THE IRISHMAN, A Martin Scorsese Picture with de Niro, Pacino, Pesci, Keitel

The CGI in Silence was really poor.

Good chat between MS and QT:

https://www.dga.org/Craft/DGAQ/All-Articles/1904-Fall-2019/Conversation-Scorsese-Tarantino.aspx?fbclid=IwAR0XVAgPO3Ls8n8hdGknmGN7TwmW0BmA_wQ0h8krzZldnUX6j7xq5mpnpCk

Thanks for that

Great interview, thanks!

yeah thx for posting that was great (even if I only understood like half of it)

koresky's take

http://www.reverseshot.org/reviews/entry/2590/irishman

initial roundup

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6612-martin-scorsese-s-the-irishman

All my favorites. I'm cautiously optimistic.

I'm not.

What fire and music?

we know Pacino can't match Scarface, Eric

(ptui)

Pacino being in Scarface automatically makes it De Palma's worst movie.

you pass over Carlito's Way?

just a kazoo with some sparkles

Bookmark this great piece from @BilgeEbiri and read it **after** you see “The Irishman”. https://t.co/FmQgtrF5LB

— Todd "Your Shot is Targeted for Today" Vaziri (@tvaziri) September 30, 2019

fuck that, i'm gonna read it now and no-one can stop me

Spoiler: people die in this movie

whoa

A friend of mine just referred to them as The Italian Beatles. pic.twitter.com/mhv8ezjNnb

— Sean Burns (@SeanMBurns) September 27, 2019

Gian, Paolo, Giorgio, and Reengo

Who is Pete Best

surely John Cazale

FREDOOOOO

people losing their minds over Scorsese saying Marvel movies are "not cinema"

if anyone has the right to say what is and what isn't cinema it's Scorsese

you could chuck all of his own films out and he'd still be one of the most important film preservationists in history

Scorsese otm for the most part

I still crack up sometimes about Scorsese's essay for the millennium issue of Rolling Stones where he talks about industry people telling him "he should check out The Waterboy!".

they're more like a marketing exercise

xp

Scorsese said what needed to be said. Constantly. By as many people as possible. This from a fan of disaster movies.

well, Marty is also a fan of DeMille, including the spectacles like Samson and Delilah and Ten Commandments

those still had recognizable human dynamics embedded in them

i mostly like the Marvel movies as entertainment but he's pretty otm, also there's the minor film tragedy of so many good actors being booked for all these movies and having less time for other work. pretty sure 90% of Robert Downey Jr's screen time the past decade-plus has been scenes of him talking trash to Captain America while surrounded by glowing consoles, or in extreme close-up while his Iron Man suit short-circuits for the fiftieth time.

I do think there's a difference between the MCU and pre-2008 comic book movies. The Raimi Spider-Man trilogy is great for what it is. the MCU movies I've seen are just inert, totally lifeless

spider-man 2 is still my model for what a comic book movie should be

yeah the first two really are the gold standard. ditto for first two X-Men movies

where are these comments of Scorsese's btw

Don’t ask Martin Scorsese his thoughts on the record-breaking “Avengers: Endgame” because he hasn’t seen it, nor will he ever see it. The legendary filmmaker recently dismissed the Marvel Cinematic Universe during an interview with Empire magazine, saying that Marvel movies do not possess the traits that make cinema truly special.

“I don’t see them. I tried, you know? But that’s not cinema,” Scorsese told Empire. “Honestly, the closest I can think of them, as well made as they are, with actors doing the best they can under the circumstances, is theme parks. It isn’t the cinema of human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being.”

Scorsese is fresh off universal praise for his new drama “The Irishman,” which debuted on opening night of the 2019 New York Film Festival. The gangster epic, starring Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci, debuted to instant Oscar buzz and is considered a top contender to land nominations for its actors, plus Best Picture and Best Director bids, among others. Disney and Marvel Studios is also launching an Oscar campaign for “Avengers: Endgame,” which grossed over $2.7 billion worldwide this year to become the highest-grossing movie in history (unadjusted for inflation).

