQ, it's the same sages gushing over a film that has cultural pretensions but no heart. (This paper's critic, Jonathan Romney, is an exception and only recommends highly cultural works with pounds of raw heart - I just wish they weren't all set in Uzbekistan). How often have I trekked off to see a film, convinced I am about to watch a work of hitherto unimaginable cinematic genius worthy of Hitchcock, Kubrick and Bunuel rolled into one fat, beardy French uber-director, only to sit slack-jawed with disappointment at the monumental work of disengaged tedium passing before me?

So I should have known when I bunked off work to see "the best film of the year so far", "a marvel of production design", "more clever and literate than anything around", that it would be the Emperor's new turkey. Far from Heaven is director Tod Haynes' ludicrously overwrought tribute to Douglas Sirk's ludicrously overwrought Fifties' melodrama All That Heaven Allows. Haynes may have written a new screenplay, but the cast of characters and plot remains largely the same, with just a couple of updates that are supposed to be a sophisticated wink at a contemporary audience. For example, Julianne Moore's domestic goddess, Cathy, is not a widow, but the wife of a repressed homosexual, and she falls for a black, rather than a white, gardener. But it's still an utterly pointless act of retro devotion to anyone not given to musing, "Wow, that's really neat to have a closet queen in the remake, when the original starred Rock Hudson!" Furthermore, Dennis Quaid as Cathy's surly husband, Frank, is about as gay and "charming" as Billy Bob Thornton. Meanwhile Julianne Moore wafts through the autumnal haze of a master-class in cinematography (all the colours of the fall, geddit?) in startlingly full-skirted frocks, with all the period authenticity of one of those crinolined dollies you put on top of the loo roll. The LA Times wrote, "What she does with her role is so beyond the parameters of what we call great acting that it really defies categorization." Actually, it's so far beyond those parameters that it defies what I call acting. Moore is just a milky, wide-eyed canvas on which Haynes projects his stultifying lens.

And yet Far From Heaven is up for four Academy Awards, including Moore as best actress. But when you look at the films that have won best movie over recent years it all makes sense. There's American Beauty, The English Patient, Shakespeare in Love, Driving Miss Daisy, Rain Man, and The Last Emperor: scrupulously tasteful but low-cal dinner-party fodder every one - films with literary associations that make people feel sophisticated, like knowing the correct way to eat artichokes. Was there ever anything more vomit-inducing than listening to the chattering classes forcing laughter at Shakespeare in Love just to show they got the tepid jokes about Webster and Marlowe?

Over the past 21 years the only two films that have won best film and deserve to be in any sane person's DVD collection are Unforgiven and Gladiator, both of them rudely vibrant movies that know how to take a big screen by storm. Over the same time equally mesmerising classics such as Blade Runner, LA Confidential, Strictly Ballroom, Heat and The Fellowship of the Ring, failed to triumph. I am fairly certain it's because none of them was scripted, directed or remotely touched by a luvvie, such as Sir Tom Stoppard or Sam Mendes. Judging by this criterion, Sir David Hare's screenplay for The Hours should help that turgid piece of pseudo- intellectual onanism carry off the top honour this year. But I shall still hold that the year's best films were The Two Towers, Laissez Passer and The Devil's Backbone. And for those who want to see a masterpiece about the price of emotional repression in a censorious society, may I suggest Wong Kar-Wai's In the Mood for Love? If Far From Heaven is painting by numbers, In the Mood for Love is a Turner sunset.

Yay, I am a vulgarian!

So I think the ending of Far from Heaven is in keeping with the ambivalent endings of several of Sirk's melodramas.

It's a great film. Todd Haynes at the Oscars is sort of incongruous. I'm actually relieved he didn't win.

for me it kinda wasn't

Haynes's is v. talented at making "impossible" films--films that can't really be assimilated to any one set of critical expectations, and that are necessarily frustrating for that and other reasons. They're difficult to love, in my experience. I'm still wondering if that sort of thing has a value in itself, but given how much thought I've given to Far from Heaven I suppose the answer is yes.

can you expand on this pls?

hollow meta levels

i think i'd rather see a douglas sirk film in 2002.

Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story: classic or what?

far from heaven wz a bit of a slog tho

Bob Dylan has given permission to a Hollywood studio to make a film about his life and will be portrayed by seven actors - one of them a black woman reports The Times Online.

Todd Haynes confirmed last week that he is searching for a woman who can do justice to the short white Jewish singer's "inner blackness". The seven will play Dylan during different eras in his 43-year career, starting in the 1960s when his song "The Times They Are A-Changin'" turned into an anti-war anthem. Costing £30m, the film is due for release next year under the title "I'm Not There: Suppositions on a Film Concerning Dylan".

It is traditional in films spanning a lifetime for characters to be played by more than one actor, but rarer for them to change sex or race. Haynes is considering actresses ranging from pop singer Beyoncé Knowles to tennis champion Venus Williams and the one and only Oprah Winfrey.

I'm really curious about this. Like Ned, I could care less about Dylan's music, but I do think he's a pretty compelling personality and icon.

Far From Heaven seems to work best on people who recognize top-flight pastiches can unleash emotions, like Magnetic Fields' 69 Love Songs.

yes, beyonce. what a terrible idea. it is a pointless, and obscene, gimmick.

(but if you swap sirk for glam, and VG for FFH, i wd probably be defendin it, so maybe it's just that i'm not really THAT big on sirk myself)

the person i wz with - unrepentent sexual pirate and general tomboy activist - knew nothing abt sirk or sirk theory and wz emotionally overwhelmed, except in a bad way: we had to go straight to a gay bar after and have several drinks

I'd rather he get Venus Williams (or Lisa Leslie) than Beyonce though!

If it were Todd Solondz behind the camera, I'd agree with you. (Actually, wait, doesn't his new film Palindromes do the whole multiple-actors-playing-the-same-character thing, too? That's weird.) But Haynes truly does have the ability to transcend his conceits. That combination of intellectual cleverness and genuine, overwhelming emotion is why Far From Heaven and Eternal Sunshine are two of my favorite films of this decade.

i think the conceit is sort of similar, but haynes's film was much more imaginative in its reworking of the source materials and much more rigorous in its evocation/replication of the style of said materials.

i don't know, i think van sant is gifted but not very smart, honestly. haynes could not be accused of not being smart, i suspect.

i guess the most interesting part about "elephant" was the degree of human sympathy it elicited for characters not often seen in films (NOT the killers, but some of the students introduced in the first half ), but that was ultimately sort of incidental to the film and its main reason for being. i've written about this on an "elephant"-specific thread.

what's funny is that haynes seems such an unlikely person to be obsessed with bob dylan. in the sense that dylan's legacy has been "owned," or rather leased, of late by the sort of rock critics who emphasize his folk roots and so on. to the point where there isn't a pervasive sense of dylan as a pop persona, as a modernist figure. so i'm very interested to see where haynes goes with this. (i mean, it's hard to imagine haynes making a movie that concerns itself with, uh, different versions of "st james infirmary," simply because that's a strain of american culture the celebration of which takes on a certain role that seems anathema to haynes's own self-fashioned role in the culture. if that makes sense.)

xp

eg the gap between dylan (in toto) and glam (in toto) is smaller than dave van ronk wants it to be

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0306814072/qid=1111779776/sr=8-2/ref=pd_csp_2/102-1769521-6410552?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

[i]http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0306814072.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg[/i]

i agree, i was trying to say (i think i failed) that the reigining dylan paradigm doesn't really involve much glam and doesn't really evoke anything that haynes has previously been known to be interested in. that doesn't mean that dylan himself, or his music or pop persona, doesn't have affinities with what haynes has previously been known to be interested in.

