THESE FORUMS NOW CLOSED (read only)
Fun Stuff => ENJOY => Topic started by: Johnny C on 03 Dec 2010, 15:49
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PREMIERES TONIGHT IN SELECT CITIES AND I WON'T GET IT HERE FOR MONTHS BECAUSE IT'LL ONLY PLAY AT THE ARTHOUSE THEATRE BECAUSE ALL THE DUMB COCKSUCKERS HERE WANNA GO SEE DUE DATE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jaI1XOB-bs
if you live in one of those select cities please go and tell me if this is as fucking awesome as it looks
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it's been getting rave reviews from all the sources i trust. it's not playing anywhere in my city yet, as far as i can tell. which is fucking stupid and weird.
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yeah, I doubt this will play anywhere close to me any time soon, but I'm gonna keep my fingers crossed.
been looking forward to it for a while
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I love Natalie Portman, but hate Mila Kunis. Decisions.
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Has Darren Aranofsky made a bad movie?
I'd characterize The Fountain as a noble failure, but I'm open to other Ps of V.
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I am OK Natalie Portman, lukewarm with Mila Kunis but I LOVE it when people grow feathers. Decisions.
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Makes me think of Suspiria.
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JC, my friend in Houston caught it and said it was brilliant.
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Man Jens why we gotta disagree on things, we normally get along so well.
Requiem for a Dream is a pretty amazing film. It's not top flight perhaps simply because it's just too fucking intense. It's like eating a whole box of chocolates all at once, but the chocolates are made of machine guns.
Makes me think of Suspiria.
I got overtones of Suspiria plus other Argento films, particularly Opera (Terror at the Opera in the US).
This is a very good thing, though Opera is Argento at the beginning of what looks like being a terminal waning.
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I feel there's a lot about it that was fairly fresh, at least to that format and length of moving image, at the time it was made. I mean yeah, the last half an hour is like a high budget Nine Inch Nails video that never stops, but I guess I like that.
Ironically, most of the times I've watched Requiem for a Dream, I will admit to being seriously fucking wasted.
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moviie bob from the escapist ave it a really good review. he also said this movie actually uses natalie portmans potential.
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ANSWER TO THE THREAD TITLE: IT IS
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for sure the most stressful movie i've watched since antichrist
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I was definitely hooked during the run time (during the rehearsal scene where the black swan falls into a mattress, I jerked and spilled soda on myself) but afterwards all I was really left with was the strength of the performances (Natalie Portman is so good) and the surprising nuance of the peripheral characters (except Evil Show Mom, who is crazy and evil).
But overall I just could not for the life of me shake the feeling that the whole thing was an extended love letter to the works of David Cronenberg, even with the thematic mirroring of The Wrestler. Dude pretty much owns the body horror / physical-manifestation-of-psychic-sickness niche. That isn't to demean Aranofsky's work, which was pretty excellent throughout. It's just... yeah, I'm having trouble saying that it's better than the sum of its considerable parts. Certainly worth watching, whatever the case.
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i dont think people are giving her mom enough credit as a character – there's some real joan crawford moments but there's also a lot of moments that speak to serious fears about her daughter's increasingly unhinged behaviour, and there's several of those moments where the character elicits at the very least some pathos. and i don't know that it has to be better than the sum of its parts, when the sum is this high. it's remarkable aesthetics wedded to remarkable performances of a script that embraces archetypes and at the same time fills them out. there's also a ton of seriously unsettling shit that we never actually get resolution on. a friend of mine compared it to lynch's lost highway. i think that comparison is apt.
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Perhaps the mom character does care about her daughter, but her motives are harder to discern than those of her counterpart in Vincent Cassell - for one, her controlling behavior is pretty over-the-top, the cake scene in particular, and it felt to me as though her resentment towards her daughter gives her an impulse to sabotage as much as save her (though that is some extrapolation on my part) and in any case she'll only help her daughter on her own draconian terms. Cassell, on the other hand, while being a generally pervy and handsy type, was genuine in his assessment of Nina's technique and earnest in his desire to see her nail the black swan. I feel like that difference may have to do with Nina's perspective, though, since she chafes under and fears her mother while practically worships the director. Aside from possibly the last scene the film seems entirely immersed in Nina's headspace.
I was thinking about Lost Highway when watching it a lot too, particularly in that both movies have (arguably) a clear point of demarcation between the period in the narrative where the main character is balancing precariously on the edge of breakdown and the full descent into the psychotic rabbit hole, so to speak.
SPOILERS ARE HERE
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In Lost Highway the turning point is the arrest of Bill Pullman's character, where his cognitive dissonance and denial are so strong that he becomes an entirely different person (and a much worse actor). For Black Swan it's Nina's night out, when she stands up to her mother for presumably the first time, admits to herself her repressed sexual desires (and even deeper gay/bi desires / deep-seated Freudian issues) and generally achieves the abandon needed for the black swan part at the ultimate cost of her sanity and (possibly) life. When she came home and her mother didn't acknowledge Lily it immediately signaled for me that the point of total lunacy had been reached.
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END SPOILERS
So hey they got rid of smaller-than-average font sizes. I have no idea how to provide foolproof spoilers now.
