WINTER'S BONE

grim.

in a good way? got solid reviews

yeah it's good, i really liked it.

http://www.wintersbonemovie.com/

john hawkes is great. everybody in it's pretty great! but lemme tell you, grim.

I saw lots of teary eyes emerging from it at the local.

liked this a lot

I was gonna see this a couple weeks ago, but I couldn't bring myself to get into the mood for it. (Went to see Get Him to the Greek instead, lol.) I want to see it eventually, though.

it's not really a downer, tbh, didn't move me to tears. the subject matter and everything is hella bleak but it's not on some fake ass von trier kind of shit.

it's a mystery, so it has a lot of forward motion. there's not a lot of wallowing.

This was the best new movie I've seen in years. At least that was the thought I had while walking out of the theater.

is it a mystery? there wasn't much pushing it forward, i thought. the one deadline kind of came and went without anything happening.
overall i found the dialogue (which was apparently adlibbed) stiff, and the tone a bit too ponderous. wanted to like it more than i did.

Yeah it's a mystery in that we're trying to figure out where her father went/what happened to him. It might not be textbook mystery, but I think there's a good bit of mystery as to what is going on with this extended family. It's some kind of rural southern noir, at least that's how I appreciated it. The deadline came and went because the movie resolved that deadline. I don't know how to talk about that without spoilers.

haha, goole also started the thread on miracle at st anna, which was part 2 of my beat the heat double header yesterday. it, like winter's bone, was disapointing but better than being outside.

? is that still in theaters? or did you d/l winter's bone?? OR WHAT???

it (and she's gotta have it) played at the brooklyn acadmey of music yesterday, where they show first run and repertory films.

lol nyc, the streets paved with film cans...

pretty bad movie, that one, btw

i thought this was pretty good, not great. except john hawkes - he was great. agree with mizzell that the noir mystery elements didn't really add up to much. i guess you could argue that's true of a lot of classic noir too though, so maybe i missed the point. there were def some good images along the way.

tbh my favorite scenes were ree teaching the kids to kill squirrels and eat them and stuff like that.

yeah as a straight mystory or 'noir' it's not exactly high-tension or anything. imo the movie works on two mysteries at the same time, and doesn't have very conclusive answers for either one: "what happened to my dad" and "why the hell is life like this here"

More or less agree with salsa - lots of great elements, not a truly compelling whole. V. curious to see what Granik does next, mind.

john hawkes is great in this. kinda blew my mind when i realized that i recognized him from eastbound and down. very solid movie.

oh this is that movie set in the ozarks right? i want to see this. i'm a big ozarks fan.

haha

you'll like this then. ozarks are the star of the movie. and squirrels.

Young lead is real good, John Hawkes too.

liked this quite a bit

lead was very good!

squirrel cleanin' scenes second-to-none

This movie wins a few Indie Spirit awards and fried squirrel comes to Williamsburg

saw this. loved it. almost seemed to be the opposite of the noirish movies South America has been putting out -- very low key, grim atmosphere, and a lack of likable characters outside of the main protagonist family.

I almost watched it this afternoon but I made the mistake of reading Stephanie Zacharek's review first: she was not very impressed with how it wallows in darkness as a sign of its seriousness.

Instead I hung out by the pool.

I loved this. Really good.

Seeing a screening of it this week, looking forward to it.

Loved this. It's gonna haunt me for a while though, definitely grim stuff. I mean, jeez, you wanna talk about coming of age.

she was not very impressed with how it wallows in darkness as a sign of its seriousness.

that's just stupid. the movie is very much a "country-noir" kind of flick, and the story IS pretty dark. it didn't feel like it was "wallowing" in anything!

Otm. It felt more like a matter-of-fact portrayal of a hard way of life. The girl, Ree (?) spent the whole movie trying to keep things from getting worse! "Wallow" my ass.

don't really agree that it was a matter-of-fact portrayal... i think it's like latebloomer says, a more stylized noir kinda thing.

This was pretty good. Loved the old biddy who plays the closest thing to a villain.

She was great! She played the town hooker in My Name Is Earl.

