Is the work of Steven Soderbergh the most overrated thing ever?

You wouldn't be complaining if it had been Julia Roberts.

Julia Roberts...meh. Julia Louis-Drefyus in her birthday suit with a bowl of chicken soup and matzoh balls...now we're talking.

How so?

(i enjoyed it mainly bcz i discovered that my friend nic totally looks like julia roberts as she in in this movie, and i never noticed in real life: so basically for me it wz all abt how my friend nic worked her butt off in skanky too-tight clothes to win all these foax in a small US town lots of deserved money for being poisoned by THE MAN)

(probbly the best bit is, if i told nic she looks like JR in EB, she wd doubtless punch me in the mouth!!)

(the orig Traffik is great)

(and wasn't EB, well, a lie [ie company not found liable but settled and lawyers got all the money anyway or some such thing]?)

What Ilike about him is his workman like attitude to film-making.

haha in fargo it says "based on a true story" and ppl said "is it?" and they said "no" and ppl said "you can't do that!!" and they said "why not? it's fiction ie not true so that includes the phrase 'based on a true story'"

Pitch Black was great too. I hadn't noticed the connexion befor but that and Kafka have a lot in common. King Of The Hill is grebt.

I suspect Traffic will be unwatchable in a few decades. It's like Stanley Kramer + Alan Pakula.

He ain't no Terry Gilliam though.

Didn't have the heart to go see _Solaris_, myself.

Plus, the oldest of 'his last four movies' dates all the way back... to 2000.

I've never found much use for the term "hack," as it tends to caricature or obscure the specifics of the creative process. How do we know that Soderbergh doesn't work closely with his screenwriters? That he doesn't feel strongly about the material?

I do agree that the "one for them, one for me" pattern in his filmography is worrisome. I wonder if his films have suffered for his artifical dichotomy between compromise and experiment--"wonder" because I haven't seen the last two.

I *did*. I was a movie critic back then, and I thought it was a hoax. Honestly, the idea that something quite that fake could be sent to Cannes, let alone be the talk of the place, could only be explained by it being a pratical joke. Did anybody listen? Am I still a movie critic? (Is Bush about to bomb Iraq for humanitarian reasons?)

Which, according to the interview he and Clooney did on the Charlie Rose show, is precisely how they ended up remaking Solaris. To his credit Soderbergh said that he could bring something new to the story, but that it wasn't his project from the get go.

it's called THE LIMEY!! (= it isn't even remotely concerned with actual real british people you've met!)

also it's unfinished and oddly-paced in a way quite faithful to the films it's emulating (60s Point Blank-style revenge pictures, not film noir). What's great about soderbergh's genre work is also what i guess can be frustrating about it - its aesthetics are more meticulously "studied" than usual (and it's here where his film-geekiness really kicks in, not in the arty pictures nobody sees), which means you wind up getting his homage to what's good AND bad about the source material

i REALLY didn't get the fuss the "how dare you remake this venerable classic" contingent raised when Ocean's 11 came out - the original is exactly as shallow and silly as the remake is.

bed for me i think

Solaris was a good waste of 2 hours but once again not something I'm gonna add to the stacks anytime soon.

I have apparently not seen any of his really good stuff. Maybe someday I will fix this.

As a cinematographer (under the nom de cam "Peter Andrews"), however, he is particularly good - those Mexico scenes in Traffic.

The Alan J. Pakula reference is OTM on at least one point - he stole the closing credits for Traffic from All the President's Men.

the way the end-credits appear in both traffic and EB (maybe in his other films too but i either haven't seen them or wasnt paying as much attention) - while the movie is still in process, so you don't have this BLACK SCREEN appear and wrap things up and force you into making some kind of judgement/summation. so we get a kind of a profundity-of-the-everyday quality - the 'final judgement' already happened without us noticing (actually, both end scenes i'm talking about here are very much ABOUT the mundane turned profound - benecio attending the little league game which becomes this beautiful cosmic event with the help of eno and everthing being saturated in mars red and erin's workroom squabble which resolves itself into 2 million dollars)

sure, some films of his are great, some are okay - and some are crap.
but i'd like to hear anyone who's seen schizopolis bad mouth soderbergh. go on, you know you can't.

George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh don't have much trouble getting the media's attention. The swooning and curiosity that's surrounded their quasi-fictional political show for HBO, "K Street," never fails to mention Clooney's charm, wit and sparkling grin, and to lavish praise on Soderbergh, glossing over self-indulgent flops "Solaris" and "Full Frontal," and ignoring his obvious embrace of his own celebrity despite humble, "Gosh I just hate this stuff" interviews to the contrary. A few signature leading-man looks from Clooney and a little self-deprecation from Soderbergh and these two are sophisticated, talented, swashbuckling guys just crazy enough to try something new, blurring the line between politics and Hollywood (what line?) and breaking down the barriers between reality and fiction (what barriers?).

http://www.salon.com/ent/tv/review/2003/09/15/k_street/index_np.html

On the other hand, Albert Finney's accent. Oy.

The first settlement was 500 mil, but that was supposed to be the first of many, in the film...

I just saw EB again last night, and the scene where Aaron Eckhart and Julia Roberts break up is so great. Her speech is so realistic, her delivery. Everything with Finney is hilarious (and I only noticed his accent once). There are some scenes that are overplayed--the brittle female lawyer bitch is too much. But the townspeople are portrayed with so much care that I'm totally baffled by the reaction here. Should movies never deal with small-town victims of corporations? These people are shown to be skeptical and smart. The scene with no sound, with the dad throwing rocks at the company at night--scenes like that put this movie WAY out of the realm of TV movie.

Traffic is probably my least favourite Soderbergh. Erin Brockovich kicks its ass.

(Pete Scholtes can regularly be seen at www.complicatedfun.com.)

That said, I stand by my previous statement that Soderbergh 89-99 was better than 00-onwards, but I've decided to try to go through the entire oeuvre and see if a closer look yields anything worth reconsidering.

There.

Other than Sex, Lies and Videotape, which I also liked, I have not seen any of Soderbergh's other films.

I haven't seen Out of Sight in a very, very long time, mainly because I have it on VHS and not on DVD, but I plan to rectify this very soon.

Yeah, what was that guy thinking ripping off Gus Van Sant like that!

-- Nordicskillz (t1nym1n...), March 11th, 2003.

solaris is one of my favorite films of all time. yes this version. you may now excuse whatever paltry credibility i have earned over the last five months.

kafka is great too.

I like all 3 Solarises, tho in Lem-Tarkovsky-SS order.

I would agree, but he has made some good films (King of the Hill is probably my early favorite, but I like Schizopolis and The Underneath and most of Hollywood fare too.)

SS steped in on this after Terence Malick (?!?) backed out.

Soderbergh:Malick::Spielberg:Huston

So Bob Pollard has scored most of Bubble. If only it was still the '90s.

No, the work of Lars von Trier is

This is so OTM. Best post on this thread.

mind-boggling.

I'll admit EB shrinks in comparison to something like North Country, which actually takes an interest in its children, has no stock townies, and makes its trial almost an afterthought to activism. But I guess I will always be on board for The Julia Roberts Show in some form--unless that means sitting through Ocean's 12 again.

Read Jon Lee Anderson's Che biography before you decide it wouldn't make a great movie. Hope it's Reds/Godfather II-long, too.

-- Andy K (xndkx...), September 16th, 2003 9:42 AM. (Andy K) (link)

Must've been posted after the first or second episode.

Directed by:
Michelangelo Antonioni
Steven Soderbergh
Kar Wai Wong

Anyone seen this? Apparently a collection of 3 'erotic' short subjects. According to my friend, Soderbergh's contribution is comparable in style to Schizopolis.

oh, and I want to see the Limey. Gah, I just hate how so many of his movies just use enough of the tricks of good filmmaking to push over the horseshit. All the character exposition at the beginning of Brokovich was just to morph into A Civil Action For Women by act two.

For a bit of needed perspective, see Kim Il Jong.

I'm no Star Wars dude or anything, but I noted that after Soderbergh ripped the Right Stuff Sally Rand fan dance with the fountain scene in 11, this time around we get Isabel, I am your father and the cantina scene (the music, even) at the end.

BEST. MOVIE. EVER.

ru crazy, i still want my money back for ocean's 12

i walked out of it hating liberal hollyweird

Ocean's 12 was the best of the three.

maybe, i didn't see it in the theater tho, or tonite. did this one have a lot more subtle (or semi-subtle) stuff than the last two?

What I liked best about the second is that they didn't even pretend that the caper(s) made sense. It was just Hollywood Glamour by way of Godard in pretty locales. This one's shot in the same way, but there's less room for the characters riffing together and having fun.

This one was actually a pretty effective pop heist movie (where the first one pulled a lame switcheroo and the second one just didn't bother), but very little made an impression (Pacino was ill-used, too much time examining the mechanics, far too little Eddie Izzard).

but the scenes in Mexico were pretty awesome.

