Boyhood

[wilder]

The life of a young man, Mason, from age 5 to age 18.

Directed by Richard Linklater
Starring Ethan Hawke, Patricia Arquette, and Ellar Coltrane
Release Date - July 11, 2014

Trailer

[Tictacbk]

[jenkins]

april 28
dear diary,
[all my emotions!] also, i can feel linklater's boyhood slowly roping me in. not through reading about it (which i haven't), or knowing wtf it's about (which i don't), but from linklater and this idea (i know the boy-across-the-years idea thing)

linklater has his entire career cared about the nature of being human and existing. and you, diary, know i care about that as well. his last movie, before midnight, can be described how it can be described, but the one thing that can't be left out of any description is its sense of breath

i wouldn't tell anyone but you a funny trivia about me: school of rock is the last movie i cried during. i cried at the end of school of rock! people are ridiculous. how important is crying? it's not important, it's ridiculous, that's what i'm saying, i'm saying that crying is an example of human ridiculousness, and linklater is the one who can take me there

i don't think he "gets it" or something like that. life is so big, how can it be got?? tricky as fuck. what linklater does is see it, as a human, and he makes human movies

excited about the movie. well diary, adios. gotta go eat itaian food right now

[Cloudy]

Ohhh man...that post was a tearjerker in itself, thank you.

i don't think he "gets it" or something like that. life is so big, how can it be got?? tricky as fuck. what linklater does is see it, as a human, and he makes human movies

mmm.

i cried at the end of school of rock! people are ridiculous. how important is crying? it's not important, it's ridiculous, that's what i'm saying, i'm saying that crying is an example of human ridiculousness, and linklater is the one who can take me there

...that's a conversation...I wanna talk about that at one point. You should talk more about it.

May 2 at Castro Theatre, anyone in the Bay should go. Linklater will be there:
http://www.sffs.org/festival-home/attend/film-guide/boyhood

[BB]

I too cry during School of Rock. Every time I've seen it. When Zack takes his guitar solo and his dad softens. I'm getting hot eyes just thinking about it. 

[Cloudy]

Every human being must see this. Take someone you care about to this one.

Unsurprisingly Jenkin's words above really say so much about a movie he hadn't even seen yet.

[jenkins]

such a lovely email today from cinefamily

Hey, folks!

It's time to get your film-loving dad, future film-loving kid, anyone that's had a dad or been a kid that Cinefamily membership they deserve (did we cover everyone with that list?), because we have a very special Father's Day gift for all our members.

Please join us for a delicious Members-Only Father's Day brunch on Sunday morning (thank you, IFC!) -- followed by a screening of what, in my humble opinion, is the movie of the year for cinephiles.

Yes, I said that.  Boyhood is the movie of the year for film lovers.  You can put that in quotes, and put my name after it, if that means anything.  I know it's only June, but it's the horse to beat.

Fassbinder said a good movie should be simple and beautiful -- and that it's very hard to do both.  Well, the formal conception to Richard Linklater's new film is both simple and beautiful, and if that wasn't hard enough, nearly impossible to pull off from a technical point of view.  In the early Aughts, he decided to tell the story of childhood not by selecting a single year, but by gradually showing every step, all the little details and memories that stand out, and how fast it all goes, and to do so by filming with the same cast once a year, for twelve years.

Every year the entire production would reassemble to shoot approximately fifteen more minutes of the story, complete with pre-production, production, and post production.  Every year, Linklater would re-edit the whole film, taking into account what footage he'd added.  The practicalities alone are mind-boggling -- but add to that the aesthetic challenges.  How do you cast and work with child actors, when you don't know what they're going to be like in twelve years?  When you don't know what you'll be like in twelve years?   How do you keep the film's look and feel consistent?

It's incredibly audacious and difficult upon reflection, yet unpretentious and understated in execution.  The film flows easily and smoothly, and, like life itself, the time has passed before you know it.   It's the kind of quiet ambition that makes Richard Linklater such a special American filmmaker, the same kind of laid-back experimentalism that brought films as unusual as Slacker, Before Sunrise and Waking Life surprisingly close to the mainstream.   Once again, he has made a movie with the intellectual curiosity and spirit we associate with European auteurs, but one that I can watch with my parents.

We're so excited to have Rick -- a true cinephile if there ever was one, BTW -- along with many of Boyhood's cast members (Ethan Hawke, Patricia Arquette, Ellar Coltrane and Lorelei Linklater) here at the theater to talk about the details and unique challenges of making such an unusual film.

won't be there but it sounds immensely lovely

[Ghostboy]

I will be there and hope it will indeed be lovely.

