Kenneth Lonergan's MARGARET, starring Anna Paquin as a teenager in turmoil

i think the situation is a little more complicated than that xpost

― licking your challops (Tape Store), Wednesday, 12 October 2011 21:33 (1 year ago) Permalink

i've been meaning to bump the sidney pollack thread re: this, but it deserves its own thread. it was much better than i expected (WAY better), but at the same time you can tell its a really fucked up version of what lonergan wanted it to be... there's some brilliant stuff in it though (the scene where emily tears into lisa) (morbs otm - jeannie berlin is great)

― The sham nation of Israel should be destroyed. (Princess TamTam), Thursday, 13 October 2011 00:10 (1 year ago) Permalink

austin, atlanta, and toronto next week as well

― omar little, Thursday, 13 October 2011 00:38 (1 year ago) Permalink

its already playing in atlanta

― The sham nation of Israel should be destroyed. (Princess TamTam), Thursday, 13 October 2011 00:56 (1 year ago) Permalink

she fuck any vampires in this?

― balls, Thursday, 13 October 2011 02:17 (1 year ago) Permalink

oh sorry, congrats to those cities

our market is shut out, like it's absolutely not happening

― licking your challops (Tape Store), Thursday, 13 October 2011 03:53 (1 year ago) Permalink

Jeannie Berlin gets an ace film part once every 39 years.

― incredibly middlebrow (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 13 October 2011 05:07 (1 year ago) Permalink

Huh, looks like tomorrow's my last chance to see it.

― Ice Old Bee (jaymc), Thursday, 13 October 2011 05:46 (1 year ago) Permalink

The reviews have been mixed, but the box office not good -- less than $1000 per screen last weekend in 14 theaters.

I found the UWS classroom donnybrooks over history and terrorism entirely convincing.

― incredibly middlebrow (Dr Morbius), Friday, 14 October 2011 14:52 (1 year ago) Permalink

Liked this a lot, though I'd be be eager to see the "non-Scorsese cut" (if it indeed exists).

― Simon H., Friday, 14 October 2011 15:01 (1 year ago) Permalink

xp I found them unconvincing at first, before I realized they were taking place in a classroom full of "privileged liberal Jews."

― Ice Old Bee (jaymc), Friday, 14 October 2011 15:02 (1 year ago) Permalink

Sympathetic to Lonergan's vision, but I find it hard to imagine what an extra half-hour would've done for this film.

― Ice Old Bee (jaymc), Friday, 14 October 2011 15:03 (1 year ago) Permalink

Yeah, it was long enough. While I find Matt Damon more enticing as a geometry teacher than as an action hero, I think going where they did was a mistake, one plot strand too many.

― incredibly middlebrow (Dr Morbius), Friday, 14 October 2011 15:09 (1 year ago) Permalink

I'm gonna see this tonight in Austin. Hopefully I can time my bathroom break correctly.

― ryan, Friday, 14 October 2011 15:13 (1 year ago) Permalink

149 minutes ain't no thing

― incredibly middlebrow (Dr Morbius), Friday, 14 October 2011 15:29 (1 year ago) Permalink

Yeah the real fools are the ones planning to catch Turin Horse and Once Upon a Time in Anatolia back-to-back at a local fest here in Mtl this weekend. That takes some kinda perseverance I can't match (having only seen the former).

― Simon H., Friday, 14 October 2011 16:33 (1 year ago) Permalink

I missed the four-hour Mysteries of Lisbon last weekend because its only showing interfered with dinner plans.

― lumber up, limbaugh down (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 14 October 2011 16:35 (1 year ago) Permalink

I'm guessing most of you recognized Lonergan as Lisa's dad? I didn't know he was in it, and probably haven't seen a photo or interview in years, but he has an Irish-artist lumpenness about him.

― incredibly middlebrow (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 19 October 2011 20:22 (1 year ago) Permalink

I recognized him.

I really, really liked this. Been thinking about it a lot since I saw it last weekend. I hope we get to see a "director's cut" at some point.

― ryan, Wednesday, 19 October 2011 20:50 (1 year ago) Permalink

I wasn't 100% sure it was him right away, but yeah. He's in YCCOM, too, as the priest.

