tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10506214.post3817016712047382632..comments2024-01-23T13:41:41.463-05:00Comments on The Forager Blog: Screening Log: January 2009Jon Hastingshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01030406521787423155noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10506214.post-54391036973102996372009-02-09T09:31:00.000-05:002009-02-09T09:31:00.000-05:00cool--I actually want to write something on Stop-L...cool--I actually want to write something on Stop-Loss at some point!<BR/><BR/>I did really like Zodiac (not to mention The Game, Se7en and, to a certain extent, Panic Room... Fight Club drives me bonkers, but I did get a lot of mileage out of it in a classroom situation, so that must mean something!)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10506214.post-88612673409715416322009-02-06T17:37:00.000-05:002009-02-06T17:37:00.000-05:00David -Well, to be clear, I don't like Button any ...David -<BR/><BR/>Well, to be clear, I don't like <I>Button</I> any more than I like <I>Zodiac</I> (which I also find kind of devastating: Mike Mageau at the end of the movie, aged and worn down, while Darlene Ferrin is - horribly - forever young).<BR/><BR/>And I very much like your soldiers-as-temps take on <I>Stop-Loss</I>.Jon Hastingshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01030406521787423155noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10506214.post-30503454790200649822009-02-06T16:22:00.000-05:002009-02-06T16:22:00.000-05:00"overt critique of the WAR" I mean!"overt critique of the WAR" I mean!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10506214.post-12637331561422988952009-02-06T16:20:00.000-05:002009-02-06T16:20:00.000-05:00interesting--Button has elicited some of the most ...interesting--Button has elicited some of the most disparate responses (from "I-want-those-three-hours-back!" to "Fincher-has-reached-a-new-and-exhilarating-level-of-maturity) I've ever seen!<BR/><BR/>Stop-Loss--oh sure, I got that you were implying that Pierce was being disingenuous in eschewing any overt critique of the way... Although I'd say that what she does offer is, instead, a critique of professional military service in toto...(dealing with the Iraq vets not as WWII style patriot-conscripts nor as Vietnam style canon fodder-conscripts but as very modern "temps" who kill and "keep order" instead of running a machine or sitting in a cubicle for 8 hours day...)<BR/><BR/><BR/>Regarded in that light, it comes by its melodramatic character very naturally... and its legalistic bent brings the ultra-cynical basis of 21st century "recruitment" into sharp focus!<BR/><BR/>DaveAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10506214.post-20609074161575947612009-02-06T10:58:00.000-05:002009-02-06T10:58:00.000-05:00Hi Dave -I haven't written anything about Button, ...Hi Dave -<BR/><BR/>I haven't written anything about <I>Button</I>, and I have to admit I'm having a hard time coming up writing up a coherent response to your question. It's one of those cases, though, where I feel <I>sure</I> that I could get it across if we were talking face-to-face. Trying to write it up, it comes out like a jumble, but...<BR/><BR/>I love the way that it plays with the perspectives on telling a story. It does this in a lot of ways, but centrally of course, through Benjamin's predicament. In one sense, Benjamin faces the same kinds of issues anyone would face: he deals with unexpected circumstances, he ages, he misses opportunities, he ends up in a position where he's lived a full life but can't remember any of it (i.e. a position that someone aging "normally" would face). But his reverse-aging acts as a fantastical element that <I>pops</I> all of these things into sharp relief. So that the image near the end of old Cate Blanchett walking down a street with toddler-Benjamin is, to me, moving and devastating because of its uncanny context.<BR/><BR/>We get a sense of this play with perspective in other ways to: the way that the movie is told from Benjamin's journal, but we get commentary from dying Cate, for instance.<BR/><BR/>And I think the movie approaches, in certain scenes, a Welles-like take on the passage of time <I>through</I> space. I'm thinking especially of the way Fincher poeticizes the Hotel set in the scenes with Swinton.<BR/><BR/>Re: <I>Stop-Loss</I> - I guess I mean that I think <I>Pierce's</I> moral outrage really isn't legalistic, so her trying to fit it into this legalistic story, using her bordering-on-sensationalism melodramatic style feels off to me. I mean, basically everything bad that can happen to returning vets happens to these guys in like a 3 day period. That's (to me) a perfectly acceptable thing in the context of an outraged melodrama, but it makes the whole stop-loss issue seem tiny in comparison. I think, for example, its a mistake for Timothy Olypahnt to play that officer as a Major Dick and a Bad Guy, because the REAL bad guy is the fucked up bureaucracy and the idiots at the Pentagon/White House. (Just like it was a mistake for Steve Spielberg to portray Stanley Tucci's character as a Major Dick in <I>The Terminal</I>).Jon Hastingshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01030406521787423155noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10506214.post-80829809890233672442009-02-06T10:28:00.000-05:002009-02-06T10:28:00.000-05:00cool!have you written anything on Benjamin Button?...cool!<BR/><BR/>have you written anything on Benjamin Button? <BR/>(I can always just scroll down and look, of course!)<BR/><BR/>I've liked some Fincher in the past, but BB almost killed me. I liked one scene (the submarine attack--a really stylish jolt of cinematic invention), but that's it. I'd be very interested to see how it put those four stars in your eyes!<BR/><BR/>(on the other hand--I liked Stop-Loss a fair bit--I take your point about Pierce's refusal to engage the question of the war-qua-war, but isn't that what's good about the film? It deals specifically with a group of people who--for a variety of socio-economic and cultural reasons--have agreed to put their lives on the line for a certain period of time... and who then find that they've signed on for more than they bargained for... it IS a legalistic--rather than a moral/political--analysis...which I found quite interesting and unexpected!)<BR/><BR/>DaveAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com