How do you feel about Kristen Wiig

We should actually write a movie like this collectively, mad-libs style. I need a quirky or unusual occupation.

music critic

ok now I need a non-major-city US location

i've never really understood that "mad libs" are improv. I guess I grew impatient the wat TSt tried to be dark dramedy + SNL sketch.

it's definitely not one I'd watch again

Honestly I go to movies so little now that I think my standards might have lowered. I haven't actually disliked any of the last handful of movies I saw in theaters, although worst in the last couple years was probably Silver Linings Playbook -- now THERE'S an indie madlib.

BTW trailer for new Cooper/Lawrence film looks ATROCIOUS

St. Joseph, Michigan

Ok, I feel like the music critic in St. Joseph's michigan has probably moved there to escape something in his past...what?

A music critic and his estranged twin brother, a failed professional musician, reunite in St. Joseph, Michigan, for their father's funeral, only to discover from their mother that their actual father d is a former rock star who lives alone in an empty mansion in the Los Angeles hills. They fly out to meet him, teach him how to rock again and, more importantly, teach him how to love.

St. Joseph scenes will be filmed in LA, natch.

But when they get there, they discover that he's committed suicide and that they have a precocious seven-year-old half sister who writes a romantic advice column in the local alt weekly.

this probably functions as a biography of andrew bird

I feel like pretty soon after that they're going to get some kind of unusual/exotic pet dumped into their lap

Estranged brothers must quickly learn to be grownups, then team together to get her into an elite LA private school.

needs a shot of the caravan peeling away frantically from lower-class folk they accidentally riled

From the real father's estate, his pet aye-aye named tenzin gyatso

They host a benefit by forming a band to cover the songs of their father, which suddenly shoot up the iTunes chart, get them a financial windfall, and get them a record deal. Then the school decides to let their little sister in afterall, but they tell the school to take a hike.

Movie ends with the girl all grown up, finishing the book about her crazy family.

Post credits, she gets a phone call optioning the crazy story for a movie.

Estranged brothers must quickly learn to be grownups, then team together to get her into an elite LA private school.

― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, January 7, 2015 3:35 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Is this a Dave Eggers reference?

Oh shit, forgot about him. Eggers sort of is the embodiment of a whimsical indie movie cliche.

they feed the aye-aye human flesh. it develops a taste for it, and they use the crazed human-eating aye-aye to avenge their father, who committed suicide because he never successfully defended his podcast patent.

(the aye-aye eats marc maron in the movie)

post credit shot of the aye-aye knocking on adam corolla's studio door dressed as a pizza delivery man

mid-film side plot -- after the real Dalai Lama suddenly dies, a group of exiled tibetan buddhist monks find them through a facebook page listed in the aye-aye's name, mistakenly thinking they may have found the next incarnation. After laughs over their misunderstanding, they agree to do guest throat-singing vocals on a track for the covers record.

T-shirts with the aye-aye and a movie catchphrase would work well, maybe "Are you sure you didn't order anchovies?"

man, I've been waiting to be able to say this, but Dr. Morbius otm with his assessment of Skeleton Twins.

That said, I did like Hader's performance. Didn't really like Wiig, but I have an unusually low tolerance for he anyway.

I found her convincing somehow as the person trying but failing to hold it together as a norm.

a shitty '80s tune

I think you mean one of the greatest songs ever tbh.

lol

I do like that one part where she first reluctantly starts lip-syncing, very cuet

feel like that 'heart-to-heart' dance move has been done by Wiig in a movie before...

It totally has. That said, it is a pretty good move.

also i find the boucing around from suicidal depression to lipsyncing to playing fartgames on nitrous oxide just a little too 'resilient' even for characters in an indie dramedy.

that blond actor who played her Aussie scuba teacher was well worth a fuck tho (apparently he's Elisabeth Olsen's bf).

yeah there is a certain bathos to the way amerindie films deal with these subjects, always putting this slightly unbelievable *positive outlook* spin on things, same with Silver Linings Playbook and mental illness.

Oh shit, forgot about him. Eggers sort of is the embodiment of a whimsical indie movie cliche.

― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, January 7, 2015 8:38 PM (21 minutes ago) Bookmark

lest we forget

http://www.seat42f.com/images/stories/Movies/Posters/Away-We-Go-Movie-Poster.jpg

oh lord, did anyone here actually see that turd?

lol, the character names

John Krasinski as Burt Farlander
Maya Rudolph as Verona De Tessant
Carmen Ejogo as Grace De Tessant
Jeff Daniels as Jerry Farlander
Catherine O'Hara as Gloria Farlander
Allison Janney as Lily
Jim Gaffigan as Lowell
Maggie Gyllenhaal as LN
Josh Hamilton as Roderick
Melanie Lynskey as Munch Garnett
Chris Messina as Tom Garnett
Paul Schneider as Courtney Farlander

That reminds me, a film version of You Too Shall Know Our Velocity (or whatever it's called) starring Harry Potter is due for Festival Season '15-'16.

