Licorice Pizza - Speculation & General Reactions

HACKANUT · January 26, 2022, 10:10:13 AM

The actual main titles

https://www.instagram.com/lavetaluddite/p/CX9ILPmJ-Ag/?utm_medium=copy_link

Drenk · January 26, 2022, 10:15:52 AM

You can see a cropped "Soggy Bottom" in one picture.

wilberfan · January 26, 2022, 10:43:18 AM

Quote from: HACKANUT on January 26, 2022, 10:10:13 AM
The actual main titles

https://www.instagram.com/lavetaluddite/p/CX9ILPmJ-Ag/

Awesome find!

HACKANUT · January 26, 2022, 12:51:01 PM

found it via eBay, of all places.

The daydream of buying and hanging this over my toilet was very real...

https://www.ebay.com/itm/275138735119?_trkparms=amclksrc%3DITM%26aid%3D111001%26algo%3DREC.SEED%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D20160908105057%26meid%3D85ab510866cf4844be55fa639c85c87e%26pid%3D100675%26rk%3D1%26rkt%3D15%26sd%3D275138735119%26itm%3D275138735119%26pmt%3D1%26noa%3D1%26pg%3D2380057&_trksid=p2380057.c100675.m4236&_trkparms=pageci%3A83e1510f-7ed8-11ec-9724-da1122fcd117%7Cparentrq%3A97b7825f17e0a9d95ac882f1fff01a1c%7Ciid%3A1

Drenk · January 26, 2022, 03:14:28 PM

Let's ask for a Xixax sign.

wilberfan · January 26, 2022, 03:18:05 PM

I've reached out to him to see if he'll meet for a chat/coffee/meal/zoom. I should compile a list of sign requests...

DickHardwood2022 · January 27, 2022, 03:20:00 PM

What's everyone's experience been like with this film in the cinema.

I've had some great showings with he audience really loving it and laughing alot. Yet the other day no was laughing but me.

One screening a guy said to me after randomly how much he loved it yet i over heard someone say to who they were with that they thought it was shit.

Always interesting to see how a pta film plays. Sad though more people seem busy with spiderman and cream than LP.

HACKANUT · January 27, 2022, 04:57:53 PM

Of my 4 theater views, the first had a lot of laughs, the second and third were crickets, and the fourth got decent laughs.
Haven't had anyone tell me what they thought tho.
In the quiet showings I had a steady stream of people coming in and out, too. Like they were more focused on everything BUT the movie. Who knows what goes on in peoples heads.

PaulElroy35 · January 27, 2022, 05:39:36 PM

Quote from: HACKANUT on January 27, 2022, 04:57:53 PM
Of my 4 theater views, the first had a lot of laughs, the second and third were crickets, and the fourth got decent laughs.
Haven't had anyone tell me what they thought tho.
In the quiet showings I had a steady stream of people coming in and out, too. Like they were more focused on everything BUT the movie. Who knows what goes on in peoples heads.

yeah i dont get that. I will watch a film to the end in the cinema even if i hate it but to come in and out and just fuck about on phones and talk is weird just leave if its that bad for you haha.

I will never in my life understand why people choose to pay for a film and walk in 15 or 20 minutes late. Then of course they bad mouth the film and say its shit because they didnt get was going on because they missed important information.

wilberfan · January 27, 2022, 07:26:19 PM

Just had viewing #6 (my first DCP). A whopping SIX of us in the theater..and everyone was respectful and engaged. And masked.
A full 50% LOLd at Jerry Frick and 17% of us (me) applauded Harriet.

Of the six viewings, this was somehow the most....intimate. Warm, familiar...affectionate. Seats were big enough that I could take off my shoes and curl up and spend some time with my old friends that I hadn't seen in a couple of months. I was concerned going in that it's magic might have worn off (something I fear with every big-screen PTA rewatch), but it held up very, very nicely...

Yes · January 28, 2022, 02:00:20 AM

I saw 4 times.

First time on Christmas. Decent sized audience. Lots of laughing but you could feel the third act wear them down. Conversations afterward how it was too long

2nd time was few days later. Great size for matinee. Lots of laughter. The "fuck off, teenagers" killed both times.