Scorsese’s thoughts on Marvel movies recall a similar opinion shared by Ethan Hawke in August 2018. The “First Reformed” actor told Film Stage that moviegoers were treating superhero movies as if they were great works of art, which is not the case.

“Now we have the problem that they tell us ‘Logan’ is a great movie,” Hawke said. “Well, it’s a great superhero movie. It still involves people in tights with metal coming out of their hands. It’s not Bresson. It’s not Bergman. But they talk about it like it is. I went to see ‘Logan’ ‘cause everyone was like, ‘This is a great movie’ and I was like, ‘Really? No, this is a fine superhero movie.’ There’s a difference, but big business doesn’t think there’s a difference. Big business wants you to think that this is a great film because they wanna make money off of it.”

twitter I think

i do think some of the Marvel movies that step a bit outside of the primary "Cinematic Universe" storyline exhibit more energy or creativity or flashes of humanity (Ragnarok, Guardians of the Galaxy, Black Panther, the Ant Mans), but there's only been a couple of them I would ever want to see again, even though i have liked most of them. but it's just the streaming TV model brought to film imo.

I think the MCU's "quality control" policy just smooths everything out and makes it so punishingly bland, obviously this is better/safer business than rolling the dice (like Hollywood did for a century), but if you can't hit the lows of idk, 2005 Fantastic Four or 2003 Hulk (not that bad imo), then you can't make a Spider-Man 2 or X2.

there's a really good book by Ben Fritz called The Big Picture about all this stuff

Even arguing about this narcissism of Marvel differences means "they" have won.

yup, goalposts successfully moved

the Spider-Man and X-Men trilogies were not made by Marvel

scorsese is 100 percent otm, if anything he wasn't mean enough

the Spider-Man and X-Men trilogies were not made by Marvel

― flappy bird, Friday, October 4, 2019

does it matter?

I like the 2004 Spider-Man and the first two X-Men, and lord knows the thousands of genre films I've watched in my life boast inventive performances, unusual inversions of expectations, thrilling action sequences, and so on; but if you're still a working critic in 2019 the pressure to review these things from publicists depresses me, as is the Box Office Mojo ethos of constantly discussing grosses (even my students taking my elective film class chat about grosses like Madison did John Locke). I got six emails wondering why the hell I wasn't interested in attending the preview for Joker. I told the publicist, whom I know well, "Traffic is more fun."

imagine dedicating your life to movies, spending all your time either making them yourself or trying to preserve and promote them, and suddenly it's 2019 and the only movies anyone wants to talk about or spend money on involve cgi raccoons or "edgy" takes on the clown who fights batman

I'm skanky enough to think, "What's the difference between devoting a couple years to 'developing' a Howard Hughes biopic and developing a Joker film?" I gotta say.

the Spider-Man and X-Men trilogies were not made by Marvel

― flappy bird, Friday, October 4, 2019

does it matter?

― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, October 4, 2019 2:03 PM (seventeen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Marvel Studios has a completely different operating philosophy with a built-in fanbase that will see whatever they release no matter what. the MCU is a decades spanning project with every film relating to and effecting the others. no middlemen, no risks, no bombs like Daredevil. that sort of quality control just fuckin' smooths it all out into a paste. Sony taking on Marvel's IP and rolling the dice with is an entirely different situation.

I'm not doing it justice but all of this is covered in The Big Picture & everyone sad/mad/madsad about Marvel occupying cinemas 24/7 should read Ben Fritz' excellent book.

What 'risks' are you looking for? Spiderman 2 and X2 are solid films but they're no less superhero movies than the MCU. X2 took on social themes but what risks or deviation from the superhero formula did S2 take?

The reason Daredevil stunk isn't because it "swung for the fences"