Come anticipate David Fincher's "Zodiac"

missing this important tweet

Guillermo del Toro‏Verified @RealGDT
Zodiac is a "One Sock Movie" meaning: you're getting dressed- you catch it on TV and sit down (one sock in hand) and watch it until the end.

It's a one sock movie alright. For wankers.

so rong it makes me think you're in on this somehow

it's a one sock movie alright. for transfemoral amputees.

It was just something to say on a Tuesday morning.

But I found this a dull, grey movie.

opening shot alone says no

sorry, pointless argument, something to say on a Tuesday morning

Tuesday morning needs its own thread

That's the spare truth right there

not to come across all cap'n save-a-dullard but i think there is a deliberate dullness to much of the back half of zodiac that contributes hugely to the movie - after the immaculately staged and shot murders at the beginning, the characters start to unravel and get tied up in endless, frustrating miniutiae.

then it's punctuated occasionally with a new zodiac letter or the totally magnetic interview with arthur lee allen, where the cops know they're within inches of getting their guy... and they don't. investigations are tough and boring and sometimes massively exciting and there are very few movies which communicate that as clearly as zodiac does

for real, I think that's all otm and I think it's a great movie but I'm not in the business of selling it to the unconverted

i am - i get a twix every time someone buys a special edition blu-ray on my recommendation

What if I pronounce your username with emphasis on the first syllables, do they still know where to send the twix

I did get that at the time, and def I get that part of the point is to bring us as participants in the frustration and to remove the omniscient view, which is admirable and something that I'd advocate for in plenty of less intelligent efforts.

Interesting that there always seems to be an insistence of repeat viewings for this one, I've seen it repped hard enough by the right people that I might do that.

i get two twixes on those occasions iirc xp

the other thing that i love about zodiac (which yeah i've seen multiple times and i think it does reward repeat viewing) is how effortlessly it lays out a massively complicated case and sticks to the facts about the murders and the investigation. it does take a few liberties with characters here and there iirc, but otherwise it's a masterclass in how to make a movie based on real events.

i'm a sucker for procedural movies tho, i wanted arrival to be like 185 minutes of amy adams writing on a whiteboard

This movie and Thin Red Line are two (relatively) recent masterpieces that yeah I will start watching from any point.

then it's punctuated occasionally with a new zodiac letter or the totally magnetic interview with arthur lee allen, where the cops know they're within inches of getting their guy... and they don't. investigations are tough and boring and sometimes massively exciting and there are very few movies which communicate that as clearly as zodiac does

OTM, this scene is so great. Five and a half minutes of people sitting at a table talking, and it's riveting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5D13q-2I62w

I especially like how he shoots the entire thing in standard masters and alternating shot/reverse shot takes of Allen and each detective, until Allen starts talking about bloody knives, at which point we get three Jonathan Demme-style closeups of each detective staring right into the camera.

There's also a couple of weird moments where he violates the 180-degree line and places Elias Koteas on the "wrong" side of the screen in relation to both Allen and to Edwards/Ruffalo.

The Thin Red Line is a really good comparison i think because both movies have this loose and open structure with a number of discrete episodes which makes them they feel longer than they really are. Zodiac in particular has a kind of entropy to its narrative that i find fascinating.

no country for old men kinda has the same hypnotic one-sock feeling as zodiac for me

tarkovsky's stalker, too

how many twix can you fit in one sock

two twix one sock

Zodiac in particular has a kind of entropy to its narrative that i find fascinating.

entropy's a great description, yeah - after the spin-up of the early scenes the sense of everyone just losing their personal and collective momentum over the course of the intervening years is pretty unique

how many twix can you fit in one sock

trainer sock: eight
regular ankle sock: 17
knee-ish length athletic sock: 37

these are single-twix packets, obv

There are a couple other prominent movies like this, like ... Vertigo, maybe? Where the initial plot driver ends and turns into something else entirely.

the scenes toward the end of Zodiac that seem to have dramatic tension, like the conversation in the film guy's basement, lean heavily on the viewer's anticipation that something is going to -- no that something has to happen. but nothing does, because the case never had definitive closure

Vertigo is maybe the ur-text, but L'avventura is the paradigm case. i am really drawn to these kinds of movies. actually a lot of Antonioni fits the bill, The Passenger and L'eclisse especially.

"I'm not leaving you holding the bag on anything, am I?"

like 185 minutes of amy adams writing on a whiteboard

would be amazing

good Cinephilia stuff here

http://www.cinephiliabeyond.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/cap057.jpg

https://cinephiliabeyond.org/finchers-zodiac-as-easily-one-of-the-best-thrillers-of-the-millennium-so-far/

i'd like to know more about the pre-production history of this movie, because it feels like such an anomaly. i mean, i can see why a serial killer movie got greenlit, particularly based on a source text that purports to "solve" the case--but how on earth did this wonderful script--which more or less turns into a nearly metaphysical meditation on "closure," narrative and otherwise--get accepted and made into a movie with what appears to have a healthy budget, A-list cast, long running time, etc.? how did this slip through the cracks?

Jake is beautiful.

i assume the studio was at least partially banking on fincher making another serial-killer blockbuster on the scale of seven and they accidentally got an entirely different kind of movie

yeah my thoughts exactly.

that's definitely it. Seven is the reason this god made.

got

That little Vimeo compilation of insert shots is a great short film on its own!

probably worth remembering too that the a-list cast was a little less a-list back when it was in production in 2005/2006, especially downey jr, who was only just climbing his way back to respectability

It's a one sock movie alright. For wankers.

completely wrong obviously but A+ work regardless

I have clarified that it was offered in somewhat that spirit!

Fuckit I might well watch this again tonight just as penance

just looking on imdb and holy moly this movie cost $65m

the weird thing is that i guess most of that went towards stuff which the audience probably mostly won't actively notice, like obsessively-detailed set and costume design and super-subtle digital effects. there's a great behind-the-scenes feature on the dvd (buy a copy and earn me a twix guys) which shows how the scene of the taxi murder was shot on location at the real murder scene with a massive greenscreen in the background so that fincher could ensure the skyline was period-correct

Inexplicable (or not): zero Academy Award nominations. Even coming out in March, you would think it'd get editing and cinematography at a minimum.

US gross ($33 M) was about half the est'd budget. Oscar does not like flops, early-year flops in particular.

Howbout those screenwriter credits after this:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0888743/?ref_=ttawd_awd_66

btw I've not seen this since the original run (once). What besides San Francisco and obsession does it have in common w/ Vertigo? Seem wildly different otherwise.

I want to say it either wasn't released on blu-ray in north america or was done so very poorly

there's some UK not region-locked version I have that's nice, beautiful film

Haha, I saw "Meg" at the top of that list and thought "Given his other credits this is going to be that giant prehistoric shark monster book, isn't it?" DING DING DING