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Thread: Ten-Years-Later Match Cut Consensus - 2010

  1. #151
    A Platypus Grouchy's Avatar
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    #1. The Social Network



    If you guys were the inventors of Facebook, you would have invented Facebook.

    Directed by David Fincher
    USA
    Mark Zuckerberg creates the social network that would be later known as Facebook. He is sued by the twins that claim he stole their idea and by the co-founder who was squeezed out of the business.

    Awards
    Best Adapted Screenplay (Aaron Sorkin), Best Film Editing (Kirk Baxter / Angus Wall), Best Original Score (Trent Reznor,, Atticus Ross), Academy Awards
    Best Foreign Film, César Awards
    Best Foreign Language Film, Cinema Brazil Grand Prize
    Best Adapted Screenplay, Writer's Guild of America
    Best Film, Online New York Film Critics

    I find Facebook and Starbucks equally significant to my life in that I don't patronise either of them. -- Winston

    The Social Network isn't only a great film but it's a classic for a new era in filmmaking. ​-- Danielle Solzman

  2. #152
    It's weird; I like Inception better than The Social Network, but I'm happy the latter won because I like Fincher as a director way more.

    Anyway, good work Grouchy!
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  3. #153
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    Curious about the score difference between Inception and The Social Network.
    Midnight Run (1988) - 9
    The Smiling Lieutenant (1931) - 8.5
    The Adventures of Robinhood (1938) - 8
    Sisters (1973) - 6.5
    Shin Godzilla (2016) - 7.5

  4. #154
    Replacing Luck Since 1984 Dukefrukem's Avatar
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    bah!
    Twitch / Youtube / Film Diary

    Quote Quoting D_Davis (view post)
    Uwe Boll movies > all Marvel U movies
    Quote Quoting TGM (view post)
    I work in grocery. I have not gotten sick. My fellow employees have not gotten sick. If the virus were even remotely as contagious as its being presented as, why haven’t entire store staffs who come into contact with hundreds of people per day, thousands per week, all falling ill in mass nationwide?

  5. #155
    In the belly of a whale Henry Gale's Avatar
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    Good stuff! Sucks that I came so late to it.

    No need to make things even more difficult by counting these in too, but my list probably looks like:

    1. Certified Copy
    2. Black Swan
    3. Inception
    4. 127 Hours
    5. Exit Through the Gift Shop
    6. The Illusionist
    7. Shutter Island
    8. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
    9. Blue Valentine
    10. The American

    [
    ]
    Last 11 things I really enjoyed:

    Speed Racer (Wachowski/Wachowski, 2008)
    Safe (Haynes, 1995)
    South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (Parker, 1999)
    Beastie Boys Story (Jonze, 2020)
    Bad Trip (Sakurai, 2020)
    What's Up Doc? (Bogdanovich, 1972)
    Diva (Beineix, 1981)
    Delicatessen (Caro/Jeunet, 1991)
    The Hunger (Scott, 1983)
    Pineapple Express (Green, 2008)
    Chungking Express (Wong, 1994)

  6. #156
    The Social Network is probably the most entertaining film Fincher has made since the '90s (certainly it's a lot tighter as storytelling than either Zodiac or The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), although there's something creepy about the way mainstream reviewers hocked the film so aggressively when it came out--a phenomenon that may, in the end, tell us more about American society than the film itself, which frames its subject in exclusively personal terms (i.e., the emphasis is entirely on Zuckerberg as the Great Singular Visionary Who's Also a Bad Friend rather than the ways in which the aims of capitalism dictate the general direction of technological development). Part of what's creepy about the critical hype is the way that terms of praise reviewers used to describe the movie exactly mirrored the terms Silicon Valley uses to hype itself (the Solzman quote is a good example of this): Just as every new piece of technology or software coming down the pipes is supposed to revolutionize our lives and make whatever came before obsolete, the movie (which is essentially classical in its construction) allegedly represents the beginning of a new era in filmmaking.

    I've said enough about Inception just in this thread.

    In his review of Eastwood's Changeling, J. Hoberman described the film as a "two-fisted snake pit weepie," and the same label could be applied to both Black Swan and Shutter Island as well. What sinks all three films is the heavy-handed directorial bombast, which seems to be obligatory in Serious Hollywood Filmmaking these days (see also the noirish lighting schemes of The Social Network and Inception). Every stylistic move these filmmakers make seems intended to remind us how freakin' monumental it all is, crushing their flimsy stories under an unearned air of significance and making Fincher's film look relatively unpretentious by comparison. To make things worse, Scorsese now seems to be under the impression that a film's importance directly corresponds to its length.

    Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is fun but monotonous, and at two hours, way too freaking long.

    I'll have to see Another Year again but my initial impression from ten years ago was that long stretches of it were masterful, but at a certain point, it starts to become redundant, hammering home the same point over and over.

    True Grit sucks all the fun out of the western.

    Winter's Bone, Blue Valentine, and Poetry are all reasonably accomplished films that I have no desire to see again.

    Copie conforme, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Exit Through the Gift Shop, Meek's Cutoff, The Ghost Writer, Carlos, and Greenberg are all spicy or warm.

    I haven't seen Toy Story 3, 13 Assassins, or I Saw the Devil.
    Last edited by baby doll; 05-24-2020 at 08:53 PM.
    Just because...
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    The (New) World

  7. #157
    collecting tapes Skitch's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting baby doll (view post)
    ... or I Saw the Devil.
    I think that is up your alley, sir. Damn is that a film.

  8. #158
    Here till the end MadMan's Avatar
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    I miss Winston. Thanks for doing this Grouchy. I went into The Social Network thinking "They made a movie about Facebook? Why?" and left thinking "What a picture! I want to see that again."
    BLOG

    And everybody wants to be special here
    They call your name out loud and clear
    Here comes a regular
    Call out your name
    Here comes a regular
    Am I the only one here today?



  9. #159
    Quote Quoting baby doll (view post)
    the movie (which is essentially classical in its construction) allegedly represents the beginning of a new era in filmmaking.
    Not to say you're wrong, but this seems like a crazy idea for anyone to have about The Social Network.

  10. #160
    collecting tapes Skitch's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Mr. McGibblets (view post)
    Not to say you're wrong, but this seems like a crazy idea for anyone to have about The Social Network.
    Which part?

    I don't know that its a new era in filmmaking, but I'm still shocked anyone was able to make a film about facebook that is not only entertaining, but an aggressively well made almost thriller. Thats fucking Finch tho.

  11. #161
    Quote Quoting Mr. McGibblets (view post)
    Not to say you're wrong, but this seems like a crazy idea for anyone to have about The Social Network.
    I agree, and yet...

    Quote Quoting Grouchy
    The Social Network isn't only a great film but it's a classic for a new era in filmmaking. ​-- Danielle Solzman
    Just because...
    The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022) mild
    Petite maman (Céline Sciamma, 2021) mild
    The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh, 2022) mild

    The last book I read was...
    The Complete Short Stories by Mark Twain


    The (New) World

  12. #162
    A Platypus Grouchy's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Peng (view post)
    Curious about the score difference between Inception and The Social Network.
    They were tied 67,5 before Rico gave The Social Network 6 points over. Inception was winning because it had ten votes instead of nine.

    If Henry Gale's votes count, then Inception would be winning again. But the bottom half of the list would need some re-doing - basically 127 Hours and The Illusionist would make the list and True Grit, Let Me In and I Saw the Devil would drop off.
    Last edited by Grouchy; 05-25-2020 at 04:56 AM.

  13. #163
    Quote Quoting baby doll (view post)
    The Social Network is probably the most entertaining film Fincher has made since the '90s (certainly it's a lot tighter as storytelling than Zodiac)
    You dissing one of my favorite movies from '07, homie?
    Last edited by StuSmallz; 05-25-2020 at 08:05 AM.

  14. #164
    Quote Quoting StuSmallz (view post)
    You dissing one of my favorite movies from '07, homie?
    Yes.
    Just because...
    The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022) mild
    Petite maman (Céline Sciamma, 2021) mild
    The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh, 2022) mild

    The last book I read was...
    The Complete Short Stories by Mark Twain


    The (New) World

  15. #165
    Quote Quoting baby doll (view post)
    Yes.
    To each their own then, as I felt the way that he juggled the multitude of story threads and perspectives, as he went back and forth between the police investigation, various minor characters, and the journalists at the Chronicle, and the manner in which the propulsive pacing of the first half covering the spree of killings, and the way it transitioned to Graysmith's methodical, one-man investigation in the second, to be utterly seamless, while The Social Network, while still a pretty good movie on the whole, still had one of the most pointless, wasted uses of a mixed-up timeline I've seen in a movie since Reservoir Dogs.

