Xixax Film Forum

The Director's Chair => Martin Scorsese => Topic started by: MacGuffin on March 26, 2007, 01:27:30 AM

Title: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: MacGuffin on March 26, 2007, 01:27:30 AM
Scorsese, DiCaprio cry 'Wolf'
'Departed' duo visit Wall Street
Source: Variety

Martin Scorsese is looking to direct Leonardo DiCaprio in the film adaptation of Jordan Belfort's upcoming tell-all autobiography "The Wolf of Wall Street" for Warner Bros. Pictures, with "The Sopranos" scribe Terence Winter aboard to write.

Alexandra Milchan will produce with DiCaprio's shingle Appian Way, which has a first-look deal with Warners. Scorsese's Sikelia Prods. is attached to produce.

It's unknown, however, where "Wolf" stands on the list of potential directing projects that have been announced for Scorsese since the Academy Awards.

Deal with Warners for "Wolf" was consummated Friday night, following a brief but aggressive bidding war between Warners and Appian on one side and Paramount and Brad Pitt's shingle Plan B on the other.

Plan B wanted to produce for Par, where that shingle is based. Pitt wasn't necessarily attached to star.

Milchan, daughter of producer Arnon Milchan, and lit agent Joel Gotler, who repped the film rights to Belfort's book, ultimately decided to go with Warners because of the Scorsese-DiCaprio combo offered by Appian Way and the studio, although no official deals are in place for Scorsese to direct or DiCaprio to star.

In "Wolf of Wall Street" DiCaprio would play Belfort, a Long Island penny stockbroker who served 20 months in prison for refusing to cooperate in a massive 1990s securities fraud case that involved widespread corruption on Wall Street and in the corporate banking world, including mob infiltration.

Bantam Books publishes the autobiography in September.

Like "Catch Me if You Can," "Wolf" would be a two-hander with a key part for a second star: Much of the film would hinge on Belfort's relationship with the FBI agent who tried to make him an informant.

Milchan, who is producing the upcoming "Mary Queen of Scots" and "The Night Watchman," worked with Belfort in developing the film project and brought Winter aboard "Wolf" to write.

Winter is expected to begin adapting the tome immediately.

The bidding war between Paramount and Warners was preemptive, meaning that other studios didn't have the chance to bid.

Par does have the option to co-finance half of any project that Scorsese directs or produces elsewhere under the terms of its recently inked first-look deal with the filmmaker. A signed deal has to be in place before Par's option kicks in.

Scorsese has strong ties at Warners, where he made "The Departed," which earned him his first Oscar for director, along with the best pic prize. Paramount topper Brad Grey, then a producer, brought Scorsese aboard "Departed."

At Paramount, he's developing with an eye to direct "The Long Play," a rock 'n' roll epic to be penned by "Departed" scribe William Monahan. He's also attached to direct the bigscreen adaptation of Eric Jager's historical tome "Last Duel: A True Story of Crime."

Over at Warners, the studio and Graham King's Initial Entertainment Group recently picked up the screen rights to Brian Selznick children's novel "The Invention of Hugo Cabret" as a potential directing vehicle for Scorsese.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: MacGuffin on October 03, 2007, 12:25:20 AM
SCRIPTLAND: Scorsese's Oscar does not buy him freedom
The director's next possible project stalls as Warner Bros., Paramount battle over co-production.
Source: Los Angeles Times

Apparently, winning an Academy Award and scoring your biggest box office hit in four decades of filmmaking with the year's best picture doesn't buy you any smoother a ride in Hollywood. Right now, with Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. scrabbling over a suitable co-production arrangement, director Martin Scorsese's next potential project, "The Wolf of Wall Street," remains stuck in its cage.

On paper, the movie looks like a great investment: Scorsese once again directing his "Aviator" and "Departed" star Leonardo DiCaprio in an adaptation of the just-published cash-coke-and-corruption memoir "The Wolf of Wall Street" adapted by Emmy-winning "Sopranos" writer-producer Terence Winter. The hitch is that it's set up not at Paramount, where Scorsese has his directing deal, but at Warner Bros., the studio that released "The Departed."
 
"Wall Street," released last week by Bantam Books, is the autobiography of New York stockbroker Jordan Belfort, a flashy, drug-abusing, hooker-hiring, model-marrying master of the universe sent to jail for securities fraud and money laundering in the '90s. It's a juicy part for DiCaprio, and he and Scorsese are looking to make this their next movie, ideally completing production before any potential talent strike next summer.

But the film's immediate future remains iffy.

In late March, right after Scorsese finally won his directing Oscar, Warner Bros. and DiCaprio's Appian Way production shingle beat out Paramount and Brad Pitt's Plan B in a brief bidding war for the Scorsese-DiCaprio-Winter "Wall Street" package. But in November 2006, as "The Departed" was shooting its way past the $100-million mark for Warner Bros., Scorsese signed a four-year, first-look directing-producing deal with Paramount.

The hook, similar to arrangements Steven Spielberg has made with DreamWorks, was that if Scorsese were to make a film at a competing studio, Paramount had the option to own half of it and co-distribute. The director has personal and professional ties at both studios, so Scorsese and Co. have been trying to massage a preemptive deal between them before the film's likely greenlight.

But Scorsese may be sending mixed signals by having taken the Paramount deal (which reportedly is enormous) while Warner Bros. was in the midst of its "Departed" Oscar campaign and then turning around to push for his follow-up to be back at Warner Bros.

Warner Bros. and Paramount have other high-profile co-productions, such as "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" and "Beowulf," which typically entail Paramount taking domestic distribution and Warner Bros. taking international. But thus far on "Wall Street," Warner Bros. has offered financial halfsies but no co-distribution, which Paramount has rejected.

Technically, Paramount's option isn't triggered until Scorsese's contracts are signed at Warner Bros. and the film is a go, but in the context of an impending strike, nailing the arrangement down as quickly as possible behooves all parties.

As it is, Scorsese has four other features in development at Paramount, which is also releasing his Rolling Stones documentary, "Shine a Light," sometime next year. And Warner Bros. has two other potential Scorsese projects, so there's plenty of the beatific Italian genius to go around. (And Scorsese, apparently finding himself under-committed, last week announced that he's also going to make a documentary about George Harrison over the next couple of years.)

The smart money's on everyone eventually deciding that they want to be in the Scorsese business even if it means sharing more than they'd like. If they don't, and this "Wolf" is released back into the wild, there's bound to be some howling.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: ElPandaRoyal on October 03, 2007, 04:51:11 AM
For some reason, I think this movie can be truly fascinating, as long as they don't make it "The Aviator II". I still would love for him to make "Silence".

Anyway, I hope they start shooting soon, for us to read the reports: "Marty's office was robbed and the thieves took some laptops, coke (both real coke and movie coke) and the director's Academy Award".
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: pete on October 04, 2007, 10:55:26 AM
God I'm sick of these scorsese movies in which I already know how they end.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Pubrick on October 04, 2007, 03:45:05 PM
i'm sick of these scorsese movies that aren't really scorsese movies. more like scorsese products.

Quote from: LA Times
the Scorsese business
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: soixante on October 23, 2007, 12:12:52 AM
Variety just reported YET another Scorsese-DiCaprio pairing, Shutter Island, based on a Dennis Lehane novel.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: MacGuffin on July 07, 2010, 11:04:02 PM
Ridley Scott Eyeing Reteam With Leo DiCaprio On 'The Wolf Of Wall Street'
By MIKE FLEMING, Deadline Hollywood
   
EXCLUSIVE: The Wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort's memoir of 1990's stockbroker decadence, is back on the prowl. I'm hearing that  the film is being put back together, with Ridley Scott in early discussions to direct Leonardo DiCaprio, who once expected to make the film with Martin Scorsese. In the scenario under discussion, Scorsese would join DiCaprio and his Appian Way shingle as producer, and it is likely that Scott Free would board the project in a producing capacity as well. Scorsese and DiCaprio nearly did the project together two years ago, but it got stalled in a tug of war between Warner Bros--where the project was developed--and Paramount, the latter of which gave Scorsese a rich overall deal. Instead, Scorsese and DiCaprio teamed on an adaptation of the Dennis Lehane novel Shutter Island.  The Wolf of Wall Street is still in the process of being figured out for budget and distribution, but Scott loves the script by Terry Winter (the writer/producer of The Sopranos and the upcoming HBO series Boardwalk Empire). It is funny, dramatic and fast paced, and manages to make something of a sympathetic character out of a stockbroker who supervises a cadre of brokers who squeezed clients to buy stocks that paid off--for the brokers, who used the funds to live extravagantly until they were brought down by the feds.

I'm told that Scorsese--who's directing for GK Films the 3D adaptation of The Invention of Hugo Cabret-- is willing to pass the baton to Scott, who directed DiCaprio in Body of Lies. Scheduling is an issue for all involved. It is unclear whether Scott can squeeze in the film before the 3D Alien prequel, a priority project for the director's home studio, Fox. DiCaprio, who opens next week in the Chris Nolan-directed Inception, is next expected to play FBI director J. Edgar Hoover in the Clint Eastwood-directed biopic Hoover for Imagine Entertainment and Warner Bros.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: MacGuffin on March 15, 2012, 03:12:32 PM
Martin Scorsese And Leonardo DiCaprio Committing To 'The Wolf Of Wall Street' For August; Red Granite Fully Funding
BY MIKE FLEMING | Deadline

EXCLUSIVE: Director Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio are committing to make The Wolf of Wall Street their fifth collaboration. The film is based on the Jordan Belfort memoir of his days as a hard partying, drug addicted stockbroker who was indicted in 1998 for security fraud and money laundering and served a 22-month federal prison stretch. Shooting will begin August in New York.

The film will be fully financed by Red Granite Pictures, which acquired The Wolf Of Wall Street at the last Cannes Film Festival after Danny Dimbort, Christian Mercuri and Joe Gatta formed the international sales company. Red Granite got involved early with the just released comedy Friends With Kids, but this really is an opportunity to be put on the map, much the way GK Films did with Gangs of New York and The Aviator. The film will be produced by Scorsese and his production head Emma Tillinger Koskoff as well as Irwin Winkler, DiCaprio and his Appian Way partner Jennifer Killoran, and Alexandra Milchan, who long developed the project before becoming an executive at New Regency. Red Granite chairman/CEO Riza Aziz and vice chairman Joey McFarland will be involved in producing capacities as well. There is no timetable to set a domestic distributor, but Red Granite will certainly sell territories at the upcoming Cannes Film Festival.

Both Scorsese and DiCaprio were in the mix for several big feature projects, but they always wanted to make this film together and finally felt the time was right. The script is by Terence Winter, the exec producer of The Sopranos and Boardwalk Empire, and he will polish his script before going into production. Belfort came of age on Wall Street in the '80s and early '90s, and his success was undermined by the decadence fueled by the endless money he made in New York at that time. Though a period piece, this tale is all about extravant excess and that certainly resonates with those who mistrust of Wall Street excess after the 2008 financial collapse that was also based on greed.

For Scorsese, this will be his fifth time directing DiCaprio, after Gangs of New York, The Aviator, the Oscar-winning The Departed and Shutter Island. DiCaprio has a ways to go to catch up with the eight seminal films that Scorsese directed with Robert De Niro, but Scorsese and DiCaprio certainly bring out the best in each other. Scorsese is coming off his Oscar-nominated 3D film Hugo, and DiCaprio most recently wrapped the title role in the Baz Luhrmann-directed The Great Gatsby.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: P Heat on April 19, 2012, 01:32:14 AM
Ok , so i was watching "the 25th hour", mostly bcuz I read it had PSH in it and enjoyed it. I thought the movie itself was OK, but PSH's side story was GREAT! and hilarious. One scene i liked and decided to youtube was the so called "broker scene". I then clicked on one of the similar videos where it said the wolf of wall street (not knowing about the upcoming movie) and it is about the Jordon Belfort, the guy the movie is gonna be based on. He lived that crazy scarface life! and his story of destroying  a multi million dollar yacht filled with drugs is his most popular story. He even has a youtube video talking about being on set with DeCaprio and Marty.

that said, this is guy is definitely a Scorsese character, which is obviously why he picked him. He is like a Henry Hill, or LaMotta, and closet to Rothstein (Casino). I hope this upcoming film for Marty will be in same family as those other past greats (pre 2000's) and hope he still has it in him to do so. The only thing that has me worried its not going to be is that DeCrapio is starring in it.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: MacGuffin on April 19, 2012, 04:14:14 PM
Official: Martin Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio Team Up for 'The Wolf of Wall Street'
The director and his actor-muse will reunite on the film about a troublemaking banker.
Source: THR

Martin Scorsese is partnering with his muse, Leonardo DiCaprio, on The Wolf of Wall Street, their fifth film collaboration.

The movie is based on Jordan Belfort's 2008 memoir about his hedonistic run on Wall Street as a risk-taking, drug-using, high-level investment banker. DiCaprio will, of course, portray Belfort.

The Scorsese-DiCaprio reteaming had been rumored for months but was made official in an announcement on Thursday.

Riza Aziz and Joey McFarland of Red Granite Pictures, which owns the rights to the book, will produce with DiCaprio's Appian Way, Scorsese and Emma Koskoff's Sikelia Productions and Alexandra Milchan's EMJAG Productions. Irwin Winkler and Georgia Kacandes will executive produce.

