W.

[john]

Close to greatness, if not quite there.

It's almost exhausting, too. Which I really think it should have been. As it stands, even with it's over two hour running time, it ended up feeling a bit fleet.

I almost couldn't sleep last night in anticipation of seeing this. Which was strange considering my expectations were rather low. I expected a much more rushed effort. It seemed like, even during production, Stone was already apologizing for making such an immediate film. What he ended up making was a surprisingly clear-eyed portrait of a sitting president. Balancing empathy and condemnation without seeming pedantic or pious.

It's almost the reservation that Stone experimented with in World Trade Center, but executed so much more effectively. It's a sober analysis of the first Bush term and, by reaction, the second one, too. All the while wrapped in a very cinematic, often told story about patriarchy and generational obligation.

Maybe it's because I just recently rewatched it, but this film echoed The Furies in ways I wouldn't expect.

And a golf clap for Toby Jones, while I'm at it. I expected Brolin's GW to stick with me, but was really surprised by Jone's Rove and Wright's Powell.

[Gold Trumpet]

Initial reactions...

W. seems to be a major accomplishment for Oliver Stone. As a filmmaker of a distinct personality and temperament, he's always wanted to transition to more dramatic and personal stories. He wanted to deal with stories that are more classical and not rooted in complex character and sociological structures. World Trade Center was his recent attempt. While I liked portions of it, I think I did because I was an exuberant fan who took notice of good filmmaking moments over the complete whole. Too many moments in the film were just too dry for his imagination potential.

W. is the perfect embodiment of a lucid and imaginative storytelling structure for Stone in a smaller, more dramatic work. The story goes between different moments of Bush's life, but it is about an erratic character of different extremes so it has to set a style and purpose of storytelling. The major thing he does in W. is lose conventional set ups. There are very few exposition shots to introduce new locations and the camera seems to always be on the move, going in between the action. Sometimes it shows the actor talking and sometimes it doesn't, but it creates a movement or pace where we understand the wavelength of Bush's mind.

It also sets up a tone where scenes begin to bleed with each other like natural progression. Because Stone has little interest to set up new scenes properly we begin to take in each new scene like it was still part of the last one. The fast movement of the story forces us to do so. Critics have said that this tone was Stone being physically rushed to get the film done and include as much as possible, but I believe the point is to have a thematic continuation. We are better to link moments in his past with actions he takes on as President because the scenes are so closely tied together.

The beautiful thing is that Stone films a story that is the equivalent of a chamber drama over the course of 40 years. The story encompasses numerous things about Bush's life, but deals with everything on a specific personal and political level. The Bush we see as a relative kid still feels like the one we see as President. The details the film focuses his development on felt like a stage work, but the film broke the stage boundary by giving the story a wild timeline for progression of events. The audience is supposed to take events that happened to Bush on the oil rig in his 20s as key indicators for when he became President. The closeness of the events in the film's storyline makes it feel like a story that is happening over a very short period of time.

The Queen compressed a lot of themes and ideas of British rule and history into a simple story. It elicited all the details through the characters in the film. W. comes out of the Queen in that it shares a similar approach to story, but Stone goes so much further. He compresses a lot of events, history, themes, and story in a relatively simple storyline. The fact that it has an intimacy similar to the Queen is astounding.

I don't rate W. with Stone's major epic works. For one they are incomparable and the film is too new for me, but it has numerous storytelling similarities to great smaller works like Born on the Fourth of July and The Doors. I believe W. is a really good work, but I want to see how it ages with me. The fact I watched a Stone film in theater that didn't initially disappoint me is shocking so I hope my second viewing tomorrow will be just as good. I think it will.

I'm glad John complimented the story for being exhausting. Critics are calling it Stone being boring, but he has always meant to do this. In The Doors you feel the wear and tear of everything Morrison has done by the end. The film had no major moments where it was appeasing critics by saying this was the distinguishing moment in Morrison's career. Events and life circumstances were documented, but nothing was zeroed in as being a pivotal moment. For Stone the whole was more important than the sum of its parts.

Too many filmmakers today are critic conscience where they want to imply the themes way too often and want to have pay off moments. It's funny, but one of the things I like most about Stone is that he means to discourage critics and give them little pay off. He wants to be so close to the story it's like an experience for him. I like it because he gets better results from the story usually.

[Pozer]

i think he should have saved it for a more epic work as opposed to this almost pointless movie (the how he got there stuff making it not completely pointless). 

Thandie Newton... i was like, "why aren't they giving her any lines in these scenes?"  then when they finally did, i was like, "why don't they stop giving her lines in this scene?"  annoying as hell, not even worthy of an SNL performance.

