The Michael Mann poll

Two words:

http://www.tatteredcoat.com/images/heat-pacino-buggy.jpg

GREAT ASS!!!

He's such a crap director.

and so it begins.

"None of the Above," but if I have to choose, I'll say Collateral.

Miami Vice is like heroin.

Yeah Collateral.

That scene where Cruise beats the shit out of those dudes who think he's a pussy was A++++

xpost yeah, I could totally see that again. But I have to go with Heat.

MANHUNTER.

DO YOU SEE?

i voted for collateral but i think i meant heat

Miami Vice (2006) - awesome awesome awesome
Collateral (2004) - awesomer
Ali (2001) - good, but kinda pales in comparison to actual footage of Ali
The Insider (1999) - haven't seen
Heat (1995) - reputation better than it deserves to be - but still awesome
The Last of the Mohicans (1992) - haven't seen in ages, but didn't care much for it then
Manhunter (1986) - this one is actually pretty crappy
The Keep (1983) - waht is this?
Thief (1981) - very underrated

I'm voting for Miami Vice just because.

Isn't Rollins in Heat?
;_;

we get down if the play calls for it

"That's not what happens. What will happen is....what will happen is... I will put a round at 2700 feet per second in your medulla at the base of your brain, and you will be dead from the neck down before your body knows it. Your finger won’t even twitch. Only you get that. So tell me sport, do you believe that?"

Yo Homies, is that my briefcase?

Thief (1981) - very underrated

OTM. James Caan is fantastic in it.

"There is 'undercover' and then there is 'which way is up.'"

"Dream much, Will?"

Yo Homies, is that my briefcase?

-- milo z, Wednesday, 29 August 2007 09:40 (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

^^^^^AWESOME, thx.

Miami Vice (2006) garbage
Collateral (2004) garbage
Ali (2001) pointless
The Insider (1999) decent enough
Heat (1995) good up until the last 45 minutes which are garbage
The Last of the Mohicans (1992) garbage
Manhunter (1986) some good performance, but mostly irritating
The Keep (1983) never seen
Thief (1981) nice score, but has James Caan starring in it.

The Insider because, thankfully, he had a co-writer.

Yeah I voted The Insider too.

there are people who hate James Caan? This is news to me.

What kind of heartless, fun-hating bastard hates Heat, Collateral AND Miami Vice?

Yeah they are people who hate bad overacting.

Tony Scott poll coming up soon, I think

The Insider's the only one that feels like he created and inhabited a world. Russell Crowe, Bruce McGill, and Diana Verona are all great.

(xpost)Oooh that's a good one!

Miami Vice would have been a classic if only they'd gone the Robert Bresson route?

The Thief score by Tangerine Dream is very nice, but is also so dated it gets giggles.

You gotta let Vice drip into your veins and FUCK your arteries.

Yeah, Rusty was good in the Insider, one of his better performances.

xposts

"Miami Vice would have been a classic if only they'd gone the Robert Bresson route?"

Haha possibly!

what Mann score isn't dated within two weeks of release? Worst part of Collateral is when they're rolling slow through LA to the sweet, sweet strains of Audioslave.

Miami Vice does make good use of Jay-Z/Linkin Park, though. The assault on the drug boats! So badass.

Miami Vice. The Insider is pretty tolerable, tho, for blatant Oscar bait.

'cept Al's shameless angling for the bait wasn't noticed.

I didn't really like Ali at all. :(

Me neither.

Collateralz
James Caan is great in Thief but the movie's not the greatest. the score is really good and really bad.
indsider was booooring. russell crowe looked like he was full up to the neck with feces

you could smell him?

Ali is the oscar bait, and it suffers because of it. Insider is great.

This one is tough.

I think everyone's misread what I wrote: I said "Al," as in, "Pacino." We really shouldn't discuss Ali in polite conversation.

miami vice the show should really be in there

I really liked the insider.

AH! I assumed it was a typo. Sorry.

to alfred, obv

"we've been made"

Miami Vice sucked. My rental DVD went kablooie when they were about to rescue the chick from the trailer with the fake-pizza-delivery-scam, and I didn't even bother asking for a replacement to finish it. Awful, awful, awful, and boring to boot.

I voted for Collateral.

fuck manhunter haters YOU OWE IT AWE.

other people's unexplored fetishes are really boring

(unless, of course, you agree)

I own new-Miami Vice on dvd! Not the 'director's cut' though, since I heard it sucked so I bought the other one

YOU OWE IT AWE

^^ kudos

The Insider

i don't really care for his style. manhunter and the first 2/3rds of collateral are good too.

Police Story really needs to be in this too

I thought the same thing initially, but the best thing about Crime Story is the Abel Ferrara-directed pilot.

crime story is the best BY FAR but the pilot does stand out stylistically. wasn't the chase through the mall in the pilot?

I'm in sales and the territory I cover happens to be where I grew up. So when I travel to visit my clients I usually visit my parents and sometimes stay the weekend. They don't have any DVDs. Only VHS tapes. And of the VHS tapes they have, get this, Jurassic Park, Braveheart, and The Insider. That's it. Needless to say, there have been many times when I've been bored and will end up popping in The Insider.

And it never gets old. I think it's truly fantastic. ALL the performances are pitch perfect. That scene with Bruce McGill in the courtroom jars me every time. It's maintains the feel of a Michael Mann film but it feels weightier than usual, and not just because of the subject material.

Here's that scene I was talking about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdGqfhAt6yQ

Might as well post this one too :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIjpP-XngKA&mode=related&search=

I'd say definitely The Insider as well. He puts all of his visual, structural, and storytelling skills to use in something beyond a crime film. Pacino is excellent because, as in Donny Brasco, he plays a guy who basically has to pick a lock and can't raise his voice, and so forget about yelling.

Mann's films are some of the only DVDs I own, and I never get tired of watching them. The HD video on Collateral and Miami Vice is a real step forward.

Zodiac is clearly David Fincher going toe-to-toe Michael Mann.

The ending to Heat is dissatisfying.

Collateral clearly started as a very run-of-the-mill 1990s hit man dom-and-sub-male screenplay that Mann managed to make his own. I'm sure Ruffalo's path in the movie was Mann's rewrite.

There is great potential for a Best Cameo in a Michael Mann Film poll: Rollins, Tone Loc, Bud Cort, the Me and You and Everyone We Know guy.

Eazy, that's the exact thought about Zodiac I had. Visually and stylistically (whatever that means) they're pretty similar. What I just thought about, though, was that they're pretty similar thematically as well. In a way they're both about guys who are working to get a story out there but run up against institutions that are not motivated to tackle it full force. And even in the end the victory in both cases are almost afterthoughts.

hay alex in sf u a fucken faget

anyway here is my fav scene~~ http://youtube.com/watch?v=oa5z77EI8y0

So so hard, but I'm going to have to go with Miami Vice which is without a doubt the best looking film I've ever seen on a big screen, except for In The Mood For Love. Not seen the first two though.

there are people who hate James Caan? This is news to me.

Well, it's usually with a demented form of bad taste. I mean, deep down I can sort of forgive Alex because, well, he's a cool dude and all, but seriously you lack a few braincells when you discard every Mann film.
I picked Heat but after watching Collateral again I had a hard time picking between these two (and Manhunter). I simply adore his style. Miami Vice is grebt as well.

Does everyone remember this?

A Michael Mann moment

Zodiac is clearly David Fincher going toe-to-toe Michael Mann

Sure! If Zodiac had any juice!

there are people who hate James Caan? This is news to me.

Landlords and ex-girlfriends from the mid-1980s.

eh. Who needs em.

i like heat but ffs it's the insider by like a country mile, ppl. michael mann is kind of bad.

yeah i voted for the insider. I liked Heat and parts of Collateral tho.

If you want to appreciate Michael Mann, for the first time or once again, go see The Kingdom when it opens this fall. This could have been a fantastic movie if he'd made it (he produced it), but instead the characters/plot/visuals aren't as sharp, and it really goes off the rails in the last third. But the premise -- total MM territory.

smooth -- that's how we do it.

if i want to appreciate michael mann, i'm going to put on the insider, not go watch a middle movie!

middlING, sorry

Heh! Well, go see another movie at the multiplex in September and sneak into The Kingdom for a bit and see what I'm saying.

now THAT i am ok with

'ali' and 'the insider' are maybe his worst films. i haven't seen 'the keep'.

