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

ah yeah, I didn't mean this new project -- just the impression he's retreated in some way, or has pretended to retire/retreat a few times because he'd rather have less scrutiny on his works as _his works_

I don't think it's weird for him to use new toys, because that's pretty much what he does in a non-flashy way with every other production

the new toy is his old iPhone, and that part's fine – other than stressing the you-are-there shocks of the nuthouse sequences, it doesn't add appreciably to the verisimilitude of the narrative or whatever

Mosaic was* a totally new toy in terms of storytelling


*"is," it's still only a month or two old. But I'm only 1/3 of the way through it bcz it's fucking horrible to watch a story on a phone

Unsane spoilers to follow:

It's one of the most fascinatingly awful movies I've ever seen. At the beginning it seems like it has some chance at being a decent psychological thriller that paints the for-profit medical industry and the complacency of police and the legal system as the villains. Then it turns out that the actual villain is a psycho murderer, who tortures one victim by sandwiching his head between defibrillator pads, and kills another with a Steven Seagal-style neck break maneuver. The way it gradually escalates the schlock level from moderate to unbearable is really something to see.

I like Soderbergh's schlock side. Side Effects and Haywire are two of his best movies IMO. Might need to check this one out.

from jrn's summary this movie sounds fucking awesome

seconded

it's uninterestingly mediocre

It's fucking awesome. And the for-profit medical industry is clearly the (co-)villains.

Boring after it turns into a slasher flick

― morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, March 19, 2018 7:14 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah we prob won't agree on this one alfred

Slasher flicks = fine

"Soderberg makes okay Cuckoo's Nest knockoff with garrulous slasher denouement" = dud

You write that as if it makes sense...

Who wouldn't?

Impressive, at least for a while--up to the first long rubber-room scene--although I was very conscious of all the films it was stealing from: Cuckoo's Next (serendipitous I would see it today), Repulsion, Rosemary's Baby (probably The Tenant, too, which I haven't seen in ages), Get Out, Shock Corridor. I know Soderbergh's proximity to commercial success and getting-films-made has had some wild swings over the years--this is all some metaphor for the film industry, right?

the climax/coda seemed really haphazard, as if a narrative theme was dropped back in after the fact because someone remembered that angle wasn’t addressed, or there wasn’t a good ending they’d filmed

the extreme horizontality of ocean's twelve is a delight to me

not a single scene above ground level iirc

His new one seems to perhaps be Magic Mike for basketball

https://www.filmlinc.org/films/high-flying-bird/

He was on Bill Simmons' podcast and called out Under The Skin as a recent movie that he wished he had made, prompting me to finally watch that freaky-ass movie.

It's good!

watched Out of Sight as a family last night, everyone enjoyed it.

yea bill smartly said almost nothing other than like "surprising answer!" as he clearly had no idea what sodes was talking abt

https://deadline.com/2019/01/steven-soderbergh-sundance-slamdance-icon-interview-1202544513/

I found this to be a pretty excellent, lengthy interview.

of all the people I have interviewed over the years, he was up there with the smartest and most interesting. sort of an eno-esque polymath.

Amy Taubin is a fan

https://www.artforum.com/print/201902/amy-taubin-on-steven-soderbergh-s-high-flying-bird-78379

It's really good! By the writer of Moonlight (and it's a better film).

I sat in the row in front of Bill Duke, who has a golden supporting role. SS and Kyle Maclachlan, among others, were in the back but were not part of the Q&A.

MacLachlan + Sodes is a deeply satisfying pairing

he has a scene-stealing moment in the steamroom

btw if you are not a sports fan, fear not, there is very close to zero playing of basketball in this film

news I can use

opens today in NY/LA (looks great), streams on Netflix

I would have happily watched a whole series of this but liked it just fine as a film. I like all other non sports knowerrs immediately googled the Edwards book the second it was over. Sodes is really good at that wholeclever-but-not-annoying thing.

soderbergh gives so many interviews, he's such a constant presence on social media, etc., and he's such an interesting guy to listen to, that i feel like his movies and TV series are just one (important) part of this ongoing "brand" he puts out there.

he seems like one of those guys who isn't just a workaholic, he just has a fundamentally more active pituitary gland or something, like he's just "on" all the time, always sharp and focused and productive. i had a professor like that. it's amazing.

