Half Nelson

[matt35mm]

Did this begin with the first "Civil Rights Lesson" with the children and archival footage?  I came in 1-5 minutes late, and I'm not sure if I missed anything or if that was indeed the opening scene.

I don't listen to Broken Social Scene, so from that point of view, the music was never distracting.  I don't know what you guys are talking about.  But generally, yes, if I know the song that's playing, it takes me out slightly.  From a more objective perspective, though, the music seemed to always "fit" to me.

This film was pretty good.  It's the performances that make this stronger than its story or filmmaking warrants.  I didn't find the situations particularly interesting.  Far from being too subtle, though; I thought there were parts that were too obvious--and some parts seemed to deliberately not go where you would think they would go, rather than just developing differently from the get go.  There were several instances where the situations felt like they were built to go in a certain direction and then not go there.  So instead of a more organic scene, you'll get a bit of a sharp turn near the end of some scene in order to avoid cliché.  But those things were minor in general.  I don't like it as much as Kevin Smith does, but again, the performances are some of the best you could hope to see.

[w/o horse]

Half Nelson is basically how I want all my movies to be.  I thought it was amazing, really did.  There's much more I wrote about the film for an outside interest, and I'll post that soon.


I saw Invincible too.  It made me jump in the air, clap, and other unusual things.

[Champion Souza]

A newbies review...

This first caught my eye when I saw the ads saying it featured music by Broken Social Scene.  After reading the very favorable reviews at the beginning of this thread I decided to check it out.
It's a decent movie but really seems to suffer from first movie amateurism.  The direction is sometimes muddy or confusing.  Which can be forgiveable in an independent debut effort.  My biggest complaint is that it seems like the movie tries too hard for a feeling of realism by sacrificing dramatic involvement.  Some key scenes dwindle into nothing when they are dealing with very dramatic subject matter.   There's an interesting set up and then no pay off.

I don't think this movie will be on my list of years best.  It might still be in the running for best debut though - despite my criticisms.

[modage]

good to hear.  i figured it was more of a rental.  recently it seems if the focus of a film is its performance, it is because the film itself isnt as good.  and i follow directors more than actors, hence i still have not seen Monster.  i will rent this though.

[pete]

dude, it's not more of a rental.  take your girl to it!  that's a command.

[w/o horse]

Half Nelson is basically how I want all my movies to be.  I thought it was amazing, really did.  There's much more I wrote about the film for an outside interest, and I'll post that soon.

And here's that.  I wrote a chunk of it after seeing Half Nelson is why I chose to talk about the movie.

:

I want to say, without being condescending or preachy or anything, that I really feel this year has been spectacular one for American cinema.  I've felt a real emergence of perspective from the films, and there's been some gaps filled that needed to be.  In other recent years other people have felt the same.  And I didn't.  And it's because this year has gripped me so hard that I want to be fare to those who don't feel it, because that's fine.  I'm talking the cracks here too.  I'm talking The Proposition.  I'm talking Lonesome Jim.  I'm talking Friends with Money.  I'm talking even The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, because the movie might not have been my favorite, but the ways it missed are some of my favorite ways, and films, especially here in America, don't usually miss in that way.  It felt like it was awake to possibility.  It didn't feel small.  It didn't feel numbered.  These are just qualities, they don't possess the film, I'm only happy to see them included.  And for what it's worth, I really think Dave Chappelle's Block Party is a kind of metaphor for what has been possible this year, and that the movie itself says something sweet and subtle about a shift in what people expect from movies.  I think that as the population here sweats off another decade of incorporated and delineated dreams, the much promulgated, mostly white, middle class or suburban, ennui will begin dripping off of us.  Simply, what I notice is a rising optimism in the belief that we are not yet all that we can be.   And United 93 I think felt like that.  It was in Little Miss Sunshine.  And Half Nelson felt like that.  Half Nelson could be saying that we're ready again to deal with our nation, on a small level, on a street level, on a personal basis.

