Les Miserables

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Re: Les Miserables/Zero Dark Thirty

Post by Big Magilla »

Sonic Youth wrote:
Big Magilla wrote:I think mostly I wonder what all these people complaining about close-up think of Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc . Do they agree with the consensus that it is one of the greatest films ever made or do they see it as " just close-ups of a crying woman and grumpy old men" as someone on the IMDb. described it.
But they don't sing.

That's not a minor distinction. I can imagine a huge difference between crisp, black-and-white images of faces in a silent film vs. faces projecting spectrums of expressions in song, complete with nostril-flaring, chin-wagging and all sorts of shape-shifting of the lips. And since the cast sings entire songs, I'm guessing the close-ups are held for much longer in Les Miz than they are in Joan of Arc.
There is no nostril-flaring or chin-wagging and no more shape-shifting of the lips in Les Miz than in Joan of Arc.
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Re: Les Miserables/Zero Dark Thirty

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Les Miserables led Django Unchained on Christmas $18 million to $15 million on two hundred fewer screens. I'm too lazy to do the math, but that's gotta be the largest opening for a musical entirely composed of Dreyer-esque close-ups in a few months!

In other news, Silver Linings Playbook finally doubled its number of screens from 371 (all December) to 745 and added another million to its total. Why Harvey Weinstein is treating this like Sideways and not As Good As It Gets in a year where seemingly any movie could win Best Picture continues to be beyond me.
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Re: Les Miserables/Zero Dark Thirty

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Big Magilla wrote:I think mostly is the key word here. If it were all sung it would be too much like an opera for most audiences. There is just enough spoken dialogue to keep it realistic, that and the much maligned clos-ups which showthe raw emotion on the actors' faces.

I wonder what all these people complaining about close-up think of Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc . Do they agree with the consensus that it is one of the greatest films ever made or do they see it as " just close-ups of a crying woman and grumpy old men" as someone on the IMDb. described it.
But they don't sing.

That's not a minor distinction. I can imagine a huge difference between crisp, black-and-white images of faces in a silent film vs. faces projecting spectrums of expressions in song, complete with nostril-flaring, chin-wagging and all sorts of shape-shifting of the lips. And since the cast sings entire songs, I'm guessing the close-ups are held for much longer in Les Miz than they are in Joan of Arc.
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Re: Les Miserables/Zero Dark Thirty

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I think mostly is the key word here. If it were all sung it would be too much like an opera for most audiences. There is just enough spoken dialogue to keep it realistic, that and the much maligned clos-ups which showthe raw emotion on the actors' faces.

I wonder what all these people complaining about close-up think of Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc . Do they agree with the consensus that it is one of the greatest films ever made or do they see it as " just close-ups of a crying woman and grumpy old men" as someone on the IMDb. described it.
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Re: Les Miserables/Zero Dark Thirty

Post by HarryGoldfarb »

By the way, a question to the people who have seen Les Miserables: the fact it is a mostly entirely sung musical can alienate people? I remember back in 1996 this was an issue with Evita, at least for the non-fanatic people (or people not familiar with the show).
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Re: Les Miserables/Zero Dark Thirty

Post by HarryGoldfarb »

flipp525 wrote:Your comment was extremely tacky and cruel.
Delicate issue and my (poor) English and common sense should prevent me from getting involved in a political discussion, but "extremely tacky and cruel" seems out of proportion... Maybe Magilla was unthoughtful, but cruel? I'm sorry Flipp, i don't mean to be disrespectful but I think being politically correct is overvalued these days. We need to be respectful, and I'm glad people is more in touch with delicate matters, in fact it is necessary to do it, but we can get over deffensive and in the process become more agressive than the alleged offensors.

