Anticipating Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza

Liked this (loved the cinematography), but it reinforced my theory that if you have enough money to license amazing songs, you can make any movie seem better than it is.

idk i just keep asking myself why this (powerful hollywood white man from a hollywood lineage) guy, at this point in his career, in 2022 decided to do a movie about this age gap shit. like really. why? 🤔 🤔 🤔 🤔

Three bad takes in a row!

Agree with Darin's theory, although to me that's a plus--spend, spend.

Minus its soundtrack (not the most expensive ever assembled--I guess Bowie cost enough), Licorice Pizza would evaporate.

I'll also give LP extra points for featuring the most authentically ugly onscreen 70s hair on men I've seen since the actual 1970s.

the wigs were pretty bad

It’s kinda funny to see people call out a soundtrack that includes “My Ding-a-ling.”

My point is that anyone can film young people running in 35mm w/vintage lenses and toss Life on Mars? in the sound bed and trigger an emotional response (with Bowie doing the heavy lifting).

"anyone" = someone with a large soundtrack budget

it's a godawful small affair

whenever someone brings up the age gap someone chimes in with "BAD TAKE" when it's actually good that people point that out and think about why its even in this dumb movie!

the soundtrack drop with the greatest impact is a doors song imo which requires talent to carry off

you can sub in wings for the doors in that post and it’s still true :)

also ffs how many pta movies involve transcendent pop song placement that you feel the need to invoke “anyone could do this” for this film

for me it’s impossible to say whether the soundtrack makes this movie seem better than it is because it’s one of his indisputably great tricks, across his oeuvre

The best argument I can make for the talent/knack involved in placing a song artistically is to look at films like Forrest Gump or (my go-to example, a forgotten film--for good reason) The Flamingo Kid. They're filled with great songs, most of which have zero resonance (occasionally one will work anyway). So even though I mostly agree with Darin about "Bowie doing the heavy lifting," what the director does in choosing that song and placing it right can't be removed from the equation.

The last 25-30 years have been littered with movies that leaned on their soundtrack that weren't able to generate any kind of response.

This movie didn't entirely work for me but the "age gap" discourse has been a typical shambles. It paints everything with the same brush and is about defining what's out of bounds for artists to explore, not about generating thought.

"life on mars" scores cooper hoffman running to the gas station right? not sure what emotional heavy-lifting people are accusing it of tbh

most of the song placements in this movie align with its tilts between realism and surrealism, and the surreality life takes on when it no longer resembles what you recognize, which is i think what the intervention of the gas shortage also signifies for these characters, that the time they have to abide within their fantasies will end

I'm no film critic, but in defense of my post:

• seems like PTS saw the Tarintino Manson movie and thought "MY TURN"
• song choices felt unconnected to narrative and arbitrary (although Brad's take on the Bowie song is good)
• soundtrack seemed like a crutch (yeah yeah you can direct this at any film, but whatever)
• the aesthetics of the film were the only aspect I truly liked which made me feel manipulated in a way
• as I said, I liked the movie, but didn't love it. Sorry!

blood in the streets it's up to my ankles

Three bad takes in a row!

― Max Hamburgers (Eric H.), Monday, February 21, 2022 1:04 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

lol

In my film class today we discussed sound design: music, special effects, etc. PTA came up as an example of a director who can use music diegetically and non-diegetically well and also for spectacularly ungainly reasons. The wall-to-wall score in Magnolia came up as an example of how he can do it badly.

(The point was to explain how movie scores contribute to our responses).

Am I crazy though? It felt like I’ve seen the 70s character quirks over and over scans as cliches to me...

It's not fresh like Phantom Thread, which seemed as if he were breaking new emotional ground; American directors don't touch this sort of conception of love as a game you can still take seriously. It's like Ophuls directing a Mazursky script. I saw it again in January and am prepared to crown it his best.

Magnolia’s score did what I think PTA wanted it to do tho? To keep the entire movie at a heightened state of anxiety for 3+ hours?

congrats, PTA!

The only film-score mismatch I can think of in PTA’s work is There Will Be Blood come to think of it

inasmuch as Greenwood music only works with Thom Yorke's dispatches.

last two posts are deeply wrong lmao

*cues Greenwood thunder*

one of my most memorable theater experiences is the seasickness i felt when greenwood's score starts up in there will be blood

pta's way of making the landscape from which they extract the oil feel full of doom and hostile to any kind of humanity

That's a movie where it's a necessary complement, yeah.

In my film class today we discussed sound design: music, special effects, etc. PTA came up as an example of a director who can use music diegetically and non-diegetically well and also for spectacularly ungainly reasons. The wall-to-wall score in Magnolia came up as an example of how he can do it badly.

― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, February 21, 2022 3:25 PM (forty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Would pull my kid out of this college

me in professor Soto's class

https://c.tenor.com/sCdo8DW21XQAAAAC/boo-outrage.gif

can't stand Radiohead, Greenwood's scores for PTA and Ramsey and Campion are v good

I'd also differentiate between using period music to fix time and/or to capture a mood, like with "Life on Mars" here, and using something counter-intuitively, like PTA using "Jessie's Girl" in Boogie Nights in the midst of this violent, chaotically surreal scene. The former is the lowest level of imagination--it can be great, but as Darin says, the music does the heavy lifting. With the latter, I give most of the credit to the director (or person in charge of the soundtrack).

My example of "great soundtrack, inert movie" is Almost Famous.

That's an example of a startling PTA use of music xpost

I love a few things from Almost Famous: "Tiny Dancer," of course, but also "America" as William flips through his inherited record collection, the couple of Led Zeppelin songs, and one or two other things, I think.

Best of all, when Dirk, sitting on the couch and in close-up, realizes the song describes his relationship to Amber and smiles.

This movie didn't entirely work for me but the "age gap" discourse has been a typical shambles. It paints everything with the same brush and is about defining what's out of bounds for artists to explore, not about generating thought.

This is dumb bcuz the guy explored it and made a huge movie about it and is getting critical acclaim and anyone that disagrees is labeled with having bad takes.

So what's your good take?

disagrees with what

the critical acclaim

kurt you hate this movie on such a personal level that all of your arguments feel like a form of revenge. hard to engage with

isn’t there tumblr for this kind of stuff

What about my about-the-70s movie tropes issue? I just wanted someone to tell me why I'm wrong