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

i keep meaning to revisit haywire based on the buzz but he gave me all those actors i love and it was just like this lady who couldn't act in a room from far away and ugh i didn't trust him to go elsewhere, i know his kicks

this is what The Movies should always be like IMO.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCIXKzeaAAs

helloe tess

I'll step up to the mound and defend Traffic here. It's heavy handed both stylistically and thematically, for sure. However, I think what Soderbergh wanted to express is on the money on so many levels. He manages to tie so many things together, both very personal (what can one person do against addiction or corruption) and very political (how do we deal with Tijuana). I generally agree with his views on the drug trade: take care of the demand side of things, in a way that floats your boat. That notion found interesting echoes in his post-Lehman films about money and greed (Magic Mike, Haywire). I think its wise that you get to have clear stylistic distinction between all three sides of the trade itself: transportation, supply and demand and how they are all connected made me very hopeless and how Soderbergh find a way to get his character out of the situation without being too corny (at least to me) and I enjoyed that.

yeah, Traffic is not terrible even if it might be improved with the sound off.

Wolf of Wall Street IS terrible even if it might be improved with the sound off.

Traffic was solid, I had no misgivings at the time. "Heavy-handed" is accurate, I'll admit

Traffic was OK whenever Michael Douglas wasn't worried about his daughter and Benicio didn't dream about his ballpark.

Erin Brockovich has become my most watched Soderbergh.

traffic is hilarious, traffik is somber in the same way departed US is hilarious, departed HK is somber.

so what you're saying is that in Traffik, the humor is unintentional

traffik is pretty dour!

wolf of wall st def not one of soderbergh's best

it is def David O. Russell's best tho

http://www.vulture.com/2014/09/steven-soderbergh-the-knick-directing-race-riot.html

does the knick get less gory

not really, though the opening episode is a straight up "oh blood bothers you, GTFO" gutbucket. it never gets worse than that.

blaaahhhhh i guess i'll keep going until i explode

I have gotten quite hardened to the surgical scenes, that opening failed c section scene in ep1 is very disagreeable - that is probably the most troubling scene of the series.

syphilis nose way harder on my stomach than the c section

oh should i still be watching this? i kind of forgot about it!

are you a fan of syphilis nose

who isn't?

That the "comedy" Typhoid Mary subplot is the light relief in this series says a lot.

haven't seen traffic in like a decade, willing to believe it will suck on re-screening, but i always thought the closing eno-soundtracked scene was p cool

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNgvVVjgK68

Watch his "touched" version of 2001: A Space Odyssey:

http://extension765.com/sdr/23-the-return-of-w-de-rijk

anyone hear The Limey's commentary track?? sounds crazy.

http://www.avclub.com/article/the-new-cult-canon-ithe-limeyi-filmmaker-commentar-23702

it's been a long time since i heard it but i remember enjoying it and cringing in equal measure. it's like the polar opposite of the chummy, rambling john carpenter / kurt russell commentary tracks.

yes, it was A+.

yea I have, dobbs is a p crabby dude but its mostly good natured kvetching iirc

that's one of the best commentary tracks! probably the most illuminating one i've heard in terms of how a film is a kind of negotiation between competing authorships.... the robocop and starship troopers commentary tracks w/ verhoeven and neumeier are also englightening that way, though in those cases the principals seem less aware of what they're revealing.

i was just thinking yesterday of how 90% of commentary tracks are a waste of... time and space, i guess.

was listening to the commentary on the monte hellman double feature (shooting/ride in the whirlwind) and while there are a quite a few interesting anecdotes, almost none of them relate directly to what you're seeing onscreen. in that sense you have to appreciate it as two separate streams of information. on the video level, you're kind of re-experiencing the film, while on the audio level, you're hearing a bunch of people gab about the movie -- but the two seldom interact meaningfully.

the hal hartley/richard pena(?) commentary on godard's "hail mary" is another missed opportunity IMO. hartley is (well, /was/) one of the smartest Godard acolytes, who has a great fondess for JLG's 1980s work, so it should have been a gas. but it's clear that no preparation was done, no remarks were planned, so it really is just like eavesdropping on a not entirely enlightening conversation. it does help that pena (i think it's h im) has nothing of interest to say at all.

i should add that bill krohn and blake lucas, who "interview" hellman for the two commentary tracks i mentioned, have some interesting things to say but probably 70% of it is just bloviating and them floating dubious theories about the films' relationships to the western genre, most of which hellman tellingly just avoids responding to.

to bring this back to soderbergh, his commentary w/ john boorman on the point black dvd/blu-ray is great. soderbergh in general is kind of the master of commentary tracks, i'd say it should actually count as a key part of his body of work.

point BLANK

Yeah, the point blank track really is great

i wish more filmmakers were as good at /talking/ as soderbergh.

actually, hal hartley is a great talker, too, which is one reason his "hail mary" commentary was such a disappointment.

I'mm not a fan of them either – I only listen to them if I'm watching a movie a second or third time – but a top fiver for me is, of all things, Jack Nicholson's for The Passenger. Meticulous, consistently interesting, no trace of the Jack persona; the guy knows about composition, film history, etc.

yup, which makes it all the more regrettable that nicholson is nowhere to be found on the criterion of those hellman films, which he starred in and produced (and he wrote one of them!).

feel like soderbee is kinda underrated rn if anything

he's thanked in the liner notes btw, which probably means he helped out somehow--maybe he gave them a phone number or two--but bowed out of actively participating. which is a shame.

who know who is overrated? Gus Van Sant. I have no clue how a man so talentless at directing fumbled his way into a highly successful career.

i don't think he's talentless, but i think his best moves are stolen from other directors and that his choice of subject matter is positively vampirish.

but nobody really cares about gus van sant anymore, right?

boy the King of the Hill Blu-ray is gorgeous.

it's a really good movie! i love the ending, in particular.

did you watch the supplement where soderbergh talks about how terrible he thinks "the underneath" is?

I watched The Underneath and remembered how non-descript it is, a couple of acerbic exchanges and framings of actors around interior design aside. Peter Gallagher is so miscast.

Also: it's awkward! The hopscotching through time and space often breaks rhythms.

yeah, it looks really nice, though.

i remember good things about alison elliott's performance in that film but i don't know if that's an accurate memory.