I can't think of a single thread/discussion/reaction that I've ever found more interesting than the film it's discussing.

Dylan never should've left Toto, he was the best one!

anyway i think i was being really unclear upthread... due to my trying to condense a difficult thought that i hadn't even quite reasoned out into a few words (because i was at work and rushed). i'll try to explain myself again a little later, when i have time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWgiFU9Lqhc

"DOTTIE GETS SPANKED" A++, WOULD WATCH AGAIN AND AGAIN.

I dressed like the kid in that when I was 6.

from SXSW:

TH asked how to find 'Superstar': "You're asking the one person who isn't allowed to tell you, and my lawyer is two people over from you."

http://blog.oregonlive.com/madaboutmovies/2009/03/sxsw_oldnew_indie_tweetybloggy.html

I'm glad that guy reported on it, but Twitter journalism, Jesus.

it's pretty easy to find a torrent if you know where to look. it's great.

http://www.illegal-art.org/video/popups/superstar.html

is another place where this can be found.

thx

Reading the "cultograpy" of Superstar and really enjoying it. Prompted me to finally watch Poison and it is pretty damn good! I'm gonna check out everything else of his I haven't yet seen.

i totally love this movie, I've never seen Poison or VG, even though I've loved every other bit of Haynes I've seen so much.

You should read the book, it's putting the film in a new context for me.

love most of this guy's stuff, Poison excepted.

no wait I think I'm mixing that up with Safe.

Safe freaked me out.

Me too, but in a good way. Film I keep meaning to revisit.

i love superstar; poison to me falls more into the interesting-failure category, tho it's worth seeing.

http://weblogs.variety.com/bfdealmemo/2009/08/winslet-game-for-mildred-pierce-.html

Kate Winslet is attached to "Mildred Pierce," a miniseries adaptation based on the James M. Cain novel that Todd Haynes is writing and directing. Sources said that HBO is the lead contender to get the mini, but payweb sources said no deal has been struck.

Cain's tale was famously turned into a 1945 film that won Joan Crawford an Oscar for the lead role of a bored housewife who gets into the restaurant business, an enterprise that leads to back-stabbing, romance and murder.

The involvement of Winslet--right after her Oscar-winning performance in "The Reader" and her work in "Revolutionary Road"--underscores how much paywebs like HBO have become prestige venues for films that might vanish as theatrical releases, a fact underscored by the success of "Grey Gardens," which garnered Emmy noms for Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange.

Haynes directed "I'm Not There," "Safe" and "Far From Heaven."

intrigued!

whoa

i hope there''s lots of chickn and waffles in it!

(guessing it's going to be a contemporary update tho)

oh man, LOVE the Cain novel. finished it a couple of months ago. very excited about this.

contemporary update? why wd you hire the guy who did far From Heaven for that?

haha ya i guess

whoa! just watched the OG MP earlier this wk

this could be cool

Greenlit!

HBO is revisiting the Great Depression with "Mildred Pierce."
Pay cabler is going forward with a five-hour miniseries starring Kate Winslet as a proud, single mother struggling to earn her daughter's love during the depression in middle-class Los Angeles. Story is based on the novel by James M. Cain.

Mini has been speculated for months, but the deal just become official.

Joan Crawford won an Oscar for the lead role in the 1945 film adaptation of the novel. "Mildred Pierce" earned a total of six noms, including a pair of supporting actress nods for Eve Arden and Ann Blyth.

Todd Haynes will write the script along with Jon Raymond. Haynes will also direct and act as exec producer, along with Pamela Koffler, Christine Vachon, and John Wells. Ilene Landress ("The Sopranos") is producer and pic is in association with MGM.

Wells, who has a pact at Warner Bros. and saw his "Southland" cop drama picked up by TNT after it was dropped by NBC, recently unspooled his bigscreen pic "The Company Men" at the Sundance Film Festival.

Winslet is coming off a lead actress Oscar for her role in "The Reader." It was her first win after being nominated five times previously.

Actress last appeared on HBO in the pilot of Ricky Gervais starrer "Extras," playing a nun pining for an Oscar nom. Gervais teased her about the role during the 2009 Golden Globes.

No other thesps have been attached to the cast.

whoa.

is this the first miniseries that will be all directed by the same dude?

was just reading abt this, will b awesome

winslet? really?

yeah she kept her maiden name

No guesses as to what I hope they'll have as the theme song.

as much as i could see kate pulling this off, it would take a miracle to pull of a joan crawford in this role.

i'm sure haynes knows that, and this will probably be at right angles to the film.

haynes is nothing if not savvy about stuff like this, whatever you think of the results (i think he has a good track record).

pic is in association with MGM.

how much TV has MGM been producing lately? it's on the auction block right now, and is not in very good shape, at least in terms of theatrical.

xp i hope you're right! i do think he's a very sensible fit for the job.

This has potential.

I have never see a single Todd Haynes film. But I know at least two people who have slept with him!

that's ass-backwards. um, i mean...

I still prefer Carol Burnett's Mildred Fierce.

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/XP_UtPcjvp4/0.jpg

o. m. g. i have never seen that

ahahahahahahahaha watching this now, amazing

but that's NOT the Mildred Fierce sketch I saw! it was done later, a pretty close parody of the Crawford movie.

carol 4eva <3

Is it fucked up that I have always liked the name Veda because of this movie?

no way, it's a good name

yeah, it's a pretty name.

wow, this sounds good.

love most of this guy's stuff, Poison excepted.
I agree with this, although I still have not seen 'I'm Not There.'
'Safe' is one of my favourite movies.

up until the mention of 'I'm Not There' here I had been reading today's discussion thinking of Todd Phillips and being seriously confused.

that Mildred Fierce thing reminded me of this, which I hope everyone has seen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGa4M0zmOLI

wow this sounds awesome

This has potential.

