Let us anticipate Greta Gerwig's directorial debut "Lady Bird"

No one was. Period piece.

it was tropey but it did things that pretty in pink brought up, and did them right (it's no accident that both the dresses she picks are pink). for instance: the probably gay friend turns out to be actually gay here. And, she sides with some real friends in the end, rather than going with the douche.

"only thing that bugs me is the handling of her name in the very last scene. might have come off differently to me ten or five years ago, but in 2017 it felt weirdly situated re: trans identity and now it feels like a movie i should not recommend to friends blindly." Huh, I'm not reading you.

we're supposed to find it touching and powerful that she sheds her chosen name for the "good name" her parents gave her. feel like for a lot of people, that will be a super unpleasant moment that throws them out of the movie.

it may but hopefully they can see outside their own selves enough that its real & works for this character, perspective of distance from her parents illuminating how they did the best they could &c &c

maybe? i dunno? just saying that it makes me feel like i'd be being a dick to tell all my friends oh man you will LOVE this movie, it gets everything right!

I've never felt that way.

Likewise.

I love many movies that get many things wrong.

re: "wrong," maybe playing with fire here, but if the ending of this movie is enough to give you pause, what entertainments out there do you regard as safe?

jeez y'all. i'm just saying that the trans/NB people in my life are very sensitive to narratives about given vs chosen names and it just played really weird, to me, to have it be played as a happy-ending payoff that a character who's earlier articulated a pretty groovy claim on her name ("I gave it to myself") later is like oh nah forget it. and it's fine for her to be oh nah forget it! but we're supposed to feel big feelings that she does, and *that* felt weird to me.

but tbf it's early and I'm still working on my coffee so I might not be doing the best job expressing this

And I might be doing my best job resisting it.

gotta say too that the save a horse ride a cowboy tshirts @ that western party (?) made me immed think of ilx/ilm

― johnny crunch, Tuesday, November 21, 2017 7:58 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ha me too, although I remember Big & Rich as a late '03 phenomenon.

― morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, November 21, 2017 8:02 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol yes i figured it was an anachronism (the single and the album it was on both came out in spring 2004)--but then wondered whether "save a horse, ride a cowboy" was just a phrase that people said before big & rich made a song out of it?

pretty sure it was? but when i try to remember i just hear the song in my head.

i was pretty surprised they were allowed to wear shirts that said that to a dance at a catholic school

as a nonbinary person who has often considered changing their name, doc casino’s point honestly never occurred to me as i was watching it. huh

huh, fair enough - I'll def trust your perspective on this more than my second-guessing of my own!

i mean i actually find what you’re saying really interesting, even as my experience of the film was more along the lines of what johnny crunch said

Loved it. Loved how so many minor characters (the two play directors) could be drawn so sharply in a scene or two.

It's like the Veep style turned into something other than mean comedy, as far as efficiency and detail.

^^ Left-field comparison, I know, but this thing moved without being farce.

oh yeah lmao the football coach subbing for the theater director was hilarious

football coach was hilarious if a cartoon. but a good cartoon of how a precocious high schooler sees a coach. like something from daria. i hope high schoolers are seeing this movie! i hope it replaces those john hughes movies or whatever else are considered standards of the genre.

but the first director was incredible. i never did theater so maybe those are all stock scenes that every high school theater kid would know but i thought they were really beautifully done. loved how all the teachers in this, even coach, felt like they really liked kids and wanted to see them happy/successful, even if they have their flaws and limits. they weren't as fleshed out as the other adults, sure, and a high schooler watching will probably see them overwhelmingly in terms of what they mean to the leads (e.g. math teacher crush guy is sth we can all relate to via julia: oh nooooo he has a wife and she's pregnant even!). but the actor plays it like he's playing a real person so if the same kid watches it a few years later maybe there's something else they can appreciate there.

Was there any explanation as to what the first director was going through--why he was seeing Laurie Metcalf? I assumed it was general depression, but maybe I missed something.

Son died, maybe suicide?

That scene was so amazing in rounding out Laurie Metcalf's character, too -- seeing her on the job as a true caretaker.

yeah, i loved that. it seemed like all the other people in town had a very different perception of lady bird's mom--they got to see a warm, caring, and even funny side of her that she wouldn't allow lady bird to see, just shown in short scenes with the father and with her co-workers

the theatre nerd in me loved that they did Merrily, We Roll Along...and committed to showing it!

Between Sondheim and "Crash" and "You Oughta Know" and "Cry Me A River," the music rights must've been a big line item.

And "Tha Crossroads!" A great, great, pick - years out of date but weirdly plausible to me as a slow-dance song at a religious school in 2002.

lol yeah, it's got a nice religious message and it would pass the nuns' rigid censorship

https://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/vulture/2017/11/21/greta/21-greta-gerwig-letter-music-2.nocrop.w710.h2147483647.jpg

That's sweet. I wrote a letter just like that to the Angry Samoans when I was making student films.

seein it tonight

My review.

V sweetly written up Alfred :)

yes. this is great and v on-point with how i remember the later stretches of high school: "both outcasts who use wit not so much as a rapier against the popular kids at their Catholic high school but as an end in itself because rapiers are cool."

i remember the uncle conversation differently though - doesn't lady bird just say "he's not your uncle," and julie responds, "it's something I'm trying out"? as in, she's trying out calling him that?

thanks!

@ Doc Casino: I saw at least one trans writer on Twitter pick up on the same thing you mentioned w/r/t the ending

beautiful review, Alfred

i found this perfectly cozy and lovely world to inhabit for a couple hours. can't wait for her next flick, but also, i hope she keeps acting or casts herself

Just saw it a second time; being prepared for the jokes made me be present enough to notice how sad I felt about many of the laugh lines

I hope she and Noah Baumbach stay together because I’m romantic but I would think/hope she’s got no further need for him as far as making movies

thanks, y'all

"being prepared for the jokes made me be present enough to notice how sad I felt about many of the laugh lines"

maybe I said this up above but when i heard the "why don't you like me" scene on the radio before I saw th emovie it made me cry. It didn't seem as sad in a theater full of people who were laughing at other parts; but I think removed from an audience I'd feel the same way again

This is another one of those films that I suspect earns very different reactions and elicits different emotions depending on whether you are viewing it as a parent vs. viewing it as a child. Perhaps gender makes a big difference, too. For example, my wife watched it as a perfect encapsulation of what it was like a be a young woman at more or less that exact age/time, and of course I can't ever fully appreciate that perspective. But I could understand what it was like to have a fraught relationship with a parent (as everyone can) and yet also now, as a parent of a freshly minted teen, what it is like to have a complex relationship with your kid. Though as a father, not as a mother, which is, again, a distinction and dynamic worth noting in this particular story.

The senior citizen crowd I saw it with really dug the Didion quote at the beginning.

lol same with my crowd!

i loved the dad in this. his gruff laugh when the mother asks 'you think miguel and diana have sex on the pull-out couch?' 'oh yeah'

Tracy Letts was really good as the dad in this (mind you, the character's so likeable contrasted with Laurie Metcalf, maybe not the most difficult role). Thought I knew him well from somewhere else, but the only possibilities are Weiner-Dog and The Big Short, and I don't think it's either of those. So it must be..."Counterguy" in the Seinfeld where Kramer goes back to work at the bagel place.

no he is in Wiener-Dog. also was in a really shitty movie this year called The Lovers

I know he's in it--I was going by IMDB--I'm just saying I have no strong association between him and the film. All I really remember is Danny DeVito and Ellen Burstyn, and had to double-check about Burstyn.