Come anticipate David Fincher's "Zodiac"

watched it Friday night, it was ok.

there's a big ad at the beginning of the DVD about how the superduperfancypants director's cut 2cd bonanza will be out in 08.

jonesing already

has he done anything else i should see?

If you haven't seen "You Can Count On Me," you need to. Ruffalo is amazing in it.

looking forward to giving this a second viewing tonight

I enjoyed this film but I don't think I quite get why so many people think it is SO great.

well personally I found that after seeing it various elements of it kept coming back to me, and my associations with a lot of the locations in the film (SF, Lake Berryessa, Riverside, the Ontario airport) gave it some weird kind of resonance for me. I expect I'll have a more nuanced appraisal of it after seeing it again.

People getting their Kubrick on with the director of "Janie's Got A Gun"

I don't like acting much, usually. And Robert Downey Jr is the worst of them.

xpost

perhaps it underwhelms because, as this review maintains, the quality of the DVD transfer is "shameful"?

http://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/dvd_review.asp?ID=1178

But it could just be that the style and execution is quite good, and the material utterly Old News.

(that's for adam)

Yeah I guess it is what I would call a great rainy afteroon movie, and certainly there aren't enough of those. But I have this feeling that it only stands out (for me) because everything elwe is so terrible!

else

RD needs to show us a new, less prattly side soon.

Mark Ruffalo was using a reedy voice (not his usual one) that was reeeeallly familiar, but I can't figure out who he might have been imitating.

Haha I think it might have stood out for me because everything else by Fincher is so terrible!

"terrible" = not like a million overrated gritty cop shows of the last 25 years

lol well okay.

I read the (first/original) Graysmith book when I was a teenager, so I did sort of know how everything panned out beforehand. I may well have been more gripped if I knew less about the case.

I like gritty cop shows, Morbius! =)

But seriously I thought it was just fantastic. Great acting, great mood, great pacing. I admit that maybe it might have resonated more with me because the case was such a part of the undercurrent of the Bay Area when I was growing up, but it's still probably the best movie I've seen this year.

Alex OTM

Maybe this is why I like This Is England so much then! Not that it is set anywhere near where I am from or features people like those I grew up with, but it certainly draws from a larger culture that was all around me during my childhood.

Fincher decorates background walls with classic movie posters and includes a self-indicting, pre-opening credit visual clue (elucidated during the third act) that speaks to cinema's potent cultural impact,

wait what is this "clue" he's referring to here

S: Donal Logue
D: John Ennis

I don't like acting much, usually

What do you watch in movies -- costumes? wallpaper?

(although if you watch Jake Gylllie in this one you might hate acting too).

i just watched this just now

I don't know, a lot of "movie acting" has really got to me of late, basically the kind of acting you see in most studio films has suddenly begun to strike me as utterly ridiculous - that this is now how you now portray characters for a mainstream audience. I'm not just trying to be snobby about it (I hope) because there's lots of horrible acting in other types of movies.

Worst recent example I can think of - Little Children.

That movie was terrible though.

It was. Lots of things wrong with it. But the acting in it was (for me) kind of the final straw. Whenever I notice acting now it turns me right off.

Also if you though Robert Downey Jr was bad in this, don't see Fur! Actually don't see Fur period!

hahaaaa! I have NO plans to see Fur in this lifetime.

I don't know that I think RDJ is "bad", I think he probably always succeeds at what he is trying to do. I just don't particularly want to buy what he is selling.

(unless he has some really good shit)

On the other hand, I sort of like Mark Ruffalo despite his only-slightly-more-subtle but still ludicrously mannered performances.

And I know everyone thinks I am RONG and crazy anyway but just to show I'm not simply being contrarian - "acting" I have liked recently was definitely Daniel Auteil in Cache'. That was perfect, IMO. Almost invisible!

RDJ quite fine here; the only perf in recent years I couldn't stand was in the Linklater cartoon.

If you like "realistic," no-nonsense, leaden acting, you couldn't get better than Anthony Edwards here.

Yeah he was good. I didn't say LEADEN though, you did. =)

And I don't just like "realistic" acting. I thought Laura Dern was amazing in Inland Empire, I liked Alec Baldwin in the Departed. It's a really fine line, I admit.

I couldn't stand Edwards, actually.

really? that's funny!

I didn't have a problem with any of the actors actually. Inland Empire (Laura Dern's acting chops aside) was nearly unwatchable OTOH.

Of course part of the reaosn why I didn't, was it didn't matter was on screen cuz Fincher treated them like they were wallpaper anyway.

It's funny how quickly Zodiac's become Fincher Film #3 or #4 about which everyone will be evenly split on its merit.

Edwards did a fine reprise of Goose here.

x-post I don't think anti-Fincher people have the same animosity to this that they did with Fight Club and Seven, in part because "Hurdy Gurdy Man" aside he avoided his more obvious indulgences. It's not even ANTI-Fincher, just varying degrees of enthusiasm.

Really haunting film – I think of it as Rashomon for the CSI-watching pathology/forensic-obsessed generation.

Who the killer is the least of your problems, it's the inability to know anything to a certainty.

I was never a fan of Fincher until this film

I really don't have much of an opinion either way about David Fincher and wasn't really hyper-aware of this being "a David Fincher film" while I was watching it.

D: John Ennis

Are you MAD?!?!

I was aware of him but didn't really care one way or the other - altho I actively disliked Fight Club and Se7en seemed like some sub-par Vertigo graphic novel type crap (you call that a "twist" ending? wtf)

also yeah I loved John Ennis' two scenes in this

"It's funny how quickly Zodiac's become Fincher Film #3 or #4 about which everyone will be evenly split on its merit."

Hah but the funny thing is how many people who liked Zodiac HATED his other films!

John Ennis was the 2nd handwriting expert, right?