"Everything about this film plays to Martin Scorsese's genius and visionary storytelling," said Aziz in a statement. "At its heart, 'The Wolf of Wall Street' is about the rise of new 'modern' gangsters in New York. Wall Street gangsters that redefined excess, greed and arrogance. We're excited to see Mr. Scorsese take the reins of this visceral, tumultuous ride."

Production begins August in New York, with a screenplay adapted by Terence Winter (The Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire).
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: chere mill on April 20, 2012, 03:57:13 AM
scorsese making a film about the corruption of wall street has enormous potential. his impulse to make a gangster film is evidently still persistent, albiet of a different type.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: I am Schmi on April 20, 2012, 07:03:58 AM
"At its heart, 'The Wolf of Wall Street' is about the rise of new 'modern' gangsters in New York."


Yeah, I can agree with that.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Pubrick on April 20, 2012, 11:12:23 AM
Quote from: chere mill on April 20, 2012, 03:57:13 AM
scorsese making a film about the corruption of wall street has enormous potential.

I wish he were more interested in the corruption of our fucking souls and made Silence already.

But maybe the last decade has given him more insight into money obsession so this material seems like a natural fit.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: wiped_out on April 22, 2012, 04:32:36 PM
I have the script if anyone wants it, I am looking for the script for Low Life and P.T Anderson's Lowlife, but I will glady send wolf to anyone who PMs me..

Also if anyone has any Roger Avary script I would enjoy reading anything that man has written.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: MacGuffin on May 04, 2012, 05:40:06 PM
Jonah Hill Set To Star With Leonardo DiCaprio In Martin Scorsese-Directed 'The Wolf Of Wall Street'
BY MIKE FLEMING | Deadline

BREAKING: After getting an Oscar nomination playing Brad Pitt's wing man in Moneyball, Jonah Hill has just been set to star alongside Leonardo DiCaprio in The Wolf Of Wall Street, the Martin Scorsese-directed adaptation of the Jordan Belfort memoir. Boardwalk Empire creator Terence Winter wrote the script.

The film chronicles Belfort's dramatic rise and fall on Wall Street, along with his hard-partying lifestyle and tumultuous personal life, which included drug and alcohol addiction. Hill will play his close friend, who becomes Belfort's business partner when the charismatic stock broker persuades him to quit his job in the furniture business to jump into the lucrative, volatile world of stocks.

Red Granite Pictures principals Riza Aziz and Joey McFarland stepped up to make the picture happen, and they are producing along with Appian Way's DiCaprio, Sikelia Production' Scorsese and Emma Koskoff, and EMJAG Productions' Alexandra Milchan. Irwin Winkler and Georgia Kacandes will executive produce. Hill is repped by WME and Karl Austen.

Hill is coming off 21 Jump Street, the hit comedy that just crossed $175 million at the global box office. He next stars with Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn in The Watch, the comedy that had previously been titled Neighborhood Watch at Fox.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: wiped_out on May 10, 2012, 10:25:48 PM
hill plays a slimey character, as apposed to the wolf himself who is a real SOB
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: I am Schmi on May 11, 2012, 01:42:20 PM
Quote from: wiped_out on April 22, 2012, 04:32:36 PM
I have the script if anyone wants it, I am looking for the script for Low Life and P.T Anderson's Lowlife, but I will glady send wolf to anyone who PMs me..

Also if anyone has any Roger Avary script I would enjoy reading anything that man has written.

PTA's "Lowlife" PTA has a screenplay titled: "Lowlife"?
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Pubrick on May 11, 2012, 04:34:33 PM
What the hell are you lowlifes talking about?
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: MacGuffin on June 18, 2012, 06:18:32 PM
Leonardo DiCaprio Gets A Wife In Martin Scorsese's 'The Wolf Of Wall Street'
Source: Playlist

From a Tony nomination to playing Leonardo DiCaprio's wife in a film directed by Martin Scorsese -- as far as career boosts go, it doesn't get much better.

Cristin Milioti, recently nominated for her turn in the Broadway production of "Once," has landed the pretty plum role in "The Wolf Of Wall Street." Joining a cast that so far includes Jonah Hill, Kyle Chandler and "The Artist" star Jean Dujardin, the film tells the true story of Jordan Belfort, a wheeling and dealing New York stockbroker who sees his career and personal life fall into shambles thanks to sex, drugs and alcohol. Milioti will play of Belfort's Italian-American hairdessing wife, who is crushed by his infidelity.

Milioti will continue her run on Broadway before heading over to 'Wall Street' when production on the Terence Winter penned film begins at the end of the summer. And we would guess her appearances on "The Sopranos" may have tipped her to Winter and Scorsese's attention. And in case you're curious what her pipes sound like, watch her below signing the show's signature tune, "Falling Slowly." [Variety]
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Ravi on June 27, 2012, 07:37:53 PM
 :yabbse-sad:

http://www.empireonline.com/news/story.asp?NID=34396

Scorsese Goes Digital, Abandons Film
But Wolf Of Wall Street won't be 3D
27 June 2012  |  Written by Phil de Semlyen  |  Source: Exclusive

They say you shouldn't change a winning formula - and Hugo's digital cinematography did win an Oscar after all - but it's with a tinge of sadness that Martin Scorsese seems likely to bid farewell to film once and for all.

"It would appear that we've lost the battle," said Thelma Schoonmaker, the director's long-time editor. Talking to Empire's Damon Wise after a film restoration panel at the Edinburgh Film Festival, she confirmed that Scorsese's next film,The Wolf Of Wall Street would stick with digital, albeit in 2D. "I think Marty just feels it's unfortunately over, and there's been no bigger champion of film than him."

Schoonmaker revealed that while Hugo's warm tones had delighted the director and persuaded him to embrace the format, there's much melancholy at the passing of an era. "It's a very bittersweet thing to be watching films with him now that are on film. We're cherishing every moment of it. The number of prints that are now being made for release has just gone down, and it would appear that the theatres have converted so quickly to digital."

Schoonmaker also filled in some of the blanks on Scorsese's current production. "We start The Wolf Of Wall Street in the second week of August," she said, revealing her habit of only reading Scorese's shooting script once. "I don't want them to influence me when I see the dailies, but it's pretty wild. It's about this man in the late '90s [Leonardo DiCaprio's Jordan Belfort] who got people to start investing in much cheaper stocks. It was a big scam, and he went to jail. They were out of their minds. Out of their minds! He's out of jail now, doing motivational speaking. He supposedly feels bad about what he did..."

A little like Henry Hill then? "Yeah! (Laughs) They showed me a tape of what he's doing now. It's very interesting."
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Alexandro on June 28, 2012, 10:24:14 AM
yeah, sad. and she makes the new film sounds really boring.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: theyarelegion on August 02, 2012, 03:41:37 PM
Matthew McConaughey joins 'Wolf of Wall Street' (http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118057381)
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: wilder on February 28, 2013, 11:58:28 PM
In theaters November 15, 2013
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Champion Souza on June 17, 2013, 12:25:50 AM

Trailer Here (http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/paramount/thewolfofwallstreet/)
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: HeywoodRFloyd on June 17, 2013, 09:06:32 AM
What the fuck is that

I'm sorry but that looks like Pain & Gain meets The Hangover
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: AntiDumbFrogQuestion on June 17, 2013, 11:41:24 AM
"From the filmmaker who brought you 'Hugo' "
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: ©brad on June 17, 2013, 01:34:28 PM
Hmm I think it looks pretty fun. Just wonder if it has anything new to say.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Cloudy on June 17, 2013, 01:45:53 PM
Quote from: ©brad on June 17, 2013, 01:34:28 PM
Hmm I think it looks pretty fun. Just wonder if it has anything new to say.

Agreed. The fact that this is Scorsese reassures that this is gonna be fucking entertaining and maybe even hilarious. But at the same time, we're all wondering...out of all the pictures he could make, at this point in his career...why this one? The dude needs to sell out in order to make what he wants--SILENCE--why? How is it that someone like PTA can make whatever he wants even if it takes some time and some pain, and get money for it when Scorsese can't? Maybe he doesn't want to though..maybe he wants to make these kinds of films. But, in his interviews he always speaks with such passion about doing more personal work, and sort of talks down about the process of making these huge things...it's frustrating.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Pubrick on June 17, 2013, 01:58:29 PM
The dude has been selling out basically since he started working with Leo.

He's not doing it for Silence. If anything he's not making Silence because Leo can't play the lead.

This looks like his most inconsequential film since The Defarted.

Marty is DONE.

Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Lottery on June 17, 2013, 07:27:23 PM
You know, I like a number of his DiCap movies but I wish that their collaboration would just end already.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Stefen on June 17, 2013, 08:17:39 PM
TIL Leonardo DiCaprio turns down blockbusters in order to work with indie filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorcese and Chistopher Nolan.

I think that's really cool. Does anyone else respect him a lot?

Then 2000 comments about how he's never won an Oscar, not even for Django or Inception, DAE think he'd be perfect for *insert obscure marvel character here,* was thinking the same thing, dumb inception joke that keeps going, I kind of like that he only works with obscure directors, him and Depp will never sell out, AMA request: Leo DiCaprio.

Leo's sellin' wolf tickets alright.

EDIT: Awesome! Glad to see I'm not the only one who appreciates the thespian he is!

EDIT 2: Omg! Front page! This is seriously the best day of my life! THANK YOU!!!

EDIT 3: I just wanted to say thanks again for all the comments! Keep 'em coming!' Best. Community. Ever!

EDIT 4: Let's keep the comments about Depp in this thread too. Don't use the other one that was created. It'll be easier for people just getting here to read everything if we just use this one.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Derek on June 17, 2013, 09:47:10 PM
Wish I was done the way Scorsese is done.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: diggler on June 19, 2013, 10:15:45 AM
This is actually the first time Leo hasn't felt miscast in a Scorsese movie.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Lottery on June 19, 2013, 06:34:42 PM
Quote from: Garam on June 19, 2013, 06:47:52 AM
The Departed might not be deep, but for me it's a far better viewing experience than Casino anyway.

Hey man, Casino is great.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Pubrick on June 20, 2013, 12:16:55 PM
You know nothing, Garam.

Casino is Scorsese's last masterpiece.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Garam on June 20, 2013, 12:19:53 PM
Cool to see you're as dogmatic as ever in your, what, thirties? Nice one.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Pubrick on June 20, 2013, 01:04:07 PM
Cool to see you're a fucking idiot in your, what, whole life?
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Gold Trumpet on June 20, 2013, 01:39:41 PM
Definitely think DiCaprio is overrated and has a low ceiling for acting potential, but I also think he's the reason a lot of Scorsese films have been financed in the last decade. Scorsese has been able to steadily work without really changing his interests or having to do a blockbuster-style flick. Not many other filmmakers can say the same. I don't think any other filmmaker who has a low grade box office return history like Scorsese has can say the same in this climate. For better or worse, DiCaprio probably has allowed Scorsese to make movies he wants to make.

Has Scorsese the filmmaker changed? Of course, but he was changing out of his hard nose drama shoes even in the 1970s and moving more toward a Howard Hawks everyman studio type of filmmaking. I just wish he would do more films that at least had the interest and ambition of Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, or Last Temptation of Christ. Silence is so appealing because it's a project we know is in that ballpark and Scorsese is legitimately passionate about but if it weren't for that project, I think he would roll with a dozen type of Departed flicks because they're more accessible to make.   
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Neil on June 20, 2013, 02:52:00 PM
Quote from: Garam on June 20, 2013, 12:19:53 PM
Cool to see you're as dogmatic as ever in your, what, thirties? Nice one.

Quote from: Pubrick on June 20, 2013, 01:04:07 PM
Cool to see you're a fucking idiot in your, what, whole life?


:rofl:
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Reel on June 20, 2013, 10:05:29 PM
Feels good when it's not us, right?
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Garam on June 21, 2013, 09:14:03 AM
Fucking lame comeback. Jerkstore called, they're running out of you.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Jeremy Blackman on June 21, 2013, 09:41:44 AM
Is this really happening? Really?
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Frederico Fellini on June 21, 2013, 10:10:59 AM
Quote from: Garam on June 21, 2013, 09:14:03 AM

Fucking lame comeback. Jerkstore called, they're running out of you.




Haha... I'm just glad is not me this time.  :laughing:   
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Pubrick on June 21, 2013, 12:14:05 PM
your arguments against casino and pro defarted are uninformed.

are you seriously telling me you've seen every film he's made and you legitimately think his 2000+ output is up to par?

do you feel the same way about woody allen? they are comparable almost exactly.

anyone who praises scorsese's 2000+ films beyond anything he did in the 90s is a cinematic idiot.

shit, even the last shot of Age of Innocence is a million times better than anything he's done in the last 14 years. your upvoters are idiots too,.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: 03 on June 21, 2013, 02:41:14 PM
im kind of just reiterating what i said in the chat but:
scorsese really did pull a woody allen, his transition to what he does now wasnt necessarily horrible but its definitely nothing close to his earlier work. his bringing out the dead stage, which he's still in is pretty disappointing in comparison.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: AntiDumbFrogQuestion on June 21, 2013, 06:22:48 PM
I'm sick of this site. It used to be a safe place to come and discuss enthusiasm over film with a few jabs thrown in to keep it lively. Now it reads like a bunch of angry high-schoolers who never get laid come here to bitch and put each other down.  I'm not defending this movie before seeing it, just the treatment of others in regard to their opinions.

"Good" you might say "the weak shall leave the pack"

I'll still be checking in to read because I enjoy reading the comments and perspective provided by a small group of cinefiles such as yourselves.