Damon's daddy reveal/role should have been more explosive, though. You could see it coming a mile away, and I wanted him to be a bigger personage (politician/head of the FBI/something).

NO TOPHER GRACE NO CREDIBILITY

i thought the heist in this one sucked

s 'bubble' any good? why is mark romanek the commentator on the dvd? i'm intrigued.
-- The Man Without Shadow (Enrique), Monday, 30 January 2006 14:16 (1 year ago) Link

last thing romanek actually did?

i hate every movie this fucker's been involved with

NO TOPHER GRACE NO CREDIBILITY

haha! but armen weitzman was pretty good, no? plus, the return of vincent cassel? jerry weintraub as the lead whale? David Paymer!

What I liked best about the second is that they didn't even pretend that the caper(s) made sense. It was just Hollywood Glamour by way of Godard in pretty locales. This one's shot in the same way, but there's less room for the characters riffing together and having fun.

oh i don't know about making no sense. otherwise yeah, maybe, but the snippets were still pretty fun this time around. and mexico. and all the old-vegas/hollywood/reuben stuff. and roman-greco/analog-digital. and george&brad as women/the charity/oprah. the real-life/relationship stuff. "Fender Roads"

every time i try to watch one of these ocean's movies i fall asleep in the middle and wake up at the end completely bewildered.

actually this happened with the bourne movies too. maybe it's matt damon

i agree that Caldwell pere wasn't all it could have been (maybe that's for 14? that wasn't telegraphed or anything), but the Linus stuff remained pretty fun

i saw the first 'oceans', it was pointless shit, and it's a kind of "phenomenon" now, and in thirty years god help us, clip shows will look upon it as the acme of 00s cool, for serious. the lame thing about soderbergh is that his 'one for them, one for me' strategy doesn't actually lead to very exciting 'one for me projects'. i say this having not bothered with 'bubble', 'the good german', or that self-referential one, but the point stands. i liked 'out of sight', it had a fine cast, but at this stage that's about as much enthusiasm as i can summon. may be i should 'rescreen' some. maybe not though, there's only so much time on this earth.

Everything Soderbergh I've seen is shit, except Schizopolis which I guess is like his one fluke, as it's pretty much genius. I'm not sure how that worked out.

Saw Erin Brockovich again a few weekends ago; it holds better than any of his others (save Out of Sight).

something about his style just flattens everything. all the jump cuts and ppl talking over each other comes off as planned and over rehearsed, just like the heist itself, they've planned everything in advance and are just going through the motions being pleased with themselves & only concerned about looking cool. what godard i've seen is reckless and exuberant, like they don't know what'll happen next. steven soderbergh, proof that cool is over.

saw oceans 13 last night and thought it was incredibly shit. i think soderburgh is just making whatever gets him a cheque at this point. didnt really laugh once in the whole film (ok maybe once) but found the whole thing too smug in its 'coolness'. and the pastiched 70s soundtrack was even worse.

also pacino just seemed to barely be trying as the hotel owner, and izzard just seemed deeply uninteresting, flat and devoid of personality. i know im meant to find this sort of film 'smooth' but i just found it a bit irritating in its complete and total lack of rough edges (narrative or visual).

are there really people who look at clooney & co and think that they either are, or are trying to be, 'cool'?

yes. many, many people.

i know im meant to find this sort of film 'smooth' but i just found it a bit irritating in its complete and total lack of rough edges (narrative or visual).

Why is this bad?

seemed a bit smug.

i dont *hate* soderburgh though. i still really like sex lies and videotape. i think i liked traffic too, even if i remember it being a bit heavy handed.

The first person to ask me for my opinion mentioned something about hoping it was too overdone. Overdone? That's the damn point of the franchise!

So the Oprah shit carried a fair amount of disdain for her antics, or was it just me laughing?

i don't know i actually love some of his stuff... Traffic, Brockovich, Ocean's 11, all of that stuff really, really satisfied me. Esp Erin Brockovich, which i own and love

i actaully own Traffic too

People expecting this to somehow not be a cross between an Altman ensemble piece and James Bond are seriously misinformed

I liked Solaris an awful lot, along with Ocean's Eleven. And Out of Sight.

caught the end of Ocean's Eleven last night and could not but feel: such banter and panache, such self-pleasuring cinematic ease. I was deeply impressed anew somehow, and felt that David Thomson must love this picture - especially with its sentimental efforts to admire a pensive or conflicted Julia Roberts. But maybe he doesn't. It just felt like he should.

yeah he doesn't.

will he like his 2 Che films tho

He REALLY doesn't.

(xpost)

The semi-subtle this-is-what's-happening-in-America/the-world nods seemed more prominent in 13, as noted above, but they've also jumped out at me more in my, ahem, rescreening of the earlier films.

If pf likes the end of 11 (or the Venetian scene in 13), he should see the original, also referenced above.

Well, Sex, Lies, and Videotape holds up better than I thought.

has a call-girl movie coming out in May, shot w/ newer version of the Che HD camera.

we shot our movie on that!

And real porn stars, no?

xp

Real porn stars are hurting from free porn downloads so any work is good.

Real porn stars are paid to be hurting tho so it's all good.

http://jezebel.com/5234491/the-girlfriend-experience-blurs-the-line-between-fantasy-reality

his quotes here make him sound like a fucking moron.

it might make a better film than 'che' at least.

This doesn't sound very good.

Hey in schizopolis, there's a segment where they start speaking in grammatical descriptions of the dialogue instead of actual dialogue, but I heard a similar thing put on by a comedy? troupe on this american life -- was this tribute or outright pilfering?

Glenn Kenny on his role in The Girlfriend Experience:

http://www.theauteurs.com/notebook/posts/672

(now I don't have to be tempted to report what I overheard him say about it in a screening room)

COME ON

did u see it?

no.

Nothing spectacular, he just said what I'm sure will be in these two articles.

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/girlfriend_experience/news/1822420/five_favorite_films_with_adult_film_star_sasha_grey

there didn't seem to be anything particularly revealing or surprising in those posts

lol ebert (four * review): Chelsea is played by Sasha Grey. She is 21. Since 2006, according to IMDb, she's made 161 porn films, of which only the first title can be quoted here: "Sasha Grey Superslut." No, here's another, which makes me smile: "My First Porn #7." I haven't seen any of them, but now I would like to see one, watching very carefully, to see if she suggests more than one level.

lol i did not know that was glenn kenny in that scene. think he should star in a biopic of jim toback

movie was ok liked it lots more than che

In Skittish Hollywood, Stars Can’t Save ‘Moneyball’

By MICHAEL CIEPLY, NY Times

LOS ANGELES — In a production office here, at least a couple of would-be film workers were still hanging around on Monday, hoping in vain to score with their troubled baseball movie “Moneyball.”

But they had swung, and missed.

The powers at Sony Pictures, which was supposed to finance the film, and the Creative Artists Agency, whose prize client Brad Pitt had agreed to star in it, were, meanwhile, wrapping up a rhubarb with the director Steven Soderbergh, a clutch of producers and each other. This followed Sony’s decision to halt the picture just days before shooting was to have begun in Los Angeles, Oakland and Phoenix last week.

The last-minute demise of a high-profile film project, especially one starring an A-list star like Mr. Pitt, is Hollywood’s equivalent of a bridge collapse. Painful, expensive, and damaging to all involved, the spectacle is rare. It happened with “Used Guys,” a high-priced comedy at 20th Century Fox in 2006.

But such disasters — this one is estimated to have cost Sony $10 million in development and pre-production costs — may become more common as an increasingly nervous film business comes to terms with a sharp decline in home video revenue, the diminishing power of even the most popular stars to muscle their projects into production and new uncertainty over complicated bets like “Moneyball.”

“They’re much more careful about doing a movie just because a star wants to do it,” said Eric Weissmann, a long-time entertainment lawyer who recalled the days when Warner Brothers made a film, “An Enemy of the People,” based on an Ibsen play, largely because Steve McQueen wanted to do it.

“Moneyball,” which is based on a 2003 nonfiction book by Michael Lewis, is supposed to tell the story of Billy Beane, the Oakland Athletics general manager who figured out how to build a winning team on the cheap with players who were undervalued by the conventional measures of success in baseball.

Not hugely expensive — the budget was estimated at around $57 million — but not a small indie project, either, the film was of a sophisticated type that needs the cachet of a Soderbergh, the star power of a Pitt and perhaps Academy Awards potential to overcome its somewhat cerebral quality and the difficulty of attracting foreign viewers for American-based sports pictures.

But some of those elements collided in the last few weeks, increasing doubts that Hollywood — where specialty divisions like Warner Independent Pictures and Paramount Vantage have been closed or diminished — is losing its ability to deliver tricky but appealing pictures like “Good Night, and Good Luck” or “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” which earned Oscar nominations for George Clooney (as a director) and Mr. Pitt (as a star).

