Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig's "Frances Ha"

noah baumbach did kcrw's guest dj project. i approve of his picks, even/especially the supertramp.

http://www.kcrw.com/music/programs/gd/gd130605noah_baumbach

That screed gabbneb posted could have been written by Greenberg himself!

wanna know what u think lamp

it's hard to sort out how i feel about 'frances ha' as a film or even like, 'greta gerwig' as person from how i feel about my own life i mean i even just got back from a probably ill-advised trip to europe and so i wasn't really watching very critically. i'm also bored and anxious with portrayals of urban near-adulthood generally, they all seem to occlude the most important or central parts of the xp in some meaningful way, i wonder how much any 'successful' portrayal of this mode is betrayed simply by being 'successful', i think i wanted it more incoherence, more ambivalence, but that probably wouldn't have made it a better movie...

nice.

I haven't seen any of Gerwig's pre-Greenberg mumblecore movies. Aren't they meant to be all about incoherence and ambivalence?

so mickey sumner is stings daughter? huh ok

What you're seeing on screen is the rotting carcass of a nation's exhausted cinema .... pointless, empty triviality posturing as wry social observation, spewed from the wealthy pockets of a talentless hack with too many inside connections and Taschen art books piled up onto his conspicuously displayed Eames chair.

Although I like some Baumbach, this describes how I feel about the bulk of today's "indie" film

Generation ZZZ

this is p good morbsian wordplay ish

"roaring back like a million untamed lions" put it over the top for me

WARNING: The Deep Thoughts of Greta Gerwig, Artiste
by kiss_trigger-570-471334 (Sat May 4 2013 20:22:26) Ignore this User | Report Abuse

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If this is what the American "independent" cinema has come to, it's time for the funeral rites:

“I also think we have to believe in a happy ending,” Gerwig said. “We have to, otherwise what is anybody doing? I always have this frustration that, in a therapeutic sense, it can feel you have one of two ways of relating to your parents: one is you’re in denial, and the other is you can be really angry at them. And I’m, like, there has to be a way in which you just LOVE them.” She continued, “And I feel that there has to be a story that’s true to its marrow and also filled with joy. There has to be that. Otherwise, it’s utterly depressing.”

She went on, “This is lofty”—a lot of emphasis—“but in one of Hamlet’s soliloquies he says, ‘This brave o’erhanging firmament,’ and he’s talking about the air and the stars and how everything is so alive and so beautiful, and at the end of it he says, ‘It means nothing, it means nothing, and I don’t want to live.’ And I’m, like, ‘How can you see everything and then feel that way?’ I always want to find the reverse of that—to see all the darkness and find the light, as opposed to see all the light and resonate with the nothingness.”

by kiss_trigger-570-471334 (Sat May 18 2013 21:59:07) Ignore this User | Report Abuse

UPDATED Sat May 18 2013 23:07:32

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Frances: Were like a lesbian couple that don't have sex.
Sophie: I know, right? But like, if we have sex, then we might threaten
our demographic and Apple product placement deal, and we need to reaffirm
our hetero/traditional orthodoxy under the guise of hip independent film.
Frances: Oh, wow....that's like so self-reflexive...let me think about that.
Sophie: Are we gonna play fight again so we can sublimate our physical desires, while on the surface appearing "cute" and/or "quirky"?
Frances: Oh, wow...this is getting a little too, you know.... meta-Freudian for me, Soph.
Sophie: But you have a BA in psych.
Frances: Yeah, but...I want to be a dancer because I always wanted the legwarmers from "Fame" thing to come back again to hide my fat calves.
Sophie: Let's put on some disco music, which will help with that pop-cultural
retro reference thing in the dialogue and soundtrack, because, you know it's millennial.
Frances: Uh-huh.
Sophie: Yeah.
Frances: It's the story of us, like were in a film of ourselves, while I'm in actuality sleeping with the director in real life to get acting jobs, playing myself playing a version of me in black and white, for no reason, watching myself do the laundry and trying to find a job while dropping fancy author's names and picking my teeth and making quirky facial expressions and then becoming famous for it...you know? I'm a muse.
Sophie: Amused?
Frances: No, a muse.
Sophie: Oh. That's very charming. Your so very charming and eccentric, Frances.
Frances: Does that mean were gonna have sex now?
Sophie: Not at all. We need to focus on money and careers and romantic affairs with boys who remind you of John Paul Belmondo, but in a hip "recession-era" way. But not "Girls".
Frances: You are the man, Sophie. That's rad, another obscure 80's pop reference of outdated expressions for extra-hip quirky charm in the dialogue of like, the movie of our generation of itself, with us...you know?
Sophie: I know.
Frances: Take off your socks.
Sophie: Sex?
Frances: No, socks, silly.
Sophie; Do you think we'd look better in color?
Frances: Probably not.
Sophie: That's so existential.
Frances: Do you want to French kiss, like were in "Breathless" or like, you know, like Noah loves Eric Rohmer and Godard and all those French ticklers he has and he puts them up my..
Sophie: No.
Frances:Ok....ahoy, matey. I'm going to make another quirky noise when you try to touch my shoulder, ok? For restraint's sake, if not outright prudery.
Sophie: Now that's tragic.
Frances: Shakespearean, kinda.
Sophie: Good night, Frances.
Frances: Good night, Sophie.

