im not in the habit of anticipating movies but i am anticipating sofia coppola's somewhere starring steven dorff, hotel rooms and dreamy retro pop music

i'm guessing Dorff will never surpass his performance as Candy Darling

dud dud dud dud dud dud dud dud

Never thought I'd look back with fondness on Marie Antoinette but there we are.

One ILX-baiting scene involves two strippers doing a tennis-themed number on hotel room tension poles to "1 Thing."

suddenly, getting a copy of this in the mail feels less special.

I hated Antoinette, a lot.

Dunst then Dorff, wtf.

First tough rule of for your consideration screeners: many of them are, once you set aside the buzz, crap.

wow. awful.

this still looks like total fun comfort food to me but it's hilarious that it beat hellman, gallo, bing, etc.

comfort food for the rear segment of the centipede

Quietus bit http://thequietus.com/articles/05418-sofia-coppola-s-somewhere

it's not good.

my screening had excitable kids who were chatting for the first 15 mins until someone told them to shut up, but after about 45 minutes we had lost pretty much everyone. conversations going on all over the room at normal volume. pretty unusual for germany tbh.

approx how many mins is michelle monaghan on screen?

disappointed u withstood 15 mins of insensate doggerel w/out telling the swine to stfu or otherwise hardsonning them

and that's just the film amirite

approx how many mins is michelle monaghan on screen?

90 seconds, maybe? She has literally two lines. This was really, really awful. A third of the theater walked out, which I haven't seen in a while (it took about 35 minutes, but once one couple broke the seal, it was on). Dorff is not to blame; he was fine - it's just got nothing happening in it whatsoever.

isn't she trying for a 'nothing all that much happens' kinda film? [via ozu, et al]

Did she namecheck Ozu? Jesus. I guess there are different degrees of 'nothing all that much happens,' but really, nothing all that much happens in ANY way.

Quick question for anyone else who has seen it (SPOILERS, I suppose):
Did the chit-chat from Chris Pontius (the 'Jackass' guy) to Elle Fanning strike anyone else as slightly creepy/inappropriate?

not really. pontius was supposed to be her uncle, right?

how does this compare to the other 'nothing happening' film coming out (the one with michelle williams and ryan gosling)?

YES.

great, Martina dyke jokes to an 11-year-old

xp

Blue Valentine has its problems but is way better.

also, plenty happens in it!

The promise of "nothing happens" usually pulls me into even the worst of movies.

Like, I want to see that Filipino one about the kidnapped people in the back of a truck in real time, despite the unanimous worst-Cannes-entry-ever, just because, you know, nothing happens.

Kinatay, that's the one. Ebert wrote:
For at least 45 minutes, maybe an hour, maybe an eternity, Mendoza gives us Queasy-Cam shots, filmed at night in very low light, of the interior and exterior of the van as they drive a long distance outside Manila to a remote house.

I've hated pretty much everything S. Coppola has done but this was a new level of pretentious nothing. Pontius did creep me out and i believe he was meant to be like the Dorff's childhood friend not his brother.

The promise of "nothing happens" usually pulls me into even the worst of movies.

^^^this

"Sofia Coppola is the authentic Little Focker."

- Armond otm

Not sure what she was going for with the soundtrack on this one either.

"Sofia Coppola is the authentic Little Focker."

A sentiment that will only seem more profound as the years pass

"Quentin's Pulp is but a shadow of The Shadow"

haha ok i didn't realize this was from a joint review with Fockers rather than one of Armond's gratuitous refs to other films released the same year, a little more explicable there.

This movie seems to steadily improve over its course, thankfully. I barely made it throught the first third. God, the poledancer scenes, so dull and witless, and so long.

A decent portrait of balh blah postmodern isolation and sense of meaninglessness, the onslaught of banalities and indignities in professional life. The Ferrari always moving slowly was a good metaphor for his quiet desperation, I think.

Fanning kid pretty great! Not as cloyingly cute as Dakota; very naturalistic.

Way flawed movie, though. Can't imagine wanting to see it again. In a movie seemingly trying to capture these little existentialist 'moments' like the ones LIR succeeded at occasionally, there was really nothing here that stuck. And i never felt I really knew what motivated the protag.

