The Wolf of Wall Street (new Scorsese)

all art is quite useless

art is totally useful, not so sure about art criticism

The scene before the final scene is much more pointed (and avoids implicating the audience in the good-bad times ... which maybe was what Scorsese was trying to do in the first place).

http://www.film.com/movies/the-wolf-of-wall-street-morals

That's been Scorsese's weakness as a director, no? He's aware of The Audience as a shadowy thing, out there, and he's rarely sure about implicating them.

doesn't Pesci fire a gun at the audience at the end of GoodFellas? (presumably it's Liotta's dream/vision, but still)

Pesci's dead well before the end of Goodfellas...?

It's a vision, yeah

I don't even remember what the last shot of this movie is, and I'd like to think I'm usually pretty good at remembering those.

It was kinda the same as the last shot of A Touch of Sin.

I never took that final Pesci shot as a dream or vision of Liotta's, just a device thrown in there by Scorsese--a middle-finger representing the attitudes of all those guys, meant to sync up with the Sid Vicious song.

Is Frank Vincent anywhere in The Wolf of Wall Street? Chuck Low? I can see Chuck Low as some low-level brokerage guy hanging on by his fingernails.

Frank Vincent is not in this, will you settle for Fran Lebowitz?

There's a Frank Vincent-related joke I want to make, but I can't make it because she's a woman. My internal censor has come through (it doesn't always).

As picked up by TheWrap, 75-year-old actress Hope Holiday posted to her Facebook page that Scorsese was heckled by an unnamed screenwriter following a weekend screening of "The Wolf of Wall Street" for Academy Awards voters.

last night was torture at the Academy--"The Wolf Of Wall Street"---three hours of torture--same disgusting crap over and over again---after the film they had a discussion which a lot of us did not stay for--the elevator doors opened and Leonardo D. Martin S. and a few others got out then a screen writer ran over to them and started screaming--shame on you --disgusting--

In the comments section of her Facebook post, Holiday, who starred for Billy Wilder in "The Apartment" and "Irma la Douce," revealed that she also admonished the director, but then removed herself from the situation before a fight broke out. ("I ran down the stairs.")

christ this movie owns

nobody that old runs anywher

it was more of a power walk

Thelma:

I do think that everyone is rushing headlong into this complicated technology now to the point where interfacing with somebody else, or some other system, become so complicated, sometimes you just wish you could go to your flat-bed editing machine and just flick a switch and it would come on. But now my assistants spend a great deal of time, they understand this computer stuff better than I do, I edit on a computer but I don’t understand half of what we go through, editing the film and screening it… you have no idea how complicated all these have become, and I worry because it makes us so vulnerable, doesn’t it? All you need is for all the cell towers to down in some disaster and –

– Poof, all the movies are gone.

It’s very true, there is something scary about this rush. And you know digital isn’t stable. It has to be migrated every five years or else it just vanishes.

Yeah, it’s not even as good an archival medium as film.

That’s right. Film, if properly cared for, will last almost 100 years, but digital will not. You’re right, it’s a little scary....

I never thought of (this film) as a companion piece to “Goodfellas”, and I don’t think that Mr. Scorsese did either. I think he wanted it to have the rush quality of “Goodfellas” at points, but I don’t think of it as “Goodfellas” at all, I think that’s a whole different thing. These people are doing much more damage than the guys from “Goodfellas” were doing, that was somewhat limited to a few murders here and there, but the damage these people did was enormous, and you’re quite right that it’s very similar to “After Hours”, which by the way was also heavily improvised, and a tremendous amount of fun to cut. It was pretty wild, and this was pretty wild.

http://www.film.com/movies/thelma-schoonmaker-editor-interview-the-wolf-of-wall-street

holy shit, this movie

best since casino for sure. its grotesque and surprisingly maybe his ugliest/bleakest movie to date. really knocked me on my ass... also probably the funniest movie ive seen this year

can't remember if this are pts I've made before and I'm too lazy to scroll up but I think it's a movie that won't win over huge fans and I could see this coming up emptyhanded come Oscar time even wrt nominations because it is so unapologetic and has zero preachiness and no character who represents the victims, both of which are important. I think it's helpful to see how people like this operate in a cocoon in a world where their victims are just voices on a phone. and the debauchery reaches this surreal level and is so absurd, this movie really is hilarious. "Smoke crack with me, bro!!"

the debauchery reaches this surreal level and is so absurd, this movie really is hilarious. "Smoke crack with me, bro!!"

That movie's been playing here for months.

can't remember if this are pts I've made before and I'm too lazy to scroll up but I think it's a movie that won't win over huge fans and I could see this coming up emptyhanded come Oscar time even wrt nominations because it is so unapologetic and has zero preachiness and no character who represents the victims, both of which are important. I think it's helpful to see how people like this operate in a cocoon in a world where their victims are just voices on a phone. and the debauchery reaches this surreal level and is so absurd, this movie really is hilarious. "Smoke crack with me, bro!!"

― christmas candy bar (al leong), Thursday, December 26, 2013 3:43 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

yeah the lack of overt moralizing is pretty key, i mean you can tell scorsese has a lot of contempt for these reptiles but he knows there's no need to overplay it - he just gives em enough rope

also you're otm about it being a breakout performance for margot robbie. where'd she come from??

