come anticipate Miami Vice with me

(not really)

http://ffmedia.ign.com/filmforce/image/miami_vice.jpg

!!!!! omg

One of the famous things about Miami Vice was that it used lots and lots of popular music. Releasing it on DVD requires re-licensing all the music, apparently, and the record companies wanted scads of money to do that, apparently. It's typical stupid bullshit. Of course they stand to make much more money from people buying 80's music because they saw it on Miami Vice (albeit 20 years later).

And they might not. The RIAA needs to lighten up, though. If they didn't try to charge so much to begin with, everyone would make money. But there are plenty of threads on the complete lack of logic in record industry business practices.

(2) do you think they'll use that jay-z/linkin park song in the movie? ouch.

It looked almost cheap for a $120mln film.

sometimes (as in parts of "collateral") mann goes for artifacts and other "cheap" elements as part of the visual design. one problem w/digital is a sort of correlative to its ability to get a lot of detail in darkness: controlling the points of light in the mise en scene becomes potentially difficult, as any stray bulb can take a sudden prominence.

angela bassett in drag

Season Two gets underway with a two hour episode titled “The Prodigal Son.� The two part episode is nothing short of excellent and sets the season off on the highest level. Crockett and Tubbs travel to New York on the hunt of a Columbia drug ring that is killing off federal agents. Crockett walking the streets of New York at night as the Glenn Frey song “You Belong to the City� plays is hands down one of the best sequences in the history of the series. Another great moment involves Tubbs rushing to the airport as the Phil Collins song “Take Me Home� plays in the background.

also: steamy sexoring w/ tubbs & pam grier (to the sounds of the aforementioned phil collins song! best montage ever.)

ihttp://hitparade.ch/cdimages/don_johnson-heartbeat_s.jpg

You can't have the same guy playing Ray Charles play Tubbs, man. Foxx ain't as lionesque.

hum... let me think...

http://www.urbanzone.somborinfo.net/images/pit.jpg

So psyched.

-- gear (speed.to.roa...) (webmail), June 25th, 2006 9:11 PM. (gear) (link)

can't wait.

also, the trailer's full of modern day music, wtf?

-- mark p

this is so wronnng... the absolute of this movie has to be that its played 100% dead straight, and no mercy to ironic nostalgia! anyway how can u not get a boner to speedboats at sunset with "i've becoooome so NUUUUUUUMB" skyscrapering over the top, cmon

should have been tiga, maybe.

i am ridiculously excited for this.

philip michael thomas was a TERRIBLE actor! don johnson was underrated, i think.

I want to punch Jamie Foxx in his long fucking face.

But Gong Li, yay!

The look: Unlike the bright candy colors of the TV series, this version is dark, violent, and — like Mann's 2004 thriller "Collateral" — digitally shot, which adds to its raw, gritty vibe. There isn't an ounce of kitsch here. Any connection to the TV show is unrecognizable, both in visual and narrative style.

The plot: Mann doesn't bother with exposition. (This is a would-be summer blockbuster, after all.) Think drug busts, guns, speedboats, planes, danger and steamy sex.

The locale: "The allure of Miami has sustained itself in my imagination," Mann says on the film's official website. "The city has a perfumed reality, where things are not exactly what they seem. It's very attractive, alluring and sensual; it's also very dangerous."

The music: Where have you gone, Jan Hammer? Setting the aural mood this time are Moby, India.Arie, Goldfrapp, Mogwai and others, yet the soundtrack proves oddly disappointing.

The fashion: Crockett sports a handlebar mustache and both men sport sexy sunglasses. Expect more chocolate browns and charcoal grays than pale linens, but the suits are still expensive.

Memorable lines: "Things get emotional, moves get messy; moves get messy, and the wrong people die." "There's undercover, and then there is which way is up."

Oh, I can't imagine how that could possibly be true.

I think we're ignoring the legacy of Max Steiner.

Miami was a grisly place fashion-wise.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Tnyp9tRXRo

i think that he means to say "The city is ugly, sticky, and boring and the people here suck donkey dick both ways to Arkansas." also, it's only dangerous if you're poor or black. like every other shitty city in this country. what a moron. at least he's right about things not being what they seem to him.

i think that he means to say "The city is ugly, sticky, and boring and the people here suck donkey dick both ways to Arkansas." also, it's only dangerous if you're poor or black. like every other shitty city in this country. what a moron. at least he's right about things not being what they seem to him.

ps spyders are mad fin

the soundtrack looks dire, but i probably said the same thing about glenn frey and phil collins in the 80s.

the voice review of this is atrocious and embarrassing

"About half the movie doesn't even take place in Miami!"

oh my god though, it really is bad. but the author isn't even a new times guy plucked from blogscurity; he's written for fucking 'cinema scope'!!!

:(

basically the 21st century equivalent of the music used in the series.

Why even get excited by this?

"But it's not often enough noted that Mann is the creator of many strong female characters"

xpost

hahaha!

But as is often the case in Mann's films, there is also a romance...

this guy is a genius.

xpost

hi, i write for INTERNET REVIEWS.

scott foundas is a complete hack writer. is j. hoberman on vacation? is michael atkinson sick?

i would say... get really high and see this.

i like michael mann a lot and i think heat is one of his most run-of-the-mill endeavors. it's not a great movie (or even a great premise), it just has big "actor's studio" type stars and it caught the public attention at the right time.

I can see why some people don't get it, the Havana scenes and some of the buddy interaction were stilted, but good God when Mann is focused and stripped down it is indeed BADASS.

A Michael Mann film with a complete disregard for mainstream movie conventions - no romance, no family life, even less closure - might just be the greatest film ever.