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Anyway it should be said that even if the film's themes are unmistakably Cronenbergian they are equally Aranofsky...an. He makes films about destructive obsessions. It just so happens that with this one and his alleged next project (about a man who gradually turns himself into a cyborg, apparently) he's venturing into territory well-tread by the Canadian psych-horror demigod.
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cronenberg is a really appropriate thing. there's apparently a large debt to several polanski films which doesn't surprise me, and argento's a pretty good reference point in some ways as well.
the thing with the mother is that, yeah, there's an emphasis on the controlling behaviour (cake scene was egregious, although it ended with one of the more legitimately uncomfortable mom/nina bits in the movie), but the resistance on nina's part is really strange and aggressive and not altogether healthy either; she's capable of some serious emotional violence against her mother. it's an unhealthy and strange relationship and the mother has a controlling impulse for sure but i think it's frequently and in several ways rendered somewhat impotent. the power dynamic seems obvious but there's a lot of ambiguity within it.
spoiler
plus there are scenes where her concern for her daughter is surely genuine (e.g. the scene where nina screams and tears down all the pictures) and there are scenes that make you think her control issues stem from far longer-term fears about her daughter's health that she's ultimately powerless to affect (viz. nina's perpetual scratching).
two of the best movies i've seen this year have been like litmus-test psych-horror endurance runs, which is like really weird
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also i'm seriously surprised that people can find any part of this film particularly erotic since even those scenes are suffused with dread
e: question, though, i guess: is the movie's use of sexuality and sex exploitative?
double edit: reading some reviews i think the globe & mail's rick groen hits on kind of the way i feel about the functions performed by obvious & literal metaphor in the movie
At this point, as we’re drawn deep inside Nina’s fearful psyche, it’s becoming hard to distinguish the actual from the imagined. The bloody scratches on her back are surely real – in a physically punishing business, she’s given to self-mutilation. But when those scratches morph into inky scales and then black feathers, or when she wraps her rival in a lesbian embrace and then gets mean with a shard of glass … well, these are the way-over-the-top sequences where the film doesn’t just “lose itself” but its audience too. This is the risible stuff.
Or is it? The doings in the original Swan Lake are laughable at a literal level but poignant and lovely when viewed metaphorically. Maybe Aronofsky, in retelling the story and reshaping the imagery for a different medium, deserves the same respect. More profoundly, maybe he’s upping the thematic ante by adding a further element to the ballet’s explorations of the tensions between opposites – that is, art’s own tension between the literal and the symbolic, and the consequent wavering of the audience between dismissive laughter and engaged emotion.
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One particular thing that bothered me was Nina's age. How old was she supposed to be?
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My girlfriend was wondering about that too.
BUT HOLY FUCK, WHAT DID I JUST WATCH. I never really understood what was going on at any time.
also i'm seriously surprised that people can find any part of this film particularly erotic since even those scenes are suffused with dread
e: question, though, i guess: is the movie's use of sexuality and sex exploitative?
I walked into it thinking it would be somewhat erotic, but when the things went down there was way too much going on for me to even think of it in a sexual way.
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SO STRESSFUL AGLDFGDKFJGFAGADFG
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One particular thing that bothered me was Nina's age. How old was she supposed to be?
I was wondering this, too. It said in the movie she'd been with the company for four years, so I'm guessing around 22? (Assuming she got in at 18, but that happens with dancers, and also 28 is "old" according to Nina when she talks to her mom.)
But man, what a ride.
Spoiler Alert! When it comes to the mom, though, even though she is horribly overbearing and controlling, we don't know WHY though. She's obviously very concerned when she thinks Nina is scratching again and since the bumps on her skin are not real (her mom points out the scratches, not the weird rash), I think she's concerned with why Nina is scratching - possibly some bad tick? Both characters are troubled in their own way (her mom's paintings weirded me out, especially in the scene where she was crying as she was working on one), but at least the mom realizes that Nina's problems are pretty severe. End Alert!
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Watching Natalie Portman go off the deep end in the last 30 minutes was one of the most riveting things I've ever seen. There were obviously huge parallels to Aronofsky's other movies, but the pacing in the last 30 minutes as she wavers between realities was impeccable.
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Oh man, watching her become the black swan was so. good.
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I saw this a few weeks back and didn't have anything to add to this, BUT a friend of mine suggested that maybe the ending was also a fantasy only happening in her head and what we were shown was not literal (I AM DOING MY BEST TO NOT MAKE THIS A SPOILER but I made it small anyway just in case).
Actual spoiler
I also remember thinking on the way out of the theater, "that's weird that no one noticed she was bleeding profusely from her stomach," so my friend's suggestion that the ending was not as it seemed, just like much of the rest of the film, could make sense
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Watching Natalie Portman go off the deep end in the last 30 minutes was one of the most riveting things I've ever seen.
yeah i mean the movie isn't exactly subtle but in the last act absolutely everything is on full bore and that's when it's at the height of its powers. i'm wondering if maybe the right philosophical sort of thing to apply to it is like the romantic version of the sublime, i.e. something beautiful and terrifying and enormous and that is just a little too big for us to fully understand.
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PREMIERES TONIGHT IN SELECT CITIES AND I WON'T GET IT HERE FOR MONTHS BECAUSE IT'LL ONLY PLAY AT THE ARTHOUSE THEATRE BECAUSE ALL THE DUMB COCKSUCKERS HERE WANNA GO SEE DUE DATE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jaI1XOB-bs
if you live in one of those select cities please go and tell me if this is as fucking awesome as it looks
According to a coworker, it scared the bejeezus out of her. I quote: "Not a movie you would want to take your grandma to see."
