slaves, tell me about 50 Shades of Grey

50 Flags of Post

There's a subway ad for the movie with the tagline "Curious?" I've never seen a more resigned, phoned-in movie ad.

The only thing you need.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Lh021TosOs

wait that's not a shop

oh i see

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5lem_fUC88

This isn't as awful as I was hoping, but the best part is when someone asks them who they called when they found out they got the part, and it turns out neither of them called anyone.

"raaiinnn.. .?"

at one point i think she checked her nonexistent watch

When I saw the trailer for this I was wondering how many couples would break up after watching this.

if my gf made me this etc etc

eh made me *watch* this

50 Shades Friedman: Davos Nights

i might go see this tomorrow in a 10am double feature with "The Boy Next Door"

will report back

my wife went to go see this today at 420 because she's cool

its also the second movie she's seen all year and possibly the 5th she's gone to in our 4 year relationship. why she picked this turd I'll never know..

hope you've got the butt drawer ready

The director used to be a horrible "artist" named Sam Taylor-Wood...glad she's found a new profession

Surprised this didn't get posted yet -- fish in a barrel for a seasoned film critic, but masterful nonetheless:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/23/pain-gain

On the other hand, the film, by dint of its simple competence—being largely well acted, not too long, and sombrely photographed, by Seamus McGarvey—has to be better than the novel. It could hardly be worse. No new reader, however charitable, could open “Fifty Shades of Grey,” browse a few paragraphs, and reasonably conclude that the author was writing in her first language, or even her fourth. There are poignant moments when the plainest of physical actions is left dangling beyond the reach of her prose: “I slice another piece of venison, holding it against my mouth.” The global appeal of the novel has led some fans to hallow it as a classic, but, with all due respect, it is not to be confused with “Madame Bovary.” Rather, “Fifty Shades of Grey” is the kind of book that Madame Bovary would read. Yet we should not begrudge E. L. James her triumph, for she has, in her lumbering fashion, tapped into a truth that often eludes more elegant writers—that eternal disappointment, deep in the human heart, at the failure of our loved ones to acquire their own helipad.

http://www.filmfreakcentral.net/ffc/2015/02/fifty-shades-of-grey.html#more

Mildly disappointed with this review, as Walter Chaw can write some of the best takedowns in the game. But if the film is indeed at least partially self-aware, well, good for it, I guess?

The director used to be a horrible "artist" named Sam Taylor-Wood...glad she's found a new profession

― Iago Galdston, Friday, February 13, 2015 8:30 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ahem

Death Valley Sam Taylor-Wood, 2004, 7 min 58 sec, music by Matmos and Andrew Hale

My wife says this was the funniest movie she's seen in years

out of the five?

tivo has a cash in thing at the top of the menu screen that is cycling through various program options
50 shades of JK = JK Simmons films
50 shades of Ray = Everybody Loves Raymond reruns
50 shades of Hey = Hey Arnold episodes

and so on

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/23/pain-gain

Death Valley Sam Taylor-Wood

Youtube hosts the darnedest things!

Been away from the news, but ... This opened huge?

sadly,yes
http://variety.com/2015/film/news/fifty-shades-dominating-box-office-as-it-eyes-record-breaking-76-million-opening-1201434159/

The film, which began rolling out internationally on Wednesday, opened at No. 1 in 56 of its 57 territories, including the U.K., France, Germany and Russia. It grossed $38 million on Friday for an early total of $66 million. The film is on track for an international weekend take of $158.3 million, which would make it Universal’s second highest opening weekend of all time, just behind “Fast & Furious 6″ ($160.3 million).

There's a sucker born every minute

The overwhelming consensus = not as terrible as the book.

Gaming the numbers with a five day opening weekend, all markets already in, over a soft mid-Feb slate.

I'm prepared to eat my hat but I'm guessing there aren't enough sweatshirt moms in the world to give this one major legs. Still, enough to start photography on part two I guess. Traets.

Everyone seems to agree than Johnson is good, which is nice. Hopefully this will make studios less afear'd of female-friendly stuff, sex, and R ratings? Trying to accentuate the positive here.

I'm really terrified at what the special edition bluray packaging will be

Xpost

xpost

studios will definitely now have the courage to option massive best-sellers with huge, manifestly undemanding fanbases.

I'd rather see Still Alice for valentine's day

apparently that is also terrible

kind of thinking who Dakota Johnson's parents are, this is not even in the top ten debacles in her life thus far

I dug the Jezebel staff's take on this, where they saw it as a group of eight and divvied up the review by different aspects of the movie:

http://jezebel.com/we-survived-an-opening-night-screening-of-fifty-shades-1685672861

The consensus is that they hadn't, as a group, pre-gamed nearly hard enough, or even approaching the levels of others in the audience

Still Alice appears to have a special kind of middlebrow american bathos that trash like fifty shades would never be at risk of

The whole thing of turning something wholly awful and tragic into a "triumph of the human spirit" is such a big lie

...I meant I'd rather see something wholly depressing like that for VD, not that it's a bad movie (it wasn't)

middlebrow trash v plain trash FITE

hey guys, just saw this yesterday, let me tell you all about it

The film is 2 hours for no reason because almost nothing happens in the film. The characters are really, REALLY underdeveloped (moreso than you would expect even for a film like this); they solely exist in relation to each other but have no personality whatsoever, almost to an impressive extent. The sex was ultimately pretty tame, but some of the sex scenes were reaaaally funny, like when the dude rips off all of her clothes and spins her backwards and then starts to... braid her hair (???).

I was kinda hoping for comically awful but what I expected (and ultimately received) was thorough mediocrity with occasional bits of unintentional humor. Like really though who cares about a boring rich white dude getting off on a quasi-abusive relationship being played off as BDSM, zzzzzzzzz

Was it worth it?

Is it gunna be worth another two outings?

I mean it's terrible but only 35% less masturbatory than the Hobbit threefer

I've only ever met one person who completetely unironically loved the book and admitted so with gusto - one of my sisters in law, and to be cruelly uncharitable, shes an ill-read bogan, so.

find me a person who completely unironically loved the book etc etc

(ps is "ill-read bogan" kind of like a sweatshirt mom?)

My mother-in-law apparently enjoyed all 3 books and was irritated and incredulous when my wife told her they started as Twilight fanfic

It was totally worth it because I went with a really fun friend who was in it for the laughs and we laughed the whole time and made the experience totally worthwhile. If I went with people who wanted to see it because they found it earnestly interesting or erotic I would have been really miserable.