3rd time few days later with about 4 other people there and no reaction

4th time had 4 other people, 2 groups of friends. Muted reaction except laughter at Daddy Haim

jviness02 · January 28, 2022, 02:33:17 AM

I have seen it 5 times and have had two really good crowds, one decent crowd and two where it felt like I was the only one enjoying the film.

Alma · January 28, 2022, 04:38:02 AM

There were only 4 people in my screening (2 of whom sat directly behind me, maskless, despite there evidently being a lot of empty seats) and nobody else really reacted to anything apart from an older lady who laughed like a drain at the Streisand pronunciation joke and nothing else.

It still felt like quite a good atmosphere though? I think I was just happy to be seeing it.

Rooty Poots · January 28, 2022, 01:13:44 PM

There were maybe 8 people at my showing. My husband and I were sitting right in the middle of a mostly empty theater, but right before the show started, two people (unmasked) came and sat right next to me. Not even a seat separating us.

Everyone seemed to really enjoy the entire movie though, from what I could tell, and laughed at all the right spots. I didn't hear any complaints about it being too long, and at least half of us sat through the full credits. (Also personally, it didn't feel over two hours to me. Those two hours flew by. I didn't have any problems with the third act, either. And when it was over, my husband immediately said "I loved everything about that movie," a comment I've never heard from him about a PTA movie—although he's always said he liked them when asked.)

wilberfan · January 28, 2022, 08:49:51 PM

Handwringing in Argentina (Google Translated?)

Licorice Pizza vs. Marvel: the cinema that resists

"There is more cinema in two minutes of Licorice Pizza than in the 274 Marvel movies", the critic and programmer tweeted a few days ago Diego Lerer. It hovered in many after reading this statement the memory of the controversy opened by Martin Scorsese in October 2019, when he declared that he could only identify superhero movies with theme parks. "It is not the cinema of human beings trying to transmit emotional and psychological experiences to other human beings," he said then.

Shortly after, when it was about to be released the Irish, Scorsese reinforced his idea in a column to New York Times. There he names several filmmakers (including Paul Thomas Anderson, Director of Licorice Pizza) and maintains that when he watches a work by these filmmakers "I know that I am going to see something absolutely new and that I will experience something unexpected and difficult to define".

On the other side was the Marvel universe, composed -according to Scorsese- of risk-free stories, crafted in marketing labs and tested through focus group. "They are made to meet a battery of specific demands and are designed as a constant variation on a finite number of themes," he adds.

Immediately, strong and influential names (from Robert Downey Jr., to Paul Rudd, Jon Favreau and James Gunn) came out to respond to Scorsese and defend Marvel, of whose films they are an essential part. The small local rebound of that controversy did not reach that much. Lerer himself, in a subsequent tweet, wrote: "It doesn't matter if they are better movies or not, It is a matter of language, of vocabulary. Several of Marvel can be entertaining and even very good movies, but they rarely have any minimally relevant cinematographic idea.

It could not be said, therefore, "them" versus "us". Much less does it correspond to take things to the Manichean scenario of good versus evil. What acquires relevance in this renewed (and essential) debate is nothing more and nothing less than novelty value. The appearance of something different. The local premiere of Licorice Pizza, the most recent film by Paul Thomas Anderson, recovers that strong idea in a way that had not happened in our midst for a long time.

Licorice Pizza It is an extraordinary film in the broadest sense of the word. Justifiably received with an immediate and almost unanimous wave of enthusiasm among film specialists and lovers who have already spoken out in the media and on social networks. The film obtained the highest rating from our critics in LA NACION. "A masterpiece with a teenage spirit", is the title of the text from which Natalia Trzenko salutes, among other wonders, the vitality with which one of the characters seems to be crossing the screen while running.

This constant movement crosses the protagonists of this beautiful love story and also, of course, Anderson, an artist who he wants nothing to do with staying still. We are amazed by the story and also by the uncertain, exciting, amazing path that leads this couple to a destination that was already set from the beginning. But we are even more amazed at the possibility of enjoying the adventure on a movie screen, along with several people who throb and celebrate everything that happens in front of their eyes at the same time.

Surely we are going to get excited when Licorice Pizza is available on some streaming platform and we can see it again on an HD television from the comfort of home. But in the cinema, the place for which this film was conceived, the characters in a story like this get bigger and with them grow those emotions that Anderson shows us from a place we didn't expect. How many more times could we live that experience if the spaces to see this type of film in the cinema get smaller and smaller?