― Google W. Buzz (jaymc), Wednesday, 19 October 2011 21:07 (1 year ago) Permalink

this movie is still buzzing around in my head.

i think, though, that in large measure that it's about the perils of empathy, and the ways we protect ourselves from it. (witness every single political discussion revolves around rejecting the very possibility of the other's real suffering or grievances.) Lisa's initiation into adult life is then, i guess, about developing this capacity for rejecting empathy, perhaps? (or the ways empathy gets refracted into things like opera..)

that's just a first pass at it, as I'm sure there's other things going on.

― ryan, Monday, 24 October 2011 19:54 (1 year ago) Permalink

I recenrly saw A Seperation and I kept thinking back to this film - intense family-related dramas that also comment on their societies at large, both revolving around injury/accident (to varying degrees). I think this is by far the richer movie, though.

― Simon H., Monday, 24 October 2011 20:18 (1 year ago) Permalink

*A Separation

― Simon H., Monday, 24 October 2011 20:19 (1 year ago) Permalink

that's high praise. psyched to catch this/if i can ever catch this.

― mid-song laughing elvis (schlump), Monday, 24 October 2011 20:36 (1 year ago) Permalink

Bear in mind I don't like A Saparation as much as virtually everyone else seems to.

― Simon H., Monday, 24 October 2011 20:39 (1 year ago) Permalink

hence the constant misspelling.

― Simon H., Monday, 24 October 2011 20:39 (1 year ago) Permalink

huh. just didn't love it or had problems with it? cause part of its strength was it just being unindictably thorough & well put together, to me, so i can understand how not being sold on the contents would change things somewhat.

― mid-song laughing elvis (schlump), Monday, 24 October 2011 20:59 (1 year ago) Permalink

Just didn't love it.

― Simon H., Monday, 24 October 2011 21:40 (1 year ago) Permalink

duuude

― quick brown fox triangle (schlump), Sunday, 8 January 2012 23:21 (1 year ago) Permalink

i wouldve watched 4 hours of this

― maghrib is back (Hungry4Ass), Sunday, 8 January 2012 23:29 (1 year ago) Permalink

yeah me too, easily.

― 404 (Lamp), Sunday, 8 January 2012 23:44 (1 year ago) Permalink

word. i was going to SPOILER reference a scene i wanted to mention, but i don't have to, because you can just choose any scene from the last third of the film and it still applies: it was so rich & multifaceted, everything was just laden with the dimensions & weight of everyone and everything involved.

SPOILER-ESQUE: so say the phone conference in the lawyer's office, there were these unfurling threads of money & blame & responsibility & guilt & mis-connecting & law & anguish & self-awareness. i kinda feel like the distributors for this should be tried for unamerican activities, it just felt crucial, useful.

quietly entered the canon of best-films-about-being-a-teenager, also.

― quick brown fox triangle (schlump), Sunday, 8 January 2012 23:55 (1 year ago) Permalink

This is, IMO, the best American movie since Mulholland Drive, and the best film I've ever seen on an initial screening run. As Ryan says upthread, empathy and solipsism are its primary concerns, but it finds a far more intangible paradigm amongst the drama: society as a mental construct, built and fractured within each character's mind, where everybody has their reasons and their righteousness but where conflict bears the subtle grace of inevitability.

I mean, quite apart from its invoking of my favourite poet and its dynamite script (I laughed, I cried etc), it is a film where people's relevant and entirely believable problems interact with one another in a sympathetic, unresolving manner - the other film of recent years to do this (that I've seen) was The White Ribbon (which was, perhaps, less positive about its characters, but which bore the stench of warfare and deprivation to a far higher degree than the metropolitan excoriation of Margaret). The two movies are, I would say, the two best I've seen in the past decade. These are films that operate at the highest pitch of mystery and confluence - a movie must have confluence (or, more crudely, alchemy) for it to work, otherwise it is just screened logic (which sadly constitutes the vast majority of Hollywood and UK film atm). Did not La Regle Du Jeu operate in the same poetically all-embracing, affably intermeshed way as these films? Did not Bunuel's later movies demonstrate the worshipful truth of coincidence and confluence?

