Reading Inherent Vice

That was a particular move that would get laughs (or not) through repetition. Goes into a place to question then wanders around (w/out say even asking to go to the toilet first, as you would typically have in such a scenario in films). First time he does this I think is where he goes to Sloane's place then wanders off to look for the tie labelled 'Shasta', which he then finds it when he wanders in the retreat, strapped to the Nazi (or guy with the swastika?)

So themes = sometimes.

id make it a triple bill with big lebowski and soderbergh's the informant.

Think I followed the plot for an hour before I stopped caring/drifted off in the fog. There was a v silly piece in The Guardian about how people were finding the plot so difficult they walked out (which I won't link right now, its piffle that takes five wasted seconds of your life to skim through). xp

the plot is not really that confusing?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qbcqg_70i-w

We saw it in a very small cinema, with not a lot of people attending. However the middle-aged man, who had come alone, sitting behind us was laughing uproariously all the way through; even at parts that were only tenuously funny/quirky. Maybe he'd read the book or something? We couldnt' work it out.

― oi listen mate, shut up (dog latin), Monday, February 9, 2015 3:11 AM (13 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

these are the people who laughed at CSNY stage banter. no one else gets what's so funny.

so coke

basically

There obviously is a narrative, don't think its necessary to follow anything.

It was quite funny, although its not obvious even at which points so diff bits will be funny to whoever.

I don't even remember the sex scene in the book, which puts it firmly outside the top 15 or so disgusting Pynchon sex scenes.

re: sex scene. I didn't find it a problem, its hardly Strawdogs or 70s Japanese 'pink' cinema.

yeah it was just a cross between sexy, comic and discomfiting. Shasta mumbled a lot and I didn't catch everything she was saying, but the whole scene (I found the whole 'foot/crotch massaging' thing a bit unpleasant really) was just a bit too eerie to be taken as a straight sex scene.

We saw it in a very small cinema, with not a lot of people attending. However the middle-aged man, who had come alone, sitting behind us was laughing uproariously all the way through; even at parts that were only tenuously funny/quirky. Maybe he'd read the book or something? We couldnt' work it out.

maybe his idea of what's funny is different to yours.

it could even be possible that every other human being has a different mind to your own.

dont see the big deal about the sex scene, other than that the nudity seemed a bit gratuitous, and forced in there.

"There obviously is a narrative, don't think its necessary to follow anything."

i dont think this film is actually stoned or at least weird enough to justify the non-interest/non-sequitur-ness of its narrative. it has a texture and atmosphere, sure, but it doesnt seem THAT powerful or enveloping. PTA is too controlling for it to ever really get out of control which it could have done with more of.

i guess that's the nub of it really. i disagree. i found each scene worked on its own merits, so i didn't care about the narrative really, it was there if a bit loose. i prob laughed more at this than i have at any movie in a long time - but there was more to it than that - it had intensity at times - the scene where they were on coke was ridiculous but also built this amazing tension - tension that was not tied to any major part of narrative. it was quite druggy in the way it manipulated you like that.

i think being familiar with the politics/culture of the era and place is as helpful to "following" as reading the novel would be. Anyone who's read a little about COINTELPRO knows what the deal is with Owen Wilson's character fairly quickly.

See I didn't know it was called that. But no one is who they say they are is something Pynchon does in a way that no one quite does. This needs a lot more thought and comparison than I can give right now.

I thought there was a lot more disintegration of narrative/loss of control in the last hour. And again, characters appearing and disappearing within a page - that was awesome to see adapted into a film.

Should check whether this has been remarked on upthread but the characters did lower their voices mid-sentence a lot, to almost a mumble? Pynchon as proto-mumblecore?

I definitely picked up on that, thought it might have been deliberate, but assuming so it really irritated me as a directorial choice.

I thought it was fine as a choice -- adds to the confusing haze the characters are in -- and certainly deliberate, deadpanning here but I can re-watch with subtitles one day.

went out to see this last night. disappointed, though i don't know why, as i've never been much of an anderson fan. it just felt so lifeless. the plot, while complex in the manner of paranoid free association, was easy enough to follow in its general outlines. it seemed irrelevant, though, mostly just a framework for stoned lurching. problem is that the stoned lurching, while kind of funny at times, was far more often dull and repetitive. lots of endless, expository conversations full of pointless detail. margin doodling carried out at feature length. performances are generally great, especially brolin & phoenix, but they weren't enough to hold my interest. a few good jokes ("something spanish"), but not many. did love martin short.

the scenes with short are among the few where the movie comes alive for a time. sportello's taxi driver-quoting escape near the end is another, along with the highly-charged seduction & sex scene with doc & shasta. loved those moments, and i can see why the latter has attracted so much commentary. it feels like the film's emotional center as well as its real conclusion. it's hard not to read shasta's self negating power kink as yet another commentary on the selling of 60s idealism, but honestly, i don't think the film really has much to say on that score - beyond dutifully rehashing the familiar complaints, i mean. whatever its politics, that scene at least manages to suggest for a moment that something's at stake. unfortunately, everything afterwards (except for bigfoot's final milkshake-drinking tray-gobbling, another standout moment) felt pointless.

I thought it was fine as a choice -- adds to the confusing haze the characters are in -- and certainly deliberate, deadpanning here but I can re-watch with subtitles one day.

― xyzzzz__, Thursday, February 12, 2015 10:40 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes - this totally makes sense. i think the stoned mind has an tendency to wander and often you'll start listening to someone before concentrating on other thoughts.

"i don't think the film really has much to say on that score"

otm. this is PTA not only channelling his 70s heroes, but the same subject matter. aesthetically magnificent but otherwise just hollow and redundant.

