Spike Jonze (and now Megan Ellison)

Started by Teddy, May 23, 2003, 11:20:41 PM

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Newtron

Quote from: Mesh
Quote from: The Gold TrumpetBoth movies seem to be standing on the idea though that they can pass for supposed originality and in that, there are countless number of scenes of standing around and talking like the greatest idea has been conveyed.

A.  Was that English?
Not as bad as this little gem:

Quote from: The Gold TrumpetMovies exist outside this realism and when trying to go for realism, it better captures its own realism though other forms of realism like heightened or mellowed realism.
I think he's talking about realism, or something.

Gold Trumpet

hah, never said I could write good.

But for my attempt to better explain myself:

1.)Both movies start and seem to end only on the conceptions for the film. The conceptions are never forwarded to anything that is fulfilling and what we get in the films is characters standing around and talking like they are apart of the greatest idea ever for any movie. Drama seems lacking because the stories never get past its own gimmick nature.

2.)Full realism, like the life of a day for any of us, can never be realized in cinema. Cinema does though have its own realism and that realism seems like a realism in responce to a highly cliche or standard story that comes closer to making the story more real or interesting. Instead of movies trying to go for real life interesting, they should go for the more interesting reality that only movies can bring.

~rougerum

children with angels

I would say that Being John Malcovich develops a great deal from its original "clever" concept into something really very tragic and touching in the final images. The young girl swimming underwater, John Cusak's character pleading desperately, impotently from within her: who could've predicted that from the starting fun/surrealistic comedy beginnings of the movie? Whether you find it fulfilling is entirely subjective, but I certainly think it goes beyond simply being a clever idea, and turns into a very touching one.
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Mesh

Quote from: The Gold TrumpetInstead of movies trying to go for real life interesting, they should go for the more interesting reality that only movies can bring.

You got a pretty cut-and-dried dialectical aesthetic goin' on there. Can it always apply to every film situation?

BJM was more than a gimmick, btw, which it seems like you've taken a long time to say.  It was also an apex of filmic absurdism, IMO.  It was also wildly inventive within the confines of its own gimmick.  It was also oblique cultural critique (a humongous and brave deflation of the "ACTOR MYSTIQUE" so associated with Malkovich, not to mention an inflation of Charlie Sheen's lack of mystique [was that English?]).  It also displayed Shakespearean themes recast as psychosexual farce (the puppet play within the play, the main character as actual puppeteer and as Malko puppeteer, gender bending and gender identification [like you might find in The Bard's racy comedies]).  I could go on and on about BJM; if you're seeing just gimmick, I pity you.

Teddy

Quote from: MeshBJM was more than a gimmick, btw, which it seems like you've taken a long time to say.  It was also an apex of filmic absurdism, IMO.  It was also wildly inventive within the confines of its own gimmick.  It was also oblique cultural critique (a humongous and brave deflation of the "ACTOR MYSTIQUE" so associated with Malkovich, not to mention an inflation of Charlie Sheen's lack of mystique [was that English?]).  It also displayed Shakespearean themes recast as psychosexual farce (the puppet play within the play, the main character as actual puppeteer and as Malko puppeteer, gender bending and gender identification [like you might find in The Bard's racy comedies]).  I could go on and on about BJM; if you're seeing just gimmick, I pity you.

Good stuff about BEING JOHN MALKOVICH.  I'd like to hear what you have to say about ADAPTAION.
"I saved Latin.  What did you ever do?"

ono

Quote from: TeddyWhy is this guy not on the director's list?  He and writer Charlie Kauffman are geniuses.
Kaufman is a great writer, but in my opinion, his screenplays (that I've seen) kind of crumble in the third act.  He had trouble sustaining the Malkovich joke, and things kind of got sucked in to this black hole.  And in Adaptation., I get the irony of the switch, but I felt like it was a cop out as a result of writer's block, nothing more.  And I would have liked to see a real script; a real adaptation of The Orchid Thief.  Both movies are very entertaining, but not perfect.  There are a few others by him I want to see: Human Nature and the up and coming Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind, which looks promising.