its v disingenious 2 hold up gerwig & baumbach as some counterculture indie stalwarts, they co-wrote madagascar 3 right? or @ least baumbach did

that said, kiss-trigger shd def come post on ilx

yeah but isn't that kind of how they hold themselves out and how the film industry holds them out?

Ignore this User | Report Abuse | Flag Post | Suggest Ban

old man yells at ruling class 'why dont you be lesbians'

i just learned who greta gerwig was a couple of days ago because i started to read some profile of her that began with an entire paragraph that can be summed up thusly: "it's not hip to like Woody Allen today in NYC but she does and oh her exuberance and her willowy arms will charm you and challenge you simultaneously while you die of a heart attack from her infectious laugh"
then i stopped reading it and GISed to see who this magnificent creature was and i found a normal looking young woman

which was kind of a relief tbh

this lame reps woody allen... oh but her willowy arms

her spirit inferno will charm you until you have been reduced to a heap of ashes on the ground, which she will then resurrect, thereby earning your eternal devotion

I haven't seen any of Gerwig's pre-Greenberg mumblecore movies. Aren't they meant to be all about incoherence and ambivalence?

well i like mumblecore more than i liked 'frances ha', they are also generally not that successful

Is it "not hip to like Woody Allen" in the sense that it's an assumed thing like liking hamburgers or something, or is it actually hip to not like Woody Allen?

its a lame reference, you can like him but not like, like him ime

i imagine some hip people like woody allen while others do not

if you want to be real hip never like anything too much, all in moderation #protip

The wedding blog was funny.

if you want to be real hip never like anything too much, all in moderation #protip

― lag∞n, Thursday, June 6, 2013 11:33 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this post was alright

i also cite abuse of "modern love" in the trailer

I'm in actuality sleeping with the director in real life to get acting jobs

This is where kiss trigger reveals his hand as a creepy asshole

for some reason I assumed kiss trigger was female

i also cite abuse of "modern love" in the trailer

― free your spirit pig (La Lechera), Thursday, June 6, 2013 10:43 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well his use of this is a nod to carax's "mauvais sang"

not necessarily a good idea to make an extended reference to a film that is much better than yours

xp Oh, you may be right.

"Many would argue" that worked out fine for Brian De Palma.

not necessarily a good idea to make an extended reference to a film that is much better than yours

can't think of many instances where extended references to films that are much worse than the film in question really worked out tbh

and that dope who made The Artist

xp

yeah I think the power move is almost unquestionably to only make extended references to "classic" but obscure and unpopular films, affirming your supreme taste while elevating your film above the subject of your homage.

still haven't had time to see, but as it opens around the country i'd be curious for compare-and-contrasts with An Oversimplification of Her Beauty. (Thirtyish black Brooklyn boho filmmaker makes drama-doc about his ex)

the thread on that 1 will be less than 250+ posts, i predict

i dunno it came at a point in the movie when i was warming to it a little bit and then it was like, "oh, i could've been watching a leos carax film, couldn't i?"

it's not like baumbach _did_ anything with his reference, it was just sort of _there_

'oh i could've been watching a leos carax film, couldn't i?'

"Film About First World Problems Inspires First-er World Problems (Pictures @ 11)"

like you haven't sat through a crappy movie and thought about what you'd rather be doing instead

assholes

I walked out of Before Sunrise long ago because my friend and I realized we could be sitting and talking instead of stuck in a train compartment with Ethan Hawke hitting on a gal. (Liked/loved the second one, though.)

And there are several writers who deal with privilege in a reasonable, persuasive way but in Britain, at least, this issue has caught fire on Twitter, where it's much easier to get heated and phrase a tweet in a way that sets the discussion spiralling down a more negative ad hominem path.

Oops, wrong thread

You sure, DL?

Also: Teasing, Am, Teasing!

This is a good one... fell down a little in a couple repetitive scenes. I liked Sophie's line “He's a nice guy, you know, for today."

The trailer is the worst kind of nineties dr(lol)oll indie romcom.

Were you disappointed that there was no rom?

"I like you, Patches."
"I like you too Frances."

a great movie about a magic pixie girl

After a while you forget about the magic and that she's a six inch pixie with dragonfly wings. Thats the real triumph of Gerwig's performance.