This was good. The script was in some places beautiful, and Andre Holland was ideally cast.

I loved Bill Duke in this a lot

The women were terrific.

"prosperity gospel" talk suitably skin-crawling

He always seems consciously invested in honing his own skills even when it means trying new variations that don’t quite work, and notably doing so without just throwing bottomless money at things until they pass a focus group

I don’t know that I’ve read more than a couple interviews and have never noticed a social media presence!

https://twitter.com/bitchuation

This is something else.

10 tweets in a year is not what I wld call a “constant presence on social media”

Holland said that Soderbergh showed them Sweet Smell of Success.

I didn't know Zazie Beetz or Sonja Sohn from their TV work, both fine especially the latter.

I think you would like Atlanta.

for a while I thought Sonja Sohn was Angela Bassett; her voice has the same timbre.

I think everyone would like Atlanta.

I want to see Atlanta! It's taking me over a year to get through Twin Peaks 2.0.

I recognized Harry Edwards as a go-to talking head on race in American sports for decades, but wasn't aware he helped bring about the '68 Olympics protest:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic_Project_for_Human_Rights

zazie beetz -- how wonderful is it that this is her real name? if philip roth gave a character this name, reviewers would be rolling their eyes. she's lovely btw.

news I can use

half an hour to go because I was dozing on painkillers the first time and rewatched to catch up, but the tiny bits of basketball are easier to follow than every single other thing about the NBA's contracts and "lockouts" and tactics tbh

and it looks great. the sort-of-flat field is integrated into his approach, with the flexibility of "camera" placement turning that into a somehow bombastic yet intimate visual. Unsane felt more like an experiment, technically, but here he's obviously freestyling wildly with setups and movement and tracking/panning that you can't do with a camera*, yet it's servicing an overall controlled, mannered feel.

*or can do in seconds in situ vs production designing, building, lighting, etc - like the conversation btwn Ray and Sonja Sohn in the bar that's shot from behind the glasses of cherries and twists

remembering I still have** 2/3 of Mosaic left to watch, because a) I loathe watching stories on a phone and b) Sharon Stone went on WTF a few days after I started watching and talked about the ending of this 18-part-plus-other-stuff story, is the work of Steven Soderbergh the most existing thing ever, for a "film director"? Woody Allen has written & directed 47 features in 48 years, plus acting in things and writing other stuff. Studio system and b-movie directors could crack out a couple of features in a year, but very rarely wrote them. (TV directors can turn out 15 hours in a year that shows their style, or more on soaps, but never (?) as writers-directors.)

In Soderbergh's first 24 years as a narrative film director, he made 23 features as director (one of them 4.5 hours long and later released as two), only wrote five of them, but wrote two features with / for other directors, wrote and directed two shorts (one half-hour narrative, one 4-minute artier thing), directed-from-existing-material a feature Spalding Gray doco, directed a feature of a Spalding Gray performance, DPed 16 of his features and one short, edited 11 of the features and both shorts, directed two half-hour stories for television, directed/shot/edited a ten-episode season of TV, and produced half a dozen features for other directors. (Not counting "executive producing.")

In the three years he was "retired" from features, he directed/shot/edited two ten-hour seasons of television, and shot/camera operated/edited one feature (his best film, obv).

In the three years since unretiring, he's directed/shot/edited three features, produced another one, and directed/shot/edited a (let's call it) 18-part, 8-hour branching narrative.

Plus he's going home at night and editing 2001 or his friends' unfinished films for fun! Just adding up by minutes, has anyone else come close?



** oh it turns out the app was decommissioned a few days ago, go fuck yourself HBO

easier to follow than every single other thing about

lol that the minute I picked back up again, the NBA stuff immediately became a metaphor for Soderbergh's experiments with and failures in self-distribution

Erin Brockovich is very well made, and thank God he hasn't made another like it. It's a Julia Roberts superhero movie; no wonder you poptimists love it. Ed Lachman (dp) and Anne Coates (edit) better than Roberts and Finney.