But calling a movie "defarted" and telling someone they're uninformed because maybe they liked "The Aviator"? Sure, some have a high perch on the board, but this is just getting fucking idiotic.
(Hm...maybe it could have been called "The Retarded".)

So long Xixax. It was fun when we started, but you've changed, man.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Derek on June 21, 2013, 07:55:06 PM
Quote from: Pubrick on June 21, 2013, 12:14:05 PM
your upvoters are idiots too,.

Didn't upvote him because I agreed with his opinions on the movies. I upvoted him because you're a bully and a threadkiller. Contrary to what you may think, your opinions are not the be all and end all. And you're not nearly as witty or insightful as you think.


Don't give a shit if you're an admin.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Gold Trumpet on June 21, 2013, 09:21:17 PM
I understand people may be hard on Scorsese now, but I think Hugo is one of his best films, period. Is it comparable to Raging Bull or Taxi Driver? Nope, but I don't think Casino is comparable to those two films either. Scorsese's relationship to violence and gangster world changed (for me) with Goodfellas. He started to integrate the filmmaking tricks he learned with his more commercial affair in the 80s (After Hours, Color Of Money) and mixed it into a more dramatic story. I don't think the film was as serious as Mean Streets about the characters and was more about the excess of the world. For me, Casino was a continuation of that and the best filmmaking Scorsese would do on the subject and type of stylized filmmaking.

The reason it's so hard to really compare Scorsese films because his every decade has different barometers of filmmaking and story approach. Hell, a film like the Last Temptation of Christ does not feel like a film made right before Goodfellas. Stylistically, it's from another world, but Scorsese wanted to be able to have a Rolodex type of talent to his approaches with style. With Hugo, I think he found a crescendo level of inspiration for a fairytale story and it allowed him to be more freewheeling with his filmmaking than in recent years.

I think The Departed is just a bad film and where it lacks in any character depth, it tries to make up with suspense tricks that are too familiar. Just thought the ceiling on the project was too low and Scorsese played the story too straight with his filmmaking work. I believe the original director's cut to Gangs of New York has beauty and inspiration the journalists who saw it talk about seeing, but for whatever reason, we're never going to see it. I don't know, his last 15 years have been a mixed bag and I'm not too shocked. I wouldn't cast away all the work. I'm still happy whenever I see a new trailer for a Scorsese film, I still get excited. And that's all. Some bad trailers foreshadowed bad films and some great ones bad films. It's preliminary stuff.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: polkablues on June 21, 2013, 10:01:41 PM
I just don't get a sense that Scorsese feels a personal connection to much of his material anymore. Inasmuch as Hugo worked, it worked as a love letter to cinema history, which it seems is the only thing that really gets Marty off the couch nowadays. Where it didn't work was everywhere else. It's nice that Scorsese loved Amelie as much as I did, but leave the Amelies to the Jeunets from now on. Jean-Pierre Jeunet has more magic and whimsy in his little finger than Scorsese has in his entire eyebrow.

Maybe it's a product of age, complacency, whatever, but I almost get a going-through-the-motions feeling from the bulk of his post-2000 output. I would be amazed if he ever makes another film that feels as alive and as necessary as Raging Bull, or Taxi Driver, or After Hours, or Age of Innocence, or even Bringing Out the Dead. Hell, I'd take another King of Comedy at this point.

The most annoying thing is, he's not even making BAD movies (Gangs of New York comes close, secret director's cut notwithstanding). He's a very good filmmaker. He can make a solid, cinematically proficient movie with very little effort. And he has. Over and over for 13 straight years.

What's this thread about? Wolf of Wall Street? I don't even care anymore. You hear that, Marty? You've broken me. Do a Cape Fear prequel with Bradley Cooper or whatever, I won't even get outraged anymore.

Postscript: Can we please leave all the butthurt sanctimony at home from now on? Everybody is responsible for their own words, but you are responsible for how you choose to react to them. Reacting like you got pushed down on the playground is the wrong choice.

Also, please reread Pubrick's initial post toward Garam, recognize that it's a Game of Thrones reference rather than a brutal personal attack, and adjust your outrage accordingly.

Fuck this thread. But sincere kudos to GT for trying to right the ship not once but twice. I agree with you about everything except how good Hugo was.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: 03 on June 22, 2013, 12:55:18 AM
are you guys for real?
being offended by pubrick is so 2007.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Alexandro on June 22, 2013, 02:35:39 AM
well...
I liked the trailer. today I saw the aviator on a bus ride. on mute because it was dubbed to spanish so I just watched, and it's just brilliant. It kept me thrilled by the second...I know this "late" scorsese phase will get it's due recognition someday.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: HeywoodRFloyd on June 22, 2013, 03:55:28 AM
Quote from: Alexandro on June 22, 2013, 02:35:39 AM
today I saw the aviator on a bus ride. on mute because it was dubbed to spanish so I just watched, and it's just brilliant.

It is brilliant, you know you're in the hands of a master when Hughes is out of his comfort zone on the red carpet, but you realise that throughout that whole scene, you yourself have subconsciously leaned further and further back, with a cringe and squinty eyes mirrored on your face just as Hughes with every blinding flash (Richardson's "shining bright lights into actors faces" syndrome is only redeemable here). In fact I don't know about everyone else but in every neurotic OCD moment in the film, I found myself subconsciously cringing, as if I felt his discomfort, it's a rare thing but I tip my hat to Scorsese, what a master.

Just as the use of 36 fps whenever Jake is overanalysing situations in Raging Bull, obsessing over little situations far more than what it actually is. Or even PDL the score is Barry's inner demons and delights, everything from the cinematography (camera movement, lighting etc.) to the music is reflective upon how Barry feels at that given moment, so it's essentially the purest kind of character study as the film is almost first-person from an emotional standpoint. 
These character studies are captured through the emotional looking glass of the character, The Aviator is the same. The film begins with a 3 strip-technicolor look, we're in the mindset of Hughes' current obsession "Hells Angels", he sees the world around him being an extension of his film, he attends parties not to enjoy himself but to find more cameras for his film etc. And then of course we foray into more normal visuals when his obsession with furthering the staple of aviation takes precedence.

I feel that The Aviator is one of his best, and perhaps Dicaps best role along with Catch Me If You Can.

That said TWOWS looks very formulaic to what "sells" today, I hope I'm just jumping to false conclusions and there really is more than meets the eye here. I don't share the Scorsese disappointment of latter years with other veterans on this board, I actually really like Shutter Island aswell, sure some would say you could see the twist from a mile away, but it has an atmosphere that's almost perfectly crafted, and the visuals are the best in Scorsese's oeuvre.

All in all, I don't like this trailer at all, but i hope I'm being a grouch and it turns out great.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Stefen on June 22, 2013, 09:29:09 PM
Quote from: polkablues on June 21, 2013, 10:01:41 PM
I just don't get a sense that Scorsese feels a personal connection to much of his material anymore.

BUSINESS MAN MODE.

To be fair, he kept it real for longer than most. Nolan lasted like 4 movies, Spielberg like 4. Other dudes I've forgotten probably like 4. Scorsese went decades. Maybe he just got old and lazy. He's made lazy shit since 2000.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Tictacbk on June 23, 2013, 12:34:52 AM
Quote from: Garam on June 21, 2013, 10:17:21 AM
If you could give me a list of XIXAX-acceptable films I'm allowed to enjoy, and compile them in a nice ranking order, we can avoid any more of this unpleasantness in the future.

Yeah, when are we doing another Dekapenticon?
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: polkablues on June 23, 2013, 12:40:38 AM
Just read the last one and insert The Master in, like, eighth place.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Robyn on June 23, 2013, 07:49:50 AM
it looks pretty fun! I was never a huge scorsese fan anyway.

Quote from: Tictacbk on June 23, 2013, 12:34:52 AM
Quote from: Garam on June 21, 2013, 10:17:21 AM
If you could give me a list of XIXAX-acceptable films I'm allowed to enjoy, and compile them in a nice ranking order, we can avoid any more of this unpleasantness in the future.

Yeah, when are we doing another Dekapenticon?

eh, what's that and where can I see the previous ones?

Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Pubrick on June 23, 2013, 08:16:58 AM
Quote from: Brett Ratner on June 23, 2013, 07:49:50 AM
eh, what's that and where can I see the previous ones?

we did one in 2004: http://xixax.com/index.php?topic=5109.0

and another (more definitive) one in 2006: http://xixax.com/index.php?topic=8560.0

for some reason the 2004 pics don't show up anymore, but you get the idea from the second batch.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Robyn on June 23, 2013, 08:39:43 AM
Quote from: Pubrick on June 23, 2013, 08:16:58 AM
Quote from: Brett Ratner on June 23, 2013, 07:49:50 AM
eh, what's that and where can I see the previous ones?

we did one in 2004: http://xixax.com/index.php?topic=5109.0

and another (more definitive) one in 2006: http://xixax.com/index.php?topic=8560.0

for some reason the 2004 pics don't show up anymore, but you get the idea from the second batch.

that's pretty much what i expected. if we do another list I think it should be better to do a top 25, tho. the surprises are too few in that list, and the only movie that made me raise my (inferior) eyebrows was esotsm.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: martinthewarrior on June 24, 2013, 10:06:10 AM
"The Aviator" is absolutely one of his best films. Nothing controversial about that position. Now, off to lurk in the shadows for a few more years.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: pete on June 25, 2013, 05:48:11 PM
Quote from: martinthewarrior on June 24, 2013, 10:06:10 AM
"The Aviator" is absolutely one of his best films. Nothing controversial about that position. Now, off to lurk in the shadows for a few more years.

wait can you hang around for a little bit so Pubrick can trash you?
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Pubrick on June 25, 2013, 06:32:33 PM
funny. i think the way i phrased my argument could have been better, but it's only because we've covered this so many times before:

1. I actually like the aviator (http://xixax.com/index.php?topic=7381.msg178694#msg178694). (relevant post from Alexandro's wonderful defense of that film which made a lot of us reassess it)

2. the main argument here was covered extensively last year when Marty made that siri ad and we all wept (http://xixax.com/index.php?topic=12245.0), because it was truly the mark of the final decline.

3. finally my review of the departed (http://xixax.com/index.php?topic=5470.msg234571#msg234571) wherein i reiterate my affection for the aviator being the only good thing he's done this century.

there i find solace with fellow xixaxiens that the departed was devoid of all scorsese hallmarks -- first and foremost, the one thing that has gained him the reputation he is now constantly squandering: smashing out important contributions to cinema. this was basically scorsese's role in the medium before 2000, every film was a milestone in his life and ours and cinema's in general, with approximately one exception per decade (NY NY, Color of $, i guess bringing out the dead which is still pretty good). now the ratio has flipped, he's lucky if he cranks out one excellent film a decade.

bla blah blah AND IF YOU DON'T AGREE WITH THIS YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT blah blgh blah... this is nothing new, it's weird that with every disappointment we have to deny the growing evidence, he is simply not making masterpieces anymore. he's not the only person who didn't survive the new millennium, his best friend de niro suffered a worse fate. but again i'm just repeating a point i made last year.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Pubrick on June 26, 2013, 12:48:35 PM
uh, yeah.. i'm never gonna read that.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Garam on June 26, 2013, 12:50:46 PM
So why engage me in the first place, you complete and utter tosser?
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: polkablues on June 26, 2013, 01:02:57 PM
You guys are about 40 minutes of your romantic comedy away from kissing in the rain.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Pubrick on June 26, 2013, 01:14:26 PM
we're way past that.

i'm actually about to jizz in his face.

annnd scene.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: 03 on June 26, 2013, 03:37:48 PM
i read it and you know what? i like you garam, and i respect your opinions which are just that, but you are definitely uninformed.
and to give you a proper definition in this circumstance, being uninformed is: having lack of unbiased knowledge of his films and not regarding them in a way devoid of opinion and based on factual details.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: jenkins on June 26, 2013, 05:24:33 PM
it wasn't necessary to present knowledge with the adjective 'unbiased.' if you're confused, i recommend david shields, john d'agata, and the examination of the idea "the response is not caused by the thing but by the person receiving the thing"

my intention here was to end what i suspect everyone already wanted ended
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: 03 on June 27, 2013, 12:00:40 AM
well damn
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: wilder on August 29, 2013, 02:18:36 PM
Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese Explore the Funny Side of Financial Depravity in The Wolf of Wall Street
via Vulture
By Mary Kaye Schilling

Imagine a world where a guy can make $12 million in three minutes, where blow jobs are a perk of the gig, dwarfs are tossed to raise employee morale, and inhaling anthills of coke, Scarface style, is encouraged. Now imagine a world where a studio would pass on a movie with a subject that titillating, even if it came tied in a ­Leonardo DiCaprio–and–Martin Scorsese bow. That's the way things were looking back in 2008, when Warner Bros. dropped out of Scorsese and DiCaprio's upcoming black comedy The Wolf of Wall Street. The two went on to make Shutter Island, then separated for other projects. But when a window in Scorsese's schedule opened up in 2012, DiCaprio approached the ­director again. "I told Marty, 'I don't think we'll be able to do a movie like this too many times in the future,' " says DiCaprio. "Larger-scale, R-rated dramas, like Blood Diamond or The Departed, don't really get financed anymore."