Back on topic: I haven't seen any of the big films mentioned in this year race, but I have a theory about the Les Miserables sudden backlash. I just think critics and organizations simply doesn't like to be told what to do. The very first review I read about Les Miserables was way too enthusiastic, the "this film is so good you won't believe your eyes" tone of it made me dubious. The film was actually called the Titanic of 2012, the film to beat. Immediately after that, every critic was trying to find a way to dismiss the film. It is easier to be cynical with a popular product cause it makes you look smarter, hipster or more demanding. Being the favorite is not a good thing: the Academy has showed us that it fits in this pattern. I am not sayng The Social Network should have won the Oscar (Black Swan, The King's Speech and even Inception are higher in my esteem), but the critis were commanding it to be named Best Picture. The Oscar had to come up with an alternative just to keep itself relevant, just to to make a statement about having its own mind. The same can be said regarding Brokaback Mountain. The precursors actually may hurt a film.

I find having great expectations about a film is the best way to guaranteed a big disappointment (The Informer and Nine come to mind in my own experience), and the contrary is also true (The Sixth Sense in its summer, Moneyball). So Magilla having a preconceived opinion about Les Mis or if he watched the film expecting it to be quite good is something we can all relate to, but the fact he didn't end up disappointed is actually quite a strong argument to me.

All in all, this has become the most interesting year in quite a long time just for the fact we don't have an already established two head race by this late time.
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Re: Les Miserables/Zero Dark Thirty

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flipp525 wrote:
Big Magilla wrote: Btw, I didn't appreciate your flippant use of the word "retarded" down-thread. My cousin is mentally retarded and one of the most special, wonderful people I've ever known — kind, sweet, generous, brave and beautiful, inside and out. Your comment was extremely tacky and cruel.
No, it was accurate. I, too, have retarded people in my life who are indeed sweet, kind, generous, brave and beautiful. Some of them can be very emotional and behave as that couple did, i.e. say things out loud that most people wouldn't. I think everyone around them realized these were "special" people which was the reason no-one shushed them. I thought his sobbing was itself very sweet, brave and beautiful itself. He was probably moved by the story and the character and was not expecting her sudden death. He did not sob earlier when Hathaway's Fantine died - he had probably been forewarned of that, but the sobs got louder when Hathaway returned for the finale. By then, though, the entire audience was wiping away the tears.
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Re: Les Miserables/Zero Dark Thirty

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Big Magilla wrote:The worst part of yesterday's film going experience was sitting through too many trailers to count including two starring last year's gross-out Cinderella, Melissa McCarthy, one in which she beats up Jason Bateman and one in which she beats up Sandra Bullock. They'll probably both be hits and when she fails to receive an Oscar nomination for either her legion of fans will chalk it up to vote-splitting.
Did Melissa McCarthy kill your dog or something?

Btw, I didn't appreciate your flippant use of the word "retarded" down-thread. My cousin is mentally retarded and one of the most special, wonderful people I've ever known — kind, sweet, generous, brave and beautiful, inside and out. Your comment was extremely tacky and cruel.
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Re: Les Miserables/Zero Dark Thirty

Post by OscarGuy »

I had a pleasant experience with moviegoing on Christmas. Silver Linings Playbook is a darling film, one I wish were being campaigned better.
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Re: Les Miserables/Zero Dark Thirty

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Everyone has an idea going into a film whether they will like it or not. Sometimes one's preconceived opinion is bolstered when they see the actual film, sometimes it is not. Sad to say, I find the latter the case more often than not. Last year I was extremely disappointed by just about everything that came out of Hollywood and Great Britain. This year I've been pleasantly surprised to find myself liking a number of films I had limited expectations about including Lincoln. I've been bitterly disappointed in screen versions of Broadway musicals of the last decade in particular, especially Phantom of the Opera and Rent, both of which I saw before I read the reviews. I went into Les Miserables expecting the best despite mixed reviews, which usually means at least some disappointment as with last year's middling My Week With Marilyn and wretched star vehicle, The Iron Lady. To my relief, I greatly enjoyed it as did the packed audience.

Beasts of the Southern Wild was a film I expected to like based on all the rave reviews it's gotten. Worse than a disappointment, it seemed like a cruel joke perpetrated on the movie-going public by critics who are predisposed to like anything new from a no-name director and a cinematographer with a shaky camera.

