Gus Van Sant

http://us.movies1.yimg.com/movies.yahoo.com/images/hv/photo/movie_pix/miramax_films/good_will_hunting/_group_photos/matt_damon7.jpg

it's funny, at the top of the thread it's all 'argh sell-out!' gvs has now 'gone back to his roots. does he now seem 'less fraudulent'?

hahaha otm!

It's coming soon. End of the year on Criterion.

october, to be precise (nice cover, too)

(i didn't really like this at all tho)

PUNISHMENT PARK

paranoid?

anyone else seen paranoid park? does it really not come out in the US until March? (outside of NYFF, i mean.)

it was good.

i really liked elephant, but last days was pretty bad, and gerry... fucking hell, that was the worst movie i've ever seen. and i have generally low standards.

This was the tread on which I was introduced to Morbz!

Mala Noche out at last.

These two consecutive comments:

I just remembered that my budding socialist college film-geek friend, who was openly disdainful of "mainstream culture," saw this when it came out and confessed to being moved to tears.
-- jaymc (jaymc), Monday, August 8, 2005

I vividly remember during the Titanic box office lockdown that Good Will and As Good As It Gets were the top two and three films for many weeks.
-- Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Monday, August 8, 2005

... sent me straight back to that time period, when I was the only one in my group of college friends who preferred Titanic to Hunting and thought the latter was every bit as shameless a weepy as the former.

GVS is doing the Harvey Milk biopic, starring Sean Penn. Newly cast are Josh Brolin as his assassin, Emile Hirsch as a gay activist, James Franco as Milk's lover (very savvy hotness quotient).

http://www.towleroad.com/2007/12/emile-hirsch-jo.html

hmmmm - there was an open casting call for this in SF a few weeks ago

won't Dianne Feinstein be a character in this? was she Council prez?

She was Supervisor on the Board (equivalent to City Council) - this definitely catapulted her political career.

I sort of hate her these days.

Emile Hirsch as a gay activist

Who will figure into approximately 80 percent of the film's running time.

in painted-on denim.

in 1993 he was talking about casting Robin Williams. It'd make more sense now that Williams is more of a bear than ever.

way too old now, tho? Harvey was surely too lean to be bearish?

yeah Harvey was skinny (more like an otter - lolz)

Penn's a better choice than Williams I think.

The writer is a guy from "Big Love."

Time for SFists to grow big broom 'staches!

The Castro is set to receive a makeover next month – Hollywood style – as the creative team behind the biopic on the life of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man elected to office in the U.S., recasts the gay neighborhood back to its 1970s glory days.

Longtime denizens are likely to find some old haunts return to Castro Street, like the fabled Toad Hall bar – now part of Walgreens – and Milk's old camera shop – now the home of gift store Given – as the filmmakers recreate the streetscape from the days when Milk reigned over the area as the "mayor" of Castro Street.

"We want to dress this neighborhood the best we can like the 1970s," said Jonathan Shedd, the film's location manager. "We hope to create a feel that works."

Cars from the era will be parked on the streets. Awnings and street signs of businesses postdating that time will be changed. Even the Castro Theatre will be swept up by the time warp.

The movie-house's marquee, damaged by a Muni bus that ran into it while PG&E crews were doing work out front this fall, will be repaired next month and repainted to match the color palette it sported four decades ago. In addition to the settlement they receive from Muni – expected to be finalized in early January – the theater owners plan to spend upwards of $12,000 on the project.

http://ebar.com/news/article.php?sec=news&article=2555

"I sort of hate her these days."

Sort of? THESE DAYS! I've hated her forever.

Not sure this movie won't be a little to close for enjoyment (unlike Zodiac I was alive for and remember the fallout from Milk's assassination much clearer.) Brolin might be a good choice for White, but I can't imagine Penn as Milk at all.

Finally (after 15 years or so) got to see Mala Noche and it was good (probably his second best film), but not a patch on Drugstore Cowboy obv.

not a patch on Idaho, either (but a test run).

When we were drinking for ian's birthday in Brooklyn, the bar was showing a Hitchcock/Van Sant mashup of the Psychos. It's scene-for-scene but NOT always shot-for-shot.

Drugstore Cowboy was good but come on, thread

I'm not a fan of Idaho actually. The best sequences are the ones where Van Sant is talking to the real kids.

I thought Elephant was one of the most beautiful Movies ever made. The scenes with that red hoodie were amazing.

I could not get through more than like 20 minutes of Last Days, despite having been thoroughly into Elephant.

I like both of them. I'm a little on the fence with Sevigny, probably because her performance is so different from what I'm used to with her.

Holly Golightly = Carol Matthau...I guess that's true? Hard to picture Walter Matthau married to the Holly Golightly of the movie.

oh huh i didn’t know that!

matthau irl seems too curmudgeonly to tolerate a golightly but there you go
there’s someone for everyone i guess

Wait, what? I just came across her name elsewhere.

Regarding Glenn Close's performance in Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical adaptation of Sunset Boulevard.

Close modeled Norma’s grotesque look on Walter Matthau’s wife, Carol. Close didn’t know her, but she’d heard that when Carol was young she had porcelain skin. As she got older, she applied white makeup to her face, which made her look odd, even a little frightening. “But I’m sure when she looked in the mirror she saw that porcelain skin,” Close said. “Norma’s makeup morphed into something grotesque. But she was seeing something different in the mirror. She was seeing what she looked like in the 1920s.”

Riedel, Michael. Singular Sensation: The Triumph of Broadway (pp. 20-21). Simon & Schuster

You hope for a strong finale; thought this one meandered, so I'll knock the series down a notch overall. They should have ended with E7.

I did like the very ending though, the last five minutes and the final shot. I don't know if that young couple bidding had special significance--I thought something was going to be revealed about them, but no. Love that bit of music at the end, which played throughout the series.

The ending was of a piece with the Black and White Ball. I think I find that so interesting because it feels like the last time that glamour and celebrity still largely belonged to people over 40 (pick whatever number you want--50 maybe). From '67 forward, that changed.

I watched the whole thing thinking Answered Prayers was eventually published in more or less its finished form. I guess not, although the version published in 1986 is 180 pages long.