(as for this movie: it is supposed to be nice to look at.. i will not get raped by any movie theater to see it though. third run, the apollo, i'm there)

http://tvphotogalleries.com/data/699/10-9699-sm.jpg

Possibly, but not Miami Vice. I suppose the zero chemistry between Gong Li and Colin Farrell qualifies as anti-romance though. Closure it's got: the conclusion's unsentimental shorthand was perfect. But for most of the film's two-hour-plus running time we got an unsmiling "NYPD Blue" episode with little of the original show's splendid vulgarity (Gong and Farrell going to Cuba for mojitos and a few dozen shower-fucks excepted).

i think i suggested owen wilson upthread.

ps. http://www.glumbert.com/media/roast.html

And too much Audioslave. But it's so fucking gorgeous that I'd be glad to watch it a few more times (and probably will). Funny how the landscape images are equal to the action in Mann's films - how Collateral is as much about just driving around L.A. as it is about people and guns.

I liked the result it gave... All the Miami scenes looked like they were filmed by a surveillance camera. Nice offset to the old-world brokendownness of Cuba & Haiti.

yes yes yes

http://media.slate.com/podcast/Slate_Spoiler_Vice.mp3

SPOILER SPOILER

.
.

..
.

Trudi gets jacked on behalf of the cartel's intel guy who wants to kill them. GONG LI SAYS THIS if you're too dumb to notice on your own..

Whispered comment during the movie: "Why are all white supremacists so ugly?"

SPOILER

i know!! that's why i said it felt like 2/3rds of a movie. you'd think at some point you'd, y'know, find out who the mole was

xpost i remember very clearly an episode of miami vice where the director/editor/mann/whoever cross-cut a hott sex-scene filmed almost in the dark, with a red gel over everything, the participants gnashing their teeh and moaning, with some gangland torture and execution. i was watching with my parents and my mom rolled her eyes and is like "he's trying to equate sex with violence. i just think that is so... LAME."

Oh yes. And when Foxx finally takes out the intel guy, it's a real mess. That time you don't just get the splatter, you get a quick shot afterwards of the gory body with a huge hole in it and a nasty flap of skin somewhere it shouldn't be. Pure gun porn.

And the finest in men's clothes, modern weaponry, cars, watches and gadgets.

I really loved the final, final shot, in part because it was as mundane as security-camera feed but moving as well.

i wished that gong li had stuck to the "hard-headed businesswoman" persona she was projecting in the beginning, and not turned into a vulnerable ho-bag. my favorite character was the female backup who shot the kidnapper.

The more I think about it, the more I agree with you. I was charged walking out of the theater, thoughtful by the time I got around to posting on ILE, and now reverent of Mann, as all film geeks should be. Ain't his masterpiece or anything, but damnit if he can't make a good goddamn movie.

i feel odd saying this, because i'm ambivalence about cronenberg's movies while i've been a mann booster in the past, but the scenes of violence in "history of violence" (admittedly much less protracted than the ones here) were models of clarity compared to what was going on in "miami vice."

yeah very few people can pull those off. thank god for brian depalma

good action. stylish. a little convoluted maybe, but i found it gripping for the most part. some great shots and very intense scenes.

that'd be Doug Liman, who first showed up with Swingers and the Tiger Woods golf-ball-juggling advert.

Nice guy in person, but I haven't seen any of his action flicks yet.

They said this at least once more with a different word at the end!

there was a lot of 'let's do this'. you can't really have too much of that, though.

my favorite character was the female backup who shot the kidnapper.

seconded.

maybe on the dvd it will be possible to decipher what the fuck they're talking about, but i loved it.

the music is REALLY BAD. just totally fucking anonymous. i usually like mann's music.

thanks, as suspected i never need to see this.

Haha, Paul Verhoeven does this too.

I just started watching the DVDs of Crime Story, Mann's follow-up series to Miami Vice. Four or five episodes in, it's not quite as good as MV. The characters, especially Dennis Farina's, are much more archetypally Cop-y), but the action and the art-direction are just as much fun (in the Abel Ferrara-directed pilot, especially).

heat
the insider
manhunter
thief
collateral
the last of the mohicans
miami vice
the keep

there were a few oddly-pitched moments like this, when one of the characters would make some flaky pop-culture reference in a completely deadpan voice, and no one would respond to it. i enjoyed this for its utter strangeness.

Thinking about all the night combat scenes and general weirdness still makes me happy.

there were a few oddly-pitched moments like this, when one of the characters would make some flaky pop-culture reference in a completely deadpan voice, and no one would respond to it. i enjoyed this for its utter strangeness.

i saw it at the arclight in hollywood the day after it was released, so naturally the theater was awash in screenwriter scum, laughing in full voice at all the popcultrefs and mann-isms.

poetry

and i might rank LotM higher if i'd seen it in the past 12 years!

my favorite character was the female backup who shot the kidnapper.

I loved the way she shot him, waiting for him to speak and thus be distracted enough for her to pull the trigger. Took me by surprise anyway.

and now EVEN MORE ANNOYINGLY they rerelease series 1 in the new-style packaging THE SWINE.

That movie blew so much. I was actually expecting more, expecially cuz I like some of Mann's other stuff.

Thanks too.

living on a boat is probably pretty cheap, that said.

Not the movie, but I've been watching season 3 lately and I was deeply saddened at them killing off Larry, Swyteks buddy.

It's pretty great though, the series, even if there's a lot of rerunning of similar plots I still love Manns arty neon shots. And sooo many cameo roles (never realised Steve Buscemi had been in it).

I think the only parts that let it down are the sex scenes, not so many in season 3 but i remember season 2 being littered with them, especially for Tubbs. They go on for too long and play that horrible same sex music.

i would love to see this remade as a series, in the style of 'the shield', with the complexity of 'the wire'.

woah season 4 is pretty much a joke, although the occasional episode does entertain and it does end with a decent cliff hanger.

