RM Movie Club #2: Quiz Show

[tragabigzanda]

Whenever there's active promotion on the part of somebody else, whenever I see somebody all dolled up for a fancy photograph and someone's handing out flyers or whenever there's active promotion for something like that, as an imposition on my day, I hate all those people and I want them to fail. I have a visceral reaction to advertising and promotion. There's just something about salesmanship that grates on me on a very base level and I react very negatively towards it. I want those people to suffer and I want their enterprises to fail.

[Simple Torture]

I'd like to thank trag for really elevating the discussion in this thread.

[Simple Torture]

Also, did anyone say the visuals were unimportant or flat? They may have and I don't recall. But I think "static" is the comment I made, meaning there's hardly any movement. Which doesn't allow the actors to move much. Which puts the emphasis on dialogue and faces (and set design and lighting and music and...).

I agree the lighting was great, and the Art Deco and appropriately beautiful. But it's very static.

Skitch said on Page 1 that the visuals were unimportant, and Joey said that it lacked a visual language. I disagree with both, even though I feel like it loses some of its siganture visuals towards its back half.

[Simple Torture]

Also, thanks for bottom-paging my long post about 18th-century ethics with a joke about double penetration.

[tragabigzanda]

Whenever there's active promotion on the part of somebody else, whenever I see somebody all dolled up for a fancy photograph and someone's handing out flyers or whenever there's active promotion for something like that, as an imposition on my day, I hate all those people and I want them to fail. I have a visceral reaction to advertising and promotion. There's just something about salesmanship that grates on me on a very base level and I react very negatively towards it. I want those people to suffer and I want their enterprises to fail.

[tragabigzanda]

Whenever there's active promotion on the part of somebody else, whenever I see somebody all dolled up for a fancy photograph and someone's handing out flyers or whenever there's active promotion for something like that, as an imposition on my day, I hate all those people and I want them to fail. I have a visceral reaction to advertising and promotion. There's just something about salesmanship that grates on me on a very base level and I react very negatively towards it. I want those people to suffer and I want their enterprises to fail.

[LoathedVermin72]

I really like Rob Morrow's presence in this movie. He's so soft and affable, but you get the sense that it's a veneer that could crack at any moment.

[LoathedVermin72]

I love Mira Sorvino. The trajectory of her career is so disappointing.

[tragabigzanda]

Whenever there's active promotion on the part of somebody else, whenever I see somebody all dolled up for a fancy photograph and someone's handing out flyers or whenever there's active promotion for something like that, as an imposition on my day, I hate all those people and I want them to fail. I have a visceral reaction to advertising and promotion. There's just something about salesmanship that grates on me on a very base level and I react very negatively towards it. I want those people to suffer and I want their enterprises to fail.

[Norah]

This has been a great success. Dev must be seething.

[lennytheweedwhacker]

[LoathedVermin72]

Perhaps this is a product of living in a time when scripted "reality" shows are the norm, but I'm a bit unclear on why this would be a legal issue in the first place. This is all obviously immoral, but how is it illegal?

[LoathedVermin72]

I enjoyed this movie. It's a very engaging, easygoing watch. But I don't think it hit the deeper level it should have. During most of the running time, it's essentially a simple morality play that suffers because it's too straightforward. The characterizations and struggles lack nuance, and could do with more cinematic subtlety and insight. I was also longing for the film to extrapolate its themes into something more macro, which it finally did in its final moments...in the worst way. It really ladles on the ham-fisted cynicism thick, comparing the corrupt situation to the American political system in a parallel that seems totally unearned and unestablished. It's easy and tired and obvious and uninteresting.

Essentially, the film unravels at the end and feels unfocused. It doesn't seem to know who it wants to indict - the public, politicians, the system, Van Doren, Stempel. It winds up taking a broad shot at everyone and accomplishing nothing beyond finger-wagging pessimism. It's the last scene of The Wolf of Wall Street but without the bite.

[@SkitchP]

Also, did anyone say the visuals were unimportant or flat? They may have and I don't recall. But I think "static" is the comment I made, meaning there's hardly any movement. Which doesn't allow the actors to move much. Which puts the emphasis on dialogue and faces (and set design and lighting and music and...).

I agree the lighting was great, and the Art Deco and appropriately beautiful. But it's very static.

Skitch said on Page 1 that the visuals were unimportant, and Joey said that it lacked a visual language. I disagree with both, even though I feel like it loses some of its siganture visuals towards its back half.

I regret that statement. I probably should have said that they were secondary.

[epilogue]

I enjoyed this movie. It's a very engaging, easygoing watch. But I don't think it hit the deeper level it should have. During most of the running time, it's essentially a simple morality play that suffers because it's too straightforward. The characterizations and struggles lack nuance, and could do with more cinematic subtlety and insight.

Yep

[epilogue]

Also, did anyone say the visuals were unimportant or flat? They may have and I don't recall. But I think "static" is the comment I made, meaning there's hardly any movement. Which doesn't allow the actors to move much. Which puts the emphasis on dialogue and faces (and set design and lighting and music and...).

I agree the lighting was great, and the Art Deco and appropriately beautiful. But it's very static.

Skitch said on Page 1 that the visuals were unimportant, and Joey said that it lacked a visual language. I disagree with both, even though I feel like it loses some of its siganture visuals towards its back half.

I regret that statement. I probably should have said that they were secondary.

I stand by what I said, but my second sentence more accurately expresses what I meant: that the film wasn't stylistically compelling enough to rise to the level of greatness. So, yeah, obviously it has a visual language. I just find it lacking in that it isn't compelling or interesting enough to elevate the overall film above other similar films or even many of the best of the 90s.

[tragabigzanda]

Whenever there's active promotion on the part of somebody else, whenever I see somebody all dolled up for a fancy photograph and someone's handing out flyers or whenever there's active promotion for something like that, as an imposition on my day, I hate all those people and I want them to fail. I have a visceral reaction to advertising and promotion. There's just something about salesmanship that grates on me on a very base level and I react very negatively towards it. I want those people to suffer and I want their enterprises to fail.

[Simple Torture]

I was thinking about Boogie Nights while watching, too, but in a different sense: I saw a relationship between the way the elder Van Doren became anxious over TV's ascension over poetry and the way Jack in Boogie Nights gets anxious, resists, and finally accepts video over film as the most efficient (but not the most artful) way to shoot pornography.

There's a tiny bit of irony here, too, in the way you wish for a Boogie-Nights-like tracking shot (which was an homage to Scorsese) in a film that features Scorsese in a bit role.

[Simple Torture]

I want to make a longer post about the actors in this, but for now: I think it was an excellent choice picking an Englishman to play an American from Connecticut who desperately wants to put on the affect and speaking patterns and lifestyle of an Englishman. Fuck Connecticut.

[tragabigzanda]

Whenever there's active promotion on the part of somebody else, whenever I see somebody all dolled up for a fancy photograph and someone's handing out flyers or whenever there's active promotion for something like that, as an imposition on my day, I hate all those people and I want them to fail. I have a visceral reaction to advertising and promotion. There's just something about salesmanship that grates on me on a very base level and I react very negatively towards it. I want those people to suffer and I want their enterprises to fail.