The worst part of yesterday's film going experience was sitting through too many trailers to count including two starring last year's gross-out Cinderella, Melissa McCarthy, one in which she beats up Jason Bateman and one in which she beats up Sandra Bullock. They'll probably both be hits and when she fails to receive an Oscar nomination for either her legion of fans will chalk it up to vote-splitting.
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Re: Les Miserables/Zero Dark Thirty

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But that's the point. Whether the criticism is expressed thoughtfully or "cheaply", it's still an opinion. Should it be invalidated because it had a nasty tone to it?

Your review of Beasts of Southern Wild was vicious and had some cheap shots in it. Maybe it should be dismissed on that basis? It felt pre-judged to me. For that matter, so did your enthusiastic Les Miz review. Wouldn't your standard of fairness and objectivity mean that your opinion should be considered unreliable?
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Re: Les Miserables/Zero Dark Thirty

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Sonic, your friend's review is thoughtful and scholarly, it doesn't resort to cheap shots at "all those close-ups". I found all his criticisms accurate, but taking Hooper and company to task for not properly explaining the 1932 insurrection is outside the scope of the film. A more relevant criticism might be that the film's coda, which harkens back to Places in the Heart and Longtime Companion, should have been about the triumphant 1948 rebellion rather than another chance to see Aaron Tveit, Samantha Barks, Anne Hathaway and other dead characters once again singing their hearts out, although that, as well as the truncated group of partisans at the barricades, were part of the show. As I recall, the truncated group of partisans harkens back to Hugo, or at least previous film versions of Les Miserables.

Okri, I don't regularly read National Rogers, although I did look at his website and couldn't find his review. I couldn't find it on Rotten Tomatoes either, although I did find his impassioned support of the film in light of all the naysaying. He does fault Hooper's reliance on close-ups but doesn't seem to find it an overall problem except in one instance. http://thefilmexperience.net/blog/2012/ ... tures.html

I have no problem with people liking or not liking a particular film or even a particular genre, but I do have a problem with people who pre-judge a film and fashion their reviews around those pre-judgments. It's almost like they had their reviews written in advance and couldn't wait to see the film so they could publish those already written reviews. Most of the hatred for Hooper isn't because he won an Oscar for an over-rated film but because he and his film won an Oscar over critic's darling David Fincher and his film, The Social Network.
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Re: Les Miserables/Zero Dark Thirty

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Big Magilla wrote:
Reza wrote:Read elsewhere that the constant closeups and rat-a-tat editing are pretty annoying.
Again, all these complaints about close-ups and so on were from critics who were gunning for the film. I used to have respect for Lisa Schwartzbaum even when I disagreed with her, but after her slam-down of this and Trouble With the Curb, I've lost it. If you read my current DVD Report, it's she I'm talking about naming the Eastwood film one of the five worst films of the year, when it was actually a decent, though certainly not great, little movie. I suspect she and the other critics who slammed that one were reacting to Eastwood's embarrassing performance at the Republican National Convention, which had nothing to do with the film.
But Magilla, what about the review I posted before? This is someone I know personally, and he writes for an independent publication and is a member of OSFC. He had many of the same criticisms. Do you honestly believe he had an agenda going into the film?
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Re: Les Miserables/Zero Dark Thirty

Post by Okri »

It's kind of fascinating how fans of the film respond to criticism thereof. Magilla's dismissing anyone who has a complaint with the direction as those gunning for the film (though I'd point out that Nathaniel Rogers has admitted finding the direction flawed despite his own love of the movie, as have other enthusiasts). If you don't like Anne Hathaway's performance, you're just pretending. If you don't like Hugh Jackman's, that's your own genre bias. My mom wants to see it and we'll go during these holidays, but I'm almost afraid of enjoying it lest I resort to the same dismissals (or dislike it, and be subject to them).
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Re: Les Miserables/Zero Dark Thirty

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dws1982 wrote:
Big Magilla wrote: The guy broke down in sobs at Barks' death scene and kept sobbing until the end of the film he was that moved.
What the hell was wrong with him?
I thought the couple was slightly retarded the way they were commenting on the film. I lost count of the number of times he said to his companion "that's Anne Hathaway". At least with the sobbing, the commentary stopped.
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