An independent production company, Red Granite Pictures, eventually stepped in to finance the film (Paramount is distributing), which is based on Jordan ­Belfort's memoir of the same name. The book chronicles the former stockbroker's rise and fall as the head of Stratton Oakmont, a brokerage house he founded when he was only in his late twenties. The Long Island–based boiler room bamboozled small investors out of roughly $100 million in the nineties, the heyday of cheap money, junk bonds, and spectacularly ugly ties. In 1998, Belfort was indicted for securities fraud and money laundering, serving 22 months in prison after ­cooperating with the FBI.

Belfort's writing, alternately horrifying and hilarious, almost reads like a Scorsese movie. And "Marty directing was Jordan's dream scenario, absolutely," says DiCaprio, who plays Belfort. "When Marty couldn't do it the first time, I set it up with a few other directors, but I never felt comfortable pulling the trigger. I was fixated on him. There wasn't anybody else who could bring the rawness and toughness, the music, and particularly the humor required to convey the excitement of these young punks—these robber barons—taking on the Wall Street system."

Executive producer Alexandra Milchan had brought The Wolf of Wall Street to the attention of DiCaprio's production company, Appian Way, in 2007. Warner Bros. quickly optioned it for DiCaprio and ­Scorsese, more than a year before the crash of 2008. "The book personified ­America's addiction to obtaining wealth at all costs, and that hasn't changed," says DiCaprio, who found in Belfort a micro-tale of corruption and greed. "He was a small fish in a gigantic pond, and he'd motivate his guys by telling them they were heroes for taking on the big houses. Un­regulated Wall Street was like the Wild West." The actor was captivated by the author's singular transparency. "There was nothing Jordan wouldn't divulge, no matter how intimate or embarrassing," he says. "That was the attraction for Marty as well—it's the kind of brutal honesty that got Marty into making movies like Mean Streets."

Scorsese has dabbled in black comedy before—After Hours and The King of ­Comedy, of course, and long stretches of GoodFellas. But the comedic menace here isn't violence (unless you count death-­defying self-abuse); it's Belfort's spectacular implosion. In addition, the film offered the director his first crack at the Zeitgeist since 1983's Comedy—Scorsese's creepy poke at celebrity worship—as well as an entrée into a world as ripe for hyperbole as that of Vegas, the Mafia, and 1840s New York: sin, redemption, obsession, operatic displays of excess! How could he resist?

"Jordan was a brilliant guy in a world where there may be no morality ­whatsoever," says Scorsese. "He got caught at what a lot of people didn't get caught at." As he sees it, Wolf is about what happens when free-market capitalism becomes a matter of faith. "If you look at what occurred in the world of finance—many times now and it will probably happen again—you really have to ask the questions: Is dishonesty acceptable? Aren't people expected to go too far?"

Jonah Hill plays Donnie Azoff, Stratton Oakmont's second in command (a composite of a few characters in the book). Azoff, if possible, is even more gonzo than Belfort, who at least regretted ripping off clients. "Jordan told me that certain people [at Stratton Oakmont] actually enjoyed hurting people," says Hill, who, along with DiCaprio, spent time with current day ­traders before shooting began late last summer. "I imagine it's a lot more politically correct and less chauvinistic now. It certainly couldn't be more politically incorrect or chauvinistic. But it's still very alpha male, or alpha female, depending on the person in training. People who are weak, or perceived as weak and emotional, are fed to the wolves." At Stratton Oakmont, says Hill, the philosophy was kill-or-be-killed, and ­Gordon Gekko was fetishized, but so were Scarface and GoodFellas. "Those were their models," he adds. "They kind of ran their businesses with those sensibilities."

Belfort's arc does sound a little like Henry Hill's in GoodFellas—in this case, a nice Jewish kid from Bayside, Queens, with a genius for sales, gets seduced and corrupted by Wall Street. But Scorsese disputes comparisons between gangsters and stock brokers. "The parallel between the Mafia and Wall Street works only to the extent that they're all interested in making as much money as possible, as quickly as possible."

In Terence Winter—creator of HBO's Boardwalk Empire (executive-produced by Scorsese)—DiCaprio found the perfect screenwriter to adapt Wolf. Winter worked in the equity-trading department of Merrill Lynch when he was in law school. "I was there on October 19, 1987, the day of the stock-market crash," he says. "To see it happen again, on a much larger scale, in 2008, after I had written the script? That was eerie."

His own Wall Street experience wasn't as crazy, but the excessive testosterone and drug-fueled, locker-room ­atmosphere were familiar enough. And Belfort's epic charisma was simply irresistible. "For all the bad things he's done, he's so utterly charming," says Winter. "That's why I'm glad we kept the voice-over; you need his hilarious asides."

Which, according to Winter, is what will separate Wolf from the many Hollywood films that have already satirized the avarice of the financial world, most infamously in American Psycho and Wall Street. That and the "pretty sadistic humor," says DiCaprio. "We take the lives of the people in the film seriously; we don't take the genre seriously.

"Marty said to me early on, 'No matter the genre, no matter what kind of movie, people respond to the honesty in the characters,' " adds DiCaprio. "We weren't interested in sentimentalizing Jordan. We aren't painting a portrait of someone we want people to feel sorry for. Later in the film, when his life starts breaking apart, people are going to think he's making the wrong decisions constantly. That's not to say that people won't be rooting for him, because he's a likable guy."

DiCaprio spent weeks with Belfort. "I wanted a close relationship with him so that I could weave intimate details into the movie," he says, "things that weren't in the book. I was kind of the middleman between him and Marty, and I would bring pages of notes from my meetings with Jordan—things like this insane orgy on a 747 going to Vegas, chimpanzees in diapers that would skate through the Stratton offices, very intimate stuff about his relationships with women—and Marty was game to try everything. His approach was essentially to put everything onscreen and see what we responded to. It was old-school, really independent filmmaking on a larger scale."               

This is the fifth collaboration between the 38-year-old DiCaprio and Scorsese, who turns 71 two days after The Wolf of Wall Street is released (November 15). What at first seemed an unlikely alliance is obvious now: The two men are equally committed to their independence from Hollywood, even as they play within the system—or, in the case of DiCaprio, becomes one of the most popular and highly compensated actors of his generation, without ever starring in a blockbuster franchise. "Leo and I share a certain sensibility," says Scorsese, "a temperamental affinity." Scorsese lived through, and DiCaprio reveres, a time when films were discussed as urgently as television is now, when it was as much an art form as it was a business. Their collaborations might lack the brute-edged intensity of Scorsese and Robert De Niro's, but that relationship was less of a partnership. Without DiCaprio, their shared sensibility—for full immersion in a comically depraved world—would never have been financed.

"Marty is brilliant at many things, but one of them is showing people doing things that are morally corrupt and still making them enjoyable to watch," says Hill. "You root for them and adore them in some way—it's cool and exciting to be doing something wrong." And the same, Hill realized, applies to the guys in Wolf. "Leo and I had numerous conversations while our characters were doing really despicable things. I was disgusted by what I was doing!" Hill laughs. "There are people who won't see the darkness of it. Spring Breakers came out while we were making the movie. I'm a big Harmony Korine fan. I saw Kids when I was way too young—probably 11—and I completely disregarded the aids plot; I just wanted to be like those guys. So now I'm 29, and I walked out of Spring Breakers thinking, Gosh, this generation is so screwed. I was really depressed by the movie. But I realized that if I was 14, I'd be like, Oh, let's go on spring break!"

"It's an old story, really: People can take their identification with movies and novels to some alarming places," says Scorsese. "Some people might just zero in on the fun, exhilarating side of it. But if you're putting a world on film, and you're going to stay true to that world, as opposed to show it from a distance, you're going to make it attractive and entertaining—and, by the way, the people are entertaining, and they had a great time until they got caught."

You can't call Scorsese a prude, not with all the violence in his films. But sex—lots and lots of sex—has never been one of his obsessions. In one scene in the film, a coked-up Belfort furiously dry-humps a first-class stewardess on a flight to Switzerland. It's reminiscent of the alarming comedy in Scorsese's earlier films—classic Joe Pesci stuff. DiCaprio's natural grace remains (it was there even when he played a sadist in Django Unchained), but he's never been so feral. And this is one of Wolf's tamer scenes. "It's a modern-day Caligula," says DiCaprio, "the height of debauchery."

The courtly Scorsese officiating over an orgy is an incongruous image—perhaps for him as well. "Before one pretty explicit sex scene," says Margot Robbie, the Australian actress who plays Belfort's second wife, "Marty was talking to me about my comfort level. He said, 'Okay, so when you're making love ...' And I was thinking, Making love? I wouldn't really call it that. It was quite sweet and funny." In a memorable moment of self-pleasuring early in the film, Robbie teases DiCaprio in their daughter's nursery—a scene that took seventeen hours to shoot. "That's a long time to pretend you're masturbating," says Robbie. "It was exhausting! But most of the time it was impossible to stop laughing. How could you not, when every shot was something completely absurd, and you're directed to take everything as far as you want? I mean, there's a naked marching band in one scene. We sank a yacht!"

I ask Hill to identify the most outrageous scene in the film. He is unable to pick just one. "I can safely say that this is the craziest performance I'll ever give as far as what the character gets involved with." And this is a guy who played a guy who got sodomized by the Devil in This Is the End.

Winter is momentarily stumped as well. He mentally sifts through a long list of possibilities. "Oh, yeah," he says finally. "There's a scene where Donnie and Jordan take a lot of vintage quaaludes from the eighties. It takes a while for them to kick in, so they keep taking more." The result is a five-­minute fever dream of apparently world-class fucked-up-ness that, among other things, introduces the potential for a new comedy team. "DiCaprio and Hill on drugs rival Laurel and Hardy," says Winter. "When my wife read the scene, she was nursing our newborn son, and she nearly dropped the baby she was laughing so hard. You alternate between enjoyment and thinking, When is it going to stop? How can they possibly survive this? "

Given his time on Wall Street, I ask Winter if he learned anything new writing the screenplay. "I was under the impression that we were playing on a semi-level playing field some of the time," he says. "But when you start to uncover the layers of how things could get corrupted, you realize that the whole system can be rigged—even the government end of it. Knowing what I know," he adds, "I don't put my money in the stock market. I'd rather invest in pretty much anything else—like a vintage-Matchbox-car collection."

Hill's takeaway was more basic. "Maybe don't do bags of ­quaaludes and cocaine every day for four years," he says, and laughs. "Everything is going to feel like a letdown after that kind of sensory overload, you know? It's like the end of Good­Fellas. Ray Liotta is in witness protection. He orders spaghetti and gets egg noodles and ketchup. The rest of his life he's going to be eating egg noodles and ketchup. He's going to live life like a schnook."
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Pubrick on August 29, 2013, 04:52:24 PM
Great article, they spoil pretty much every scene in the entire movie but it's the first thing I've read that's made me excited to see it. I think I understand Marty's angle on it now, even though it does sound like a rehash at times.

Highlights include lots of sex, drug sequences, and possibly another rendition of Gimme Shelter. Who am I kidding, we all know that's a definite.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: polkablues on August 29, 2013, 05:44:16 PM
I'm just so sick of the stupid trailer and all the idiots laughing at the idiot jokes in it like it's the second coming of Rob Schneider. I'm sick of Leo's stupid "ain't I a stinker?" smirk and Matthew McConaughey's weird ancient-Egyptian-mummy cheekbone disorder and poor Kyle Chandler being forced to play the exact same one-note humorless authority figure he's played in everything he's been in since Friday Night Lights proved he's so much better than that. I'm sick of directors validating Jonah Hill's opinion of himself. I'm sick of Scorsese being a fucking hack and making movies that any paycheck director in Hollywood could make just as well.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: ©brad on August 29, 2013, 10:22:25 PM
This movie will have two audiences, and the bigger one will be cheering these assholes on.



Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Alexandro on August 30, 2013, 01:08:17 PM
you could say that about goodfellas.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: MacGuffin on October 29, 2013, 07:07:55 PM
New Trailer


Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: wilder on December 04, 2013, 02:04:39 PM
Hollywood Reporter roundtable interview (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/video/leonardo-dicaprio-martin-scorsese-reveal-661947) with Scorsese, DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, and Terence Winter
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: jenkins on December 04, 2013, 02:30:44 PM
i haven't seen this, but apparently it's already been screened for the public. i know because critics know and have talked about it, and of course they see an omen of a bad movie. i think they're making assumptions. the tradition, however, is indeed to skip the critics if you think the critics won't like it
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Alexandro on December 04, 2013, 02:47:41 PM
i've been reading nothing but raves from critics and people who saw it.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: polkablues on December 04, 2013, 03:44:39 PM
They need to cut some better trailers then, because so far it looks like an outright abomination.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: jenkins on December 04, 2013, 03:48:18 PM
Quote from: Alexandro on December 04, 2013, 02:47:41 PM
i've been reading nothing but raves from critics and people who saw it.

you're saying it's gone to both the general audience and critics? rotten tomatoes turns up nothing but i believe you. please link me. tbh i don't even know where these general audience people were, i've just heard them mentioned, and of course there was enthusiasm. i'm positive the studio also guessed an early screening of this movie would excite a general audience

(edit) nvm, and yes i also think it's funny i tried rottentomoatoes before google

QuoteFormal reviews are embargoed but as an initial observation I would label the movie "Scorsese's Satyricon," a wild ride full of contemporary debauchery to say the least (DiCaprio compared some of it to Caligula), with a fine ensemble and a frenetic pace that belies its three hour running time
http://www.deadline.com/2013/12/oscars-scorsese-and-dicaprio-back-in-the-race-as-wolf-of-wall-street-makes-a-raucous-debut/

QuoteThe film isn't set to screen for the press at large for another week, but this weekend it began making its way through guild screenings, where plus ones and crossover memberships with critics and the film commentariat are just unavoidable. So it was Saturday afternoon that I made my way to the first of two SAG screenings of this absolutely unrepentant entry (hopefully that caveat saves the studio some disgruntled phone calls — over 100 people were turned away from the two screenings, which were filled to the brim). Stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, Rob Reiner, Cristina Milioti, Jon Favreau, P.J. Byrne and Kenneth Choi were on hand to discuss working with a master filmmaker and the life and times of a man, Jordan Belfort, who by anyone's measure should probably be dead by now.
http://www.hitfix.com/in-contention/are-leonardo-dicaprio-and-the-wolf-of-wall-street-just-what-this-oscar-season-needed#QwJj0lDTbhBeS40q.99
DEC 1

QuoteEverybody loves Martin Scorsese's "The Wolf of Wall Street" – including, perhaps, people who haven't even seen it.

