Come anticipate David Fincher's "Zodiac"

yes! "metaphysical" the word I was looking for.

haha how could that be you use that word in 21% of all your posts

haha honestly I almost never use that word! i usually grope for something like "religious" (like I do upthread I am willing to bet) which seems wrong here somehow.

2nd occurence of metaphysical in my post was changed from religious

but yknow it's not that the whale is god

the genius of the movie is how much of the Zodiac case Fincher understood. Not even from Graysmith's angle, but how nebulous it has turned out to be, how terrifying it is that so little is known even when he left victims ALIVE, how it continually kept poisoning the well for any new law enforcement agent that dared to even look sideways at the cold case

It's like the Mummy's Curse somehow

How can something SO terrifying and SO fascinating and SO public be such a dead end?

Fincher captures all that desperation and futility so well

well no one ever solved the Ripper murders either
xp

How can something SO terrifying and SO fascinating and SO public be such a dead end?

haha yup

i feel like the supposedly radical ambiguity of the film is undercut more than somewhat by the last scene(s?).

i feel like fincher/screenwriters lead us to believe that this guy really was the killer and there wasn't enough evidence to pin it on him in time.

my sense is that there is also evidence that would seem to rule that guy out that fincher doesn't introduce. so he does streamline the narrative a bit in order to have some kind of conclusive ending, even if it's far less conclusive than the vast majority of film procedurals.

still think it's a brilliant movie FWIW.

"my sense is that there is also evidence"

i mean to say that i recall reading of evidence...

beyond what's referred to in the closing text shots?

I think in some sense you're right that they want us to definitely suspect him without having proof. it's a conceit of the film, I think, that he can't be totally ruled out. hence why that bit about the DNA not matching at the very very end almost makes you want to say "so much the worse for the facts" in a graysmithian mode.

but the witness answering "8" is just so amazingly perverse I have to think it's based on actual testimony? In any case it's brilliant. it's not like "5"--it's almost there!

they should make a musical about this from the POV of Arthur Leigh Allen about how he's just a regular joe being stalked by policemen, journalists and this crazy Highsmith dude. all he wants to do is skin some squirrels and go skin diving but nooooo

ok maybe not

beyond what's referred to in the closing text shots?

― Οὖτις, Tuesday, May 13, 2014 4:32 PM (22 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes, from news articles and etc.

skin some squirrels and go skin diving

that, and masturbate to the sounds of children's screams IIRC

Graysmith: "Does the name Dick Van Dyke mean anything to you?"
Narlow: "Hypothetically, you just named my favorite suspect in the whole case."

(Last year, but I'd never seen it till now.)

well no one ever solved the Ripper murders either
xp

― Οὖτις, Tuesday, May 13, 2014 9:22 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That's what they want you to think!

Abraham Lincoln and Jack the Ripper: One and the Same?

dang, was looking forward to reading the gary l stewart book ( as recommended on s&d: True Crime! books ) but is it just outright bullshit?

i feel like fincher/screenwriters lead us to believe that this guy really was the killer and there wasn't enough evidence to pin it on him in time.

my sense is that there is also evidence that would seem to rule that guy out that fincher doesn't introduce. so he does streamline the narrative a bit in order to have some kind of conclusive ending, even if it's far less conclusive than the vast majority of film procedurals.

still think it's a brilliant movie FWIW.

― espring (amateurist), Tuesday, May 13, 2014 9:29 PM (6 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The movie sticks to Graysmith's version of events which has many factual errors and distortions, including a ridiculous scene in the film where Graysmith supposedly solves the second cipher.

ALA was excluded by everything: handwriting, fingerprints, eyewitnesses, DNA. It wasn't him.

dang, was looking forward to reading the gary l stewart book ( as recommended on s&d: True Crime! books ) but is it just outright bullshit?

― NI, Monday, May 19, 2014 12:53 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The fingerprint evidence in the book is ludicrous from what I've read.

dang, was looking forward to reading the gary l stewart book ( as recommended on s&d: True Crime! books ) but is it just outright bullshit?

― NI, Monday, May 19, 2014 12:53 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The fingerprint evidence in the book is ludicrous from what I've read.