'crime story' is not the best 'by far', you smokin'. anyway mann directed like one episode. ditto 'miami vice'.

I own new-Miami Vice on dvd! Not the 'director's cut' though, since I heard it sucked so I bought the other one

-- mh, Wednesday, August 29, 2007 3:47 AM (13 hours ago) Bookmark Link

apart from more herc-from-the-wire at the start, there's no big difference.

What makes The Insider one of his worst? I'm curious.

Keep is my favorite. Not cuz it's great - it isn't - just cuz it's got monsters in it. Mysterious and creepy, too, with entertaining 80s Tangerine Dream score. I'll always take creepy w/ monsters over men w/ guns.

"seriously you lack a few braincells when you discard every Mann film"

Haha I didn't discard them! I've seen them all (except the Keep) and I even gave little reviews above. They just mostly suck.

http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/8/8e/200px-BandoftheHandDVD.jpg

In an attempt of resocialisation, five hopeless juvenile criminals are sent away from prison into the Everglades for a survival training under the Indian Joe. When this is successful, they move back to Miami. However this offends the former illegal inhabitants of their house, all loyal customers of drug baron Cream. The conflict leads to armed fights.

The first 10 minutes of Ali are as great as anything he's done. He's (obviously) a director of sequences -- Collateral and Heat didn't end in a satisfying way for me (and Miami Vice too, to some extent), but all the little perfect 10-minute films along the way make these movies some of my favorites.

So I could see how Ali wwork in bits and pieces.

So basically he should make more videos.

I can't what to see what middle-aged hunk actor he puts in a gray wig next. ACTING!

lol u has only seen one michael mann movie, huh?

the trailer for miami vice >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> miami vice >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> any other bit of film released last year

Well, a video, though, is built around a song, and he's putting the other elements on the same high-volume level as the soundtrack. So, ideally, his best sequences are like a music video, a fashion spread, a Gerhardt Richter painting, a Jim Thompson novel, and a Raymond Carver short story all rolled into one.

no schef, I'm talking about Big Russ & Little Tom (using oth ppl's def of hunk).

ja i take it back, i forgot the cruiser had silver hair for no reason in collateral! probably because i completely forgot everything about collateral.

also ppl propping miami vice: u mad?

You-all have probably read already about the troubles on the Miami Vice shoot. It makes sense that the story was supposed to end back in the Triple Frontier.

That sequence in the mall in Paraguay is a perfect example of something I had to watch three or four times to take it all in: between the documentary aspect of shooting in Ciudad del Este, the colors and architecture of that indoor shopping mall, the ethnicities of the characters (who are central to the scene but who we don't know yet - of Chinese descent, South Americans, etc.), the actual action taking place (handing the information on Crockett and Tubbs to the bike courier), and the actions the guys at the table take to hide what they're doing. That's a lot of information to take in in 45 seconds.

I like the insider but my least favorite parts are those really random bits of slo-mo that I have nobody but Mann to blame for.

Eazy is right about the first bit of 'ali', i had forgotten.

What makes The Insider one of his worst? I'm curious.

-- Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Wednesday, August 29, 2007 5:19 PM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

it's not bad at being dull & worthy, it has more panache than, say, 'erin brockovich', but it doesn't have the main things you want from mann -- which 'miami vice' has in spades.

cranked up moments of melodrama and visual excess and minimalist dialogue, is what i mean.

and again what eazy said -- i was more hooked by the real-world shit in 'miami vice' than the 'oh wow did u know big tobacco r evil?' stuff in 'the insider'.

it's not bad at being dull & worthy, it has more panache than, say, 'erin brockovich', but it doesn't have the main things you want from mann -- which 'miami vice' has in spades.

cranked up moments of melodrama and visual excess and minimalist dialogue, is what i mean.

ok, say again: u mad?

ranked up moments of melodrama and visual excess and minimalist dialogue, is what i mean.

The Insider (and Erin Brockovich) don't have these?

i still think farrell was doing a george w. bush impression in miami vice

the insider is scene after scene of melodrama and someone JUST complained that the visual excess is what they DON'T like about the movie. this thread is insane.

guys, michael mann is tony scott with pretentiousness. i'm not sure why he's treated so seriously while other action directors are regarded so lowly on ilx, but seriously miami vice was a piece of shit.

There's taking sides and then there's which way is up.

the melodrama in 'the insider' wasn't life-or-death enough. but i can't talk rationally about mann.

the insider was way more entertaining than miami vice! it was fun to watch, miami vice was just like >:| and also jamie foxx's chinpubes were pissing me off.

apart from more herc-from-the-wire at the start, there's no big difference.

The scene where Tubbs's wife receives a big bouquet of flowers right after he meets with the folks in Haiti is one that I think was missing from the original run.

guys, michael mann is tony scott with pretentiousness.

lol i can't really argue with this but then again tony scott is kind of awesome to me too

i'm surprised mohicans isnt getting more love! it is goofy as hell but so are most of these, and also it has MAGUA. and a dude who says "KAN-TUCK-EE." and they fight with big hockey stick thingies.

Mohicans would be second on my list!

mohicans is what i voted for.

man now i need to buy the studio cut of 'miami vice'. the first hour of that film, right up to farrell and gong li going to cuba, is my favourite film ever at the moment.

You guys are all cocks, Ally included, for having and trying to impress your reactionary and stodgy aesthetics -- like the ending of a film matters??? -- personally upon me as the lot of you are deleted from ILX and replaced by 1000 cankles (who is OTM) clones.

Smoke a cigarette, dude.

Smoke a cock, bro. ^_^

Light my fag end.

:D

ps ally comparing michael mann to tony scott is o_O

have you seen Domino? incomprehensible bullshit
man on fire? crazy looking, jumpy bullshit with WORdS ON THE SCREEN wtf

Man on Fire was terrible.

But the Denzel time bending bullshit one was p sweet.

Walken's quote from Man On Fire, something like " death is his art, and he's about to paint his masterpiece"

So very o_O

tony scott:michael mann::buffy fanfic:h.p. lovecraft

tony scott:michael mann::talking to a 3 year old:talking to a 16 year old

tony scott:michael mann::banana:plantain

tony scott:michael mann::FUCK YOU

Mohicans is awesome, even with that poorly handled scene where the French officer talks to Magua

F.O.: Sup Magua
MAGUA: Magua hates the White Hair because blah blah blah blah blah
F.O.: Dude, I was just askin' wussup. le chill.

Fantastic ending though. DDL kickin' ass with muskets, chick kills herself, Wes Studi in general.

Also, "I face north and turn left real quick like"

Don't get the Tony Scott thing though. Mann apes Le Samourai and we get the fantastic Collateral. What would happen if Scott were to do so?

Wes Studi should be in every movie, ever.

Alfred, your gay bits cannot abide by my Promethean fire that burns so white hot you can see your reflection in it!!!!

Wes Studi should be in every movie, ever.

-- Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Thursday, August 30, 2007 2:45 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Somebody should do a Wes Studi poll, though part of me wonders whether it will just descend into Mystery Men quotations.

yeah wes studi is a pimp. otm about the ending sequence too, just music and wacking dudes with hockey sticks

I was thinking earlier tonight how it would be really hard to find a good birthday present for Michael Mann.

Which is not the case for Nancy Meyers.

Nancy Meyers, an Aveda basket would do the job.

By the way, the latest Nike commercial featuring LaDainian Tomlinson was directed by Mann. Makes me think that Any Given Sunday would've been great in his hands.

tony scott:michael mann::talking to a 3 year old:talking to a 16 year old

-- max, Thursday, August 30, 2007 1:00 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

oh snap

LOTM and Manhunter are awesome, particularly LOTM which battles with Roger Rabbit to be my favourite film ever. Miami Vice SuXoR, haven't seen the others.

Thanks, Wookie. Nice ad.

http://filmfanatic.org/reviews/wp-content/uploads/2007/03/cOX.JPG

Would you, uh, like to leave me your home phone number, Will?

Do you know how you caught me, Will?