Margaret and The White Ribbon are movies of great heart. Each character is given weight, and each character is given their reasons. Of course, Margaret concentrates most rewardingly upon the central figure. Anna Paquin shows integrity, even when she lies. She discovers personal integrity even as everyone and everything around her becomes an extension of herself. And she leads the viewer into a story whose unbalanced complexity resembles their own life, and where resolution is less unrequired, more complete anathema. Such are the greatest of films - where the tale careens onward, beyond the cinema. (Certified Copy is another great ILE recommendation of recent times - my wife & I even had a Certified Copy roleplay evening afterwards, demonstrating the power that an unresolved analysis of pretence and present-moment reality can have. Not as good or exciting as Margaret, though - it's very much limited around a traditional marital paradigm rather than a societal one.)

As a subordinate point, I hope I've conveyed which kind of cinema appeals to me the most, and that some amongst you could suggest further viewing along (or parallel/perpendicular to) such lines. My gratitude besets you.

― once a week is ample, Monday, 9 January 2012 00:16 (1 year ago) Permalink

wtf paquin is like 30

― seasonal thug (some dude), Monday, 9 January 2012 00:57 (1 year ago) Permalink

she filmed this just after the piano though

― quick brown fox triangle (schlump), Monday, 9 January 2012 01:05 (1 year ago) Permalink

she's so good in this anyway

― quick brown fox triangle (schlump), Monday, 9 January 2012 01:06 (1 year ago) Permalink

like your post btw once-a-week, going to chew on it & come back to you when i've some time. this film reminded me of one i've forgotten since coming out of the theatre, but one of the reference points kicked around upthread is farhadi's a separation, which came out last year (or only just, in the states, i think) & topped a lot of lists for being v rounded & sympathetic. think you would dig if you don't already, & that there are probably other iranian routes you'd be into along similar lines

― quick brown fox triangle (schlump), Monday, 9 January 2012 01:15 (1 year ago) Permalink

oh ok somehow missed the mention in the OP of it being filmed so long ago

― seasonal thug (some dude), Monday, 9 January 2012 01:24 (1 year ago) Permalink

some backstory here if it's of interest:
http://entertainment.time.com/2011/12/02/director-kenneth-lonergan-emerges-to-tell-us-hes-on-team-margaret/

― quick brown fox triangle (schlump), Monday, 9 January 2012 01:25 (1 year ago) Permalink

has a play on bway in may, also

― quick brown fox triangle (schlump), Monday, 9 January 2012 01:26 (1 year ago) Permalink

white ribbon is such joyless and moralizing film i never wouldve thought of it in comparison to 'maragaret'. the best thing about the latter is how much it shares a teenagers sense of curiosity and freshness towards the world, its interested in how things work w/o really feeling like its trying to explain to you how things work whereas 'the white ribbon' is cynical and didactic imo

― 404 (Lamp), Monday, 9 January 2012 01:31 (1 year ago) Permalink

anyway once a week you might really like céline sciamma's 'tomboy', from this year, i think its a movie w/ a great sense of empathy and it uses character study to examine big, important qn abt gender/society &c &c

― 404 (Lamp), Monday, 9 January 2012 01:35 (1 year ago) Permalink

I loved your review but recoiled when you mentioned The White Ribbon.

― lumber up, limbaugh down (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 9 January 2012 01:35 (1 year ago) Permalink

Is this on DVD yet?

― ☆★☆彡彡 (ENBB), Monday, 9 January 2012 01:42 (1 year ago) Permalink

i wasn't crazy about the white ribbon either - i think i liked it well enough, maybe i just thought it was sorta autopilot haneke with a slightly jarring context change - but i could imagine tying in code unknown or cache with margaret, i guess. i'm sorta blanking on films to recommend, particularly re your emphasis on 'confluence', which is very otm, because i feel like there are a lot of well-woven films from the past decade (i just can't think which), the ones that aren't as brash or literal as like babel or w/e

