he made a point of saying that none of the characters are really amoral except for "the thief" which seems weirdly reductionist? probably good not to assume the creator completely understands his own work.I think i mentioned this upthread but he also said that the walden connection was totally by accident and happened once they started filming more or less. so there's a lot of happenstance, as in all art.
― brb buying poppers w/my employee discount (forksclovetofu), Sunday, 28 April 2013 22:26 (eleven years ago) link
Saw this today also, did anybody get a lead on the actual connection between the Sampler and the Pig Farmer? And were the Pig Farmer guys actions actually bad, I got the impression he was somehow trying to improve the Sampled peeps quality of life slightly.
Were the sampled whooshes from the bass bins designed to attract the Sampled? Is that how Kris suddenly appeared or was it just her memories driving her along.
― ヘイシグ・ブローズ (MaresNest), Sunday, 28 April 2013 22:27 (eleven years ago) link
i feel i have missed out on a generation-defining experience.
don't.
― Pope Rusty I (Dr Morbius), Sunday, 28 April 2013 22:35 (eleven years ago) link
yeah that's a strange reaction
an independent theater in chicago posted on FB that they were showing this over the weekend (apparently they'd been showing it for a few days but almost nobody came), and some guy responded, "When are you going to start showing regular movies?"
lol
― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Monday, 29 April 2013 00:37 (eleven years ago) link
Music B0x? That makes me "almost nobody" -- what a distinction!
― and that sounds like a gong-concert (La Lechera), Monday, 29 April 2013 01:08 (eleven years ago) link
wtf? how can the cinematic freeing of spirit pigs not be a generation-defining experience? sometimes i just don't understand you people...
― controversial vegan pregnancy (contenderizer), Monday, 29 April 2013 02:36 (eleven years ago) link
Saw it this afternoon, finally. I liked that it seems to be a horror movie about modern notions of how human consciousness operates, but it was so profoundly sad (and more a little nauseating, due to camerawork + sound) I don't know if I could watch it again.
― the girl from spirea x (f. hazel), Monday, 29 April 2013 02:50 (eleven years ago) link
profoundly sad? really?
― call all destroyer, Monday, 29 April 2013 02:58 (eleven years ago) link
I thought so.
― the girl from spirea x (f. hazel), Monday, 29 April 2013 03:00 (eleven years ago) link
― and that sounds like a gong-concert (La Lechera), Sunday, April 28, 2013 8:08 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
no. p4ti0
― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Monday, 29 April 2013 03:08 (eleven years ago) link
oh ok. i don't know that place -- i just looked it up and there it is. i've been to events at the portage, but not that one. will look into!
also yes -- this movie was so sad! people are sad, generally, and then the pigs and the river and the flowers? yikes. and so grisly.
― free your spirit pig (La Lechera), Monday, 29 April 2013 13:03 (eleven years ago) link
mostly looked and felt like a honda commercial,
thought insurance commercial @ times, def
― johnny crunch, Monday, 29 April 2013 13:06 (eleven years ago) link
that's part of what i liked about it -- you know those commercials, where everyone is shuffling around, going about their business and then two people look at each other and someone starts talking about aging parents and life insurance? imagine if all of those people in those commercials are just under the spell of the spirit pig. mindlessly sending their checks where they're told, giving each other meaningful looks, making jokes about birds, and hiding their secret horrifying worm experience.
it makes those commercials a little more fun!
― free your spirit pig (La Lechera), Monday, 29 April 2013 13:12 (eleven years ago) link
goddam it. oh how i hate you, movie theater.
― controversial vegan pregnancy (contenderizer), Monday, 29 April 2013 15:52 (eleven years ago) link
hiding their secret horrifying worm experience
okay, now that someone's said it...
― controversial vegan pregnancy (contenderizer), Monday, 29 April 2013 15:53 (eleven years ago) link
what made it look like a honda commercial?
i've only seen the preview and the sort of fussy long-lens subdued color thing def. has something in common with slick ads but maybe that's not what you folks meant?
― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Tuesday, 30 April 2013 05:55 (eleven years ago) link
I think they meant that it started Pomplamoose
― resulting paste of mashed cheez poops (silby), Tuesday, 30 April 2013 06:12 (eleven years ago) link
irrelevant question: does anyone know where this was shot? some parts of the city scenes looked like Austin but others definitely did not. Maybe Dallas? Do they have trains now??