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Two words:

LA Takedown

Missed this. 'Heat' ages so well, it deserves this, even though I agree the ending is weak, and I hated it the first time I saw it. 'L.A. Plays Itself' notes some blatant mistakes of local geography, but the whole cool-cops-vs.-cool-bad-guys thing you either love or hate.

'Ali' read like a great script when it was excerpted in Vanity Fair, but so much of what was supposed to be going on in those scenes was internal to his character that you wondered how it could be filmed, and of course it turned out it couldn't.

I could not, for one second, believe Tom Cruise as a hitman in 'Collateral,' so that was pretty much a beautiful wash for me.

x-post

Yeah, need to track it down:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097700/

uhhh no you dont

OK WHO VOTED FOR ALI

Hey, I spent an hour at the Museum of Contemporary Art's bookstore today reading this Taschen coffee-table book on Michael Mann's films.

Wow, I never realised Thief was Michael Mann. It's way better than most of that shite. I'll take James Caan over post-1980 Al Pacino every day of the week.

cosign

But I didn't see it on the list at first so I voted for The Keep which I saw as a teenager and as I remember is strange and maybe a bit rubbishy but in a good way.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=55BZ2gSsSmY

HOLY SHIT THIS IS SO FUCKING COOL. HAHAHAHA IT USES THE MUSIC FROM THE END OF LAST OF THE MOHICANS TOO

he's doing the dillinger story. psyched.

Johnny Depp + Christian Bale = awesomeness, as long as mann doesn't fuck up the party with chris cornell.

Heat--Awesome
Collateral--really good
Miami Vice--awesome
The Insider--AWESOME
Manhunter--could go either way

Some 'Public Enemies' stuff plus this anecdote:

When I spent time on his "Ali" set in Miami, he insisted on shooting a scene where Ali first sees Malcolm X at the exact mosque where Malcolm was preaching. He also shot a scene set in the backyard of Ali's Miami home at Ali's real house, even though the backyard was right in the flight pattern of Miami International Airport, meaning a plane flew overhead every 90 seconds, repeatedly drowning out the dialogue. One of the production guys shook his head, grumbling "We didn't have this problem when we shot near LAX with 'Heat.' " Why was that, I asked? "Michael got the flight controllers to reroute LAX traffic to a different runway for a few hours."

it seems really weird Alex in SF doesn't like this guy

My brother is an aspiring filmmaker and he is obsessed with both Mann and Tony Scott, so I figure the comparisons aren't completely off-base.

His enthusiasm encouraged me to watch several of Mann's films. I thought that Manhunter, Heat, and Collateral were all pretty meh. But then I watched Miami Vice (Director's Cut) and found myself enjoying it way more than I thought I would. Reading this thread makes me want to see it again.

I bought the Taschen book mentioned above for my bro as a Christmas present a couple years ago.

they're fair but Mann eats him alive

I could see someone (not me) make the argument that Scott's films are more entertaining. Mann can be kind of dull at times. Still, anyone who could make a movie as bad as Domino clearly can't be too great.

I love Heat if only for how awesome the guns sound during the bank robbery. Dude can film a pretty meaty and satisfying gun fight.

he is an asshole driver

"it seems really weird Alex in SF doesn't like this guy"

I'm actually overstating my dislike for him on this thread. He's done plenty I liked. He just tends to inspire the kind of acting that bugs the shit out of me.

And by plenty I liked I mean the Insider, the parts of Heat that don't suck, Crime Story, the parts of Manhunter that don't suck and actually that's probably it.

Just started Crime Story. Hopefully there aren't any further scenes where Farina has to cry.

Scene from L.A. Takedown that became, almost word for word, the Pacino/DeNiro diner scene in Heat:

Trailer for fake movie, starring Benecio del Toro, that Mann made for Mercedes in 2002:

did anyone ever see his tv show with tom sizemore? LAPD robbery homicde or something? i caught a couple episodes i thought it was pretty dope

i'm trying to power through all the mann films but i'm stuck on "the insider" and it's 2.5 hr run time since school picked back up but

i was lukewarm on "collateral" until the scene in the DA's office. hon one of the most amazing looking scenes i've ever seen? everything pitch black except the city lights reflecting off the glass. and really the whole last 25 or 30 mins or so were incredible. train scene as well.

i LOVED "ali" tbqh. like, i'll acknowledge that it was *rolling my damn eyes* oscar baity, but god damn did mann shooting boxing give me a robust erection. i loved the way he used the music too, and i thought will smith was great & rightly funny at times. def the 'warmest' mann movie i've ever seen in terms of aesthetics. blues & daylight instead of blues & nighttime i guess.

did anyone ever see his tv show with tom sizemore? LAPD robbery homicde or something? i caught a couple episodes i thought it was pretty dope

― beyonc'e (max), Sunday, December 7, 2008 11:35 PM (9 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

robbery homicide division iirc. never been able to find this on torrent :(

the insider was a serious letdown. hard for a movie to be an anticlimax from the credits all the way through, but it managed somehow. the scene with pacino on a BEACH shouting down the PHONE may have merit if viewed as self parody from all involved, but other than that it's just a fat russell crowe.

The Insider's his best movie despite Mann's ceding the movie to Pacino in the last third.

no

it's miami vice fuiud

or heat or public enemies or manhunter fuiud

I can shout like Al Pacino if need be.

heat is on tv atm

insider rules. his best.

heat is on tv atm

I think Heat on TV about 100 hours a week lately.

A Hollywood guy I know told me how Heat, after being lukewarm at the box office, is a favorite of all the studio guys in their 20s/30s who saw it in their formative years. I was asking him why it was on TV all the time and Blue Thunder never is.

5 votes for manhunter fuckin seriously guys

0 votes for Thief is worse.

manhunter is clearly a TRANSCENDENT FUCKING AWESOME MOVIE THE BEST ONE HE EVER MADE then the insider then miamivice heat and collateral - and obvs miami vice the tv show shouldve be included here cause want to talk abt some art work lets talk abt that

theif is cool but its somewhat formative mann trying to mix gritty realistic 70s vibe w/sweet high tension michael mann shit - the scene w/jim belushi lookin over the billboard ready to snipe is super bomb tho

u should make a movie called stanhunter

the scene w/jim belushi lookin over the billboard ready to snipe is super bomb tho

For pure Chicago location thrills, there's that early scene with sunrise on the lakefront, and then at the end he blows up the Green Mill. Rock.

Also, Jimmy Caan.

manhunter sucks guys. red dragon is much better! rattner! rattner! rattner!

*fake challops*

He just tends to inspire the kind of acting that bugs the shit out of me.

axtually i kinda agree, but i'm not sure how to put into words.

an example i mean, not the fact that i kinda agree

Ali was just a disaster. Smith had no fucking idea who his character was and just settled for a bizarrely muted impression, and the narrative was painfully boring.

All Mann's other films are must see though.

Heat would easily be his best movie, and perhaps one of the greatest films ever, if it weren't for the awful Pacino performance. But when his character isn't on screen, the movie is fantastic. Strangely enough, Pacino was actually good in The Insider.