The three-hour real-life tale of financial skullduggery and personal excess has become the hottest screening ticket in town in the first few days of its guild screenings, with Paramount turning away viewers at SAG, AMPAS, DGA and WGA screenings that began on Saturday afternoon and will continue all week in Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and London.
http://www.thewrap.com/wolf-wall-street-martin-scorsese-leonardo-dicaprio-oscar-race-screening-reactions

roger
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: matt35mm on December 04, 2013, 04:04:34 PM
Critics have started to see it but there is an embargo on the reviews (not unusual for big movies, and not a negative sign at all. Similar thing happened with AMERICAN HUSTLE, which is why all these reviews of it have dropped almost all at once earlier today. THE HOBBIT has also started screening but there are no published reviews yet.

But yes, the buzz on WOLF OF WALL STREET has been pretty strong just from the hints on Twitter from over-excited critics.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: jenkins on December 04, 2013, 04:10:15 PM
idk why i didn't guess this is a common american release practice. i heard about it in a funky way, i agree. but like, from an la times critic, who compared this with a deflating tire
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: ©brad on December 04, 2013, 04:17:13 PM
Quote from: polkablues on December 04, 2013, 03:44:39 PM
They need to cut some better trailers then, because so far it looks like an outright abomination.

Really? I think the trailers are fun.

/ducks

Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: polkablues on December 04, 2013, 05:03:54 PM
Quote from: ©brad on December 04, 2013, 04:17:13 PM
/ducks

Because Leonardo DiCaprio just tossed a dwarf at you.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: 03 on December 04, 2013, 08:11:12 PM
i thought that was vin diesel
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: jenkins on December 22, 2013, 01:33:35 AM
you ready for the kicker? cinematically there's no fussing around about who wins. scorsese of course. there's an allout hilarious drug scene that i'm happy scorsese flew with. jonah hill and other supporting actors were terrific. but overall american hustle > wolf, imo. for the characters
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: jenkins on December 23, 2013, 02:20:39 PM
i've also had fond memories of matthew mcconaughey and spike jonze. especially mcconaughey

here's a youtube irl video of a party in the movie. don't worry, it's much different in the movie of course
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-Md3sFW4AM
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Drenk on December 25, 2013, 11:19:00 AM
So much energy in this movie for a character I didn't give a shit about. Yes, DiCaprio is great. But I was bored. I felt the energy, though, while being bored - for a long time, this movie is long, really long-, and found myself in a strange state at the end.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Alexandro on December 25, 2013, 01:34:12 PM
http://www.theasc.com/ac_magazine/December2013/TheWolfofWallStreet/page1.php


"When we started testing different digital cameras and ideas, I also shot film as a benchmark so I could understand differences in terms of latitude, color and so on," Prieto recalls. "I shot the same images on film and on digital, and when I screened the tests for Scorsese, he kept pointing to the film versions and saying they looked better, basically noting that the skin tones were richer and there was more color nuance. So, I went to our producers to explore the financial implications of shooting on film negative and reserving digital capture for low-light situations. After looking at the comparative costs, production agreed to work with that hybrid method."
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: ©brad on December 25, 2013, 08:56:23 PM
Some fun scenes. Way too freakin' long and repetitive. Leo is no Ray Liotta when it comes to voiceover. I loved the final shot.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Cloudy on December 26, 2013, 03:22:07 PM
I feel akin to this statement,

Richard Brody, New Yorker:
"No, of course Scorsese doesn't approve of Belfort's actions; who would? We may wish that such behavior didn't exist, but its existence is a central part of human nature, and there's a reason that we can't stop watching, just as we can't stop watching the terrifying storm or the shark attack. Within the movie's roiling, riotous turbulence is an Olympian detachment, a grand and cold consideration of life from a contemplative distance, as revealed in the movie's last shot, which puts "The Wolf of Wall Street" squarely in the realm of the late film, with its lofty vision of ultimate things. It's as pure and harrowing a last shot as those of John Ford's "7 Women" and Carl Theodor Dreyer's "Gertrud"—an image that, if by some terrible misfortune were to be Scorsese's last, would rank among the most harshly awe-inspiring farewells of the cinema."
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: jenkins on December 26, 2013, 04:31:09 PM
the "we can't stop watching the terrifying storm or the shark attack" part illustrates to me how he's attempting to generalize to a higher status. i can stop watching those things. that's me. brody also appeals to authority figures by referencing classics. forget it. i think what he did was amplify the sounds of fright and yes, if it worked for you already it must work better now. not sold
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Drenk on December 26, 2013, 04:52:48 PM
Spoilers, I guess.

Yes. I could definitely stop watching. I was so distant...This Jordan Belfort, how can you follow three hours of this man? He's not Tony Soprano or Daniel Plainview. He's just there, on drugs, doing insane things, for almost three hours, then he's not, cause the FBI...People were fascinated by Jordan during his speeches. And then, me, watching people fascinated, wondering if the movie would end.

But this movie is insane. Not insanely good, though. Anyway, a lot of people love it, it's a good thing. He made it work in a way that I can't get.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: wilder on December 26, 2013, 05:37:17 PM
Felt this was Scorsese's worst, but I didn't hate it. I feel apathetic toward it, really. Like ©brad said, some fun scenes, but a missed opportunity to make something much more interesting. This is key, from David Denby's New Yorker review (http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2013/12/wolf-of-wall-street-review.html):

Quote from: Davd DenbyAs the critic Farran Smith Nehme pointed out to me, one of the filmmakers' mistakes was to take Jordan Belfort's claims at face value. In his memoir, Belfort presents himself as a very big deal on Wall Street. The movie presents him the same way—as a thieving Wall Street revolutionary—whereas, in fact, he was successful but relatively small time.

Telling it from that angle would have made the character so much more complex.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Jeremy Blackman on December 26, 2013, 06:12:30 PM
That's funny. I actually got that exact impression from the real-life video on the previous page. He's self-consciously speaking like a big-shot but you can hear from the constant background conversation that probably half the people on the boat are barely paying attention or ignoring him entirely.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: wilder on December 26, 2013, 06:16:02 PM
Bahaha I didn't see that that's fucking hilarious
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Cloudy on December 26, 2013, 06:21:01 PM
I think I'm having similar problems with this film, it's hard for me to really put my finger on how much I liked it. But what I mainly cared about from Brody's statement was that there was an element of detachment from all that was going on, where we could see humanity's progression to the point we're at now, and in those moments I felt a sense of awe.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: jenkins on December 26, 2013, 06:50:24 PM
ooh yeah that's so true. he's detached from being a human, that's how he's able to persist. in a movie sense, his center is amorality. he sure cooks it. i'm glad you mentioned because i wasn't thinking about it. i still don't like the movie, but now i like thinking about it more
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Drenk on December 26, 2013, 07:04:01 PM
I wanted to add that...at one point, the movie really felt long, and they were still doing insane parties and being crazy and doing drugs, and I felt the void in all this debauchery. It was the point? So Marty won? I like to think about it.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: tpfkabi on December 26, 2013, 10:00:47 PM
http://www.pluggedin.com/movies/intheaters/wolf-of-wall-street.aspx

"All told, well more than 700 profanities, vulgarities and obscenities crowd every square inch of The Wolf of Wall Street. And at least 525 are f-words."

Ha. I guess Scorsese made a kid's film last, and wanted to come back swinging.
Now that I think about it, I don't know that I've seen Goodfellas or Casino unedited for TV - and I have 2 DVD copies of Goodfellas (I bought one cheap at a rental store going out of business, and then bought a Scorsese box that was really cheap).
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Kal on December 27, 2013, 06:31:56 PM
You can't compare Jordan Belfort to Tony Soprano or Daniel Plainview. Jordan Belfort is a real person and all that stuff did happen.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Drenk on December 27, 2013, 08:20:44 PM
A character is a character. Based on real events or not. And I can compare characters. I don't think Sorkin's Zuckerberg is the real Zuckerberg. I don't want him to be. The character of Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street doesn't seem real to me. That's the irony and why I didn't care about him. Why I didn't laugh. Why I wasn't fascinated. Why I could stop watching.

Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Kal on December 27, 2013, 08:52:44 PM
That's your opinion, but the fact is that the character is very real.

And Zuckerberg's story and his personality was told from someone else's point of view, with Zuck wanting zero involvement. Jesse Eisenberg didn't even meet Zuck at all. So it was harder to make it accurate if you base it on other opinions.

This story was told first hand by Jordan, and he was very involved in the script as well as spending time with Leo and Marty to make things as accurate as possible. You never see movies that are so close to the books as this one.

And once you realize that everything that happened is real, and that the character is real, and that many other stories have been inspired from real characters like him, then I believe it gets to be much more interesting. Boiler Room was inspired on Stratton Oakmont. People like that movie told from the point of view of a schmuck that supposedly worked for Jordan.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: wilder on December 27, 2013, 10:17:08 PM
Scorsese and DiCaprio on Charlie Rose (http://charlierose.com/watch/60318162)
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: jenkins on December 27, 2013, 10:45:27 PM
"Some of this actually happened."
isn't that a great way to put it (american hustle's opening title card)
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Neil on December 27, 2013, 10:57:00 PM
I think it's a good time to just leave this here

http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2013/12/wolf_of_wall_street_prousalis.php? (http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2013/12/wolf_of_wall_street_prousalis.php?)
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Cloudy on December 28, 2013, 12:13:53 AM
American Cinematographer
http://www.theasc.com/ac_magazine/December2013/TheWolfofWallStreet/page1.php

You'll notice that this might be the most boring and basic AC article you have ever read, which completely explains why I couldn't sink my teeth into the cinematography of the film. All of the concepts and ideas behind the cinematography were so empty and uninspired.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: ElPandaRoyal on December 28, 2013, 05:10:12 PM
Quote from: Neil on December 27, 2013, 10:57:00 PM
I think it's a good time to just leave this here

http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2013/12/wolf_of_wall_street_prousalis.php? (http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2013/12/wolf_of_wall_street_prousalis.php?)

Haven't seen the movie yet, but these are the kinds of articles that usually come around this time of the year whenever a big movie comes out. Last year it was all about Zero Dark Thirty and its use of torture, then the gears shifted to how acurate Argo really was, and now this. The idea that people assume filmmakers should be the ones to morally judge their characters is completely weird to me. I mean, since we're talking about Scorsese, who doesn't watch GoodFellas and have fun with it. It's a riot, and yet it's about mob killers. The movie doesn't judge them, it hopes for the viewer to do so based on common sense.

What this article does is exactly what it shouldn't do. It tries to talk people out of watching a movie that, either for better or worse, is about a serious subject. Again, I haven't seen it, but even if during the whole 180 minutes of it we don't see the consequences of Belfort's actions, most viewers in the audience should know them very well, they probably are feeling them themselves. We always complain about how some films dumb down audiences, but when it comes to so called "important" subjects, everybody thinks they should be talking to their audience as if they're 5 years old. If people leave the theatre idolising Belfort, well, I'm sorry to say they are as big as idiots as the ones who left A Clockwork Orange wanting to be like Alex or the ones that left Fight Club wanting to be Space Monkeys.

But what really bothers me about this piece of writing in particular is how the writer sees herself as an innocent victim (and I don't doubt she was fucked over by her dad, most of these Wall Street guys are disgusting) and unaware of what was going on around her, but at the same time talks about how much coke she did. I'm sure the poor girl didn't know drugs were illegal, and a shit ton of people die in drug trafficking.

So yeah, if the movie is bad, or long, or whatever, I get it, but I just can't get behind these kinds of campaigns.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Alexandro on December 28, 2013, 07:00:37 PM
that article is basically a promo for her own memoir, which she will publish shortly. a fact that, without having seen the film yet, feels like it's validating what I'm presuming is it's main point, that the whole of modern society has become an empty circus of greed and guiltless crimes with no self awareness whatsoever.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Neil on December 28, 2013, 10:11:46 PM
I've yet to see the movie either, & I posted it for that exact reason, the ridiculousness found inside that piece of published b******* just blows my mind. From what some of you have been saying it seems like Scorsese kind of did the opposite of what she's suggesting too, but I guess I'll just have to wait and see when I watch this
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: cine on January 01, 2014, 12:35:28 PM
perhaps i missed something but i watched this yesterday and loved it. very engrossing picture and the 3 hours flew by.

Barely Spoilers:

dat scene with Leo trying to get Jonah off the phone. good lawd.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: RegularKarate on January 01, 2014, 05:08:50 PM
Quote from: cine on January 01, 2014, 12:35:28 PM
perhaps i missed something but i watched this yesterday and loved it. very engrossing picture and the 3 hours flew by.