And Viking Bikers in season 3 is the funniest thing ever

maybe on the dvd it will be possible to decipher what the fuck they're talking about, but i loved it.

I've now watched this movie on DVD about 12 times in the past 18 months, and it's finally making sense: the go-fast boats, the FLIR images, all that narc jargon -- and that the guy in the white linen jacket at the club buying the hookers is part of their team (was he going to have sex with them?) and that the rest of the team follows Sonny and Crockett into Jose's Hatian den and Justin Theroux tosses Crockett a hand grenade during the negotiations. And so many scenes finally make sense where initially it's like watching the end-credits of Cache.

That all made sense the first time.

You've got split-second vision and an ear for high-tech counterintel, my friend.

this movie

amazing. best film of that year?

the color of the sky in the final big shoot-out (blood-black?) deserved an oscar all by itself. i want the michael mann crayola set.

i used to be against the numetal phil collins cover at the end but now i think it fits perfectly

felt the same about cornell in collateral

i'm glad i was proved wrong here and this turned out to be a great film

http://www.englishforums.com/English/GrammarMiamiViceMovieTrailer/czwqv/post.htm

That grammer thread was more entertaining than this movie.

It's pretty great though, the series, even if there's a lot of rerunning of similar plots I still love Manns arty neon shots. And sooo many cameo roles (never realised Steve Buscemi had been in it).

otm. Season One was nearly perfect television (then it fell off the rails, sadly).

nrq you are apparently the tv series dvd expert. at £45 this seems like a pretty good deal, yes? http://www.amazon.co.uk/Miami-Vice-Complete-Collection-DVD/dp/B000SLW43M/

fuckin love this movie which is on atm.

WHAT CHANNEL

Universal HD. climactic shootout comin up

the praise heaped on this film on ILX made me watch it for the first time. i'd just like to say 'thankyou ilx!' and also that i'm absolutely flabbergasted this movie wasn't better recived by the critics. it's *brilliant*! wipes the floor with just about any big budget hollywood action movie i can think of from these last few years.
some have noted that the trailers made it look like BAD BOYS or whatever and yet it's an art film in many ways so it got a widespread 'huh?' from shoot-em-up loving teens etc.

the trailer park scene is one of the most tense i've ever seen.

the saddest thing is that if it had been any kind of hit, Mann wanted to do a sequel.

I should see this again. I remember just about zero about it, which usually is a sign that it's kind of a forgettable movie. But Mann is easy to underestimate, and I would at the very least enjoy LOOKING at it again.

Ha! Me, from earlier in the thread:

I won't remember anything about it in a month except for the way it looked, but hey.

I have to agree with myself here, if only for purely practical reasons.

i just saw this and it is fucking astonishing. so bummed i didn't see it in theatres.

http://www.leftfieldcinema.com/misunderstood-modern-cinema-miami-vice

Mann in the past has been well known for some of the ill-conceived music choices he made in his 1980’s films Manhunter and The Keep, in the case of the former in particular the soundtrack was the biggest issue the film has to contend with

absolutely no desire to read any more in an essay that contains this sentence

lot of run-on sentences in that post

Thief's score is worse.

i dont remember the score from thief which is usually a good thing w/ mann ficks--collateral and miami vice both had horrendous soundtracks (which i think sort of "worked" with the aesthetic), but manhunter had a rad soundtrack iirc

Thief had that Tangerine Dream score, which was great.

omg garda da vida (or however you spell it) is fucking ace!

okay that was less of a score, as it was a part in the film. the score was amazing too.

That article . . . ugh. It did make one valid point: The film would have been better served if it wasn't named Miami Vice. I suppose it's okay to belittle the audience for expecting to see a rehash or parody or pastiche of the TV show. But it's also hard to blame the audience for those expectations, since they were set by a deliberate choice of the filmmakers, who undoubtedly wanted the film to benefit from a direct association with the show.

The problems with this movie weren't addressed in the article. First, the acting was wooden. Second, Colin Farrell -- who absolutely was the lead, with everyone else, including Foxx, as distant supporting players -- had no presence, charisma, or charm. Third, quite a bit of the dialogue was hamfisted, and it stood out even more because of Mann's effort to make the film gritty and realistic (the dialogue wasn't helped by the acting, e.g., the stiff "I'm a fiend for mojitos" line).

i dont get why its weird to call the film miami vice? the aesthetic of the movie and the aesthetic of the show seemed pretty similar to me.

There are better articles than that one on the film, seeing as it has been elevated to the level of masterpiece by the blogosophere.

seems like whoever wrote that isn't familiar with the original series at all

yeah

was thinking maybe piscesx wrote it

i think the acting style and dialogue is vastly secondary to how the film was shot, scored, edited, and framed. not a criticism, i just think that mann was trying to make an entire picture of nothing but "michael mann moments" (and trying to get some kind of emotion from what some folks might find to be a cold style and story) and he succeeded. it's like 'gaucho' or something.

i was actually lookin for the miami vice dvd last week and couldnt find it anywhere, i was suddenly overtaken with the urge to listen to the commentary~

i will say that the score of manhunter was super distracting to me for some reason, normally i dig that kind of crap

not readin that gay article tho

i think the commentary is only available on the director's cut, which isn't as good as the theatrical. shame.

my man michael mann's manhunter

watched this again recently---i think omar's kinda right, in that the acting really is secondary to what mann is trying to do visually/etc., and that's basically OK (then again, i really just intensely disliked colin farrell)

but i dunno, it's too long (would rather watch Heat), and i think Collateral did just as well at capturing that aesthetic (or w/e) and was just a tighter, more enjoyable film in general.

it's funny to say something is too long and then say you'd rather watch heat.

watched this again recently---i think omar's kinda right, in that the acting really is secondary to what mann is trying to do visually/etc., and that's basically OK (then again, i really just intensely disliked colin farrell)

I don't disagree. But that just means, in the overall scheme of things, acting is secondary to other elements of the film. It doesn't mean that the dialogue has to be bad or the acting stiff and flat.

aesthetically it was manns best - in other ways it was one of his worst - but it all kinda worked in a purposely non working style - i enjoyed it immensely - especially the flying parts - so much so i saw it 2 times on teh big screen

it's funny to say something is too long and then say you'd rather watch heat.