[Ghostboy]

Yeah, she was terrible. The movie itself felt a lot like a SNL skit at first, except without the funny parts. Even Jeffery Wright's Powell was a caricature. Once it stopped being weird, it just got kinda boring.

[©brad]

huh, i thought it was quite successful in avoiding snl-like impersonations, thandie newton included, and overall i found the film fascinating. my immediate beef (an obvious one no doubt) would be i felt it ended a bit prematurely, as did a few other peeps in the sold-out theater i was in. one guy even screamed "keep going!" after it cut to black. now this doesn't mean i'm in the camp that felt stone should've waited a few years to make this. knowing the real W is still alive and kicking in the oval office made the film all the more powerful and zeitgeisty.

stone's films are always appreciated more in retrospect, so the polarized reviews aren't that surprising. the film definitely reconfirmed my love for stone, particularly his balls (heh) in tackling daring, difficult subjects most chicken-shit filmmakers and studios wouldn't dare consider.

side notes
- mad props to josh brolin, who's newfound ability to disappear into roles rivals PSH and, hell, even DDL.
- dug the photography much. great hand-held work.
- i think the rushed post-production was most evident in the scoring, which was a hodge-podge of soft pianos and guitars that didn't do much of anything. i did enjoy a lot of the music selections though, and almost which they just ditched the score and stuck to source (a la any given sunday).

[MacGuffin]

Police: Arkansas TV anchorwoman attacked in home

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – A popular local TV anchorwoman who had a small part in the Bush biopic "W" was in critical condition Monday after being beaten in her home, and police said they are investigating possible motives.

KATV anchor Anne Pressly, 26, was found about 4:30 a.m. Monday by her mother, who went to the house when her daughter didn't answer a wake-up call, Little Rock police spokesman Cassandra Davis said.

Davis said investigators are talking to Pressly's co-workers to determine whether she "has had any problems." Davis said Pressly's purse was gone and that robbery was among the possible motives being explored. Davis would not discuss specifics of what the investigation revealed.

Pressly was found unresponsive in her bed and a police report said she was bleeding from her head. Davis said Pressly was in critical condition at an hospital.

Davis said Pressly was stabbed, but KATV cited investigators later in reporting that all of her injuries were from being beaten in the head and upper body.

Pressly appeared briefly in Oliver Stone's new movie about President Bush that opened over the weekend.

She portrays a conservative commentator who speaks favorably of President Bush's "Mission Accomplished" event on an aircraft carrier shortly after the start of the Iraq war. She won the role after being noticed by the casting director when she went to Shreveport, La., where the movie was filmed, to work on a story about it and the city's film industry.

Spokeswoman Kate Hubin for the film company Lionsgate confirmed Pressly's role but declined to comment further.

KATV's Web site notes that Pressly's most notable interview was with Vice President Dick Cheney. Traveling through an Arkansas town, she found the highway blocked in front of a hunting goods store because Cheney was inside. Pressly asked for an interview, which she conducted on the ammunition aisle.

During its 11:30 a.m. newscast, anchor Jason Pederson read a story about the attack.

"We would ask that you keep Anne in your thoughts and, especially, in your prayers," Pederson said.

Early Monday afternoon, a man answering a phone number for Pressly's mother, Patricia Cannady, said the family had no comment.

[Gold Trumpet]

Yeah, she was terrible. The movie itself felt a lot like a SNL skit at first, except without the funny parts. Even Jeffery Wright's Powell was a caricature. Once it stopped being weird, it just got kinda boring.

I call it a chamber drama as far as structure goes, but I also believe it is meant to be an unfunny comedy. I consider that to be a type of story onto itself. Comedies believe in their characters because they can find some genuine warmth in their misdeeds. Unfunny comedies (like How I Won the War) play everything to a superficial and critical level. Nothing is genuinely funny because the storytellers see little redemption in the characters so they tell the story with their problems amplified to a comedic level but keep it unfunny because they want the story to act as an examination of the character's short comings. How I Won the War is superficial about nuclear war, but frames a lot of things in a context that give the best summation of our obsession with nuclear war.

Stone announces that the film will be light hearted and superficial when he opens the film with a credit sequence straight of a 1930s or Woody Allen film. In interviews he speaks about Bush as being a provincial character and that his rise to fame comes straight of a Frank Capra story. There are tides within the film that are serious, but the general overall point is that Stone doesn't believe in Bush as a person. He genuinely believes he represents the caricature of a real politician.

Now considering all of Stone's best films deal with duality, the dueling things within W. is the need for Bush to be his own developed person and how he always fails at it. The comedy of his antics offset his attempts to be deft. We get scenes that repeat lingo of his from press conferences because that does say something about him. Then we get little known pieces of personal information that hint at him being something more, but the constant struggle through out the film is that he is never that. The tone of the film always changes between light and serious because Bush is never who he wants to be. He is not the complete man. He is controlled by handlers and always undermined with his opinions and will never be good enough for his father. So the film goes between a dull comedy and a heartfelt drama. I found the mix of tones and perspectives about Bush to be fascinating.