Absolutely flew by. Amazing movie and I don't get the hate... this is Scorsese doing some of his best work. Blew me away.

I keep getting really pissed at my Facebook friends posting about that dumb open letter and how this movie is irresponsible... it's like they don't know how to watch movies.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: ©brad on January 01, 2014, 10:07:27 PM
That letter is so dumb. I got all ranty on two different friends who posted it.

I definitely liked the movie. It's one showstopping scene after another. I still feel it was a tad long and repetitive after a while, and yet I'm not sure we got enough of what made Jordan such a great salesman.

There is a lot going on in that final scene I'm still trying to unpack.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: jenkins on January 02, 2014, 10:30:22 AM
it's fun and zany and wooo 3hrs? a lot to think about here
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Kal on January 03, 2014, 04:49:02 PM
Now the father of that idiot girl Christina McDowell writes his own letter.

http://elitedaily.com/news/world/the-father-of-the-girl-who-wrote-an-open-letter-to-the-makers-of-wolf-of-wall-street-has-his-own-response-and-its-epic/

Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: ElPandaRoyal on January 04, 2014, 06:17:42 AM
AHAH. These people are insane. But well, in the age of reality TV, it makes complete sense for a father and daughter to use the media to trash each other publicly. Who's coming next? I bet it's a grandma.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Alexandro on January 04, 2014, 11:08:09 AM
yep. that letter is pretty funny and sad. I don't think any of them realize how crazy they and absurd they are. this guy rambling on about his "beautiful hellenic" new wife and how she has brought shame to the whole family...Sounds like a loaded family for sure.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Alexandro on January 07, 2014, 09:57:53 AM
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Alexandro on January 07, 2014, 06:29:33 PM
always a pleasure to listen to this man talk about cinema.
I didn't know he put 500k of his own cash when he went overbudget in the aviator. that's amazing. I wonder how many other big name directors do this and never say anything about it, like spielberg or mann or tarantino.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Just Withnail on January 08, 2014, 05:18:06 AM
Great interview.

Interesting insights about how a lot of the tone of Wolf was found playing around on set.

That fade that comes in the middle of him listing all the filmmakers at around 03.00 is funny. Like he's been listing for hours. And that grin after he mentions putting up 500 000 for The Aviator is priceless.

But there's also something painful about the mood of the interview. He seems to be struggling quite a bit with finding motivation to do films these days.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: wilder on January 08, 2014, 04:56:42 PM
^ going off that...

Martin Scorsese Explains Why Future of Film is Bright in Open Letter to Daughter
via IndieWire

Quote from: Martin Scorsese
Dearest Francesca,

I'm writing this letter to you about the future. I'm looking at it through the lens of my world. Through the lens of cinema, which has been at the center of that world.

For the last few years, I've realized that the idea of cinema that I grew up with, that's there in the movies I've been showing you since you were a child, and that was thriving when I started making pictures, is coming to a close. I'm not referring to the films that have already been made. I'm referring to the ones that are to come.

I don't mean to be despairing. I'm not writing these words in a spirit of defeat. On the contrary, I think the future is bright.

We always knew that the movies were a business, and that the art of cinema was made possible because it aligned with business conditions. None of us who started in the 60s and 70s had any illusions on that front. We knew that we would have to work hard to protect what we loved. We also knew that we might have to go through some rough periods. And I suppose we realized, on some level, that we might face a time when every inconvenient or unpredictable element in the moviemaking process would be minimized, maybe even eliminated. The most unpredictable element of all? Cinema. And the people who make it.

I don't want to repeat what has been said and written by so many others before me, about all the changes in the business, and I'm heartened by the exceptions to the overall trend in moviemaking – Wes Anderson, Richard Linklater, David Fincher, Alexander Payne, the Coen Brothers, James Gray and Paul Thomas Anderson are all managing to get pictures made, and Paul not only got The Master made in 70mm, he even got it shown that way in a few cities. Anyone who cares about cinema should be thankful.

And I'm also moved by the artists who are continuing to get their pictures made all over the world, in France, in South Korea, in England, in Japan, in Africa. It's getting harder all the time, but they're getting the films done.

But I don't think I'm being pessimistic when I say that the art of cinema and the movie business are now at a crossroads. Audio-visual entertainment and what we know as cinema – moving pictures conceived by individuals – appear to be headed in different directions. In the future, you'll probably see less and less of what we recognize as cinema on multiplex screens and more and more of it in smaller theaters, online, and, I suppose, in spaces and circumstances that I can't predict.

So why is the future so bright? Because for the very first time in the history of the art form, movies really can be made for very little money. This was unheard of when I was growing up, and extremely low budget movies have always been the exception rather than the rule. Now, it's the reverse. You can get beautiful images with affordable cameras. You can record sound. You can edit and mix and color-correct at home. This has all come to pass.

But with all the attention paid to the machinery of making movies and to the advances in technology that have led to this revolution in moviemaking, there is one important thing to remember: the tools don't make the movie, you make the movie. It's freeing to pick up a camera and start shooting and then put it together with Final Cut Pro. Making a movie – the one you need to make - is something else. There are no shortcuts.

If John Cassavetes, my friend and mentor, were alive today, he would certainly be using all the equipment that's available. But he would be saying the same things he always said – you have to be absolutely dedicated to the work, you have to give everything of yourself, and you have to protect the spark of connection that drove you to make the picture in the first place. You have to protect it with your life. In the past, because making movies was so expensive, we had to protect against exhaustion and compromise. In the future, you'll have to steel yourself against something else: the temptation to go with the flow, and allow the movie to drift and float away.

This isn't just a matter of cinema. There are no shortcuts to anything. I'm not saying that everything has to be difficult. I'm saying that the voice that sparks you is your voice – that's the inner light, as the Quakers put it.

That's you. That's the truth.

All my love,

Dad
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Mel on January 09, 2014, 04:02:00 PM


Some highlights (till 16th minute): improvisations, possibility of extras for DVD, Martin laughing on set, McConaughey's chant, adjusting run time.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Alexandro on January 13, 2014, 12:03:53 AM
I hope I have more time during the week to write a proper review, but I saw it friday and I can't stop thinking about it. It's a waaaay better film that comments on this thread let know. Completely unjustified dismissiveness here. As someone else pointed out, repetition of the empty rituals of excess are part of the point. Very brutal and cruel portrait of greed not as a sentence on it's characters, but on the society which produces characters like these and allows them to prevail. Which means, us. Insanely funny at times, (Di Caprio and Hill are just like a diabolical comic duo in the classic style), the filmmaker it reminded me the most is Luis Buñuel. For all it's energy and anger, a very still film, with not a lot of camera movements and very straightforward mise en scene. The quieter scenes were the most disturbing (an early one with Mathew McConaughey is just perfect). All in all, a great ride.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Mel on January 13, 2014, 08:32:27 AM
I loved it, one of my favorites for this year and one of the best comedies I have seen in some time. I'm not quite ready to write some kind of review - I would like to see it again at least before that. I'll just address some complains that I have seen flying around the web.

Repetition - this has to do more with run time, than anything else I guess. Average comedy is about 85 minutes long, where "Wolf" is 3 hours long (last 30 minutes or so turn into drama). I have huge troubles watching comedies - often half a hour is enough for me, where I had huge fun watching this film. I agree with Alexandro that showing things again and again is the point - those excesses weren't episodic, that was their life.

No judgment. This is weird thing going on - complains, that we never see victims of scams etc. Film is very strongly focused on main character, to the point where DiCaprio is in every scene or he is narrating it (there are very few exceptions). No surprise that everything is shown from his perspective.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: ElPandaRoyal on January 13, 2014, 05:18:26 PM
Saw it a couple of days ago and am still digesting. A few points:

- It's one of the most hilarious movies I've seen recently.  I mean, at some points I was laughing out loud in that theatre as was most of the audience.

- Not only did I feel it was a bit longer than it needed to be, but I also think that if they had more time to work on it, they would have cut about 20 minutes out of the movie. Still, I would rather seat through an overlong Scorsese movie than a Peter Jackson or Chris Nolan or Lars von Trier.

- Didn't really like some of the music used in this. I know it's probably what these guys would listen to at the time, but it felt lazy and uninspired.

- Great performances all around. Leo and Hill are excellent, but everyone else is really amazing as well.

- People complaining about ow the movies doesn't judge its characters not shows the consequences of their actions, well, as I said before, whoever glorifies these guys is an idiot to begin with. If you're in love with an irresponsable-woman beater-thief-drug abusing dude, then fuck you.

- The final scene is one of the best Scorsese has ever shot.

- Margot Robbie!!!
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: wilder on January 14, 2014, 04:58:38 PM
Wolf of Wall Street VFX (http://vimeo.com/83523133)
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Kellen on January 16, 2014, 04:42:29 PM
Did anyone else have an "exclusive sneak peak" Jack Ryan clip play before their film?
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Drenk on January 16, 2014, 05:29:01 PM
By the way, PTA and Scorsese:

http://instagram.com/p/jOBJp6AIRg/
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: ono on January 16, 2014, 07:40:44 PM
Haha, looks like PTA's rocking the mutton chops.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Alexandro on January 17, 2014, 02:13:07 AM
Quote from: wilder on December 26, 2013, 05:37:17 PM
Felt this was Scorsese's worst, but I didn't hate it. I feel apathetic toward it, really. Like ©brad said, some fun scenes, but a missed opportunity to make something much more interesting. This is key, from David Denby's New Yorker review (http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2013/12/wolf-of-wall-street-review.html):

Quote from: Davd DenbyAs the critic Farran Smith Nehme pointed out to me, one of the filmmakers' mistakes was to take Jordan Belfort's claims at face value. In his memoir, Belfort presents himself as a very big deal on Wall Street. The movie presents him the same way—as a thieving Wall Street revolutionary—whereas, in fact, he was successful but relatively small time.

Telling it from that angle would have made the character so much more complex.

SPOILERS

But the film does get that across very clearly. The film goes out of it's way and spends a lot of time setting up the idea that Belfort is a minor league player in Wall Street. Several times this is mentioned, but more than that, it's established that no one in his team is particularly smart. The film takes a comedy tone to it, and it starts with the assembling of Belfort's team. They're all shown like dumb and ignorant. As Belfort says at some point: "they were not smart, but who in their right minds would trust these clowns?", or something like that. When the FBI agent talks with him for the first time, he spends a lot of time saying that he is just one of the small guys, and at other points he mentions how the big guys on Wall Street look down on him and his company.

the thing is, the film is told from his point of view, and he is an unreliable narrator. early on, there's a shot of his car, and in the middle of the shot the car changes colors because he says so. so from his point of view, he is this big shot, and even within this frame of mind, the film manages to let you in on the fact that whatever he says, you can't really believe everything. belfort's narration is sneaky. he paints any picture that suits his points. he's a pep talker that never rests. his main success is convincing himself of his own greatness. so everything he says is probably hiding a darker, painful truth. the film, actually, tellingly avoids showing his wrongdoings for the most part. this endless party must have some victims, but he is unable to show you them. there is a great small moment, when he talks about a coworker who marries a sales assistant that had a sexual encounters with everyone else in the office (he says the guy married her "despite" this), and he mentions that a couple of years later the guy in question killed himself in the shower, and there is an all too brief cut to a still of this moment: a bathtub soaked in blood. it's a rare image within this film, and it's one the narrator can't get away from too quickly. it's shown there for a second and it goes. later, when belfort has a gruesome fight with his wife and punches her in the gut, the action takes place almost in the background. scorsese has never shied away from showing violence, or domestic violence. but here it's like he, and his character, doesn't want us to see it so upfront. but when it comes to party and drugs, we have full access. looking away from wrongdoings becomes our character's way of life and the point of view of the film. the philosophy is: it's easy to do wrong if you never see the consequences. but what is scorsese aiming at with this? by the end, when he switches the tables on us, the final shot is a mirror for the audience, for us. people have complained about the lack of moral judgement within the film, but the film is extremely harsh not on belfort but on us, on everyone. on the system, the society that permits this. he very clearly says: "I was terrified of going to jail, but then I remembered I was rich, and I live in a place where you can sell anything". the cynicism, this level of it, this anger, is a new element that I don't think scorsese touched upon before. even travis bickle had good intentions. this time, there is no salvation. belfort is back from jail at the end and he has an audience eager to learn from him.

this moral ambivalence bothers people. and some have said that such an ugly view of humanity makes the film unworthy. scorsese pulls no punches here. this is why the film reminded me of buñuel. like the characters in the exterminating angel, trapped in a house dinner absurdly unable to leave, these people seem to be trapped in a loop of debauchery and pointless satisfactions, with no end. the difference is, they don't even want to get out. but they are not alone. every character in the movie (with two notable exceptions) is presented as happily within this greed loop. the "victims" of belfort's fraud are not talked about like innocent and naive, they all want to get rich quickly. there's a scene in the first part of the picture when a female employee is offered 10, 000 dollars for shaving her head. she agrees, and the whole scene is presented as a grotesque spectacle of dehumanization. of course, the scene is a clear reference to the passion of joan arc. in that scene, in that movie, joan of arc gets her head shaven as an act of submission, and she endures it (despite the fact it amounts to a sexual violation) as a way to preserve her beliefs, her honor and her principles. the employee here, does it for the money, for breast implants. and the scene (as "fun" as it is portrayed, quickly shows it's ugly side, as we watch the hopeless face of the employee, not even realizing the full extent of her humiliation, too busy counting her money to care). like buñuel in viridiana, los olvidados, discreet charm, phantom of liberty and many of his masterpieces, scorsese doesn't see anyone as innocent. everyone remembers how buñuel went after the bourgeoisie, but he was equally ruthless with the poor. scorsese does something similar.

to be honest, the film strikes me as too rich and dense to comment on everything it's trying and doing (what about that great sex scene with belfort and his wife near the end? that's a great emotional sex scene, a true characters scene in which both are fucking). within scorsese's work it reminded me the most of casino. that's another film that was coldly received and criticized for being too long and repetitive. it took me several views to start appreciating it's richness in style and content. wouldn't be surprised if this one has the same effect on me. 
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: wilder on January 17, 2014, 04:51:57 AM
Quote from: Alexandro on January 17, 2014, 02:13:07 AM

SPOILERS

But the film does get that across very clearly. The film goes out of it's way and spends a lot of time setting up the idea that Belfort is a minor league player in Wall Street. Several times this is mentioned, but more than that, it's established that no one in his team is particularly smart. The film takes a comedy tone to it, and it starts with the assembling of Belfort's team. They're all shown like dumb and ignorant. As Belfort says at some point: "they were not smart, but who in their right minds would trust these clowns?", or something like that. When the FBI agent talks with him for the first time, he spends a lot of time saying that he is just one of the small guys, and at other points he mentions how the big guys on Wall Street look down on him and his company.