― queen frostine (Eric H.), Thursday, February 11, 2010

Only if there are some anachronistic Dylan songs, amirite?

thx for reminding me to get Cain novel at liberry

turns 50 today:

http://mubi.com/notebook/posts/2715

& looking great for that!

really looking forward to Mildred Pierce.

the beginning of this thread is so funny

ive never seen the velvet goldmine but ppl think it sucks right? i pretty much hate all of that glam rock carry-on so i dont think i could handle it if it was also rubbishy. i pretty much love all his other ones tho, i'm not there is so good, dying for mildred pierce. looks kindof straightforward for him in the trailers tho, i thought it was supposed to be 2010 tho, i mean if it hasnt been on already then obv. that partic. bird has flown.

velvet goldmine has a dedicated fanbase

of peverts

saw it again a couple years ago and really enjoyed it, tho i would've preferred a fake marc bolan biopic to a fake bowie biopic.

I don't like glam rock, but I like VG (except for the Bale reporter stuff).

20th anniversary DVD of Poison coming out soon.

http://www.amazon.com/Poison-20th-Anniversary-James-Lyons/dp/B004THJ3BC/ref=sr_1_11?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1302329049&sr=1-11

that is all

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2011/08/julianne_moore_hbo_todd_haynes.html

signed up to do another hbo thing - another female lead/period hbo thing

can't he just make a sci-fi rock biopic thats really about aids, sick of these period dames.

TH and Jon Raymond working on a film about red-state politics:

http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/todd-haynes-says-his-new-project-about-conservative-politics-will-be-unbiased-drama-about-middle-america

Anyone ever seen Assassins: A Film Concerning Rimbaud? I don't think I even knew he did something before Superstar!

http://www.lightindustry.org/haynesandphillips

ughhhh i've been wanting to see that for years

me 2

ok, so far I'll take that as a no.

was the tv show good

Patricia Highsmith adap w/ Cate Blanchett, Mia Wasikowska

http://www.screendaily.com/festivals/cannes/todd-haynes-to-direct-carol/5056652.article

Much like Safe:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2576848/I-used-sick-time-Dozens-Americans-claim-allergic-electromagnetic-signals-settle-small-West-Virginia-town-WiFi-banned.html

To direct Reese Witherspooon as Peggy Lee, from a script by... Nora Ephron?

http://www.avclub.com/article/todd-haynes-direct-reese-witherspoon-peggy-lee-bio-208988

Haven't seen Safe in almost exactly twenty years; I checked the Blu-Ray out of the library. In certain shots Moore looks like the alien from the Sigourney Weaver flicks.

The only element that's didactic is the synth score.

Much like Safe:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2576848/I-used-sick-time-Dozens-Americans-claim-allergic-electromagnetic-signals-settle-small-West-Virginia-town-WiFi-banned.html

― That's So (Eazy), Sunday, March 9, 2014 5:33 PM (10 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

if safe were made today -- and set in the present day, or even in the very recent past -- i'm sure the governing metaphor would have to do with the internet and surveillance.

in fact, i think the remake with kristen wiig is about precisely that.

first glimpse of Carol, his adap of Highsmith's The Price of Salt

(oh yeah, Rooney mara replaced Mia Wasikowska at some point)

http://thefilmstage.com/trailer/first-footage-from-todd-haynes-carol-with-cate-blanchett-and-rooney-mara/

I hope he hasn't done something too conventional. I prefer him a bit wilder.

Cannes roundup

https://www.fandor.com/keyframe/daily-cannes-2015-todd-hayness-carol

As a snob who couldn't care less for Bob Dylan, and who pretty much discards a filmmaker when oscar likes him, is it worth diving into his films?

not sure i'd rank anyone ahead of him as the best American narrative filmmaker of the last 20-25 years (Spielberg is in the ballpark)

I'd agree with that. Frederik, I'm pretty sure you'd love Safe.

safe is the one

any but that

[Safe] > Superstar > Dottie gets spanked > I'm not there > Far from heaven > poison > The velvet goldmine.

I haven't seen Mildred Pierce.

Superstar
Velvet Goldmine
I'm Not There
Far From Heaven
Safe

Is how i'd rank em. Didnt finish mildred pierce.

Cant remember if i've seen poison tbh

Dottie should be after I'm not there and Far from heaven tbh. I was being a little too hardcore there although Dottie is excellent.

As a snob who couldn't care less for Bob Dylan, and who pretty much discards a filmmaker when oscar likes him, is it worth diving into his films?

― Frederik B, Sunday, 17 May 2015 14:29 (3 hours ago) Permalink

You should know better than diving into this 'snob' business.

Carol is such a Haynes project..been years since I read it.

Todd Haynes is already planning his next foray into sumptuously photographed dissatisfied women. According to IndieWire, the director is planning a TV limited series based on The Source Family, the real-life hippie cult profiled in the 2013 documentary of the same name.

http://www.avclub.com/article/todd-haynes-planning-tv-series-about-70s-rock-cult-219585

“Amazon Studios is nearing a deal to finance, produce and distribute writer-director Todd Haynes‘s Wonderstruck, which will reunite the director with Julianne Moore,” reports TheWrap‘s Jeff Sneider. “Based on the children’s novel by The Invention of Hugo Cabret author Brian Selznick, Wonderstruck follows the intertwined narratives of two deaf children, Ben and Rose. Ben lives with his family in Minnesota in 1977, when a mysterious note prompts him to run off to New York following his mother’s death. Rose, who is locked in a house in 1927 New Jersey, also escapes to New York to see her idol, film actress Lillian Mayhew.”

http://www.thewrap.com/julianne-moore-todd-haynes-wonderstruck-amazon-studios/

initial mixed Cannes takes

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/4553-the-daily-cannes-2017-todd-haynes-s-wonderstruck

Sounds interesting. I never got around to Carol

Todd Haynes! You technically polished bastard who leaves viewers emotionally cold! How the hell are you? pic.twitter.com/WYRK9GKJj3

— Jaime N. Christley (@j_christley) May 18, 2017

emotions, feh

if i want a sublime transcendent experience that moves me to my core, obv there's always De Palma

Cool.

"cold"

lol

I thought Carol was a snooze fest but this new one sounds right up my alley.

Yeah I found it so boring.

!! http://www.pitchfork.com/news/todd-haynes-to-direct-new-velvet-underground-doc/

have loved all of his music-related features unreservedly, so v curious about this

yeah super excited about this!

has anyone here seen Wonderstruck yet? or has it only played at Cannes?

2 other fests to date

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5208216/releaseinfo

The spectrum of the Wonderstruck reviews is pretty fascinating, from "his worst" to "the film he was born to make."

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/5021-the-daily-nyff-2017-todd-haynes-s-wonderstruck

don't see how he can top Carol

Really? It felt dry and desiccated to me on my only look.

I couldn't stand it; I choked on whimsy.

I preferred it to Far from Heaven, at any rate.

wait, which?

I preferred Far from Heaven to all but maybe two Sirk films.

Just got Far From Heaven on blu-ray, psyched to see it for the first time- just watched All That Heaven Allows and Ali: Fear Eats the Soul recently

We've been over your wrongness on this count multiple times, Morbs.

