The Michael Mann poll

i like some of his movies a lot, but holy cats is michael mann a pretentious douche

https://twitter.com/vishnevetsky/status/556197084169527296/photo/1

also see his sight & sound poll comments

like, if there's one thing distinguishing thief from drive (and there are a few things), it's not that thief is an incisive marxian analysis of global capitalism

I like that conflict. Mann's roots are hardcore blue collar Chicago, and his movies are often about a working class of sorts, but cast through this intellectualized spectrum. I think it can be read as pretentious, but I think Mann really feels strongly about the world he is depicting. Like, good or bad he can make some pretty rousing defenses of what some people see as ridiculous. That's why his commentary tracks are great.

he is so obsessed with details and minutiae that when he finally makes a movie as thoughtless as his new one, I am really curious as to why he made the bad decisions that he did.

well, he has that hollywood thing (which latter-day malick has, too) where you get obsessive over the minutiae but sometimes miss the larger stuff.

and i'm not saying that his intellectualism is bogus, but he does seem really set on making sure that you're aware of it, more in his interviews than the films (although it crops up occasionally in the films, too).

I think his obsession with detail pays off when he has some space to let the information breathe. Lately, no doubt due to budgets and commercial pressure, I get the feeling he lacks the power to make 3 hour character-drive epics. I do find it interesting that so many of his films (even Heat!) were subsequently released as a director's cut. For better or for worse, he keeps thinking about and tweaking his films, and some of the versions (Ali and Mohicans in particular) are much better than the theatrical cuts, even when the changes are subtle.

Though he seems pretentious, I don't really get that from Mann. I think he is just so thoughtful and thorough that he sometimes seems to be showing off, but that's likely his autodidactism at work. This new one is such an anomaly, in that it is clearly a Mann film with many Mann things going on in it, but is lacking justification for the details it does include, while missing a ton of details it really needs.

Kinda loved this. This review is pretty on point. http://reverseshot.org/reviews/entry/1989/blackhat

As are most of his. He is remarkably faithful to his enthusiasms and I envy that.

Well, I'll give him credit for identifying all the ways the movie is weird and erratic and inconsistent, but then highlighting them as pros rather than cons.

ooooh i betray my enthusiasms all the time like most ppl

I do too; from which stems dissatisfaction.

https://twitter.com/calummarsh/status/557213638088749056
https://twitter.com/calummarsh/status/557214572361555969

was being tot sarcastic btw, i have no idea how anyone does that

Well try being Scandinavian, for a start.

late for that

those calum marsh tweets make me want to hate michael mann's movies

i'm sort of half-convinced that some of the over-enthusiastic mann-o-lytes are sort of making up for being late to the party, having discovered his great films a little late and now trying to outdo the other fans with their enthusiasm for his newer, profoundly mediocre films. sort of how jonathan rosenbaum praised "hollow man" (!) to the skies after having missed the vanguard critical boat on verhoeven's other american films.

there's that line from an interview in cahiers (was it truffaut or godard or rohmer?) from the 1960s where they basically say, "yes, we love minnelli and preminger et al, but let's admit that the films they are making now aren't really that good." whether or not you agree about the particular films (anyone want to defend "the chapman report" or "hurry sundown"?), i see a kind of broad parallel.

I mock obsessive Mann stans but I will love the new Verhoeven even if it's terrible, probably

another thing: his fans now emphasize mann as a visual stylist, but i think at his best he's more than that. the screenplays to his best films are beautifully proportioned. "heat" in particular is a kind of miracle of narrative construction. i just don't see that in his recent films. even "collateral," which has a really compelling look and might be the last film he made where he seemed totally in control of his effects, has a pretty obvious—even trite—screenplay.

Xp I can't do that with movies

I def overrate things but I could never convince myself I liked a film more than I did due to standom

Actually yeah I guess I could

I think some of the Mann stans are actually just having fun with the skeptics.

Some of them can be so touchy.

I def overrate things but I could never convince myself I liked a film more than I did due to standom

maybe not you, but this is a pretty common phenomenon within "auteurism" IMO. although an auteurist would say that knowing someones body of work can often enhance your understanding of/appreciation of one of their films. which is totally true! but i think a lot of times people do a lot of special pleading for disappointing films made by their favored directors.

i mean i wouldn't want to shut this kind of dialogue down, it's an important dynamic w/in film criticism/appreciation.

i think it's important to see where a director might be coming and try to probe deep into the work and dialogue and camerawork, but certainly some directors are not extended the same courtesy. this happens w/music crit too, i think in similar ways. certain artists get the gushing auteur treatment and others are dismissed w/o examination.

I think a director like Mann is so consistent and specific in his style and themes that when something seems amiss a defender is tempted to excuse it first and try to fit it in with his other films second.

Like, this film is not terribly good, but it is so very much of a piece with his other films, and by that standard I'm not sure I could call it a total failure.

This one has something consistent with most of his other films, where parts of the story that could seem preposterous are actually justified but within some jargon-heavy dialogue or a fleeting scene without close-ups to show what just happened. And with such absorbing visual composition, the lines that justify the action (and actually would pull us into the story) get lost, especially on a first viewing. The reviews for this one are "lol muscular computer nerd" but the couple of mumbled lines about "gladiator academy" tell the story. And so Mann can have confidence that his homework in building the characters is there (he shared a whole long context to the villain's Lebenese sidekick on Charlie Rose last week, but the tragic thing is when all that detail gets lost in the bigger preposterousness of that big final showdown.

Like, this film is not terribly good, but it is so very much of a piece with his other films, and by that standard I'm not sure I could call it a total failure.

― Josh in Chicago

i.e. the classic defense of auteurism line

Woody Allen gets this same treatment.

Not terribly often, these days.

i think it's important to see where a director might be coming and try to probe deep into the work and dialogue and camerawork

this post has the same kind of hypnotic excitement as the Sacre, the same primitive force, and the same thrusting, jabbing eroticism.

The movie made it pretty clear why he was buff like Thor, almost to the point of being too on the nose. The girl even comments how different he looked from his photos, implication being that he was not always a beast, that prison forced the change (though do they really throw hackers in the max security deep end like that?). What didn't make sense to me was how she would instantly fall madly in love with him, even if he looked like Thor. Or how this international fugitive who is pushing 7 feet tall and looks generally like Thor could possibly escape detection as he's slinking around Asia. Or how he and she were able to drum up fake passports and transportation all all this stuff at the last minute, sneak into Jakarta, etc., but not manage to arm himself with more than a few screwdrivers or whatever. And so on. A real forest for the trees narrative mess.

chris hemsworth is 6' 3" tall fyi

Point stands. Might as well be 7.

lol

the worst part about that tweet is "the Sacre"

Just blendin' right in:

http://images3.cinema.de/imedia/0303/6350303,TfpHoAlyl6FoVNR2ljANu6zfG6xNplQYfKbP39Vm3ZKzZmCQHcSw1SED5NrR22Xs2kdis++_Mv70XNOW89dAxg==.jpg

looks like Val Kilmer in Heat.

are there any gritty shaky-cam closeups of the insides of circuit boards in this

Alfred otm

Also, 6'3" is on the tall side of normal, not that much of an outlier

nordic is the new normal

otm

I don't think it's normal in Jakarta.

i can't tell the Hemswortheses apart, as i've never seen either in anything.

that tweet is not the dumbest thing c4lum m4rsh has ever written btw.

Morbs, you would like Cabin in the Woods. Really smart stuff.

hey, y'all wanna hang out and listen to the sacre while we jab and thrust?