Come anticipate David Fincher's "Zodiac"

Really, really good, but I thought the Coke product placements were incredibly jarring. Did anyone else notice that?

not that i ever listened to HURDY GURDY MAN much but i certainly won't ever again in my life be able to hear it without wanting a stiff drink.

Having seen Donovan perform it last week, I feel the same way.

Yes- never thought I'd hear Donovan soundtracking brutal executions!

nobody else thought this was very made-for-TV stuff, with just better actors than normal?

i was very disappointed with how standard it was.

you're a dick.

oh the debating-school rhetoric.

The acting and tech quality is way above average, but yeah, the raw material is "pretentious cop show."

Mark Ruffalo's character was slightly Columbo-like, I thought. That's not a bad thing.

yeah he's meant to be. the actual guy was a media cop -- consultant on 'bullit', i think. that's part of the whole thing. i don't think morbius understands the film.

Yes- never thought I'd hear Donovan soundtracking brutal executions!

Lest We Forget

Starts @ 3:30 (On the the other hand, altough it is brutal, the actual execution is later on and Donovan-free)

nobody thinks that one guy was a bit disappointing? i'm constantly bemused at how standard his posts are.

Toschi was the role model for Bullitt and Dirty Harry - both films are directly referenced in Zodiac

which is key, as the central thrust of this movie is that movies distort and obscure reality

huh?

go back over all the film references in the movie, they're liberally littered throughout it and always used to point up how a desire for fame, or conventional film narrative, or desire to be a hero hopelessly obscure the facts and making solving the murders essentially impossible.

making = make

some ex. - Toschi's relation to the movie business, Melvin Belli on TV references his Star Trek appearance, the basement scene with the projectionist, the movie posters that decorate Graysmith's walls, Graysmith's referring to "The Most Dangerous Game" film, etc etc

The acting and tech quality is way above average, but yeah, the raw material is "pretentious cop show."

-- Dr Morbius, Friday, November 2, 2007 2:53 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

naturally, being 'about' a murder investigation, the material has a lot in common with cop shows about murder investigations.

but by pretentious i think you just mean it hits notes that cop shows often don't, and that's partly because of... the high quality of its acting and because of fincher's eye (and ear).

the raw material is something that actually happened! reality is pretentious.

cop shows are about reinforcing revenge/punishment fantasies (criminal always caught, etc.) Zodiac is all about deliberately violating this convention.

Critically respected cop shows (Bochco, The Shield) haven't been like this in awhile, have they?

I mean, like the reinforcement Shakey describes

the first three eps of 'homicide' were about a moidah that never gets solved, iirc.

xp

by raw material I basically meant the script.

thing is, i remember the movie making an emphasis of graysmith's disintegration but i remember much more concretely the climactic scene w/ him & arthur lee allen at the hardware store, & the pre-credits sum-up thing where it heavily implied that he'd 'caught' the killer, even if he wasnt brought to justice - i dont really think satisfaction for the audience was being subverted

that may very well be true Morbs - I've only seen one episode of the Shield, I can't stand that Chiklis guy. Homicide I've never seen. Bochco is... a strange case. Cop Rock was hilarious tho. Stuff I have seen (the wife likes to watch CSI, for ex.) still hew pretty closely to the humanized cop+revenge fantasy structure (also if you are not a cop on one of these shows, you are either a victim, deserving only pity, or a criminal, deserving only punishment. Cops tend to be strictly of the morally-conflicted-but-ultimately-upright-struggling-hero variety, which I find nauseating.)

honestly I try to avoid cop shows like the plague, police procedurals and cops in general tend to really irritate me.

x-post

i dont really think satisfaction for the audience was being subverted

see my comments upthread re: Graysmith's closure moment at the hardware store being ultimately empty and self-serving.

(altho that scene is GREAT)

also the pre-credit thing notes that Leigh Allen was exonerated by DNA evidence and never charged...?

i like tv cop shows, still think 'zodiac' is going for a different thing... partly because one of the main 'investigators' is not a cop but an obsessive, and the guy who cashes out is also not a cop.

if i were pitching i'd say "it's a movie about letting go". and i think it's really ambivalent about that -- it's also clear that needing to know is fucking these people up, even though, as RDJ says, people are dying every day. "why these particular murders?" is part of it.

RDJ comes to a kind of buddhist-nihilist conclusion; jakey decides, ah fuck it, it's this guy for definite.

^^^yep that's all in there

Late to the party...but still. Zodiac kind of lends itself somewhat to Homicide, and NYPD Blue in that you are shown more human failing, etc. It didn't feel stereotypical in any way though, except for the procedural aspect but you can't really have a story like that without the procedurals. I like Shakey's interpretation re the film references...I hadn't ever thought about it that way, mainly because a lot of those references are in the original Graysmith book, (ie The Most Dangerous Game etc)..but Shakey your view adds a little more to it. A good excuse to go back and watch - yippee!

Personally, as a closet true-crime nerd, I just enjoyed how well Fincher recreated the book...but also the fear that the Zodiac engendered...and I loved, loved, loved the details, San Francisco going through those time-period changes, the recreations of the Zodiac letters...I just geek out over that movie.

2-Disc Director's Cut (now featuring THAT music montage / black screen sequence): January 8, 2008.

http://www.dvdactive.com/news/releases/zodiac4.html

packaging is teh lolz

maybe now it'll turn a profit.

sike.

still movie of the year.

-- s1ocki, Tuesday, 12 June 2007 16:35 (Yesterday) Link

-- and what, Wednesday, June 13, 2007 8:19 AM (6 months ago)

this was totally great.

interesting that the zodiac in the crime scenes was played by three different actors.

no shit! I love it

still movie of the year.

It's in my top 3 this year. I thought this film would have a lingering effect on me when I moved to SF last summer. Instead it's just creeped me out about Vallejo.

I'm giving this the number two slot in the high school paper! (number one = INLAND EMPIRE)

Man I had terrible taste when I did lists in my H.S. paper. I'm pretty sure senior year saw me praising Shine and Primal Fear.

more terrible, I mean.

My school offers an awesome film class...the teacher shows lots of great films (obvious gems like Kane, Sunset Blvd., Psycho + less expected ones like Run Lola Run, His Girl Friday, Go Tigers!)

Oh, yeah...This year's class watched Funny Games!

Wow, this is a high school class, right? Wish I'd gone there.

got the director's cut dvd. the cut's not much different at all, but the extras and commentary are worth it.

what a good movie....i own it but didn't finish, tho I saw it n the theatres...

How long was the theatrical cut anyway? In my mind, it's at least four hours, but I figure it was more like 2:30?

Kubrick mentions above (and in reviews) still seem very odd. Characters and their psychology/mindset are always central to Kubrick's films, where Fincher doesn't seem to hold much interest in them beyond moving the plot.

the hell? think we find out more about douglas in the game, norton in fight club, forster in panic room, ruffalo in zodiac, than we do about those guys in 2001 or full metal jacket.

Yeah I really don't think Kubrick did "psychology" very much.

One of the reasons I love him haha.