Didn't recognize Sheryl Lee!

I didn't either! Wow.

Laura Palmer was in this?! Who did she play?

She's in one scene, as the woman Jessup was having an affair with.

ohhhh ok! damn!

agree w/ Soto on that supporting actress

Recognized that actress as the meth head from that episode of Breaking Bad w/ the ATM. Didn't recognize Sheryl Lee at all.

it was good, but i expected more. a little overrated.

that's true, but i'll take what I can in the current American environment.

i thought this was great. it could have been improved by seeing a little more humanity among all the folks that ree has to deal with - everyone's either a monster or a brooding shut-in or both. country people are usually a lot funnier. i was also thrown by a lot of music that i think of as appalachian ("farther along", "high on a mountain") but i guess hillbilly country extends farther than i'd imagined.

it's not a noir in the classic sense though, right, because the protag isn't someone who made bad decisions that are now coming back to haunt her? i feel like noir protags are usually morally compromised somehow.. anyway, nice tidy story, great acting, especially (as has been said) john hawkes and the lead actress. had no idea hawkes could be so intimidating.

i was a little confused by the money at the end. i'd like to talk about it but maybe a SPOILER tag would be in order..

I was confused for a second too until I remembered that, even though we don't know the full story, we know enough of it to have a pretty good idea.

I think the implication was that someone anonymous had bailed her dad out of jail so the baddies could then kill him. The money was put up for bond, which meant the money gets returned (minus commission) once he turns up in court/morgue. So when he was proved a goner, she got the money. Which I did think was too tidy an ending for a movie whose protagonist - despite being smart and tenacious - already more or less just had to stick around long enough and wait for everyone around her to suddenly help her despite repeatedly professing their disinterest in doing so. And, you know, in some cases trying to kill her.

Regardless, still like a lot about this. Shame the actress is following it up with a mutant role in the fourth X-Men movie. Another one bites the dust.

like that precludes her from acting in other movies?

Sort of shows her priorities, doesn't it? Never a good sign when a potential Oscar nom for a breakout role leads to the heavily made-up fifth lead in the fourth film in a comic-adaptation tent pole. Pays the bill, sure, but it's a delicate balance. Ask Halle Berry.

you are a schmuck

hate that bullshit elitism. who gives a fuck what she does? I WILL DEFEND HER HONOR UNTIL I DIE

sorry for calling you a schmuck, that was unnecessary. just really hate that armchair "THIS is what this actor/musician/artist should be doing" crap.

you should be her manager.

No, that's cool. She may be awesome in the X-men movie (as have been other Oscar winners/noms)! I'd just rather her be awesome in a movie that's not the fourth X-men movie, because the last one was dire, and I don't see how playing Mystique will show off her talents. Has the potential to staunch her, well, potential. (Ha, she's apparently in "The Beaver," too). She can do whatever she wants, of course, but Hollywood rewards success over talent, and the lack of the former can allow the latter to languish. No matter how good you are.

I'm sure her manager told her to take the X-Men gig, because the $$$ will be potentially multiples the Winter's Bone budget. George Clooney has credited Batman & Robin with allowing him to do whatever he wanted with his career. But again, Hollywood is more forgiving of male stars than ingenues. There are too few good roles written for women in Hollywood as it is.

I wouldn't find it so offensive and condescending if there weren't so many examples of actors bouncing back and forth between indie movies and studio genre flicks. The paternalistic "aww, what a shame this girl isn't living up to her potential tsk tsk" tone is something that sets me off like nothing else. Maybe you didn't mean it like that, but it sure sounded that way.

There are a lot of examples of established actors bouncing back and forth, sure. But she's beginning her career with a likely Oscar nom, which is unusual, and places her in a precarious position. I didn't mean to be paternalistic, but I do know Hollywood is a lot less coy about its sexism and double standards for women actors. I'm glad there are indeed so many exceptions to the rule, and I wish Lawrence the best, but those Esquire swimsuit photos and sexy video montage back when, followed very quickly by news of her casting in X-Men 4, made me seriously wonder why she was trying so hard to counter her indie buzz with pin-up cred. But I'll say it again - whether or not X-Men 4 is a masterpiece, no one can possibly argue that jumping from an esteemed indie to a FX tentpole in blue body paint augers well for anything but exposure.

