come anticipate 'Brick' with me!

...which would be ok, again, if the actors had been trained to deliver the argot.

i like this movie enough that i bought a copy.

haters OTM.

Although if it had actually been a high school play instead of a movie it would've been great!

SHIT SANDWICH.

Maybe clarifying Shakey's point a little: the teenage world is recognizable as the noir world (actions, motivations) but what's the point if the teenagers don't TALK like teenagers? (ie Alfred OTM). Not trusting the teenagers not to talk like the Continental Op and still come up noir --> unpleasant gimmick.

this movie is better teen noir than brick

http://www.digitallyobsessed.com/cover_art1/tart.jpg

seriously

so weird. I had no idea this was such a divisive movie.

ilxors only like contrived teen movies when theyre made in the 80s (ferris bueller etc)

... except when they're called "brick" and made in the 2000s? are you sure you read the thread?

kenan i really really wanted to like this and yet it's one of only like 3 movies i've ever walked out on, so when other people express mild enjoyment it's just perplexing to me.

New Best Friend >> The Smokers >> Tart

It's Joseph Gordon-Levitt's finest role since Angels In The Outfield

It's a really fun movie. A little amateurish at times. The fight scenes were very entertaining and the running scene culminating in the trip was very clever and well executed. The dialog was great, not for it's authentic delivery, but for the humor. I especially love the moment on the beach when the Pin asks him if he's ever read Tolkien. "His descriptions of things are really good. He makes you wanna be there."

Haters are sour and have no sense of fun.

Teen movies might as well be written and acted like this because they are almost all painful to listen to, even the good ones.

"She knows where I sit at lunch."

C'mon. That's awesome.

I hardly even think of it as a teen movie. It's pretty effective noir, down to the last cliche.

There's a little plot problem at the end, tho.

Since being a poseur has done so much for Tarantino, you can't blame the (much less talented) writer-director for trying it with this tripe.

Yeah I'm gonna have to join the haters on this one. The trailer got my girlfriend and I so hyped up, but when we finally rented it we were both pretty disappointed. I get that the stylized dialogue was sort of the point, but after Veronica Mars proved that you can do high school noir while still letting the characters talk like chatty modern teenagers, it just felt so ham-fisted and overcooked. I mean, I went to a high school were small-time dealers beat up and killed each other over drugs, so the plot didn't seem too far-fetched, they just made it feel ridiculous with poor exectution. And it felt very much like the rookie director's first effort that it was, hopefully his next one will be better.

it felt very much like the rookie director's first effort that it was

yes, but i'm kinda thrilled by that

hopefully his next one will be better

fingers crossed

RUFFALO

I wanna see John and Fluffy Bear At the Movies now.

roffalo

The Bros Bloomps?

I was all about this movie fwiw

John Justen and Fluffy Bear at the movies is in preproduction at the moment, but prominent names have been attatched to the project.

Wow, I'm also surprised there's a hater contingent for this one. The complaint that doesn't really make sense to me is Shakey's:

If you aren't gonna have the characters operate in any of the standard way teenagers do, or have their world bear any resemblance to teenage life and motives and concerns...

This is weird to me, since so much of the obvious surface-level fun and recognition of the thing comes from the way the high-school setting is already noir. Someone's already mentioned the "where have you been eating lunch" slang, which is a good example of that -- but it goes beyond the slang, really, into the idea of high schools as microcosms where there really is an importance to where you're eating lunch, with complex heirarchies and subterranean groups and social scheming that's as noir as anything from the get-go. Most of the great moments of crossover and recognition come from that, with the assistant principal scene probably chief among them -- the ass VP is the police of the high school world, the disciplinarian, the one adult who's actually (in the real world!) trying to keep track of how a high school's worlds operate (they have informants and shit!), and so it turns out to be a rather narrow exaggeration to have one taking on that role, right? I can't figure out why this bothered Shakey, rather than pretty well delivering the chuckly recognition it seemed meant for.

There was a review somewhere that basically said that this movie has no idea who their audience is which is probably otm. Most teenagers wouldn't get the Hammett/Chandler references and the people who do get it probably wouldn't get why they have to be placed in the context of a modern high school. My first impression was that they were pretty much saying that noir-speak is a lot like teenage-speak - impenetrable unless you're part of that world. Nabisco otm, it is pretty clear that Brick (and Veronica Mars as mentioned upthread) is basically pointing out that high-school is very noir. When I saw this, it really got me wondering why nobody thought about doing this earlier.

I kind of liked it, mostly because it is so obviously done by an amateur, you could see just how hard they were trying. And there were a lot of fun moments - how could you not appreciate all the physical comedy in this? All the fighting scenes were great! Plus, I liked the dorky kid who plays JGL's sidekick/man-on-the-inside but then again, I would.

I thought it was pretty well directed, though it's not like I really know about those things. The previously mentioned chase/trip scene stands out, as does the visual concept of the pin's dark basement with almost no furniture and the really low ceiling.