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I just loath films that get 'rave reviews'. Critics love it, my friends keep telling me "It's the best movie of the year!" and it sounded like an intresting plot premiss, as I didn't know too much about ballet. But I go in and...eh? It's a decent movie. I didn't fall asleep. And the ballet geuniely intrested me. But the plot just seemed to perdictable to me. I mean, it's established from the get go that Natile Portman is crazy and the pressure is getting to her. So then it just becomes a long steady trip into seeing just how crazy she gets. Once you see where the film's going, you have nothing to keep you engaed other then the story telling. Winona Ryder stole the movie for me, as she was just a wild crad. I had NO idea where she was going and her story geuneily intrested me. But the rest of the characetrs? Meh? Couldn't really connected with anyone and the ending just came so abrubtly.
By all means it's a decent film. And I'd love for Winona Eyder to get nominated for best supporting actress. But it's no timeless masterpiece. And am I the only oen who's tired of all these "pscholigical thrillers" comeing out ever year, around THE SAME TIME? It's like they're not even hidding the fact that , yeah, it's totally Oscar bait.
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Did anyone here actually say it was a timeless masterpiece? I just thought it was a pretty good movie. I went in expecting her character to fall apart, knowing what the premise and a good deal of the story was. Aronofsky has a pretty solid formula and he sticks to it. I've watched tons of movies with predictable plots; quite frankly it's more important to me that the plot is executed well rather than in a new and interesting way. I knew full well in advance that Nina would develop a schizophrenic bird alter ego, but that didn't make her downfall any less exciting.
I was pretty wary about this movie because a) it's Oscar bait season, b) it's Darren Aronofsky and c) the lesbian thing was revealed to be something to get more people to go to the movie. Sometimes Oscar bait movies are actually deserving of Oscars, Darren Aronofsky found a way to make his formula work better and honestly the lesbian gimmick was carried out pretty well. I personally feel this movie was a good deal better than The Wrestler, which was Aronofsky's Oscar bait movie 2 years back. Don't watch movies because critics say they're good, watch movies because they seem interesting to you. That way your perception isn't tainted by what everyone else already thinks of it. Sometimes movies that get rave reviews really deserve them, but it's all in the eye of the beholder.
And no, they make no attempt to hide the fact that it's Oscar bait season, it's when they start adding things like 'award-winning director/actor' to the TV spots. Watch 'For Your Consideration', you'll probably get a kick out of it.
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the argument that something is "predictable" is one that usually mystifies me a bit because it seems kind of like how my mom approaches media, e.g. whenever there's a pregnant pause she will try to guess the next line
i don't mean to say something can't be like eye-rollingly full of cliche but i think like the idea that something is a trope doesn't necessarily make it bad. whenever i'm reading or watching a movie or whatever i'm less interested in whether or not a character archetype has been done but rather whether or not it's done well. like dimmukane says, for me, i'm at a point where execution matters to me more than anything else. it's nice; i get less hung up on how "original" everything is and i just get to see whether or not it's actually enjoyable.
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I didn't care that much for the movie as a whole, but I definitely felt that way about the opening sequence of the latest Star Trek movie. It was absolutely chock full of tropes, but much like with the Wrath of Khan they didn't waver from the idea that space opera-- yes, even in all its cheesy glory-- could still be dramatic. Thus I ended up enjoying that sequence in a way that many more self-conscious movies rule out from the beginning.
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i'm the wrong person to mention the new star trek around, i refuse to see it on the grounds that they show them building the enterprise on earth and you can't do that because how would you get it into space idiots
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the argument that something is "predictable" is one that usually mystifies me a bit because it seems kind of like how my mom approaches media, e.g. whenever there's a pregnant pause she will try to guess the next line
i don't mean to say something can't be like eye-rollingly full of cliche but i think like the idea that something is a trope doesn't necessarily make it bad. whenever i'm reading or watching a movie or whatever i'm less interested in whether or not a character archetype has been done but rather whether or not it's done well. like dimmukane says, for me, i'm at a point where execution matters to me more than anything else. it's nice; i get less hung up on how "original" everything is and i just get to see whether or not it's actually enjoyable.
Belive me, I thought the plot was amazingly orginal in how it was carried out. One of the few things I liked, was the look into the world of ballet. And Darren Aronofsky, cleary had a passion for the subject and created a story that made me care about it too. But once you know based on the freaking trailer, that the movie is just one long slow count down to Natalie Portman's inevitable break-down ( no doubt, brilliant acting can be expected, as this is Natalie and this IS Oscar season), I'm just pulled out of the story. Now that I know the ending, it's just me watching A+ drama students ace there final. All fine and dandy. But I came to have a good time. Not to watch overpaid actors have a good time. I just get so frustreaed by the way everything about the Oscars is just so clean and percise. They're not so much films as they are science fair projects. Blue ribbon worthy and all. But after the shows over, do you really want to have to have anything to do with it again?
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I'd watch it again. I'm not quite sure what you mean by 'clean and precise'.
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I'd watch it again. I'm not quite sure what you mean by 'clean and precise'.