(I laughed, I cried etc)

this bears repeating wrt this film; it was frequently very funny, sharp and rhythmic, & there were parts - kind of strangely separate from or at least dissynchronous with whatever its emotional peaks were - where i was feeling teary (her running across the square downtown after leaving the meeting was one); another example of its range. i also thought it did a much better, bolder job using new york atmospherically than most anything recent i can remember, &, to get a cheap dig in, infinitely better than shame did; its music-&-drifting-camera passages were very effective & exemplary of the kind of purposeful, contributory content that enriched the film as it increased its running time.

still processing slightly, & i guess 'empathy' does encompass a lot of what the film was concerned w/, but i think there's something else, definitely something societal. i think what was so affecting for me about the scene when they're arguing over the phonecall was that it was testament to everyone processing & living with an event that's happened, doing whatever they can to reconstruct, but in very narrative terms, & with that autonomy there being the inevitable butting of heads. like i think it was very concentrated on balance in a lot of ways - obv in those high-school classroom discussions, but also in AP striving for a counterweight to her initial actions.

xp nuh-uh :/, idk whether it's on IFC on demand or something though? dvd date not even announced afaik, i think the guy wants to screen his 3 hr cut somehow

― quick brown fox triangle (schlump), Monday, 9 January 2012 01:56 (1 year ago) Permalink

maybe i should say imbalance. like the hilarious argument w/her mom about jean reno (also mainly hilarious)

― quick brown fox triangle (schlump), Monday, 9 January 2012 01:57 (1 year ago) Permalink

i dont really know what the white ribbon is - haneke right? - but a lot of once a week's post seems apt to me. margaret seems like too 'big' a movie for me to be able to say something big picture about it, but i can talk about some things i liked

i dont think 'margaret' SHARES a teenagers sense of curiosity/freshness wrt the world - if it did i'd find it unbearable - but i do think it's sensitive to how teenagers feel and experience things, without also valorizing that experience. the clarity with which the movie sees margaret herself is remarkable to me, she bursts at the seams with selfishness and unearned moral certitude, but the film doesnt condemn her - it doesnt need to, because she's barreling headfirst into the adult world, where the consequence-free upper west side private school echo chamber that has cultivated her bullying persona is repeatedly shown to create friction, and then consequences, with the adults who Don't Have To Put Up With Her Shit. no remonstration of margaret on the movie's part is ever required

the reason i could watch basically an infinitely longer version of this, no matter how useless the tangents in it get, is that everything about the movie's world is so sharply observed. the moment we meet the jeannie berlin character in tight close-up, remembering her friend, i knew exactly who this woman was, she's so aptly presented that i had no doubt that lonergan would be capable of 'observing' her in any situation without ever striking a false note

the scene where margaret horrifyingly posits that she was actually inhabited by the ghost of allison janey's daughter or some shit is unbelievable in how observant it is, how it nails that narcissistic grasping-for-maturity moment that this character would clearly find herself settling into, and how berlin (who you could see as a margaret who's actually been around the block a few times) reacts with rage at the way this child is trying to make herself the center of her dead friend's life

― maghrib is back (Hungry4Ass), Monday, 9 January 2012 02:06 (1 year ago) Permalink

i also thought it did a much better, bolder job using new york atmospherically than most anything recent i can remember, &, to get a cheap dig in, infinitely better than shame did; its music-&-drifting-camera passages were very effective & exemplary of the kind of purposeful, contributory content that enriched the film as it increased its running time.

i think this may partly be that the movie deeply understands new york culturally, or at least its particular slice of new york, so its images of the city are naturally more resonant, just as a part of the movie's world. shame displays no particular understanding of new york as anything other than a place that can be photographed prettily

