Is the work of Steven Soderbergh the most overrated thing ever?

Labor drama that skips the basketball? Not *that* pop.

Looooooove High Flying Bird. iPhone populism 4ever!

Zach Lewis on EB:

The most quotable line from the film is a response to Ed’s questioning of her prerogative power: “They’re called boobs, Ed.” This would almost devise a problem for Brockovich, posturing her as the archetype of troubled-past sexual-aggression that weakly traverses the narrative as a feminist conclusion without an argument. Instead, Roberts’s archetype, purportedly funneled from the “golden-hearted hooker” character from Pretty Woman, embodies sassiness as a confident hallmark, using it when necessary and as a subversive atmosphere when not. As the case accelerates, Ed calls in a big-city law team to handle the formalities; Brockovich is furious as she feels that she maintains legitimate ownership of the case and that the people of Hinkley will not respond to formal tactics. Her curvy outfits disrupt their expectations as she vocally lists phone numbers and complicated personal information of various clients from memory, solidifying herself as the case’s paramount authority. While Soderbergh places keen adjustments to a well-known paradigm, the film ultimately becomes lost in a motherly sentimentality, making Brockovich a messiah figure for the residents for the residents of Hinkley sans unconditional love; her emphasized “I just want to be a good mom” monologue in the beginning now appropriated for the cancer and disease-ridden town. It is a nice gesture and a definitive comment on the parent/career dilemma, but it is troublesome to accept given Roberts’s previous performance of a woman whose life has finally been given purpose via her career. Her reconnection with her kids at the end of the film also suffers; they accept her social-ladder-climbing by relating to the sick kids with whom she is actually spending time — no real catharsis, just narrative happy-ending excuse, an emotional deus ex machina.

https://www.popoptiq.com/erin-brockovich-investigates-the-power-of-performance/

Traffic is failed agitprop. I was one of those guys fooled for a few weeks into thinking the fun Erin Brockovich was the less 'serious' film.

The question is, how much 'fun' should a film with people dying of cancer via corporate malfeasance at the center be?

Erin Brockovich is very well made, and thank God he hasn't made another like it. It's a Julia Roberts superhero movie; no wonder you poptimists love it.

yeah stfu you poptimists

erin brockovich was on c5 last night

― mark s (mark s), Wednesday, March 12, 2003 2:05 AM (sixteen years ago)

Erin Brockovich is nearly as good except it forgot to have a story.

― pete b. (pete b.), Wednesday, March 12, 2003 2:13 AM (sixteen years ago)

erin brockovich has too much story!!

― mark s (mark s), Wednesday, March 12, 2003 2:19 AM (sixteen years ago)

_Erin Brockovich_ is at best, a TV-movie-of-the-week starring Julia Roberts. Utterly overrated.

― Matt Maxwell (Matt M.), Wednesday, March 12, 2003 4:14 AM (sixteen years ago)

Erin Brockovich [...] is really weak though and Full Frontal is one of the worst movies I've ever seen.

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Wednesday, February 16, 2005 7:00 AM (fourteen years ago)

the subsequent eleven years of approving posts are all from dedicated superhero movie fan Alfred, so fair enough

he likes certain kinds, see also Hoffman as Tootsie

so then EB is as fraught as any well-made Hollywood product

also Brockovich has one of THOSE Thomas Newman scores. Does he still get work?

I've more of a problem with the script's caricature of a female lawyer. Every one of those scenes is a cringe.

Yeah... particularly strange as it was from a female screenwriter. (Check her subsequent credits to confirm that the script is the Achilles heel of this, abetted by Star Syndrome.)

https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/dd56f3c2-1b74-406a-b3f0-b3aeb3bf9042

shoulda gotten Ed Asner

I've generally like Soderbergh but I forced myself to watch Oceans 11, 12, and 13 on some flights last month and goddamn if those movies don't get progressively worse with every passing minute. By the end of 13 I wanted to beat every one of their smarmy faces to a pulp.

i only saw O11, which is a decent powdered donut, not a film. Had no interest in the others. Clearly minor works.

i rewatched them last year. 11 >>> 12 >>>>>>>>>>>>> 13.

Logan Lucky is the heist film the Oceans movies were prep work for

i should watch that. Yeah, caek's assessment is spot on though I'd put maybe more of a gulf between 11 and 12.

Nah, the Oceans films are delightful, though the first one is far better than the other two. Bad Soderbergh is when he thinks he's an auteur and makes four hour films about revolutionaries.

upcoming:

Thinking of Gary Oldman's German accent in THE LAUNDROMAT way too much. "Do you VANT to go BACK to BUH-nan-UHS?!?!"

— Keith Uhlich (@keithuhlich) September 13, 2019

Looks familiar, but I'm down for it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuBRcfe4bSo

That looks VERY Big Short.