― omaha deserved 311 (call all destroyer), Wednesday, November 18, 2009 10:32 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

uh? what i mean is: if i'm gonna watch a long-ass michael mann movie, i'd rather watch Heat

does anyone understand the promise and peril of dv better than mann - no one does - think abt it

also i think i would've enjoyed this MUCH more if i'd seen it in the theater

soderbergh, maybe? xp

i dunno

lol soderbergh doesnt know shit about shit

i fart on him

was gonna say

if u say so! i don't think i've seen a soderbergh movie since traffic (lol), just know that he's really "into" dv

i am not a soderbergh guy really but i thank him for telling clooney he sucked, causing him to vastly improve

but it was spielberg who told him to not move his head around so much

also obv i am retarded because i have seen all of the ocean's AND solaris (which i don't really remember thx w3333d)

lol out of sight is good - after that naaaaah

gotta say tho that i really, really love dv/HD when it's done right

mee too

there were a couple of crazily wonderful scenes in public enemies where i was all wow he just showed me something

public enemies is frustratin for me, there's stuff in it that's as good as anything he's done since heat but idk if i could even watch it again cuz of the scenes where the feds beat up his old lady, 2 hard 2 watch

yeah that was unpleasant

totally missed public enemies

will have to see it over the holidays

i dont....really see movies much

i see all of the movies

yeah gbx i knew what you meant but since you left out "if i'm gonna watch a long-ass michael mann movie" it kind of read funny.

i see all of the movies

― SMH (ice cr?m), Wednesday, November 18, 2009 11:50 AM

i know how do u manage to do that

special goggles

more like special *googles* imo

that too

from sharper image i bet

i used to just hang around in that store til they made me leave

me and my pals brandon and doug

does anyone understand the promise and peril of dv better than mann - no one does - think abt it

― SMH (ice cr?m), Wednesday, November 18, 2009 11:36 AM (31 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

not sure he really understands the peril tbh

but ya i know what u mean about those moments in PE that were just... holy shit. for some reason the guy hanging out the car at the beginning... stayed with me more than anything else in the movie.

the scene when hes paraded in front of reporters at the airport looked so real or something

wonder if HD makes period costume design harder? like if the picture is super crisp it'll pick up the fact that costumes are costumes and not clothes that ppl have been living in?

def makes makeup/bad skin more challenging

oh totally, hadn't considered that

i didn't write that article no. it's starting to get a cult around it though this film. check the imdb for more 'omg this movie is soo under rated wtf' type geek talk.
i use geek in a non aggresive way there. seems to be one of those watch-it-many-times-over type movies for people too.

Kevin B. Lee hosted roundtable discussion

Keith Uhlich

Ryland Walker Knight

I don't want to see public enemies again, but I remember finding one or two of the big impact dramatic aria scenes way powerful mostly because of clarifying, unflattering video look. was a wreck by the end.

that article about MV was staggeringly bad by the way. felt like there was a solid 75 words in there though.

Didn't care for the night shootout in Public Enemies, the noisy digital look seemed terribly out of place in a period film.

wonder if HD makes period costume design harder? like if the picture is super crisp it'll pick up the fact that costumes are costumes and not clothes that ppl have been living in?

This was big problem for me with Public Enemies. So much of the clothing looked like costume, and things like matchboxes really looked like props.

Was also put off by the look in shootouts; was like a behind-the-scenes docu.

i thought it was sort of "mann-ish" in a slightly depressing way. the way that "face/off" was woo-ish. kind of an interesting movie in some respects, though i was bored for a lot of it.
― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Saturday, July 29, 2006 3:06 PM (3 years ago) Bookmark

just watched this cause of the poll thread - this was otm I thought

thankfully I watched this on my laptop and surfed the web during the gong lzzzzzzzz parts

^^^no way to experience this phenomenal film

considering a suggest-ban

;]

going to watch it again to restore the balance of the universe

yeah yeah the film is gorgeous and all, real shame I didn't catch it in the theater when it came out etc. etc. but still am glad I wasn't made to sit through 40 minutes of colin farrell drinking mojitos

I guess plotwise the movie hinges on the sincerity of the gong li relationship thing, which wasn't really a very believable subplot in the first place. you don't make it more believable by devoting more screentime to it, in fact you expose it even more. hi let me show you a picture of my dead mother

lots of great subtleties in that dead mother scene

As featured in Slant's Top 20 of the decade http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/feature/best-of-the-aughts-film/216/page_9
and
Time Out's Top 50 http://newyork.timeout.com/articles/film/80947/the-tony-top-50-movies-of-the-decade/3.html

From the Slant piece:
A freestyle meditation on identity and self-perception, Miami Vice finds a perfect union of form and content via ravishingly rendered digital cinema, flattening the world into an expressionistic vista of interconnected tides and currents of bodies in space, subtextually loaded with ultra-gritty genre juice to spare. Michael Mann's recurring themes of freedom and the nature of will reach the metaphysical realm as the film scrutinizes the performance art inherent in undercover life, the metaphorical meaning we assign to our lives made literal. It's pulp and opera, an off-the-cuff balancing act, a liquid cinema statement from the moment Mann sends his everyman surrogate across the ocean he's for so long merely gazed upon. Like Moby's awesomely cued "One of These Mornings," it's a forever-remembered bliss.
-

Even i'm surprised by what now seems to be happening with this film.