― maghrib is back (Hungry4Ass), Monday, 9 January 2012 02:12 (1 year ago) Permalink

wow yes, definitely. which takes me back slightly to a couple of the points in yr reading of the film; i think you're much harsher on margaret than me (it is possible the weight of my teenage crush on anna paquin makes me over-sympathetic) - so say with the scene in which she's talking about inhabiting the body of the daughter or w/e, &c&c, while it is totally horrifying, & utterly without perspective or sensitivity, to me the real thing about that scene is just the inability to articulate, because there's clearly a thing she's trying to express - that theoretically it could be nice in someone's last moments to have even the confused delusion of feeling as if one were with one's daughter, to have that illusion, & that that's a legitimate thing to wonder, but it exists as an idea basically for the audience and only in between the characters. & when you mention the consequence-free upper west side private school echo chamber that has cultivated her bullying persona - this was another great strand, i thought (which to go on about the phonecall some more seemed to get some sense of pay-off in someone saying maybe $350000 isn't a lot of money to ~you~) that sorta existed from multiple angles.

prior to the film i hadn't really known, beyond a mention in a blurb, in what sense this was a 9/11 film, but it was a powerful element, like i think particularly in scenes like the lunch with the lawyer in which they're weighing the importance of suffering & having to contemplate it & revisit it, weirder still in this strange, removed context it now exists in (in this case, money). or what the other lawyer says, this is how we punish people now.

so good.

― quick brown fox triangle (schlump), Monday, 9 January 2012 02:32 (1 year ago) Permalink

like this film for me had a lot of "what then means, now", the lens through which people have to look back on things, even recent things, changes in friendships, stages of relationships with family, & how to deal with that day-to-day. lisa flags under the weight of that, and then the additional weight of global context, people dying &c&c

― quick brown fox triangle (schlump), Monday, 9 January 2012 02:35 (1 year ago) Permalink

wheres that pic from

― Hungry4Ass, Friday, 14 September 2012 17:28 (29 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

https://twitter.com/FilmComment/status/222327591036661760

― very sexual album (schlump), Friday, 14 September 2012 20:59 (8 months ago) Permalink

i only watched it until just after the crash and thought it seemed almost inept. the crash itself was badly directed imo and i found the part where she was running beside the bus asking ruffalo where he got his cowboy hat kind of crass. i may return to it at some point.

ps i'm a huge fan of you can count on me.

― jed_, Friday, 14 September 2012 21:01 (8 months ago) Permalink

i don't mean a crass thing for paquin's character to do but a crass thing for lonergan to do.

― jed_, Friday, 14 September 2012 21:07 (8 months ago) Permalink

on the King Lear classroom scene:

http://www.avclub.com/articles/a-seemingly-superfluous-scene-says-a-lot-about-mar,85264/

― kizz my hairy irish azz (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 25 September 2012 16:17 (7 months ago) Permalink

i loved that scene, and found the student's take weird but interesting.

― ryan, Tuesday, 25 September 2012 16:30 (7 months ago) Permalink

Saw the extended cut. Loved it, a beautiful mess. Not having seen the 2.5 hour version, I don't know what was cut, and there isn't much I could imagine cutting (would maybe lose the Matt Damon/abortion stuff, but obviously that stayed in the shorter version). Fave scene: Matthew Broderick (at his best when playing wearied teachers) arguing King Lear with a student while sipping from his juice box.

― Room 227 (cryptosicko), Sunday, 4 November 2012 04:55 (6 months ago) Permalink

good portion of the abortion arc - less the involvement w/damon - is cut in the shorter version, fyi. that & some of the high-school theater, some of which i found a little much.

― absurdly pro-D (schlump), Sunday, 4 November 2012 05:00 (6 months ago) Permalink

I loved the high school drama scene cause it was so high school.

― Room 227 (cryptosicko), Sunday, 4 November 2012 05:01 (6 months ago) Permalink

It's time for end-of-year lists. Fresh Air movie critic David Edelstein stubbornly refuses to either place his top picks in numerical order or make his list an even number of 10. Instead, he places his 12 favorite films from 2012 in alphabetical order, from Amour to Zero Dark Thirty.

Of the 12 films he picked for 2012, not one, Edelstein says, would he call the "M"-word — a masterpiece. That designation he reserves for the new extended DVD cut of Kenneth Lonergan's film Margaret.

When he first saw that movie, Edelstein says, "I thought the first half was brilliant and the second half was a fiasco. Lonergan got hold of it. He extended it by at least 45 minutes. He clarified certain things. I think that the film that exists now on DVD is an absolutely bona fide masterpiece. The story of a young woman's moral and emotional coming of age, unlike I think any that we've seen on-screen in decades and decades. People must rent it or buy it. They must see it, but they must see the extended cut. It really is the greatest film of the year."

