The Michael Mann poll

The fight staging in Ali is great. Low angle so ceilings are a centered background so so vastness of the ceilings and single white bulbs like sky full of stars. Unscored so the crud sound of the body blows and delayed dislocation between the shifts of momentum within the fight and audience’s reaction to what’s happening...emphasized realism juxtaposed w theatrical elements.

It's funny, I was going to say that Dante Spinotti had a heck of a run for a while, but just glancing I think I'd now say that Dante Spinotti had a heck of a run with Michael Mann (and Curtis Hanson) specifically. He did just a bunch of movies with Brett Ratner, and no one goes on and on about how great *they* look.

Michael Mann director’s cuts are all worse than the theatrical IIRC.

LOL. This has been discussed elsewhere, but Mann's notorious for changing and recutting his films every single chance he can get. To be fair, he's far from the only director who does this - IIRC even D.W. Griffith got thrown out of a museum's projection booth once when he tried to make edits to their Intolerance print many years after the fact. But it's not just tinkering out of perfectionism, there's a belief that Mann simply can't let go of any project. When Arrow Films in the U.K. licensed Thief for reissue, they made sure NOT to involve him because they didn't want him preventing them from releasing the film as it was originally shown. They got away with it by simply licensing Criterion's Mann-approved restoration (which meant there was no need for him to sign off on anything as it would've been redundant) and including an HD transfer of the original film as a bonus.

FWIW, Heat is my favorite, but The Insider would be close behind, followed by Manhunter and probably Thief. The Insider used to be my favorite Mann film, but it feels kind of overblown now. Plummer is still magnificent - it came up a lot this weekend because of his death, but it's probably one of his very best film performances.

I never saw the "point" of Ali tbh....we already have so much great footage of the real Ali, why settle for an expensive recreation?

Hah, I felt the same way! And this was right after When We Were Kings which got a ton of press (as well as an Oscar - I actually remember the long standing ovation they got when Ali and Foreman went up to the podium). To be fair Smith is good, and it could be his best dramatic work, but Ali is no distant memory thanks to all the footage we have of him. There's just no way Smith can compete with the real thing.

As far as fiddling with finished films go, I've yet to watch the nu-Heat, where apparently he re-color corrected the whole thing, because the original looked too "90s." First of all, I'm not sure what that means! Second of all, the original looked great. Third of all, the challenge of all these different versions is it's so hard to tell which one you're watching without a few clues. Studying run times, watching for where certain scenes land, listening for certain lines, and so on. At this point I'm not sure I would even know if I was watching nu-Heat, or the director's cut of Mohicans or Manhunter. I suppose the end credits would give a few hints of additional post-release work.

Miami Vice is still up there in my fave films of the last 20 years. Great to see the Letterboxd types truly love it.

... I mean I’m not joking, the Letterboxd reviews are insane; off the scale. 5-stars right down the page one after the other. Millennials ‘got it’ in the way that Gen X never did. Although it always had a favourable reaction on here. It was the results of this very thread that made me see it in the first place. Well done ILX!

Another good example, because afaict the theatrical version is actually pretty hard to track down!

I never understood the backlash against Miami Vice other than "omg they're not wearing Hawaiian shirts and getting bitched out by Edward James Olmos"

The style of it is amazing

I think some people just don't like Colin Farrell in things? I think he's good in it, but Jamie Foxx is really good in it.

Another good example, because afaict the theatrical version is actually pretty hard to track down!

― Josh in Chicago, Monday, February 8, 2021 8:15 AM (seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

you can rent and buy it iirc

the new heat cut looks great and it remains a great movie, i am pretty "who gives a shit" beyond that

Jamie Foxx pretending to nut too soon then saying "psych!" was funny

miami vice > blackhat > collateral > heat > manhunter > thief

one day i will see the rest

Gina telling the one thing that she can shoot him in the medulla without his finger twitching and then doing that was badass

miami vice never shakes off this in-media-res quality that makes all the action feel super present which i think adds to its coolness

I'm glad I can rent and buy it, thanks! Is that true for all of his other movies? That they're still available in their original forms? Or are they all at least designated as director's cuts or theatrical versions? That is, no DC has totally supplanted/replaced the theatrical yet, has it? I guess as long as the original versions are accessible, let the guy fiddle.

only for miami vice

manhunter, heat, and mohicans are afaict only available in their most recent edits (manhunter's being the scream factory release i think). differences and choices mann makes in these edits that i've noticed are so negligible and have so little impact on how i feel about the movies that once again imo whatever

one day i will see the rest

I need to re-watch Public Enemies (the one with Johnny Depp as Dillinger). I hated it when I saw it in theaters, mostly because I thought the digital really ruined the period atmosphere. But maybe I'll like it better now.

Third of all, the challenge of all these different versions is it's so hard to tell which one you're watching without a few clues.