As of Tuesday, “Moneyball” was back in development, with Sony executives still hoping at some point to work with Mr. Pitt. But Mr. Soderbergh was off the project. And the studio was gearing up eventually to find someone who would direct something more like the version of the script written by the Oscar-winner Steven Zaillian than the rewritten version by Mr. Soderbergh that scuttled the project.

But that might bring problems of its own. One of the reasons Mr. Soderbergh made his script changes was to win the approval of Major League Baseball, which was not happy with some factual liberties in Mr. Zaillian’s version. Such approval is crucial in a reality-based baseball film that intends to use protected trademarks.

“Typically, on a film like this, we look at it for historical accuracy,” said Matthew Bourne, a public relations vice-president for Major League Baseball. “We’re been in touch with Soderbergh and Sony, and they’ve been receptive to our requests” Mr. Bourne said.

Representatives of Sony, Mr. Pitt, and Mr. Soderbergh all declined to discuss “Moneyball.” But accounts from more than a dozen people involved with the film, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid damaging professional relationships, described a process in which the heady thrill of a film rushing toward production was halted by a studio that was suddenly confronted by plans for something artier and more complex than it had bargained for.

A central player in the drama has been Amy Pascal, Sony’s co-chairman, and an executive known for taking a strong hand in the development of scripts. Ms. Pascal and her team became involved with “Moneyball” about six years ago, when a relatively untested producer, Rachael Horovitz, brought the book to Sony with a screenwriter, Stan Chervin, after virtually every other buyer in Hollywood had passed.

Stephen Rivele and Christopher Wilkinson — writers who had worked with Sony on pictures like “Ali” — also wrote a draft. Then Mr. Chervin returned to work with the director David Frankel, who opted to do “Marley & Me” instead.

Mr. Pitt, a fan of the book, meanwhile had become interested, putting the film on a fast track at Sony, which, hired Mr. Zaillian, another of the studio’s favorites, to do another rewrite, even as it agreed to bring on Mr. Soderbergh as the director.

While he has scored big with studio projects like the “Ocean’s Eleven” series with Mr. Pitt, Mr. Soderbergh remains one of Hollywood’s most self-consciously distinctive directors. He serves as his own cinematographer, often contributes to scripts and has worked lately on a series of challenging, low-budget films like his two-part “Che,” a Spanish-language movie that made its debut both in a small number of theaters and on pay-per-view.

Two weeks ago, a mismatch in both personal style and expectations proved fatal to “Moneyball.” Mr. Soderbergh, about a week before shooting, delivered his own revision of the script, which Sony executives saw as being far more documentary-like than Mr. Zaillian’s approach.

The executives, who had just seen disappointing results from “The Taking of Pelham 123” and “Year One,” rebelled.

It cannot have helped that the new script showed up just days after an announcement in Washington that Sony was about to begin an elaborate production by yet another studio favorite, the writer-director James L. Brooks, with Owen Wilson and Reese Witherspoon. The untitled new movie is a romantic comedy set in the world of — baseball.

The situation was particularly ticklish, given Mr. Pascal’s close professional relationship with Bryan Lourd, the Creative Artists partner who serves as one of Mr. Pitt’s agents. In a highly unusual arrangement, when the studio decided to pull the plug on Mr. Soderbergh’s film, it allowed representatives for him, Mr. Pitt and the producers a weekend-long window to shop the film to Paramount, where Mr. Pitt is closely allied with the studio chief, Brad Grey, and Warner, where both Mr. Pitt and Mr. Soderbergh have strong ties.

Both studios, however, immediately passed.

Through last week, the “Moneyball” team looked for a compromise that might restart the film, which was already weeks into its expensive prep period. But Fox, which also got a look, joined those who passed.

And by this week, the movie, at least in its current configuration, was dead. Mr. Pitt’s representatives had an eye out for his next picture. Mr. Soderbergh’s were looking for ways to assure that his valuable, if somewhat eccentric, career, would not be harmed by the debacle.

And those who looked forward to “Moneyball,” the film, were waiting to see whether Hollywood might still figure it out.

“There’s a movie in there,” Mr. Wilkinson said on Monday. “But it’s a very unusual movie.”

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

god $57 million for a frickin baseball executive movie?

is Dubya in it?

three cheers for sony imho. soderbergh's personal/serious/arty films have a very low strike rate.

the informant looks pretty dece.

yeah i was lollin at the informant trailer

max, $57 M is dirt-cheap for any Brad Pitt-starring film.

enrique, you're such a pro-shit scumbag.

sorry, I meant cad, not max xxxp

so you enjoyed 'che', 'full frontal', 'the good german'?

apparently ss wanted to excise from the script anything that 'didn't really happen'. what a dick. soderbergh, you're fucking out.

what an asshole, wanting to make a movie that way.

wonder if erin brockovich was that sassy irl.

xp yeah i realize that pitt is commanding a lot of that i'm just continually bemused by how ppl need $57 million for a film that in terms of actual execution should need what--10? 15?

nice use of american baseball slang nrq

I'm guessing nrq wouldn't know a baseball if it struck him in the nutz. (and i'd love to test that)

I saw only Che of those, like the first half particularly. I quite liked Bubble and Solaris.

also cad, the budget for MLB licensing and shooting in ballparks ... this would be a early '00s period film, calling for quite a bit of FX to make the game transitions work...

If the script didn't stick to general facts, MLB might withdraw its co-op, which would kill the film (a different way).

ok, you are slowly convincing me....

I think the average studio pic budget is well over $100 mil, and even the avg Aniston romcom costs $60 M or more. (pre-advertising)

solaris is maybe the worst movie i've ever seen. soderbergh is overrated but his fans are more annoying than the movies he's been a part of imo.

i'm a fan of his! i think i'm kind of annoying too, but not overly so

what does that even mean xp

like ppl who wear steven soderbergh t-shirts?

i don't do that

artists who follow their muse will be "annoying" some of the time

who's worse, soderbergh fans or DMB fans???

Soderbergh fans joined forces with grieving MJ fans.

you know what that should have been "two people i didn't like who always brought up steven soderbergh in class as examples of 'post-modern' cinema in 2002." solaris still sucked so hard but i haven't seen very many of his other movies so idk honestly

steven soderbergh is ok but the fanfic writers are a little ott

Especially the mpreg stories.

i really wish ppl would EXPLAIN why things "suck so hard"

i foolishly GISed mpreg before checking wikipedia x-post

it's a remake of my favorite tarkovsky movie and one of my favorite movies of all time with george clooney in it, who drives me crazy, so admittedly i'm a little biased. i saw it years ago and i've forgotten specifics but i just remember feeling like it was the most pretentious and vacuous movie i'd ever seen.

Solaris is the Kid A of films. make of that what you will.
― Nordicskillz (Nordicskillz), Tuesday, March 11, 2003 6:54 AM (6 years ago) Bookmark

a movie about baseball, really

what a tragedy for movies about baseball

I cannot join the contrarians in praising The Informant!, which strains to be a satire of something or other (the corporate culture of theft, I wish). Matt Damon's bipolar voiceover wore me out before his Bruce McCullochization. I don't particularly understand all the bashing of the Marvin Hamlisch score, it just underlines the already smug vibe.

It was obnoxious. Scott Bakula and his hair were the only saving graces.

I did get The Girlfriend Experience today.

*instant rimsh...wait that sounds wrong.

I liked Bakula! Tom Smothers slipped by unnoticed; I did spot his brother.

So, is this the point where everyone comes to their senses and realises this man has never made a good film?

King of the Hill, Out of Sight, The Limey, Erin Brockovich, The Girlfriend Experience comprises an impressive achievement.

*comprise

watched "king of the hill" it was good i thought. also i correctly id'd a young katherine heigl! i never really knew she started so young

we all did

'out of sight' remains way more stylish and fun than i had assumed it wld - lol'd heartily throughout - everyone & everything in this is so charming that it sorta fucked me up that the end was so bloody & heartless

the cast in this is so stellar - head nods @ catherine keener and luis guzmán & the keaton cameo that nods to jackie brown - whole thing has a tremendous ease to it

If he'd made OOS now we'd all think he was in his Effortless Craftsman phase.

ru crazy, i still want my money back for ocean's 12

― A B C, Friday, June 8, 2007 11:55 PM (3 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i walked out of it hating liberal hollyweird

― A B C, Friday, June 8, 2007 11:56 PM (3 years ago) Bookmark

haha! ocean's 12 sucked but i did like the Kashmir scene

out of sight was the last time j-lo was really hot too... then she got a bunch of work done to make her look like a white girl

j-lo in out of sight is O_O esp when they put her in those little shorts and a dolphins jersey

i gotta watch oos again--my gf loves it but i never cared for it.

sex lies is still one of my faves and really the limey is too so i don't care what else this guy does.

