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

Soderbergh's one of the few guys who knows how to direct Conventional Hollywood Narrative, so he should stop overestimating his talents.

I mean, I wish more boilerplate as good as Erin Brockovich more often.

*wish he made

this is actually something i think you're right abt

yeah i always thought is best stuff was perfectly decent entertainment-making. he tries too hard with the arty thing. his arty stuff sweats too much.

Neither am I really sure why he's unhappy.

He's spoken about his frustration with 'the tyranny of narrative' before - I suspect that traditional storytelling based filmmaking just increasingly bores him.

nevermind, morbs already said that

he should try abstract noodle art.

this is actually something i think you're right abt

ha "actually"!

this is way better than Traffic, by the way:

http://img.designswan.com/2009/Art/noodleArt/2.jpg

oops

The Girlfriend Experience was his best 'experimental' film and fortunately it was less than 80 minutes long.

this is way better than Traffic, by the way:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_WdZilHfMq6U/TRj2EK6IaPI/AAAAAAAAAyY/rm0JEFBDJJo/s1600/noodle+art+2+tutorial.jpg

he should try abstract noodle art.

He says he's going to be painting and doing photography so it may still happen.

damn, design swan got some tight security on their noodle art...

guy has a pretty high productivity rate -- at least one full-length film as a director a year since '98, often 2 a year -- and in the announcement he talks about how much work he's been turning down lately, so whether or not it sticks as a permanent retirement i can kinda see why'd want to publicly just shut the whole thing down and stop getting job offers.

he should make Transformers 3 if he hates narrative so much

I still like sex, lies & videotape a lot. When Soderbergh broke through with Out of Sight, Erin Brockovich, and Traffic, I remember him saying something somewhat dismissive of the earlier film, like he'd finally figured out that people don't want to see stuff like sex, lies & videotape...I don't recall the exact quote, but I remember thinking, "Sorry that you feel that way--some of us want to see that stuff." Wonder where he stands on that now. (I may have mangled the quote--his comment may have been specifically aimed at Kafka--but I don't think so.)

I found this in a NYT article from 1998, when he was cleaning up with Out of Sight: "Yes," he said one afternoon recently at his production office in Hollywood. "I had a bad case of my 20's, of being overly serious. And now I feel better at my job than I was." I don't know if that's the exact quote I had in mind--doesn't seem all that bad. Still, I like the "overly serious" sex, lies & videotape better than Out of Sight or Traffic (haven't seen Erin Brockovich), even though I realize Out of Sight would win a three-way poll handily.

it's funny, I don't remember a single thing about SL&V except for Andie McDowell talking to a video camera.

she lied to the camera, i'm pretty sure

i think i've watched ocean's 11 like a million times and i always love it

Peter Gallagher's hilarious as the idiot husband. I also like Spader; most people'd find him insufferable. And Laura San Giacomo's yum-yum. (In general, I think it's a much funnier film than its reputation would have it.)

sex, lies, and videotape is a pretty conventional indie film though -- even for its time! I wouldn't put it in the experimental camp.

Traffic is failed agitprop. I was one of those guys fooled for a few weeks into thinking the fun Erin Brockovich was the less 'serious' film.

All the actors are first-rate in SLV. I could forgive casting agents thinking Andie McDowell had talent.

Maybe it wasn't experimental formally, but it was still, from how I remember it, a much different film than most everything in theaters at the time. (What were the comparable indie films? I remember 1989 as Rain Man and Working Girl and all that.) It felt like an early-70s film to me. Not a good thing for everyone; for me, high praise.

it's funny, I don't remember a single thing about SL&V except for Andie McDowell talking to a video camera.

― garage rock is usually very land-based (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, March 14, 2011 4:30 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark

haha same - i remember james spader changing into jeans in a gas station bathroom and that's it

The characters drink a lot of iced tea.

Maybe it wasn't experimental formally, but it was still, from how I remember it, a much different film than most everything in theaters at the time. (What were the comparable indie films? I remember 1989 as Rain Man and Working Girl and all that.)

Spike Lee, Nancy Savoca, Jarmusch, etc had all made splashes before SLV. I'm not diluting Soderbergh's triumph: Ameri-indie needed an avatar. And I do like the movie (I own it). But SLV is a first film in the good and not so good sense: it's clever, facile, beholden to ill-considered ideas about sex and women. He was a better filmmaker by the time he made Out of Sight; he learned to trust how an actress like Jennifer Lopez can sip bourbon thoughtfully and say everything about sex without dialogue.

oh god jlo in that movie..............................oof. he could make movies that are nothing but jlo sipping beverages thoughtfully for the rest of his life and i would be happy.

is jennifer lopez supposed to be a good actress? i saw this movie on a flight once where she was having a sperm donor baby

She was great in Anaconda.

jk she was awful. No she's not a good actress.

ill-considered ideas about sex and women

I knew there was something I connected with in that film...Personally, I consider SLV more experimental than Do The Right Thing (which I like). There are aspects of Do the Right Thing that make it very much an audience film; for better or worse, SLV is not that. Clever and facile...well, I don't want to get into an Up in the Air thing all over again; I don't think there's anything especially facile about SLV. (Clever in the pejorative sense, probably, to the extent that it's entire storyline is the kind of thing that only exists in the movies...which is okay, because it's a movie.)

I have a feeling I would like SLV much now.

wouldn't, rather

Do the Right Thing isn't particularly experimental, it's just really really good

Is SLV really that experimental?

No.

Whether J-Lo is a good actress is beside the point, really. Soderbergh used her well, and she delivered.

same for Andie McDowell.

clemenza, you've got a different idea about 'seventies film' than I do. American seventies films were a lot more sensual and crowdpleasing than SLV, which is closer to the spirit of a Rohmer thing.

same for Sasha Grey.

same for Julia Roberts.

Out of Sight is a really well cast movie period.

clemenza, you've got a different idea about 'seventies film' than I do.

We probably do, yes.

When I say SLV is experimental, I don't mean it's Michael Snow or Stan Brakhage or anything like that; I meant in relation to, I don't know, The Accidental Tourist and other acclaimed American films of the day. It does some somewhat unusual stuff with the videotaping scenes. That's all.

ha, not being very crowdpleasing was v much a new hollywood thing, look at the box office for many of the most revered ones

Compared to the Accidental Tourist, the Muppets Take Manhattan was experimental.

Great line, but I'll stand by my point that SLV is not a conventional film.