It's a great film.

total bullshit that the theatrical cut isn't available on Blu-Ray

Needs to start with the Jay-Z.

groovemaaan otm. keep the slant bs out of the picture. "it's a forever-remembered bliss"??

it is indeed a great film. i *like* that Slant piece! it's hillariously ott.

i think the acting style and dialogue is vastly secondary to how the film was shot, scored, edited, and framed. not a criticism, i just think that mann was trying to make an entire picture of nothing but "michael mann moments" (and trying to get some kind of emotion from what some folks might find to be a cold style and story) and he succeeded. it's like 'gaucho' or something.

― jØrdån (omar little), Wednesday, November 18, 2009 11:19 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark

otm tho im not sure how much it succeeded

just watched the director's cut for the first time - last time i peeped this was when it was in theaters - feel about the same now as i did then, which is that it's pretty cool but not great. feel like Heat and Mohicans are mann's only unambiguously great movies, and everything else is a mixed bag. which isn't really a criticism, because i love some of those mixed bags and revisit many of them! but its just that early in the 00s i kept waiting for his next masterpiece and never got it, and i think i know now that i should just expect 'next lumpen weird movie with lots of awesome little moments.'

some of my favorite mann moments in this:

interior of car being torn apart by anti-materiel rifle

the part before the climax where crockett & tubbs fistbump exactly when the drums of nu-metal in the air tonight kick in

scene where luis tosar is shown the security footage of crockett dancing just a little too erotically with gong li and the camera lingers on the back of his head the entire time

the raid on the trailer park was the only sequence that had any dramatic heft, to me. really would've liked to have seen the movie mann 'wanted' to make, with the climax taking place in the triple frontier. it also struck me that jamie foxx killing yero at the end = russell means killing magua at end of mohicans. in both cases it was like a concession that, yeah, the white lead was lame and the nonwhite sidekick's conflict was much more dramatically satisfying.

i couldnt actually figure out what was changed for the director's cut, aside from getting rid of the cold opening (which is like the worst possible change they could've made)

gong li did all her dialogue phonetically!

I remember certain scenes were extended and a little more sense was made of the plot, but getting rid of the cold open was such a terrible idea I never went back to watch that version again.

im a fiend for mojitos~~~

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4c3UeHTjxls

scene where luis tosar is shown the security footage of crockett dancing just a little too erotically with gong li and the camera lingers on the back of his head the entire time
― marios balls in 3d for 3ds (Princess TamTam), Monday, 31 January 2011 06:16 (23 minutes ago)

my favorite moment in any Mann movie.

even though getting rid of the cold open was a horrible decision, I like the movie a lot more the second time around.

Main (only?) added scene is where Tubbs calls Trudie as soon as he gets his signal back after meeting Montoya. She says she's fine and thanks him for the flowers. Then they sit in a diner and talk about whether their fake identities can be cracked.

Cold opening was a last-minute choice (if I remember a Wall Street Journal article in 2006 correctly) because the studio needed 10 mins shaved off. Maybe that explains cutting the other scene as well.

I love the scene in the airplane hangar before the final raid, when we see all the props of deception around them -- the boat, etc.

still love the contrast between Eddie Marsan's "It could come back on me, baby!" guy and Crockett's existential yearning out that window into the scene where the sound drops out.

Main (only?) added scene is where Tubbs calls Trudie as soon as he gets his signal back after meeting Montoya. She says she's fine and thanks him for the flowers. Then they sit in a diner and talk about whether their fake identities can be cracked.

Cold opening was a last-minute choice (if I remember a Wall Street Journal article in 2006 correctly) because the studio needed 10 mins shaved off. Maybe that explains cutting the other scene as well.

I love the scene in the airplane hangar before the final raid, when we see all the props of deception around them -- the boat, etc.

― An Artily Shot Sesame Street (Eazy), Monday, January 31, 2011 1:49 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah that diner scene was the main one where i was like 'this had to have been added' - i was a little fuzzy on some of the gong li stuff at the very end too, but maybe i just cared so little about that storyline that i didnt bother to remember how it ended

and yeah, dig the hanger scene. really like the exchange between crockett and tubbs there. mann really knows how to make u feel like ur 'in a moment' as its happening, and u really feel like ur in a hanger in miami in that scene.

I bought this on dvd because I heard that they were discontinuing the non-director's cut version! Gotta have that cold opening.

Still love this movie.

mh - glad I'm not the only one! I love the movie opening in the club, I don't get wthy in the Director's version they had to have some really stupid intro on the beach.

also a local actor I know is in this movie -- the assistant to the main White Supremacist guy, who claims the stuff is pure 'unlike thes tuff they sell in Nuyorico', and gets shot at the end....Steph@n Jon3s -- does a lot of local theatre here.

when it was released he said he wasn't even sure he'd be in the final cut and he's in like 10 minutes of the movie and his name appears in big letters at the end. jealous of this dude.

i love that the movie takes you through all of the complexities of undercover work, and the psyche of what it takes to be good at it.

I mean...I loved the Miami Vice show, but dunno that I"d have enjoyed it if Mann had done 2 hours of the way he did the television show, I'm glad he went the more gritty route with it (which is why many MV fanboys hated it, to be sure).

Justin Theroux must have had the opposite experience -- assuming he was a major character with a lot of scenes, but ended up in the background.

i started watching the tv series 'in earnest' when this was in the cinema and never got to season 2. apparently it does improve, but kind of doubt it was ever great.

I do think that this and Public Enemies could have been really great HBO miniseries.

A marked difference exists between the first two seasons! The first is your average crumb bum eighties P.I. drama with occasionally cool music (and Don Johnson smokes throughout); the second is when the P.I. drama gets delirious pans, long takes, and every shade of pastel, with cool music played often.