(Preferred Carol to Far From Heaven, to be clear. Haven't seen Todd Haynes' mother!)

sorry i definitely saw carol and enjoyed it and can't recall it having a particularly whimsical streak

it wasn't whimsical at all, it was so tonally precise

yeah, zero whimsy.

what can I say, i like actors who are better than Hudson and Wyman.

what can I say

More than I ever wanted you to.

oh, youuuuuu

anyway at least you can skip the VU documentary

Fair enough. You, actors. Me, soundtracks.

I assume Alfred's whimsy comment was aimed at the new one, not Carol.

I like or love most of Haynes' movies, but the source material for this one makes me skeptical. I didn't like Hugo, so reviews saying either "It's as good as Hugo" or "It's not as good as Hugo" don't do anything for me.

Dargis in the NYT thought it was pitched primarily at adults.

idk what to think after the trailer tbh

I tend to love Haynes when he's focused on music, less so on other topics but I did like Far From Heaven and Safe

def doesn't look like something that would interest children imo

I referred to the new one. The kids are better than the horrors in The FLorida Project though.

Give it a rest already.

I referred to the new one. The kids are better than the horrors in The FLorida Project though.

― morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, October 20, 2017 12:58 PM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ah sorry for misrepresenting you alfred

Carol could have done with some whimsey.

Give it a rest already.

― Anne of the Thousand Gays (Eric H.), Friday, October 20, 201

Someone likes Florida!

Except some people.

Carol was boring af

I didn't think Carol (or Far From Heaven) was boring as much as straitjacketed by good taste and period detail. As for Wonderstruck, I will say that its period settings didn't strike me as nearly so restrictive. And I found the musical settings to be an exercise in obviousness, which I assume means it will get its only Oscar nomination in one of the sound categories.

Yeah, Wonderstruck is pretty boring. Moreso than Carol, even.

I was restless.

No floor to mop or furniture to Pledge either!

used '70s Manhattan as a theme park, too

Next up this fall... don't think I knew about it?

https://www.indiewire.com/2019/08/todd-haynes-dark-waters-mark-ruffalo-anne-hathaway-primetime-oscars-release-1202168878/

Seems like a prosaic social-issue variant on Safe.

. It was adapted most recently by Mario Correa and first writer Matthew Michael Carnahan from Nathaniel Rich’s New York Times Magazine article, “The Lawyer Who Became DuPont’s Worst Nightmare.”

Anne Hathaway stars opposite Ruffalo as Biliott’s wife, Sarah; she’s also the star of “The Last Thing He Wanted,” which Rees and Marco Villalobos adapted from the 1997 Joan Didion novel.

I'm quite confused.

they are referring to another non-Haynes film in the can

yes it is a Haynes film

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvAOuhyunhY

oh damn!

Kind of like when Mann did The Insider and moved past his crime-genre limitations while keeping his strengths.

Gus Van Sant did an enviro drama what, 2 years ago?

I love Haynes but this looks p boring

I like this one more than Carol or Wonderstruck. It works.

also fuck Dupont and their former senator the Frontrunner

welp I guess I just learned this movie exists!

A decent New Yorker profile: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/11/11/todd-haynes-rewrites-the-hollywood-playbook

What differentiates this one from Promised Land?

dunno, didn't see that one

subject matter is not the end-all though... there certainly are echoes of Safe.

superb Ed Lachman cinematography as always, a frequently icy blue palette

DARK WATERS (Haynes, 2019) pic.twitter.com/jaXpclD2sj

— gina telaroli (@GinaTelaroli) November 12, 2019

Dug it. Like Morbs says, super cinematography And careful accurate design overall but never exaggerating late-90s Cincinnati style.

Agree withEdelstein:

If meanly-clad-little-David-versus-venomous-corporate-Goliath melodramas like Todd Haynes’s fact-based Dark Waters are more alike than unalike, it’s because there’s really only one way to frame what happens every day in a country controlled by companies with vast coffers, armies of lobbyists, and politicians leased by the year.

ppl who handwave at this somehow think Parasite says "more"

How does the speed change things for you, on the filmmaking end?

It's not my preferred method, but we just went there. And we went to these places and we surrounded ourselves with these people, and we just sucked everything out that we could from their stories and their experiences in their homes, in their living rooms, the documents that each of them hung on to through the course of the story. We shot in the law firm itself in Downtown Cincinnati and we shot in the Netherland Hilton, where they really had these annual black tie events. We shot at the Queen City Club, where Victor Garber was first introduced and makes the speech praising DuPont.

We were right inside all of this. It was pretty insane because it puts you in the visual landscape and the spatial landscape. Space is a really important part of these kinds of movies, the sense of individuals alienated within corporate spaces, public spaces, domestic spaces. That became apparent and literalized by the story itself, where he's literally walled in by the boxes of discovery that he finally shakes loose from DuPont.

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2019/11/dark-waters-todd-haynes-interview

Ed Lachman not bothering to conceal his annoyance while explaining why DARK WATERS is the first all-digital Haynes feature https://t.co/h2fqhl9EGD pic.twitter.com/190Gm8yDrQ

— Vadim Rizov (@vrizov) December 3, 2019

I thought Carol was really beautiful visually, wonder how this one compares

This was fine as far as corporate malfeasance films go, not as gripping as Erin Brockovich or Norma Rae but better than A Civil Action. The cinematography made the lineage between this and Safe explicit.

thread

Haynes turning his eye for the voluptuous towards the grotesque and depressing? That’s how you shore up the conscience of the American movie goer. You make the comfort of wealth look sad and the hell of government mandated poverty un-Romantic

— Scout Tafoya (@Honors_Zombie) December 9, 2019

good stuff. i'm looking forward to seeing this one.

https://www.vulture.com/amp/2020/01/dark-waters-movie-why-didnt-it-get-nominated-for-an-oscar.html

It's a film I love reading about and admire but didn't much like while watching it.

Dark Waters is playing here for a couple of nights next week--looking forward to it. The China Syndrome is my gold standard for mainstream rabble-rousing; also liked Night Moves and The Promised Land more recently.

I should have mentioned Michael Apted's Class Action in the post above. Haynes may acknowledge it in Dark Waters when DuPont buries Ruffalo's lawyer in an avalanche of discovery documents.

I thought DW was pretty good, though less than what I was hoping for. I'm sure I would have liked it more if I hadn't lost 20% of the dialogue--even accounting for my poor hearing, I'm sure they didn't have the sound loud enough. (A kind of makeshift rep theatre.) I was surprised Anne Hathaway took the proverbial suffering-wife role. She was hardly in the film for the first half; she got more screen time after that, but it still seemed like a part for a less established actress. Maybe she just felt strongly about the subject.

her scenes were p strong tho, idk more meat to it than *just* the suffering wife, plus that neglectfulness of his family coming out in the 3rd out really showed his sacrifice, good movie

Watched Safe last night for the first time since it came out. It kind of went past me at the time--I think I got it (being allergic to the 20th century was a great concept), but, I don't know, it just wasn't my kind of film. I was hoping, of course, it would have special resonance right now.

