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

Reitman is on the Bill Simmons ESPN podcast today.

It is occasionally quite irritating!

i can believe it was a body double, but what was obvious about it? have you seen her ass before?

CANCER?

CANCER?

No, I said, would you like a CAN, SIR?

HURRR.

fucking hell. this was terrible.

a perfect opening for how tone deaf the movie was.

a book of all the reviews of this film would be a great snapshot of how fkn clueless our reviewers are.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/c253a100-0062-11df-b50b-00144feabdc0.html

"When the film is smart, it is very smart. “Think of me as yourself, only with a vagina,” is Farmiga’s erotic appeal to Clooney."

hmmmm, that is p smart.

"Later, after a cocktail hour spent salivating over each other’s gilt-edged loyalty cards, she says: “We’re two people who get turned on by elite status.”"

haaaaaa! she's describing what happens in the scene!

"when the film is smart, it is very smart"

does tht reviewer even comprehend what any of the words in tht sentence mean?

idk if im revealing something weird here, but honestly "me + vagina" is not erotically appealing.

tbf i think that was reitman's point.

History maygina

history mangina

this movie is so good at being oscar zeitgeist bait'n'switch bullshit i get pangs of ebertian "it achieves what it aspires to" if try to say it sucks raw ass.

There's a reason why deleted scenes should stay deleted

Oscar momentum is a funny thing. For most of last fall, "Up In The Air" seemed to be the film to be beat as it was widely considered to be a frontrunner for Best Picture, George Clooney seemed to be a favorite for Best Actor and Jason Reitman was poised for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay honors. And while the Oscar nominations panned out, a late season surge by "The Hurt Locker," a career encapsulating turn by Jeff Bridges in "Crazy Heart" and an ugly screenplay credit fight between Reitman and Sheldon Turner quashed the film's chances and it walked away empty handed on Sunday night.

Thus, today's "Up In The Air" DVD/BluRay release feels a bit anti-climatic. However, Paramount didn't skimp on the extras for their Oscar horse, and if you're a fan of the film, the BluRay might be the one to get. Loaded with 14 deleted scenes (versus 5 on the DVD) and a handful of other exclusive features, it's the edition to own. You can check out two the deleted sequences below and warning for those who haven't seen the film, a spoiler warning does apply to the "Omaha Montage" clip.

The first clip is a dream sequence that features Clooney's Ryan Bingham floating around in a spacesuit. It's a pretty heavy-handed metaphor for the alienation that Bingham feels, and it's not particularly compelling so its easy to see why it got the axe. In the second clip, we see Bingham somewhat unbelievably set up a home life in the hopes of settling down with Vera Farmiga's Alex Goran. It's not quite clear if this is another dream sequence or not, but seeing as how its intercut with other plot threads from the film, we're guessing it's not. It clearly does not fit in at all with Bingham's character arc and it's easy to see why it was excised. It's just way too over the top.

(looks like one of the clips was removed from YouTube but the other is still there)

on another note i recently watched stripes, and the deleted scenes (interspersed throughout the theatrical version) are really, really bad

christ ILX *really* hated this?

Well, why did you like it?

i only just watched it, i'll have to figure that out but i had no idea it was despised by all and sundry. i guess a movie with a lead male character who hates the idea of settling down appealed to me.

If the movie had stuck to that premise, I would have sent Reitman flowers.

according to the new york times, this is the 101 on critical hate of up in the air (which is not an ilx thing -- don't remember reading any raves, read lots of pans): http://www.slate.com/id/2246901/

Ross Douthat liked it = color me unsurprised.

this wasn't bad, altho the sdtk kinda annoyed me. was glad it didn't get into a touchy-feely BAD MAN LEARNS LESSON trope at the end but it still felt kinda pointless overall. Hated the young girl/protege actress' performance.

finally saw this. i didn't expect much and it was worse than that. fuckin' reitman jr. smug as always, trite as always, taking down strawmen as always.

the complete absence of a plot beyond "this happens then this happens" is fine in a novel with a strong voice and inexcusable in a major motion picture. at least JUNO had dramatic tensions, however false. the final Interviews With Actual Real People What Has Been Laid Off In This Economy left a particularly bad taste - picture implies that it's giving the little people a voice or something but does precisely zero to earn it.

this movie had too much music in it

this was only slightly less predictable/offensive than 27 Dresses

Main thing I got out of this: Jason Reitman is making better Cameron Crowe movies than Cameron Crowe is (and faster too).

I am anti- this movie, after all. I just give it credit for being a slick fraud.

― really senile old crap shit (Eric H.), Friday, 4 December 2009 18:36 (6 months ago)

succinct, otm. should just have read this thread first tbh.

absolutely gutted at the butt-double. it really was the best thing about this

I didn't catch this on release, bought a used copy today, and I'm glad I did. I'm sure there were reviews out of the gate that went way overboard, and that always leads to backlash. But it ambles along, and I thought it came together at the end. The most interesting character was the mousy assistant. The Hurt Locker basically left my mind the minute I left the theatre, but Up in the Air I'll mull over for a few days.