Like literature in the 19th century, film no longer has the advantage of being new.  It has lost the gloss of being special.  It is ready to grow and evolve and it needs to or it will die.  We are all aware of how rapid information grows and spreads in the modern world, but why is that our cinema seems so stagnant most of the time?  Why do we still judge movies based on principles implemented inside of a successful studio system from over fifty years ago?  There are those who believe that movies were the best they will ever be back then.  There were those said the same of the novel in the post-Victorian age.  Whether they were right or not negates the fact that the novel is now capable of endless mutation, as is painting, as is sculpture, as is most other arts.  The disparity between ideologies in all art forms besides cinema has been absorbed into a general culture.  Why not cinema as well?  We cannot persist in perpetuating the myth that there is nothing new to discover.  This claim is based on the boundaries we create for ourselves, and in film these boundaries are called craft.
 
The craft of filmmaking is a tried and true formulaic method of approaching the audience with a story.  There are books full of successful actions a filmmaker can take toward captivating and capturing the imagination of the audience, with hardly any imagination required from the filmmaker.  Simply take some steps, rearrange some shots, get a helicopter of a story, and shoot the film.  The audience will be right there with you.  This process of taking different riffs on the same stratagem might easily be compared to jazz in music, and should be compared at that, if film ever reaches that potential.  The major difference here is that this formula has for too long consisted of too few notes.  It's not the story's fault.  It's the system the story must survive in which brings it down.  I have seen many great stories killed by rudimentary plot construction, act marks, brisk pacing, unnecessary but sympathetic additional characters, and a plain and stupefying playing to the audience.
 
In the late 50s John Cassavetes said that the Hollywood system was dead, he was right, and many have committed necrophilia sins since then.  But it hasn't been all that.  There has been a consistent supply of quality filmmakers working independently or within the studio system since and before Cassavetes.  I would say that the most fundamental and decisive cause for the state of cinema right now is the overt and reckless commercialism and mainstream sheep herding which reached its apex in the 80s.  I do not blame Jaws, I do not blame Star Wars, I do not blame any particular aspect of cinema itself for its fractured current state.  It is without a doubt the outside influences of an entire consumer culture which necessitates the garbage that dominates a multiplex today.  Cinema has not lost its potential for individuality, the people have.  As the people lost their identity, they shifted into mass ennui, depression, lack of commitment, focus, the feeling of helplessness, the feeling of not being able to change, of not being changed, of not touching, reaching out, etc etc etc etc.
 
But there is a glimmer around the borders this year, and I think it has to do with how terribly similar everything has been for so long, that has caused a new and exciting mindset to develop, if ever so slowly.  What marks the difference this year for me is the understanding that those affected must persist.  Because the gloom can't carry us through at all.  And there's simply more to it.  The happy ending isn't always a lie, and the ambiguous ending isn't always a sad ending.  I love American 70s film, absolutely do, the idea of a moral grey is fabulous to me.  But it haunts me, you know.  And it can begin to control me.  If cinema can remind me that there are matters more important than personal misery, it has accomplished its ultimate goal.  There shouldn't be a person who doesn't agree with that, given the nature of film, because whichever way we choose to define film, its most exasperating element will always be the way it dwarfs the individual.  What other art form is predicated around the raising of the art to a literally elevated state:  let us never forget that we look up at the screen.  As filmmakers understand this, they can shed the more preposterous notion that movies must be fantastical themselves.  They are already.  And if we are to deal with the world around us, it must be confrontational, it must be direct, and it sure as hell can be through cinema.
 