Like in the sense that, you can't go into the film and not know that ever emotion captured on screen, every emotion stirred, every lighting trick, film score cue, and actor intesnity witnessesd, was all desgined purely to inlict a response out of you to win an award. I know, I know, at the end of the day, they are actors, and they are at work, and they are working for a paycheck. But it's hard to close my eyes and be taken in by a story when I feel like the director is just nudging me every few seconds to impress me.
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i'm the wrong person to mention the new star trek around, i refuse to see it on the grounds that they show them building the enterprise on earth and you can't do that because how would you get it into space idiots
This is pretty much as obstinate as my reasons for not watching Battlestar Galactica. I will however say that in the defense of the new Star Trek it doesn't really not make sense in universe. I mean in the fluff for TNG it said the Enterprise D was built at Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards and Utopia Planitia is a big plateau on Mars, so hey. They've got anti-gravity and free energy and teleporters and FTL drives and they can land their goddamn gawky swan-ships on planets and turn them round on a dime because they're held together by magic energy fields and they have intertial dampers. If you can swallow all that shit then quite honestly they can build their starships wherever the hell they want. Hell, with Star Trek technology you could build a starship on the surface of a sun.
I thought the new Star Trek movie was a bit shit though personally, but for other reasons. TOO MUCH FUCKING SHINY JESUS CHRIST.
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But once you know based on the freaking trailer, that the movie is just one long slow count down to Natalie Portman's inevitable break-down, I'm just pulled out of the story. Now that I know the ending, it's just me watching A+ drama students ace there final. All fine and dandy. But I came to have a good time.
How many movies have ever existed when you pretty much know what is going to happen in the end? I read/heard somewhere that anyone can come up with a beginning and an ending, but good storytelling is just that, "how did they get there, what happened to bring this eventuality, etc."
Dunno, seems like you are trying to just not like the movie. If you didn't like the movie or it just rubbed you the wrong way, just say so, it's totally fine, but these weird points of logic don't really seem to be holding up.
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But once you know based on the freaking trailer, that the movie is just one long slow count down to Natalie Portman's inevitable break-down, I'm just pulled out of the story. Now that I know the ending, it's just me watching A+ drama students ace there final. All fine and dandy. But I came to have a good time.
How many movies have ever existed when you pretty much know what is going to happen in the end? I read/heard somewhere that anyone can come up with a beginning and an ending, but good storytelling is just that, "how did they get there, what happened to bring this eventuality, etc."
Dunno, seems like you are trying to just not like the movie. If you didn't like the movie or it just rubbed you the wrong way, just say so, it's totally fine, but these weird points of logic don't really seem to be holding up.
Honestly it might be just this. :-D I alwasy get really jadded around the Oscar season, and having to put up with every movie poster/trailer/comercial for films the reminded you over and over again it's "Nominated for an Academy Award!", just get on my nerves after awhile.
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Oscar season is really annoying, yes, but there is a valid reason for releasing movies at certain times of the year. Movies will tend to make a lot of money if they come out in the summer (especially family movies) and Thanksgiving/Christmas (Oscar nods). The reason the Oscar nods get released later in the year is because they will be fresh on everyone's minds by the time Oscars roll around and it may/may not hurt chances if it's released at another time. (I don't know or care if that's true, but it seems like a possibility.) When the Oscars happen, look at the movies and see when they are released - most likely most, if not all, will have come out in summer or around the holidays. Why? Because movies make a lot of money around those times of year!
Tl;dr - Yes, Oscar season is annoying, but it's smart business on the studio end.
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Honestly it might be just this. :-D I alwasy get really jadded around the Oscar season, and having to put up with every movie poster/trailer/comercial for films the reminded you over and over again it's "Nominated for an Academy Award!", just get on my nerves after awhile.
If that's the case, then you should definitely check out For Your Consideration. It's Best in Show if it were about the Oscars instead of dogs.
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I thought the new Star Trek movie was a bit shit though personally, but for other reasons. TOO MUCH FUCKING SHINY JESUS CHRIST.
Enjoyed the opening, but yeah, a lot of it was pretty thoroughly crappy. By the time Simon Pegg was making his appearance I had felt ready to go home for quite a while.
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Honestly it might be just this. :-D I alwasy get really jadded around the Oscar season, and having to put up with every movie poster/trailer/comercial for films the reminded you over and over again it's "Nominated for an Academy Award!", just get on my nerves after awhile.
If that's the case, then you should definitely check out For Your Consideration. It's Best in Show if it were about the Oscars instead of dogs.
I honestly have never heard of this film. It sounds hilarious, and the fact that it has most of the cast from my all time favorite movie, This Is Spinal Tap, makes it a win! :-D I'll rent it sometime. Thanks!
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This is pretty much as obstinate as my reasons for not watching Battlestar Galactica.
in my defense this is all completely true and has occurred to me, and furthermore might i add that it's the worst reason to not watch a film and the last time i explained it to someone i introduced it with "allow me to explain why i don't have a girlfriend"
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This was one of my favourite films of 2010.
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Possible angle? (http://www.slashfilm.com/nina-mom-black-swan-paranoid-schizophrenia/) (Spoilers in the link)
I think the more "mundane" explanation is more easily agreed upon (the given idea requires a... reading of events that have other explanations), but it still seems like a possibility. The "Ready for me" scene does seem to stick out.