'public enemies' was once set up to be an hbo mini. it could have been sweet; it could have been nicely art-directed crap (like 'boardwalk empire'). but done right, with all the other crooks in it, it would be amazing. the book is fearfully boring, but the story isn't.

xp

huh -- ok, might rent s02!

Don't expect "Sopranos" or "Wire" level writing or acting though.

you can't watch the TV show the same way you watch the movie. the tv series is more about style and flash, and the plotlines are thin -- like ever see Crockett/Tubbs make arrests? Most of the time they got in shootouts with their criminals so the writers could neatly close the story arc. it's more black and white guilt-free fun with little deep examination of crime.

I will say this tho -- there was one pair of episodes that was far and away better than the arrest, and those were the Golden Triangle episodes, with General Lao and his formerly presumed dead wife. Much darker in tone than the rest of the series, although it had a bullshit copout ending at the end of the 2nd episode.

i have the second season on DVD but have never finishedi t, mostly cuz I'm only rarely in the mood to watch it.

I loved the episode directed by Edward James Olmos in Season Two: the one which begins with the camera panning down a South Beach sidewalk as Bryan Ferry's "Boys and Girls" plays; it had a Japanese theme.

the tv series is more about style and flash, and the plotlines are thin

The movie was 90% style and flash with a weak plotline!

the plot was kinda weak but i liked the world it took you into, the triple-frontier, haiti, rival agencies

xpost I wouldn't say the plotline was weak, it was simple sure in that it was an undercover bust of a drug ring and not much else, but the framework within that was much more developed w/ how deep they went into it. The Gong Li romance was kind of tacked on.

Being a Michael Mann movie, of course style and mood played a large role in it, but what I meant about the television show is that it was more 'candy'.

television show was "oooh, fancy clothes, shiny cars, beautiful Miami beaches, girls in bikinis, and great pop music...oh yea there's some cop stuff going on too"

movie had great shots of offshore beaches and open water, but also lots of grainy film stock and shots of the seedy white trash Miami underbelly and a lot more grime to it. I mean seeing slow motion captured exit wounds and watching a dude's arm get ripped off by bulletfire = gritty as it gets.

still wouldn't say the plotline was most of the movie because Mann invested so much into the visuals, but maybe closer to 40-45%.

movie did have some gorgeous images in it tho that's for true

xxpost one of my favorite moments is where Crockett notices his cell signal is gone due to phone jamming technology and he says "what's this doing on a dope deal?"

the grainy film stock was video i think

probably. i know very little about making films, mind you, so half my terminology is probably horseshit.

have directors cut and theatrical dvds; neither has the trailer, frown emoticon

grainy stock was digi cams running at high gain. Loved the look in Miami Vice but it made Public Enemies look like some video behind-the-scenes footage of actors acting and bugged me all through it.

i think the problem w/digital video that i have is a lot of directors seem entranced by it as much for the speed with which filming can be accomplished as much as its look. i guess it could be argued that the visual style lends some kind of immediacy to the proceedings, something which can be missing in film, but i'm really not sure that any of the films that have used it wouldn't look better with actual film stock and i'm not sure the "immediacy" thing isn't bullshit.

that said i think it worked in miami vice and collateral, but i don't think it worked better than film may have though since mann probably used it for the ability to capture certain nightscapes more than anything i'm willing to concede that point.

need to revisit 'public enemies' but i thought the use of digital was a revelation there, a new way of doing period shit. 'boardwalk empire' looks like a really dull and miscast and did i mention boring bore next to it. sometimes he went a bit far, with the gun-flashes, but sometimes art is about letting go and abandoning good taste, like the dude says in 'black swan'.

I though Public Enemies looked really bland and lifeless. No character to the lighting.

Would love to see a Michael Mann movie shot on a Canon 5D II (which has a sensor larger than any video camera or 35mm motion picture film).

i luv this movie seen it like 5 times, mann 4 lyfe

i saw this three times in the theatre!

still remember dude in the crowd gasping "oHHHHHHHHHHHHHH" when Jamie Foxx shotgunned out John Ortiz's insides

dammit now I wanna watch this, gotta see where I put the dvd

haha

i saw it x2 in the theater, watched on back to back nights when it as on tv a few months ago, its just so engrossing and rad

feel like Heat and Mohicans are mann's only unambiguously great movies, and everything else is a mixed bag.

― marios balls in 3d for 3ds (Princess TamTam), Monday, January 31, 2011 1:16 AM (16 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

crazy talk manhunter pwns all

also mohicans doesnt have hardcore mann vibes so w/e

Manhunter is amazing. fuck Ralph Fiennes, he's a good actor but is he who you really think of when you imagine off-kilter serial killer? Noonan IS the Tooth Fairy.

also love The Insider, even tho there's only one bullet in it and it's in the mailbox

public enemies was a mixed bag visually - there was too much motion blur and artifacting, but there were some nicely shot scenes too. it did make me think about the possibilities re: shooting period stuff in DV... i reread From Hell last year and eddie campbell did such an amazing job on the nighttime scenes that I had to imagine what it'd be like to shoot them all in DV.

still think collateral is the best thing mann did in the 00s, especially for this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmKR6evZRQQ

also mohicans doesnt have hardcore mann vibes so w/e

― ice cr?m, Monday, January 31, 2011 6:05 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

heh, wrong

u just dont know what mann vibes really are mannn

DONT START W/ME TAMTAM

lol anyway public enemies was uneven, but the high points were vv high, def some moments where i felt like i was seeing something new and brilliant in the world of movies

fukkin <3 collateral

collateral was dope but cruise and fox are both uncool tryhards which is somewhat off putting in combo, feel like it wouldve been better if the fox roll had been played by someone more chill

Collateral would have been better served if Mann had held Javier Bardem in close-up for 159 minutes.

yo homie

manhunter's good but i always found it a bit cold - def need to see it again though, its been a long time

mohicans is just amazing. has some of my favorite mann movie weaponry, from the gunstock clubs to the long rifles and muskets. if you started a discussion about the best screen villains of the 90s, you'd have to start with Magua and gary oldman in the professional and work from there. and its genuinely stirring/moving in a way mann's never approached again. the end sequence, where the synthesized score drops out and is replaced w/the live celtic sounding track that plays throughout magua's pursuit, is breathtaking. and when they catch up with magua, it's russell means not the white protag who gets to exact vengeance. and it has guys saying 'kan-tuck-ee.' perfect movie basically.

never seen it

idk i shd try again... i like it but mann's thing is photographing cities, is it not?

