The old "Hollywood undercutting game" -- like how in 1970, MASH the movie came out first and outshone the bigger Catch 22 of later that year? Maybe? But as you point out, the modern music may be more popular...but not as good.
Yes! The people behind WSS 2021 and In The Heights 2021 must kind of *hate* each other at this point. It's an old, remarkable story the shared zeitgeist of ideas and technology at a time often leads to very similar (at least in outline) movies being green lit around the same then both racing to meet similar release dates. Strangelove/Fail Safe, Deep Impact/Armageddon. Volcano/Dante's Peak, The Illusionist/The Prestige, and lots more.
Netflix Taking Over News: something new on Netflix that looked like a hybrid of Wall-E and The Incredibles got some raves - The Mitchells vs The Machines - and I duly checked it out. It's quite good fun for the whole family with some interesting ideas, lots of good jokes, and especially excellent voicework from Olivia Coleman. Above all it's pretty damned impressive dropped out of nowhere on Netflix. I mean, blimey, Netflix really *are* almost certainly the second biggest movie studio now behind Disney's sprawling empire. Anyhow the lead character in The Mitchells vs The Machines is a teen girl, Katie, who makes movies starring her dog and her brother for youtube etc (one of the key, partially maddening features of the overall film is that it feels like it was in part shot and edited by Katie herself) and who is trying hard to get accepted to film school in LA. We see her scripted application to film school which includes images of her directorial Mount Rushmore:
https://twitter.com/NetflixFilm/status/1388251826483449857/photo/1
Gerwig (Ladybird, Little Women), Celine Sciamma (Water Lillies, Portrait of a Lady on Fire), Lynne Ramsay (Morvern Callar, We Need To talk About Kevin,You Were Never Really There), Hal Ashby (Harold and Maude, Shampoo, Being There).
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swanstep (2715)
4 years ago
Could a current, awkward but hipster-wannabe, seemingly budding lesbian teen really have these as her heroes? I'm not sure (particularly given that Katie's own films seem more influenced by modern genre action directing styles), but it's an interesting idea nonetheless, and does suggest how we may at last have reached a true tipping point with how many plausibly inspiring and cool contemporary directors may be women (and among white male luminaries an Ashby can easily loom larger for a particular creative individual than a Hitchcock or a Spielberg or...). Note that one of Katie's Dog-Cop movies is called 'Dial B for Burger' so Hitch did get that nod at least.
Netflix Taking Over #2: The Woman In The Window starring Amy Adams w/ Julianne Moore and Gary Oldman and directed by Joe Wright (Atonement, Pride and Prejudice, etc.), is dropping exclusively on Netflix soon (May 14?):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_0GJg_Jnlo
Looks a bit overdone to me... but with its good cast (although it actually *hurts* to see Amy Adams' character so broken down!) and gender-flipped Rear Window/The Tenant vibe I *will* watch it if the reviews are even a little positive. Note that Adams has a junket-style interview floating around online, e.g., here
https://www.smh.com.au/culture/movies/amy-adams-on-breaking-the-hitchcock-heroine-mould-in-her-latest-role-20210429-p57nc5.html
about how TWITW is her trying to 'break the Hitchcock heroine mould'. In the interview she claims to have been obsessed with/possessed by Novak's turn in Vertigo for years!
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ecarle (14979)
4 years ago
Netflix Taking Over #2: The Woman In The Window starring Amy Adams w/ Julianne Moore and Gary Oldman and directed by Joe Wright (Atonement, Pride and Prejudice, etc.), is dropping exclusively on Netflix soon (May 14?)
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Way back before COVID hit, I went to movie theaters and I saw that trailer AT the movie theater and me and mine said, "hey, that looks pretty good -- Rear Windowish" (I daresay Rear Window paces Psycho as thriller inspiration..NXNW is too unique with the crop duster and Mount Rushmore and Vertigo has inspired some movies but never well enough.
On "Netflix" taking over , a couple of thoughts:
Tom Hanks gave a recent quote that makes basic common sense: when COVID is over, big budget movies that have to be shown on the big screen for maximum impact(and bucks) will be shown on the big screen before streaming...little indies may go to streaming and never GO to theaters. "Change is inevitable."
Fair enough. But I was wondering if Spielberg's outcome is inevitable: the Emmys and the Oscars merge to award movies seen ONLY on TV.
But what to do with the movies that DO go to theaters? Can't be the Oscars if they are only Marvel movies.
A conundrum.
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swanstep (2715)
4 years ago
Netflix Taking Over #2: The Woman In The Window starring Amy Adams .... I *will* watch it if the reviews are even a little positive.
