slim jenkins

El Hombre Invisible
the call from Nixon was fictional yeah - which I don't have a problem with, except that Frost never made the switch from lamb to wolf. I've not seen the actual interviews but from what I've read after seeing the film, at least. the light the film casts the interviews in is rather misleading, they weren't a watershed cultural moment, Nixon didn't really admit anything & he essentially "won".

OTOH agree fully that Langella was absolutely brilliant, & the portrayal of Nixon was really what mattered more than historical accuracy. dude who played Frost was alright but a bit overmatched (tho actually that's probably exactly how it was in real life).

Frost doesn't come across too well...although perhaps there's some accuracy in the portrayal? Lightweight...fickle...bit of a chancer, really. Wonder what he thought when seeing it?
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
not the portrayal of Frost - which is probably about right - so much as the general portrayal or framing of the interviews. exaggerating their importance & drama. making it into a real clash of wills, rather than just a lightweight chancer - tho Frost was semiserious, he'd done other political interviews - getting skillfully outmaneuvered by an old pirate like Nixon. the main point is really that there was never any climactic breaking point, as the film imagines, where Nixon kind of tacitly admitted his wrongdoing, tho he may have said the actual words used in the film.

tho I mean, that's what films do, it's hard to complain about them taking dramatic license. the only reason it bothered me a bit was cos it seemed to make the whole premise of the film rather disingenuous. hardly the first film to have a disingenuous premise, or the first film to rewrite history to fit a storyline, but nonetheless.
 

crackerjack

Well-known member
tho he may have said the actual words used in the film.

pretty sure he did say it - certainly all the coverage i read of the film mentioned the phone call as being the one moment of serious fabrication

it may not have been as dramatic as the film made it, but for a president to say he's above the law - the only logical meaning of his words - is pretty damning by any stretch
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
pretty sure he did say it

ah, yes but he didn't say it in that way. as well the tone, the delivery, the entire context, all off. the point is really that he didn't admit anything that everyone didn't already know, Frost didn't catch him off-guard at all, it was all pre-planned, practiced lines from him & his PR team. there was no climactic moment where Frost nailed him. from the Huffington Post (which one could hardly consider a bastion of Nixon nostalgia, of. I also remember reading much the same from conservatives):

Then, through a sleight of hand, the script simply changes what Nixon actually said: the script of the play has Nixon admitting that he "...was involved in a 'cover-up,' as you call it." The ellipsis is of course unknown to the audience, and is crucial: What Nixon actually said was, "You're wanting to me to say that I participated in an illegal cover-up. No!"

& various similar things. also the whole thing wasn't nearly as adversarial as it was made out, David vs. Goliath. it was quite a cozy deal for both sides. again, I mean, it's a film, I understand. but there's an important difference between making historical concessions to drama & rather grossly distorting the entire premise of an actual historical event. rather a disservice to Langella's terrific performance as well.
 
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crackerjack

Well-known member
ah, yes but he didn't say it in that way. as well the tone, the delivery, the entire context, all off. the point is really that he didn't admit anything that everyone didn't already know, Frost didn't catch him off-guard at all, it was all pre-planned, practiced lines from him & his PR team. there was no climactic moment where Frost nailed him. from the Huffington Post (which one could hardly consider a bastion of Nixon nostalgia, of. I also remember reading much the same from conservatives):

the zinger, if i remember right, was "i'm saying when the president does it, it isn't a crime"
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
also - just watched Lilya 4-Ever yesterday. sweet jesus is it a grim, grim movie, almost unspeakably so. tho admittedly the subject matter doesn't really lend itself to anything else. either way certainly worth watching, a film that should be watched. definitely a movie that i will remember vividly for the rest of my life. which isn't something you can say about very many films. the lead actress is absolutely fantastic as well. [SPOILER ALERT] that scene near the end where she blankly tells one of the johns that he can't buy her heart & soul just about broke my heart. [END SPOILER ALERT]

*EDIT* just in case it wasn't clear I very highly recommend the film - just be forewarned that watching it could be a difficult experience (tho perhaps the more valuable for that)

it was the first moodysson film I've seen tho he's been recommended by several people, certainly based on this I'm quite interested in his other work.

See Fucking Amal!

I made my ex's friend cry and scream in horror when I took her to see Lilya at the cinema. Bad choice for an afternoon's friend-sitting?

Moodysson is in my canon just for those two films.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
"it was the first moodysson film I've seen tho he's been recommended by several people, certainly based on this I'm quite interested in his other work."
I've only seen his upbeat ones (Fucking Amal and Show Me Love) but I think that he's so good at manipulating the audience's emotions that I don't dare see the depressing ones.
I don't mean necessarily that he manipulates emotions in a cynical way, I just mean that his films are very emotionally effective - although on reflection I gues part of me does feel a bit as though I'm being lead to what I'm supposed feel which is why I used that phrase.

