The Michael Mann poll

imo all great hacking films have feats of athleticism in them, often by the computer experts -- Sneakers, Hackers, Goldeneye

film was ridiculous and the casting is what really broke it imo. he looked like someone who gets flummoxed sending an email.

who doesn't, really

and the way he almost magically got the girl with virtually zero effort was beyond dumb. for a film that seems to be selling the diversity of its cast, it would have been more novel if the agent/brother got a girl rather than the norse god.

I loved how that courtship was handled.

You mean like this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKLizztikRk

Another new interview

Thief has never looked better than in its Blu-ray release -- I haven't seen it in 20 years. Too bad that it's attenuated (male) menopausal nonsense with a way too loud soundtrack.

Buried in Cannes sales news:

BECKET – Director: Michael Mann. Writer: William Monahan. Story of the 12th century Archbishop Of Canterbury who enraged King Henry II when he declared fealty to God over the king. CAA selling.

man, that one is going to have a bangin audioslave soundtrack.

blackhat's opening sequence is so great

I couldn't finish Blackhat, the first time I've had to say that about a Mann movie. ;_;

Finally got around to watching Blackhat. Michael Mann has basically abandoned the notion of character development in movies. I didn't notice any terrible soundtrack choices, which is a plus. This film has the rare quality of feeling both too long while also lacking depth, if that makes any sense. Overall forgettable but I was entertained enough, I guess.

"How fast does that go?"
"It goes very fast."
"Show me."

Been meaning to go back to Blackhat, but my one viewing bummed me out so much. Then I saw Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation and thought, huh, in a lot of ways that was a more popcorn version of what Mann was going for with Blackhat. Basically, I wish Blackhat was somewhere in between the two, a movie with Mann's sensibility and pacing and patience but with a slightly more coherent villain. I dunno. Maybe it's the bourbon talking. Blackhat could have been so cool if it was 30% more, just fleshed out a bit... eh. I should watch it again.

Rewatching "Miami Vice" (theatrical cut) for the first time in ages, and I think it holds up really well. So many cool details told in elliptical Mann style. The opposite of (how I remember) "Blackhat" (which I will get to again, eventually).

I was looking to lose myself in a big genre film, so I was definitely receptive to Black Hat. Just seemed to get sillier and sillier as it went along, though. Lots of movie hokum. Imprisoned hacker gets brought onto government counter-espionage team for his computer expertise, turns out he's also very skilled with guns. Or the moment when Chris Hemsworth is standing where all those tin mines are, and he spontaneously figures out the bad guys nefarious plot like he's doing a crossword puzzle. Thought Hemsworth (who I liked in Rush), Wei Tang, and even Viola Davis were all kind of terrible.

My other biggest problem I'll put on me, not the film: whenever they started into the details of the hacking operation, I had no idea what anybody was talking about.

i finally got around to blackhat. the blu-ray was sitting on my living room table for weeks. it took a lot of willpower to actually watch it, mostly because i thought "public enemies" was already nearly-final confirmation of mann's decline.

so... it was unredeemable, absolute garbage. every fault of michael mann's films to this point (and there are many faults) was magnified. there were about two, very brief grace notes in the entire thing. (miami vice, which i did not like, had many more.) the script was among the worst for a thriller i've ever seen. mann's visual sense has never seemed less inventive and assured, and the few critics willfully hailing this as some kind of avant-garde accomplishment... well, i'll have what they're smoking. all i saw was absolutely slack and preposterous storytelling married to am almost incompetent style.

one of the worst films i've seen by an erstwhile major filmmaker.

i also read a piece from deadline speculating about why this failed so miserably in every market it played in. the answer is probably only slightly more complicated than: it is awful, and the marketing did nothing to disguise that fact.

it will never become a hacker mainstay film but has a couple moments

the preposterousness of the screenplay might have been slightly redeemed had it been handled in a different fashion. but mann being mann, there's lots of brooding and self-seriousness and cliches of "realism" that just sit terribly uncomfortably next to the astounding series of profound inauthentic, ludicrous, undermotivated plot points.

the part where the hacker type is just a self-aggrandizing dickhead seems pretty on point

One of these days I'll capitulate and watch Heat. I've resisted it forever because of the Scarface vibes I get from it (i.e. it's deified by people who would turn off any other De Palma movie five minutes in).

170 minutes.