This film was fine being made now. To worry about the complete picture of who he is until death is to give into general things that people expect in a biography. Stone isn't concerned about what he does through out his lifetime, but what he becomes and how he does so. That's why major events like his winning the election were unnecessary for inclusion in the film. W. does have themes about who he is as a man goes and what it meant for the country. He's already done enough as a President to convey that.

[samsong]

Once it stopped being weird, it just got kinda boring.

lovely.  i felt the same way and had a difficult time summing it up in a way that mirrored the laziness and indifference the movie seems to have been made with.  flaccid and mediocre to the core, though the performances are exceptional.  instead of adding to the brolin praise--all deserved--i'll say that i really loved elizabeth banks.  stupid as thandie newton was her presence was a welcome distraction.

[New Feeling]

This was nowhere near as good as Nixon or even That's My Bush, but it's still pretty good. 

[Alexandro]

Once it stopped being weird, it just got kinda boring.

lovely.  i felt the same way and had a difficult time summing it up in a way that mirrored the laziness and indifference the movie seems to have been made with.  flaccid and mediocre to the core, though the performances are exceptional.  instead of adding to the brolin praise--all deserved--i'll say that i really loved elizabeth banks.  stupid as thandie newton was her presence was a welcome distraction.

i have not seen the film. but indifference is definetely not the word i get from the oliver stone interviews about this film. i get indifference when ridley scott says that shooting body of lies was a piece of cake, but not this. also, a film with exceptional performances can't really be mediocre.

[Ravi]

Yeah, she was terrible. The movie itself felt a lot like a SNL skit at first, except without the funny parts. Even Jeffery Wright's Powell was a caricature. Once it stopped being weird, it just got kinda boring.

The film is just a collection of a recreation/reconstruction of certain moments, but nothing binds them.  There's no overarching theme that we haven't heard before in other forms.  Also, we get Bush choking on a pretzel but not 9/11?

Brolin and Dreyfuss were particularly effective.  Thandie Newton's performance bordered on parody.

[w/o horse]

I agree most strongly with the views of john and GT.  I am blown away by this, not because of who they are, but because every person after them has reached the conclusion that this wasn't a good film.  And I thought it was classic Stone, as in uneven and overstated, and also insightful, revealing, and dramatic.  I'm sure this has much to do with my apathy for Bush as a political figure and my interest in him as a person, meaning that for me I was able to view this film without readied conclusions about his character and personality.  On drinking, personal and professional development, and family relations I thought W. was truthful and wise, and if Stone hurried through the temporal reality of the situation she definitely didn't make many missteps about the emotional truths, there.

I refer to the scene between W and his pastor after he finds sobriety, the scene between W and his parents when he announces his candidacy for Texas governor, even the Yale Frat scene to the Quitting His Job scene, and also when W was eating a sandwich with Cheney.  Those scene stand out for me as examples of why the film was successful.

[SiliasRuby]

There's nothing more to say: w/o horse, john and GT hit it right on the head. I'm looking forward to the DVD as I know GT is as well. Whether there is a Director's or Extended Cut is still up for debate of course but I loved it and I left wanting more.

[picolas]

spoils

the sum is greater than the parts. some of the parts are a little off or simplistic or on the nose. powell's speech and cheney's oil rebuttal being one of them. some of the parts are excellent. the final image really sticks with me. it sums up this interpretation of bush pretty well and feels incredibly, strangely heartbreaking.

thandie MESSED UP and totally misunderstood the movie she was in. i also agree 9/11 should not have been ignored. especially considering the structure of the film it would've been easy to include at least a few moments. Bush in the classroom, being told the country was under attack could've been an obvious but great moment with the right placement. i also thought the placement of the pretzel scene could've been stronger later in the film. i agree waiting a little bit longer to make this would've been a good idea.

Brolin was absolutely incredible. i would love if he got a nom for this. don't think he will though. Cromwell was freaking GREAT too. the relationship with laura was handled incredibly well. you could understand her love for him, and the sacrifices she made for him. not just personally but philosophically... this review is very scattershot and i think that's a tribute to how meaty this thing is. it missteps here and there, but the more i think about it the more i NEED to see it again.

[MacGuffin]

Josh Brolin Calls Playing George W. Bush The 'Ultimate Risk' And 'Ultimate Reward'
Brolin's bold decisions and leading-man leap make him one of the actors we're thankful for in 2008.
By Josh Horowitz; MTV

The leaves are falling, and the turkey is practically in the oven. Yes, according to the calendar, it's time to take stock and give thanks. So that's precisely what we're doing by talking to the actors and filmmakers that made 2008 a memorable year at the movies — a year filled with self-loathing kick-ass superheroes, Manolo-wearing women and the return of a very familiar man in a hat.

