Come Anticipate Up in the Air: Jason Reitman, George Clooney, sad songs

Clooney is fine in it. The acting is certainly not this movie's problem.

I don't remember Broken Flowers having a moral stench.

Nothing out there is any good this year, so a halfway winning film about semi-recognizable adults is being oversold as Sturges 2.0.... tarted up with inexcusably mawkish, Laurent Cantet-for-the-USA Today-set inserts of "real" people (not actors!) addressing the camera and describing their emotions following the loss of their jobs due to downsizing. This spray-on gravitas is preposterous, not just because it's so clearly phoned in, but more importantly because these "real people" are there not to complicate The Ryan Bingham Story (what an actual art film would do with, you know, extra-diegetic nonfictional material), but to cement its home-and-hearth trajectory as American gospel.

http://academichack.net/reviewsDecember2009.htm

Hey Morbs, I checked out 35 Rhums on your rec and it was really good. Thanks!

glad!

yeah i thought the use of REAL FIRED PEOPLE was pretty disgusting

This fucking movie. Only the Academy would consider Anna Kendricks' kewpie doll performance nomination worthy.

The real fired people really add a dollop of meaning to the story of this rootless guy who wishes he had someone to go steady with.

I almost talked to this panhandler I saw a couple of blocks from my hood because I wanted to feel better about my shitty life.

Nothing out there is any good this year, so a halfway winning film about semi-recognizable adults is being oversold as Sturges 2.0.... tarted up with inexcusably mawkish, Laurent Cantet-for-the-USA Today-set inserts of "real" people (not actors!) addressing the camera and describing their emotions following the loss of their jobs due to downsizing. This spray-on gravitas is preposterous, not just because it's so clearly phoned in, but more importantly because these "real people" are there not to complicate The Ryan Bingham Story (what an actual art film would do with, you know, extra-diegetic nonfictional material), but to cement its home-and-hearth trajectory as American gospel.

http://academichack.net/reviewsDecember2009.htm

― Rage, Resentment, Spleen (Dr Morbius), Saturday, December 26, 2009 5:36 PM (31 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i agree with this dude but "laurence-cantet-for-the-usa-today-set" is a terrible turn of phrase. also, come on. it's annie hall/reds he's obviously going for.

(by which i mean reitman is going for)

Read that whole Academic Hack review! Speaking as a guy who liked this much more than he did, I thought it was great. Except:

"his gradual abandonment of a philosophy of selfish isolation in favor of family and connection -- i.e., switching from being a perpetual traveler to forging a "home""

strangely ignores protagonist's final-reel realization that up in the air, without family or connection, really IS where he belongs!

Re the "real fired people" -- in the context of the movie, though, these guys don't play as real people at all, but as actors. It never occurred to me they weren't actors until people in this thread said so. So I think this is something to hold against the movie's PR campaign, not the movie itself, in which these characters are presented as no more "real" than Clooney himself.

Wait, so they took interviews with flesh and blood people who have gone through some difficulties in the last year and inserted their stories in the end credits? Am I getting this right?

strangely ignores protagonist's final-reel realization that up in the air, without family or connection, really IS where he belongs!

I didn't read the ending that way at all. I thought he was considering Natalie's (?) idea that he should just use his miles to fly somewhere cool and actually enjoy it and maybe grow some roots, instead of living in a world of airports, hotels, and trade shows. But anyway, whatever the ending is, I think there's some ambiguity there. But clearly he's sick of being perpetually airborne, and I think his conversation with the pilot speaks to that.

I've seen plenty of press about the 'real ppl' interviews (start and finish, and a few in the middle) all over the place.

s1ocki, "laurence-cantet-for-the-usa-today-set" is my favorite line in that!

watching reitman on charlie rose, hes really hard for me to even listen to

if i ever see this it will be a few years from now on tnt

Couldn't stand this predictable, trite, perpetually annoying film, but JK Simmons is pretty much always great though. I wish the movie had been about his character.

Well, George Clooney would have shot him.

“New York Magazine: Jason, after just three films you’re already polarizing critics. For example, Armond White of the New York Press opened his Up in the Air review with: “Jason Reitman’s movies come in three forms: Rubbish (Thank You for Smoking), Crap (Juno), and Swill (Up in the Air).”
Jason: [Laughs.] That’s a good one.

New York Magazine: My editor wanted me to get your reaction to that.

Jason: Did your editor also suggest you tell me I’m extraordinarily pale and Jewy-looking and I should lose some weight? [Laughs.] What was the name of the guy who wrote that?

New York Magazine: Armond White.

