RICHARD LINKLATER

ah well ok that makes sense

still wanna see this tho. bummed it isn't opening in SF just yet

on a related Jack Black genital note, my friend Jim did the new Tenacious D album cover art (likely NSFW, tho Jay Leno held it up the other night):

http://www.toogoodforradio.com/comedy/stream-tenacious-ds-new-song-album-out-in-may/

a new Tenacious D album is really not something that needed to happen

seeing Bernie tonight

shoulda read me, I am absolved

I did read it, still gonna see it

this was pretty enjoyable. lack of Jack Black bjs didn't bother me.

bernie owns

weak tea

yeah I enjoyed it. I like movies where the surrounding community is as much a central part of the narrative as the main characters

keeping Bernie offscreen wd've been better.

so I lost my hopes that Bernie would be uproarious but uneven like I Love You, Philip Morris in the first ten minutes.

http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Ethan-Hawke-Julie-Delpy-Shooting-Sequel-Sunrise-Sunset-31409.html

We’re also doing a follow-up to Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, so that will be fun. We’re going to shoot that this summer,” Hawke reveals. “I’ve gotten into trouble, so I’m sworn to secrecy [about where it will take place]. The biggest change between this one and the last one is the Internet. The first time we did it, we didn’t have any pressure; nobody gave a shit.

omg I hope for good things, I love those 2 movies!

When I heard they were doing Before Sunset, I thought, "that is a TERRIBLE idea."

I feel the same way now, despite really loving Before Sunset.

Finally saw Bernie. Thought it fantastic, but that's perhaps owed to, you know, the TEXAS thing. He didn't get talked up as much as Black did, but McConaughey absolutely NAILED the lifelong small-time/big ideas Texan Politico ("Let me show you what I like to call my 'Wheel of MIS-Fortune'."), from the hand movements down to the cowboy hat and half-full bottle of Big Red on the table in the courtroom (that part I guess was really up the props department).

Was moved by the dedication to Lou Perryman and Eagle Pennell at the end of the credits.

i was crestfallen to find out at the end that Rick Dial had died

bernie was great. i thought shirley maclaine was just fantastic (jack black too, but her performance was so smart). especially after how much i disliked her on downton abbey.

i loved this. Morbs is probably right in that it does deflate a little. for that happened after the murder.

townspeople the real star (and maybe even subject) of the film, which almost reads like an ethnography of small town east texas. particularly loved the sense in which it was obvious (to me anyway) that many of the interviewees were cutting up not only for the camera but for each other--you get the sense this kind of performance in front the community is a part (and pleasure) of daily life in a town like that. this is like sitting in church and listening to gossip. Bernie is a hero because he played that game, because he performed so well. the "reality" of what he did is incidental.

*for me that happened after the murder.

I just watched Bernie, that shit was great!

Me too! McConaughey /is/ Texas as much as any of the folksy old people.

yeah, totally.

Before Midnight getting rapturous reviews.

This guy disagreess: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2013/jan/21/before-midnight-first-look-review

the film it most closely resembles is not either of its predecessors but Abbas Kiarostami's Certified Copy, an ironic, metatextual take on cinematic love stories that somehow, and most unfortunately, feels much more genuine than this.

Somehow this doesn't dampen my enthusiasm.

uh ya haha

end of cinema

go back to bed

xp sign of enema

http://www.gossippando.it/wp-content//2013/01/EthanHawke-platinato-prima-dopo-NY.jpg

bernie was great. i thought shirley maclaine was just fantastic (jack black too, but her performance was so smart). especially after how much i disliked her on downton abbey.

― Author ~ Coach ~ Goddess (s1ocki), Wednesday, November 21, 2012 6:01 PM (6 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

but w-w-wait-- she didn't do anything. she just held fast to the same constipated expression, staring out blanky through soulless botox eyes. it was a non-performance, like she was kind of animal or something.

i don't have any problems w/ the conception of bernie, i just thought it fell down in the execution, like everybody was half-asleep. was kind of sloppy visually too, he gets that way sometimes (some scenes from the otherwise good school of rock are like the most awkwardly framed/edited things i've seen by a director i admire).

come on she did more than just stare! (i can't remember any specific things she did now, but i thought she was great!)

i dunno. it struck me as the one of the least expressive performances i'd seen.

Bernie was a nothing.

i didnt think maclaine was that good either... it didnt help that the movie only wanted to see her character one way, but her sourpuss act didnt do a lot for me

the star of the movie was the guy in the diner talking about the different regions of texas, and how he wouldnt trust the rednecks in the next county over to mow his lawn. that guy was perfect

^^Sonny Davis! He was in a bunch of stuff back in the day--the early Eagle Pennell films, Melvin and Howard, Roadie, Fast Times At Ridgemont High (he's the guy that get Reinhold fired at the burger place)...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWHHQ3Rz534

holy shit that guy was a fuckin actor? i thought he was a real guy from the town!

yeah he was awesome. I wasn't sure if he was an actor or not either

haha I guess I'm not surprised since he seemed a little TOO perfect. The bit where he says people tend to forget about the panhandle, and then he promptly forgets about it, is when I knew I'd love the movie.

yeah he was awesome. I wasn't sure if he was an actor or not either

― Number None, Saturday, May 25, 2013 4:12 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that was probably the most interesting thing about this movie, the way it blurred the distinction b/t documentary and fiction.

the actual character at the heart of the movie was just null. the film couldn't seem to decide if we were seeing him "through" the eyes of the townspeople exclusively or if we were going to get a bit of privileged access into his own feelings. it ended up being a little of both, and for the me that way it kind of indifferently switched among these vantages made the film seem kind of lazy and ineffectual to me.

i thought it was pretty consistent in keeping Bernie a bit opaque--at what point do we get privileged access to his feelings?

well we get some private moments IIRC, like him breaking down after the murder, no? or him complaining about ol' miss botox? i just remember a few points where the "as seen through others" thing is just kind of violated. i mean if i thought linklater was managing these changes in tone and perspective in some organized way, i could have gone with it. but it just felt kind of sloppy.

i admit i'm running on imperfect memories here since i saw it a while ago (when it was in theaters) and it didn't leave a strong impression.

yeah that's fair enough. i guess i chose to interpret those moments as more like a "negative" correlative in the sense that they show Bernie is maintaining a facade but they don't give us much insight into what's behind it. hell, even the murder shows that maybe Bernie doesn't understand himself very well.

I watched this last night, sparked primarily by all the interesting back-and-forth here. I agree with something from almost everyone...It's a conceptual rather than a lived film, and more often than not, there's a limit to how much I like such films. (I prefer the messiness of School of Rock, in other words--lots of exceptions, of course.) So it was always a little off for me, even though it held my interest the whole way. I agree with a lot of what amateurist wrote above, although I did admire Maclaine's performance (but can see where someone else wouldn't). McConaughey was excellent, and thanks for pointing out the Fast Times guy--would never have realized it was him.

i had a dream that i was watching before midnight last night and the film started with a sort of wacky, bright green-and-yellow animated logo announcing it was "the latest in the BEFORE series!"

I liked the movie, but the weakest part of it (as the real Danny Buck Davidson pointed out) is that it's entirely too sympathetic to Bernie (although maybe that's because it was impossible to find anyone with anyone nice to say about the widow MacLaine, but since a lot of the talking head people are actors I don't see where that would be an impediment). Bernie might really have been the harmless, generous naif that the movie makes him out to be, but he still committed a pretty horrific crime and the Fargo-esque way it plays in the film diminished that.