  16. #166
    Guttenbergian Pop Trash's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting StuSmallz (view post)
    still had one of the most pointless, wasted uses of a mixed-up timeline I've seen in a movie since Reservoir Dogs.
    I don't want to sidetrack into a pointless discussion about Reservoir Dogs, when you are clearly in the tiny minority, but come the fuck on. The chronology in that works to continually give you new information about Mr. Orange and his development as a mole in the group.
    Ratings on a 1-10 scale for your pleasure:

    Top Gun: Maverick - 8
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    McCabe & Mrs. Miller - 8
    Crimes of the Future - 8
    Videodrome - 9
    Valley Girl - 8
    Summer of '42 - 7
    In the Line of Fire - 8
    Passenger 57 - 7
    Everything Everywhere All at Once - 6



  17. #167
    Administrator Ezee E's Avatar
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    Reservoir Dogs told from straight beginning to end would be pretty bad.

    Barbarian - ***
    Bones and All - ***
    Tar - **


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  18. #168
    Quote Quoting StuSmallz (view post)
    To each their own then, as I felt the way that he juggled the multitude of story threads and perspectives, as he went back and forth between the police investigation, various minor characters, and the journalists at the Chronicle, and the manner in which the propulsive pacing of the first half covering the spree of killings, and the way it transitioned to Graysmith's methodical, one-man investigation in the second, to be utterly seamless, while The Social Network, while still a pretty good movie on the whole, still had one of the most pointless, wasted uses of a mixed-up timeline I've seen in a movie since Reservoir Dogs.
    Personally, I found Zodiac a bit choppy as storytelling, moving in fits and starts, rather than achieving the narrative fluidity of Fritz Lang's M (in one sequence, Fincher cites that film's sound bridges to connect parallel lines of action)--although admittedly that's a rather high bar to clear. Incidentally, another reason I prefer Lang's film is that it uses its killer as a device for making a broader point about German society in the 1930s, whereas Fincher's film--which is concerned with procedural minutia to the exclusion of anything else (the characters are all boring stock figures: obsessed amateur detective, neglected wife, working class murder suspect)--suffers in my view from its narrow morbidity.

    I'd have to see The Social Network again before weighing in on its flashback structure. My memory of the film is that it creates a strong primacy effect (the scene in the café where the girl calls Michael Cera an ass-hole) and then confirms the correctness of that initial impression (as opposed to what Meir Sternberg calls "the rise and fall of first impressions" regarding Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice, to say nothing of the more radical overturning of our first impression in Light in August). Indeed, given that the story was already largely known to the public before the film's release, I suspect that Sorkin's screenplay was aiming for the sort of exposition that Sternberg finds in the novels of Anthony Trollope: Create a strong primacy effect (here in part through typecasting) and minimize suspense and curiosity in order to concentrate the spectator's attention elsewhere, hence the choice of flashbacks to fill in the details of a sequence of events whose outcome is already known by the spectator beforehand.

    Tarantino's temporal manipulations are more overt in that they're not motivated as subjective flashbacks (as in The Social Network), although I don't think you can say they're less purposeful: As Tarantino himself put it, in the first part of the movie, the spectator knows less than any of the characters, but by the end, the spectator knows more than any one character. Moreover, the short vignettes establishing Mr. White and Mr. Blonde aid in the spectator's hypothesis-forming as they try to figure out who the rat is.
    Last edited by baby doll; 05-26-2020 at 03:57 PM.
    Just because...
    The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022) mild
    Petite maman (Céline Sciamma, 2021) mild
    The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh, 2022) mild

    The last book I read was...
    The Complete Short Stories by Mark Twain


    The (New) World

  19. #169
    Quote Quoting baby doll (view post)
    Personally, I found Zodiac a bit choppy as storytelling, moving in fits and starts, rather than achieving the narrative fluidity of Fritz Lang's M (in one sequence, Fincher cites that film's sound bridges to connect parallel lines of action)--although admittedly that's a rather high bar to clear. Incidentally, another reason I prefer Lang's film is that it uses its killer as a device for making a broader point about German society in the 1930s, whereas Fincher's film--which is concerned with procedural minutia to the exclusion of anything else (the characters are all boring stock figures: obsessed amateur detective, neglected wife, working class murder suspect)--suffers in my view from its narrow morbidity.
    I felt that the storytelling in Zodiac was quite smooth throughout, not just in its second half (which pretty much took place exclusively from Graysmith's point of view alone), but in the first one as well, as, even with its ever-shifting perspectives, the film remained constantly propulsive and engaging from the way it used every single character and scene to advance a new fact or development, steadily building up the case one brick at a time as Fincher knew that, as a serial killer procedural, the case is the true star of the film, which is an approach that is consistently utilized throughout the film, and makes perfect sense to me.