It did, to a degree; thought the last half was strong. So while I still think its placement high on decade-end lists is overstating it, I was a lot more receptive to it.

I've not had a second viewing, but I think minority views are often important to consider

Rewatch of DARK WATERS confirms flat out masterpiece status. Every shot just a deliberate choice of economic filmmaking, didacticism barely apparent, even Hathaway felt necessary and good. God how’d we let this one get away.

— Peter Labuza (@labuzamovies) April 5, 2020

I still have my screener; I may give it another go this week, especially after my parents told me casually on the phone on Friday that they loved it (!).

I've still only seen it once too, but--allowing for an audio issue I mentioned above; I missed some of what she said later in the film--I disagree about Anne Hathaway. I did think it was a good-looking film.

I think it was terrifically shot, at least in the long shots of buildings, cities, offices, etc.

I share the doubts about Hathaway, who seemed to have accepted an oddly minor part.

I like the film overall.

May/December doesn't seem to have a thread...opens here tomorrow. I saw the trailer last week, seems to have some connection to Mary Kay Letourneau?

Netflix Dec. 1, didn't know. (And, after checking, yes to my question.)

I caught a preview that was open to the public earlier this week. Beautiful looking film, Lincoln Center will screen an exclusive 35mm print so it's probably worth seeing it there. I liked it quite a bit. Richard Brody of The New Yorker was kind of tough on the film ("good film by a great director") but it may very well be the best film I've seen that was theatrically released this year. Still early though, there are a few more I'm looking forward to.

Believe I will receive a MUBI GO ticket for it in a week or two which I presume will work at Lincoln Center, just saw the trailer there today in fact.

I saw it at the Chicago film festival and loved it. It's a tonally tricky film, but Haynes pulls it off. It's a lot funnier and campier than I was expecting while still taking its characters seriously. And the music, which is adapted from an 1970s Michel Legrand score, is deliriously great.

Re: the humor, Haynes talked about that during the Q&A at our screening. (His Q&A's are wonderful and he comes off as a wonderful human being - if he ever makes a personal appearance, definitely go see him.) He mentioned it's unpredictable how an audience will react because at Cannes, the audience didn't really laugh even though the reception was enthusiastic, but we did and he was like "you guys, YOU get it."

Speaking of personal appearances, he's got a couple schedule for December 1 at the Museum of the Moving Image, and I would highly recommend this one because the "other films" is very likely just Superstar, which was recently "remastered" per Haynes by the same people credited for the restoration for Dottie.

Good tip, thanks!

the music, which is adapted from an 1970s Michel Legrand score

Is it Summer of '42? Ballsy move if so.

The Go-Between

He mentioned it's unpredictable how an audience will react because at Cannes, the audience didn't really laugh even though the reception was enthusiastic, but we did and he was like "you guys, YOU get it."

I saw some Letterboxd reviews from viewers at my screening who complained that people were laughing inappropriately at things that weren't supposed to be funny, and I thought "no, I think they were supposed to be funny."

It's on my Netflix account today and will watch. Local critics are ecstatic.

xps

thanks bird!

It's on my Netflix account today and will watch. Local critics are ecstatic.

Critic access.

Just seen this at the cinema and thought it was fantastic. Beautifully shot, maintains a consistent unsettling undercurrent throughout, and great acting in particular between Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman.

I enjoyed it without being rhapsodic -- my usual approach to Haynes. He has more DO YOU SEE moments than you'd expect from a guy with his resume. I only got the campness when Haynes alluded to Persona.

But, boy, this is Portman's best work, isn't it? I've long distrusted her -- she comes off in other things like an AI version of an actor. She plays a mediocre actress without fuss.

I thought of Tar a lot: the way the vacuum-sealed compositions act as an ironic strategy; the light mockery at the expense of the self-absorbed artist that never turns cruel; the way a couple scenes (the lipstick scene for instance) play with erotic tension without succumbing.

i tend to feel the DO-YOU-SEE moments are literally and consciously a *device* rather than an inadvertent clumsiness of sensibility but i'm not sure what difference this has an effect (e.g on me rolling my eyes)

He's damn skilled in other depts so it's an affect at this point

His Q&A's are wonderful and he comes off as a wonderful human being - if he ever makes a personal appearance, definitely go see him.

I saw a preview screening of Safe and the audience was more-or-less contemptuous. They were all snickering knowingly at the final scenes, which caused Haynes to gently tell them that he didn't think they were supposed to be funny. Meanwhile, the women behind me who had talked through the film also continued to talk through the Q&A itself until I cursed them out. It was nightmarish for me, I can't imagine how he must have felt, yet kept his cool.

Oh wow, so this was back in 1995 (since it was a preview)? I feel bad for him, but he got the last laugh - it topped the Village Voice's critics poll for the best film of the decade, and I know he had to be aware of that.

I actually asked him to sign my Criterion edition of that film not too long ago, and not only did he inscribe it to me (I didn't ask him to, he asked for my name) but he drew a ♡ on it too. A sweet, sweet man.

This thing was a hoot!

Alfred I think you nailed what’s never worked for me about Natalie Portman as an actress

Watch this one, though!

Excellent review, Alfred

Thank you!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-xwsIW_otg

...and yes, he makes a closet joke in the first 30 seconds.

Safe is his only 'great' film imo. It's critique and ambiguities are so sharp! Nothing he's done since seems at all convincing. His version of pastiche is so on the nose, like an episode of a kids show where the main character falls asleep while writing a book report and has a dream where all the regular characters are versions of themselves in a Sirk movie/glam band etc. all that heaven allows was a totally pointless movie. Who needed Sirk to be spelled out like that?

I like the adaptations okay, particularly the really vulgar Mildred pierce miniseries, most memorable to me is the nude scene of Veda. A way better part than in the Joan Crawford version.

The new one sounds like nothing.

Sorry, far from heaven I meant

although I think the mistake does underscore something

His version of pastiche is so on the nose

I like Velvet Goldmine a lot, but the problem is that the only viewers who can make all the connections are probably going to be very opinionated about "the meaning of" Bowie, glam, Iggy, etc., and not accept Haynes' interpolation.

I laughed more often with (not at) this one quite a lot. Give it a shot.

Far from Heaven is the only Haynes I’ve seen that, yes, felt basically pointless. I remember Morbs used to say it was better than the Sirk and thinking his addiction to being against the grain led him to a truly bad take on that one

Not even Haynes would say that.

He has a wonderful analytical eye and I'd like someone to just get him to talk about a bunch of his favourite films for hours (like how ppl rightly indulge Scorsese), but Far from Heaven simply didn't come off.

Basically agree with Plax that Safe is his best but he was really great in the 90s and then mostly pretty good since. I always look forward to catching his new one.