(+ go-fast boats)

when i go into a mann film i am fiending for that extreme stylized cosmic shit, mohicans is cool but its sort of a tease as far as hardcore mann vibes, its too human

Day-Lewis is inhuman!

It makes perfect sense that Mann chose one of the most popular shitty classics ever inflicted on totally suspecting high school students.

hah yeah DDL actually gives the worst performance in that movie, but it's possible that it's just not a very rewarding role.

cruise is awesome in collateral btw. foxx is good in it too but he's more suited to playing scared cab drivers than badass undercover agents, he doesnt bring much physicality to the table which is what mann generally demands of his leading bros

public enemies is on tv right now, my favorite scene is when purvis guns down pretty boy floyd in an orchard... cant believe channing tatum was in this

Would smh Billy Crudup.

*downloads mohicans*

lol at "leading bros", that is basically it. who is the best leading bro?

"miami vice" is great but i still think it's a tad long

"collateral" is better & also has some of his most breathtaking scenes, altho cruise chews some scenery in that bitch like it's big league chew

still think "ali" is hella underrated even by mann stans

That's the one where Jon Voight as FDR rises unaided from his wheelchair, walks into the ring, and knocks out Foreman, right

Collateral is fantastic too. think I bought that dvd the day it came out

i think "ali" his most beautifully shot movie

I would read a contrarian take on Ali; at the time I didn't think his mythmaking worked when supporting an actual legend. I need to rewatch it.

will smith i just cant, its a tragedy, dont want to talk abt it

Ali's a great looking movie with an amazing opening, that shot of ali walking out of the tunnel at the stadium in zaire, and a cool ted levine cameo - but it's kinda sterile and dull and does nothing to illuminate what kind of man Ali was, and also is maybe overly reverent towards him imo

tho it was a little inappropriate that they retconned Ali into defeating the entire Viet Cong army

i think that if you view mann's films thru an aesthetic lens first & then consider everything else afterword, "ali" comes out in a much better light

that being said it's not like i have a problem w/ sports biopics or anything

but it's kinda sterile and dull and does nothing to illuminate what kind of man Ali was, and also is maybe overly reverent towards him imo

― marios balls in 3d for 3ds (Princess TamTam), Monday, January 31, 2011 6:52 PM (36 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah basically typical biopic trap, also will smith apparently plays ali

ice cr?m is being so unjiggy right now

imagining what Scarface would have been like if Mann and not De Palma had directed

would've loved to have seen an Ali movie that portrayed him as a monster instead of this safe recycling of shit we already saw in When We Were Kings

i rewatched ali a few months ago -- it just kind of disintegrates into tedium rly, basically just recreating things that happened and were documented, but there is gold in there too

http://vjmorton.files.wordpress.com/2007/09/ali-greatest.jpg

heat is really fucking long and i have things to do. collateral is maybe the only tom cruise movie where i dont want to vomit all the way through. i feel like mann is the only director who uses video where i feel like it looks great *as* video. like it seems like it comes from the same pot of alchemised shit that makes encore seem epic. i totally love that song anyway tho

btw i wasnt paying attn when ali was on tv but i have no idea what makes it any diff from like walk the line or smthg

walk the line is better

not that ive seen it

but i bet i'd be way more into it!

biopics are usually horribly awful and all exactly the same

except Before Night Falls and Carlos.

i find it hard to think b4 nite falls is any good not bc of anything to do w/ the movie but bc schnabel is such a joke of a painter

he is maybe the worst painter of all time including this girl who was in my class who. i mean i dont wanna even get started.

that reminds me i need to do that Prefontaine vs. Without Limits poll i was planning on

heat is really fucking long and i have things to do

You're not working yet, son. Make time imo.

i find it hard to think b4 nite falls is any good not bc of anything to do w/ the movie but bc schnabel is such a joke of a painter

Lucky for all of us he became a much better director.

schnabels transformation from awful painter to rad filmmaker is one of the great mysteries of contpo art - before night falls is a straight up classic great movie

walk the line is better

― marios balls in 3d for 3ds (Princess TamTam), Monday, January 31, 2011 7:04 PM (22 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

it is better!

not really a mystery--painting is hard--making a movie is easy

pfft painting isnt hard check this out *paints*

did schnabel do basquiat? thats the only one ive seen. its ok.

yeah basquiat is alright, before night falls is masterful, diving bell and butterfly is good if kind of minor seeming

some key reasons collateral owns:

mark ruffalo's red herring tough-guy detective character (martin balsam in psycho?)
coyotes
bardem scene
statham cameo

memorable scene from last of the mohicans (which did in fact own): that british dude is getting burned alive and DDL puts him out of his misery w/a long-distance shot

Collateral isn't bad but the plot is totally fucking ridiculous and once they go to the Jazz club it's all downhill.