Munch Garnett

poor Paul Schneider, he really deserves another good movie, someday

Office dude has some big feet

points to anyone who can find me a modern american person named "de tessant" -- every link I can find gives me the movie or a french person from another century

Munch Garnett

― $80 is absurd and very ridiculous! (Sufjan Grafton), Wednesday, January 7, 2015 4:40 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

She and Hader are good, considering, but that Skeleton Twins script is a desiccated collection of Sundance cliches. Oh no, Joanna Gleason as an Evil New Age Mother! Suicide attempts all around! Lipsyncing a shitty '80s tune cuz gay!

― touch of a love-starved cobra (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, January 6, 2015 11:31 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark

I basically agree with Morbs' assessment except I would flip the things on either side of the "but," i.e. the performances outweighed the cliches for me. Also thought Ty Burrell was very good as the teacher.

― man alive, Wednesday, January 7, 2015 12:21 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I also didn't know sundance movies were full of suicide attempts, guess I just don't see enough of them.

― man alive, Wednesday, January 7, 2015 12:22 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

also i find the boucing around from suicidal depression to lipsyncing to playing fartgames on nitrous oxide just a little too 'resilient' even for characters in an indie dramedy.

that blond actor who played her Aussie scuba teacher was well worth a fuck tho (apparently he's Elisabeth Olsen's bf).

― touch of a love-starved cobra (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, January 7, 2015 4:12 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah there is a certain bathos to the way amerindie films deal with these subjects, always putting this slightly unbelievable *positive outlook* spin on things, same with Silver Linings Playbook and mental illness.

― man alive, Wednesday, January 7, 2015 4:19 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

Silver Linings Playbook drove me insane with its marrow deep phoniness and manic pandering insistence that u love it and message that we're all part of the same crazy human tapestry so don't sweat it if you're a psycho who puts dudes in the hospital. Awful film

The Skeleton Twins was a lot better. It has contrivances, it has melodrama, and it certainly has an element of Wiig & Hader being so great (Wiig gives a top 3 performance in 2014, as she did in 2011) that they bring uninspired-on-paper scenes up to their level. But the miserablist throughline being so genuine and right really took it a long way, and I give the director/writers credit for having just the right sensibility a lot of the time, underplaying the right things, the disinterest in schtick, the comedy is naturally extracted so when it comes it's a dizzying relief instead of trying to oppress u with its antic irreverence. There's nothing revelatory but it mostly feels 'right'... especially compared to fellow 'Sundance Style Comedies' like The Kings of Summer or w/e, boy does it really excel in that company

Hader could've been a too easy desexed tragic homo but his passive resilience is apt... the film isn't putting a fake 'positive outlook spin' on suicide, it's just being real... sometimes u try to kill yourself and sometimes u get up and dust yourself off but you're still a miserable piece of shit. The movie gets why depression is funny, how it's almost like a great feeling to know you're about to kill yourself out of loneliness and dissatisfaction, so it doesn't have to overcorrect at the end and ladle on "they're gonna be ok"-isms. They're still lonely pieces of SHIT at the end. For some reason I'm now thinking about how Ida was a more 'unflinching' film that studiously avoided melodrama, and it ended up saying something a lot more phony about its characters...

Also its a miraculous Luke Wilson comeback vehicle! Has he been this good in anything since Bottle Rocket? That Laura Dern tv show maybe, but that's it

good post, and thx for backing up my memory that Skeleton Twins was at least significantly better than Silver Linings Playbook.

And I enjoyed Luke Wilson a lot in it too.

I groaned when I heard the distant off-screen right-channel *splash* during the climax. I was expecting it, but still.

Office dude has some big feet

Office dude had big shoes to fill. First guy was a Hobbit apparently.

xxpost H4A otm. I really loved this and reading all the hate here made me feel like I'd watched a totally different movie. I was going to say something but I get really intimidated talking about movies once the doc shows up on a thread. Yes, I realize that's more my thing than anything having to do with him but it's true. FTR SLP was one of the most disappointingly awful movies I've seen in years. O'Russel is one of my favorite directors and that was just awful in pretty much every way.