― ryan, Tuesday, 30 April 2013 13:58 (eleven years ago) link
Based on the scenes with the trains, it's definitely Dallas.
― the girl from spirea x (f. hazel), Tuesday, 30 April 2013 14:12 (eleven years ago) link
I was looking so hard I noticed that the background of almost every city scene was intentionally out of focus.
― ryan, Tuesday, 30 April 2013 14:17 (eleven years ago) link
So much of it is out of focus and has an insanely shallow depth of field, bokeh ain't that cool, I found it wearing after a while.
― ヘイシグ・ブローズ (MaresNest), Tuesday, 30 April 2013 14:22 (eleven years ago) link
Yeah that's part of what bothered me about the visual look. For all it's flair it wasn't terribly interesting to look at
― ryan, Tuesday, 30 April 2013 14:54 (eleven years ago) link
mostly Dallas locations, apparently
http://www.dallasnews.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/20130418-with-upstream-color-and-to-the-wonder-texas-filmmakers-deliver-experimental-love-stories-that-stand-as-examples-of-pure-cinema.ece
― Pope Rusty I (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 30 April 2013 15:04 (eleven years ago) link
per that article, i know im malick-stan but not sure those comparisons are doing carruth any favors--at least in terms of his visuals. i think that will definitely be an area in which it will be fun to watch him develop as he makes more films. he definitely seems to have a fully formed aesthetic in most other respects already.
― ryan, Tuesday, 30 April 2013 15:24 (eleven years ago) link
yeah, as I noted upthread, the constant barrage of shaky-cam close-up shots and short depth-of-field made me nauseous. really claustrophobic too... this would be a terrible movie to watch on acid.
― the girl from spirea x (f. hazel), Tuesday, 30 April 2013 16:38 (eleven years ago) link
I wonder if the shallow dof is a way of masking budgetary constraints wrt locations/sets
― ヘイシグ・ブローズ (MaresNest), Tuesday, 30 April 2013 17:29 (eleven years ago) link
Probably. Obv it was intentional, tho I'm not sure if the choice helped Carrutth's directorial vision or not. I found it tedious after a while, and felt the same way about the film as a whole :\
― Millsner, Tuesday, 30 April 2013 19:37 (eleven years ago) link
the soft focus look is sometimes a way of making a cheap production look less cheap and more "stylish"
but sometimes you can see right through that and the effect is cloying
for a counterargument see the 1st 2/3 of roy andersson's love story which is all shallow focus long lens stuff and boy is it amazing
― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Wednesday, 1 May 2013 08:46 (eleven years ago) link
― ヘイシグ・ブローズ (MaresNest), Tuesday, April 30, 2013 12:29 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
sorry just saw this. answer is "yes" i think
― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Wednesday, May 1, 2013 4:46 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark
otm
― we're up all night to get (s1ocki), Wednesday, 1 May 2013 12:54 (eleven years ago) link
also filmmakers like lucrecia martel use it super well
― we're up all night to get (s1ocki), Wednesday, 1 May 2013 12:55 (eleven years ago) link
there has been a real shallow DOF explosion with the advent of DSLR cinema cuz finally you could get that look with a cheap camera and it made your video look way more film-like
― we're up all night to get (s1ocki), Wednesday, 1 May 2013 12:56 (eleven years ago) link
that piglet at the end was her "baby" wasn't it?
― ryan, Friday, April 26, 2013 11:11 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
so tired of people asking this question after films
― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Saturday, April 27, 2013 1:18 AM (4 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
^ lol
my capsule reviews of this movie are "tim henman should stick to tennis" & "is this the indie matrix". thought this was pretty bad? morbs otm on its reach for profundity; i thought it might cohere well enough to work as some sort of allegory for the ills of antibiotic overuse or something, but it was just kind of uninterestingly diffuse, i think, & suffered additionally for being so in light of recent, more successful broad films like post tenebras lux, the new malick, &c - when this careened into the guy's work history or tepid subway conversation i didn't really feel anything was gained. i can't specifically locate a source well enough to call it cliched, but was a movie ever as likely to feature swimming pool sequences, or strip-lit photocopying montages? wearied post-nolan use of ~charged talismans~. it was so student. the mechanically administered twinkling wonder of the synth score was kinda oppressive, too.
pigs, starlings & haircuts excellent throughout though.