― your damn bass clarinet (Eazy), Tuesday, 25 December 2012 22:55 (4 months ago) Permalink

new Lonergan interview

http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/feature/interview-kenneth-lonergan/343

― saltwater incursion (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 26 December 2012 03:44 (4 months ago) Permalink

When he first saw that movie, Edelstein says, "I thought the first half was brilliant and the second half was a fiasco. Lonergan got hold of it. He extended it by at least 45 minutes. He clarified certain things.

love the implied chronology of lonergan deferentially reacting to edelstein's tentative thumbs up

― kristof-profiting-from-a-childs-illiteracy.html (schlump), Wednesday, 26 December 2012 04:23 (4 months ago) Permalink

Should I track down the director's cut DVD instead of watching the 2:30 cut that's on HBO Go currently?

― Kiarostami bag (milo z), Thursday, 31 January 2013 00:19 (3 months ago) Permalink

didn't love the director's cut

― the little prince of inane false binary hype (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 31 January 2013 00:23 (3 months ago) Permalink

watch it though

― the little prince of inane false binary hype (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 31 January 2013 00:23 (3 months ago) Permalink

I'd like to see it. It really turned some people around.

― Gukbe, Thursday, 31 January 2013 00:29 (3 months ago) Permalink

Prefer the longer cut

― Simon H., Thursday, 31 January 2013 00:37 (3 months ago) Permalink

I just don't believe the people who think the director's cut suddenly turns it into a good movie or whatever. It's all there in the theatrical

― Number None, Thursday, 31 January 2013 00:41 (3 months ago) Permalink

Haven't seen the shorter version, but from what I've read, there's things in the longer cut that I couldn't imagine losing, so yeah, track down the directors cut.

― Public Brooding Closet (cryptosicko), Thursday, 31 January 2013 01:06 (3 months ago) Permalink

short version is a masterpiece, need to get hold of long, before long

― imago, Thursday, 31 January 2013 23:24 (3 months ago) Permalink

Saw the longer cut over the weekend and don't know which bits got cut - maybe some of the classroom debates? It probably is too long but I loved it anyway. Paquin gave one of the best portrayals of neurotic, reckless, self-dramatising adolescence I've ever seen. Incredible performance. Jeannie Berlin too. Their argument about Monica's dead daughter ("This is not an opera!") was the heart of the movie for me.

the only thing I thought that misfired completely in the last act was Jean Reno's resolution.

Morbs otm

― Deafening silence (DL), Monday, 4 February 2013 10:49 (3 months ago) Permalink

the two big cuts that i can remember are the abortion scene and the play rehearsal/therapy session

― Number None, Monday, 4 February 2013 10:54 (3 months ago) Permalink

Ah, thanks. I guess both could go without hurting the narrative but the play rehearsal is so important to the theme of adolescent navel-gazing. I love how Kieran Culkin's character finds all of it, and by extension everything that drives Lisa, just unnecessary hassle.

― Deafening silence (DL), Monday, 4 February 2013 11:05 (3 months ago) Permalink

obv i'll never know what i would have thought w/out knowing the backstory but boy howdy could you tell they had a hard time putting this together.

can't really call it 100% successful but the things it does well it does amazingly well.

― call all destroyer, Monday, 4 March 2013 03:57 (2 months ago) Permalink

Watched this this morning (in one sitting, a miracle for me). I thought I was watching the extended version, but I guess the 150-minute cut is...what? longer than the theatrical, but shorter than the full thing? Very ambitious--the only recent American films I can think of with comparable sprawl are The Tree of Life and The Master. I liked Margaret better than either of those, flaws and all. Found the central dilemma fascinating; took the whole film, but was glad that Paquin finally verbalized her own complicity. The classroom scenes were great--as someone pointed out earlier, my favorite was Broderick's exasperation with the one student's Shakespeare interpretation (even though I think most any teacher would have welcomed the alternate reading). Paquin's confrontation with Ruffalo was excellent. Disagree with someone else upthread: I thought the big cathartic scene with Paquin and Berlin (while looking at pictures) was the film's most overwrought. Agree with Morbius that the Damon business at the end came out of left field and didn't really seem necessary. And I thought the ending was weak. But, already a big fan of You Can Count on Me, I hope Lonergan keeps aiming this high.