The opening sure works, though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STDo6Z5YJa4

i think being a true stann means looking past his depiction of ali as a person and just marveling at how the movie looks - anyway i think it's obv that he thought that getting into who ali really was would distract from he really wanted the film to be - now obv i totally understand how that can turn people off but i really loved it

damn

http://www.etsy.com/shop/FatEyes?section_id=6557913

poll

lol mario van peebles as malcolm x - not sure if thats more or less absurd than smith as ali - btw my dad has a treasured pic of himself w/cassius clay in that v gym while he was training for the liston fight

xp to ali open youtube

i dont remember what i voted for but i hope it was mohicans cuz that shit owwwwns

william peterson is worst dude btw

u suck

watch manhunter and to live and die in l.a. back to back and tell me he isnt the most unlikeable creepy manchild to ever... exist

it works more in to live and die in l.a. because he's supposed to be a total creep.

the characters in both movies are supposed to be totally unlikeable!!!

also how can u hate a guy who starred in 2 of the best noir movies of the 80s AND the greatest american procedural of the 2000s

i know i know, i'm just saying he is unpleasant to watch! even if that is the point

i have never watched csi tbqh

mannhunter=best

marg helgenberger ftw

csi is great

he's not meant to be unlikeable in manhunter! he's just supposed to have.. defects. i love him in that film. LOVE him. tell me he's not brilliant in that scene in the supermarket. sensitive too!

in terms of cop show aesthetics csi is to the 00s what miami vice was to the 80s... otherwise the shows arent really at all the same

double tam making want to revist all the mann movies - havent seen mohicans or insider in so long - nice to see you can sb ppl for shit they sd in 2007 tho

generally agree w/ the poll results but i havent seen ali

i appreciate william petersen a lot more now than i did then... he's amazing in to live and die in LA... i think what creeped me out were the scenes where he was supposed to be like, sexy... he was all rubbing his torso and shit... kinda weird

def need to revisit the insider

i'd rank Thief above ali and the keep, though it's pretty crude compared to his later stuff

the keep is so weird, havent seen it in forevs but i have to respect any movie that tries to make scott glenn an action hero

write-in:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6joglwxWuo

Tags:
nike football tv television commercial ad advertisement michael mann shawn merriman steven jackson mohicans epic boner

seeing william peterson's dick was kinda the most unexpected aspect of to live and die in l.a. tbqf.

'manhunter' is the one i like the least although my memory is too weak to really articulate much - i remember it felt blocky and i guess ponderous - never really crystalized for me i guess.

the unheralded mann that id rep for is 'robbery homicide divsion' which probably doesnt count but is an interesting 'transition' + just a p enjoyable cop show.

yeah i dug robbery homicide division - it didnt last long but it had some cool crappy-looking DV photography and tom sizemore and the jowly black guy - unforch i got into the Wire a few months after it ended and i could never look at it the same again

'manhunter' is kinda dated and the basic premise of this preternaturally gifted detective chasing a serial killer is a little cheesy, but it works for the most part for me because of the acting and the fact that it's fairly creepy. i like the scenes near the beginning w/peterson going through the house, and we never see the bodies nor the killings, just the crime scene. pretty effective. stephen lang in full-on simpering douchebag mode before he started to age into a ripped-up middle age tough guy.

also: stephen lang etc

manhunter has an ill soundtrack, too

i think Manhunter must've been shot on a shitty film stock or something (this was a problem for a lot of 80s movies) because something about the look of it always left me wanting

still like Silence more tbh

silence is better yeah, i think i went back and forth on that for awhile but i saw it again recently and it's this nasty unpleasant movie that's also just really pretty dope and incredibly entertaining.

probably didn't help it in my memory that hopkins ran that character into the ground.

silence is stone cold amazing, am willing to concede my opinion of manhunter is p worthless but i still cant credit ppl who claim its the best harris adaptation

im not even a hopkins fan and am p tired of That Character, but fortunately Silence's dopeness lies in many different areas, such as the Ted Levine area and the Goodbye Horses area

and yeah, just a mega entertaining movie

silence is better than manhunter for sure. i guess manhunter is underrated in non-ilx circles tho.

hopkins gets all the credit but jodie foster just effing crushes it in that movie

and tony heald obv

I likned to this way above, but I do love the fake trailer Mann made for Mercedes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoCLxp2W9xE

i think Manhunter must've been shot on a shitty film stock or something (this was a problem for a lot of 80s movies) because something about the look of it always left me wanting

whoa, tara's alcoholic mom from True Blood is in that mercedes ad!

kind of amazing that del toro hasnt been in a mann movie yet, come to think of it

hopkins gets all the credit but jodie foster just effing crushes it in that movie

feel like hopkins retroactively ruined his performance or maybe it was just martin amis but his scenes w/ foster theyre both completely n/l. foster is amazing throughout tho, agreed

yeah they kill it together, all of their scenes have that crazy psycho/romantic/sexual/etc tension that must have been so stupid in the script but is riveting on screen

I'm sort of surprised at how few of these I've actually seen esp since I love Heat and Collateral. Miami Vice thread making me curious enough that I'm going to watch it tonight. Also Max/Lamp otm re Foster and Hopkins. Watched that again recently and was pretty blown away by just how good they both are together.

Have you seen The Insider, E.? That's my vote for his best.

Nope. I've actually only seen the two I mentioned. Probably gonna be housebound due to snow for the next couple days so might try to squeeze in a couple of these.

I've only seen Heat and Collateral. Heat deserves all the plaudits, while Collateral is somewhere agonisingly between a fun friday-night thriller and a more traditionally 'good' movie. Something like that..

I'm also very intrigued about MV being basically panned on its release, yet resuscitated as this 00s lost classic. There's obviously something to it being the more recent Mann critical consensus rather than Collateral or Public Enemies..

has it really been reappraised anywhere outside ilx tho? was it in many best of decade lists?

Totally....it's high on Slant, Film Comment and possibly a couple of others.

Although Morbius and Eric are bigwigs at Slant, so make of that what you will.

the thing about miami vice is not that it's a bad film, it's just a very unusual one. they sold it like an action movie (of course) and people went in expecting bad boys 3, not some weird existential brooder. i think mann stanns who know his style really get it for the most part, everyone else was flummoxed.

ah, didn't see the film comment list.

i assume the high slant showing is due to morbs putting it at #1.

'weird existential brooder'

-you see, this is the side of the spectrum where Collateral became really interesting. Does MV completely sweep you away like Heat? If i'm into one, would I connect to the other etc etc

manhunter is great you nobbers, this poll is rong

xp Morbius had MV as his no1?? Really? What a taste that man has..

i said it here or on the MV thread but i think mann was trying to do an entire movie of "michael mann moments" if you know what i mean.

yes, miami vice was morbs's #1 and i think master and commander was #2, inception dropped to #3 because of plot holes.

lol

departed and inglorious basterds rounded out the top 5.

Honestly though, what was Morbs's 00s rundown?

I'm pretty sure Brokeback Mountain was in the top three.

Totally baffled by the results of this poll. For me it goes Thief, Heat, Miami Vice, Insider, Manhunter, Collateral, Ali, Public Enemies (not on poll, but it suck-diddly-ucked), and I haven't seen The Keep or The Last of the Mohicans.

BTW, the key to Miami Vice is to watch it with the sound off. Fucking gorgeous movie.

If that's so, should I line up an alternative soundtrack? Would the new Destroyer album work?

same with beautiful women tbrr

It also delves into the drug-cartel world that has more visibly taken over Mexican daily life since its release.

just thinking abt the scene in the diner in Thief where james caan has his perfect little fantasy collage makes me cringe

i do like how brutal the ending is tho

thread making me totes curious abt watching silence again. i guess i loved it when i saw it but its sortof bloated in my memory via hannibal lecter as cartoon villain. like im willing to fall in love all over. manhunter is super creepy and i like the unconventional way its claustrophobic, like i remember these excruciating scenes like joan allen w the tiger where the whole thing is shot w ultrafluorescent ugly striplight brightness

last of the mohicans disappointed the shit out of me but i think i was like eight

i think the mann i have like most has a kindof exhilarating ugliness

i like hopkins' lecter but he is a pantomime villain. cox has an air of contempt that is authentically medical

Red dragon is closer to the source novel but anybody who prefers it to Manhunter can eat poop-flavored Cheerios

Michael Mann in Talks to Develop and Direct Fox Film About 1967 Le Mans

(in short. DO WANT)

The project is based on A.J. Baime’s book "Go Like Hell," which revolves around how the Ford Co. became the first American car maker to win the famous European car race over Ferrari.

Michael Mann is in talks with 20th Century Fox to develop and potentially direct Go Like Hell, the real-life story of the famous competition between the Ford Motor Co. and Ferrari that led to Ford winning the Le Mans in 1967.

Ford was the first American car maker to win the world’s oldest car race, held in France. For years, Ferrari had dominated the contest.

Based on A.J. Baime’s book, the Fox project recounts how a young Henry Ford II — determined to infuse new life into his family’s company — decided to get into the European racing scene.

With the help of racer Carroll Shelby and Lee Iacocca, Ford built and designed a car that could take on Ferrari cars, known for their speed and style. They ultimately won the Le Mans, the world’s oldest car race that takes place each year in France.

Insiders say the initial idea is for Mann to develop the script.