Anyway, f u Sophia. Not horrible but close.

LIR?

Lost in Ranslation

A rare OTM moment from Denby:

At the moment, Coppola is an artist fixated on a single subject: this is her third film about an isolated soul living in a hotel. It’s time she risked losing her cool

idk this seems like the kindof movie i would enjoy. still think coppola should explore "genre" movies. like her period movie was fun and a really good context for her style. I want to see her make a sci fi or a western. Something about a young frontier-girl seeing the prairies for the first time, the west; or a meditative disaster movie where lone makeshift rafts silently float thru nearly deserted cities.

Would have been an OK 10-15 min short, which is more than I can say for Marie Antoinette.

Ha, "Marie Antoinette" made an excellent trailer!

given the ocean of crappy directors and the waves of lame product washed ashore from hollywood studios year after year, i'm happy to take sofia coppola's elegant, moving "lost soul in a hotel" movies over-and-over.

it'd be nice if the anti-sofia crit club could make it through an entire review without resorting to creepy armchair-psychologist bs (armond: "sofia coppola’s pretense that her own father issues are again (the fourth time around) worthwhile movie content....")

Easy film to hate, liked some things about it regardless. Definitely bordered on trolling the audience with the sad rich guy schtick. Dorff was way too flat and empty even for a character who was supposed to be flat and empty, and didn't come off as a strikingly good-looking leading man type who could be a star as big as he was supposed to be while completely lacking substance (tbf I think this was the awful writing/lack of characterization and not really Dorff's fault). Lots of groanworthy cliches (long lonely drives, nu-tech as barrier between people, "Who is Johnny Marco") -- what the fuck kind of a name is Johnny Marco anyway? Can anyone really believe that there's a star named Johnny Marco?

I thought the girl was good, and I liked the fact that the film almost started to be about something, like there was some effort at "hey, maybe this is WHY the characters are bored and sad." There were a few sharp moments (e.g. tearful Dorff on the phone to ex saying he feels so empty, shallow ex says "Why don't you just volunteer or something?" Creepy sexual stuff going on with the daughter too, but I thought there was an implication that the women chasing Dorff were all really seeking their dads.

heard this was horrible

Did the chit-chat from Chris Pontius (the 'Jackass' guy) to Elle Fanning strike anyone else as slightly creepy/inappropriate?

― She Got the Shakes, Monday, December 13, 2010 10:29 AM Bookmark

Yeah, but I think it was supposed to be. I mean it's also inappropriate for him to be laying some random chick in a hotel and then having her to breakfast with his daughter. There's little that's appropriate about the environment she's being raised in (and it's kind of implied that the mom is just as bad, if in a different way). Hyper-sexuality is a big part of the film and that's what she's exposed to. I mean I think that has something to do with the uncomfortable figure skating scene too although I can't quite put my finger on it.

The only reason I might watch this is b/c Dorff is fun to look at. The trailer made me think "AGAIN?!" Again with the muted, drifting nothing-happens movie (I loved Lost In Translation and The Virgin Suicides, but by the time Marie Antoinette came out, that style felt like a gimmick), but mostly A-FUCKING-GAIN with the rich, bored, angst-ridden characters??

This review makes great points:
At the dawn of independent film, growing out of avant-garde culture, the movies reveled in their outsider status, portraying edgy misfits living on the cusps of society, in films like Stranger Than Paradise. Somewhere along the way, however, America’s self-styled outsider arts, the “indie” movement in all its manifestations across film, music and fashion, not only made their peace with the capitalist hierarchy, but began to celebrate it. Across culture, the “indie” world filed for emancipation from its downtrodden, protest-heavy forbears, and became something cloying, cutesy and simpering.

sophia makes very beautiful looking movies. nice w/ valium or percocet.

She does. When I saw the preview for this I was kind of excited about it but everything I've read has been horrible which makes me sad because I wanted it to be good.

if only welles and renoir had made more movies celebrating "edgy misfits living on the cusps of society" instead of pretending we have anything to learn from "rich, bored, angst-ridden characters."