WINTER'S BONE

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.