Todd Haynes

Fair enough. You, actors. Me, soundtracks.

I assume Alfred's whimsy comment was aimed at the new one, not Carol.

I like or love most of Haynes' movies, but the source material for this one makes me skeptical. I didn't like Hugo, so reviews saying either "It's as good as Hugo" or "It's not as good as Hugo" don't do anything for me.

Dargis in the NYT thought it was pitched primarily at adults.

idk what to think after the trailer tbh

I tend to love Haynes when he's focused on music, less so on other topics but I did like Far From Heaven and Safe

def doesn't look like something that would interest children imo

I referred to the new one. The kids are better than the horrors in The FLorida Project though.

Give it a rest already.

I referred to the new one. The kids are better than the horrors in The FLorida Project though.

― morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, October 20, 2017 12:58 PM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ah sorry for misrepresenting you alfred

Carol could have done with some whimsey.

Give it a rest already.

― Anne of the Thousand Gays (Eric H.), Friday, October 20, 201

Someone likes Florida!

Except some people.

Carol was boring af

I didn't think Carol (or Far From Heaven) was boring as much as straitjacketed by good taste and period detail. As for Wonderstruck, I will say that its period settings didn't strike me as nearly so restrictive. And I found the musical settings to be an exercise in obviousness, which I assume means it will get its only Oscar nomination in one of the sound categories.

Yeah, Wonderstruck is pretty boring. Moreso than Carol, even.

I was restless.

No floor to mop or furniture to Pledge either!

used '70s Manhattan as a theme park, too

Next up this fall... don't think I knew about it?

https://www.indiewire.com/2019/08/todd-haynes-dark-waters-mark-ruffalo-anne-hathaway-primetime-oscars-release-1202168878/

Seems like a prosaic social-issue variant on Safe.

. It was adapted most recently by Mario Correa and first writer Matthew Michael Carnahan from Nathaniel Rich’s New York Times Magazine article, “The Lawyer Who Became DuPont’s Worst Nightmare.”

Anne Hathaway stars opposite Ruffalo as Biliott’s wife, Sarah; she’s also the star of “The Last Thing He Wanted,” which Rees and Marco Villalobos adapted from the 1997 Joan Didion novel.

I'm quite confused.

they are referring to another non-Haynes film in the can

yes it is a Haynes film

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvAOuhyunhY

oh damn!

Kind of like when Mann did The Insider and moved past his crime-genre limitations while keeping his strengths.

Gus Van Sant did an enviro drama what, 2 years ago?

I love Haynes but this looks p boring

I like this one more than Carol or Wonderstruck. It works.

also fuck Dupont and their former senator the Frontrunner

welp I guess I just learned this movie exists!

A decent New Yorker profile: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/11/11/todd-haynes-rewrites-the-hollywood-playbook

What differentiates this one from Promised Land?

dunno, didn't see that one

subject matter is not the end-all though... there certainly are echoes of Safe.

superb Ed Lachman cinematography as always, a frequently icy blue palette

DARK WATERS (Haynes, 2019) pic.twitter.com/jaXpclD2sj

— gina telaroli (@GinaTelaroli) November 12, 2019

Dug it. Like Morbs says, super cinematography And careful accurate design overall but never exaggerating late-90s Cincinnati style.

Agree withEdelstein:

If meanly-clad-little-David-versus-venomous-corporate-Goliath melodramas like Todd Haynes’s fact-based Dark Waters are more alike than unalike, it’s because there’s really only one way to frame what happens every day in a country controlled by companies with vast coffers, armies of lobbyists, and politicians leased by the year.

ppl who handwave at this somehow think Parasite says "more"

How does the speed change things for you, on the filmmaking end?

It's not my preferred method, but we just went there. And we went to these places and we surrounded ourselves with these people, and we just sucked everything out that we could from their stories and their experiences in their homes, in their living rooms, the documents that each of them hung on to through the course of the story. We shot in the law firm itself in Downtown Cincinnati and we shot in the Netherland Hilton, where they really had these annual black tie events. We shot at the Queen City Club, where Victor Garber was first introduced and makes the speech praising DuPont.

We were right inside all of this. It was pretty insane because it puts you in the visual landscape and the spatial landscape. Space is a really important part of these kinds of movies, the sense of individuals alienated within corporate spaces, public spaces, domestic spaces. That became apparent and literalized by the story itself, where he's literally walled in by the boxes of discovery that he finally shakes loose from DuPont.

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2019/11/dark-waters-todd-haynes-interview

Ed Lachman not bothering to conceal his annoyance while explaining why DARK WATERS is the first all-digital Haynes feature https://t.co/h2fqhl9EGD pic.twitter.com/190Gm8yDrQ

— Vadim Rizov (@vrizov) December 3, 2019

I thought Carol was really beautiful visually, wonder how this one compares

This was fine as far as corporate malfeasance films go, not as gripping as Erin Brockovich or Norma Rae but better than A Civil Action. The cinematography made the lineage between this and Safe explicit.

thread

Haynes turning his eye for the voluptuous towards the grotesque and depressing? That’s how you shore up the conscience of the American movie goer. You make the comfort of wealth look sad and the hell of government mandated poverty un-Romantic

— Scout Tafoya (@Honors_Zombie) December 9, 2019

good stuff. i'm looking forward to seeing this one.

https://www.vulture.com/amp/2020/01/dark-waters-movie-why-didnt-it-get-nominated-for-an-oscar.html

It's a film I love reading about and admire but didn't much like while watching it.

Dark Waters is playing here for a couple of nights next week--looking forward to it. The China Syndrome is my gold standard for mainstream rabble-rousing; also liked Night Moves and The Promised Land more recently.

I should have mentioned Michael Apted's Class Action in the post above. Haynes may acknowledge it in Dark Waters when DuPont buries Ruffalo's lawyer in an avalanche of discovery documents.

I thought DW was pretty good, though less than what I was hoping for. I'm sure I would have liked it more if I hadn't lost 20% of the dialogue--even accounting for my poor hearing, I'm sure they didn't have the sound loud enough. (A kind of makeshift rep theatre.) I was surprised Anne Hathaway took the proverbial suffering-wife role. She was hardly in the film for the first half; she got more screen time after that, but it still seemed like a part for a less established actress. Maybe she just felt strongly about the subject.

her scenes were p strong tho, idk more meat to it than *just* the suffering wife, plus that neglectfulness of his family coming out in the 3rd out really showed his sacrifice, good movie

Watched Safe last night for the first time since it came out. It kind of went past me at the time--I think I got it (being allergic to the 20th century was a great concept), but, I don't know, it just wasn't my kind of film. I was hoping, of course, it would have special resonance right now.

It did, to a degree; thought the last half was strong. So while I still think its placement high on decade-end lists is overstating it, I was a lot more receptive to it.

I've not had a second viewing, but I think minority views are often important to consider

Rewatch of DARK WATERS confirms flat out masterpiece status. Every shot just a deliberate choice of economic filmmaking, didacticism barely apparent, even Hathaway felt necessary and good. God how’d we let this one get away.

— Peter Labuza (@labuzamovies) April 5, 2020

I still have my screener; I may give it another go this week, especially after my parents told me casually on the phone on Friday that they loved it (!).

I've still only seen it once too, but--allowing for an audio issue I mentioned above; I missed some of what she said later in the film--I disagree about Anne Hathaway. I did think it was a good-looking film.

I think it was terrifically shot, at least in the long shots of buildings, cities, offices, etc.

I share the doubts about Hathaway, who seemed to have accepted an oddly minor part.

I like the film overall.