I watched a good film called City of Pirates (La Ville des Pirates) yesterday. Another extremely surreal film in which the main protagonist Isidore is spirited away to the Isle of Pirates by a peculiarly malevolent boy child who has declared himself her fiancee (after slaughtering his entire family and castrating her lover). There is no city in the film and no pirates either but there is a lot of weirdness involving characters having numerous personalities and strange familial relationships that seem to be in constant flux throughout the film. At one time Isidore's father seems to think that a bouncing white ball is his missing son - and, fair enough, it does come and go at his command so who is to say he is wrong?
The film is disjointed and loses its way at times - possibly a consequence of the fact that the director was apparently writing it as he went along - but overall I think it is more satisfying than other similar films where you feel as though the director is just sticking in weird stuff for the sake of it (say Black Moon for example).
An unusual pinkish filter which is used at times along with the film's constant switching between black and white add to the sense of otherworldliness as do the excellent/insane performances from all the cast, especially the terrifying child.
The director is a South American (Chilean?) called Raoul Ruiz and the only other thing I've seen by him is a short called Colloque de Chiens which is told in stills like La Jette - I'm definitely going to try and find more of his stuff though.

vlcsnap-617239.png
 

slim jenkins

El Hombre Invisible
Since I'd neither rec nor 'not' I'll mention 'A History Of Violence' here to be positive. Really mixed feelings about this, having been excited by the first 30mins or so but slowly felt that it became ridiculous, or rather too much like so many Hollywood thrillers as it progressed.

Bizarre rape scene on the stairs (the 'Get off me! Oh, I'm suddenly enjoying it' kind of thing)...and absurd, gratuitous close-up of the baddie's pulped face...the final straw being the hero's ability to kill more efficiently than Arnie in 'Total Recall' (snap! crack! bang!)...just nonsense, and I expect better from Cronenberg.

Even the son supposedly 'inherited' this capacity for ruthless violence...:slanted:. But it's not so much the fact of this violent capacity but the way it's depicted.

Cop-out, I reckon.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
That's almost exactly what I thought about A History of Violence - and also Eastern Promises to some extent which is definitely part of the same period (for want of a better word) of Cronenberg's career. I think I'd call it the "crap action films with facile endings period" or something.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
K-punk's reading of 'A History of Violence' made me see it in a different light - as a sort of depiction of fantasies of both violence AND security.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I expect that there is probably something in that - I'm sure that Cronenberg didn't see himself as making a straight revenge/action film. But I didn't find enough in the films to really justify giving them the benefit of the doubt in relation to whether he succeeded in saying anything more than "isn't violence bad - oh actually it's kind of cool when the good guy is doing it isn't it?". I don't think he avoided being seduced by the very thing he was trying to highlight and, as a consequence, he ended up with a standard action film.
 

slim jenkins

El Hombre Invisible
That's almost exactly what I thought about A History of Violence - and also Eastern Promises to some extent which is definitely part of the same period (for want of a better word) of Cronenberg's career. I think I'd call it the "crap action films with facile endings period" or something.

:) Is he cosying up to Hollywood for some reason...like fooling backers into thinking he will always make 'solid' thrillers so he can take their money next time and make a sci-fi mutant non-linear surrealist epic? I like to think so. Hated Shore's soundtrack too, which was typical 'moody' strings seemingly as a constant - and he did such good work for 'Naked Lunch'. Haven't seen 'Eastern Promise' but this has put me off.
 

slim jenkins

El Hombre Invisible
Oh, and back to 'Frost/Nixon', if the aforementioned changes are correct I think that's bad. I feel cheated! Respect it less now.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
"Is he cosying up to Hollywood for some reason...like fooling backers into thinking he will always make 'solid' thrillers so he can take their money next time and make a sci-fi mutant non-linear surrealist epic? I like to think so."
That would be great although somehow I doubt it. It does seem a shame that he's making such disappointingly normal films when you look at his back catalogue. You can't blame someone for wanting to avoid being stuck in a rut I suppose but I think he's made a change for the worse.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Hmmm, loved History of Violence. true that the opening 45 mins or so was the best part of the film, but i thought it survived thereafter on style if nothing else. Ed Harris(?) was a great bad guy.

Eastern Promises, though, was a bit of a shoddy retread.
 

3 Body No Problem

Well-known member
also - just watched Lilya 4-Ever yesterday. [...]
*EDIT* just in case it wasn't clear I very highly recommend the film - just be forewarned that watching it could be a difficult experience (tho perhaps the more valuable for that)

I saw that film a few years ago. I felt that it was peddling too many "Damsel in Distress" cliches for my liking. Not that it matters, but by pure coincidence I ended up in Paldiski and the Tallinn nightclub where parts of the movie were shot, just after it had come out.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
...but I think that he's so good at manipulating the audience's emotions that I don't dare see the depressing ones.
I don't mean necessarily that he manipulates emotions in a cynical way, I just mean that his films are very emotionally effective - although on reflection I gues part of me does feel a bit as though I'm being lead to what I'm supposed feel which is why I used that phrase.

well as I said this is the first film of his I've seen, but I thought such a brutal topic was handled with considerable touch. certainly it wasn't exploitative, it didn't aestheticize anything, & I appreciated that. I understand what you mean tho.

also, doesn't all cinema (all art, in fact) manipulate emotions? I suppose it's all in how you do it.

I saw that film a few years ago. I felt that it was peddling too many "Damsel in Distress" cliches for my liking.

eh perhaps you'd care to elaborate on that...?
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
"well as I said this is the first film of his I've seen, but I thought such a brutal topic was handled with considerable touch. certainly it wasn't exploitative, it didn't aestheticize anything, & I appreciated that. I understand what you mean tho."
Well, like I say I haven't seen this particular film so I can't comment - and anyway, I'm quite confused as to what I think about him anyway, hence the equivocation.

"also, doesn't all cinema (all art, in fact) manipulate emotions? I suppose it's all in how you do it."
Yes and yes. I reckon it's best if you don't feel it being done and maybe, with Moodysson, you do (slightly) every now and again. Then again you could say the same about On The Waterfront and I love that.
 
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