I remember Morbs used to say it was better than the Sirk

lol Morbs

I loved Far From Heaven. I actually saw that in its original run, the first time I saw any of Haynes's films in a theater, and it completely blew me away. Easily the most gorgeous looking film I had seen up to that point and a big reason why I started going to the theater more and more. What's miraculous is that every physical element - clothing, scenery, cinematography and lighting whether in composition, detail or color - worked so well in tandem it clearly looked like a director's hand was guiding everything, and yet when I finally saw the DVD extras, I was stunned that Haynes had given plenty of freedom to all the department heads on that film. It's a credit to their combined talents - just look at their filmographies and it's no surprise they were able to do such great work.

This seems to be less the case nowadays, but during the mid-'00s to early 10's, it seemed like every time I caught a vintage Hollywood film in a repertory theater, you'd always have some jackass in their late teens to late '20s snickering and laughing at the film for being of its time. Sirk, Minnelli, Nick Ray, The Night of the Hunter, etc...there'd always be an obnoxious display of historical arrogance. And I always thought of Far From Heaven as responding to that, as if to say that aesthetic and that stylistic vocabulary not only remains vital but can address more things that people continue to face in their own lives in the world today. And the film does a powerful job of getting across the anguish its characters go through - the ending still kills me, the way two people have to deny themselves a kind of happiness that's all too rare for anyone. I still know people who have a lot done to them over interracial relationships or who struggled not too long ago with coming out to their family, and even if the world and the culture isn't what it once was, that pain and those raw emotions haven't gone away for everyone.

If I had to teach a film class, I'd have them study the whole sequence where Cathy runs some errands with Raymond and ends up dancing with him in the bar. When you think about storytelling in terms of what the characters are going through internally and how that progresses as a plot, look at the way that whole section of the film depicts that cinematically. The use of color alone is amazing - the way Raymond's clothes blend into the welcoming autumnal background, and how Cathy is isolated and alone in the purple coat wrapped around her. When they finally dance in the bar, and it's like the moment where you realize there's something here that can really turn into love, they do this neat trick where the light on the dance floor bathes them in a color that visually unites them - it doesn't clash with the colors of their clothing, it somehow makes them all blend in uniformly. All of a sudden, it's like some missing balance has been restored.

Safe is a top 10 ever film for me. Maybe my favourite genre of films is "it's a horror film but you don't realise it until later" (see also: Dead Ringers)

Last three posts are booming.

Its a powerfully angry film about AIDS and it brings together two rich seams of queer discursivity - the sophisticated semiotics of illness developed in that period (e.g. Crimp, Gran Fury, General Idea) and Sirkian (is that a word?) irony and detachment. All the ways it updates Sirk (sad, rich housewife; opulent but dismal decor; all consuming spiritual decay) feel original and with a rare contemporary urgency.

Far from heaven just feels (to me) like someone explaining Sirk and in doing so undermining the key tensions (surface/depth, public/private, etc) that animate those films. I feel like someone is sitting beside me saying 'actually this could be a metaphor for sexual repression' and start looking at my watch. Safe (and Fassbinder, even Mark Rappaport) do a much better service to Sirk* by working at a slight remove that leaves his seeming resistance to explicitness intact.

(I think the various anecdotes about nasty snickering audiences at Sirk and Minnelli screenings, hostile Q&As for Safe also point to a collective anger that I think is interesting and has a relationship to these films and the strategies they themselves deploy or the way they have been appropriated but I couldn't articulate here and now)

That said I don't like *hate* his films. Although I do think Far from heaven is a total waste of everyone's time its not as 'bad' as the obviously very bad velvet goldmine. Carol was fine and very pretty and I enjoyed seeing it at the time at the Ritzy in Brixton (practically empty, Christmas shopping period I think?). I loved the velvet underground documentary and could have watched a four hour version of it, though i would have enjoyed it more if I was still 16 and found the posturing of the now grown up factory people less cringe.

*That said I've been watching a lot of less canonical Sirk lately, including the noirs and historical comedies and its clear to me in a way that it wasn't before that what is commonly seen as 'Sirk' is really just a part of his overall output, which is much more varied though with certain motifs that become more striking when you see them used across a wider variety of genres (I'm thinking especially of his obsession with mirrors).

I don't care for Far From Heaven either. Sirk made those films that way because he reacted to the tenor, pace, look, and cultural assumptions of the 1950s; I didn't see the point in pastiching Sirk in 2002..

I mean there's a case to be made for a film that revisits the world of Sirk, but it would have to be something that tells us something new about that world, or its politics or its psyche - not just the same things repeated more slowly and enunciated more deliberately.

That was Fear Eats the Soul

As in a proper revisit to Sirk's world.

In one sense, and this is true of Safe also, but I meant more in response to what Alfred said about the 1950s consumer fantasy worlds of Sirk. There are definitely shades of that in Fear Eats the Soul (like the scene the tv getting kicked in) but its fundamentally about the Wirtschaftswunder and its margins rather than the horrible glare of postwar American prosperity.

That's why May-December works: it's the exegesis (and synthesis) of what he'd toyed with on FFH, Mildred Pierce, and Carol. The film offers his usual glassy precision but at the service of a camp approach that constantly interrogates his surfaces.

Natalie Portman is very good here, especially her spot-on (and therefore funny) imitation of Julianne Moore in her long in-character monologue towards the end. Moore has some effective moments--she's as good at Julienne Moore as Portman is--and the kids are all fine; wish the older, more acerbic daughter had shown up sooner in the film. The biggest flaw for me was big enough to be a problem: Charles Melton. He's stolid and bland most of the way--I think we're supposed to see him as having been a credible temptation for Moore 20 years earlier--but when he's called upon to actually act later in the film, I thought he fell woefully short. The film's ending, first the final encounter between Portman and Moore and then the epilogue, was intriguing.

Wow! His was the performance I wasn't expecting -- and he was rather hot with that dad body.

Gonna watch it today or tomorrow but, yeah, all my mutuals led me to believe it was his performance that was the movie’s stealth best

He plays this stunted man with finesse, and Haynes inserts him into this smoke-weed-with-his-kid sequence that's the only time in recent memory such a sequence hasn't mortified me.

Good profile of Charles Melton, who just won the New York Film Critics Circle award for best supporting actor:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/26/movies/charles-melton-may-december-riverdale.html

I'm delighted Melton's in.

Just watched this one last night and I'm pretty sure that it's my new favorite Haynes, above even Safe.

_I remember Morbs used to say it was better than the Sirk _

lol Morbs

Guess maybe you mean this post

I saw it at the Chicago film festival and loved it. It's a tonally tricky film, but Haynes pulls it off. It's a lot funnier and campier than I was expecting while still taking its characters seriously. And the music, which is adapted from an 1970s Michel Legrand score, is deliriously great.

what a film!!!!!!