What Michael Mann can do with sports:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55BZ2gSsSmY

The Insider hardly made any impression on me when I saw it first time around, and many years later I still find it very pedestrian. I will say that Pacino's performance has fewer histrionics--none, really--than anything he's done since the '70s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNKmmA6_oTQ

ali still so underrtaed

Very odd to read this for the first time now - the poll results are up first, and I think "Oh well, it's ILX, they were always going to be on Heat's dick", but there's nearly no-one repping for it at the time!

the insider, I don't understand how could anyone say this movie is pedestrian. not a single bad performance, best story, actual things at stake from the real world as opposed to the (...) all style comic book material in heat collateral and miami vice. also, whoever said the slo-mo was bad is crazy, the final scene is one of the most outstanding things I have ever seen, a beautiful philip-lorca dicorcia picture set to motion. it doesn't get much better than this!

This poll didn't get all that many votes imo.

Very odd to read this for the first time now - the poll results are up first, and I think "Oh well, it's ILX, they were always going to be on Heat's dick", but there's nearly no-one repping for it at the time!

Think people just got tired of talking about it even if that's the one they voted for.

yeah, i think everyone feels like Heat's a given

ali still so underrtaed

― J0rdan S., Sunday, September 16, 2012 3:42 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the main problem with this film is it stars will smith as muhammad ali, besides that its p sick

ali isn't very good.

i like when him and frazier ride around in a car together

there's some things to like about it... the opening set to live at harlem club vers of bring it on home to me, so killer. ali walking out into the stadium in zaire. cool mix of video and film. ted levine outta nowhere. but it has the same basic problem as public enemies... neither film has anything interesting to say about ali or dillinger as men

ya theres a maybe purposeful distance operating, tho tbf i dont really remember ali that well

Seem to recall the director's cut of Ali being much better. Also, was Mann's first experiment with shooting digital, for the jogging/training sequence.

Really shocked that nobody voted for Thief. That movie is so fucking pure. Even Jim Belushi couldn't wreck it. But I'm also surprised Collateral came in second.

SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER

If Collateral had ended the instant Jamie Foxx flipped the cab over - just cab flip, crunching noise, credits roll on a black screen - that movie would have fucking ruled. But the actual ending was lame and trite.

ya i think everyone agrees that the end of collateral was dumb

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2012/10/22/last-of-the-mohicans-director-michael-mann-remembers-russell-means/

what the fuck, when did russell means die

I love Michael Mann interviews.

http://insidetv.ew.com/2012/11/12/michael-mann-david-frankham-talk-hbos-witness/

That sounds incredible.

otm

watched most of the first ep last night, it was p fascinating, had one v graphic intense raw scene, as you might expect

collateral has some boring dialogue scenes but the final 30 minutes or so are incredible

Well that's the inverse of pretty much every review at the time.

james caan

AVC: Thief was Michael Mann’s first film.
JC: Yeah, I found Michael Mann. Literally. I was doing Chapter Two, and this guy was sitting outside my trailer in a wooden chair, and he said, “Can I talk to you?” I said, “Yeah.” And he said, “I wanted to show you a script I’ve written.” And at the time, I was very fortunate that I was able to do whatever the hell I wanted to do, so I put it together right away. I got Jerry Bruckheimer to produce it… along with my brother, Ronnie, which was hysterical. And Michael, he’s a workaholic, you know. I still think that’s his best picture. He brought in the forensic stuff and everything. It was a real tough picture to work on, though, because he’d work 16, 17 hours a day. I liked it, though. It was a good movie.

that interview's hilarious

Alien Nation (1988)—“Det. Sgt. Matthew Sykes”

JC: Why the fuck… Why would you bring up that?

AVC: A lot of people actually like the film. I do, for one.

JC: Yeah, well, I don’t know.

IMDB page for Cyber is up: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2717822/

Computer hacking is usually portrayed so ridiculously in movies that it's difficult to not reflexively shrug. Still, a straight-up Michael Mann crime thriller in China sounds pretty great. Please do not suck. Also, please hire Boards Of Canada to do the soundtrack.

Don't know how good a BoC/Chris Cornell collab would sound tbh

Maybe it won't get scratch on the re-poll?

http://s3.amazonaws.com/criterion-production/release_boxshots/4191-560cd65f1ec2a91f6e3ffccb67d6d7eb/691_box_348x490_DF_original.jpg

lol who would vote for The Keep or Ali over thief

Because it can never be posted enough:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfetsPmDWAk

IMDB page for Cyber is up: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2717822/

Computer hacking is usually portrayed so ridiculously in movies that it's difficult to not reflexively shrug. Still, a straight-up Michael Mann crime thriller in China sounds pretty great. Please do not suck. Also, please hire Boards Of Canada to do the soundtrack.

― Elvis Telecom, Tuesday, July 30, 2013 7:06 PM (2 months ago) Bookmark

my main expectation of this is that mann shooting hong kong is going to look amazing

Hopefully better than this!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95-bc1DZovg

Ooops, that's Japan. Sorry.

my main expectation of this is that mann shooting hong kong is going to look amazing

― i wanna be a gabbneb baby (Hungry4Ass), Wednesday, October 16, 2013 4:12 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

otm

Set to open one year and one week from today:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyber_(film)

That'll give it plenty of time to go over budget, run into some natural disasters, encounter unforeseen delays and then get mangled in the editing suite.

January release ;_;

Was thinking that seemed weird for a tentpole guy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQTn0psH_bM

To Be Cont'd doing a thing this month on Thief. http://tobecontd.com/thief-series/2014/1/9/thief-under-the-cover-of-darkness#.UtHzjGRDuet

I haven't seen it in a number of years but I'm getting it on Tuesday so I'm not reading anything until I've rewatched it.

Oh, and The Keep is back up on Netflix Instant.

was it much-publicised that HEAT was a remake at the time? i don't recall. musta been a shock to anyone who didn't realise, if they'd seen the TV version.

I remember Heat coming out and wanting to see it, but I was also 12 so I don't really remember. I didn't find out about LA Takedown until years later. Still haven't seen it.

i dont know if it was a secret that it was a remake of LA Takedown, i just dont think anyone cared. but i cant see any mention of it in reviews from the period so im guessing it wasnt in the press kit at least

i watched LAT not long ago, it is pretty interesting b/c it really is just Heat but shorter and crappier. stuff like the coffeeshop scene really hammers home how badly you need great actors to make mann's dialogue not thud. there's some great shots and mann moments in it though

i think that scene above when watched next to the heat version is really useful as a compare and contrast between good acting and bad acting. those two guys are just hoping to get through the scene without flubbing a line, but deniro and pacino have a lot of subtle little looks and moments and inflections in their lines, plus they actually look the parts and bring some gravitas to the proceedings.

yeah totally. it doesn't matter how awesome a job everyone working on your movie is doing if your actors aren't showing up and kicking ass

ha yeah that is really instructive

especially about the part of acting thats like being interesting or being charistmatic

Was thinking that seemed weird for a tentpole guy.

― tbd (Eazy), Thursday, January 9, 2014 11:00 AM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

when has mann ever been a tentpole guy?

also when is my criterion thief blu-ray arriving, eh?

mann's last movie was so dire that i'm not going to raise any hopes for this one.

Ali was, like, four movies ago.

ali was a remake of fresh prince of bel air but most people dont know

I don't think Jon Voight knew.

i meant public enemies duh

public enemies was pretty good i thought but such a weird movie in retrospect. it was like a mix of 'dillinger' and beatty's version of 'dick tracy.'

i just thought it was lifeless and pointless.

New interview:
http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/interview-michael-mann-talks-making-thief-the-importance-of-authenticity-whats-coming-in-his-next-film-20140206?page=1#blogPostHeaderPanel

And for viewers, the pulsating sound of that world comes from Tangerine Dream’s expressive score. It’s so much a part of the texture of “Thief,” it’s hard to imagine the film without it, but as Mann revealed, he initially had other ideas about the soundtrack before explaining why he settled on the progressive rockers.