Then again, she may be the next Christian Bale!

i would chill out and just see what happens.

That seems like a good idea! Thanks!

I think the implication was that someone anonymous had bailed her dad out of jail so the baddies could then kill him.

― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, December 5, 2010 3:37 PM (44 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

It probably wasn't someone anonymous, though, if you think about the flow of information throughout the film and also that it raises the idea, however faintly, that this might be the attempt of an admittedly cruel and broken culture to look after its own in the form of letting the money stay where it is.

Then again, she may be the next Christian Bale!

please god spare us

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_NIhjnQz-xrA/SlmalGqqi7I/AAAAAAAAAQk/qKnVYg1lmas/s400/Shrug.jpg

i thought it was a de maupassant kind of thing: the hunt for her father is also the struggle for money & safety. by proving that her father can't be found, she gets the money

for some reason i thought that if person A puts up bail for person B, person B dying would mean that person A gets their money back. i didn't realize it would go to the next of kin of person B. or maybe i'm still not getting it. sorry to be so dense about a relatively uninteresting aspect of the movie but the plot kinda does pivot on it.

(also re: getting bailed out by your enemies who want you dead, surely a lesson should have been learned across america's entire criminal community by the events portrayed in the movie jackie brown and the book upon which it was based)

i thought that if person A puts up bail for person B, person B dying would mean that person A gets their money back

I think that's right but I'm pretty sure the marshal explains that person A basically walked into his office and plopped down a bag of money

they don't know who person A is so they give it to the next of kin. I think.

the marshal explains that person A basically walked into his office and plopped down a bag of money

that wasn't a marshal, it was the bail bondsman, right? and didn't he say something like "we took our cut and this is what was left" or something?

i guess the only way the money gets to rhee is through this loophole, when they don't know who originally put up that money, but in the real world there's no way bail gets granted without paperwork i don't think. even in missouri. sorry to be all plot-dickish but... it is kinda what the entire payoff of the movie depends on!

"paperwork" is pretty frequently a difference between the real world and the cinematic one, so it didn't really bother me - plus it had already been made clear the police were in cahoots with the community. and the bail bondsman def made clear what a lucky duck he thought she was.

really, as soon as the sheriff goes "welp, thanks for the fingers, you can go now" you can assume he's not worried about the paper trail

yes bail bondsman not marshal

in the real world there's no way bail gets granted without paperwork

I guess but they made pretty clear in the plot that whoever put up the money wanted to stay anonymous (for the reason talked abt upthread, most likely they wanted Jessup out of jail so they could kill him). maybe the only signature on the bail papers is the bondsman and whoever gave the bondsman the money doesn't really matter.

what the hell are you guys on about

Well, they said (if memory serves) that Jessup put up some of the money himself, leveraging the house, but that was hardly enough to cover bail; the rest came from the anonymous source. Tthey can't be talking huge sums of cash, but even modest bail would be a life-changing mountain of money in dirt poor Ozark terms.

eh. this was alright. don't get the fuss at all. was certainly a put on "stylized noir" thing (reading this grim, brooding seriousness as REAL LYFE is kind of lol). nothing wrong with that, but it did keep me emotionally distanced from whatever suffering this girl was going through.

That was my point upthread about the annoyingness of the stick of butter closeup: the director telegraphing LOOK SEE THEY HAVE NOTHING TO EAT when just a simple medium shot of the girl quietly looking for things to cook around the kitchen would have sufficed.

felt the same way about last tango tbh

no one explained to this country bumpkin the myriad ways in which one could put sticks of butter to use.