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Saw it tonight, landing firmly in the camp that thinks it's a solid movie and pretty much well within Aronofsky's usual schtick of heavy-handed metaphor and well-worn tropes and unerring inevitability that still manages to be entertaining and interesting and worthy of serious consideration and conversation.
I read the article KvP posted before seeing the movie (I'm not too bothered about spoilers because as previously discussed in this thread, it's a pretty simple story when you get down to it and the interest lays in more visceral concerns) and although the guy makes his case somewhat convincingly, there's not much in the actual content to support, even when you go and watch it with that very theory in mind.
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The ready for me scene is the only thing that sticks out, but I don't really like that whole thing. I think her mom was controlling because she is a total stage mom and also because there's hints of Nina's having been a little nuts in the past (namely the scratching).
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This opened in Australia today so I went and saw it. It was certainly very tense, and the fact that the cinema was pretty crowded made it even more tense. There was lots of shocked laughter going on. (Judging by the specificity of some of the audience reactions I think there were also a lot of dancers in the cinema). I thought it was a pretty good movie, I definitely got big Cronenberg vibes off it as a few other people in this thread have. The only bits that I thought were really misjudged were:
SPOILERS
In Nina's big pyschotic episode, when the paintings were all moving and then when her legs broke, both these effects just looked really goofy to me; and although Natalie Portman's performance was generally excellent her "evil" acting when she came off stage just before going back on and transforming into the black swan was really on the nose.
END SPOILERS.
Also, it bugged me that she never went and just explained her mistake to the girl who she said "congratulations" to, but that kind of thing - where a big festering problem (though granted it wasn't really touched on again in the film, I just like to imagine) could so easily be avoided by a bit of sensible behaviour - tends to annoy me to an unreasonable degree in movies.
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Also,
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b2/Cygnus_atratus_Running.jpg)
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I saw a picture of a white swan recently and it just looked completely bizarre.
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And dirty too, I bet! MORE LIKE MUDDY YELLOW SWAN.
White swans are even wronger than Christmas in winter.
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Also, it bugged me that she never went and just explained her mistake to the girl who she said "congratulations" to, but that kind of thing - where a big festering problem (though granted it wasn't really touched on again in the film, I just like to imagine) could so easily be avoided by a bit of sensible behaviour - tends to annoy me to an unreasonable degree in movies.
Holy shit me too. It's getting to the point where I find it really hard to watch, like, any sitcom.
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stuff like that hits close to home as basically a walking bearded regret bundle so i'm willing to let it slide in movies the same way i let those conversational opportunities slide in life
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Haha, oh wow. The Age, Melbourne's broadsheet daily, has a famously . . . let's be generous and say "iconoclastic" film reviewer named Jim Schembri. He reviewed Black Swan this morning and described it as "rhapsodic" and "intoxicating". Now, I thought it was a really good film, but those are literally two of the last words I'd ever use to describe it.
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The Radio 4 program Front Row gave it a rather mediocre review (such that I wasn't planning to go and see it). The ballet person they had in disliked it a whole lot more than the other reviewer - but I guess this is not atypical when specialists review a non-specialist film that covers their area.
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I liked it. I thought it was a good movie, along the lines of "Kiss Me Kate" but for a ballet and not Shakespeare. I will say that Natalie Portman nailed her performance, and Mila Kunis rocked as well.
And just for the bwuh-huh about the new Trek movie: you know, they also build very large ships (say, for instance, a San Antonio-class LPD or Essex-class LHAs, or even an Nimitz-class CVN) on dry land... and the LHAs are ported over land and for over a mile into the nearest water from Bath Iron Works... so, to say that a starship couldn't be launched from the ground is silly.
I also have had carnal knowledge and an extended relationship of/with members of the opposite sex, who were of age. None of the knowledge/trivia above prevented me from doing so.
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And just for the bwuh-huh about the new Trek movie: you know, they also build very large ships (say, for instance, a San Antonio-class LPD or Essex-class LHAs, or even an Nimitz-class CVN) on dry land... and the LHAs are ported over land and for over a mile into the nearest water from Bath Iron Works... so, to say that a starship couldn't be launched from the ground is silly.
I think the main problem is that a San Antionio-class LPD doesn't have to escape the Earth's gravitational pull
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The Radio 4 program Front Row gave it a rather mediocre review (such that I wasn't planning to go and see it). The ballet person they had in disliked it a whole lot more than the other reviewer - but I guess this is not atypical when specialists review a non-specialist film that covers their area.
i've thought the ballet review community's reactions have been pretty hilarious just based on how like outrageously angry they've all been
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i read one that was like "her dancing isn't even CLOSE to masterful, she spent a mere year learning what it takes a lifetime to do" and i just laughed my ass off
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Those words were indeed used in the review I mentioned; they may be true, but c'mon.
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I wonder how feasible it would be to have a ballet double? I haven't seen the film yet (should be seeing it tomorrow!) but I imagine that it would kind have ruined it, even with effects trickery.
Thing is only a ballet expert is probably going to be able to tell good ballet from excellent ballet, so there's probably only a very small number of people who are actually annoyed.