Okay you're right, I do remember him saying that. My complaint is more about the tone the picture takes, though. The comedy angle seems the right route, but although I was laughing, it wasn't at the idea of Jordan's lack of self-awareness -- which is what comes across in that YouTube video of him speaking on the previous page. Something like Soderbergh's The Informant with more outright debauchery seems like a more appropriate comedic tone to take with this story. Not that I expect most to agree...the movie is definitely funny, though for other reasons, and it's getting a lot of love that way.

There's a disconnect in the presentation of his underlings and of Jordan himself. If we're to believe they're stupid, which he says they are, and as they're shown to be, then Jordan's salesmanship should come across as a con only those he has contempt for would buy into. I can see the argument that the film has contempt for the United States as a whole, letting our society get to this point, but that's not the issue here. Jordan's sales pitches are played so directly, so much without irony, that they're played TO US -- we're asked to buy into them. We're asked to align ourselves with his blatantly stupid employees, but putting a road marker here telling us we're stupid if we do prevents us from identifying, and prevents us from the resulting complicity that would make the movie more compelling.

Quote from: Alexandro on January 17, 2014, 02:13:07 AMthis moral ambivalence bothers people. and some have said that such an ugly view of humanity makes the film unworthy. scorsese pulls no punches here. this is why the film reminded me of buñuel. like the characters in the exterminating angel, trapped in a house dinner absurdly unable to leave, these people seem to be trapped in a loop of debauchery and pointless satisfactions, with no end. the difference is, they don't even want to get out. but they are not alone. every character in the movie (with two notable exceptions) is presented as happily within this greed loop. the "victims" of belfort's fraud are not talked about like innocent and naive, they all want to get rich quickly.

[...]

the philosophy is: it's easy to do wrong if you never see the consequences. but what is scorsese aiming at with this? by the end, when he switches the tables on us, the final shot is a mirror for the audience, for us. people have complained about the lack of moral judgement within the film, but the film is extremely harsh not on belfort but on us, on everyone. on the system, the society that permits this. he very clearly says: "I was terrified of going to jail, but then I remembered I was rich, and I live in a place where you can sell anything". the cynicism, this level of it, this anger, is a new element that I don't think scorsese touched upon before. even travis bickle had good intentions. this time, there is no salvation. belfort is back from jail at the end and he has an audience eager to learn from him.

I don't disagree with you here, all salient points. The moral ambivalence didn't bother me. It's obvious the film and filmmakers aren't condoning their character's behavior. All the rah-rah and up-in-arms nonsense about that aspect has me scratching my head (are people this dense?)

Quote from: Alexandro on January 17, 2014, 02:13:07 AMthere's a scene in the first part of the picture when a female employee is offered 10, 000 dollars for shaving her head. she agrees, and the whole scene is presented as a grotesque spectacle of dehumanization. of course, the scene is a clear reference to the passion of joan arc. in that scene, in that movie, joan of arc gets her head shaven as an act of submission, and she endures it (despite the fact it amounts to a sexual violation) as a way to preserve her beliefs, her honor and her principles. the employee here, does it for the money, for breast implants. and the scene (as "fun" as it is portrayed, quickly shows it's ugly side, as we watch the hopeless face of the employee, not even realizing the full extent of her humiliation, too busy counting her money to care). like buñuel in viridiana, los olvidados, discreet charm, phantom of liberty and many of his masterpieces, scorsese doesn't see anyone as innocent. everyone remembers how buñuel went after the bourgeoisie, but he was equally ruthless with the poor. scorsese does something similar.

That was a great scene. And really fantastic observations on your part. I didn't notice the connection to Joan. You put this perfectly.

Now on to the bad.

There are three main things that irked me about Wolf...

-The shot structure felt lazy and excessively simple compared to Scorsese's past movies. I know he was working with Innaritu's DP this go-around so maybe that had something to do with the difference (though Scorsese ceding much control over shots to a DP seems unlikely at best), but many of the Casino type stylistic flourishes where there's something like a fast dolly into a telephone keypad as a character dials felt like a less talented filmmaker trying to "do Scorsese" and coming up short. Whereas in a past Scorsese movie midway through that kind of dolly move it might have cut into a more close-up version of the same shot as it landed on the keypad to accentuate the frantic state of mind, in this movie it was just the one shot the whole move in...it seemed watered down and simplified, basically imitative of his earlier style, because (it seemed) there wasn't as much passion for the material in the mix. He's spoken about DiCaprio having to talk him into returning to the project, and I felt that his hesitation to commit came across in the direction. Not that Boogie Nights is bad, it's great, but you can see this more simple shot structure attempting to be Casino in that movie, too. There, even though a watered down version of its template, it seems to work for the material. Here it felt like Scorsese failing at his own schtick. Coming from the man himself, it felt flaccid when I expected all guns blazing.

-The pacing is FUCKED. For the first half hour I felt like I was watching a workprint. Scorsese and Schoonmaker have spoken about trying to experiment with Jordan's drugged up headspace, the stop and start sometimes without reason, but for me it just didn't work. Schoonmaker also mentioned that they usually have 12 test screenings before they release a picture and this time only having 6, so maybe that also had something to do with it.

Quote from: Alexandro on January 17, 2014, 02:13:07 AMthe thing is, the film is told from his point of view, and he is an unreliable narrator. early on, there's a shot of his car, and in the middle of the shot the car changes colors because he says so. so from his point of view, he is this big shot, and even within this frame of mind, the film manages to let you in on the fact that whatever he says, you can't really believe everything. belfort's narration is sneaky. he paints any picture that suits his points. he's a pep talker that never rests. his main success is convincing himself of his own greatness. so everything he says is probably hiding a darker, painful truth.

All those speeches where he pumps up his employees felt inadvertantly douchey when I wanted to feel seduced by his salesmanship. It was all so transparent but the transparency didn't work to underline the idea that Jordan is a conman or deluded by his own success, it seemed to underline the failing of the movie to sell me on Jordan's talent in the first place.

And this may be me not remembering but I could swear the voice over was more on the nose than you're describing.

The seduction that was occurring was all thanks to the Price Is Right exhibition of the lifestyle and objects you could have if you got filthy rich: drugs, parties, property, women, etc., making Jordan himself a replaceable character.

Quote from: Alexandro on January 17, 2014, 02:13:07 AMthe film, actually, tellingly avoids showing his wrongdoings for the most part. this endless party must have some victims, but he is unable to show you them. there is a great small moment, when he talks about a coworker who marries a sales assistant that had a sexual encounters with everyone else in the office (he says the guy married her "despite" this), and he mentions that a couple of years later the guy in question killed himself in the shower, and there is an all too brief cut to a still of this moment: a bathtub soaked in blood. it's a rare image within this film, and it's one the narrator can't get away from too quickly. it's shown there for a second and it goes. later, when belfort has a gruesome fight with his wife and punches her in the gut, the action takes place almost in the background. scorsese has never shied away from showing violence, or domestic violence. but here it's like he, and his character, doesn't want us to see it so upfront. but when it comes to party and drugs, we have full access. looking away from wrongdoings becomes our character's way of life and the point of view of the film.

That actually all sounds great, the way you're pitching it. I didn't feel that way in the theater, or I totally checked out. You've brought up some interesting aspects and I'll reserve judgment until a second viewing.

Quote from: Alexandro on January 17, 2014, 02:13:07 AMwithin scorsese's work it reminded me the most of casino. that's another film that was coldly received and criticized for being too long and repetitive. it took me several views to start appreciating it's richness in style and content. wouldn't be surprised if this one has the same effect on me.

I love Casino to death. It's completely visceral and makes its 3 hour running time feel like a 2 minute amusement park ride. I never forgot I was watching a movie with TWoWS, and when I escaped to the bathroom somewhere near the middle it struck me that I didn't care what I was missing and didn't mind how long it took me to get back. I'd never had that experience with a Scorsese picture before, ever.

That all said, the movie was very funny and I'll definitely watch it again with an open mind. The one scene that has stuck in my memory (SPOILERS) is the bit after they're rescued from the sinking yacht and Jordan is sitting in the Italian's ship, looking between the storm outside through the porthole, and his wife and her friend dancing to Umberto Tozzi's "Gloria" inside. THAT was a Scorsese moment if I ever saw one. Now the song and that scene are forever married in my mind.

Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Alexandro on January 17, 2014, 05:57:22 PM
SPOILERS AGAIN

I think Belfort's sales pitchs are pretty persuasive if you are the kind of person who is looking to be persuaded. They didn't sound particularly persuasive to me, but I could see how someone desperate could be convinced. I'm not sure the film is trying to persuade the audience as if the audience were that guy who gets that call at that moment. What the film tries to show is the absurdity of the whole enterprise. A guy like Belford shouldn't be so successful with a scam like that, but he is. His drones shouldn't be able to get rich doing that but they do, and people shouldn't believe them, but they do. The only reason something like this happens is because everyone is willing to play the game of greed. However, it does happen in the film that Belfort and Co. get more sophisticated when they reinvent the company to sell penny stocks to rich people. Yet the scam remains basically the same, and the reason it works is the same.

Having a first person narrator and use his point of view during the whole film doesn't mean that we should identify with him or that the audience can't see the story from the outside and still be interested. A good example on this I think it's A Clockwork Orange. That said, Belfort's own cluelessness about how everything he does is a desperate attempt to be a "big man" became more notable the second time I saw the movie: his need to clarify that his car was white as the car of the miami vice character, the way he shows off to us his "gay buttler" and all the other instances where he expresses contempt for pretty much everyone in the world who has less money than him.

Also on second viewing, the pace seemed to me much more precise. On my first viewing I found the first hour to be kind of sketchy too, but then on second viewing, it was the opposite. I think the weak spot of the film is around the 2 hour mark.

One thing I like about Casino is that Scorsese has never tried to do that again. This one seemed to me much more restrained in the visual sense. Casino is a visually exuberant ride, and I don't think that was the aim here. Both Goodfellas an Casino have romantic notions to their worlds, however reprehensible. GF is a look back to a time of kings, and Casino is a vision of a paradise lost. There's nothing like that here. It's a plain, visually boring world, in very bad taste too. I don't know about shots that much. I think we should give a few more viewings to digest that. I know there were a few nice shots here and there, but the really brilliant moments were simple quiet scenes of conversation.

About Scorsese and his passion for this, who knows. He said the same thing about Raging Bull. He said Casino was an "assignment". He surprised me a few weeks back when he said "The Departed" and "Shutter Island", of all films, were films he personally felt he HAD to do. Go figure. I don't think once he embarks on a project he doesn't puts everything into it. Doesn't seems like he has to do this.

Loved that Gloria scene too. And in general loved the comedy timing the film has. That is tremendously difficult. I don't think people realize how hard it is to make a comedy that actually makes people laugh.



Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: wilder on January 18, 2014, 04:45:22 AM
Re: Alexandro - I feel bad posting in here again without responding to you, but I won't have anymore to say until I see the movie another time.

For now, here's this surprise:





Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Mel on January 18, 2014, 07:10:21 AM
^ Biggest surprise in this interview: physical comedy segment wasn't planned. Yet for me it felt very deliberate.

SPOILERS!

Speeches delivered by Belfort didn't convince me either, but should they? This reminds me of "Nashville", where most singers were more than average. What is import here I think is abuse of confidence and trust. I'm not only speaking about clients, but also about workers. He gives very graphical presentation of the script to his workers and they are laughing their asses off, probably thinking about those poor suckers. Yet his "friends" from Wall Street are swallowing his IPO/quitting pitches without a problem. In the end he sells them to FBI.

Everything is for sale and everyone can be bought - this is pretty much a Jordan attitude. Notice how upset he gets, when this doesn't work. FBI agent is obvious example. There is also Duchess - that sex scene was like a message "I paid with my body for last time, leave me alone" for me and then he goes for drugs as he figures out that she bought him, not the other way around.  He initially gets very angry with article in Forbes - they didn't buy his fairy tale about Stratton Oakmont.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Alexandro on January 18, 2014, 06:24:39 PM
yes, and both those pep talks of motivation are all about getting them to sell more. what's interesting is this you are mentioning of how he looses his temper when his philosophy of life is challenged by people who doesn't buy into his schtick.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: AntiDumbFrogQuestion on January 20, 2014, 01:19:41 AM
Quote from: Mel on January 18, 2014, 07:10:21 AM

Speeches delivered by Belfort didn't convince me either, but should they?