It's annoying, I get why archivists and historians hate it, but it seems like most versions apply minor changes. Those don't bother me. The recent versions tend to be much worse because instead of minor tweaks that can fly by with little notice, he's making radical changes that impact the whole movie. I used Thief as an example partly because that's the worst case I've seen so far. No Hollywood movie from that era has the color palette that's been applied now - it looks like an awkward attempt to slather a 2010's look on to a 1981 picture.

Just to clarify that link, when you see the screenshots grouped in 3's, the top two are the exact same restoration re-colored by Mann. It's the third one at the bottom that's an HD transfer of the original film.

Jamie Foxx pretending to nut too soon then saying "psych!" was funny

not big on that movie but this is a great, great moment

I disliked MV at the time ("How can this fucker do this to MY city?") until I realized he treated Miami as if it were Narnia.

oh damn michael mann made everything blue

Wow, "earthier tones" is kind of underselling it a little, isn't it? The images look significantly, intentionally different!

only for miami vice

Blackhat director's cut has never been released to rent or buy afaik, just for cable TV

And even then, iirc, not regularly aired, which is one reason I was unable to even find a torrent of it.

Comparison of the nu-Heat transfer here:

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film6/blu-ray_reviews_75/heat_blu-ray.htm

This seems a lot more subtle than "Thief."

thief was already blue

er, i meant heat lol

https://miro.medium.com/max/4088/1*IQmOvcK78Xsw9yNx8xz8Ew.jpeg

"'Heat' has never looked so ... cool."

Yeah, Heat looks fine to me. If you speed through those caps, it's probably impossible to pick up the differences, but with Thief, it's impossible to miss - chunks of teal and then a flash of actual flesh tones.

Thief's the Mann flick I find hard to re-visit. Uninterested in women in his better films, he turns instead to James Caan to peddle his notions about honor, code, etc. and iirc Mann doesn't probe them much. The film's undulating rhythm gets lulling.

Robert Prosky is an incredible villain in it, though — one of the best performances in Mann's entire filmography.

Counterpoint, Thief is the Mann film, in that its themes are things he returns to again and again. Not the best Mann film, but introduces the macho, hardened individual - professional, criminal, professional criminal - vs. the world/time/society motif that shows up again and again in the rest of his movies.

imo Thief says fuck the bosses

Fuck the bosses vs. paid tha cost to be da boss.

first trip back to the theater was a screening of Thief last night, my first time seeing it. i'm generally not a fan of mann but really enjoyed thief, likely my fav of his i've seen. part of it is surely that i was just awed being back in a theater, but something about it really clicked for me. its true he doesnt probe anything or seem to have any big ideas about whats going on, but i think thats what worked for me tbh. mann has always struck me as a smart-for-a-dumb-guy type, and the other films have always turned me off as overblown and pretentious, but this was just a nice subtext-free genre flick with a slow rhythm, no dull speechifying, and a bunch of giant old cars & old chicago locations that looked good on the big screen. even the blue grading & tangerine dream worked for me. amazing performance by robert prosky as the villain too.

i appreciated the Rififi-style restraint of the robbery scenes, no dramatic complications or dumb action-y twists, the characters just silently do exactly what they said they were going to do and it unfolds as expected. watching people do illegal robbery shit is inherently tense & exciting enough without adding "oh no guys - we've got company!"

i watched or rewatched a number of his movies in the past year. i watched thief for the first time and then rewatched it a few months later, cann is amazing in it, just a coiled tense ball of testosterone. rewatched heat and collateral, the latter of which i think belongs in the top tier of mann movies for sure - foxx is so great and the shitty digital cinematography has aged really well. also watched last of the mohicans for the first time, which i enjoyed a lot - the main romance is pretty eh and it's not DDL's best performance but all the action (which is like 85% of the movie anyway) is fantastic and wes studi steals the movie.

idk one eye open, if you liked thief that much for those reasons, you should prob revisit the mann films that turned you off

though you do mention one thing i love about thief that isn't really in a lot of other crime genre cinema, which is that the jobs go off without a hitch and he only has run-ins with the law because the cops are itching for their bribe

mann's understanding of prison culture, the way it alters one's ability to effectively reenter society, and also just the way the system flattens and ruins lives forever, is deeper than any director i can think of offhand

Last of the Mohicans is more fun and touching than it has a right to be.

heat is the gayest movie of all time

mann's understanding of prison culture, the way it alters one's ability to effectively reenter society, and also just the way the system flattens and ruins lives forever, is deeper than any director i can think of offhand

Check out Ulu Grosbard's Straight Time, with Dustin Hoffman. It's streaming on Prime for $2. The book, No Beast so Fierce by Ed Bunker, is also excellent. Bunker spent years in juvenile and adult institutions, and this is his whole theme. Depressing stuff, but his writing's extremely vivid, and the movie's about as unglamorous as you can imagine but also brilliant. Some of Hoffman's best work ever.

well, gays like great asses

(Ha; I just looked at Wikipedia and Mann was an uncredited co-writer on Straight Time.)