SCFZ

Strays (Vin Diesel, 1997)

A Vin directed movie called Strays? Let me take a wild guess and say there's gonna be some deal like What makes you a stray is you ain't got family and without family you're nothing. Or some such.

ofrene wrote: ↑Wed Nov 18, 2020 8:52 am gonna watch Mank in few minutes and nobody reserve ticket except me..

i want to hear about this

greg x wrote: ↑Wed Nov 18, 2020 9:56 pm A Vin directed movie called Strays? Let me take a wild guess and say there's gonna be some deal like What makes you a stray is you ain't got family and without family you're nothing. Or some such.

I have to say it is an admirable directorial debut. It's nicely shot and most likely features people Diesel knew, so he was able to make it on a tiny budget (one place says $10k, other - 50k). He premiered it at Sundance and, apparently, Spielberg saw Strays and liked it well enough to write a specific character for Diesel in Saving Private Ryan. So, I guess, this attempt to present himself to the movie world really worked.

rischka wrote: ↑Wed Nov 18, 2020 10:25 pm
i want to hear about this

nothing to say much.. Fincher's most messiest film and little underwhelmed for me though some relevant stuff(Upton Sinclair stuff, for example..) and all that obsessive technical ambition to look like 30-40s film

yeah i expect i won't like it either but will probably watch out of curiousity

Fincher and Classic Hollywood feels like a strange pairing, as he doesn't strike me as a classic film cinephile like, say, the Coen Brothers. It seems like the biggest motivation behind it is the fact that the screenplay was written by his late father, and from what I've read and ofrene might confirm this is that it seems to align itself with Raising Kane, that controversial opinion that Welles' involvement in writing CK was minimal. So, hey, the fact that it isn't a 'love letter' might make it more interesting than something like Hail, Caesar. I'll probably end up bitching that it doesn't get the period, most likely...

Yeah, the trailer yells Raising Kane or a cheap Coenesque knockoff of it somehow, almost more like the relationship Joe Dante's film within a film, Mant in Matinee, had to monster movies of the 50s. The cinematography, a normal Fincher strong point, also looks awful, like shot on vid in color and cheaply converted to black and white rather than feel at all like old film stock. I'm giving it a hard pass.

mank makes some sense inasmuch as fincher always strikes me as a director with a strange if not outright perverse relationship to the written text of his films, this very controlled mise en scene guy who almost exclusively works with the flashiest written material possible. watched se7en for the first time in a decade + a little while ago and hadn't remembered just how *written* It actually feels, scene for scene and line for line, even as fincher wrestles it into being what almost anyone would consider a director's movie.

he doesn't seem to be a cinephile in the classic sense at all but does seem to be in love with the mythology of the hollywood system almost to the point of fetish. this is going to sound more like an insult than i think i mean it to be but fincher's lines about welles downfall make more sense when you consider that the very fertile, peripatetic working life of welles in the post-hollywood years would sound like a depressing nightmare to someone with fincher's production sensibilities (just as much as it was a source of great inspiration to someone like mekas or ruiz).

greg x wrote: ↑Thu Nov 19, 2020 2:04 pm The cinematography, a normal Fincher strong point, also looks awful, like shot on vid in color and cheaply converted to black and white rather than feel at all like old film stock. I'm giving it a hard pass.

That's interesting that it reads that way, since it was shot on the Red Monochrome sensor. It's essentially one of the very few digital to films to not have a color negative out there somewhere. Though I agree it has a "digital b&w" look as opposed to a celuloid one. That kind of a clash between the Fincher aesthetic and the style of the film is intriguing enough to me.

Also, from what I hear, Fincher's dad definitely subscribed to the Raising Kane speculations, but Fincher himself overall disagreed with his father on those basic facts. So that's another bit of dissonance that I think leaves some room for interesting ambiguity.

My reservation is that Eric Roth apparently ghostwrote the script (leaving Fincher's dad with sole credit, I'm assuming for sentimental reasons (or a sly jab at director's overtaking a writer's input?)) And I kind of despise Roth's wikipedia-style screenwriting. So depending on how much work he put in, I can imagine it becoming a huge slog.

Yeah, it just looks drained of color rather than feeling like it is trying to capture anything of the feel of an old B&W film in a way that annoyed. Not surprised it wasn't shot that way though. The Raising Kane thing is somewhat interesting because the film is clearly aping Welles direction at some junctures in how it seems to equate elements of Mankiewicz's life to Kane, so there might be some useful tension there, but the trailer certainly didn't capture it, save perhaps as parody.

Did not realize this Mank was a Fincher....Hmm I should catch this

Eric Roth's involvement, uncredited or otherwise, makes me less interested in seeing the film.

started watching iruvar and mohanlal is great



reading up on political background/controversies now

I'm gonna rewatch Amor de Perdição in small doses over the next 5 days.

They closed all the cinemas in Vancouver again!!!! I hadn't even seen the kid detective yet!!!

bergman binge: winter light, the silence, then fanny & alexander (one of three criterions i own)

k question this is a lutheran church right?? my grandparents were lutheran, i already feel involved

rischka wrote: ↑Thu Dec 24, 2020 12:27 am k question this is a lutheran church right?? my grandparents were lutheran, i already feel involved

Indeedio. The Church of Sweden is Lutheran.

wow this dude is a terrible minister

Trivia: the pudgy organist at the end is Greta Thunberg's grandad.

that is cool. greta is the bomb

nrh wrote: ↑Thu Nov 19, 2020 2:41 pmhe doesn't seem to be a cinephile in the classic sense at all

He is a video clip director who got lucky basically. Have you seen his greatest movies list? It is about as narrow as it gets for a director of his generation.

The ambiguity you are referring to is probably the result of Fincher being rather empty headed. It is painful to listen to him talk. He really is vacuous. That he is actually taken as seriously as he is is the real concern.

I know whom I'm nominating next!

MrCarmady wrote: ↑Thu Dec 24, 2020 2:32 pm I know whom I'm nominating next!

started donen and kelly's it's always fair weather last night! think i might be able to squeeze it in just under the 1/1/21 12AM deadline

i love that movie! the scene where dan daily gets drunk at his boss' house! cyd charisse's boxing number! the most melancholy musical. maybe?

partially chose it cuz i'd like to do a donen poll at some point, but also cuz it sounds like a good flick for nye, but also also cuz i remember seeing it on your top 50 ballot

greennui wrote: ↑Thu Dec 24, 2020 1:51 am Trivia: the pudgy organist at the end is Greta Thunberg's grandad.

Mind blown.

Gonna watch a Portuguese film on January 1st for the third year running.