Uh-oh, the reviews are *terrible*... No way I'd leave the house/pay additional money to see something so marginal.... but since it's *there* at no additional cost to me on Netflix I'll *still* watch it (soon). Considered personally, I can say that quite a bit of what I end up watching on Netflix is sub-par films with some actress whom I like. Another new entry on Netflix this week is Melanie Laurent in a claustrophobic, French sci-fi, 'Oxygen'. I'll watch that too. A couple of weeks ago it was Anna Kendrick and Toni Collette in 'Stowaway', a true Twilight-Zone ep sci-fi somehow stretched out to 80+ minutes.
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ecarle (14979)
4 years ago
Uh-oh, the reviews are *terrible*... No way I'd leave the house/pay additional money to see something so marginal.... but since it's *there* at no additional cost to me on Netflix I'll *still* watch it (soon).
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Its becoming a "hanging on fact" in the wake of the pandemic that movies like "The Woman in the Window" -- which some of us die-hard movie theater goers MIGHT have gone to see just to get out on a weekend -- are now appearing on Netflix and revealing their unworthiness in a very "easy to take, easy to reject" home TV setting.
I have several streaming services, and I notice that Netflix -- having made a big splash a couple of years ago with The Irishman -- has not really found anything of that gravitas or quality since. Most recently, I watched a Melissa McCarthy superhero spoof movie that, again...oh, MAYBE I would have gone to the theater, but...on TV...it just doesn't look worth it.
Meanwhile, HBO Max continues its "same month to theaters and here" deal with an Angie Jolie action movie this month. Which I will watch. It sounds passable (with a firejumper background.) But that Denzel mystery a few months ago was awful. Some of the world waits for "Suicide Squad" on HBO Max; I'm intrigued by Matrix IV -- but what I REALLY want to see is the Sopranos prequel. Irony, I WOULD have seen it in a theater, but now it will be back home on TV.
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Considered personally, I can say that quite a bit of what I end up watching on Netflix is sub-par films with some actress whom I like.
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Netflix and other streamers are providing much-needed work to "name stars" who have mansion mortgages to keep up. It feels like these stars will take ANYTHING -- remember that one with Sandra Bullock wearing a blindfold?
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ecarle (14979)
4 years ago
Another new entry on Netflix this week is Melanie Laurent in a claustrophobic, French sci-fi, 'Oxygen'.
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That's one of those "one set" movies where the set is teeny tiny. I might watch.
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I'll watch that too. A couple of weeks ago it was Anna Kendrick and Toni Collette in 'Stowaway', a true Twilight-Zone ep sci-fi somehow stretched out to 80+ minutes.
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Hmm..I didn't see that one. Another problem with Netflix -- a movie can't really be built up over time and separated out. Recall how Hitchcock went a few weeks with "The Birds is Coming!" You can't really do that on Netflix.
When the pandemic is completely, fully, totally over I anticipate the movie theaters getting lots of movies...hopefully better movies. But certain changes have been made to lifestyle.
PS. I risked a movie theater again a few weeks ago to see "Nobody" with Bob Odenkirk(a longtime favorite of mine now a star thanks to Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul.) He plays a "middle aged John Wick" who reveals to his family that this schlumpy dad is..wait for it...a trained killer and spy. Its "John Wick meets True Lies The Equalizer Meets History of Violence" but...casting and twists make it work. It plays tough and real and Mr. Odenkirk puts himself through some really rough and gory fake fights. Recommended...for action fans.
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swanstep (2715)
4 years ago
The Woman In The Window (Quick review): Very stock, airport novel-level, post-Gone Girl, 'unreliable gal narrator' mystery. All characters in this feel very flat, like formulas or lists of character traits. The film's characters are, however, unusually unattractive and unlikeable, certainly compared to the characters in the films it explicitly references: Laura, Spellbound, Rear Window, etc. (Amy Adams's character falls asleep each night watching dvds/blu-rays of 1940s/1950s mysteries/noirs).
I felt a bit sorry for the actors. There were lots of loose ends in the screenplay and when the big ending reveal comes it feels like at least 10 other possibilities might have worked about equally as well, which is to say just kind of averagely. A central end-precipitating plot point involving a (very faint and distorted) reflection in a wine glass was pretty bizarre since 2 characters instantly agree on who the reflection is and agree that it upends everything we thought we knew. But *we* see what they see and there's no way such a positive ID can be made. 'Huh? Damnedest thing, but it could be anyone.' would be the only realistic response.
Disappointing, with none of the clever dialogue or subtexts of Gone Girl that's for sure. Some flashy camera tricks can't hide the thinness and the not-at-all-fun-ness of the underlying conception here. The Director Joe Wright has mainly worked on genuinely literary adaptations, e.g., of Jane Austen, Tolstoy, Ian McEwan (Atonement). Ha, no such luck here mate! You're in the airport-novel swamps with this one.
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