    At any rate, it doesn’t make sense to me to criticize Zodiac for a lack of social relevance, as, even with its steady stream of details, it still fit a lot amount of commentary into its running time regardless, with its portrayal of the susceptibility of the public to irrational panic in the way that the entire Bay Area goes crazy in the light of the killer's threats, the dilemma the publishers of the Chronicle face when they have to decide whether printing his letters in the newspaper will temporarily placate him, or simply feed his hunger for public attention and fear, and encourage him to kill and terrorize even more, as well as with its critique of the mass media circus's role in adding to said public panic (one that's done partially in the pursuit of just getting more eyeballs glued to their papers/reports), which is a point that is not just implied, but basically expressed straight-up by Avery himself: "Do you know more people die in the East Bay commute every three months than that idiot ever killed?".

    As for the point about the characterizations, Graysmith's wife can indeed be considered a stock, ignored wife, but I was still impressed by the way that, in-between all the minutia of the overall investigation, Fincher still managed to find a way to neatly fit in the defining beats of that sub-plot (from their first, uber-awkward date, to the final wedge that Graysmith's obsession drives between them) into the film, but I can't think of many other examples of obsessed, amateur detectives in films, so I don't see how Graysmith is a clichéd character on his own, and as for the main suspect, him being a blue collar creep is simply an accurate reflection of the real Arthur Allen (as most actual serial killers, at best, tend to work menial jobs anyway), so calling him a clichéd character is like when that guy on RT complained that the movie had a "shaggy dog ending" because the killer was never conclusively identified; it's like, but that's how it happened in real life (the movie itself even pointed that out by contrasting its lack of closure with the "Hollywood ending" of the Zodiac-inspired Dirty Harry), so... that's kind of the whole point?
    Last edited by StuSmallz; 06-08-2020 at 06:34 AM.

  20. #170
    Quote Quoting StuSmallz (view post)
    I felt that the storytelling in Zodiac was quite smooth throughout, not just in its second half (which pretty much took place exclusively from Graysmith's point of view alone), but in the first one as well, as, even with its ever-shifting perspectives, the film remained constantly propulsive and engaging from the way it used every single character and scene to advance a new fact or development, steadily building up the case one brick at a time as Fincher knew that, as a serial killer procedural, the case is the true star of the film, which is an approach that is consistently utilized throughout the film, and makes perfect sense to me.

    At any rate, it doesn’t make sense to me to criticize Zodiac for a lack of social relevance, as, even with its steady stream of details, it still fit a lot amount of commentary into its running time regardless, with its portrayal of the susceptibility of the public to irrational panic in the way that the entire Bay Area goes crazy in the light of the killer's threats, the dilemma the publishers of the Chronicle face when they have to decide whether printing his letters in the newspaper will temporarily placate him, or simply feed his hunger for public attention and fear, and encourage him to kill and terrorize even more, as well as with its critique of the mass media's role in adding to said public panic (one that's done partially in the pursuit of just getting more eyeballs glued to their papers/reports), which is a point that is not just implied, but basically expressed straight-up by Avery himself: "Do you know more people die in the East Bay commute every three months than that idiot ever killed?".