“My normal instinctive choice for music would have been Chicago Blues. That's really the music that as a teenager, I first fell I love with. So my first instinct was Chicago Blues, however I felt that what the film was saying, thematically, and the facility with which the film might be able to have resonance with audience,” he said. “I felt that to be so regionally specific in the music choice would make Frank's experience specific only to Frank...So I wanted the kind of transparency, if you like, the formality of electronic music, and hence Tangerine Dream.”

http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/first-official-image-from-michael-manns-cyber-thriller-starring-chris-hemsworth-20140604

“With great facility the people in the film move between Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong, Los Angeles and Chicago. And the film’s story takes you from those places to inside a processor, inside the electron universe, amongst a population of transistors," he explained. "You have two billion transistors in your cell phone. Bits with either an absence or surplus of electrons, then become ones or zeroes, every two billionth of a second and affect the macro, our lives. That's the world this film takes place in.”

Something to look forward to. Frothing at the combination of "Michael Mann" and "Cyber-thriller"

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/moviesnow/la-et-mn-michael-mann-chris-hemsworth-wang-leehom-cyber-blackhat-story.html%EF%BB%BF

Mann said Hong Kong was an amazing yet challenging place to shoot. He joked that he didn’t have any problems a la “Transformers” director Michael Bay, who notoriously had an air conditioner thrown at him by a local who was unhappy with the production’s presence in his neighborhood.

!

cf. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/michael-bay-attacked-transformers-4-649183

Hah I kinda wanted to start a thread about more and more blockbusters using HK as a setting

he must really be agonising over that one word title this time

oh wait, the tentative title is "Cyber"

lol

I've been listening to shit tons of TD lately, should really go on a Mann jag since I'm musically prepped and all

I actually recommend re-watching "Risky Business," which looks, sounds and plays like Mann directing a teen sex comedy. Set in Chicago, Tangerine Dream score, dreamy atmosphere/visuals, subversive economic commentary, etc. It's a really sharp film, and fits right in the Mann mold.

would totally rewatch RB, haven't seen it since it was new. Fucking amazing TD on that one, possibly their best score.

Totally agree with Josh, had the same thought when watching it a few years ago.

yeah risky business is awesome, booger's great in it

cyber is "blackhat"

trailer just screened at comiccon apparently

lol

I'd go to MannCon. Nice suits, Vertu phones, tradecraft demos from former Special Forces dudes.

Would be up for some Crime Story cosplay.

probably not a good idea to cosplay the keep

I want to be the preposterously not old enough Ian mckellen!

http://youtu.be/tKyuDgygvqc

not really feeling it

this is going to be popular with people who have black hats of a certain type

Such a 90s view of hacking

As long as there are some clouds in there, I'm happy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUF3MhPKhv4

this will hold you Less Than Meets the Eye fanboys til the Q____ T______ western is ready.

Agree trailer is underwhelming

Excited to see what Mann does with HK at night, such a claustrophobic city that I'm not sure he can make it work like LA

Like not surprising he turned his camera away from the busy island/Kowloon skyline and towards the "less" developed West Kowloon/Tsuen Wan area

this will hold you Less Than Meets the Eye fanboys til the Q____ T______ western is ready.

― son of a lewd monk (Dr Morbius),

and this thread will serve as your chewtoy.

Also it looks like Mann chose Val Kilmer's son?

Trailer underwhelming, don't care gonna see anyway.

Trailer underwhelming, don't care gonna see anyway.

― Kiarostami bag (milo z), Thursday, 25 September 2014 23:30

http://i.imgur.com/ioTiGdF.gif

"We're not going to beat him from the outside."

"No..."

"It's OK. I know what I'm doing."

https://31.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m9elseiik31qdc388o1_500.gif

is there some Moby in this or what

The tron light bike POV shot of the internet's circuits short-circuiting... I mean really.

Who wrote this? Morgan Davis Foehl? Looks like a relative newbie/hack getting some Hollywood traction. Anyway, even the closest Mann's come to failures have been compelling, and given how much he enjoys depicting intelligence on screen as much as gun fights, I'm totally on board for another movie about smart people with guns.

Looks so bad.

Bet it'll be good, much better than the trailer produced by Legendary's marketing department.

but no the trailer is the film iirc

morbius what michael mann is good, i never really got it. i kinda liked thief.

*don't ask Morbs*

Thief is one I can't rewatch.

he got better at commissioning dopey electronic scores and putting Strong Man and Supporting Woman in more dialectical and interesting compositional ways later.

diner scene pretty stellar though

I still haven't seen Thief. I liked Last of the Mohicans and, with reservations, Heat. Manhunter was OK.

hey thank you. haven't seen last of the mohicans. & manhunter is kinda ehh to me. i am always just so bemused by the superlatives about his artistry & colour; can anyone rep for demonstrations of this in action, beyond like taxicab-night-photography in collateral?

actually p down with tangerine dream in thief, btw, alfred, & found james caan a pretty singular Strong Man portrait.

Great: Manhunter, Miami Vice
Reasonably OK: Collateral, Public Enemies, The Insider
Not a fan: Mohicans, Ali

I'm down with LOFM.

Paul Schrader wrote recently about how Collateral showed how you could see into the dark of night digitally, my reaction to which is idgaf.

http://images.rottentomatoes.com/images/movie/gallery/1156584/photo_15_hires.jpg

That frame (I love his MV, esp the version with the cold open) is why Mann goes digital so much lately. Because short CGI work, there is no other easy way to light that shot. He's really into trying to capture what the night looks to our eyes, not stylized for film. Which of course it still ends up being.

My faves may be Heat, Collateral, Thief and maybe at the top The Insider. Mid for me is Manhunter, Mohicans. Bottom is Ali and Public Enemies, though both are worth watching, esp. his director's cut of the former.

Putting gray hair on both Cruise and Crowe = we are watching a really snazzily photographed high-school play.

My fave quote about MM is Armond White's "You know less about Ali when the movie's over than you did when it began."

Favorites, in order: Thief, Heat (though Pacino is close to intolerable for most of it), Miami Vice (especially if you watch it with the sound off), Collateral (I'd love it so much more if it ended right after Foxx flips the taxi, though).
Middle tier: The Insider, Manhunter.
Bottom: Ali, Public Enemies.

Haven't seen Last of the Mohicans or The Keep.

https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/a_film_by/conversations/topics/14749

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-fmVg4srR-Pk/UjdKzaLTIPI/AAAAAAAAOrE/YrZlzYBr5Og/s1600/Tom+Sizemore+Heat+film.jpg

One of the more subtle aspects of "Collateral" is that the events that take place would not have happened had Jamie Foxx not been such a good cabbie that he gets Jada (on Cruise's hit list) where she's going early, which throws off the otherwise meticulous Tom Cruise. That he is subsequently forced to shuttle Cruise is, how you say, dramatic irony.

Heh "Mann poll."

One of the blind stupid aspects of "Collateral" is that the events that take place would not have happened had Tom Cruise rented a car.

A tourist in LA? He'd get stuck in traffic because he doesn't know the secret routes.

shit is that really supposed to be the plot device

I actually don't remember! It's possible he blames Jamie Foxx for messing up his ride?

Max's next fare is a businessman named Vincent (Tom Cruise) who exits the building just after Annie entered. Vincent is impressed by Max's skill at navigating the streets of LA and offers Max $600 to drive him for the entire night, against regulations. Max reluctantly agrees, the money too much to pass up. As Max waits at the first stop, a man falls onto the cab roof from above. Vincent has killed his first of five marks for the night, drug dealer Ramón Ayala, and is forced to reveal himself as a hitman. He coerces Max to hide the body in the trunk, clean up the car and continue with their arrangement.

I guess the idea is he needs a getaway driver?

The plan, except that the first guy he shot went out the window, was to have Max drive him to six stops then to LAX for a flight out. As if he were a notary or a lawyer or something, getting signatures.

Didn't know this until now:

Collateral sat on DreamWorks' development books for three years. Mimi Leder was initially attached to direct, it then passed on to Janusz Kamiński. It wasn't until Russell Crowe became interested in playing Vincent that the project started generating any heat. Crowe brought Michael Mann on board, but the constant delays meant that Crowe left the project. Mann immediately went to Tom Cruise with the idea of him playing the hitman and Adam Sandler as the cabbie.

Beattie wanted the studio to cast Robert De Niro as Max (once again making him a taxi driver, though the exact opposite of Travis Bickle). However, the studio refused, insisting they wanted a younger actor in the role.