Never loved sex lies like some ppl seemed to. Maybe I should watch it again. I do love Spader. OoS is really good.

It's true about Lopez, I think, in that film.

The Limey is super!

Love how well shot, written, and acted the scene in that lovely Detroit hotel bar is. You can taste the bourbon and smell J-Lo's perfume.

He is filming a "OH NOES FATAL VIRAL OUTBREAK IN METRO USA" film with O_o ensemble cast in SF right now called Contagion, looks to be v. similar to Outbreak (ensemble cast, shit film).

Didn't see this one coming, Steven Soderbergh to retire.

I posted a similar story on a diff thread last month

I mean, he's gotta be depressed that some people actually love the Ocean's movies

has he publicly downplayed them or admitted to being less proud of them than his other work?

NO, I COULD TELL BY WATCHING.

Clooney on Letterman a few years ago: "yep, we're doing Ocean's 12... (flashes grin) cuz Solaris bombed."

Not sure he'll actually follow through--Jay-Z retired, too, and so did Michael Jordan and Brett Favre, more than once. Neither am I really sure why he's unhappy. Of the four remaining films the article mentions, two are action/genre films, one's The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and the other's a biography of Liberace. The last could be interesting, the other three probably not. Is it that he wants to make stuff more like sex, lies & videotape and no one will let him? I thought he voluntarily veered into more commercially viable filmmaking with Out of Sight. I also thought he made enough money from that and the Ocean films that he can pretty much do what he wants anyway. Or is he just frustrated that no one goes to see his smaller films, like the quote above suggests? A whole lot of filmmakers better than him learned to live with that (don't get me wrong, I like some of his movies)...I find the story odd, but maybe I'm over-analyzing; maybe he's just tired.

I'd take the Oceans on either side of 12 over Inception anyday, as far as directors aiming for virtuoso editing.

He is apparently bored with the syntax of narrative filmmaking; Matt Damon quoted him saying something like "If I see one more over-the-shoulder shot I'll go crazy."

doesn't he have enough money to do whatever the hell he wants? he should go do that. whatever the hell it is he wants to do.

Soderbergh's one of the few guys who knows how to direct Conventional Hollywood Narrative, so he should stop overestimating his talents.

I mean, I wish more boilerplate as good as Erin Brockovich more often.

*wish he made

this is actually something i think you're right abt

yeah i always thought is best stuff was perfectly decent entertainment-making. he tries too hard with the arty thing. his arty stuff sweats too much.

Neither am I really sure why he's unhappy.

He's spoken about his frustration with 'the tyranny of narrative' before - I suspect that traditional storytelling based filmmaking just increasingly bores him.

nevermind, morbs already said that

he should try abstract noodle art.

this is actually something i think you're right abt

ha "actually"!

this is way better than Traffic, by the way:

http://img.designswan.com/2009/Art/noodleArt/2.jpg

oops

The Girlfriend Experience was his best 'experimental' film and fortunately it was less than 80 minutes long.

this is way better than Traffic, by the way:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_WdZilHfMq6U/TRj2EK6IaPI/AAAAAAAAAyY/rm0JEFBDJJo/s1600/noodle+art+2+tutorial.jpg

he should try abstract noodle art.

He says he's going to be painting and doing photography so it may still happen.

damn, design swan got some tight security on their noodle art...

guy has a pretty high productivity rate -- at least one full-length film as a director a year since '98, often 2 a year -- and in the announcement he talks about how much work he's been turning down lately, so whether or not it sticks as a permanent retirement i can kinda see why'd want to publicly just shut the whole thing down and stop getting job offers.

he should make Transformers 3 if he hates narrative so much

I still like sex, lies & videotape a lot. When Soderbergh broke through with Out of Sight, Erin Brockovich, and Traffic, I remember him saying something somewhat dismissive of the earlier film, like he'd finally figured out that people don't want to see stuff like sex, lies & videotape...I don't recall the exact quote, but I remember thinking, "Sorry that you feel that way--some of us want to see that stuff." Wonder where he stands on that now. (I may have mangled the quote--his comment may have been specifically aimed at Kafka--but I don't think so.)

I found this in a NYT article from 1998, when he was cleaning up with Out of Sight: "Yes," he said one afternoon recently at his production office in Hollywood. "I had a bad case of my 20's, of being overly serious. And now I feel better at my job than I was." I don't know if that's the exact quote I had in mind--doesn't seem all that bad. Still, I like the "overly serious" sex, lies & videotape better than Out of Sight or Traffic (haven't seen Erin Brockovich), even though I realize Out of Sight would win a three-way poll handily.

it's funny, I don't remember a single thing about SL&V except for Andie McDowell talking to a video camera.

she lied to the camera, i'm pretty sure

i think i've watched ocean's 11 like a million times and i always love it

Peter Gallagher's hilarious as the idiot husband. I also like Spader; most people'd find him insufferable. And Laura San Giacomo's yum-yum. (In general, I think it's a much funnier film than its reputation would have it.)

sex, lies, and videotape is a pretty conventional indie film though -- even for its time! I wouldn't put it in the experimental camp.

Traffic is failed agitprop. I was one of those guys fooled for a few weeks into thinking the fun Erin Brockovich was the less 'serious' film.

All the actors are first-rate in SLV. I could forgive casting agents thinking Andie McDowell had talent.

Maybe it wasn't experimental formally, but it was still, from how I remember it, a much different film than most everything in theaters at the time. (What were the comparable indie films? I remember 1989 as Rain Man and Working Girl and all that.) It felt like an early-70s film to me. Not a good thing for everyone; for me, high praise.

it's funny, I don't remember a single thing about SL&V except for Andie McDowell talking to a video camera.

― garage rock is usually very land-based (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, March 14, 2011 4:30 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark

haha same - i remember james spader changing into jeans in a gas station bathroom and that's it

The characters drink a lot of iced tea.

Maybe it wasn't experimental formally, but it was still, from how I remember it, a much different film than most everything in theaters at the time. (What were the comparable indie films? I remember 1989 as Rain Man and Working Girl and all that.)

Spike Lee, Nancy Savoca, Jarmusch, etc had all made splashes before SLV. I'm not diluting Soderbergh's triumph: Ameri-indie needed an avatar. And I do like the movie (I own it). But SLV is a first film in the good and not so good sense: it's clever, facile, beholden to ill-considered ideas about sex and women. He was a better filmmaker by the time he made Out of Sight; he learned to trust how an actress like Jennifer Lopez can sip bourbon thoughtfully and say everything about sex without dialogue.

oh god jlo in that movie..............................oof. he could make movies that are nothing but jlo sipping beverages thoughtfully for the rest of his life and i would be happy.

is jennifer lopez supposed to be a good actress? i saw this movie on a flight once where she was having a sperm donor baby

She was great in Anaconda.

jk she was awful. No she's not a good actress.

ill-considered ideas about sex and women

I knew there was something I connected with in that film...Personally, I consider SLV more experimental than Do The Right Thing (which I like). There are aspects of Do the Right Thing that make it very much an audience film; for better or worse, SLV is not that. Clever and facile...well, I don't want to get into an Up in the Air thing all over again; I don't think there's anything especially facile about SLV. (Clever in the pejorative sense, probably, to the extent that it's entire storyline is the kind of thing that only exists in the movies...which is okay, because it's a movie.)

I have a feeling I would like SLV much now.

wouldn't, rather

Do the Right Thing isn't particularly experimental, it's just really really good

Is SLV really that experimental?

No.

Whether J-Lo is a good actress is beside the point, really. Soderbergh used her well, and she delivered.

same for Andie McDowell.

clemenza, you've got a different idea about 'seventies film' than I do. American seventies films were a lot more sensual and crowdpleasing than SLV, which is closer to the spirit of a Rohmer thing.

same for Sasha Grey.

same for Julia Roberts.

Out of Sight is a really well cast movie period.

clemenza, you've got a different idea about 'seventies film' than I do.

We probably do, yes.

When I say SLV is experimental, I don't mean it's Michael Snow or Stan Brakhage or anything like that; I meant in relation to, I don't know, The Accidental Tourist and other acclaimed American films of the day. It does some somewhat unusual stuff with the videotaping scenes. That's all.

ha, not being very crowdpleasing was v much a new hollywood thing, look at the box office for many of the most revered ones

Compared to the Accidental Tourist, the Muppets Take Manhattan was experimental.

Great line, but I'll stand by my point that SLV is not a conventional film.

I'd rather use the term provocative than experimental.

Watched it again recently and it holds up well. Spader 4 lyfe.

haha same - i remember james spader changing into jeans in a gas station bathroom and that's it

― ℳℴℯ　❤＼(◕‿◕✿ (Princess TamTam), Monday, March 14, 2011 8:44 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

what about laura san giacomo's boobs?

I wish...if you've seen some director's cut I'm not aware of, please let me know.

