The Michael Mann poll

Good interview! Maybe the most interesting detail was that he and Mike Leigh were classmates at London Film School.

Long NY Times profile, in which he repeats much of what he says in the Maron interview.

When our entrees arrived, Mann did not like the look of his swordfish, which, cut into coiled ribbons, seemed more fancifully plated than he had been expecting: “This is swordfish? This isn’t swordfish. It’s swordfish? Let me have something else.” The waiter registered a quick, uncomprehending protest before shrugging and heading back to the kitchen with the dish and Mann’s untouched amuse-bouche.

I’m not clicking on this story, but ppl who do that are monsters. Eat the food you ordered fuckface.

Coiled swordfish sounds pretty monstrous.

The piece was very interesting. The Ferrari movie sounds...missable. And I have zero interest in the book.

The best part of the article, of course, is where the author tries to argue that the line "I'm a fiend for mojitos" was meant to be funny.

About 150 pages into Heat 2 and thoroughly enjoying it. As dense with tradecraft and philosophizing as you'd expect. Started reading one review of it (Washington Post) that spoiled the overall structure of it, so screw that.

Anyway:

Heat is one of the all time great gay American films pic.twitter.com/juWyAvxFCu

— Chris Fleming (@chrisfluming) August 12, 2022

I bought the book but haven’t cracked it yet.

Heat (1995) // My Dad Eating a Peach (2022) pic.twitter.com/GqNchqdgcI

— Will Martin (@mrwillmartin) August 23, 2022

homage is great flattery

2/3 of the way through the book and I feel comfortable saying that if you liked the movie you will like the book. I didn’t have high hopes but it’s good!

finished it last night. great book. does of course read like a screenplay. one completely uninteresting subplot, but otherwise fantastic. seems unfilmably long.

The Insider was kind awesome I thought. Of the three consecutive 1999-2001 Russell Crowe Oscar-nominated performances, that was the best

I’m watching Heat now for the first time. I like it, but don’t think I will finish it tonight because it is almost 3 hours long. I could easily sit through a Weerasethakul or Tsai film that length, but with a crime drama like this there is just too much toxicity and destruction

I like that video Easy

*Eazy

seems unfilmably long

Loved this about the novel, just the scale of it. It really did deliver through to the end.

And much like Mann's filmmaking style, the prose can be purple but never at the expense of momentum.

It feels like he was putting a garage worth of notebooks to use: notes on Chicago for Thief and Crime Story, notes on Ciudad del Este for Miami Vice (the casino with the giant roulette wheel as its mascot makes an appearance), and so on.

fwiw the first 10 or 15 minutes of collateral are so good, establishing the characters and the milieu. could just live in that

Bummed to hear on his Maron episode that the Hue 1968 (based on the Mark Bowden book) project is dead. Michael Mann doing an 8 hour Vietnam series, slam that right in my veins.

he was putting a garage worth of notebooks
also the home invasion episode from Miami Vice, probably manhunter for the same material, and blackhat for the computer stuff.

I also watched Heat for the first time a few days ago. It slapped.

i enjoyed heat 2 a lot. i was put off a bit at first by how stylized the language is, in an over-the-top way, but either they pulled back on that through the book or i just got used to it. the fake al pacino dialogue is funny, i have to wonder if hanna's lines were written that way in the initial script, or if it was pacino improvising and now mann has to write hanna dialogue in the pacino voice.

"Heat" is amazing, but I sort of feel that its reputation has dipped ever so slightly while that of "Collateral" has risen.

I think the "great ass" line was improvised, not sure about anything else.

I like the look and feel of “Collateral” more than I like the movie itself.

Saw “The Insider” for the first time last year and wanted to enjoy it more than I did.

I like the look and feel of “Collateral” more than I like the movie itself.

Some aspects are pretty good (I really do like the way the nighttime driving scenes are shot, and Cruise and Foxx have a good dynamic) but Mark Ruffalo is horrible, the jazz club scene (with Barry Shabaka Henley miming to a piece from Bitches Brew without a single electric instrument visible onstage) is a goddamn crime against art, and the ending sucks. I've said many times that I really think it should have ended with Jamie Foxx flipping the cab. Cab flips, smash cut to black, roll credits. Instant existentialist dude-movie masterpiece.

Ending is pretty pro forma, Ruffalo seems tacked on to pad things out (hence iirc his unsentimental demise), but it still all works out for me.

i love collateral, a lot of it is the digital cinematography and foxx's performance, but it's also a lot cleaner plotwise than heat or miami vice or blackhat. the convoluted plots of those movies are fun in their own way but there's something to be said for a relatively simple story and fewer characters. i'd put it in the top tier of mann movies.

i haven't seen ali (which i should) or the keep (which it sounds like i can skip), and it's been a very long time since i saw the insider

I'm almost halfway through the book, liking it quite a bit. Definitely some purple prose, as noted above, but it moves along quickly and feels like a pretty natural extension of the movie.

"Insider" is perfect. "The Keep" is a mess, but there are glimmers of good stuff in it. "Ali," I recall the director's cut being pretty good. I think it was his first movie to experiment with digital cameras.

Something consistent with Heat 2 and Mann’s films is that the “set pieces” are truly dazzling while ego-less in their own way as well. They are the culmination of characters’ personalities and their skills, and even with multiple things happening quickly and at once are clear to the viewer/reader.

The opening of Ali is fantastic, haven’t been able to make it through the rest since seeing it in the theater.

The Insider is my favorite, even though I go back to Miami Vice and Collateral far more often. They’re like coffee-table books I open up at least once a year.

(Speaking of, I highly recommend the Michael Mann coffee table book!)

the guy who reads the audiobook of heat 2 does a great al pacino impression! highly recommended just for that! (he generally does a good job.)

I think the "great ass" line was improvised, not sure about anything else.

Kinda sorta?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2G_8sizrAk

Finished Heat]. The ending was really great, the violent showdown, LAX tarmac location, sense of closure, final image, music, fadeout - all of it

Yeah, excellent use of peak Moby.

Ali is not that great in retrosoect

really? i thought it was kinda great

It's on my rewatch list. I'm gonna get to it before I see Last of the Mohicans for the first time, I can tell you that.

Ali is well made, great performances but it hews so closely I'd rather just watch footage of Ali and When We Were Kings.

that's p much any biopic about a sports star, singer, rapper, or actor for me

keep biopics to the eras where we didn't have literal film of them doing the things they were doing

Yeah I've still never seen Ali partly because I didn't feel like anything could match When We Were Kings.

I don't remember if I voted in this poll, but today I might go Collateral. I rewatched it not long ago and it was even better than I remembered. It and Miami Vice are two where I feel like he just went for it and made exactly the movies he wanted.

Those two put me in mind of Seijun Suzuki. Not as over the top as him, but some of the same prioritizing of aesthetics over coherence.

still can’t get past colin ferrell’s ratty little face in MV

Same

imo it's perfect for a redneck-in-the-big-city cop like that

It's perfect for a fiend for mojitos.

I like Ferrell in lots of stuff. Ratty face, expressive eyebrows.