"stoned lurching" = 20th century history imo

i keep thinking that if this was actually made a bit more 'whimsically', or a bit more 'indie', i.e. shambolic, micro-budget, etc, i think it might have worked better. but its directed with such heft and power, and all that power kind of ends up being used for very little. its an imposing piece of filmmaking but with a feeble core.

"stoned lurching" = 20th century history imo

okay, sure, and it's certainly a potentially interesting lens through which to view the era: lots of competing interests each deeply paranoid and armed only with enough information to be dangerous. i just don't think the movie does much of anything with the idea. mostly about j phoenix looking mad rumpled while herding confusion.

I was kind of j/k but I thought it expressed the idea by the whole 'not doing'. I know it can lapse into Adam Curtis bollocks.

StillAdvance - idk for how long you've been posting on here but we don't take too kindly to ppl asking for things to be 'more indie'.

Joking aside its still a ridiculous ask.

Anyone seen Impolex?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/15/movies/impolex-directed-by-alex-ross-perry-review.html?_r=0

omg the BBC tried to film GR!!

http://www.pruefstand7.de/e/download/download.html

ha, im not really someone who wants things to be more whimsical or indie, its just the description you made i think made me think that was what it might be better suited to!

I think if you read and love Pynchon, it's great they made the movie but it was nowhere freaky enough to accurately capture what his books are like

not seen imipolex but besides its being long and having lots of characters i honestly think GR would be really easy to adapt. huge chunks are already a treatment and film as physical medium and language is so central to its metaphor system. (e.g. the section where the peenemunde engineer isn't sure if the daughter the SS periodically allows to visit is the same girl every time; this is already about cuts and frames and continuity.) the only thing that comes up more than movies is parabolas, plus every other scene is a chase. you've certainly got a lot of stuff to decide whether or not to include but whatever you do include barely needs adaptation.

Judging by how cagey PTA was when asked by Marc Maron if he had read GR (he said he hadn't which is frankly unbelievable), I think it's a good bet that he'll do the movie

Godard's Goodbye To Language => watching it last night and it did have a feel of "stoned mumbling" through 20th century history...

I haven't seen the Adam Curtis doc but actually would be interesting to. Its almost like the right move to have bunged on the internet.

yes, i've seen Impolex -- i was lost, never having read TP.

On seeing IV twice:

I found myself finding whole scenes funny that I didn't even realize were comedy the first time. Again, I didn't not enjoy the film during my first go, I just had a whole different part of my brain switched on. Furthermore, once I kinda-sorta knew what the characters were all about (and where they'd end up), I found a richness to the third act's more somber tone. (Here's a tip for first-timers: this movie is basically a tragedy.)

http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2015/01/inherent-vice-second-viewing

Great article.
I cam think of a few films - 2001, Children of Men to name but two- where I've enjoyed it a lot more on second viewing. often a film blindsides me the first time because I'm expecting something slightly different that never delivers. second time I'm more likely not to worry about that and feel comfy in its universe.

this movie is basically a tragedy

otm. i love that death of the era shit

finally saw the 70mm print at the Castro last night, really impressed. couple random things - where are they in the last shot? I couldn't tell if they were in a parked car or what, with the light occasionally flashing across Sportello's face. And the last scene with Doc and Bigfoot, it seemed to me the culmination of Bigfoot always being shown easting and now he comes to Doc's place, nothing to eat, might as well eat the weed lol. so many great little moments, expressions, and throwaway lines. easily his best or at least most enjoyable since Boogie Nights.

the only TP i've read is the crying of lot 49 (about 4x), so i knew to expect that i've have no idea what was going on plot-wise. this movie really felt like TP - not that i have much authority on his style, but it felt a lot like lot 49 - so i found it to be a really... admirable film, but i'm still not sure if i actually liked it. joaquin phoenix and josh brolin were absolutely amazing.

i dont think a 35mm print has shown in NYC.

Looked like a 'stylized' moving car to me, ie probly a studio shot.

yeah that was totally a fake moving car without bothering with a process shot. fits with the almost complete disinterest in place or setting through the rest of the film - you'll take faces and like it!

this disappointed me compared to the book, which is so concerned with the travel between places, the tedious* futility of returning to the same settings over again, and the general concern with being immersed in (an impression or memory or construction of) the 1970s

*in a gumshoe / shaggy plot sense

I'd guess Anderson didn't want to be tagged as repeating himself w/ Boogie Nights' glorious 70s production design and location exploitation - but the locations and environments his characters exist in have been such a significant part of ALL his other films.

after seeing the long goodbye this evening (which is SO brilliant), i am now thinking that obv that is the kind of film PTA should have made, but also, that this is the very film he was *trying* to make and had in mind, but couldnt as the source text was different, but also because hes trying to actively resist the altman comparisons, which is a healthy thing for anyone as cinephilic as he is, but at the same time, its like he stripped out all the parts that might have made it more altman/TLG-ish (ie made it more accessible and more openly enjoyable) but didnt put anything much back in to replace it, so youre left with this somewhat obtuse, difficult film, but one with little reward beyond its own self-aware challenge that it is posing for the viewer. might also have helped if IH's lead character was half as likeable/amusing as elliot gould's marlowe.

didn't find this obtuse/difficult at all

i felt like it was PTA's version of an old RPG like monkey island - main character walks around having pointless conversations with other characters, repeat, repeat...

picaresque is the more appropriate term. I didn't find any of it pointless, it all fed back into the film's themes of corruption, misdirection, the blurring of cultural and ethical lines - which involves disillusionment to some extent - but then has a really obvious redemption arc (he's JESUS do u c) with Owen Wilson's character. Plus everyone is funny and engaging and diverting during there little turns. Couldn't ask for more afaic.

I don't think this was at all obtuse or difficult for viewers. It was obtuse and difficult for doc sportello

heyoooo