Todd Haynes

If it were Todd Solondz behind the camera, I'd agree with you. (Actually, wait, doesn't his new film Palindromes do the whole multiple-actors-playing-the-same-character thing, too? That's weird.) But Haynes truly does have the ability to transcend his conceits. That combination of intellectual cleverness and genuine, overwhelming emotion is why Far From Heaven and Eternal Sunshine are two of my favorite films of this decade.

i think the conceit is sort of similar, but haynes's film was much more imaginative in its reworking of the source materials and much more rigorous in its evocation/replication of the style of said materials.

i don't know, i think van sant is gifted but not very smart, honestly. haynes could not be accused of not being smart, i suspect.

i guess the most interesting part about "elephant" was the degree of human sympathy it elicited for characters not often seen in films (NOT the killers, but some of the students introduced in the first half ), but that was ultimately sort of incidental to the film and its main reason for being. i've written about this on an "elephant"-specific thread.

what's funny is that haynes seems such an unlikely person to be obsessed with bob dylan. in the sense that dylan's legacy has been "owned," or rather leased, of late by the sort of rock critics who emphasize his folk roots and so on. to the point where there isn't a pervasive sense of dylan as a pop persona, as a modernist figure. so i'm very interested to see where haynes goes with this. (i mean, it's hard to imagine haynes making a movie that concerns itself with, uh, different versions of "st james infirmary," simply because that's a strain of american culture the celebration of which takes on a certain role that seems anathema to haynes's own self-fashioned role in the culture. if that makes sense.)

xp

eg the gap between dylan (in toto) and glam (in toto) is smaller than dave van ronk wants it to be

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0306814072/qid=1111779776/sr=8-2/ref=pd_csp_2/102-1769521-6410552?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

[i]http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0306814072.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg[/i]

i agree, i was trying to say (i think i failed) that the reigining dylan paradigm doesn't really involve much glam and doesn't really evoke anything that haynes has previously been known to be interested in. that doesn't mean that dylan himself, or his music or pop persona, doesn't have affinities with what haynes has previously been known to be interested in.

I can't think of a single thread/discussion/reaction that I've ever found more interesting than the film it's discussing.

Dylan never should've left Toto, he was the best one!

It's funny how in the movie the people the story is based on are involved but not in the actual production of the movie where that happens

This movie is so exquisitely awkward

Yeah, between this and Showing Up it was a good year for awkward.

Showing Up is awkward, and is a remarkable film about a small local community of people (an arts community in Portland OR) trying to navigate the world, with all of the frustrations and divided feelings that come with it. It is my favorite movie so far from this year.

May December is also a favorite film this year, but it seems very slippery and knowing and almost conniving, and is almost the opposite of awkward to me, although there are some moments in it that are cringy