[jenkins]

ok wait. gimme a sec here

so

what i realized is

the imdb calendar i looked at which said boyhood opens july 18 was wrong or referring to some wider (but still limited?) release or something

because boyhood opens here in los angeles at the arclight and at the landmark on july 11

as in, the same fucking day the apes arrive boyhood arrives

and because it's 2014 and releases now happen differently, they both actually have showtimes on july 10

two days from today, the apes and boyhood

same day, the apes and boyhood

heavenly manna. fairies in my heart. birthday ice-cream with grandma. dance party by the river. a shooting star while i kiss you in the street at night. anything like that, similar for me, you know what i mean

[max from fearless]

You lucky motha! Dying to see Boyhood, which comes out here in London on Friday with Apes following next week. I cannot wait, although I have the Dune Doc and a few other bits to tide me over (just watched Andre De Toth's "Crime Wave" which looks incredible and still feels immediate, and thank the heavens for Sterling Hayden and that magnificent crazy cat, Timothy Carey) but nonetheless, I cannot wait to sit in the dark and see those two movies through!!!

[jenkins]

when/where the movie is coming to your us location (if applicable) --
http://boyhoodmovie.tumblr.com/#find

the guardian has a great title to an article--
Soundtracks of my tears: how movie music sets a mood and sums up an era

digitalspy has an article on the soundtrack --
It's a sensational filmmaking achievement, and one that's backed by an eclectic mix of music from the last decade - everyone from Coldplay to Arcade Fire, Lady Gaga to Blink-182 can be heard throughout the movie. It's a wonderfully nostalgic trip down memory lane and one carefully planned out by Linklater.
[...]
Talking about his selection process for the music, the filmmaker added: "A lot of it was retrospective towards the end to see how the culture treats certain songs, how things filter down and what songs have that connotation of putting you right back in 2004.
^
http://www.digitalspy.com/movies/feature/a577983/boyhood-soundtrack-richard-linklater-on-recruiting-coldplay-arcade-fire.html

time magazine talks about things --
There proved to be a strategic advantage too: picking songs more recently allowed Linklater the advantage of knowing which songs would stand the test of time. "You could already look at it from the future," he explains. "This film is a period film shot in the present."
^
http://time.com/2964279/boyhood-music-richard-linklater-soundtrack/

and i read all that while being curious about the soundtrack, which has:
Track Listings
Summer Noon - By Tweedy
Yellow - By Coldplay
Hate To Say I Told You So - By The Hives
Could We - By Cat Power
Do You Realize?? - By The Flaming Lips
Crazy - By Gnarls Barkley
One (Blake's Got A New Face) - By Vampire Weekend
Hate It Here - By Wilco
Good Girls Go Bad (feat. Leighton Meester) - By Cobra Starship
Beyond The Horizon - By Bob Dylan
Band On The Run - By Paul McCartney & Wings
She's Long Gone - By The Black Keys
Somebody That I Used To Know (feat. Kimbra) - By Gotye
I'll Be Around - By Yo La Tengo
Hero - By Family of the Year
Deep Blue - By Arcade Fire

(
my weekend plans --
nymphos 1+2 today
boyhood and the apes tomorrow
venus in fur sunday
)

[samsong]

saw this last night and i have to say i'm pretty devastatingly disappointed.  maybe i was in a weird headspace.  i'll revisit in a few weeks because i really do want to love this, but this first viewing did not go well for me.  i'm a huge linklater fan and have been looking forward to this movie since i heard of the project at all.  the overwhelming positivity of the critical consensus have me feeling like i probably missed something.  i will say that seeing these actors/characters age throughout the film wasn't nearly as effective for me as it seems to have been for just about everyone else who's seen the movie.

there's much to admire, and i enjoyed a fair amount of it, but it hit a lot of wrong notes to my ear.  more later, once others have seen it.  just to get the fire started though, i thought the trailer was WAY better...

[samsong]

For this kind of subject matter, I felt there was more insight in the opening 20 minutes of Tree of Life ... than the whole of Boyhood.

i thought this exact same thing, though i'd cite the passages of that film that portray, well, boyhood.

I don't know. It was okay.

word.  my disappointment speaks more to expectations going in.  i actually had no idea it was 164 minutes long until right before i went to see it, which when considered with the subject matter and ambition of the project suggested this was going to be linklater's magnum opus. 

did you find the use of music to be as obtrusive as i did?  there are a few instances that were sublime but it was all mostly distracting and i thought a pretty cheap device.

[jenkins]

first impressions seem a lil negative

[max from fearless]

Looking forward to this even more now....