Is the work of Steven Soderbergh the most overrated thing ever?

I'm no Star Wars dude or anything, but I noted that after Soderbergh ripped the Right Stuff Sally Rand fan dance with the fountain scene in 11, this time around we get Isabel, I am your father and the cantina scene (the music, even) at the end.

BEST. MOVIE. EVER.

ru crazy, i still want my money back for ocean's 12

i walked out of it hating liberal hollyweird

Ocean's 12 was the best of the three.

maybe, i didn't see it in the theater tho, or tonite. did this one have a lot more subtle (or semi-subtle) stuff than the last two?

What I liked best about the second is that they didn't even pretend that the caper(s) made sense. It was just Hollywood Glamour by way of Godard in pretty locales. This one's shot in the same way, but there's less room for the characters riffing together and having fun.

This one was actually a pretty effective pop heist movie (where the first one pulled a lame switcheroo and the second one just didn't bother), but very little made an impression (Pacino was ill-used, too much time examining the mechanics, far too little Eddie Izzard).

but the scenes in Mexico were pretty awesome.

Damon's daddy reveal/role should have been more explosive, though. You could see it coming a mile away, and I wanted him to be a bigger personage (politician/head of the FBI/something).

NO TOPHER GRACE NO CREDIBILITY

i thought the heist in this one sucked

s 'bubble' any good? why is mark romanek the commentator on the dvd? i'm intrigued.
-- The Man Without Shadow (Enrique), Monday, 30 January 2006 14:16 (1 year ago) Link

last thing romanek actually did?

i hate every movie this fucker's been involved with

NO TOPHER GRACE NO CREDIBILITY

haha! but armen weitzman was pretty good, no? plus, the return of vincent cassel? jerry weintraub as the lead whale? David Paymer!

What I liked best about the second is that they didn't even pretend that the caper(s) made sense. It was just Hollywood Glamour by way of Godard in pretty locales. This one's shot in the same way, but there's less room for the characters riffing together and having fun.

oh i don't know about making no sense. otherwise yeah, maybe, but the snippets were still pretty fun this time around. and mexico. and all the old-vegas/hollywood/reuben stuff. and roman-greco/analog-digital. and george&brad as women/the charity/oprah. the real-life/relationship stuff. "Fender Roads"

every time i try to watch one of these ocean's movies i fall asleep in the middle and wake up at the end completely bewildered.

actually this happened with the bourne movies too. maybe it's matt damon

i agree that Caldwell pere wasn't all it could have been (maybe that's for 14? that wasn't telegraphed or anything), but the Linus stuff remained pretty fun

i saw the first 'oceans', it was pointless shit, and it's a kind of "phenomenon" now, and in thirty years god help us, clip shows will look upon it as the acme of 00s cool, for serious. the lame thing about soderbergh is that his 'one for them, one for me' strategy doesn't actually lead to very exciting 'one for me projects'. i say this having not bothered with 'bubble', 'the good german', or that self-referential one, but the point stands. i liked 'out of sight', it had a fine cast, but at this stage that's about as much enthusiasm as i can summon. may be i should 'rescreen' some. maybe not though, there's only so much time on this earth.

Everything Soderbergh I've seen is shit, except Schizopolis which I guess is like his one fluke, as it's pretty much genius. I'm not sure how that worked out.

Saw Erin Brockovich again a few weekends ago; it holds better than any of his others (save Out of Sight).

something about his style just flattens everything. all the jump cuts and ppl talking over each other comes off as planned and over rehearsed, just like the heist itself, they've planned everything in advance and are just going through the motions being pleased with themselves & only concerned about looking cool. what godard i've seen is reckless and exuberant, like they don't know what'll happen next. steven soderbergh, proof that cool is over.

saw oceans 13 last night and thought it was incredibly shit. i think soderburgh is just making whatever gets him a cheque at this point. didnt really laugh once in the whole film (ok maybe once) but found the whole thing too smug in its 'coolness'. and the pastiched 70s soundtrack was even worse.

also pacino just seemed to barely be trying as the hotel owner, and izzard just seemed deeply uninteresting, flat and devoid of personality. i know im meant to find this sort of film 'smooth' but i just found it a bit irritating in its complete and total lack of rough edges (narrative or visual).

are there really people who look at clooney & co and think that they either are, or are trying to be, 'cool'?

yes. many, many people.

i know im meant to find this sort of film 'smooth' but i just found it a bit irritating in its complete and total lack of rough edges (narrative or visual).

Why is this bad?

seemed a bit smug.

i dont *hate* soderburgh though. i still really like sex lies and videotape. i think i liked traffic too, even if i remember it being a bit heavy handed.

The first person to ask me for my opinion mentioned something about hoping it was too overdone. Overdone? That's the damn point of the franchise!

So the Oprah shit carried a fair amount of disdain for her antics, or was it just me laughing?

i don't know i actually love some of his stuff... Traffic, Brockovich, Ocean's 11, all of that stuff really, really satisfied me. Esp Erin Brockovich, which i own and love

i actaully own Traffic too

People expecting this to somehow not be a cross between an Altman ensemble piece and James Bond are seriously misinformed

I liked Solaris an awful lot, along with Ocean's Eleven. And Out of Sight.

caught the end of Ocean's Eleven last night and could not but feel: such banter and panache, such self-pleasuring cinematic ease. I was deeply impressed anew somehow, and felt that David Thomson must love this picture - especially with its sentimental efforts to admire a pensive or conflicted Julia Roberts. But maybe he doesn't. It just felt like he should.

yeah he doesn't.

will he like his 2 Che films tho

He REALLY doesn't.

(xpost)

The semi-subtle this-is-what's-happening-in-America/the-world nods seemed more prominent in 13, as noted above, but they've also jumped out at me more in my, ahem, rescreening of the earlier films.

If pf likes the end of 11 (or the Venetian scene in 13), he should see the original, also referenced above.

Well, Sex, Lies, and Videotape holds up better than I thought.

has a call-girl movie coming out in May, shot w/ newer version of the Che HD camera.

we shot our movie on that!

And real porn stars, no?

xp

Real porn stars are hurting from free porn downloads so any work is good.

Real porn stars are paid to be hurting tho so it's all good.

http://jezebel.com/5234491/the-girlfriend-experience-blurs-the-line-between-fantasy-reality

his quotes here make him sound like a fucking moron.

it might make a better film than 'che' at least.

This doesn't sound very good.

Hey in schizopolis, there's a segment where they start speaking in grammatical descriptions of the dialogue instead of actual dialogue, but I heard a similar thing put on by a comedy? troupe on this american life -- was this tribute or outright pilfering?

Glenn Kenny on his role in The Girlfriend Experience:

http://www.theauteurs.com/notebook/posts/672

(now I don't have to be tempted to report what I overheard him say about it in a screening room)