Still thinking of it today.
”Too smoky!”

def think melton gave an astonishing performance. still thinking about him getting stoned with his son on the rooftop, incredible tension-release dynamic in that scene, or the way he rubs his hands against his legs when he's in bed with natalie portman, still 12 years old

but portman... portman!!! her most natural performance bc she is effortlessly gliding on the line between natural and artificial, a practiced guilelessness

Yeah all good. Believe it is Julianne Moore’s birthday today.

but portman... portman!!! her most natural performance bc she is effortlessly gliding on the line between natural and artificial, a practiced guilelessness

she is amazing.

She plays a mediocre actress so well. I don't mean it condescendingly.

Will watch sometime in the next week.

She plays a mediocre actress so well. I don't mean it condescendingly.

no, exactly. this actress is...not exceptional. she's not terrible either, which would have been a different task. she's not just great. She (the character) almost is great when she does the letter read...but what happens to that spark in the final scene (the retakes)? It's totally gone.

For me, Portman’s best moment was the high school inside the actor’s studio interlude, letting it get off the rails and inappropriate almost immediately

best line delivery of the year may december best writing of the year pic.twitter.com/t7gmNcKDBD

— Moreira (@cinemoreeira) December 1, 2023

The name of the show Portman was on (“Norah’s Ark”) was perfect.

Also, I was very relieved this wasn’t actually much like Persona.

that music cue (with the fridge opening) is hilarious

I liked this, but I thought the moral judgments were rendered a bit woodenly, and for a story about illicit love I thought it could have been even hornier!

https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/interviews/todd-haynes-may-december
Haynes interviewed by Amy Taubin

That was great, thanks. Feel like Amy Taubin is the perfect person for him to be discussing this with, especially after seeing her in The Warhol Diaries.

imo this is a real goddamn movie. still thinking about it days later. all the miles-wide negative space extending beneath the tightly-controlled performances

knew i loved it from the moment the camera follows portman into the stockroom

Longtime pal Kelly Reichardt interviewed him (and quite well) for a collection called Todd Haynes: Rapturous Process enclosed with the screener

imo this is a real goddamn movie

Yep, what the film bros have been crowing about endlessly in response to Oppenheimer and Killers of the Flower Moon, I'm now happy to report myself and the film gays are happily going overboard with in the very same vein

Something really Chabrol-ian about this film. Good stuff! Portman is indeed excellent.

Good description!

For the first time! Xpost

Watched it tonight, really liked it. I liked that it both was and wasn't Haynes' Mary Kay Letourneau movie. Also his second Citizen Kane nod, right? Like Velvet Goldmine, you have the outsider piecing together the story of the person. Except that the outsider is actually the main character. This one also reminded me a bit tonally of Assayas.

Haynes is such a smart and interesting filmmaker, really one of my favorites.

echoing the chorus of praise for melton in this, love the strange energy field he carries around with him, especially in contrast to the very different stuff portman & moore are doing. he didnt strike me so much as an arrested man-child so much as someone who had just started to develop a personality only to have it slowly disappear over 20 years. its like behind his eyes theres the faintest hint of a pilot light thats just barely flickering but never quite catches.

have to admit i'm not really swayed by the camp readings of this, feel like the "not enough hot dogs" music sting is doing a lot of the heavy lifting for that. the only other time i felt it got close was the retake scene at the end, which looked like something out of mulholland drive

I'm still not sure what to think of the final scene. Because to my eyes...nothing got better from take to take. It's the same thing over and over again. I read one review (or maybe it was here can't recall) that implied that the movie she is making is another TV movie but I don't think that's the case; it's supposed to be an independent film, right? She watches a scene from a TV movie in the film. And at the end...I don't feel like the quality of what they are doing is any better than what was reflected in that TV movie; Haynes seems to be saying that no re-enactment is ever going to be a pure expression. You can reshoot it a thousand times and it will always feel false.

I thought the final scene was a great punchline. After all that high-minded prep, the movie they end up doing is just a junky, sensationalistic thing, The Amy Fisher Story more or less.

It's double underlining that the actress (who is as fragile and susceptible to Elizabeth's influence as Joe was) is no closer to understanding Elizabeth than she was at the beginning ... less close, even. She nailed the take when she thought she had a handle on her background, but Elizabeth cut her off at the knees in the second to last scene.

otm

yeah. to me it almost feels like a final caution to the viewer: if you thought of her as your audience surrogate, a gumshoe peeling back all the layers for you, you look as dumb as she does right now. after that last scene btwn her and moore its basically unnecessary, putting a hat on a hat, but i still liked it.

I thought about that too and, ultimately, I disagree. We do need to see her flail on camera after that moment.

Idk guys. I hoped for better.

and it was!

It reminded me of like the accident or reflections in a golden eye (campy, ponderous, blurry) or something like foxes (that 70s shampoo ad look) also why was it set in 2015? It wasn't an excuse to get people to dress like it was 2015. I'm curious to see what people sincerely trying to do the 2010s in costume will look like because I want to know what type 'office girl in wide legged trousers' will signify

I suppose to get the math about their age gap accurate-- based on the original true life incident

That's what I figured, too, although since it was a fictionalized version, why did it need to have happened at the exact same time the Mary Kay LeTourneau scandal did?

oh i didn't realise it was based on a true life story. I would have fired the costume designer though. some of it was funny in a valley of the dolls way. I didn't find the final conversation between the two leads that devastating.

I mentioned this movie to my wife as one to watch, and she surprised me by saying she actually watched half of it and *hated* it. She said it was like watching a cheesy from-the-headlines Lifetime movie and didn't get the point. She did say that if I watched the first half and saw something it it that she didn't she would consider watching the rest.

I watched most of it again last night and had an even better time. Portman's earnestness (which we learn is inseparable from her guile) is hilarious.

I noted this second time Cory Michael Smith's performance as Georgie, damaged beyond reckoning and barely insouciant about it. I wrote down this bit after Elizabeth asks him about how Joe told him about what was happening b/w him and his mom:

"It was right before my birthday so we forgot to cancel the party but only one guy came anyway and we just hung out in my room and ate so many warheads that I threw up, and we watched TV until the sun was almost up and I gave him a hand-job and then he never spoke to me again."

georgie steals the very few scenes he's in. amazing performance

i really liked the way the lawyer talked to & about georgie in the scene with his bar band, a great little bittersweet comic performance by that guy

re:2015 I read an interview w/Haynes where he said he didnt want to risk audiences bringing any Trump-era baggage to the story, especially given the southern setting. I'm not sure that would have occurred to me as a viewer, but that was his reasoning anyway.

Josh, your wife is wrong.

I believe it! I was just struck by the strength of her reaction.

I didn't find the final conversation between the two leads that devastating.

In a way, it shouldn't have been. That it sent Portman's character reeling is part of what's so damning

I primarily read that conversation as Gracie's assertion of control over her own story. That no matter what Elizabeth did she'd never really know her. What she thought was her Rosebud moment maybe actually wasn't — and, pace the original Rosebud, wouldn't have really explained the truth of Gracie even if it was true.