IIRC she doesn't take him out, but does wear a lot of impressive tank tops

we do get to see her booTs however

http://www.celebarazzi.com/content/Thumbnails/L/Laura_San-Giacomo/Laura_San_Giacomo_Sex_Lies_02.jpg

I love the contrast between Spader's acting and his mullet.

Soderbergh talks more about retiring and all.

And the trailer for Haywire (the spy movie with Gina Carano) is out: http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/independent/haywire/

huh, weird. it looks like it was made very cheaply. and it almost looks like a pastiche of a straight-to-video action film.

soderbergh is very smart. he reminds me of hal hartley in how in interviews he comes across as a bit self-regarding and pompous but also as very unsentimental and hard-nosed. and extremely smart and articulate. i actually think they have a lot in common -- both seem to view movies mostly in terms of the possibilities for visual invention. and both see filmmaking as largely a question of problem-solving. that's part of the "hard nosed" bit.

that said i seldom find in soderbergh's films the sort of moment-to-moment inventiveness that i find in the best hartley films (mostly from the early 1990s). too often his visual intelligence seems put in the service of these kind of half-baked "schemes" that are somewhat interesting to contemplate but don't provide a great deal of visceral pleasure.

his statement that he feels bored with mainstream narrative filmmaking should probably be taken at face value--he's bored. but it's hard not to find it a bit hubristic. i mean, lots of great filmmakers never seemed to get bored with narrative filmmaking. it can't be because they were necessarily less intelligent than soderbergh. what he's really admitting here is not the limit of narrative filmmaking but his own limits as a filmmaker. he'd probably own up to that too, but because he doesn't frame it that way he comes across as pretentious.

i was going to say, i can see "pastiche of a straight-to-video action film" being another one of soderbergh's "concepts," much like "erin brokhovich" was very self-consciously him "doing" an inspiring movie-of-the-week thing.

to clarify, maybe: both hartley and soderbergh openly discuss thinking about films in terms of their graphic potential, in terms of the image.

his statement that he feels bored with mainstream narrative filmmaking should probably be taken at face value--he's bored. but it's hard not to find it a bit hubristic. i mean, lots of great filmmakers never seemed to get bored with narrative filmmaking.

i know, right? this is my least favorite thing for a filmmaker to say, i think. it infuriates me. i get bored with YOU, steven soderbergh!

in communist russia... etc.

and Soderberg has proven an expert in narrative filmmaking (sex, lies, and videotape, Erin Brockovich).

i agree, he's made some excellent films -- it's just an odd thing to say that he feels that he's exhausted the format. i believe he's sincere, and probably humble about it too, but it comes across as hubristic just the same.

i think you're allowed to be bored by something that other people didn't get bored by

no

not allowed

it doesnt bother me because i dont think hes saying other people are suckers for being into narrative filmmaking - i think there are infinitely more obnoxious ways he could go about saying that he's bored with directing

also yeah that trailer looks *exactly* like a DTV action movie except with big stars. it's one of the more surreal trailers ive seen in recent memory actually

yeah it seems like a category error

anyway yeah sorry don't know why i went on and on about that quote. he seems like a decent, sincere sort who's only saying that he himself is a bit bored with what he's been up to.

I've been seeing this guy at my lab a lot recently. People are ridiculously deferential to him and he drives a beaten up old VW bug.

So, there you go

that's because he's driving the original herbie.

is that a euphemism

pass the herbie from the left hand side

Off to join Bill Watterson or something.

Passive aggressive notes

this reminded me how much i enjoyed getting away with it.

seeing the byline reminded me how much i don't enjoy dan kois

well yes that article is a list of glib thoughts and anecdotes. but the book is good!

yeah it's a good book. i didn't read the article. tbh im not even sure if i've ever read anything by dan kois except the one where he says foreign movies are for posers, which i power-skimmed.

poser.

schizopolis is ~10x better than it has any right to be

Kent Jones does a fine takedown of Kois in the new Film Comment

is there a soderbergh poll?

shd leave it till he's retired / haywire has come out

sure, just wondering if i'd missed the thread

that would have been a disaster

steven soderPOLLgh is the one to search for

Getting Away With It is very smart and enjoyable and one of the main reasons I'll always give Soderbergh the benefit of the doubt.

Sad irony having that Slate article slathered in ads for Moneyball.

I don't have a problem with ranking OOS and The Limey as his beset, and Kois is OTM about Traffic and his Best Director Oscar ("it's a helpful reminder that, to the Academy, "best directing" usually means 'most directing'").

sex lies & videotape is still brilliant imo

although weirdly for such an important film, it doesnt seem to have retained its stature

http://timeoutchicago.com/arts-culture/film/15082547/steven-soderbergh-interview

hm, re-editing 'kafka' sounds interesting i guess?

glad hes not into super-quick-cutting action steez

Did not know his new flick stars Gina Carano. Infinitely more interested in seeing it now.

new flick looks *~dope~*

heard bad things

don't care

Soderbergh should make another "Schizopolis," not this commercial garbage. He's been a whore since he started working with George (C)loon(e)y.

consider yourself 'snapped', george, if you're reading tonight

http://www.celebitchy.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/wenn3103499.jpg

AV Club liked it

http://latimesherocomplex.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/haywire1.jpg?w=600&h=379

official ilx thread for steven soderbergh's haywire starring gina carano and bearded antonio banderas

I put this in the Side Effects thread too:

http://www.vulture.com/2013/01/steven-soderbergh-in-conversation.html

thanks for that, great interview

When I hear people talk about 2025, I’m like, this could all turn into Mad Max a lot sooner than that! I was talking to Dr. Larry Brilliant, who consulted on Contagion, and I asked him, “Does the world seem to be spinning out of control as fast as I think it is?” And he said, “Oh, yeah.”

i admire this dude's relentless work ethic

bummed Che went off of netfilx before i got around to watching them

Che is great.

and i've caught Contagion so many times on HBO that I've begun to think of it as a kind of minor masterwork.

I love Soderbergh interviews. The one time I talked to him he was a blast. Love that even he recognizes "Out of Sight" as his one movie where absolutely everything seemed to go right, 100%. Even the timing, which he had nothing to do with. If he made the exact same movie today, it would not be the same, because Clooney and Lopez now are totally different creatures.

ive only seen about half of his films but i've liked them all

"getting away with it" covers exactly that out of sight timing thing, but as a diary as it happened. recommended.

"But an alarming thing I learned during Contagion is that the people who pay to make the movies and the audiences who see them are actually very much in sync. I remember during previews how upset the audience was by the Jude Law character. The fact that he created a sort of mixed reaction was viewed as a flaw in the filmmaking. Not, 'Oh, that’s interesting, I’m not sure if this guy is an asshole or a hero.' People were really annoyed by that. And I thought, Wow, so ambiguity is not on the table anymore. They were angry."

great interview!

apparently I've seen 18 of his features and only actively disliked The Informant! But that was certainly a gutsy attempt at, well, something.

I enjoyed it, because I had read the book and appreciated the fact that Soderbergh transformed what was a metaphorical farce into an actual farce. Also, Matt Damon's mustache.

Dr. Larry Brilliant?

it helps when farce is funny.

Lawrence "Larry" Brilliant is an American physician, epidemiologist, technologist, author, and the former director of Google's philanthropic arm Google.org.

Loved the informant

Helps when farce is funny, but I'll take simply silly in a pinch.

prefer Schizopolis and The Girlfriend Experience.

Co-sign on the former, but the latter is "Bubble"-level lark.

Bubble's a good one too -- but a lark?

I do like how Soderbergh clearly flips channels, surfs the web, etc., finds some neo-actor who intrigues him and builds a movie around her. Oh, look at this extreme porn star! I'll make a movie around her. Hey, check out this extreme fighter? I'll make a movie around her. Hey, check out this host of some E! show! I'll date her!

Lark in the sense that it was at least partly an experiment - can I whip together this ultra-low budget film with no stars and then find an alternative distribution method?

Wait, he married Jules Asner? Good for him.

comedian friend's FB status: "Saw SIDE EFFECTS tonight -- outside of some rectal bleeding, I loved it!"

Whose rectum was bleeding? Your friend's?

He should see a doctor, and be sure to tell the theatre to throw a towel over that seat.

The Girlfriend Experience and MM my favorites of the last ten years.

I preferred Haywire to MM, in fact I generally prefer his smaller 'experiments', such as The Girlfriend Experience, to the likes of Contagion and The Informant!. sex, lies and videotape and Out of Sight are still his best work, though, I'd say.

GFE directors cut is much better than the original

wow http://www.latimes.com/features/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-steven-soderbergh-12-hour-john-barth-adaptation-james-greer-20130402,0,3573297.story

Soderberg can't be worse than Gus van Sant, who seems to have no particular aptitude towards movie-making.