How did Josh Brolin get here? Two years ago, he was best known as Sean Astin's big brother in "The Goonies" and Barbra Streisand's stepson. Today, he's sitting on a body of work that in the last two years is virtually unmatched by any other film actor alive. Sure, 2007 was great too, with scene-stealing supporting turns in "American Gangster" and "Grindhouse" and a captivating (if nearly wordless) leading performance in "No Country for Old Men," but 2008 took it to another level.

First, he took on the unenviable task of portraying a sitting president in Oliver Stone's "W." and crafted a full-bodied, complex and, yes, thoughtful performance. And next week, he brings more of that humanity and complexity to what could have been an easy target in "Milk" as Dan White, the man who murdered the famed San Francisco politician in 1978.

Brolin took a look back at the year that was 2008 with MTV News, revealing how his friends and famous family felt about his role in "W.," whether that infamous bar fight in Louisiana was a regret, and why 2009 might see him become an action hero.

MTV: I'm guessing taking on a role like George W. Bush came with some skepticism among your friends and family.

Josh Brolin: Everyone said, "Why would you want to do that?" And most of my friends continued to ask "why" until it came out. I don't know how we're getting the praise and accolades we're getting. It's amazing to me. It was the ultimate risk, and it's the ultimate reward.

MTV: Is it true that your stepmother, Barbra Streisand, wasn't thrilled about you taking the role on?

Brolin: Not true. I know — it's no fun, right? OK, I kicked every cop's ass in Shreveport, and she hated that I was doing this movie. No, we really didn't talk about it in the beginning. About three weeks ago, she saw it and loved it. She called me last night and told me that Bill Clinton had seen it and loved it.

MTV: Can you point to one moment as the highlight of your year?

Brolin: There were a couple. The reviews that I got that I didn't expect for "W." made me very happy. And Oliver [Stone] and I in a dark room coming up with about five different versions of the film and picking the one that we did.

MTV: You mean there were different cuts of the film?

Brolin: Yeah. There was a more satirical version. A more sardonic version. One that was more darkly humorous. A more pathetic one. We were really scrambling to find the right tone.

MTV: Would that bar fight and arrest in Shreveport be considered a low point in the year?

Brolin: No. That was just pathetic. Nothing went on. I keep saying that, but people go, "It was Brolin. Something went on." But nothing went on. They're really out to get me right now. They need to figure out what the f--- they want to do. There's this contrasting thing [in Shreveport] of a tax incentive where they welcome all these movie people, and then on the other hand, they have a police force that says, "We don't care for strangers in our town." My feeling is, everybody should let Shreveport be Shreveport, and let's film someplace else.

MTV: Your "W." co-star Richard Dreyfuss recently called Stone "a fascist."

Brolin: Richard needs to be quiet. He played Cheney, who's a laconic guy, and that's almost impossible for Richard. So now he's overcompensating. Now he has it out for Oliver, which I don't understand, because he should be so thankful that Oliver cut together the performance that he did. Why the guy is turning on him, I have no idea.

MTV: A lot of people thought you deserved an Oscar nomination last year for "No Country for Old Men." Were you disappointed when it didn't come?

Brolin: Absolutely not. Nobody believes me. I feel good about the decisions I've made since then. I had an opportunity to do other movies. My bank account isn't happy, but I am, ultimately. And now I'm thinking about doing this movie next year, and it's something people won't expect at all. It's really [about] having fun with a movie and getting a director that's phenomenal.

MTV: You're talking about "Jonah Hex"?

Brolin: I love it.

MTV: What's intriguing about that project?

Brolin: The absurdity of it. It almost allows you to create a new genre. I love going back into the spaghetti-Western idea and completely turning it around.

MTV: When are you going to decide whether you'll do it?

Brolin: Soon. In the last couple months, I've been going back and forth about it. I went back to my gut: "Is it a sellout? What is it I like about this movie?" When I first read it, I thought, "Oh my God, it's awful!" And then I had a moment a week later, and I thought, "Why is it awful?" Maybe the thing to do is to do the most awful movie I can find.

MTV: What's so awful about it?

Brolin: It's so tongue-in-cheek. It's so ridiculous. But once I started putting people in my mind and saying, "What if I put [John] Malkovich in this role? Then what does this movie become? Now let's put this producer and director on it and think about how it plays out." Then it becomes fun. Now I love that movie. If you have a great filmmaker come in, then suddenly, these gags and characters become interesting.

MTV: Are the filmmakers behind "Crank" still directing it?

Brolin: I don't know. It's all up in the air.