― Matt Armstrong, Sunday, May 18, 2014

The amateur sleuths on the Zodiac Killer message board aren't too convinced, it seems

that message board is kinda O_o

wait is it a message board FOR zodiac killers or

no one is sure whether they are a zodiac killer or not

very tense place

I haven't seen a picture of it but apparently this guy somehow needed to reverse the image of his dad's fingerprint in order to find a match, which sounds ridiculous

that message board is kinda O_o

― set the controls for the heart of the sun (VegemiteGrrl), Monday, May 19, 2014 1:38 AM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

which one? :D

Really odd watching The Zodiac--the other one, from a couple of years before Fincher's. It turns up in sale bins all over here.

It's not good, didn't expect it to be, was just interested in comparing them. Maybe it shouldn't have surprised me how closely the budget version anticipated the later film--it obviously draws from the same source material (Graysmith's book, I assume)--but seeing the same murders played out in the same sequence, and in exactly the same settings, and hearing the Zodiac speak lines that match up verbatim, was disorienting. The Zodiac actually starts with the Vallejo murder that Fincher's film only alludes to.

It's more plodding than outright bad, although sometimes it's that too--there's a montage of news of the day intercut with the unfolding story (as "Time Has Come Today" plays overtop) that's really clunky. The actors playing the detective and the reporter aren't within light years of Ruffalo and Downey (no Graysmith character). The worst performance, though, comes from the one person who links the two films, Philip Baker Hall. He plays the chief of police in this one, and he's surprisingly terrible.

interesting! I didn't even know about that other film.

This is playing tonight in NYC in 35mm. As a skeptic, I'm willing to give it a second shot if I can stay energized til 9pm.

http://www.filmlinc.com/films/on-sale/zodiac

if you can stay awake until then, you can always nap during the movie. it's a long one.

no i don't do that

Do it! It's a movie that really rewards (more than most) the big screen. All about the details and subtle touches, plus the construction. It's nice to be as focused on the procedure as its characters.

I'd love to see this in a theatre again. Not sure what the context will be, but I'm sure I'll get the chance at some point.

no i don't do that

― son of a lewd monk (Dr Morbius),

you can try watching it at home while vacuuming or scrubbing the tub

I don't clean, either

alfred you have a tv in your bathroom??!

or a bathtub in your living room??!!!

he has a private bathtub at lincoln center, actually.

i think this movie is pretty brilliantly achieved but not as profound as some would have it.

I think a lot of the profundity comes from a mix between a commitment to its procedural genre and the historical contingencies of the case. and outstanding performances.

i hear that a lot, that it stays true to the historical contingencies of the case. and it's true that the film does allow for more uncertainty and contradiction than most procedurals. but it still leaves out some important things that would have left the audience with even more uncertainty. the film strongly points to the one suspect, with the nagging uncertainty chiefly limited to the fact that because he's dead we can never be sure. but the film leaves out exculpatory evidence that would suggest that even that suspect was probably not responsible for all or possibly any of the murders. i think this is discussed above.

i mean, i wish the film completely lived up to the way it's often billed (as sort of spinning out into uncertainty and irresolution) but i don't think that's truly the case. i think it is more conventional than a lot of its admirers would seem to argue.

that doesn't mean that it's not an excellent movie, though.

It DOES present that evidence! And in any case I think there's more going on than a gesture towards pure uncertainty and irresolution--more like how do things like certainty and resolution play out against uncertainty and demands for justice.

does it? i thought there was some contradictory evidence that it pointedly leaves out. it's been a few years since i thought about all this, so i'm going from memory as opposed to checking my sources.

xpost

whole final act being a kind of "what now" after the pure uncertainty and irresolution already arrived at earlier (and why all the other investigators fall away from the case).

It's only presented as a postscript--so you're partially right!

weirdly, if you want to see a film that's very oddly structured--and kind of hypnotically boring-- b/c it largely hews to the uneventful flow of someone's actual biography, rent "jolson sings again"

with the nagging uncertainty chiefly limited to the fact that because he's dead we can never be sure

there is a title card saying he was exonerated by DNA evidence.