Under the Silver Lake

Started by csage97, March 22, 2018, 07:53:35 PM

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csage97

Quote from: jenkins on August 11, 2020, 09:28:43 PM
totally. i still haven't seen the movie but i enjoyed the post. you know, la hangout movies are a whole genre. there's this like anxiety-struck nyc genre, and an la hangout genre. IV too, of course. OUATIH too, of course. The Long Goodbye, oh sure, but, even better, California Split. Shampoo. Echo Park. Modern Girls. Lions Love (... and Lies). The Trip. Welcome to LA (which i don't like). but and after OUATIH was released QT, of course, had ones he wanted to mention. ones that inspired him. Targets is pretty good if you're into that sort of thing, but i like Model Shop, Jacques Demy's la movie. there's some this/that about brief intimacy between the Model Shop lady, Lola, played by Anouk Aimée, who played Lola, in Jacques Demy's Lola, and one of the scientists from Kubrick's 2001, who is the protagonist, and my favorite quality is how the protagonist is mostly depressed, mostly lost in life, not knowing what to do, and just driving around, just filling up his car with gas, and it has a Pickpocket-like final line that states everything has become figured out from an interior perspective

I haven't seen a few of those, so I'll check them out. The Long Goodbye is one of my favourites.

The sense of setting can be as big a factor for me as characters I like revisiting, or story. I'll often just watch a movie for the setting it puts me in. It's like hanging out in that place with those characters in the movie for a time. The NYC one is definitely a big one. A couple of newer films of those that come to mind are Frances Ha and Inside Llewyn Davis. Of course there are tons more. A show I enjoy which I mentioned a couple months ago is High Maintenance, which is of course about people, but it's also people in NYC. It's like hanging out with those people in that setting, for sure.

And then there are the UK ones and other places. A film I watched recently that has that thing going is Blow-Up. Need to see more like those. That's a big part of why I enjoyed The World's End so much: because of the setting and the "hanging out with old pals" feeling.

jenkins

nyc has a diversity i previously left out of the conversation. you know one i like is Michael Winterbottom's Wonderland, which has this imdb review titled "Everyman's wonderland" by the way (nice). it's '99 London artfilm-style, with a handheld camera sex scene, early Sean Bobbitt as dp, Michael Nyman as composer


putneyswipe

Since the thread was bumped, I'll say this movie, while flawed and overreaching, is a way better Pynchon adaptation/embodiment than Inherent Vice, and it's critiques are so obvious it blows my mind how critics and cinephiles I know overlooked them for dumb and obvious criticisms. I have people in my life close to me who literally are Garfield's character, so I think that added to the authenticity for me... I'm convinced on some level that the depiction of softboy, paranoid geek misogyny hit too close to home for some people.

jenkins

you're not making the grand statements you think you are, putneyswipe, but you got the spirit in you, and you're probably just on twitter too much

i'm going to watch this movie in like twenty years because whatever

WorldForgot

Quote from: putneyswipe on August 12, 2020, 12:47:22 AM
I'll say this movie, while flawed and overreaching, is a way better Pynchon adaptation/embodiment than Inherent Vice

Although I don't know how the heck this could be true when the IV film itself iz so faithful. Maybe because you mean it has the Zany humor readily accesible unlike IVs haze. Or its accessibility in general as IV iz Pynchon's pop effort? ---- if it's true of its essence it's a testament to how much of that film still feels like Anderson's. You can still feel PDL and Boogie in there. Imo, or whatever & ever amen.

csage97

I suppose this one did do the accessible zaniness more readily. PTA's IV definitely did get some of the zany spirit (like Martin Short's presence), but it's all steeped in the paranoid haze and confusion. Pynchon's humour is just hard to put into a film, regardless. A lot of it is little descriptions like people lining up to get Dr. Buddy Tubesides B12 shots which are probably some blend of amphetamines, or "Denis, whose name everyone pronounced to rhyme with penis." This stuff just doesn't make it in or translate to film as well because it's rooted in language. And of course there's the quick puns, or puns that come at the end of two pages that only existed to set up the dumb pun at the end. I think there's just a soft spot in my heart for Pynchon's written humour too. I like the film IV for a lot of different reasons, more so that it's got a lot of PTA in it.

putneyswipe

I worded that wrong - I prefer IV as a PTA film than as a Pynchon adaptation, and I agree that he made it his own and that's what I like about it, it sits really well with his other work on SoCal misfits. The movies that for me have gotten closest to being Pynchon adaptations are probably things like Spielberg's 1941 and Kuristica's Underground

jenkins

PTA generally deals with valley misfits and IV is South Bay and SoCal is something that people in San Diego or Orange County say

Something Spanish

I finally saw Model Shop a few weeks back and like all that about it too. remember having a dream about being drafted into war that night and it scared the shit outta me.