    As for the point about the characterizations, Graysmith's wife can indeed be considered a stock, ignored wife, but I was still impressed by the way that, in-between all the minutia of the overall investigation, Fincher still managed to find a way to neatly fit in the defining beats of that sub-plot (from their first, uber-awkward date, to the final wedge that Graysmith's obsession drives between them) into the film, but I can't think of many other examples of obsessed, amateur detectives in films, so I don't see how Graysmith is a clichéd character on his own, and as for the main suspect, him being a blue collar creep is simply an accurate reflection of the real Arthur Allen (as most actual serial killers tend to work menial (at best) jobs anyway), so calling him a clichéd character is like when that guy on RT complained that the movie had a "shaggy dog ending" because the killer was never conclusively identified; it's like, but that's how it happened in real life (the movie itself even pointed that out by contrasting the lack of closure with the "Hollywood ending" of Dirty Harry), so... that's kind of the whole point?
    Films aren't real life, and the major limitation--aesthetically, imaginatively, ideologically--of docudramas in general and Zodiac in particular is to confuse facts with truth. (As Werner Herzog said of Cinema Direct, "It reaches a merely superficial truth, the truth of accountants.") Of course, this would be less of a problem if the facts in this case weren't so familiar and uninteresting (that the film handles the obligatory neglected wife subplot as well as it can and that the real Arthur Allen was likely no more interesting in real life than he is in the movie is small consolation). Indeed, I would argue that the film's mania for facticity betrays a crisis of faith in the capacity of classical Hollywood filmmaking to represent reality--as if the audience wouldn't believe in this story if it didn't come with footnotes. And while there is certainly some social commentary scribbled in the margins of the film, the ratio of procedural minutia and grisly murder sequences to social commentary is in direct inverse proportions to that of Lang's film, where the murders all take place offscreen and the plot never gets bogged down in procedural detail.
    Just because...
    The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022) mild
    Petite maman (Céline Sciamma, 2021) mild
    The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh, 2022) mild

    The last book I read was...
    The Complete Short Stories by Mark Twain


    The (New) World

  21. #171
    Quote Quoting Ezee E (view post)
    Reservoir Dogs told from straight beginning to end would be pretty bad.
    Yeah, but it still doesn't work very well as it's currently structured; yes, like BD already said, the sudden timeline jumps do assist in filling in the story blanks for us as an audience, but the flashbacks also have the tendency of killing the plot's momentum immediately after something major has happened, and in retrospect, it feels more like a gimmick to spice up an otherwise fairly shallow crime caper (and even with the jumbled chronology, it still ends at the actual "end" of the events that it would've with a standard, point A-to-Z timeline, which ends up being a fairly pointless, nihilistic ending anyway), and all of that's without even me comparing it to Pulp Fiction, which actually used its mixed-up timeline to add greater, gradually revealed meanings to its proceedings (although I feel that even that film would work better if everything having to do with Marvin's death was either signficantly restructured, or removed from the film altogether, although that's a discussion for later if you're interested.)
    Last edited by StuSmallz; 06-08-2020 at 06:59 AM.

  22. #172
    A Platypus Grouchy's Avatar
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    I disagree that the ending is pointless. It would be if the surrogate father relationship Mr. White develops with Mr. Orange wasn't at the heart of the rest of the movie. It ends at the lowest possible point for both characters, sure, but I think it's clear from the opening scene that it's not going to end well.

  23. #173
    Quote Quoting StuSmallz (view post)
    Yeah, but it still doesn't work very well as it's currently structured; yes, like BD already said, the sudden timeline jumps do assist in filling in the story blanks for us as an audience, but the flashbacks also have the tendency of killing the plot's momentum immediately after something major has happened, and in retrospect, it feels more like a gimmick to spice up an otherwise fairly shallow crime caper (and even with the jumbled chronology, it still ends at the actual "end" of the events that it would've with a standard, point A-to-Z timeline, which ends up being a fairly pointless, nihilistic ending anyway), and all of that's without even me comparing it to Pulp Fiction, which actually used its mixed-up timeline to add greater, gradually revealed meanings to its proceedings (although I feel that even that film would work better if everything having to do with Marvin's death was either signficantly restructured, or removed from the film altogether, although that's a discussion for later if you're interested.)
    Right after something major happened seems like the correct place to put an expository flashback, as opposed to right before something happens or in the middle of a narrative dead zone (in his analysis of The Odyssey, Sternberg points out that most of the flashbacks in that poem come at junctures where the suspense is at a low ebb--and if memory serves, that story also ends at the ending). And if the flashback structure makes the plot more interesting--spicing it up by eliciting the spectator's curiosity about what events led up to the current situation as well as what's going to happen next, not to mention the obvious advantage of not beginning the story with a ton of boring exposition--isn't that, well, good? After all, a film isn't what it's about but how it's about it.
    Just because...
    The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022) mild
    Petite maman (Céline Sciamma, 2021) mild
    The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh, 2022) mild

    The last book I read was...
    The Complete Short Stories by Mark Twain


    The (New) World

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