When there's drugs and street life and hard times it's often very difficult to say what appropriate strings are being pulled, if there's a chance that the filmmaker is being glib.  Some would perhaps never include these features in their movies.   Half Nelson does, and I think it eclipses its rivals in a rare way.  I think that a lot of this has to do with its invisible style.  Here is a film that doesn't parade about in any suit of clothes – and some of the most powerful moments happen without a soundtrack, on the streets, with diegetic street noises.  Silences.  There's natural lighting, but it isn't abrasive.  The verite elements appear effortless on the screen without conspicuous planning or lack of planning. The camera, like the audio, can keep still.  This allows for the characters to mature, for the change to be in the action of the characters, not an increase in whip pans or snap zooms.  The people are gritty, his room is dirty, the streets are wretched, not the camera.  It's a maturation from the not so long ago in which style and content seemed awkward together, in which one voice was always louder.  What I believe is that good cinema must always follow the character and the character alone, and that the content and concentration of art, the story, any atmospheric ambient or otherwise contributions can only follow behind the character.  This, not the craft of filmmaking, will allow for infinite variations in filmmaking.  It won't matter how many stories there are to be told if we believe this.  We'll hear each way in a truly different way.
 
Half Nelson does not just get it right with its presentation.  I also tremendously enjoyed the characters and the content of the film.  There is an intense drive to this 8th grade history teacher, single, lovetorn, basketball coach, struggling author, basehead, philosophical, conscience torn man that I adore.  As much as, day, Ghost Dog, from Ghost Dog:  The Way of the Samurai.  Since the character is presented to me in a multi-faceted way, this allows also each confrontation on screen to be unique.  I have heard talk of cliché elements in the film and the tendency to avoid them, but again, I say that these elements are cliché because of us, and happen in our cinema, and happen in our lives.  I have always thought that one of the claims of Magnolia is that cinema is a god.  It is an arbiter of cause of consequence, and while we worship it, it crosses over into us, and sometimes the cinema is us and sometimes we are the cinema.  Of course scenes feel truncated, like there's aversions to certain conclusions, and that the unexpected is favored for its difference.  This is the exact variation I have been talking about.  It shouldn't be a dismissal of the quality of the movie.  The concept of this 'working' or not is again the craft of film, and shouldn't be considered outside of the context and the story and the character.
 
I saw a deeply subtle film of larger social implications.  I saw a film that dealt with the raging sea beneath all the concrete artifice.  It was a film about identity, purpose, value, and, most of all, friendship.  It was about that personal change which we all must again begin to believe in.  It wasn't sappy or sentimental though, which is important to me, and I'd like to point out.  The Gosling character does not overcome his personal defections.  He does not triumph over his pratfalls.  He simply makes a friend, a young girl with the same kind of fears and the same kind of possibilities for the future.  In the movie Gosling admits to being a part of the machine, that we are all apart of the machine because we are what constitute said machine.  Well, here, two levers have come together.
   
This year has seen a small handful of well-crafted personal films, one dealing with a national catastrophe, and each one reminds me that cinema is not a craft, nor a device, nor a spectacle, nor any one thing.  Cinema is whatever.  I think that films are finally and hopefully permanently reaching a point in which style and content can melt together seamlessly, without pretentious interference, or mainstream calculations, and the jungle in the beast will once again be the soul of man.  These films are the direction of my cinema, while others may enjoy the toil of perfecting the comic book movie.  If the future is bright, these two will coexist.

[Alexandro]

i just catched half nelson on dvd. frankly, Im amazed. I expect one of those "good" performances that appear every year on american indie films and somehow get a little overpraised, but this has got to be one beautiful, self contained, perfectly executed performance. gosling has been great before, he was even great in the fucking notebook, which I hate with a passion, but this is something to warn us the guy will be rockin us for the next few years at least. well, i hope.

the film itself also surprised me. it has a couple of the most devastating moments i've seen in movies in a long time. in fact the more i think about it the more it escalates towards becoming one of my favorites of the year. it was such a relief, after these last few days of watching by the numbers crap like the "poor will smith movie" and good but underwhelming efforts like the science of sleep to watch something that simply works and is not afraid to do everything to avoid cliches and common places. mackei and the girl are fantastic too.