People think too much about stuff.

nabisco 8080 -- it's much more realistic than the obligatory 'newcomer is introduced to the taxonomy of highschool subcultures' lunch-room scene in every other teen movie

EVEN "TEN THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU"!?!?!?

How many times has Joseph Gordon-Leavitt been introduced to the taxonomy of high school subcultures in a lunchroom?

the most obnoxious Sundance Concept Movie I've seen yet.

as opposed to regular Sundance, which is just after-school specials with a dash of "quirky"?

n/a: don't get me wrong, I thought it was quite well-directed myself. I just meant amateur-ish in the sense that it felt like someone's first real movie. As in you could really see how much love the director had for it, it was clear that he had thought a lot about the camera angles and the sets and detail. It just felt like it was a little too detailed.

I didn't get the sense that these kids were actually in high school at all - you never see anybody in class, or doing homework, or really ever even hanging out with other groups of kids, or doing anything that high school kids usually spend their time doing. Instead, they do all sorts of things that adults would ostensibly notice and intervene in (fights, murders, drug dealing), yet there is no significant adult presence. There is no internal logic in operation beyond MUST SHOEHORN IN EVERY HAMMET/CHANDLER TROPE.

Haha wait Shakey is your complaint that the lack of adult presence was UNREALISTIC?

Instead, they do all sorts of things that adults would ostensibly notice and intervene in (fights, murders, drug dealing) (sex, house parties, not doing homework) yet there is no significant adult presence.

FIXED

plz don't get all hifalutin about shoehorning in tropes, it's v boring

PLEASE can we PLEASE not use Hammett & Chandler as interchangable figureheads

Brick is much more Chandler than Hammett anyway

I think it did a good job of conveying what high school felt like at times, while making me wish that's what it was actually like.

The druggies are doing pot behind the local coffeeshop, drama kids in lame high school theatre, Brendan talks about his English teacher with the Asst VP ("Tough teacher?" "Tough but fair."), the jock is bragging to everyone who would listen and Brendan's buddy hangs out in the library because his bus comes too early. What's not high school about it?!

Anyway, the Pin's mum serves them orange juice, completely doesn't notice that her kid is a big-time dealer = every oblivious suburban parent ever?

I mean, this movie is all about a very airy and improbably combination of forms and moods, it seems incredibly weird to think that anyone would expect it to operate in any kind of serious real-world way!

(My favorite aspect of that, BTW = drama-club femme fatale being in scene-appropriate costume for each appearance, despite said club clearly not staging full-dress performances of like four different productions in the same two days.)

Brick is much more Chandler than Hammett anyway

It seemed kind of Red Harvest-y to me, but I've never read any Chandler.

(incidentally, if I were going to read any Chandler, what should I read?)

The Big Sleep & The Long Goodbye are good points to start

2nd thought, go for Farewell, My Lovely over Long Goodbye

People think too much about stuff.

Sparkling.

Nabisco, I don't have a problem with real-world correspondences; the actors were just hopeless and the staging awkward, all matters of opinion.

Haha wait Shakey is your complaint that the lack of adult presence was UNREALISTIC?

no, like I said before my complaint is that the film tries to have it both ways - its basic trope (the dialogue and the plot) is totally implausible and unrealistic, but then it also acknowledges a recognizable and realistic teenage world when it suits it (the VP, the refs to "eating lunch" or whatever). I wished the film would pick one or the other - or warp the two together in a more interesting way - but the film engages in a continuity-of-convenience that I found irritating and very off-putting. (If there's a VP, where are the cops, for example? The police don't care that there's a dead body/girl missing? wtf)

(and Alfred's right the acting IS terrible, but that's a separate thing - none of the actors knew how to handle this kind of rapid-fire dialogue with any credibility)

Okay, Shakey, I suppose I can kinda see where you're headed, but I have to mention that your list there strikes me as totally bizarre! You're separating the dialogue and plot out as improbable noir and then claiming that it gets realistically teenaged when it suits it -- "the VP, the refs to 'eating lunch'." But of course the VP talks in the same improbably noir terms as everyone, and his plot function is total noir deal-making. The references to "eating lunch" are a part of the noir argot.

So I don't really follow this idea that it picks and chooses -- part of the fun for me was that they were very well wound together, and the fact that your examples of "recognizable / realistic" strike me as so noir-bound themselves just kinda reaffirms that to me, I guess.

My complaint with the movie is that I tried to watch it twice and couldn't get more than 20 minutes in without being aggravated to the point of turning it off.

I might make it through if there is an English subtitle option, because between the mumbling and shitty background noise/dialog ratio, I think I only caught about half of the lines.

look the reason I brought up the VP is cuz the presence of one adult authority figure implies the presence of an external, ostensibly real/adult world - and if there is an adult world aspect to the film, the rest of the movie doesn't make any sense. Where are the girl's parents - they didn't notice she's gone? The cops don't care that someone's moving coke at a high school? No adults care that none of these kids seem to spend any actual time in class/at school? No adult/parent notices the main character's getting the shit beaten out of him all the time? We're supposed to believe that the VP (and the mom) are the only other adults in this world?