The adaptation was done, at least in part, by James Greer, the novelist and former Guided by Voices bassist who lives in Los Angeles when not on tour with his band Détective.

Surely one of the most impressive rock critic to film tales since Crowe. Spin mag, Kim Deal fiance, bassist in GBV, novelist, screenwriter ...

Interesting - I read that for a class in college.

He actually came to meet with my freshman writing class, it was kinda cool (Barth, that is).

psyched for this (i mean, if it actually materializes ever)

love that book

Finally caught up with Magic Mike. Surprisingly well made and good looking (not just taking about the cast here); he actually seems invested in this film rather than seeming, as he so often does to me, like he's tossing it all together so he can get on to the next thing. Saying this is Tatum's best performance probably sounds like faint praise, but he's really good in this film. His scenes with the sister and especially the one in the bank are terrific.

https://vimeo.com/65060864

Transcript:
http://www.deadline.com/2013/04/steven-soderbergh-state-of-cinema-address/

thank you so much eazy. no way i was gonna watch a 40-minute lecture, but 10 minutes of text i can handle (take that, cinema). a wonderful read. <3 soderbergh. this was particularly interesting, and i'm half surprised he didn't go on to make the obvious comparison. would have been gauche, i suppose:

But let’s sex this up with some more numbers. In 2003, 455 films were released. 275 of those were independent, 180 were studio films. Last year 677 films were released. So you’re not imagining things, there are a lot of movies that open every weekend. 549 of those were independent, 128 were studio films. So, a 100% increase in independent films, and a 28% drop in studio films, and yet, ten years ago: Studio market share 69%, last year 76%. You’ve got fewer studio movies now taking up a bigger piece of the pie and you’ve got twice as many independent films scrambling for a smaller piece of the pie. That’s hard. That’s really hard.

He's started tweeting a novel, but the tweets before the novel (when his account was probably private or anonymous) are more fun:

https://twitter.com/Bitchuation

@Bitchuation 1 Apr
Does Stanley Crouch? Did Edith Sitwell? What will Joyce Cary? Is Conrad Aiken? Did Gene Fowler? Was Anita Loos? Was Arthur Freed?

Transcript:
http://www.deadline.com/2013/04/steven-soderbergh-state-of-cinema-address/

that was great

Soderbergh re-edits Psycho, combining the original and the Van Sant remake:

http://extension765.com/sdr/15-psychos

I like a lot of his movies and always appreciate his comments, etc. but I get the feeling that he would hate me.

it's just that so often he says something like "you know who's really the worst? these guys!"

and i think, "i'm totally one of those guys"

:(

interesting

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4H2rbxgbQo

yeah he's admitted this several times -- this was his turning point, he says, but really not much has changed

I suspect Traffic will be unwatchable in a few decades. It's like Stanley Kramer + Alan Pakula.

― Amateurist (amateurist), Tuesday, March 11, 2003 11:29 AM (11 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

if by "decades" you meant within 10 years of coming out, then you are OTM.

it's like crash with cartels and freebasing white girls. I liked it when I saw it but I think I was mostly impressed by the attempt box the execution of the attempt isn't that interesting. the directing is better than the script but neither are as good as a few of the performances, which aren't given much to work with so aren't THAT good. it's funny how it plays now be soderbergh strikes me as a director of fairly breezy and confident films whereas this just trudges along. I'd probably watch any of the Ocean's movies before this now.

not to mention Erin Brockovich

attempt box? *attempt because

He has an Off-Broadway show opening at the Public, written by Scott Z. Burns (The Informant!).

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/reviews/2014/04/07/140407goli_GOAT_theatre_als

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOXbU8TOZVM

^^Trailer for new Cinemax miniseries.

so has anyone seen it?

http://www.vulture.com/2014/07/review-the-knick-soderbergh-cinemax.html

It debuts on friday night and has garnered some early doors hyperbole, one critic comparing it to Deadwood!

deadwood wasn't so great.

just watched che. a great film, i thought, within the limitations of the style.

Deadwood was p damn good, Che a bit less than that

This thread title is up there with "Glenn fucking Greenwald."

didnt this guy retire like five years ago

his movies are usually fun to watch some are bad a few are pretty good, out of sight is great

psyched

https://38.media.tumblr.com/44a94dc662d4412f05dd259a848c783e/tumblr_mwybxrwJkW1qedb29o1_500.gif

he's a great interview subject; one constant in life is that I will always read a Steven Soderbergh interview.

The Knick looks quite promising from the first episode, even though I was struggling with the extremely graphic cutting and sewing scenes. The less said about the opening caesarean section scene the better really. The violent foul-mouthed ambulance driver and the nun are my fave characters so far.

i couldn't tell if the gore was just matter of fact (can't really have a show featuring a surgeon and not have some gore) or sort of self-congratulatory in the typical quality-pay-cable way. i guess i'll need to see a few more episodes.

the decision to have a racist protagonist and an extremely upright black supporting character is also a little modish, i think. it might have been wiser to have the protagonist be a little more casually racist, rather than vehemently racist. by wiser i suppose i mean, more interesting. but i'm not a TV writer.

also apparently a spawn of Bono is in this? i really don't like to think about Bono procreating.

I am confused as I could've sworn I saw this was shown on HBO but everything says this is a Cinemax show

don't ask me, i watched it on youtube

Cinemax is owned by hbo I think. Or they're owned by the same company or whatever. Anyways, hbo aired it to spread the word b/c who watches cinemax.

they are owned by HBO, which is owned by time warner.

not gonna watch any show about surgery sry folks not gonna happen

I dbl dog dare u

no way surgery is hella gross

i love watching surgery, but i have a pretty strong stomach.

http://th09.deviantart.net/fs70/150/f/2012/029/8/e/we_got_a_bad_ass_over_here_by_multipettan-d4nz1uj.jpg

i like surgery scenes in movies, but really only like battlefield surgery or that scene in 'ronin' with the bullet or that scene in 'the killer' with the gunpowder and the cigarette and the bullet wound.

not into any sort of surgery or puss poop blood puke

soundtrack for the knick is dope

Why is this series on Cinemax instead of its corporate cousin HBO?

Well, it was an ego problem. I asked (HBO boss) Michael Lombardo, when I called him on the phone, if it would be OK if we would be on Cinemax because I, frankly, in the midst of understanding that they were sort of reorienting that brand, wanted to be the big kid at a small school, and as it happened, Michael said, "Actually that would really work well for us." And I'm glad that that did work for them because it allowed for a smaller teacher-to-student ratio in the sense that it was really me and (HBO miniseries exec) Kary Antholis having a conversation, and that was it. I mean, it was just the two of us, and I really enjoyed that. It was efficient, and it was fun, so it all for me creatively worked out perfectly.

i'm going to marathon Soderbergh, all of his films in 3 weeks. wish me luck.

I'd like to see "The Limey" again. TELL 'IM I'M FAHKING COMING"

you left out six Ns and a couple Gs

Not a marathon actually, I'm doing it as one day one Soderbergh film and so I started with Out of Sight, which is formidable. J-Lo had such potential as an actress.

keep expecting clive owen to say "eeeeeeeeranu"

Out Of Sight is movie of the week in Dissolve

http://thedissolve.com/features/movie-of-the-week/720-out-of-sight-stayed-true-to-its-source-by-taking-l/

fair dos

So I decided to watch everything Soderbergh ever did and so far the worst film by far is Side Effects, this film is terrible. Absolutely terrible. The first half hour is great and then it's a huge plan crash.

haha yeah that one really went down the tubes with the murderous lesbians and everything. it was like a bad 90s erotic thriller plot.

*queues up side effects*

Even Soderbergh’s filmmaking owes a debt to the rhythms of Leonard’s prose. Leonard portrays Karen’s riposte after she takes down Kenneth, one of Maurice’s henchmen, with these words: “‘You wanted to tussle,’ Karen said, ‘we tussled.’” Soderbergh’s film keeps the line and ends the scene with one of several freeze frames he deploys throughout Out Of Sight. Here, it serves much the same function as the “Karen said,” interruption, pausing the moment to emphasize the competence and authority with which Karen handles the situation. Kenneth didn’t get exactly what he asked for, but he got what was coming to him, and like Leonard, Soderbergh draws out the moment by one delicious beat.

otm

Side Effects is wonderful b-movie sleaze! The batshit-ness of it all is classic!

No by far his worst film is Waking Life

wait, i got my wires crossed

It would be if he'd directed it instead of Linklater.

Realizing I haven't even seen half of Soderbergh's movies, but Side Effects is still magnificent stupid entetainment

So far I'd say:

Make a golden statue in yr city's biggest park for:
Out of Sight
Traffic

Deeply satisfying stuff:
Haywire
Ocean's Eleven
Ocean Thirteen
Magic Mike

The very definition of meh:
Ocean Twelve

Burn it down and bury the ashes on a mountain:
Side Effects

I have a lot to go still: tonight it's Erin Brockovich, then I'll do the scary SL&V ->Schizopolis part of his career.