Collateral is so awesome, though Tom Cruise pretty much ruins every movie for me. Yeah, the plot is stupid, from beginning to end, but it's so beautiful! Then again, I'm a sucker for digital that goes for a digital aesthetic and not just fake-celluloid.

my favorite jason statham role, too

Great: Manhunter, Miami Vice
Reasonably OK: Collateral, Public Enemies, The Insider
Not a fan: Mohicans, Ali

― Eric H., Friday, September 26, 2014 12:32 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

agree w this hierarchy 100% except i like them all, manhunter is my fav, put heat and thief in the middle tier, the keep is kinda weird and doesnt count, l.a. takedown is the tv movie he made of heat before he made heat and is a lol for sure

and miami vice the tv show is classic needless to say

Reasonably OK: Collateral, Public Enemies, The Insider

all bad imo. nothing movies.

pft u dont move

blackhat looks like it could have a substantial number of miami vice '06-style michael mann moments

and of course the obligatory MM signature intense gun shooting scene

what i love about MM is he directs the coolest, most composed movies in a lot of ways and then his meaningful scenes have a heavy dose of something like sevendust on the sndtrk. i actually do love that about him, no sarcasm.

wld be interested in seeing a realistic hacking movie, team of eastern european nerds working for the mob steals huge cache of customer info from a large consumer goods company, consumer goods company calls their insurance provider, government agency tracks the attack to its country of origin, shrugs

i'd like to see a movie where a rogue band of russians shoots down a passenger jet, NATO assembles, investigators are hampered, attack is tracked to likely group of origin, world shrugs.

the part of reality that makes for poor cinema is all the shrugging

to be fair:

http://stream1.gifsoup.com/view/937887/death-shrug-o.gif

the part of reality that makes for poor cinema is all the shrugging

spoken like a true leech

http://commdiginews.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/AtlasShrugged3-640.jpg

what i love about MM is he directs the coolest, most composed movies in a lot of ways and then his meaningful scenes have a heavy dose of something like sevendust on the sndtrk. i actually do love that about him, no sarcasm.

I keep some Cornell on the iPod in case I ever come across a coyote crossing the street

whenever i'm driving my gunmetal blue four door charger, deep in a brood sesh after offing some mid-level heroin dealers who were pushing into my territory, i always get my lisa gerrard on

Who wouldn't?

I'm still annoyed that this didn't happen: http://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/may/27/michael-mann-go-like-hell - if anyone could surpass the look and feel of McQueen's Le Mans...

Go Like Hell is now apparently a Tom Cruise movie and the Oblivion guy is directing.

Trailer is terrible but I'll still watch this.

Late career Mann masterpiece:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6joglwxWuo

Hell, just because:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JJip8Wk0Ag

The pilot is the only ep he directed, right?

According to IMDB, the pilot was directed by Thomas Carter. Mann established the style, and executive produced all 111 episodes, though according to this avclub profile, he was really out of there after two years.

Long, long interview transcript:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/legendary-newsman-mike-wallace-detested-734792

Vadim Rizov commenting on the Stuart Murdoch musical on Letterboxd:

"I like this way too much for stupid personal factors — all the band chat was straight high school fare, I like the songs, everyone looks 'alluring' to say the least — but every day I have to wake up and read about how Michael Mann is a flawless Jesus, so I'm not feeling too apologetic..."

the world's tiniest synth is pulsing out a brooding score for vadim rizov and his tragic groundhog day-like dilemma

i'd take that over watching a "Miami Vice" ep or a spiffier "ooh look at the deep blacks" digital version of same.

maybe vadim should have thought twice before scrawling 'michael mann is a flawless jesus' on his bedroom ceiling

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtJoN68ZCf8

Looks weirdly generic and the snippets of dialog sounds like boilerplate, but I have faith in Michael Mann.

A boiler-plate Michael Mann technothriller sounds pretty good actually.

I think that looks incredible, I'm getting a kind of miami vice 2006 vibe from some of it.

90% Miami Vice, 10% https://blogatkiwi.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/eng_the_net.jpg?w=300&h=279

http://hd-report.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/blackhat-chris-hemsworth-still1-600x255.jpg
http://public.media.smithsonianmag.com/legacy_blog/1995-pizza-dot-net-sm.jpg

Is that Jose Yero as Thor's FBI handler? I'M IN.

Yep!

idk this looks pretty dumm

this hemsworth dude with his generic good looks is the main turnoff for me. seriously, the hacker has to look like an abercrombie model?

most of us do *runs hand through hair*

with these mann flicks you've got to just embrace and accept the ridiculousness bc the good shit lies beyond it.

Brogrammer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xpfJEBU9BA

Interviews, etc.:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/30/blackhat-featurette_n_6395866.html

same as ^^

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bVH0bWdP3I

"Don't Call Him A Stylist...This Mustard-Yellow Wall Just Happened to Be There"

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-sneaks-michael-mann-20150111-story.html

Well, saw a screening of this tonight and, as usual, left humming the scenery and feeling like I'd vicariously just done and felt some very important things.

Solid flick.

Another interview:

Do you have any Starsky & Hutch memories?
I remember writing that there was a robbery, and a car jumped the curb and went through the window of a car dealership. And then they shot it. I said, "Wow, this is crazy. I write this stuff, and they go and do it." So then, of course, the ambition increased.

blackhat looks pretty bad, doesn't it? i might see it anyway.

Another interview:

quite amused that michael mann is being interviewed by "men's journal"

lede: "Michael Mann is a man."

his fanboys almost give dePalma's a run for their money

http://i59.tinypic.com/f4r87l.png

i thought "public enemies" was pretty indefensible, but some mann-stans still repped for it. i don't have much hope for this one. the reviews from those not in the "converted" camp are pretty dire.

also what's with mann's cult seeming to grow and grow even when he stops making good movies? something similar happened to paul verhoeven.

actually i don't know if it's growing or just increasing in amplitude.

Well, if you are new to Mann, there is no decline, just a pile of cool films to watch in any order. But are any Mann newbies dipping into Mohicans or Ali or Insider, or just sticking with the crime thrillers?

i thought public enemies was pretty excellent and i really liked the final scene, the one between cotillard and lang.

big miami vice and collateral fan here too. i don't think he's really fallen off that much. i do think he's kind of zeroed in more on his own particular obsessions and moved away from making films as coherent as the insider and heat, but i think for mann that kinda works well.

I love Miami Vice and Collateral. Public Enemy was the first of his that did little for me (aside from its innate Mann-ness). But love him or not, from Ali on, he's been pretty divisive.

I can buy the Verhoeven comparison. There seem definite divisions between early period defenders vs. late period.

I'm not even sure many American (at least) Verhoeven folks are into his early (European) period. In his case we're talking middle period Verhoeven. Of course, there has been very little late period Verhoeven. Black Book and Hollow Man is about it for the past 20 years, and the latter is a POS with no fans.

Hollow Man is awesome

:)

Black Book felt like it was going to be the start of a new phase.

Mark Harris called Blackhat Mann's Marnie, so maybe the Verhoeven early-middle-late thing applies here. Not many love a whole lot of Hitchcock's British movies outside of the obvious highlights (e.g. Sabotage, 39 Steps, Man Who Knew Too Much).

Black Book has bits as inspired as anything V's ever done.

I liked Miami Vice better a second time but all his movies have indigestible hooey in them.

Just got the Lightbox schedule, and they've got a series running over the winter (everything through Public Enemies except The Keep, whatever that is). I've seen them all, but I'll order for Heat and Collateral for sure, maybe a couple of others.

this was p bad & super dry, i get that is maybe what ur going for, hackers as detached actors, villains lacking motive other than $$, idk that does not make for a v compelling film imo; also i prob havent seen hemsworth ever before but he is such a blank its ridiculous

'dry' is what I feared. Dry does not suit MM, does it? It's all about mood and a kind of exaggerated pathos backed with some sort of dadtronica.