The movie felt like it had a very glossy surface for most of the time I was watching it, but it has really been something to ruminate on. I just loved the melodramatic piano score, it added a lot of both pathos and humor

The score is the score from the Go-Between

Its a wonderful score but for me a major contributor to the self conscious late 60s Losey pastiche which i found tiresome, not least because every Losey film I've seen since the Servant has been a major disappointment. In that way I guess he's similar to Haynes for me, I feel like they both lucked into one great film where everything clicks and its a miracle but everything else theyve done is laboured and smug. I haven't seen every Losey film though and Haynes hasn't done anything as bad as Eva.

I thought Portman was way too much, the gags felt overdone. The screen is a mirror. I'm not really sure what I was supposed to be confronted by. Maybe it needed another hour or so of portman wandering around in a sunhat. The Chabrol comparison feels way too kind, at least there would be a dead body or a painting or a suitcase of cash it was Chabrol. I was going to say maybe Haynes should adapt a Highsmith novel but then I remembered he already has. I wonder what Laura Mulvey would say about it.

I was disappointed by this too, weird kind of mix of trashy and prestige but not really nailing either

My Letterboxd this weekend was a feast of May December backlash

I thought Portman was way too much, the gags felt overdone.

Interesting. To my mind she's an inadequate actress, but she and Haynes exploited her weaknesses well. I was more conscious this second viewing of how nicely she spaced out her delivery, how she managed a second-tier actress' trick of I Am Listening Now when another person spoke to her.

I liked it, but for a film about forbidden love, there was very little I found uncomfortable. the moral POV seemed pretty well prescribed

The most uncomfortable moment to me was was Portman telling her casting people that the 13-year-olds they were sending her weren't sexy enough. But it was also funny.

Yeah, was also uncomfortable with the variation on that theme, very willingly answering the drama class clown's question on how to film sex scenes

Take this with a grain of salt, but this film has grown in my estimation the further I've gotten from it. I found it uncomfortable and just generally not enjoyable as I watched it, but I admit I do keep thinking about parts of it (especially the final scene).

I didn't read a lot of previews or have big expectations going in, beyond knowing the basic premise. I was shocked after I watched it to find people saying how funny it was - I truly did not laugh once, and did not ever get the sense it was going for comedic beats.

I agree, and I believe Haynes when he’s said as much in interviews. (Although he obviously miscalculated with the “hot dogs” music sting, only an alien would think that wasn't intended as a camp laff.)

I find myself having that experience more & more over the last 5 or so years, seeing some really severe drama or horror movie overpraised online as a hilarious dark comedy. I think about it a lot tbh and cant really figure out exactly what I think about it. I know part of it is obviously just an effect of Me Getting Old, but I think theres definitely some things going on in current film culture that are resulting in audiences bringing a lot more irony to the table than in times past, at least w/certain kinds of films.

Kids these days reserve their solemnity for Tiktok reels

I mean, I just heard Portman and Moore going for beats in their line deliveries that amused me. idk if I brought anything.

The problem with comedy and finding things unfunny is that no one wants to feel left out of the joke.

I will never use the phrase "hilarious dark comedy" and will give serious side eye to anyone who does.

I do

congrats on finally tying the knot!

I get my boxing terms mixed. xpost

Throw those dreary vows away, they bore me!

I like the idea that Haynes is focusing on us (the audience) as avid consumers of lurid tabloid stories, and turning the narrative and whatever truth there might be about it back on us, to what our reactions to this movie might reflect about us

Throw those dreary vows away, they bore me!

― stephen miller is not your friend (Eric H.), Monday, December 18, 2023 8:49 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

lol

The general atmosphere here is very Macbeth-ish.

We've seen you like this before. Is it over or is it just beginning?

thought joe actor/character was really good. the put down of 'this is what grown ups do' was one of the most off handedly condescendingly mean thing I've seen in a movie in a while. the graduation dress shopping scene with the daughter's reaction to the 'your brave to wear that dress and show off your upper arms' volley from the mum was great/chilling. never got a handle on who gracie was throughout the whole thing. hopefully that was the point.

the music cues kept making me think of 'invitation to love'

the put down of 'this is what grown ups do' was one of the most off handedly condescendingly mean thing I've seen in a movie in a while

Yeah, this one got a gasp from me

Portman nailed the delivery.

This latest “controversy” is really killing any remaining goodwill I have toward … well discourse in general tbh

this. a24 not contacting the last remaining brother of the von erichs until after the iron claw was made…the aaliyah story a younger zendaya turned down…it should be an ethical requirement to request an individual’s permission for a biopic or “inspired story,” based on THEM. https://t.co/56QqnSQ7kI

— kristen (not crystal) yellowjackets shish-kabob 🍡 (@lordesbbqribs) January 4, 2024

give me a fucking break here lol pic.twitter.com/rhW0HmvyQk

— alice (@modlssss) January 4, 2024

I think artists should be able to write about whomever they want…but I also think if they’re based on a real person, there should be a sincere effort to understand that person and give them a fair shake…kind of a theme of this movie iirc

joe was clearly the character the story was most sympathetic to imo, fwiw

Right. I'm not myself feeling sympathetic.

He may be the inspiration but it's not a biography. It would be extremely misguided to even mistake it as one, just as it would be to think Charles Foster Kane is supposed to be a biographical depiction of William Randolph Hearst. Public figures inspire countless fictional characters. The plot may involve adapting a controversial event into a TV show, but it's still doing so within the realm of fiction.

I don't know why so much of the audience nowadays has trouble grappling with the concept of fiction - it's like when they mistake any film, book or song as being some kind of coded memoir. Is it reality TV warping their understanding of such things?

And thanks to its mixture of tones it winds up fair to all the principals? We understand without sympathizing.

I can understand the guy's feelings, sure, but that's just how stories work. Stagger Lee would like a word.

sensible and justified for this dude to see it the way he sees it

sensible and justified for haynes et al to proceed with their creative project without involving him

"If they had reached out to me, we could have worked together on a masterpiece"

i do like his delusions of grandeur though

Indeed, this movie could've been up there with The Amy Fischer Story. Instead, it's merely Haynes' best movie since Safe (the Village Voice poll's best movie of the '90s).

It's funny how in the movie the people the story is based on are involved but not in the actual production of the movie where that happens

This movie is so exquisitely awkward

Yeah, between this and Showing Up it was a good year for awkward.

Showing Up is awkward, and is a remarkable film about a small local community of people (an arts community in Portland OR) trying to navigate the world, with all of the frustrations and divided feelings that come with it. It is my favorite movie so far from this year.

May December is also a favorite film this year, but it seems very slippery and knowing and almost conniving, and is almost the opposite of awkward to me, although there are some moments in it that are cringy