I think it's partially that the story is told through his voice/filter, but also that if these people were making so much money from this business, any words their boss needed to say through a microphone to them would come across as gospel, wouldn't it?
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: MacGuffin on January 28, 2014, 05:15:47 PM
'The Wolf of Wall Street' Blu-ray Will Include the Rumored Four-Hour Cut

There was a lot of talk before Martin Scorsese's 'The Wolf of Wall Street' hit theaters about the length of the film: the release had been delayed so Scorsese could get the runtime down to an acceptable three hours from what was said to be a four-hour version of the film, and although Scorsese never releases "director's cuts" of his films, we're hearing you will be able to see his four-hour cut after all when the Blu-ray hits shelves this spring.

Producers Joey McFarland and Riza Aziz spoke with the Daily Mail about what we can expect from the Blu-ray release of the film:

I think we are going to have some good surprises. To be honest with you the movie is not much different in its longer form, it's just longer versions of scenes. Nothing really got cut out so it's a lot more of what you've already seen.

Scorsese has often said that the theatrical versions of his films are his "director's cut," and the DVD/Blu-ray releases of his films do not include extended, uncut, or unrated versions of his movies. But it looks like we'll actually be able to see Scorsese's four-hour cut of the film as the producers confirmed to the Daily Mail that viewers will have the option of watching the film with the extended scenes intact.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Mel on January 31, 2014, 04:53:31 AM


Highlights: first ~15 minutes is about "Boardwalk Empire", unreliable narrator, making "Wolf" in 2007 with Warner Bros, prolonging Quaalude scene, casting Jonah Hill, tweaking voice-over, not judging Jordan.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Alexandro on February 03, 2014, 02:10:55 PM
'Open Letter To The Makers Of 'The Wolf Of Wall Street' Writer Christina McDowell Gets Book Deal


http://www.deadline.com/2014/02/open-letter-to-the-makers-of-the-wolf-of-wall-street-writer-christina-mcdowell-gets-book-deal/
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Kal on February 03, 2014, 04:44:34 PM
Of course she did. That's why she wrote that in the first place.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: wilder on February 12, 2014, 05:54:10 PM
Scorsese on Conan (http://teamcoco.com/video/77750/full-episode-mon-2-10-martin-scorsese-vanessa-bayer-and-musical-guests-rock-candy-funk-party)
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Mel on February 13, 2014, 01:02:08 PM


Highlights: getting noticed by Scorsese after "Moneyball", then there is a bit of talk about career transition, being forced by Martin to watch films, knowing character from the start, relation between Jordan and Donnie, feeling horrible after playing cruel, not finding anything good in character.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: jenkins on May 02, 2014, 04:18:00 PM
christopher doyle doing that doyle thing where he passionately dislikes something:
Quote"Have you seen fucking The Whore of Wall Street?" he asks. "Marty, you're such a genius, what the fuck are you doing? It made me so sad, this genius person, and then ..." Exhaling deeply, he looks truly depressed, turning away and gazing into the middle distance.

"I don't know. It just made me sad all the time. What is it telling us? It's not engaging us in anything important," he says, ranting at length
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/apr/24/christopher-doyle-cinematographer-interview
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Alexandro on May 02, 2014, 09:09:38 PM
so, he didn't understand the movie.
the dumbest thing to say about a movie is that is saying something "important", or that is not saying it. that's not his thing to decide, and it doesn't matter. if it is engaging then he should ask himself why is he so engaged, not expect the movie to tell him so. jesus. "oh yeah, that film was really saying something important". please.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: jenkins on May 03, 2014, 01:12:17 AM
doyle's an interesting person with a personal paradise clouded by art and booze, and i don't think he has a reigning perspective. noyeah, his perspective is plain rainy. i like rain. but sorry if it seemed like i was trying to hurl arguments from the pedestal of a high-authority

^think my reign/rain thing is odd and i'm keeping it
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: 03 on May 03, 2014, 06:31:24 AM
[movements is all]
and when one wonders, its all cinema.
but just yes, don't doubt, here it is. leo is about it, and we know its false.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Alexandro on May 03, 2014, 09:09:27 AM
he also speaks from the bitterness of his film infernal affairs being remade as the departed.
I'm just tired to hear from smart, thinking people that Wolf is a 3 hour dumb film about nothing, or superficially engaging, or not "deep" enough. It's lazy criticism, getting up there with Kubrick is cold and The Master is boring. has no point.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: pete on May 04, 2014, 02:09:47 AM
I think you're misunderstanding Doyle's point. I think you're over-emphasizing the word "important" and just running with it. Also, I think this is a film that panders to that whole dark tv show watching crowd, and they take certain criticisms of Wolf more personally because this film flatters them and to dismiss the film's justification to be douchey would mean the viewers then are susceptible to douchey things, which is what the edgy tv show-watching crowd hate the most.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Mel on May 04, 2014, 03:03:15 AM
Quote from: jenkins<3 on May 03, 2014, 01:12:17 AM
doyle's an interesting person with a personal paradise clouded by art and booze, and i don't think he has a reigning perspective. noyeah, his perspective is plain rainy. i like rain. but sorry if it seemed like i was trying to hurl arguments from the pedestal of a high-authority

After seeing few interviews with Christopher Doyle, I took him as cokehead, not drunkard. He is interesting and fast unrelated rants are trademark of him. According to this interview (at the beginning 30 seconds in):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Gzc2Zd1DaI

He hates all the films and doesn't watch them.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Alexandro on May 04, 2014, 10:38:31 AM
Quote from: pete on May 04, 2014, 02:09:47 AM
I think you're misunderstanding Doyle's point. I think you're over-emphasizing the word "important" and just running with it. Also, I think this is a film that panders to that whole dark tv show watching crowd, and they take certain criticisms of Wolf more personally because this film flatters them and to dismiss the film's justification to be douchey would mean the viewers then are susceptible to douchey things, which is what the edgy tv show-watching crowd hate the most.

I don't think I'm misunderstanding Doyle's point, but as the quote is that brief, of course I'm running with what he is saying. The biggest criticism toward the film has been that those characters are not interesting enough to warrant the attention given to them, as if that's not a viewer's choice. It reminds me of the Raging Bull criticisms about Jake LaMotta, back when those characters weren't usual in movies: "why would I care about a cockroach like LaMotta?", and Scorsese's response, "because he's human". As Kal said, the fact that all this is based on a real human being who thinks and behaves like that, who made this and prevailed, and was even rewarded for it, it forces you to question how can a person like that come to be, what system or society creates these people, and how did we get here? who are we? Sometimes I look around, not sometimes, more like everyday, I'm baffled by the obsession with riches and consumerism in our society, how everyone's aspiration is to become rich, make money quick, and show it with cars, clothes, parties. I see this mentality all around me, all over the socioeconomic spectrum, starting with the old rich families, passing through the "nouveau riche", to the middle class, to the lower classes; each on it's own way, but under the same empty ideals. The so called american dream, or more universally, the idea that money is what matters over all other things, has evolved into this scarface / hip hop video mentality where is better to die than be less than a millionaire. morals come last. concern for others is nonexistent. I see this in my country, where crime has risen absurdly, cartels filled with kids who get paid little money, but love to drive the cool cars and show the money around, and then the girls around them, who are the same. And this film illustrates all this perfectly, even better, it shows the whole system as corrupt, not from crime and laws, but from a life philosophy perspective. By the end everyone is guilty.

I don't have a clue what you're saying regarding this dark tv crowd the film supposedly panders to. How this film flatters it's characters or people like them or who want to be like them truly escapes me. this is the second worst criticism the film has received. the panoramic view of the film and it's characters by the end is one of moral hollowness, of brutal, animalistic victim-predator reality with no foreseeable escape. do you think the film flatters this behavior and people because it plays their realities for laughs? where does it flatters these people? there's this weird notion going on basically saying that art should be like a punishing teacher, morally reprehending audiences for liking something, for laughing at things, for enjoying the ride. I suppose the film would be a hit with that crowd if instead focused on someone who got his life ruined by belfort, and as a drama, not as a comedy that ridiculed that guy, because then it would be mocking him, and it would be morally irresponsible. "12 years in debt", what about that? "stealing is bad and it's no fun". I suppose that would be interesting.

the subject of moral decay in the capitalist world, represented in the idea of greed and money while looking the other way, is one of scorsese's most prevalent themes: bringing out the dead, casino, kundun (by presenting an opposite philosophy), gangs of new york, the aviator are all films that deal with this basically as it main subject. and now this one. I not only believe is a worthy subject, but is THE SUBJECT to deal with when observing the world of the first years of the 21st century, there has never been a time when humans know so much of what they're doing wrong and at the same time pretend the damage is not there for them to act on it, and this film touches on that very nicely I think.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: jenkins on May 04, 2014, 12:47:49 PM
Quote from: Alexandro on May 04, 2014, 10:38:31 AM
The biggest criticism toward the film has been that those characters are not interesting enough to warrant the attention given to them, as if that's not a viewer's choice. It reminds me of the Raging Bull criticisms about Jake LaMotta, back when those characters weren't usual in movies: "why would I care about a cockroach like LaMotta?", and Scorsese's response, "because he's human"
you just ruffled my feathers
nice
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: wilder on May 04, 2014, 01:21:47 PM
Quote from: Alexandro on May 04, 2014, 10:38:31 AM
The biggest criticism toward the film has been that those characters are not interesting enough to warrant the attention given to them, as if that's not a viewer's choice. It reminds me of the Raging Bull criticisms about Jake LaMotta, back when those characters weren't usual in movies: "why would I care about a cockroach like LaMotta?", and Scorsese's response, "because he's human".

I not only believe is a worthy subject, but is THE SUBJECT to deal with when observing the world of the first years of the 21st century,

There's a difference between an unlikable but interesting character and an uninteresting rendering of an unlikable character. Belford was a greedy Wall Street schmuck, but I don't think anyone here went into the movie thinking we didn't want to see a story about him. I agree with the criticisms that the characters in Wolf are uninteresting, but it has nothing to do with the subject matter or source material, which is extremely rich and full of complex avenues to explore, and everything to do with the quality of writing about it. The importance of the subject matter itself doesn't act as a substitute for drama.

When Doyle says the movie isn't engaging us in anything important, I think he's more referring to the angle the movie is coming at the material at. Is the story engaging us in the strongest, most truthful conflict here, is what I thought he was trying to say.   
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Sleepless on May 05, 2014, 10:19:01 AM
My life is perpetually trying to catch up with movies released 6 months ago...

I'm not offering any critique of this film, just my personal opinion.

I hated this. Watched just shy of 2 hours on Saturday night and initially intended to finish watching it on Sunday night but realized that I had absolutely no desire to other than to watch these characters get punished. Ultimately decided I'd wasted enough of my life on this. Was way too crude for my taste. Obviously we're not supposed to root for any of these characters, but I didn't feel there was anything interesting or substantial about any of them that made me want to invest in their story - even if it was to root against them. Leo deservedly didn't win any awards for this. Of the two hours I watched, I felt they could have easily edited it down to 45-50 minutes and have a better end product. Not for me.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Reel on May 05, 2014, 10:22:37 AM
You watched it with your wife, didn't you?
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Sleepless on May 05, 2014, 12:12:37 PM
Lol, yes I did. But dude, I wasn't enjoying it. I wouldn't have if I watched it on my own. I dunno, maybe if it was 5 years ago I would have. It was just too excessive for me. But even aside from all that, I just couldn't find anything about it I liked. And I wanted to like it. Didn't.
Title: Re: The Wolf of Wall Street
Post by: Alexandro on May 08, 2014, 01:11:54 PM
goddamn it, I just don't have time to answer this properly right now.
suffice to say, subject matter is not a replacement for interesting portrayal. but to me this approach is what makes the film bold and interesting. I wasn't expecting the film to go for this kind of thing, and by doing that it became more a give and take game with the audience instead of an observational document on people like belfort. the risks of this are obvious, people like sleepless just can't take this assholes, it's a much more visceral reaction than what we could have if the film asked us to have more empathy with them.

I mention this too because even though I talked earlier about what Scorsese said in relation to Raging Bill ("because he is human") I don't think he's approaching Belfort or any of the other characters like that. He doesn't give them any dignity, as I remember the film. Every word that comes out of Belfort's mouth is turned on it's head. It's a more ambitious narrative, where we see everything from Belfort's POV while at the same time the film forces us to see things from the outside (what that review referred to as a "Godlike" contemplation). Perhaps Scorsese is way too angry about all of this to permit himself the sympathy he had for Henry Hill or other anti-heroes.

This is why I thought of Buñuel and The Exterminating Angel. The film it's almost surreal in it's endless loop of debauchery. Fun gives way to boredom, and then to horror. Just how much more drugs and parties can these people have before they get it? When are they going to think of the people they leave behind? Where is the conscience? When it finally happens, and they touch bottom, the real horror comes out: they don't learn a thing, and there's a multitude out there willing to make it all happen again for themselves.

of course I understand approaches like this are risky, and people can be turned off, but that's what real artists do with expectations. as for chris doyle, he's always been an overrated douchebag, so everything he says is kind of lame.