About to see this. Bad sign it's on the little screen.

yea theres little to no mann™ moodiness idk i think w/ such a global scope itd have needed to be 4 hrs if he tried to incorporate it

this movie appears to have been a bomb which isn't surprising. tbh whatever its merits may be, the ad campaign is awful, one of the worst I've seen recently.

yea my hunch is that the studio could tell it was tracking 2 be a bomb and really amped up that awful (agreed) advert campaign but idk who theyd poss be pulling in w it

centering the poster ads for your globetrotting action movie around a lock of chris hemsworth's hair is fucking strange.

yeah trailers were abysmal, made me want to see Mortdecai almost

CitizenFour is the better Mann movie on this subject/milieu, even though it's not his.

That would have made a much better 13 episode cable series. That said, what a weak TV episode. That might be the closest Mann has come to directing a crap episode of Miami Vice. This may be the first Mann with almost nothing going for it - and I'm including The Keep - beyond its innate Mann-ness, but that is not enough here.

LOL at seven foot tall Thor blending in anywhere. And the bad guy was a blank guy. Did he even have a name?

One thing that would have given this more weight, if not made it better, is had it begun with 30 minutes of Thor in prison and how it hardened him and taught him to fight. Also, another 20 minutes to show why he and dude's sister fell in love.

Eh, fuck it. Nothing could have helped. You can't condense a boilerplate miniseries into anything good.

I liked it as a infosec James Bond movie, but like all good propaganda I liked it without being able to explain why later. Every hacker I know has a braggart/ego streak miles long, but Hemsworth plays it so cool as to be inert.

I found the whole thing so ridiculous it was infuriating. So you have a super hacker, able to summon hundreds of millions of dollars at will, and able to marshall a small militia of psychos, and his grand plan is to what, blow up power plants to make more money?

And speaking of said militia, you have a group of armed men with machine guns and rocket launchers marauding around, linked to a guy who took out a nuclear power plant and manipulated the stock narket, and US intelligence just doesn't seem to care? Destroying a nuclear power plant and manipulating the stock market you might be two things that would get their attention the most!

xpost - Well, to control a commodity, which is what's creating the new super-duper-rich. But it sounded ridiculous paired with the manhuntering "That's what you're doing, you sonofabitch, isn't it?" moment. And the line that seemed most ridiculous to me was Hemsworth looking across an empty landscape and rattling through the potential materials this particular landscape could be used to create.

(And all true and otm with the second post!)

But why would he care about controlling a commodity when he can just spike the soy prices and make $75 million, or however much? Just so silly. It didn't even bother to give him a real motive, like "I am a huge hacker asshole, bow before my ego and abilities!" No, just some dude.

It felt like there were 8 hours missing from this.

every thing people say just makes me more excited to see it. it sounds like a wonderful visual experience unencumbered by boring plot-rubbish. monday. i'll probably hate it.

As much as it looks like a Mann movie, it is not even that visually impressive compared to most Mann films. some helicopter shots of cities at night, some cool reflections. I wish he put as much thought into the story as he did in re-creating the accurate sound of specific gunshots through specific materials.

it sounds like a wonderful visual experience unencumbered by boring plot-rubbish.

Yes, very.

Michael Mann's Quantum Of Solace.

It's not even James Bond level. It really is TV schlock level, imo. It's got no gravity, nothing at stake, barely fleshed out relationships.

yea part of me wants to defend it a tad but im also kinda *knodding* @ every JiC post so

Seriously, you will not find a bigger Mann defender than I am. This is not worth defending.

goddamn this is all v disappointing I was kinda excited for this movie

but every negative thing about blackhat in the thread seems m/l in line with the lukewarm reviews, bummer

some fascinating stuff in this about *just how much* material was recycled for Heat

http://thedissolve.com/features/movie-of-the-week/882-the-long-warm-up-to-heat/

Really, he's been recycling the James Caan scene from "Thief" again and again, at least in his crime thrillers. Basically professional people sitting across the table from one another, one telling the other that they might be friends/lovers, but when the heat comes down, it's all over and they'll never see each other again. Obviously that''s in "Heat," but it's also essentially in Public Enemies, this one, Miami Vice, maybe implicit in Manhunter, and possibly Collateral, too, where the lonely hitman (who has divested himself of all ties to civilization in pursuit of order) develops a rapport with the driver, but really the driver is biding his time before he can get the hell out of this abusive relationship.

Insider (I think his best film) flips the script, basically with Pacino telling Crowe, when the heat comes down I will *not* leave you. That's sort of the romantic underpinning of Mohicans, too. Ali ... I don't remember anything about that.

fuck "visual experiences" in narrative movies that are snazzy images with no underpinnings

Ali to foreman: "when the heat comes down I will leave you on the mat"

fuck "visual experiences" in narrative movies

lol, i meant

fuck "visual experiences" in narrative movies

If visual experiences isn't part of your equation, read a fucking book.

Excellent compromise I own:

http://www.dga.org/~/media/Images/DGAQ%20Article%20Images/0603%20Fall%202006/books_Taschen_MichaelMann%20jpg.ashx?w=175&h=207&as=1

I mean it with the quotes. Don't give me dialogue and acting you clearly don't give a fuck about, Mr Auteur.

but keep on strawmanning, EH, and pump up da volume

i like some of his movies a lot, but holy cats is michael mann a pretentious douche

https://twitter.com/vishnevetsky/status/556197084169527296/photo/1

also see his sight & sound poll comments

like, if there's one thing distinguishing thief from drive (and there are a few things), it's not that thief is an incisive marxian analysis of global capitalism

I like that conflict. Mann's roots are hardcore blue collar Chicago, and his movies are often about a working class of sorts, but cast through this intellectualized spectrum. I think it can be read as pretentious, but I think Mann really feels strongly about the world he is depicting. Like, good or bad he can make some pretty rousing defenses of what some people see as ridiculous. That's why his commentary tracks are great.

he is so obsessed with details and minutiae that when he finally makes a movie as thoughtless as his new one, I am really curious as to why he made the bad decisions that he did.

well, he has that hollywood thing (which latter-day malick has, too) where you get obsessive over the minutiae but sometimes miss the larger stuff.

and i'm not saying that his intellectualism is bogus, but he does seem really set on making sure that you're aware of it, more in his interviews than the films (although it crops up occasionally in the films, too).

I think his obsession with detail pays off when he has some space to let the information breathe. Lately, no doubt due to budgets and commercial pressure, I get the feeling he lacks the power to make 3 hour character-drive epics. I do find it interesting that so many of his films (even Heat!) were subsequently released as a director's cut. For better or for worse, he keeps thinking about and tweaking his films, and some of the versions (Ali and Mohicans in particular) are much better than the theatrical cuts, even when the changes are subtle.

Though he seems pretentious, I don't really get that from Mann. I think he is just so thoughtful and thorough that he sometimes seems to be showing off, but that's likely his autodidactism at work. This new one is such an anomaly, in that it is clearly a Mann film with many Mann things going on in it, but is lacking justification for the details it does include, while missing a ton of details it really needs.

Kinda loved this. This review is pretty on point. http://reverseshot.org/reviews/entry/1989/blackhat

As are most of his. He is remarkably faithful to his enthusiasms and I envy that.

Well, I'll give him credit for identifying all the ways the movie is weird and erratic and inconsistent, but then highlighting them as pros rather than cons.

ooooh i betray my enthusiasms all the time like most ppl

I do too; from which stems dissatisfaction.

https://twitter.com/calummarsh/status/557213638088749056
https://twitter.com/calummarsh/status/557214572361555969

was being tot sarcastic btw, i have no idea how anyone does that

Well try being Scandinavian, for a start.

late for that

those calum marsh tweets make me want to hate michael mann's movies

i'm sort of half-convinced that some of the over-enthusiastic mann-o-lytes are sort of making up for being late to the party, having discovered his great films a little late and now trying to outdo the other fans with their enthusiasm for his newer, profoundly mediocre films. sort of how jonathan rosenbaum praised "hollow man" (!) to the skies after having missed the vanguard critical boat on verhoeven's other american films.

there's that line from an interview in cahiers (was it truffaut or godard or rohmer?) from the 1960s where they basically say, "yes, we love minnelli and preminger et al, but let's admit that the films they are making now aren't really that good." whether or not you agree about the particular films (anyone want to defend "the chapman report" or "hurry sundown"?), i see a kind of broad parallel.