Birdman

[jenkins]

also there's still "normal lame" movies that we don't even chat about here. i can't believe boyhood got toasted by boy meets world and i'm cracking up. it's wild to think of tv ruining movie awards season as well, but i believe it, and i think it tends to be important to evaluate the oscars from a perspective of utter disagreement

[Gold Trumpet]

I understand the 8 1/2 comparisons and both films are about the negative aspects of the artistic experience when under severe levels of stress and anxiety. However, I think there is a major difference. Fellini's film is about an artist lost in a dream world and cannot wake up to face reality. In the brief moments he does, he has to find ways to change what he sees to elements of his fantasy and daydreaming. In Birdman, you have the artist who cannot sleep. He's on a constant whirlwind and when he can fantasize or daydream, it's momentary and a rude awakening usually brings him back to reality to confront the nonstop bender he's on. Fellini's film is expressionionim for a filmmaker fully utilizing motion of camera and editing to entangle the viewer in perspective changes and continuous revolution of images and scenery. Effects that come with dreaming or daydreaming. In Birdman, the sensation is for the extended tracking shot that closets the viewer in the world. Trying to break loose into standard set up, the film takes popular techniques from other filmmakers today and reworks it. The result isn't Enter the Void levels of imaginative, but works well to get a fully fleshed out feeling of despair and anxiety. 8 1/2 also wants to entrap the viewer but goes about it in the complete opposite way by being a film of full motion that is non stop. For 1963, it was different and a jarring experience. Birdman is trying to be a jarring experience in an age when filmmaking for discomfort been done to almost every level, so it's trying. Still, I would say, mostly successful, but the achievement has no chance to feel landmark like 8 1/2. However, it's a great work still and feels like an accomplishment.

[Alexandro]

I don't know, it seems like most of American cinema spent the year catching up to television. For example, two of the most acclaimed films - Boyhood and this here Birdman - are in their own ways covering very well-tread tracks in television.

for Boyhood - this technique of watching characters grow imperceptible before our eyes is like the nature of any tv show or sitcom that runs for more than five seasons. I think someone on youtube made a Boy Meets World recut of Boyhood to prove that point.

And this here Birdman - it just feels like this material has been covered so much more efficiently and vividly by many many episodes of Louie, but without that sanctimonious gotcha with the theater critic or the attempt at magical realism in its ending.

also Whiplash - many reality shows have turned ordinary subjects into thrillers before.

I'm not saying these films are without their own merits or achievements, but I think the exoticness of the material/ premise, which is usually what the critics celebrate first when they talk about these films, isn't really all that exotic if you just watch Hulu for a few hours.

Well, this is unfair. I could say the opposite if I wanted to prove a different point. What about saying that Birdman does in 2 hours what Louie did in 3 years? Why not compare Boyhood to the Harry Potter films while we're at it?

Films and TV series are different formats, with different priorities and results. A Louie 2 hour movie could be underwhelming, and a Boyhood series would simply be different, to be judged by different standards. I don't understand the need to keep pushing the argument that "tv is now ahead of movies". It isn't. They're different. The 2 hour, 3 hour format dictates a certain approach, energy and aesthetic discourse. Birdman and Louie have nothing to do with each other beyond some superficialities, just as the film Friday Night Lights has nothing to do with Any Given Sunday beyond dealing with football.

[pete]

what you said would be valid if Louie was actually trying to accomplish something that Birdman nailed...but the opposite is true. you're also supporting my point that each medium has its own strengths, but right now movies are more fixated by their own limitations (creating new ones while still keeping old ones - such as the self-imposed need to tidy everything up, competing with television and netflix, franchising everything, trying to please foreign box offices...etc.) the same way television was in the 80s and 90s when it relentlessly imitated cinema. I don't think TV is ahead of movies, but the Academy seems to disagree in this past awards season, by rewarding the same ol' stale biopics and then recognizing movies that are imitating television as innovative.

That scene in which Michael Keaton self-righteously chews on the critic, for me, ruined any chance of grace or self-awareness this movie was pretending to have. That final shot was the nail on the coffin. Technical achievements and good performances aside, in the end we were still watching a movie that thought way too highly of itself as it cleared increasingly low-set bars.

[Alexandro]

no, what I'm saying is that Louie (which I love) and Birdman have only superficial similarities in subject, but that as a whole are very much different and aiming at dissimilar goals.

I don't think serious directors care about imitating TV or viceversa. They just do what they want. And they're not fighting for relevance today, they want to make films that will fly in 50 years. Maybe hollywood execs are worried about that.

I love TV series and what they offer when they're good, and I love that now we have not only films but also TV to look for when we want great entertainment and art. mr. turner doesn't give two fucks about TV. inherent vice, post tenebras lux, hard to be a god, Ida, Locke.

Anway, we will have to agree to disagree.