winter's boner

what the hell are you guys on about

we're talking about the plot of the movie

i feel like you have found the exact most boring thing about this movie to have an involved discussion about

the fact that the most boring thing was also the pivot of the entire plot and ALSO pretty unclear is unfortunate, i agree

ha

look it's pretty simple

boy meets girl
boy loses girl
boy gets girl back

what is there not to understand

man meets bad dudes
man loses life
girl gets man's hands back

what is there not to understand

what if her dad turned out to be the dude from 127 hours and that movie turned out to secretly be a prequel

woman sees injustice, hollers despite threats until corrupted system corrects itself just enough to shut her up - basically an erin brokovich thing

http://scienceblogs.com/isisthescientist/butter-stick.jpg

i liked that it was set in the present day and moved an engaging plot along without a single computer or mobile phone showing up.

except when she finds the hands cuz her father checked in on 4square

@swamp

great as advertised

keep thinking abt it

subtle class differentiations were v important: thinking of the bail bondsman's later model car, leather jacket

party w/laura palmer was a step up too - that scene was when i realized oh this movie is abt the culture of this one clan specifically

they more or less had their own world

people who have some toe-hold in the official economy kind of drift into the story and out again, sort of pityingly, almost apologetically. almost all of them are part of the enforcement state (the cop, the bondsman, the army recruiter)

the drug economy is very well understood in this movie i think -- both a productive engine and a parasitical machine that chews people up. you wonder what these folks would be doing if they weren't selling drugs to each other and doing them... and then the answer is probably not much

or "just living" to be more forgiving about it

anone know where exactly this took place, in the ozarks right, but was it specifically in some town or

the border of MI and AR is an impt part of the story -- love stuff like that, two jurisdictions, one population, interzone type shit. the place is probably ficionalized, but it did come from a novel right? i don't know.

all v otm btw xp i liked the 1st interaction between the bondsman when he realized fuck this is just a little girl in a horrible situation and softens up - interaction w/the recruter was kinda interesting too for his delivering good advice and sort of connecting while maintaing institutional distance

xxpost I was curious about this myself. fwiw IMDB says it was filmed in Branson, Missouri, USA & Forsyth, Missouri, USA.

i was also really hooked the insane mixture of ree's complete steely canniness (in her own environment) and total innocence and naivete w/r/t anything outside it -- thinking of the recruiter explaining that you don't just get the $40k for signing your name, we are shipping your country ass to iraq, ps no parents? really?

and doesn't that happen right before she teaches her siblings how to hunt squirrel?

Which I did think was too tidy an ending for a movie whose protagonist - despite being smart and tenacious - already more or less just had to stick around long enough and wait for everyone around her to suddenly help her despite repeatedly professing their disinterest in doing so. And, you know, in some cases trying to kill her.

― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, December 5, 2010 10:37 AM (4 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i know everyones already piled on josh but this is just an egregious misreading of the plot - she doesnt just stick around waiting for people to help her - she spends the entire move acting in such a way that they will either have to kill her or give her her dad - its specifically what the movie is about

she figured correctly that delivering her dad would be less trouble legally and morally than killing her - this is aptly illustrated when teardrop takes the ax to guys windshield and he reacts saying 'were gonna bring hell down on you' - of course what the actual reaction is is to give in and give up evidence of her fathers death - news got back to thump and he was all 'dont really want to deal w/both these crazy fucks let just be done w/it whatevs'

as for everyone complaining abt the bail money - it really wasnt that big a deal or central to the plot and whatever paperwork requirements couldve been worked around in any number of ways - the main thing was keeping the house - i did feel like what it did was relieve teardrop of his responsibility to the family - allowing him to go on his suicide mission against whoever killed his brother

novel:

http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/winters_bone/

"border of MO and AR" i should say

MOAR

that delivering her dad would be less trouble legally and morally than killing her

But why, if they had no legal or moral trouble with killing her dad and leaving her to scramble?

Anyway, I get the movie's clan mentality, blood is thicker than water, etc. But the way the movie is set up and its characters /depicted introduced, there's a whole lot more killing that goes down after the credits roll. The guy who Teardrop thinks killed Jessup, then one presumes Jessup himself, then whoever told Teardrop who killed Jessup, and so on. Which of course would not have happened had Jessup not been killed in the first place, so perhaps the movie can be read as a take on what happens when you don't respect the bond of family, however tenuous.