As for Jonze, well, he hasn't done anything significant on his own to establish his place as a director.  I think he needs to work away from Kaufman to establish his own voice so we know for sure what his talents are.

Mesh

Quote from: Onomatopoeia
As for Jonze, well, he hasn't done anything significant on his own to establish his place as a director.  I think he needs to work away from Kaufman to establish his own voice so we know for sure what his talents are.

I kinda tend to agree with this, but begrudgingly.  Jonze (oddly enough) possesses a subtle film-directorial style; the evidence is readily apparent when one views Kaufman scripts directed by others (see Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and Human Nature).  HN especially goes goofball and "gimmicky" in a way similar to BJM, but without Jonze's sense of control and subtle absurdist tone (I'm not doing well describing Jonze's specific directorial input—help?), HN feels thrown together, over-the-top absurd, MTVish; it just doesn't quite gel.

NEON MERCURY

they are both great in my book -but adaptation  edges out

Gold Trumpet

Mesh,
I'm not giving any cut and dry explanation for aethesitics on film at all. My example was for something completely different in a different category.

Thing is, I understand what you mean about Being John Malkovich in saying all the things it acts for during the movie, but I really don't believe the validity of really many of them at all because they are shown in a way that just introduces the idea at best, and then moves on acting for its gimmick only. The ideas really hold any value because the movie can not find any useful way to show them in a context that seems as bringing up meaning for the rest of the film. They actually feel like just cute side bars instead. And I also think there was some over analyzitation going on in that review too.

~rougerum

Pastor Parsley

Quote from: EL__SCORCHOI thought Being John Malkovich was absolutely great, but Adaptation was a little dissapointing. The whole thrid act joke was very lame.

I couldn't agree more.

I loved the voice overs by Cage's character.....they are truely great.  But the rest of the movie is far from clever... it's cliche.  Halfway through the movie I began to chant repeatedly to myself  "please don't do what I think you are going to do...please don't do what I think you are going to do"  It was a little too predictable.  Just because the film makes it obvious that it knows how cliche it is doesn't change the fact that it's still a unoriginal cop out.  

I can just imagine him pitching the script "ok..ok ...it's about this guy who is adapting a book into a script, but the book is all about plant's adaption....get it? clever huh. Well anyway, Then the script that he's writing turns into the movie that we are watching!  ya get it!  clever huh!"

The Silver Bullet

Being John Malkovich [A+++] beats Adaptation [B+] hands down.

The script for the latter was indeed the work of genius, but it could never translate to screen well [half the charm was that it was a screenplay about screenwriting, and a film about screenwriting doesn't have the same in-joke effect].

It seemed to me that Jonze had no idea how to direct the film until the third act when it suddenly hit the much more familiar Being John Malkovich territory.
RABBIT n. pl. rab·bits or rabbit[list=1]
  • Any of various long-eared, short-tailed, burrowing mammals of the family Leporidae.
  • A hare.
    [/list:o][/size]

modage

i love both, and although the nic cage performance is priceless, my initial reaction after seeing adaptation is that while i loved it and thought the script was brilliant, its not something that i will honestly put on as often as i would put on Being John Malkovich.
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

Pubrick

Quote from: The Silver BulletBeing John Malkovich [A+++] beats Adaptation [B+] hands down..
your recent obsession with ratings: D - - - + -
under the paving stones.

The Silver Bullet

I can see how making my opinion on certain films known might piss you off...

:roll:
RABBIT n. pl. rab·bits or rabbit[list=1]
  • Any of various long-eared, short-tailed, burrowing mammals of the family Leporidae.
  • A hare.
    [/list:o][/size]

MacGuffin

Spike Jonze & Charlie Kaufman Developing Horror Film
Source: The Hollywood Reporter

Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman, the Adaptation team, are collaborating on an untitled horror film for Columbia Pictures that Kaufman is writing, with Jonze set to direct.

Details of the project are being closely guarded.
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