Come anticipate David Fincher's "Zodiac"

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.

psycology is externalised in kubrick, possibly?

Kubrick's all primal psychology and no backstory.

What do we find out about Norton that isn't part of the 'surprise' and/or sloganeering?

slightly loaded question there milo! we learn he had an absent father, is a bit lonely, hates his job, can't think of anything he'd rather do, separates love from sex with a cleaver. more than you learn about the guys in '2001'. and of course psychology is externalized in fincher too, e.g. 'seven'.

We don't get any sense of him as an individual beyond what we're told, and what we're told is all about moving the story (or justifying the gag). It's all shallow and explicit, quirks to drive the plot (or justify the gag).

Where in Kubrick's films, there's much more abiguity to the characters and their motivation. You actually have to read into their words and actions.

zodiac is ALL about character

I don't see the Kubrick parallels either (perhaps a certain detachment pervades it, but that's certainly not unique to Kubrick.)

If anything I think Fincher's treatment of actors (like setpieces or as I said above wallpaper) has more in common with Hitchcock.

Curious question: does anyone actually think that Zodiac's characters were unambiguous? That everything was right on the surface? Because I gotta say if that's the case you must have watched a different movie than I did because I thought there was tons of ambiguity with all of these people (in fact that's Armand White's main complaint!) and the movie (to it's credit) doesn't try to neat explain it all away. It just let's it all play out and leaves the viewer to ponder the mystery and motivations of these people (and events). Which given the real life outcomes is exactly as it should be.

i've watched this like 4-5 times now and each time im more convinced it's great. profound, even (in the contrast between certainty and faith, and the necessity of the latter; monastic dedication; the threat of nihilism; and the simple transcendence of the final confrontation). at least that's my personal reaction to it.

best american movie of 2007, for me, easily.

Kent Jones wrote in the current Film Comment that it's his Movie of the Year -- and then complains at length that Gyllenhaal is unconvincing as an obsessive fact-monkey.

i never know what to make of claims about performances like that...

saw this again, always scared to see films i love a second time in case they don't live up. this one really did. it's awesome. the music montage was fun too. forgot how much rdj brought lols.

yeah, i never got the hate for his character on this thread.

saw for the fourth time last week, great as ever

i mean "rescreened"

and yeah rdj is great - character wouldve been killed by some bullshit hammy johnny depp acting but he really inhabits it

rdj is awesome!!

must get this director's cut editiony thing.