Jason: Well, I don’t think he’s going to like my fourth film any better. My films are polarizing. I don’t want to tell my audience what to think. Thank You for Smoking—liberals thought it was theirs and conservatives thought it was theirs. And pro-lifers thought Juno was theirs and pro-choicers thought it was theirs. Up in the Air has a similar divide, depending on what people think the ending of the movie means. I would be curious to hear what Armond thinks of The Insider, a film that goes [slams down fist]: “Smoking bad! Tobacco people bad!” And for me that’s so boring. But, look, for some that’s the experience they want and those movies exist for them. I want people to talk.”

hahaha

dude is high on his own supply imo

s1ocki, "laurence-cantet-for-the-usa-today-set" is my favorite line in that!

it's a cute line except that a.) it's laurent b.) cantet doesn't rhyme with set and c.) there really is no such thing as "the usa today set," which is kind of the point of usa today.

(ok i just went back to the original and see he got laurent right. still.)

also like i said above dude is clearly going for reds/annie hall, not laurent cantet.

i haven't even seen this yet so i don't know, but yeah it's pretty hard for me to imagine jason reitman going for laurent cantet.

But anyway, whatever the ending is, I think there's some ambiguity there. But clearly he's sick of being perpetually airborne, and I think his conversation with the pilot speaks to that.

to me the ending was that he realizes he's sick of it but that he missed his chance to do anything about it. I guess him picking his own destination off the board was sorta "hopeful" but it still seemed like a downer ending to me. in a good way

I can't imagine jason reitman going for Annie Hall/Reds either. (These "witnesses" reminded me of a TV ad or some crap corporate promo/propaganda piece.) btw JR, Armond hates Michael Mann too.

yeah i thought the use of REAL FIRED PEOPLE was pretty disgusting
― stupid fruity crazy jag (J0rdan S.), Saturday, December 26, 2009 10:53 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark

what bothered me more than this was how the movie set a lot of these people up as the butt of jokes. these firing montages provided the most consistent laughs in my theater.

as it turns out, the little kid sitting behind me provided my favorite criticism of Up in Air when a minute into the film he said "is this the movie? this looks like a commercial!" i was hoping to hear more of his thoughts after it ended but he left to see "the frog and the princess"

I can't imagine jason reitman going for Annie Hall/Reds either. (These "witnesses" reminded me of a TV ad or some crap corporate promo/propaganda piece.) btw JR, Armond hates Michael Mann too.

― Rage, Resentment, Spleen (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, December 30, 2009 9:47 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i can. it's so obviously where the idea came from.

first of all, in Annie Hall what is the equivalent? In Reds, mostly well-known writers/public intellectuals recounting events of 60 years earlier not quite the same either.

i get the ref to 'time out' but cantet hasn't used inserts of irl people iirc

no morbs you're right, annie hall is prob pushing it. but reds i think for sure. and i think i just realized what the real influence is... WHEN HARRY MET SALLY

he misses the point of 'the insider' + lol at moral ambivalence for idiots.

yeah he sounds dumb

interview reads better if you add ", man" to the end of all his sentences

these firing montages provided the most consistent laughs in my theater.

Hate to give Reitman a break here, but I think this can be chalked up to a large minority of moviegoers being assholes.

(didnt put "majority" bcz it's Christmas)

I don't get how that interview is supposed to prove Reitman dumb (or Armond not-dumb) besides his disinterest in the content of The Insider, which I think is a valid point (not to touch on Mann's style, which, if I recall, is 90% of why that movie is at all memorable.)

the claim that the fact that his movies play it both ways ideologically is a virtue is what makes him sound dumb there to me. i guess that was bitchy of me. i've only seen juno, and i liked that movie but i think it's gross that he's being coy about pro-choice/pro-life. i guess this is morbs of me but the previews for up in the air make it seem worthless.

But Diablo Cody wrote Juno. Isn't this the first of his films where he has primary script credit? (also it seems agreed there's very little of the source novel left in the film)

I can't think of a more rudimentary, uninteresting examination of duality w.r.t political issues than Thank You for Smoking.

The tobacco industry is pretty fucked up and villainous imo.

I know that's a bold claim but goshdarnit it's how I feel!

also his complaint abt the insider is stupid because smoking is bad for you, and what the tobacco companies did was wrong, like idk how he thinks mann couldve shoehorned in some phony ambivalence into that movie to make it less "boring" w/o making a completely different (and more retarded) movie

lol xpost

I don't get how that interview is supposed to prove Reitman dumb (or Armond not-dumb) besides his disinterest in the content of The Insider, which I think is a valid point (not to touch on Mann's style, which, if I recall, is 90% of why that movie is at all memorable.)

― Simon H., Wednesday, December 30, 2009 1:33 PM (58 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

the implicit argument that his movies are much more interesting and nuanced than the "boring" insider—a movie that his pedestrian garbage will never, ever come closing to TOUCHING—is what makes that quote noteworthy

yeah if you're jason reitman maybe don't so much disparage michael mann

I don't think me meant to disparage Michael Mann.

*he

More to the point, while I think a lot of his remarks here and elsewhere are sometimes dubious, he's hardly the only director w/ foot in mouth syndrome. I can only account for the movie, really, which I liked.