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When the Wrestler came out, as a wrestling fan, I was pretty aware of what the reception was in the wrestling world. I don't think I read a single negative review from the people who make up that fringe interest. One former star noted it was in no way as bleak, but noted how accurate the film was when it came to representing how much physical pain actually goes into it, the way the matches were laid out, the "in ring" performance given, etc. Granted, ballet is a more focused art form, but the top names in wrestling will also spend years getting to where they are (e.g. Mick Foley, who has been getting a lot of media attention via the Daily Show. He knows the business. It is his life. And he respected the Wrestler as a film, and the portrayal Rourke gave, to my recollection).
Some people just want to complain that their fringe interest is not being well represented.
edit: I just read that Vince McMahon, the owner of the WWE, hated the film. But that guy is a douche bag and someone who half the time makes sure his performers are set for life after their careers are done and the other half of the time pretty much sends them out to the trash and forgets them, so who gives a shit what he thinks.
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I wonder how feasible it would be to have a ballet double? I haven't seen the film yet (should be seeing it tomorrow!) but I imagine that it would kind have ruined it, even with effects trickery.
Thing is only a ballet expert is probably going to be able to tell good ballet from excellent ballet, so there's probably only a very small number of people who are actually annoyed.
they do have a ballet double! the ballet double does all the close footwork shots.
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(e.g. Mick Foley, who has been getting a lot of media attention via the Daily Show. He knows the business. It is his life. And he respected the Wrestler as a film, and the portrayal Rourke gave, to my recollection).
Here's the article where he says as much (http://www.slate.com/id/2207076/)
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Ok, so I've seen this now.
Holy shit.
Holy. Fucking. Shit.
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Went and saw it with some friends a few weeks ago. I was so happy that they all loved it, it's always awesome having everyone enjoy a movie that you go and see. Our one friend who did ballet as well as a bunch of other types of dance for years was unimpressed by the dancing.
Also, I overheard a girl saying that it Black Swan was essentially a "low grade horror film with lesbians in it." Which made me slam my head into a desk.
And in terms of The Wrestler, Mickey Rourke apparently had to learn how to "fall" properly because he was hurting himself. That film really made me look at wrestling in a completely different light and I loved it for doing that. I need to watch that film again.
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I still have mixed feelings about Black Swan. I've always loved Aronofsky's work, but I noticed he didn't write this one and I'm not sure if that has something to do with my trepidation to really be excited over it. I haven't seen The Wrestler and need to do so, if only to get a bit caught up and be able to compare the two.
I think this was a strong film, but I was left feeling that it needed a good 20-30 minutes extra. I couldn't even really say why, it just felt like it ended very abruptly. I realize that to some extent that was on purpose but I couldn't help but think it was missing something. There was something about the way he developed the characters that felt a bit too much like the audience was expected to accept them in their roles and not think too much about it. Nobody really felt all that complex to me - not even Portman's character.
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And in terms of The Wrestler, Mickey Rourke apparently had to learn how to "fall" properly because he was hurting himself. That film really made me look at wrestling in a completely different light and I loved it for doing that. I need to watch that film again.
Two telling former wrestler quotes:
"You can't fake gravity."
"Everyone knows it's fake except for us and the insurance companies."
Pro-wrestling needs a union, seriously. Many pro wrestlers have gone years without health insurance because they're independent contractors and thus are on their own when it comes to paying some of the highest health insurance premiums of any profession. Between the PEDs, painkillers, grueling schedules and constant stunts a lot of those guys end up aging in dog years. A ridiculous number of the people on Deadwrestlers.net (http://deadwrestlers.net) died before the age of 50 of either heart failure or suicide. The drug and alcohol abuse is an easy answer and definitely a contributing factor in a lot of those cases, but I do wonder about the role of head trauma since recent findings have been raising suspicions about the kind of brain damage that can be done by a high volume of minor incidents over prolonged periods of time.
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And in terms of The Wrestler, Mickey Rourke apparently had to learn how to "fall" properly because he was hurting himself. That film really made me look at wrestling in a completely different light and I loved it for doing that. I need to watch that film again.
People mock it for this because it reinforces the idea that it's "fake" , but the whole idea of wrestling is to NOT hurt yourself or the other person in the ring and it's really difficult to learn how to do that effectively and still make it look as real as possible.
I really need to see black swan on the big screen again, maybe it's in the cheap theaters by now?...
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It will probably get a push in big chains due to Oscar season. King's Speech is getting the same treatment.
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It's been continuously making money...so I don't know about that. It pulled in another 5 million this past weekend so I'm not sure if they're really going to give it an Oscar push. And wow, has Black Swan made a ton of money, 90 million domestically. If anything, 127 Hours needs the Oscar push as it's barely made a blip anywhere. That movie is also fantastic.
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Holy shit I had no idea... I was just operating under the usual "welp it's been a couple weeks, right? it's probably $3 now..."
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I just like the fact that a film with some actual artistic value turns out profitable.
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I know I'm late to this party but I just saw it and came out of the cinema shaking. Holy. Shit.
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A friend saw it and said that when the movie was over, the entire audience just sat there for a minute. When I saw it, I could understand why.
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My audience laughed at several "scary" parts of the film.
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We had a lot of gasping and cringing during almost every body horror part. It made me realize how jaded I am when it comes to horror. I don't think anyone screamed though but my friend went "lesbians? FUCK YEAH!" pretty loudly at one point. I don't think he'd seen any of the marketing for this film at all.