The Limey is good stuff, especially if you liked Point Blank

the informant is great

^my choice for his worst.

haven't seen King of the Hill in 20 years, liked that quite a bit.

The Knick is immediately one of the best shows on television btw

I would rank the Limey as his best

you know what film of his hasn't been mentioned once in this thread? this one.

http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/and-everything-is-going-fine

I can't bring myself to watch something that sounds so depressing

Gray's Anatomy isn't much more uplifting, at least now.

VHS- have you gotten to the girlfriend experience yet? Be sure you see the directors cut and not the theatrical cut.

traffic is such a huge piece of shit movie just unbelievable bad a corny

wow check out those filters and years before instagram too

side effects is cool too

traffic isn't that bad but its definitely bad

i think soderbergh's got kind of a light touch that works really well with a lot of if not most of his films and a sort of 'let's throw something together and see how it works' style, which paid off with something like 'the limey', but i think 'traffic' was the worst sort of project for his two styles.

dude likes wide shots of rooms more than i do

big fan of wide shots of rooms, its true. throw in some non-actors and i start swooning

idk if traffic is technically the worst movie but it is extremely stupid and lame

like to the extent that you wonder if its purposely insulting you

Oscar winner!

big fan of wide shots of rooms, its true. throw in some non-actors and i start swooning

― ╲╱\/╲/\╱╲╱\/\ (gr8080),

why I liked The Girlfriend Experience.

it's just an odd movie storywise too, it's like a really lurid afterschool special spliced together with a south of the border docudrama and a gritty episode of CSI san diego.

Saw a bit of Oceans 12 flipping channels and even that one has some fine wide shots of an Amsterdam rowhouse.

did the people who hated Traffic also see Traffik (the tv series on which it was based)? did they hate that too if so?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096716/

it's just an odd movie storywise too, it's like a really lurid afterschool special spliced together with a south of the border docudrama and a gritty episode of CSI san diego.

― LIKE If you are against racism (omar little), Tuesday, August 26, 2014 1:28 PM (37 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

its cool tho u can tell which one is which from the colors

big fan of wide shots of rooms, its true. throw in some non-actors and i start swooning

― ╲╱\/╲/\╱╲╱\/\ (gr8080),

why I liked The Girlfriend Experience.

― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, August 26, 2014 12:26 PM (4 minutes ago)

totally, but don't forget Bubble!

its cool tho u can tell which one is which from the colors

― lag∞n, Tuesday, August 26, 2014 12:30 PM (1 minute ago)

lol sadly otm

its cool tho u can tell which one is which from the colors

― lag∞n, Tuesday, August 26, 2014 10:30 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

my favorite story is the orange one tbh

i keep meaning to revisit haywire based on the buzz but he gave me all those actors i love and it was just like this lady who couldn't act in a room from far away and ugh i didn't trust him to go elsewhere, i know his kicks

this is what The Movies should always be like IMO.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCIXKzeaAAs

helloe tess

I'll step up to the mound and defend Traffic here. It's heavy handed both stylistically and thematically, for sure. However, I think what Soderbergh wanted to express is on the money on so many levels. He manages to tie so many things together, both very personal (what can one person do against addiction or corruption) and very political (how do we deal with Tijuana). I generally agree with his views on the drug trade: take care of the demand side of things, in a way that floats your boat. That notion found interesting echoes in his post-Lehman films about money and greed (Magic Mike, Haywire). I think its wise that you get to have clear stylistic distinction between all three sides of the trade itself: transportation, supply and demand and how they are all connected made me very hopeless and how Soderbergh find a way to get his character out of the situation without being too corny (at least to me) and I enjoyed that.

yeah, Traffic is not terrible even if it might be improved with the sound off.

Wolf of Wall Street IS terrible even if it might be improved with the sound off.

Traffic was solid, I had no misgivings at the time. "Heavy-handed" is accurate, I'll admit

Traffic was OK whenever Michael Douglas wasn't worried about his daughter and Benicio didn't dream about his ballpark.

Erin Brockovich has become my most watched Soderbergh.

traffic is hilarious, traffik is somber in the same way departed US is hilarious, departed HK is somber.

so what you're saying is that in Traffik, the humor is unintentional

traffik is pretty dour!

wolf of wall st def not one of soderbergh's best

it is def David O. Russell's best tho

http://www.vulture.com/2014/09/steven-soderbergh-the-knick-directing-race-riot.html

does the knick get less gory

not really, though the opening episode is a straight up "oh blood bothers you, GTFO" gutbucket. it never gets worse than that.

blaaahhhhh i guess i'll keep going until i explode

I have gotten quite hardened to the surgical scenes, that opening failed c section scene in ep1 is very disagreeable - that is probably the most troubling scene of the series.

syphilis nose way harder on my stomach than the c section

oh should i still be watching this? i kind of forgot about it!

are you a fan of syphilis nose

who isn't?

That the "comedy" Typhoid Mary subplot is the light relief in this series says a lot.

haven't seen traffic in like a decade, willing to believe it will suck on re-screening, but i always thought the closing eno-soundtracked scene was p cool

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNgvVVjgK68

Watch his "touched" version of 2001: A Space Odyssey:

http://extension765.com/sdr/23-the-return-of-w-de-rijk

anyone hear The Limey's commentary track?? sounds crazy.

http://www.avclub.com/article/the-new-cult-canon-ithe-limeyi-filmmaker-commentar-23702

it's been a long time since i heard it but i remember enjoying it and cringing in equal measure. it's like the polar opposite of the chummy, rambling john carpenter / kurt russell commentary tracks.

yes, it was A+.

yea I have, dobbs is a p crabby dude but its mostly good natured kvetching iirc

that's one of the best commentary tracks! probably the most illuminating one i've heard in terms of how a film is a kind of negotiation between competing authorships.... the robocop and starship troopers commentary tracks w/ verhoeven and neumeier are also englightening that way, though in those cases the principals seem less aware of what they're revealing.

i was just thinking yesterday of how 90% of commentary tracks are a waste of... time and space, i guess.

was listening to the commentary on the monte hellman double feature (shooting/ride in the whirlwind) and while there are a quite a few interesting anecdotes, almost none of them relate directly to what you're seeing onscreen. in that sense you have to appreciate it as two separate streams of information. on the video level, you're kind of re-experiencing the film, while on the audio level, you're hearing a bunch of people gab about the movie -- but the two seldom interact meaningfully.

the hal hartley/richard pena(?) commentary on godard's "hail mary" is another missed opportunity IMO. hartley is (well, /was/) one of the smartest Godard acolytes, who has a great fondess for JLG's 1980s work, so it should have been a gas. but it's clear that no preparation was done, no remarks were planned, so it really is just like eavesdropping on a not entirely enlightening conversation. it does help that pena (i think it's h im) has nothing of interest to say at all.

i should add that bill krohn and blake lucas, who "interview" hellman for the two commentary tracks i mentioned, have some interesting things to say but probably 70% of it is just bloviating and them floating dubious theories about the films' relationships to the western genre, most of which hellman tellingly just avoids responding to.

to bring this back to soderbergh, his commentary w/ john boorman on the point black dvd/blu-ray is great. soderbergh in general is kind of the master of commentary tracks, i'd say it should actually count as a key part of his body of work.

point BLANK

Yeah, the point blank track really is great

i wish more filmmakers were as good at /talking/ as soderbergh.

actually, hal hartley is a great talker, too, which is one reason his "hail mary" commentary was such a disappointment.

I'mm not a fan of them either – I only listen to them if I'm watching a movie a second or third time – but a top fiver for me is, of all things, Jack Nicholson's for The Passenger. Meticulous, consistently interesting, no trace of the Jack persona; the guy knows about composition, film history, etc.

yup, which makes it all the more regrettable that nicholson is nowhere to be found on the criterion of those hellman films, which he starred in and produced (and he wrote one of them!).

feel like soderbee is kinda underrated rn if anything

he's thanked in the liner notes btw, which probably means he helped out somehow--maybe he gave them a phone number or two--but bowed out of actively participating. which is a shame.

who know who is overrated? Gus Van Sant. I have no clue how a man so talentless at directing fumbled his way into a highly successful career.

i don't think he's talentless, but i think his best moves are stolen from other directors and that his choice of subject matter is positively vampirish.

but nobody really cares about gus van sant anymore, right?

boy the King of the Hill Blu-ray is gorgeous.

it's a really good movie! i love the ending, in particular.

did you watch the supplement where soderbergh talks about how terrible he thinks "the underneath" is?

I watched The Underneath and remembered how non-descript it is, a couple of acerbic exchanges and framings of actors around interior design aside. Peter Gallagher is so miscast.

Also: it's awkward! The hopscotching through time and space often breaks rhythms.

yeah, it looks really nice, though.

i remember good things about alison elliott's performance in that film but i don't know if that's an accurate memory.