Read somewhere that Lawrence had her teeth made-up/discolored, even though you never see her teeth in the film.

gender diffs also very impt -- i'm thinking of the scene where teardrop rescues ree, she's been beaten up, and he's ready to throw down right there at the sight of her hurt, but is assured that it's only the women who hurt her. the chain of revenge doesn't cross gender lines.

you get the sense that if ree were a young dude she just would have been shot early on.

her dad was snitching, which threatened the whole clan, therefor the legal risks of murder were worthwhile and the moral bond was disolved by his actions - with her the legal risks just werent worth it particularly considering it creates a pattern and points directly back to thump et al via everyone knowing she was out harassing them - morally shes just a little girl trying to save her family and shes shown tremendous heart and bravery, criminal enterprises depend on both fear of retaliation and the bond of loyalty, shes exactly the person whos murder would degrade group loyalty - add that to the fact that everyone is clearly deathly afraid of teardrop and its just easier to give her a hand(s)

Re the bail bond: I think the accused person contracts with the bond agent him- or herself, and that person is responsible for putting up the money. So the anonymous donor was really giving the $$ to Ree's dad who then gave it to the agent = the agent will return it to Ree's dad, who will owe it, by personal commitment, to his benefactor. That loan is none of the agent's business.

A bail bond can be co-signed by someone on the accused's behalf, but in that case the benefactor's identity is required, legally. You know the benefactor only bailed him out so they could kill him, so guaranteed that person needed to stay anonymous and can never come looking for the money, therefore see Paragraph 1.

I thought this movie was great.

Rewatching this now. Every bit as good as I remembered. The people who think this film over-amps the milieu -- rural culture, poverty, etc -- are 1. misreading the movie a little and 2. apparently haven't spent much time in places like this (which is fine since most people haven't).

1. A key scene that goes without enough notice is when Ree walks the kids to school and hangs around watching other teens her age go through the high-school motions. They aren't taking AP classes, they're taking Home Ec and ROTC, but it establishes that Ree's life isn't the norm even in this pocket of the Ozarks.

2. My dad and stepmom -- who both grew up in rural Arkansas (not in the Ozarks, but they have experience with that area too) -- watched this recently. When the scene of Ree teaching the kids to skin and clean squirrel happened, they looked at each other and said, "We've done that." The only thing that seemed off to my dad was that the family lived in a log house, which he thinks would have been too expensive for them.

My stepmom remembered a moonshiner buying sugar from her father's store. This guy ended up going to prison, coming out, and switching to marijuana. Today he'd be on to meth, probably.

From my own time in that area, the visuals - stray dogs, rusting cars, trampolines in the side yard -- are spot-on.

Final note: For whoever was complaining about the "stick of butter" upthread -- it wasn't a stick, it was a tablespoon full. She's frying potatoes. This is normal.

Hubie, we miss you on ILH!

I could have sworn it was Crisco or lard - was it definitely butter?

interesting

i was going to start a thread about scary backwoods types after seeing this film

intriguing part of american culture innit

the grimmer the milieu the more it gets leavened with humor ime, but I guess it's a style thing

laurel your explanation makes sense

There's a quote in the Drive-By Truckers documentary where the guitarist, Mike Cooley, basically notes that most of America is peppered with shelled-out backwoods places decimated by poverty, yet it's a stereotype that seems to stick to the south. Or in this case rural southern mountain folk. Doesn't make it any less accurate, of course.

The depiction, that is.

There were a small number of people who lived w this kind of poverty where I grew up, which isn't remotely southern or mountainous. It's pretty rural, though. And I don't think any kind of drug culture had taken hold although I guess what do I know.

But I remember being told about kids my age who lived in a one- or two-room...probably "shack" is appropriate. The story had it that they put all their clothes in a pile at night, and whoever got up first got to pick what to wear -- and there was only enough to go around. I remember being in class with one of those boys, but as a kid you just don't understand what it means.

nice to see some deadwood crew in something good, though i didn't place the sheriff (francis wolcott/jack mccall) until the end

it seems like all of television these days is comprised of the deadwood crew - the shows I watch, at least

(loved WB btw)

Garret Dillahunt is everywhere

Everyone above is otm about John Hawkes in this, too

pretty mediocre if you've read the book tbqfh

like i know that's not fair but

How come?