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I think all the "horror" scenes were really well done... "scary" movies are almost always really poorly done and pretty much accomplish the exact opposite of what they aim for (even if it's, like, an "ironic" scary movie). They were pretty unexpected and short, not drawn out, and not too over-the-top. The "horror" elements were a nice surprise, in my watching experience. I would be bummed / annoyed if people laughed at a movie I was enjoying that wasn't supposed to be funny or ironic, anyway.
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"scary" movies are almost always really poorly done and pretty much accomplish the exact opposite of what they aim for (even if it's, like, an "ironic" scary movie).
What? Explain this to me. Are you saying that horror films in general are poorly done or...what?
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My audience laughed at several "scary" parts of the film.
My audience laughed (snickered, really) at anything even vaguely sexual. All fully grown adults, by the way.
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"scary" movies are almost always really poorly done and pretty much accomplish the exact opposite of what they aim for (even if it's, like, an "ironic" scary movie).
What? Explain this to me. Are you saying that horror films in general are poorly done or...what?
Sorry, I have had enough drinks to still be coherent but not really express myself clearly.
I do not like horror movies. Usually at all.
I thought this movie just had a small amount of the genre to be enjoyable enough.
That's just me, and I really poorly worded what I said earlier.
(edit: poorly must be my word of the night.)
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If we want to look at mainstream horror films then yeah, they are quite horrible. Good horror films are mostly found pre-2000's or from foreign shores.
I would love to see more horror films being done in this style as the only ones that have really been shown in theaters lately have been those awful SAW films. I would love to see more psychological and body horror invading our cinema. Actually, anything other than torture porn and lame slashers would be nice.
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Yeah, I think maybe that's what I was thinking of when I said that, I'm sure there plenty of exceptions outside of the mainstream.
Is it lame that my favorite "scary movie" is still The Ring? Never did see the Japanese version, though as soon as I found out what I saw was a remake I wanted to see the original.
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The original is really low-budget and I didn't enjoy it at all.
There are tons of exceptions, but that's also cause I love horror films quite a bit. And there are a lot of absolutely awful ones, in fact, most of them are awful. The joy comes from watching maybe 10-15 awful ones and then stumbling across something that's amazing.
And I'm going to not ramble on about horror films because I've been drinking and will go on forever.
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i laughed abit at the bodyhorror parts, but it was a cringing, uncomfortable, 'wtf' laughter.
overall, a fantastic mindfuck of a movie
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alright, so i saw this on saturday due to this event my school ran (you wrote yr name on a door and you could see it for free, whats up?) and holy shit, this was a great movie. i still really feel like darren aronofsky (sp?) is a giant, pretentious douche bag but pretty much everything in this film was done wonderfully and everything tied together perfectily and goddamn i jumped so many times at this film.
but yeah fuck darren aronofsky he is a douche, as good of a filmmaker he is (dont ask me to defend this statement i wont be here to do so).
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pretentious, yes. If you want a douchebag, Tarantino is your dude. And Michael Bay, and James Cameron.
Doesn't come off as that much of a douche (http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/733886/darren_aronofsky_interview_black_swan_remakes_wolverine_and_psychological_horror.html)
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Was it here that someone posted a link to an article about undertones of sexual abuse in this film? I don't know how much my interpretation was affected by reading the article before I saw the film but I can't see how anyone could have missed that - I was going to say subplot but actually I think it was the entire plot. Thoughts?
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The DS relationship between French dude and Natalie is pretty obvious but if the mom thing's there I think it's more subtle.
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Conversely, as I mentioned above, I saw the movie not long after reading the article which posits the sexually abusive relationship between Nina and her mother and even though I was looking for it, I couldn't make it work.
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I dunno, I hadn't read the article and I thought that I saw it in places. The mom is just too touchy-feely and is all up in her business even when she's trying to take a bath, etc.
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The thing for me that finalised it was when she is having sex with "Lily" and and Lily says "my sweet girl", and she finds out it wasn't her after all. I just couldn't see how that wasn't a deliberate message from the director.
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See I didn't read that as being sexual on part of the mother. She's infantilised, the mother simply treats her in the same way you might treat a six year old, which is the reason it's creepy. The 'my sweet girl' thing is when we're in the viewpoint of a deranged mind, it's probably just basic guilt/freudian terror shit, an echo of when she is masturbating and sees her mother next to her.
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oh you saw it dude, what did you think
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I liked it. I'm a big sucker for slightly moody films that rely on artistic flair over complex plotting. I had very few quibbles with it, except that some of the body horror scenes showed too much and ended up being stupid (the legs).
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I liked it. I'm a big sucker for slightly moody films that rely on artistic flair over complex plotting.
i really feel this and i think it's why i'm such a big fan of the movie
the legs were like kind of noticeably cg which is why i think they didn't quite sit entirely right with me (although how surprising the image was the first time i saw it made a difference)
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It was more that first moment when her knees go backwards I thought was funny rather than scary, and I reckon that was probably American Werewolf in London style hydraulics.
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There was some alien type movie that came out at the same time as Contact that did a similar thing when one character turned out to be an alien and not a human, or something, and it looked just as terrible then as it did in this movie... ... does anyone know what movie I am thinking of? It drove me crazy leaving the theater that I could not remember the "film."
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Hmmm... Event Horizon maybe?
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You're thinking of The Arrival (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115571/), featuring Charlie Sheen.
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Jesus christ I wish I didn't actually feel relief remembering the movie The Arrival but I do. Brilliant!