WHAT

watch Heat, you doofus. there are no Scarface vibes in it, afaik

Heat much more comparable to Ronin tbh, take that as you will

yeah heat and scarface kind of sit on opposite poles of the big action movie

I also avoided it because Manhunter aside, I never much liked anything by Mann until Miami Vice, which I loved enough to make me question my takes on all his other movies.

if you took Mann's style from Collateral and Miami Vice, made it of higher quality, and then grafted it on to Ronin you would get Heat? bad movie blending logic here, but it could help to sell it

I also get the impression De Niro plays about the same character in The Score as he did in Heat

Oh yeah, I also skipped Ronin.

throwing up my hands here, Eric

http://emanuellevy.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/all_that_jazz_5.jpg

tbh as great as "heat" is i'm tired of hearing about it, in part because mann fandom seems to be running on fumes from it, even though his last two films are horrible.

I have never really been into or even seen all of Mann's political/historical stuff. I am fine sticking with Manhunter, Heat, Miami Vice, watching parts of Collateral if it happens to be on television

rewatched Miami Vice over the weekend because I'm a fiend for mojitos

Heat is way better De Palma's Scarface. There's a good bit in Clive James' Mann essay about De Niro's understated overacting (repeating the same Mamet-esque sentence with different emphasis each time).

I've never been able to sit through Ronin tbh

RONGest poll evah, Thief rules!

I watched the Thief Blu-ray and the movie still looks undernourished. Why couldn't Tuesday Weld play the thief?

the undernourished quality is one of its big conceits, i think -- its pretensions to genre purity mean it sweeps a lot of things aside. for better and for worse.

Finished a rewatch of "Miami Vice," and there is so much in it that "Blackhat" tries to replicate with far, far worse results. If "Miami Vice" views like some action epic cut down so much it hints and nudges itself along, subliminally, even radically,"Blackhat" is as if he took an even slighter story and cut so much out of it that it starts to lose bone along with all the flesh. It's barely a skeleton.

I have never really been into or even seen all of Mann's political/historical stuff. I am fine sticking with Manhunter, Heat, Miami Vice, watching parts of Collateral if it happens to be on television

Replace Manhunter with Thief and we're 100% on the same page.

fair enough

Manhunter is beautifully shot and tense as hell but once it goes baroque with the Iron Butterfly it gets unforgivably cheesy.

Miami Vice has scenes whose details are pretty inscrutable until after multiple viewings. Blackhat had potential for this, but is either too rushed or preposterous throughout. The restaurant scene actually gives background to the Hemsworth character's physical strength ("gladiator school" and the rest), but it also has both a ridiculous setup and concluding fight.

The structure of the whole thing and where it ends up -- with characters without passports, a country, or any belonging but to their skills -- are both potentially compelling, but mostly after seeing it twice was left looking at what it could have been.

CitizenFour is a far better Hong Kong-based international techno-thriller.

The first two thirds of Blackhat left a lot to be desired, but I really really liked the last act.

I have never really been into or even seen all of Mann's political/historical stuff. I am fine sticking with Manhunter, Heat, Miami Vice, watching parts of Collateral if it happens to be on television

Mostly agree but Ali has its moments.

Man, Collateral is fucking gorgeous. Wish the script was a few shades less dumb.

Paramount will release Academy Award-nominated director Michael Mann’s (HEAT, THE INSIDER, COLLATERAL) ENZO FERRARI, starring Academy Award-winner Christian Bale (DARK KNIGHT TRILOGY, THE FIGHTER, AMERICAN HUSTLE) as Ferrari. It takes place in one pivotal year, 1957. It is the personal story of a passionate man and his sprawling world, at times hilarious and at the next moment devastating, as he faces a brutal challenge to his survival.

Vendian Entertainment and YooZoo Bliss Film Fund have come on to finance the heavily-anticipated project, which will shoot next summer in Italy. Mann will produce along with Vendian and YooZoo Bliss. YooZoo Pictures also will distribute ENZO FERRARI in China. Vincent Maraval’s Insiders will commence international sales on selected territories at next month’s American Film Market.

ENZO FERRARI was written by Troy Kennedy-Martin (THE ITALIAN JOB, KELLY’S HEROES, EDGE OF DARKNESS), revised by David Rayfiel (THE FIRM, SABRINA) and Michael Mann and based on the Brock Yates book, “Enzo Ferrari, The Man, the Cars, the Races.”