― daft on the causes of punk (schlump), Wednesday, 1 May 2013 22:08 (eleven years ago) link
did i say everybody in it looked like a tennis player, i meant to, this was a very tennisy cast
― daft on the causes of punk (schlump), Wednesday, 1 May 2013 22:09 (eleven years ago) link
I can't totally disagree with any of that after one viewing; but I do think Carruth is a talent and look forward to more from him. And perhaps in the future this will open up for me.
Kinda prefer to take this as an allegory about addiction for now...
― ryan, Wednesday, 1 May 2013 23:01 (eleven years ago) link
i haven't seen primer, & have it set aside to catch somenight soon. but to just ad-hom psychologise for a moment i kinda thought that this came from a sorta uninteresting place - it seemed sorta enamored with some pretty superficial elements of what it was trying to do, cf the mood of the score, the well maintained monotone of the first half, its affectless characters. this stuff is swimming pool montages to me, like it's pretty & appealing but its made optically & just accessorised with fixtures, with walden & terse relationship conflict (i thought the relationship stuff - with maybe maybe maybe the exception of their memory arguments - was uniformly p bad/unconvincing/sorta thoughtless). idk, i don't feel super charitable toward this anyhow.
ps i keep throwing gangsigns at you in different threads to see if you've seen the reygadas flick, ryan, cause i'm interested to hear your take. i will fund half your cinema ticket if you haven't caught it but go instead of reliving upstream color.
― daft on the causes of punk (schlump), Wednesday, 1 May 2013 23:22 (eleven years ago) link
plan to see it very soon! Like tomorrow hopefully
― ryan, Wednesday, 1 May 2013 23:34 (eleven years ago) link
some sort of allegory for the ills of antibiotic overuse or something
haha what
― resulting paste of mashed cheez poops (silby), Thursday, 2 May 2013 01:15 (eleven years ago) link
the guy is no good at relationships, it's true
― brb buying poppers w/my employee discount (forksclovetofu), Thursday, 2 May 2013 06:24 (eleven years ago) link
schlump totally otm
― karl...arlk...rlka...lkar..., Friday, 3 May 2013 05:57 (eleven years ago) link
the conversation around this film is mostly more enjoyable than the film itself
― karl...arlk...rlka...lkar..., Friday, 3 May 2013 05:58 (eleven years ago) link
i believe that the parasite is an adaptation of nature evolved to dismantle humanity's techno-industrial complex thereby preventing the destruction of earth
― karl...arlk...rlka...lkar..., Friday, 3 May 2013 06:02 (eleven years ago) link
I kept thinking of that fungus that infects ants and takes over their bodies. Or Invasion Of The Body Snatchers as told from the p.o.v. of the pod people - only they don't know they're pod people. Or that group of people who refer to themselves as Targeted Individuals - people who believe they're the victims of continued assault from government mind-control weapons.
Probably all of the above. Phase IV seems to be a huge influence on this too.
I dug it quite a bit, but will pass on seeing it again. Nobody is wrong in this thread.
― Elvis Telecom, Friday, 3 May 2013 08:01 (eleven years ago) link
No Ken Middleham, no cred!
― free your spirit pig (La Lechera), Friday, 3 May 2013 12:54 (eleven years ago) link
Shane Carruth is things that make you go hmmm.
― cacao nibs (Eric H.), Friday, 3 May 2013 14:55 (eleven years ago) link
as exasperating as I found this, I did think the style and mood carried it. sufficiently.
― Pope Rusty I (Dr Morbius), Friday, 3 May 2013 15:16 (eleven years ago) link
(it will of course be overvalued by the clarity-averse culties)
― Pope Rusty I (Dr Morbius), Friday, 3 May 2013 15:18 (eleven years ago) link
Will be busy overvaluing Spring Breakers for awhile longer.
― cacao nibs (Eric H.), Friday, 3 May 2013 15:29 (eleven years ago) link
(Meaning, *I* will be busy ... not *they* will be busy.)
leggings, the "peter pan" look"They could be STARlings"
― Ask The Answer Man (sexyDancer), Wednesday, 8 May 2013 02:21 (eleven years ago) link