UPSTREAM COLOR, a new film from Shane Carruth (Primer)

I don't think this worked for me on a Lynchian level or otherwise. There were some groovy audiovisual things going on but not enough to keep me interested. With Lynch I'm always glued to my seat, scared to tear my face away. This is another in a seemingly endless line of recent indie movies channeling identity crisis via a washed-out couple in their mid-30s babbling vacant words at each other in the middle of a kitchen. It really lagged about a third of the way through, a deliberately confusing montage of temporal and spatial displacement that nevertheless felt a bit like a trope we've seen before. I didn't hate the movie, but it wasn't Primer.

a washed-out couple in their mid-30s babbling vacant words at each other in the middle of a kitchen

my life

channeling identity crisis via a washed-out couple in their mid-30s babbling vacant words at each other in the middle of a kitchen.

I've been trying to find time to watch that last Miranda July movie for two months.

Haha, that's the other one I was talking about. I never want to see a film that does that again.

Whatever kept July from impersonating her g-d dying cat.

Two movies are not "an endless line" ... but did you mean the couples are washed-out or washed-up?

(I guess I prefer vacant babble to Primer, tho.)

xpost both. i dunno, i feel like i've seen a lot of this detached soft-focus 'what is it all about? what are you talking about? wait-whuh.... who am I?' kind of stuff a bunch of times before. maybe directors be having a personality crisis or something but i find it a pretty boring way to convey arty dissociation.

maybe just absorb the film instead of analyzing constantly, it's not something you necessarily have to think deeply about

it's just music goddamn it!

hehe, but what i'm saying here is it didn't really pull off that 'just sit back and enjoy the ride' feeling for me (as i get with Lynch and some other directors of that kind) because bits of it were either tedious or done-before or just overly confusing.

your connection with your spirit pig is strained

The worm has control.

Jainism but with worm/spirit pig duology

fuk, I meant zoroastrianism, whatever

I liked almost everything about it, tho I did watch it in 20-30 minute sprints. would def watch a tv series shot in this style.

glad to see somebody posted that carruth doesn't see the sampler as the antagonist. my takeaway was that the thief was the bad guy and the sampler was some sort of surreptitious healer, but reading some other posts on the thread I thought maybe I was mistaken. guess I should go read some interviews and crackpot internet theories.

follow your spirit pig where it leads you

I hope he makes upstream color II electric pigaloo

neon pigaloo

http://farm1.staticflickr.com/197/529174900_40c23dd968_o.jpg

Apparently no one has linked this, re "open" and "closed" movies:

http://chicagosburning.tumblr.com/post/50869565487/cb-195-sorry-were-closed-come-in-were-open

I am not understanding the comparisons with Lynch, at all.

The Thief is the devil and The Sampler is God - compassionate and showing us things as they are / sound like. The Thief sticks the worms of weakness into us - psychosis or substance abuse - but if we turn to The Sampler he can get it out. But The Sampler is part of the problem, as he is part of the cycle, which is extraneous to Man, so once we realize that - but accepting the self-help wisdom of Walden - we have to kill The Sampler to get rid of The Thief, before we can become on with the pigs.

It's all some sort of Randian bullshit, in other words.

wut

Just watched this, liked it a lot. I particularly liked that it seemed allergic to explication/explanation. No voiceover, no "aha" explanation, plenty of loose threads, plenty of potential ways to understand the linkages between the various characters but no overt parsing as far as heroes/villains or even passive victims/active agents, even though there are parts that draw upon lots of genres and emotional frameworks. It was refreshing. I can see how it might bug the crap out of some people but I really liked its weird restraint.

This picture made me think of this movie:
http://37.media.tumblr.com/0b43db2a4357a88ae7ccd464f4b65c50/tumblr_n3fwe2FcGZ1r4dx5zo1_500.jpg

:D

Barnyard productionz

http://https%3A//farm4.staticflickr.com/3922/14916512806_d9a43b179a.jpg

http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/150x100q90/745/gGyG5M.jpg

I'd been looking forward to seeing this movie for so long, but I wanted to wait until the right night to watch it, which was tonight. Wow, what a neat movie. I even managed to go in totally blind, which might have made it even better. Or at least more compelling. Don't get the upthread comparison to Lynch at all. I thought it was like a cross between Cronenberg and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind."

http://variety.com/2015/film/news/anne-hathaway-keanu-reeves-daniel-radcliffe-modern-ocean-1201632722/

not sure what it says about me that the prospect of a film about shipping routes has me very excited

caught myself thinking "free your spirit pig" again the other day

it sounds a bit mysterious, like is it set in a specific era or what?

Well the modern era of course, but it still could be a period movie

I'm with you ogmor! I'm excited!

Cast looks awful ugh.

having Reeves and Goldblum in the same movie doesn't seem legal

not sure what it says about me that the prospect of a film about shipping routes has me very excited

― ogmor, Wednesday, November 4, 2015 5:42 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

same

reeves thing isn't that disheartening tbh although perhaps i liked him in john wick more than a fair amount of people

either way, great that carruth got another project off the ground so soon after upstream color (by comparison to the gap between primer and UC, at least), also reminds me that i need to watch upstream color again - haven't since it came out

My wife said upstream color made her feel like she was going crazy. I loved it though. I should watch it again too.

Just popped onto his wiki to see what's up, and as far as I can tell ... nothing?

In 2014, Carruth announced a new film, The Modern Ocean, based on international shipping and the lives of those involved. On August 12, 2015, it was reported that the film was in pre-production, and its ensemble cast was announced in November 2015; it will include Anne Hathaway, Keanu Reeves, Tom Holland and Daniel Radcliffe. However, in an interview in 2018, Carruth noted that the film is "not gonna happen anytime soon".

Why should he hurry

Thought it neat that Upstream Color was edited by David Lowery, who also edited his own film A Ghost Story to similar ends.

My only objection watching UC is that the ubitquitous excerpts from to On Walden Pond are way too on the nose.

Another article I read made it sound like The Modern Ocean is dead as a project and he’s had to move on to other things. Really sucks, would be neat to see what he could do on a big scale.

Why should he hurry

Lotsa whys at work. But I'd say he should hurry to get it done? Because the cast will move on? Because the funding will drop out? Or maybe both happened already and he's on to the next thing. Mostly I just want more movies from him!

Of course I want him to take his time and make movies as singular as his first two, but for practical reasons he seems prone to distractions and delays. Taking small acting gigs, for example, or doing music. It looks like he did the music for the TV version of "The Girlfriend Experience," which I suspect could be Soderbergh's way of throwing him some cash. Looks like he (and Lowery and Amirpour?) also directed some episodes of a nature documentary series? Lowery, for comparison, has made four features since Upstream Color was released, incl. a big-budget Disney movie. The last thing I'd want is for Carruth to be jaded into nothingness, but he also seems like the kind of guy to surprise everyone with a new movie no one knew was coming.

That movie isn't happening and hasn't been happening for a while. He moved on.

(Don't get me wrong, I didn't necessarily want him to make *that* movie, just *a* movie.)

He abandoned a project a significant way in before making Upstream (there's a bit of footage from it in the movie). He really seems to not want to put his name to stuff that's not up to snuff. I'd love another Carruth movie but way more filmmakers should be half as self-critical.

Or independent.