Because film is inherently inferior to fiction? *sniffs brandy*

Don't get me wrong, the film is merely good, but was bound to overpraised given the amount of absolute shit on domestic screens this year.

Actually, I'd really like to know what the book is like, since it seems like the kind of story that would benefit from a glimpse into the way her mind works.

eh essentially (and i totally *get* why they did this) the film trades the majority of ree's interior life for ugly scenery and added scenes that i guess are supposed to give you a feel for the place, instead of the character. the book is mercifully light on descriptions of junked cars and trailer homes. mostly the ree in the film is a bit of a cipher, where the book suggests that she's an outsider not just because of her fearlessness but also because she just kind of thinks differently from the people surrounding her.

one particular added scene that drove me fucking nuts was w/the army recruiter--the whole point of her character is that she is not naive!

also on a basic production choices level i don't really get some of the changes they made--maybe they couldnt shoot in snow due to logistics but the book is extremely snowy. why did they make one of her little brothers a sister? why did they change her clothing (in the book she wears old print dresses or skirts with combat boots and a gigantic winter coat) which is key to imagining her tramping around the ozarks?

i mean, it's a fine movie, not that much wrong with it, i don't really know how i would have rated it if i had seen it before reading.

It's harder – not impossible – for films to suggest a character's interiority. Many times it's up to the actor to think in character – one of the signs of a good actor for me, actually.

yeah, again, i understand why they dropped a lot of stuff, but for sure some of it could've been worked in

one of my fav details--when she's splitting wood w/headphones on--she likes to listen to new age "sounds of the rainforest" shit. would've been an easy add imo

the film didn't really trade in counterintuitive details like that, unfortunately

Okay I'm reading the book now. You made me. I mean not NOW now but I'm going to go find a copy.

itll only take you like half a day, i had a good time (nb i don't read much fiction anymore especially newer fiction)

lol at the sheriff - possibly reprising his role as a Terminator? When Ree meets him for the first time she asks him 'why are you here?' and was just expecting him to say 'I'm looking for John Connor.'

CAD otm about the changes to Ree and the atmosphere in general, also missed the tense aftermath of her beating (Uncle Teardrop and other relatives standing guard outside the house) but I felt like even the novel kind of ran out of steam at the end, like Woodrell couldn't figure a better way to resolve Ree finding her father.

yeah i'd agree with that

felt like something you'd see on tv. it wasn't bad or whatever, but there wasn't much to this film besides a narrative, and the story was actually pretty boring. as a study in showing some types of people you don't see in other films then yeah it was grand, but ultimately forgettable imo.

saw this tonight. relentlessly bleak in a way that i generally don't enjoy but there were some genuinely interesting things about this film. in particular kept thinking about gender and how there appeared to be two gender hierarchies. up until a certain point every time ree tried to deal with the men she was rebuffed (generally by the women) and women kept interceding on her behalf or sending her forward. this obv comes up again when the women beat her. it made me think a lot about questions of domesticity + who controls what kinds of power/influence. that obv women were generally living under the shadow of these brutal men (and it seemed clear to me that this was a milieu with lots of domestic violence -- even that scene w/ ostensibly the good guy, hawkes' character indicated that), but that they also had their own understandings between them and representations of power. one of the issues for ree is that she was taking on some of the roles men in this family were expected to take (and they even make a point of asking her at one point, 'aren't there any men that could do this for you?') and that she constantly runs up against certain expectations for what she can/should do -- but then also those other avenues for representations of power are how she's able to do a lot of these things.

I find your post more interesting than the film...I saw it a couple of weeks ago, and I just couldn't get into it. I found it more dreary than bleak. Someone whose opinions on films I respect a lot picked it as his #1 film of the year on his blog, so I was surprised when I didn't like it.