AO Scott was mixed-to-positive, used the M-word

This brings me back to the question I started with, which perhaps should be posed another way: Is this movie satire or propaganda? Its treatment of women is the strongest evidence for the second option. On his way up, Jordan trades in his first wife, a sweet hometown girl named Teresa (Cristin Milioti), for a blonder, bustier new model named Naomi (Margot Robbie), whose nakedness is offered to the audience as a special bonus. (Mr. DiCaprio never shows as much as she does.) The movie’s misogyny is not the sole property of its characters, nor is the humiliation and objectification of women — an insistent, almost compulsive motif — something it merely depicts. Mr. Scorsese, never an especially objective sociologist, is at least a participant-observer.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/25/movies/dicaprio-stars-in-scorseses-the-wolf-of-wall-street.html

the part where jonah hill appears out of nowhere jerking his dick *kisses fingers like italian chef* he makes a great joe pesci

glenn kenny otm:

Underneath all of the fast-paced "fun" and entertainment value of the movie that so many critics have been made ecstatic by, or made alienated by, there lies, ever present, in the fact of the way the frames are composed, a distance. And within that distance there is a steely anger, that Swiftina rage I mentioned. The rage only explicitly shows its hand a couple of times. There's a bit in one of the narrated fast-forward interstices in which Belfort details the sexual escapades of a female employee, and recounts the fact that one of the male employess at Stratton Oakmont married her anyway; there's a couple of shots from their wedding album, and then Belfort says blithely, "Then he got depressed and killed himself," and the image that accompanies this, in its framing and grading, is distinctly unlike anything else in the film. Then there's an interlude into the world that most of us observe Belfort's world from, a few quiet, poetic (in the T.S. Eliot rather than William Wordworth sense) shots of Kyle Chandler's F.B.I. agent character on the subway. It's in these brief shots that the genuine nerve endings of the movie are located, and these shots are No Fun at all.

some of the shots of the brokers reacting to jordan's speeches reminded me of the reaction shots of guys lusting over maria in Metropolis

idk about the misogyny thing, I mean clearly in the end naomi seems to be a pretty brave character and a far better person than jordan. I think the movie's contempt is reserved for the men in power. Also:

Somehow wall street movies rarely capture the fact that these guys are not as awesome irl as they are in their minds.

― i don't even have an internet (Hurting 2), Monday, 17 June 2013 19:38 (6 months ago) Permalink

This is the first one that does so imo! jordan is clearly a buffoon, he's not some slick expert, he's a vulgar POS who is basically shameless and psychotic enough to rise to the top on the backs of people he doesn't care about. his co-boiler roomers are all pretty pathetic. even everyone's favorite bro mcconaughey is kind of a deluded clown.

yeah otm, they never seem like anything other than scumbags from queens, the closest belfort gets to a moment of competence is when he impresses a roomful of schnooks by selling those penny stocks

surprisingly great performance in this: shane from the walking dead

jordan is clearly a buffoon, he's not some slick expert, he's a vulgar POS who is basically shameless and psychotic

underscored nicely when chandler Columbo's him on the yacht

will watch it but ugh three hours

it flies by, a la blue is the warmest color

^otm

Enjoyed the shit out of it, it didn't have the forced frivolity vibe that I got from the trailer. Funny, gonzo, but maintains a reasonable verisimilitude, so much t&a and drugz I'm surprised the MPAA let it slide with an 'R'.

the M-word

Don't know whether it's because I'm jaded or because I'm forever under the influence of Kael that I thought the M-word meant "middlebrow."

I thought it meant "merde."

All I could think was: God, a whole industry based on calling strangers on the phone.

Edelstein:

http://www.vulture.com/2013/12/movie-review-the-wolf-of-wall-street.html

I figured Leo must have been sitting in the editing room saying, “No, no, don’t cut here — my favorite line is coming up — 30 more seconds — okay, a minute — wait, let it run! It’s my Oscars scene!” But no, this was Scorsese’s design. Overkill is the ruling aesthetic.

Overkill is the ruling aesthetic

No shit.

This was pretty fantastic.

"I'll never at fuckin' Benihana again."

*Never eat*

http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2013/12/wolf_of_wall_street_prousalis.php?page=2

heh

So here's what I'm going to do first. I'm going to hand you my shame. Right now, in this very moment. The shame that I've been carrying for far too long as a result of being collateral damage. Because each of you should feel ashamed. And then I'm going to go pre-order my tickets to August: Osage County in support of Julia and Meryl -- because at least, as screwed up as that family is, they talk about the truth.

lmao

See also: 10 Reasons the Real-Life Wolf of Street Is a Schmuck Who Shouldn't Be Trusted

I forget sometimes how terrible most people are at watching movies

Totally^

this thread has convinced me that I need to see this movie

al leong's recs hold a lot of water imo

I think it's pale and I'm Norwegian. But, hey, divergence is the spice of life. But not too spicy plz, because I'm Norwegian.

lol <3

i have the feeling this is my equivalent of a popcorn movie

I great the feeling it's someone else's idea of a hookers-and-blow movie.