Ain't Them Bodies Saints

[Robyn]

why is this called 'a texas love story' in sweden?

cuz that's what it's about!


No, it's probably that you swedes don't have a word for 'Ain't' or the translation is frjskl'fklfgdsgfdkw'fk' and it doesn't roll off the tongue as well.

dumma amerikan!

[Reel]

I just translated it, and it comes out:

är inte dessa organ helgon


that's fucking awful.

[jenkins]

szwedzki słowa wyglądają okropnie w ogólnym haha właśnie dostałem szwecja jeść tosty hahaha * amerykański piątkę *

[Robyn]

proof that swedish is beautiful:

[jenkins]

we're going off course, let's not mind, let's add up atb's numbers

kj that is a pretty song! i don't know what's being said, i don't mind. thanks for sharing. here's a music part from catherine breillat's a real young girl, it's when i first realized how badass other country's music can be, how the words sound different but culture is shared

[Punch]

https://soundcloud.com/the-playlist/dvd-is-the-new-vinyl-podcast

"DVD Is The New Vinyl" Podcast: David Lowery, James Gray.


David lowery talks about "Nashville".

James Gray talks about "Aint them Bodies Saints"

[Champion Souza]

ATBS made Edgar Wright's best of the year list.

http://www.edgarwrighthere.com/2013/12/31/top-movies-tracks-of-2013/

[jenkins]

redbox confirmed. sorry this photo is so fancy, not trying to show off my photography abilities

[Mel]

Film is growing on me as I get more time to digest it. First the bad and explanation.

It was very rough start for me. Some unintentional things have affected me so strongly in the first 10 minutes, that it took me another 20-30 minutes to get over it (not sure if completely). First of all: I don't like fast cutting, especially in the beginning of the film, when my eyes are just getting used to watching moving pictures. I had hard time following shootout scene, where discontinuity is so strongly marked. Then music with hand clapping starts...

Word of explanation: Piotr Rubik composed in 2005 music that used hand clapping heavily. It became mainstream hit in Poland and was played by radios over and over again on every occasion. Result? It became in very short time a source of jokes and memes.

...so I started laughing. Next thing I hear is voice over, which in my mind made whole presentation even more cheesy. Instead of moving ahead after concise and innocent introduction (story canvas), I was wondering why I'm watching this film with choppy editing, bad music and cheap voice over. Bad way to start.

This is pretty much everything bad I have to say about ATBS. I know this is all in my head, but it is hard to erase bad feeling and in the end we perceive things through our experience (without much control over it I guess). After that editing calmed down, some shots were hold for significant time. Other music themes started to coming up and I was enjoying the film.

It is a simple story, but film is far from that. Relations between characters are quite complicated. It isn't even a triangle, as we have father-like figure and child in the center, which makes whole construction even more unstable (it collapses in the end). If you tone down one thing (flatten the story), something else will pop up. In ATBS those are emotions, which are very present - not surprised that some people cried watching it.

I loved the second shootout: very romantic character (escape story told by character itself did a lot to establish that) in very unromantic scene. I guess that was a first murder on his hands, as he was very reluctant to do so. Holding a wide shot of a truck in the dark, worked for me very well from the perspective of the character: he doesn't know who is shooting, why he is shooting and lack of closeups adds to that. Whole romanticism is shattered even further, when driver doesn't recognize hitchhiker.

[jenkins]

(bragging about my olympian-perfect screenpics)

such a pretty shot from a deleted scene


alternative movie title that was sadly replaced


my personal favorite shot


typed out a response but i took too long and my login vanished along with my text, so i took that as fate

[Ghostboy]

The first of those shots was still in the movie at Sundance. The last of the three wasn't. I added it back in after. One of those scenes that never quite felt right but I eventually got good enough to include. We ran out of sunlight to really nail it properly (you can see the sun setting from shot to shot in the movie) but truth be told, one of the things that REALLY bugged me about it was this giant dinosaur of a plant in the house across the street - you can see it sprouting out of Rooney's shoulder in that shot. We tried to get the neighbors to let us dig it up temporarily, but no luck. It was really an eyesore. One of those things I knew that nobody would probably ever notice but that I just couldn't get over.

Mel, I feel you on the opening cuttiness.

[jenkins]

see what you mean about the shrubbery. i wasn't thinking about the shrubbery. same about the fabric of that scene. what i like is how the blues have soaked into the house, soaked into her clothes, rested in her eyes. i like that

[Alexandro]

Continuing with my rant on the American Hustle thread, when this film first came out last year it soon drew comparisons to the films of two american masters: Malick and Altman. The reasons are obvious. These are names that personally excite me because I miss Altman so much. i want him to be alive and make more movies. There's just no replacement for him. Which is why I'm so happy that this film is not trying to be him at all. Any reference or influence has been digested and came out new. The most satisfactory thing about ATBS is that you can feel a new voice coming up. Malick and Altman are easy points of reference, but the film is completely it's own beast, and the reason for that is because there is a true artist in charge.

I wish I could come up to this thread and mention things I didn't like, as Ghostboy was hoping. I know it's interesting to hear negative aspects of one's own work. But I simply think the film is fantastic. I almost burst into tears several times near the end (SPOILER: Bob watching his daughter from the window was just heartbreaking). Every expected twist is avoided because for all the exactitude in the plot, is the characters who give shape to the story. You are left watching them sort this whole thing out in a way that feels natural. As the film progresses, your sympathy for each character grows, which makes it harder and harder to pick a side. I loved that the film is so short and it gives us no time to settle. It does feel like an album you can play sometimes and get immersed in it. The beauty of the images, I kept thinking, are the work of a director and a dp relatively young, still in love with "the image", and I thanked that. The way the light looks, the colors. Shit. I just really liked it. Even though it gave David all these new opportunities and a very deserved share of acclaim, it still feels the film has been underrated. But I do believe it will become some sort of classic of the genre.

[ElPandaRoyal]

So, there's no better place to ask this question: are there any plans for an european blu-ray of Ain't Them Bodies Saints? Amazon.uk only lists a US Import version, but the last time I ordered something from the US it got caught in customs and the price to retrieve it was absurd, and I don't want to risk that again. I really want to have the movie on blu, and take a look at St. Nick.

[NEON MERCURY]

hey ghostboy. i just wanted to say congrats