Pretty much felt like killing myself after I watched this yesterday but thought it was excellent. Ree (sp? I obv haven't read the book or this thread) was excellent and I think I'm sort of in love with John Hawkes. He was incredible! What an actor. I think this was the best movie I've seen in a quite a while tbh.

ok so i was talking to a friend of mine about this movie and how i'd avoided it because i'd heard it was a debbie downer and he was all no it really isn't, it's on some ~real lyfe~ shit but it's hardly melodrama or anything that's gonna leave you shell shocked. his theory was that since the ending is just kinda "welp we're done" and w/o closure (NB I HAVE NOT SEEN THIS) it scans to ppl as a bummer when in fact it's actually just what happens in real life.

also nb my friend is an actual card-carrying poet

Maybe you should see it and then analyze it afterward.

yeah my poet friends love this movie. fuckin' poets.

hardly melodrama or anything that's gonna leave you shell shocked

I'd definitely say that's true. I didn't cry at any point but was really out bummed for a while last night. I think the "real lyfe shyt" it's on is what makes it so bleak. It's just really . . . grim. That said it was awesome and you should watch it just maybe plan to go to the circus or sniff some babies heads afterward or something.

Maybe you should see it and then analyze it afterward.

― reggaeton for the painfully alone (polyphonic), Monday, May 9, 2011 3:35 PM (35 minutes ago) Bookmark

chill winston

I have "issues" w/r/t the unremitting bleakness of it but that's my own baggage - what it's doing totally works.

Yeah John Hawkes, what can you say really? There are so many incredible actors and actresses that Hollywood is just too dumb - too retrograde - to figure out how to use.

chill winston

If I wanted to read people pontificate about films they haven't seen I'd delete my Dr. Morbius greasemonkey script.

Given the amount of real life shit in, you know, real life, I'd be pretty sad if it took this movie to bum you out. Can't remember its name, but there was a great PBS (?) doc out several years ago that focused on two high school kids in rural, poor, mountain Arkansas, and the struggles they went through just to go to school each day.

Think it was "Country Boys," and it was set in dirt-poor rural Tennessee, but same idea.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/countryboys/

Shit, I mean Kentucky. Anyway, this is real-life "Winter's Bone" and available at that site online.

I have "issues" w/r/t the unremitting bleakness of it but that's my own baggage - what it's doing totally works.

otm

Yeah John Hawkes, what can you say really? There are so many incredible actors and actresses that Hollywood is just too dumb - too retrograde - to figure out how to use.

― 40% chill and 100% negative (Tracer Hand), Monday, May 9, 2011 11:16 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

lol he gets run over by a truck 2 minutes after his character gets introduced in Miami Vice

he's gonna be a lot more noticeable soon thanks to that new flick where he plays a cult leader, methinks.

xp haha, wow, sad

i've been saying "cut them thirty year o' timber down to nuuubs" to myself for a couple days now

Thump was creepy as hell in this movie

When you finally see him he looks like a backup bass player in the Charlie Daniels band and somehow that makes him even scarier.

hahaha YES

lol

come to think of it there really wasn't one character other than Ree in the movie where I looked at them and said "y'know, this person has their head on their shoulders, really upstanding individual"...

Her neighbor.

The ones who apparently sit around mournfully singing "Farther Along" to each other all day long??

/RAGE

(sorry)

Wait which ones where that? I meant the lady who took the horse in an brought her the deer meat and vegetables.

Did she sing?

Oh I think you mean the one's who were having a birthday party when they went to talk to Jessup's ex.