[modage]

This film was pretty good.  It's the performances that make this stronger than its story or filmmaking warrants.  I didn't find the situations particularly interesting.  Far from being too subtle, though; I thought there were parts that were too obvious--and some parts seemed to deliberately not go where you would think they would go, rather than just developing differently from the get go.  There were several instances where the situations felt like they were built to go in a certain direction and then not go there.  So instead of a more organic scene, you'll get a bit of a sharp turn near the end of some scene in order to avoid cliché.  But those things were minor in general.  I don't like it as much as Kevin Smith does, but again, the performances are some of the best you could hope to see.

yep.  SPOILER i thought that when she shows up to deliver drugs to the hotel room that HE is in was a bit too much of a coincidence, but it did provide the best moment in the film.  END SPOILER   i do like ryan gosling now and in most of the film he looked like the hipster Jack Bauer of 24 Season 5.  he should always have a beard though.  how come in all the promotional crapola its like directed by Ryan Fleck, and in the credits it's him and another chick?  they're meirelles'ing her bigtime.

[Ghostboy]

Actually, I think that Ryan Fleck is credited as director, and Anna Boden is credited as writer, but they share the 'A Film By' credit. But they said in an interview somewhere that they should have gone ahead and credited themsleves as co-directors, since that's what they really did.

[squints]

my goodness i just finished this movie. How sweet it is. The music and everything. This should've shown up somewhere in the 'xax awards.

[hedwig]

This should've shown up somewhere in the 'xax awards.

uh, it did.

[squints]

my goodness i just finished this movie. How sweet it is. I'm glad this won a 'xax award.

Fixed. Sorry. Derp

[MacGuffin]

'Nelson' team up to bat for 'Sugar'
HBO Films circling the pic
Source: Variety

Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, the team behind "Half Nelson," will write and direct a pic about Dominican baseball.

"Sugar" will look at the promise and broken dreams of a Dominican baseball prospect plucked from his native country to play in the U.S. minor-league system.

Paul Mezey's Journeyman Pictures and Jamie Patricof's Hunting Lane Films, the shingles behind "Half Nelson," will produce.

HBO Films is circling the pic and could come on board to produce but has not yet made a formal commitment.

Mezey has produced a number of pics for HBO Films, including indie hit "Maria Full of Grace," which was released by Fine Line, and has an informal arrangement with the division.

"Sugar" is set to go into production in the Dominican and Midwest in late summer, with Fleck and producers currently scouting locations and seeking castmembers, some of whom could be nonpros.

Story is a fictional tale based on creators' research; it focuses on Miguel "Sugar" Santos, a teenager who ends up far from home playing for a team in the Midwest after showing baseball aptitude in his native country.

Project is described as a dramatic and cautionary account of the baseball scouting machine with a good-natured character at its center.

Fleck and Boden also signed on with Misher Films to write and direct young-adult adaptation "It's Kind of a Funny Story" for Paramount, where Misher has a first-look deal.

[MacGuffin]

Fleck, Boden taking 'Physics'
Source: Hollywood Reporter

Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden, the duo behind critically acclaimed drama "Half Nelson," have signed on to adapt teen novel "Special Topics in Calamity Physics" for Miramax. Scott Rudin is producing.

Fleck and Boden will write the adaptation, with Fleck attached to direct. Boden will executive produce.

The novel, written by Marisha Pessl and published in August, centers on a teenage girl who, after spending years of high school moving each semester with her eccentric teacher father, settles in a small North Carolina town for her senior year. There she becomes part of an upper-crust social set called the Bluebloods and gets caught up in the mysterious death of their favorite teacher.

Pessl worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers before writing her novel.

"Nelson," written by Fleck and Boden and directed by Fleck, was a critics' and awards darling and netted star Ryan Gosling an Academy Award nomination this past Oscar season. The pair are working on "Sugar," a tale of a Dominican baseball player in the U.S. minor leagues, which is being produced by Journeyman Pictures and Hunting Lane Films, the companies behind "Nelson." The movie is eyeing a summer start.

[squints]

Spoiler

her eccentric teacher father

kills

their favorite teacher.