First I'll scroll back and read about how awful it is.

Still mulling Vera Farmiga wearing Clooney's tie tbh

In a world that inspires so much ambiguity, how marvelous to look at Up in the Air and know that I can vomit without shame.

Um, anyhow...She's unusual. Amazingly, I managed to watch this months after the fact without knowing a thing about the big surprise. One or two people upthread said it was telegraphed; they're a lot more alert than I am.

I'm glad that a film about losing jobs was able to create one for Young MC.

It busts a move alright.

this movie was repulsive

I've changed my mind. I feel unclean for having seen it. Proceed apace.

In a world that inspires so much ambiguity, how marvelous to look at Up in the Air and know that I can vomit without shame.

― Gucci Mane hermeneuticist (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, September 16, 2010 8:52 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

<3

hated this boring, awful, smarmy movie. but loved george clooney in it mostly because i love george clooney in anything, always. weirds me out that he isn't a big romantic superstar making bank on daffy romantic comedies with jennifer aniston and julia roberts. cuz the best moments in this are where he's wasting time in a bar, flirting with his ladyfriend. he's so good at that kind of thing, makes it seem so effortless and joyful, it's like watching fred astaire dance. all the more poignant cuz fred astaire actually spent the bulk of his career dancing.

Turned this off after 20 mins.

^^^ good idea

awful film

I know the movie's old news, but I truly don't get the more-loathsome-than-Jerry-Springer-crossed-with-Satan vitriol here. I hardly ever feel that way about any film any more, and generally try to reserve it for truly juvenile idiocy like, oh, Inland Empire.

In the end, it settles on a pro-family-and-marriage "message." Big surprise--it shares that with 97% of Hollywood films ever made. 48 and single, I guess I could have done without that, but 1) given a choice I'd rather be married, so I hardly recoil from that, and 2) it really sends out mixed signals anyway, since no matter what it thinks it's telling you at the end, the fact is that Clooney's perfectly happpy for most of the film. As far as the work-related half of the movie, that's something it shares with about 1% of every Hollywood film ever made, so that's inherently of interest to me right away. I don't see what's smarmy about it, and really don't see how the unemployed talking heads were exploited, as suggested somewhere upthread. You get a wide range of reactions from these people; I've only been fired once in my life, and it was 20 years ago, but I'm pretty sure my reaction landed somewhere on the spectrum you get in Up in the Air. Clooney stepping in to save the day with the guy who wanted to be a chef was a bit much, agreed. Maybe as a unionized teacher with enough seniority that I'm immune to ever losing my job, I'm too detached from what's going on out there to pick up on what's smarmy about Up in the Air. As is, I just found the job-related half consistently interesting.

it's a movie about a hangman that never once seems to realize that there might be some moral ambiguity to what he does for a living... it's one of the most consciously blinders-on movies i've ever seen

I wanted to punch the screen when it went to handheld at the marriage ceremony. It was like all the little things were piling up and piling up and then that moment it crossed the Rubicon into 'awful' territory. The only really good thing about the film, aside to some degree the performances (which can be enough if the material is benign, but when that material is actively bad, it isn't), was the fetishization of efficient packing at the beginning. And I liked the establishing shots of the cities.

im glad i've forgotten it

That the movie's so handsome and polished – like its leading man – fooled a lot of critics and people; it made the thing doubly loathsome.

I was fooled--thanks, got it. Jesus...

never once seems to realize that there might be some moral ambiguity to what he does

Well, if it had been a Ron Howard film, he would have led you around with a pointer and given Clooney a big soul-searching speech on the moral ambiguity of his job--I don't think you want that, so I'm not sure what you mean. The ambiguity is there--just by virtue of it being largely unaddressed, it's there. To me, it's like a Hawksian thing: he's a guy with a loathsome job (made extra clear by the silly self-actualizing spiel they stick him with), but a guy who has some ideas on how to do it well and make it as unloathsome as possible. I think it does a very good job of not tipping its hand one way or the other; if that's not ambiguity, it's close enough for me. Where the film does lapse into speechifying is with the relationship half, especially Anna Kendricks' "You're like a 12-year-old" harangue.

in general, films having "halves" is not a good thing.

jerry maguire is an example of a film which (i) integrates the guy's job into the drama without simply having one half of the film about a profession because it was a timely gimmick, and the other half about a completely separate aspect of his life (ii) does not deal with the "family = good" thing in quite the same loathsome/i hate my audience/i am going blow their minds with a reactionary reverse way. and i don't even like jerry maguire that much. up in the air is worse than paedophiles.

Excellent. From "vomit" to "loathsome" to "paedophiles." I'm stumped as to what's next on that spectrum.

reitman killed a guy

it's a bad film!

reitman killed a guy

just to watch him die

If 10% of the country is out of work, and you make a film that deals with people being out of work, how is that gimmicky? I mean, couldn't it also be called "topical"?

The movie's interested in the unemployed insofar as it can turn them as fodder for a fable in which a silver-haired man who looks like George Clooney realizes how much he wants a family.

it could be if it didn't suck

xpost