I'm going to read this thread later cause I can't stop thinking about this movie.

the lady who took the horse in an brought her the deer meat and vegetables

Oh yeah, forgot about her.

me too. I think it was because with the way the movie would go, i half expected her to turn into a villain and then forgot about her when she disappeared from the movie.

posted these comments in bits and pieces in another thread several months ago. always meant to assemble them here, so...

this is one of the best recent american genre films i've seen. winter's bone aims primarily to capture and, in a way, to honor, focusing on the details that characterize a way of life - and on the sorts of lives that might be lived within that characterization. the film's strength is largely dependent on place and texture, on careful observation more than wild imagination, and for that reason it might not appeal to viewers who demand sleeker and more aggressive thrills.

winter's bone builds its central mystery up from a good documentarian's directness and self-effacement, and i liked the relationship between that approach and the more genre-bound mystery plotting. i loved this movie for its richness, humanism and empathic integrity. i loved too its evocation of the bonds that entwine families and communities, both strong and weak, clear and subtle, the way such bonds both define and contend with our sense of moral obligation. the deliberately rough, pseudo-documentary style might seem superficially flat, but the film's off-the-cuff naturalism allows for an offhand beauty that never feels self-indulgent or showy.

we don't necessarily expect an unusual depth & subtlety of character & theme in a mystery story, or a strikingly personal relationship with place & culture, but that's what i felt i got here. i liked the things this film chooses to pay attention to and the way it pays attention to them. it contrasts the poignancy and fragility of domestic affection - the foolish bubble of innocence and joy we try to build around our families - with the fundamental threat and uncaringness of the larger world in which family exists. i liked that and feel that i don't see it explored anywhere near enough in american cinema. i liked, too, the way winter's bone balances its empathic streak with a hard-eyed look at the sacrifices that this sort of domestic maintenance can require.

this is on netflix instant! its pretty good!

Just finished it. Wow, i fucking loved this movie. Cried like 5 times but then I'm weak that way. Must find book.

i was also thrown by a lot of music that i think of as appalachian ("farther along", "high on a mountain") but i guess hillbilly country extends farther than i'd imagined.

No, my family all come from the South Dakota prairie and my mom and her sibs sing most of these same songs when they get together.

yeah gonna rewatch this in netflix. there's another on there as well by the same director, 'down to the bone'

its "funny," for a drug plague that is reportedly pretty devastating it doesnt seem like there are a lot of meth movies out there. this and breaking bad and...? or am i just not paying attention to the burgeoning meth movie scene

Loved this film, incredibly atmospheric and A+ performances all round.

>Must find book.

My wife bought me the book as a gift, inspired by my raving about the film. It's superb, totally recommend it.

i liked 'down to the bone', the portrayal of heroin addiction here isn't ott like in most films, so it ends up evoking more empathy than gross-out. and vera farmiga is hot.

its "funny," for a drug plague that is reportedly pretty devastating it doesnt seem like there are a lot of meth movies out there. this and breaking bad and...? or am i just not paying attention to the burgeoning meth movie scene

Well, there's Spun and...yeah. Meth's not a sexy or funny drug.

neither is crack, though

i mean youd at least think thered be movies about meth _gangs_ or something

i liked 'down to the bone', the portrayal of heroin addiction here isn't ott like in most films, so it ends up evoking more empathy than gross-out. and vera farmiga is hot.

i think i remember finding post-OD mia wallace uma thurman v attractive in pulp fiction, & am glad that vera farmiga apparently maintained being v attractive even throughout her character's addiction arc in this movie

this movie is a mess structurally and its depiction of poor rural arkansas is pretty ridic. C-

i liked this line from A.S. Hamrah: "In Winter’s Bone, people are poor and dangerous, which is to say they have dignity."

it's rural Missouri, but just across the line from AR.

ozarks whatever

pfft whatever D+

p.s. you're a mess structurally!

:]

so when she gives the hands to the sheriff she says someone dumped them on her porch. why didn't they actually do that? i mean do they just make her fish him out to fuck with her? i feel like i'm missing a plot point here.

they make her fish him out to fuck with her

they didn't give a shit about her losing her home (iirc that was why she needed the body?) - probably couldn't be bothered

feel like this could've been more visually interesting with mise-en-scene and stuff. most of the time it was kind of uninteresting visually, then there were some really incredible shots that underscored how boring the rest was.

the scene where she's at the - idk slaughterhouse? and running across the beams after the guy: i often find myself remembering it

Debra Granik's new film at Sundance

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/5309-the-daily-sundance-2018-debra-granik-s-leave-no-trace