Without his saying so it's totally a crisis movie: the kind of approach he'd abandon lest he turn hack-ish.

I can see why a studio would have endorsed the project: it's 1995, heist movies are big, the kid needs a hit. But the thing is humorless and faceless.

I missed this last winter: he's still really pleased with Ocean's 12

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/10/steven-soderbergh-oceans-12_n_6289914.html

He's a smart guy and he makes good points - O12 is not incompetent filmmaking. It just feels so profoundly superfluous, even by the standards of sequels, and so much of it feels so smug (iirc). Not fun but "fun." But it's all worth it for whatever review I read that pointed out the number of scenes where a tired Brad Pitt just sort of shows up on the periphery with a coffee cup, looking like he's coming off the childcare night shift.

I like his genre exercises of the last five years or so: Contagion was the weakest of the batch, but Haywire is fucking great, Magic Mike is one of those movies I'm afraid to go back and re-watch in case it's deflated, and Side Effects was great, too.

I'm sure the day I finally cave and buy The Limey on DVD they'll announce a Criterion Blu-Ray or something. So I'm waiting.

Soderbergh otm, Ocean's 12 was full of visual flair that never gets talked about.

http://www.vulture.com/2016/05/adam-driver-joins-soderberghs-logan-lucky.html

Steven Soderbergh will produce, with an eye to direct, a movie based on the infamous Panama Papers, the largest data leak in corporate and government history.

Lawrence Grey’s Grey Matter Productions acquired the feature film rights to the forthcoming book, Secrecy World, being written by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Jake Bernstein and published by Henry Holt and Company, and is teaming with Anonymous Content (“The Revenant,” “Spotlight,” “Babel”) to develop, finance and produce the film.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPzvKH8AVf0

On the eve of the release of Logan Lucky, I thought it amazing that he has s few good movies relative to profligacy.

Not many people like his Tarkovsky remake; it’s closer to a re-imagining, transforming the original Solaris into an exegesis on remembered melancholy, the kind bereft of — too cool even for — ghosts. His instinct for cutting the crap shows itself in sharp dissolves and and crisp editing that isolate George Clooney’s astronaut in the shallowness of his recollections. I haven’t watched it again since 2002 and I’m afraid to — this guy’s work often wilts from on second thoughts.

yeah, i was surprised by how much i enjoyed his solaris - i saw it not long after it came out, having just read the book for the first time, and it struck me as a decent interpretation of lem's themes, but i've never been motivated to go back to it laregly for the same reasons as you

i think out of sight is probably my favourite of his as far as rewatchability goes, mainly for the lead performances and elmore leonard's story, which is one of my favourites of his. the aggressive colour grading hadn't aged terribly well the last time i saw it, though, and david holmes' score seemed very much of its time

I am amazed at how few people I know who have still not seen Out of Sight. The one film of his formative years I think I still haven't seen is the Underneath, which if I recall correctly also has a radical color scheme and plays with time as well.

Ouch, too many double negatives in my post. Meant how many people I know who have not seen Out of Sight.

Soderbergh is correct to call The Underneath his crisis film. You can see him lose interest in this kind of movie and narrative approach.

He seems to go into crisis mode with some consistency. While I think most of his stuff is pretty middlebrow, he's a really smart guy, and I think sometimes struggles balancing his intelligence and perhaps more radical inclinations with his similar urge to entertain. Epitomized by stuff like this:

http://extension765.com/soderblogh/18-raiders

I recently re-watched the Oceans films with my older one, and the sheer half-assed indulgence of the second one still made me mad.

Preferring Magic Mike XXl doesn’t mean we weren’t relieved that Soderberg directed the male gaze at beautiful lunks in movement the first time around

as DOP and editor, Soderbergh is still directing the gaze on XXL

(whatever gender or orientation it is - XXL is obviously very intently concerned with the female gaze, but welcomes anyone to be part of it)

i'd be really interested to know more about how xxl was made - i find it hard to imagine soderbergh being on set with actors he's worked with before and being content to just concentrate on the photography

i dunno, maybe it felt like a holiday or something for him but for someone who usually acts as his own dp when directing i wonder how difficult it was to separate the two

(xxl is rad btw)

The abs also gaze

the abs really follow you around the room

I found Sex, Lies....almost unwatchably dated when I first saw it maybe 5-6 years ago

He's made plenty of "good" movies, Alfred, relative to output or not.

I LIKE DATED MOVIES

https://global-uploads.webflow.com/5919d6d68b5a6075f26e5f3f/591b124dcd9384478b51737a_cast_dwightYokam.jpg

^^ Dwight Yoakam in Logan Lucky, btw.

nice. he was underused in the Amazon show he did recently.

Again, I don't know what dated means.

He's made plenty of "good" movies, Alfred, relative to output or not.

― ice cream social justice (Dr Morbius), T

well, yeah, I found 10 of them, didn't I?

is there a logan lucky thread or are we doing that here?

Sunday Times profile

“I’ve really lost my interest as a director — not as a producer or viewer — in anything that smells important,” he said. “It just doesn’t appeal to me at all anymore. I left that in the jungle somewhere.”

Among the contemporaries whose work excited him, he singled out M. Night Shyamalan, the oft-derided suspense director. He has reinvigorated himself with recent movies like “The Visit” and “Split,” Mr. Soderbergh said, adding, “He went back to his roots and has rebuilt himself, and is right back where he was.”

People who think The Informant! is good confuse me.

https://www.theringer.com/movies/2017/8/15/16145880/steven-soderbergh-movies-ranked

Hoping to get to LL tom'w! Tatum with a gut, Driver with a prosthetic arm, Craig with an impenetrable accent!

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/4757-the-daily-steven-soderbergh-s-logan-lucky

I like Scott Bakula and the sepia tone off The Informant! and dat's dat.

I'm stuck between LL and Wind River.

hello i am watching the Limey at the moment
how do you do?

YOU TELL 'IM I'M COMIN'!

That film is so good

log lucky was ok, bit too oceans-y

I liked it, not usually into Soderbergh but it was fun

the answer to this thread title is still 'no'

https://www.theringer.com/movies/2017/8/15/16145880/steven-soderbergh-movies-ranked

From the 15-16 I've seen on that list, I'm impressed by his sheer competence. At best pretty-good, at worst interesting if not actually good.

Hoping to get to LL tom'w! Tatum with a gut, Driver with a prosthetic arm, Craig with an impenetrable accent!

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/4757-the-daily-steven-soderbergh-s-logan-lucky

― ice cream social justice (Dr Morbius),

It was OK.

Anyone see his 2001 reedit? It's impossible to find.

Happy to see The Limey do so well on that list (and on this thread), love that film.

It was OK.

otm

thought Logan Lucky was extremely good

Really? To me he spent so much time making sure the plot was humming that the characters came off thin.

maybe? not so much that i noticed tbh. i enjoyed all of the performances a lot, and the milieu just as much.

I love Cliff Martinez's soundtrack music for Solaris.

Loved the world of Logan Lucky, reminded me a bit of Sean Baker? The sun-baked vistas with those box-shaped gas stations and shops, the slight unreality of the nascar/beauty pageant scene. The sense of a society that doesn't fit together.

It worked better in Erin Brockovich

I didn't hate it or even dislike it that much; I felt nothing when it ended except, "This is long."

Going to see it this weekend.

Also, there's a v. good Elvis Mitchell interview with Logan Lucky's costume designer, who also did Behind The Candelabra, Wall Street, Fatal Attraction.

This was really good and really fun - waaaay better than fuckin baby driver or valerian. I'm with morbz - Channing Tatum is hot af in this - I like him a little more chunky, a little less lean.

*Logan Lucky

Tatum's hot, yeah, but the rest not so much.

I dug Logan Lucky, especially how it played with the aspirational pleasures of heist movies. When each teller, clerk, etc. gets manipulated (especially the one who gets the birthday cake), there's a tug that's different from fooling the Vegas guard or Cannes concierge.

Sharp take by Alfred above.

LL was a nice baked comedown after the rush of Mother! the previous evening. Cool to hear John Fahey on the soundtrack and yes, sooo much better than the wretched Baby Driver - this is how you do a comedy heist crime romance movie.

New...not a movie, not a TV series...

https://www.wired.com/story/steven-soderbergh-new-app-mosaic/

"an NCSA production"

Steve joins the iPhone brigade!

“We hear that the pic will go wide. This is the thriller that Soderbergh reportedly shot on his iPhone and which stars Claire Foy, Juno Temple, Amy Irving, Aimee Mullins, and SNL alum Jay Pharoah.”

http://deadline.com/2017/11/claire-foy-juno-temple-steven-soderbergh-unsane-march-23-release-1202208079/

Really enjoying Mosaic so far. Not sure if the formal gimmick will pay off but it’s a decent murder mystery.