― clemenza, Saturday, 16 March 2013 17:11 (2 months ago) Permalink

the theatrical was 150

― turds (Hungry4Ass), Saturday, 16 March 2013 17:17 (2 months ago) Permalink

I thought the big cathartic scene with Paquin and Berlin (while looking at pictures) was the film's most overwrought

i didnt read any catharsis there...

― turds (Hungry4Ass), Saturday, 16 March 2013 17:18 (2 months ago) Permalink

Yeah, I just checked and that was the theatrical. I hope I didn't miss an icon for the longer version on the DVD menu.

I know you were one a few people who found that scene to be the film's most important. It just seemed very shrill to me, and the kind of scene where people start screaming at each other because it's time for a scene where people start screaming at each other. But, going by this thread, I'm in the minority there.

― clemenza, Saturday, 16 March 2013 17:22 (2 months ago) Permalink

Didn't they do something wacky with the release like put the theatrical cut on blu-ray and the extended one on dvd and released it as a DVD/Blu-ray combo?

― Public Brooding Closet (cryptosicko), Saturday, 16 March 2013 17:36 (2 months ago) Permalink

yep thats what they did

― johnny crunch, Saturday, 16 March 2013 17:45 (2 months ago) Permalink

That's actually what I thought I was renting--there were three little tags affixed to the shelf--but it seems I was given a DVD-only version. I wouldn't watch it again for the missing 36 minutes; I was able to glean a couple of things I missed from the posts above.

― clemenza, Saturday, 16 March 2013 17:50 (2 months ago) Permalink

Rental dvds are theatrical cut-only, which I think is the only way that versin is availible in that format.

― Vol. 3: The Life & Times of E. "Boom" Carter (C. Grisso/McCain), Sunday, 17 March 2013 00:00 (2 months ago) Permalink

The Canadian combo pack said it contained both versions... but the blu-ray and dvd contained the same shorter version.

― abanana, Sunday, 17 March 2013 00:37 (2 months ago) Permalink

clemenza, have you been to NYC? We scream at each other a lot.

― Pope Rusty I (Dr Morbius), Sunday, 17 March 2013 01:15 (2 months ago) Permalink

I checked the Blu ray out of the library not knowing about how it was packaged the film but only got the DVD. After finding out I'd watched the extended cut, I was happier for it.

― Public Brooding Closet (cryptosicko), Sunday, 17 March 2013 02:03 (2 months ago) Permalink

(xpost) A couple of times, yes; no one screamed at me, possibly because everyone sensed I was from out of town.

I meant to mention what I thought was the funniest line in the film (paraphrasing from memory): Kieran Culkin's "Yeah, but we're gonna skip that for now and keep moving ahead." And I think my favorite performance, admittedly a small part, was Jeannie Berlin's lawyer friend.

― clemenza, Sunday, 17 March 2013 04:12 (2 months ago) Permalink

Damn, I was trying to figure out where I'd seen Paquin's younger brother--as himself in Mad Hot Ballroom!

― clemenza, Sunday, 17 March 2013 04:14 (2 months ago) Permalink

Just saw this last night, the extended version (which was the only one they had at the actual, physical video rental store we got it from). It's exceptional. Has anyone compared it to the Sweet Hereafter? Both are about bus accidents, both about about the decision a young female must make for her witness statement.

― akm, Thursday, 9 May 2013 20:21 (1 week ago) Permalink

I saw whatever version was on HBO and really liked it.

― da croupier, Thursday, 9 May 2013 20:33 (1 week ago) Permalink

such a perfect movie for HBO - lots of stars, episodic, easy to get sucked in if you're flipping by, starring Anna Paquin as a young Lena Dunham

― da croupier, Thursday, 9 May 2013 20:36 (1 week ago) Permalink