More than the reproach for the supposed bad arts of Marvel, what Scorsese and those who echo his proposals point out is the certain impossibility of reliving in the cinema the revealing experience of the new, of the different, of the unexpected, because there is no place to do it. Without variety we lose taste. All possible screens are occupied by Spider Man: No Way Home, an intelligent movie, very entertaining and with moments of genuine emotion that can surprise us with some unexpected twist or the appearance of a character that we did not imagine seeing again. But ultimately, everything that happens there is necessarily related to a gigantic framework that in one way or another will condition what we see.

With the arrival of the multiverse, this vast world of fiction is now in a position to open up to anything new. To temporal and spatial changes, to the apparent rupture of all kinds of logic. But is there news here? Not at all. Everything is possible as long as it responds to the rules of a universe that has already been configured. Movies, series, video games and all kinds of audiovisual expressions feed back into the same concept that, by enlarging itself, leaves less and less space for everything else.

In that "everything else" is for example Licorice Pizza, which would hardly have found a place for its theatrical release without the certain aspirations it has at this time to achieve great things in the race for the Oscar. There are barely 67 screens available to see it in Argentine cinemas, compared to the 278 that it still has Spider Man: No Way Home. Fewer still (50) were assigned to the alley of lost souls, another auteur film (Guillermo del Toro) and with Oscar claims premiered this Thursday.

The evidence accumulates. Two of the best movies of the current awards season (and all of 2021) they had almost invisible premieres in Argentina. The masterful remake of Love without barriers by Steven Spielberg, summoned nothing more than 14,000 people to the cinemas. King Richard: A Winning Family, a little more: almost 18,000.

Both are also stars of the awards season and if they win something (Will Smith is the overwhelming favorite to win the Oscar for Best Leading Actor for king richard) many will want to see it. But at that time there will be no more screens to match the greatness of these titles. Another great movie recently released in theaters, the french chronicle by Wes Anderson, came to sell just 34,000 tickets. The three had limited releases, in the shadow of the large tanks, and without continuity. They were hidden in a tiny handful of rooms after the first week.

To complete the equation, we were left without seeing on the big screen films with breath and very varied expression that long deserved that possibility. From the great comedy Barb and Star go to Vista del Mar until Pig (with an unbeatable Nicolas Cage), passing by the green knight (David Lowery) Annette (the strange and excessive musical by Leos Carax, opening of Cannes 2021), The Tender Bar (George Clooney) and It was the hand of God (Paolo Sorrento).

United (except for the still unpublished Pig) by the common fate of to have reached the streaming platforms first, bypassing the theaters. There are many more. All of them, even with their whims and ups and downs, are capable of generating raw emotions in the public and bring into play human (or supernatural) experiences that become larger than life precisely because they can be seen on a big screen and through of the ritual of all life: cinema as a collective experience.

Anderson, with Licorice Pizza, and Guillermo del Toro, with the alley of lost souls they were luckier. Most of the films that directly propose new or revealing paths are no longer released in theaters. "In many places around this country and the world, superhero movies are the first choice in theaters. It is a dangerous time for the cinema exhibition. The equation was turned around and streaming is the main form of distribution of movies", Scorsese wrote in his now famous column against Marvel, which is also visionary. It was published in 2019, before the pandemic deepen that trend at lightning speed.

Not only the most powerful platforms (Netflix, HBO Max, Amazon, Star+, now Apple TV+) they open their doors wide to receive the most prestigious filmmakers and support their new productions. A space for "author streaming" also appeared, the platform Mubi, which now ensures the direct premiere of some of the most important titles to come out of the big festivals. Those that until not long ago we could be sure that they reached theaters. But the Covid not only reduced the diversity in the premieres even more than before. Gone away forever? from cinemas to an important segment of the public that she was ready and willing to surprise herself in front of the big screen.

It will be said that today there is no other option. The logic of the business, much more so in this time of exit from the pandemic, tells us that almost all the spaces available in theaters are (and will be) occupied by sequels, comebacks and "franchise" stories. What do we have in the meantime? run to the cinema to see Licorice Pizza once, twice, ten times, and we are left with the palpable sensation that cinema at its finest is alive. Still alive.