It's not an iPhone film this time? I just hope it's as greatly filmed as his last two, then I kinda don't care what it's about.

Not on iphone:

There are certain things that you can do when you’re shooting with a capture device as small as a phone that you can’t do any other way, and that’s great. But there are also other things that you can’t do that are really frustrating. Because of the fact that it doesn’t really have any mass, that can actually be a problem in some circumstances, particularly car work. The phone is so sensitive to vibration it’s kind of useless in a car context, at least for us.

The other thing is, a dolly-based, multiple-destination master is a really tricky thing to do with a phone. You need a camera that you can put on a real dolly head and a real dolly. Those are the kind of things that you have to give up a little bit. And selective focus—with the iPhone, essentially, everything is in focus. So if you’re somebody who likes to create directionality for people’s gaze with focus, that tool is gone. It was nice to be back in a world where I can do that.

also:

Filmmaker: What was behind the choice to widen the aspect ratio during that segment and the use of the anamorphic lens?

Soderbergh: I wanted there to be a different approach for each story branch. Ellen Martin’s is the most straightforward, camera always on a fixed device and very simple framing. Mossack and Fonseca in Panama when they’re at work is always handheld. The Beverly Hills sequence is The Goodbye Girl meets California Suite, a Herbert Ross from the ’70s thing. For (China), I thought it’s like a Bond film. It feels like a spy thing to me. This is the other great thing about being in the all-digital world now, you can do things like this and it’s not a problem. You can change formats in the middle of your movie. I felt like a different vibe would really help.

Also, since making this one, he's finished another film with Meryl Streep, using the first model of a new Red camera that's almost as light as an iPhone, which he intends to carry on with.

Lol. This new technology has been so good to Soderbergh.

speaking of iphone, Apple sent Rian Johnson their new model to play with and he took it outside for an hour or two: https://vimeo.com/361345913

looks like he had fun with it

let his longtime cinematography collaborator Steve Yedlin borrow it now imo

This is really disappointing. Should have been an iPhone film.

A disappointment, yes. I wanted to bludgeon Banderas and Oldman with a candlestick.

Would use this to teach Brecht’s “distancing technique” that heightens the artifice of character to make larger points about societal constructions.

It was fine on Netflix on a Sunday night, would have been disappointing in the theater. Clunky.

the blah short

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/10/movies/contagion-movie-coronavirus.html

also Contagion: Soderbergh, Winslet/Damon/Fishburne/Cotaillard/Paltrow/Law/etc/etc/etc

"Contagion" is scarily prescient

great revive

Social Distancing, Alternative Facts, and SD Cards?

https://www.indiewire.com/2020/05/soderbergh-wrote-sex-lies-and-videotape-sequel-in-quarantine-and-is-eager-to-direct-it-1202232376/

Hasn't written an original narrative screenplay since Sex Lies in 1989; has to go a few weeks indoors without directing anything, and promptly cracks out a sequel to that last one, an adaptation of a novel, and a rewrite of something else.

bless

Frottage, Fibs and Fiios

http://extension765.com/soderblogh/18-raiders

as mentioned on the Carruth thread, Soderbergh's B&W silent Raiders of the Lost Ark

looks absolutely incredible, the Social Network score doesn't work as well

Also, since making this one, he's finished another film with Meryl Streep, using the first model of a new Red camera that's almost as light as an iPhone, which he intends to carry on with.

― now let's play big lunch take little lunch (sic), Friday, September 20, 2019 6:59 AM (one year ago)

Lol. This new technology has been so good to Soderbergh.

― Frederik B, Friday, September 20, 2019 7:26 AM (one year ago)

Dianne Wiest also revealed the film was shot with “no equipment. The only equipment was sound equipment. Steven held the camera in a wheelchair and just rolled along. None of the lights, and the trucks, all that stuff that goes into making movies, there’s none of it. There was Steven and this new camera.”

Let Them All Talk on HBO Max in December.

https://nofilmschool.com/red-releases-price-komodo

Not quite iPhone weight in the end

Just watched his cut of "2001" again. There are a couple of small changes I don't like, but the vast majority of it I do like a lot, and don't really miss the stuff he cut out, tbh. And his changes definitely make it more accessible to, say, my 16-year old daughter.

"Let Them All Talk" out today I think?

I violently despised his mediocre Hollywood version of Solaris. I'm sure it's not the worst thing ever but at the time it triggered me that much I was huffing and hawing and effing and jeffing all the way through it!

producing the oscars

I suspect it will be....mostly the same

I suspect (for two reasons) it will give more attention to the craft/labour side of filmmaking, and substantially less to movie stars in tuxes smiling at each other

that is definitely possible, hopefully while shortening it too somehow

It's gonna be a new edit of the 1986 ceremony.