Inherent Vice - SPOILERS!

Started by MacGuffin, October 01, 2014, 02:10:50 PM

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Alethia

Something to look forward to...

A podcast breaking down INHERENT VICE one scene at a time!

https://twitter.com/BWDR/status/1166872637156425728

jenkins

that ad has been altered of course but the heads in the hair come from raw materials and um i would not call this one of its better products

WorldForgot

Before Pubrick left the forum, while it was being cast he had an interesting intuition on PTA's MO for the film's ensemble.

Quote from: Pubrick on July 09, 2013, 10:19:49 AM
PTA is doing something he's never done before.. he's working with a LOT of new people. and maya! i feel an analysis coming on..

basically what we can surmise is it will probably be a return to ensemble. this is significant. otherwise why have so many casting announcements? it would be a waste. i don't think any of his other films had this much of the pre release buzz generated by every single person who got a role in the film. we still don't know how significant these no-name actors roles will be, but there's enough actual name people that he will have to give them at least a scene to make it worth their while. how long have they been shooting now? it feels like every day they add a new actor to the film.

that may be the only relation this has to boogie nights, having such a big cast set in a fun loving era. i think a more interesting comparison can be made to PDL. that being his only other film aimed for the general "comedy" genre, which this most certainly will be. it will have to have some correlation to The Master cos JP is in it, but what is his BABY MOMA doing there? i'd be interested to see what role she's playing. the only other time she has appeared in his films was as the blurry red figure in the background of the supermarket in PDL.

the other PDL like thing i will go on a limb to say is Joaquin is wearing Barry's blue suit under his own perma-jacket

And it's true,  even when they're only given one scene, each cast member is allowed their own story, and they add a new shade to Paul + Pynchon's LA. A city of people here, moreso than scenic markers. As other Xixaxerz lamented its "scope,"  which is present in its characters and their storytelling -- more so than Los Angeles haunts.

Something Spanish

I'd lend that podcast an ear. That dude wrote a pretty good piece on IV.

WorldForgot

Quote from: Joan Didion'z Slouching Toward BethlehemAnybody who thinks this is all about drugs has his head in a bag. It's a social movement, quintessentially romantic, the kind that recurs in times of real social crisis. The themes are always the same. A return to innocence. The invocation of an earlier authority and control. The mysteries of the blood. An itch for the transcendental, for purification. Right there you've got the ways that romanticism historically ends up in trouble, lends itself to authoritarianism. When the direction appears. How long do you think it'll take for that to happen? is a question a San Francisco psychiatrist asked me.

At the time I was in San Francisco the political potential of what was then called the movement was just becoming clear. It had always been clear to the revolutionary core of the Diggers, whose every guerrilla talent was now bent toward open confrontations and the creation of a summer emergency, and it was clear to many of the straight doctors and priests and sociologists who had occasion to work in the District, and it could rapidly become clear to any outsider who bothered to decode Chester Anderson's call-to-action communiques or to watch who was there first at the street skirmishes which now set the tone for life in the District. One did not have to be a political analyst to see it; the boys in the rock groups saw it, because they were often where it was happening. "In the Park there are always twenty or thirty people below the stand," one of the Dead complained to me. "Ready to take the crowd on some militant trip."

But the peculiar beauty of this political potential, as far as the activists were concerned, was that it remained not clear at all to most of the inhabitants of the District, perhaps because the few seventeen-year-olds who are political realists tend not to adopt romantic idealism as a life style. Nor was it clear to the press, which at varying levels of competence continued to report "the hippie phenomenon" as an extended panty raid; an artistic avant-garde led by such comfortable YMHA regulars as Allen Ginsberg; or a thoughtful protest, not unlike joining the Peace Corps, against the culture which had produced Saran-Wrap and the Vietnam War. This last, or they're-trying-to-tell-us-something approach, reached its apogee in a Time cover story which revealed that hippies "scorn money—they call it 'bread'" and remains the most remarkable, if unwitting, extant evidence that the signals between the generations are irrevocably jammed.

Because the signals the press was getting were immaculate of political possibilities, the tensions of the District went unremarked upon, even during the period when there were so many observers on Haight Street from Life and Look and CBS that they were largely observing one another. The observers believed roughly what the children told them: that they were a generation dropped out of political action, beyond power games, that the New Left was just another ego trip. Ergo, there really were no activists in the Haight-Ashbury, and those things which happened every Sunday were spontaneous demonstrations because, just as the Diggers say, the police are brutal and juveniles have no rights and runaways are deprived of their right to self-determination and people are starving to death on Haight Street, a scale model of Vietnam.

Of course the activists—not those whose thinking had become rigid, but those whose approach to revolution was imaginatively anarchic—had long ago grasped the reality which still eluded the press: we were seeing something important. We were seeing the desperate attempt of a handful of pathetically unequipped children to create a community in a social vacuum. Once we had seen these children, we could no longer overlook the vacuum, no longer pretend that the society's atomization could be reversed. This was not a traditional generational rebellion. At some point between 1945 and 1967 we had somehow neglected to tell these children the rules of the game we happened to be playing. Maybe we had stopped believing in the rules ourselves, maybe we were having a failure of nerve about the game.

WorldForgot

Infectiously funny. Caught it at the Bev on its second night, paired with The Long Goodbye (intermission rn wrapping up), and this feels as fresh as it did five yearz ago. It steps on its own toes, is I think what happens, for first-timers or those not on its frequency, being so dense as a text, not your typical conversations and a revolving door of subculture slang, where exposition is happening during visual gags.

Forget about it, though. If you listen, you'll get sucked in. Paul gives his rhythm generously to the actors rather than the camera or cut. This playfulness also givez IV endless replay value, to me. Are you tuning in to the score? Their sudden, careful hushed tone? Burgle beer, Marshmallow pizza?

A Californian ricochet mural, done as slapstick cosmic comedy. Y'all have seen it, you know what I mean. I'm just real glad PTA got to make this. When Doc is walking backwards on the beach, after Shasta's 'return,' he's pacing against nostalgia. Just as the light reflects on them from behind the car, as much as with Once Upon a Time, we've got here an endearing as heck tome of LA mythos.

wilberfan

Seeing it tonight. I'm trying to have expectations set to the minimum and open-mindedness maxed.   I can't recall any film that I've changed my mind about completely with a re-watch*--so I don't think I'll come out of there having seen the light--but I'm hoping it will at least be interesting to see it with enthusiasts.

*I've revisited films I loved decades ago that haven't aged well--but I don't think I've ever changed my mind about a film I disliked in it's first viewing.

WorldForgot

It's an odd film. Possibly PTA's oddest? Even PDL plays in a rom-com sense that's easier to grip.

Anyway, have fun!
There's a surprise 35mm print awaiting you before the trailers, too ;)


Alethia


wilberfan


Something Spanish

Almost through the first ep, as the biggest IV fan I know, this is worth your time

Alethia


wilberfan

Please tell me they're not doing one scene per episode...

Alethia

I'm pleased to tell you that they are