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Yeah, the backward knee thing in both movies were equally bad. The wings were done well enough and were not as weird, as she'd been growing feathers since the start of the movie. But the knee thing....agh.
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Well, it sure as fuck freaked me out.
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For me it broke the rules of really good body-horror, in that it was just too much, too fast. The same thing could have been done in a much more subtle way; say, she tries to walk forwards, but trips with a horrible noise. We see the camera on her face, she does a pain/shock :o face then we pan back to reveal one leg twisted as if the kneecap has been smashed, not moving except perhaps twitching, just a really good latex piece. It's not showing the backwards knee that's bad (unlike ghost stories, body horror has to actually show us something), it's showing the actual reversal of the knee. Body horror (in my opinion) rests upon our memories of our own fear and confusion during puberty and sexual awakening, and also our anxiety about medicine etc. The key element is the sudden realisation that you've changed, the slow inexorability of it, the act of removing a bandage or piece of clothing and suddenly there is something under it that's not you. For the viewer, tension builds in the space between the character realising that something is wrong with them and the audience seeing what is wrong.
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Bird knees don't bend backwards (those are their ankles) </needlessly pedantic>
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(http://www.birding.com/images/body1a.jpg)
:?
Then again, I found skeletal diagrams which suggest the opposite. Is there some disagreement on this issue, or is this image simply wrong?
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(http://www.birdwatching-bliss.com/images/bird_skeleton.jpg)
Also this one (http://fsc.fernbank.edu/Birding/skeleton.htm) which says in the text that the knee is often got wrong!
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Well, on a human the tibia is your shinbone, and the tarsus is part of your foot. Your ankle falls between the two. So perhaps for birds and other animals they label it differently, but bone-wise their "knee" is your ankle.
<edit> Yes, on the one that pwhodges posted, you can see that the femur is actually up inside the body. The joint between the femur and the tibiotarsus/fibular is the knee. </edit>
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Hmm, I could be wrong, but the skeletal structure of the foot in a lot of animals gets severely distorted. For example on dogs and cats, the "heel" doesn't touch the ground unless they're sitting. This diagram (http://www.infovisual.info/02/056_en.html) appears more clear that the femur/tibia connection is higher up, hence the knee is closer to the body.
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So the knee is basically internal in birds?
Edit: I guess I hadn't really considered the idea that a knee is a consistently named biological feature. I just thought that all animals were kinda like horses, i.e. different names for everything. (actually I think horses have knees, I can't remember).
Edit edit: Yes they do. One of the things I always fuck up when trying to draw horses is that I think their legs are articulated the same way as a humans four limbs, when actually it's the other way round: the knees are on the front legs and the hocks (elbows) are on the hind legs.
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Aranofsky is most unsubtle mother fucker on the planet when it comes to directing. Well, not the most but he is one unsubtle dude. The absolute insistence on manifesting every ounce of psychological trauma physically in Nina crossed the line into being absurd. Those stupid dancing/yelling portraits and the literal transformation into a fucking swan are just two things that really stood out to me as painfully idiotic and overwrought. For me, the inability of the director to merely suggest something killed a lot of the atmosphere and made the whole thing some weird hybrid of goofy and disturbing rather than moody and intense. We would have gotten what was happening to Nina without the visual hyperbole and silly CG noodling. The movie had tons of potential but I think it fell flat on its face for being too over the top and overwrought. I honestly felt like it was talking down to me a lot of the time: "there's a lot of sexual repression and infantilization (both of herself and by her mother) going on. In case you didn't get it through a whole lot of clues, I'm going to be really, really obvious: here's her room with tons of pink stuffed animals. Also she's going to have a lesbian sex fantasy!" for example. We would have gotten that she became the "Black Swan" metaphorically speaking without some stupid special effects being thrown in our face. And I'm more convinced than ever that Aranofsky's a pretty serious sado-masochist when it comes to his characters. It's all around unpleasant to watch.
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Yeah, that last remark is really my point I guess except I would cast that net over the movie as a whole not just the end. I felt like Aronofsky was clobbering me over the head the whole time when some gentle nudging would have been more effective. The unsubtle approach to exploring psychological trauma turned it into a gimmick, at times even a parody. Most everything was simply over the top and it dragged down the movie in big ways for me. I certainly didn't hate the movie. It was actually quite scary and had a great sense of unease. The atmosphere, that is, was well crafted and a rare example of horror done well. I just couldn't get over some of that one flaw which to me was ever present for the whole movie. I mentioned this already but when all those paintings started yelling at her I laughed. It was stupid. And when we saw her literally turn into a swan, it seemed downright silly and completely unnecessary. Other examples abound. Maybe it's just me but I don't need my movies to be 100% explicit almost to the point of insulting my intelligence and ability to decipher things on my own.
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I don't see how that's clobbering people over the head though. That's like saying it was unnecessary to show the hallucinations in A Scanner Darkly because we see the guy scratching his skin, so we can assume he thinks there are bugs on him. The point is not to say "Hey audience, check it out, she's changing! Look, she's changing! Hey, did you notice?" but more to show what's going on in her mind. I don't think the movie would have been half as creepy had they not shown her pulling out feathers and her legs breaking and such. She wants to transform, she wants to be the black swan, but it's terrifying for her.
I actually don't even remember a scene with paintings yelling at her. I should go watch it again.