The Michael Mann poll

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