Ali is pretty awful imo. Smith is robotic and monotonous in it (as he always is lately, but he's playing Muhammad Ali!) and the script is pretty much the most rote and by the numbers Ali biopic you could write.

i dont think smith's bad in it, it's just an underwritten part

he's just not believable at all. He has the vacant expression of an actor in way over his head for like 95% of the movie.

its like casting tom hanks as castro or some shit

Best thing about Ali was ESPN running days and days of Ali fights and programming on ESPN Classic when it was released.

basically Vice is his best film and i say that as a colossal Manhunter fan. it's the sorta film that makes you buy a better telly for the next time you watch it.
i'd basically get a Blu Ray player just for this and the upcoming Star Wars box.

is the original cut on bluray or just the new cut?

new cut on bluray is hella beautiful btw.

Director's cut has never been available on BR. It was on HD-DVD, IIRC.

nah it's out

http://www.amazon.com/Miami-Vice-Unrated-Directors-Blu-ray/dp/B001B7CNXI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1296533867&sr=8-1

D'oh, I meant theatrical cut has never been on BR, but was on HD-DVD.

someone should create a PS3 app or something

still think collateral is the best thing mann did in the 00s

agree w/ this coyotes are incredible whole movie has this amazing energy looks so visceral tom cruise psychosis perfectly utilized

shld probably rewatch vice tho havent seen it in a couple years

Rest of the movie whatever, but how could this be any better?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STDo6Z5YJa4

yeah that live version of bring it on home to me is tremendous

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkLZ_pVwU3k

Cruise is great in Collateral. If Delon can use his good looks and coldness, Cruise can use his charm offensive to achieve the same thing.

Tubbs: So what's going on?
Crockett: As in?
Tubbs: As in there is undercover and then there is "Which way is up?".
Crockett: What? Do you think I'm in so deep I forgot?
Tubbs: [Tubbs and Crockett look at each other closely] I will never doubt you.

lets take this to the limit... one more time

Yes, no, maybe so.

That's not what happens. What will happen is... what will happen is I will put a round at twenty-seven hundred feet per second into the medulla at the base of your brain. And you will be dead from the neck down before your body knows it. Your finger won't even twitch. Only you get dead. So tell me, sport, do you believe that?

love that the trailer is basically a lot of guns being cocked

'ali' shd have been ALL like the opening sequence, like an entire sam cooke gig inter cut with fragments from the life of ali

schnabels transformation from awful painter to rad filmmaker is one of the great mysteries of contpo art - before night falls is a straight up classic great movie

― ice cr?m, Tuesday, February 1, 2011 12:29 AM (9 hours ago)

yah maybe this disproves auteur bs for me. like how can this guy suddenly compose a frame?

You seem okay. But him, I don't like how he looks.

Do you wanna fuck with my partner or do you wanna do business with us? 'Cause I don't give a shit how you think he looks.

-with

i kinda like history mayne's idea, kinda like make an entire film out of that style or maybe like the end of the right stuff, when the astronauts are kicking it in the astrodome watching the performance while sam shepard is taking aim at the altitude record.

Pre-shooting screenplay, by the way.

Rewatching this at the minute.

I'm gonna tell you what's gonna happen. People are gonna come in here, and you know what they gonna say? They gonna look around and go 'Ola Hijo. That's some crazy motherfucking wallpaper, what is that? Jackson Pollock?'

So, I watched this again last night. And one thing that struck me is that after Trudie gets taken, it's not like Crockett has any moment of reckoning from his team, especially since it follows the scene in the club where he's dancing with Gong Li--like, none of his crew (or Trudie, after she gets out of her coma) says anything like "Maybe this came down on us this way because you fucked the boss's boss's boss's gal and CFO?"

Idk I think that was because they were seasoned professionals and knew they had to focus on the job at hand or lose their lives.

Even in the hospital scene they still had a task remaining.

Then again, that romantic subplot was the least convincing thing about the movie...

romantic subplot probably the best part of the movie.

at least, the dancing-scene

without the romantic subplot there is no shot of montoya's back

It seemed very incongruous to Crockett's character, like it made sense why Gong Li played along, but even if his initial primary motivation was infiltration, he clearly fell for her really quick. I have to think an undercover would know it was a really poor course of action, given his experience.

I really took it as Mann trying to throw fans of the TV show a bone, since the rest of it so little resembled the shiny experience.

Still a great movie tho...

'Shiny experience'? I meant 'shiny exterior' (of the show)

Underrated movie. Still the best cold opening of all time.

Yea I hated the stupid director's cut opening they added on the DVD.

Seeing Crockett/Tubbs in the club while the Jay-Z/Linkin Park song plays is an awes beginning

There was a release that not the director's cut! There was a rumor for a while that it was going to go out of print and the director's cut would be the only one so I bought it right away.

Only the Director's Cut is available on Blu-Ray. :(

what other differences are there apart from the cold open?

More character scenes, which aren't bad or anything, but losing that cold open is a major bummer.

You can get a HD version of the theater cut, but it's on HD-DVD.

So, it probably exists out on download sites.

i keep meaning to read the first draft screenplay to see if there was ever meant to be more FBI stuff. the open is totally different to either version afaict.

http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/miamivice.pdf

such mixed feelings on all mann's stuff exc. heat. opening of ali def. inspired. jamie foxx is a ridiculous actor.

so i read the screenplay. it clearly wasn't final: there's a ~3 scene bit toward the end where it's just "a scene in which ..." and then placeholder description.

but anyway major differences from the director's cut (i missed this in the cinema):

isabella is afro cuban

nicholas has one line, delivered over the phone

yero has a speech where he tells this story about how pablo escobar used to execute his good pilots after six flights, and he is 3 times as good as escobar, so he will take out tubbs+crockett after two.

the fbi mole plot is even thinner: it's the same up to the bit where yero agrees to share intelligence and tells them to check their email, but in the screenplay the email never comes. i'm not sure that plot ever had an ending.

the final showdown is very different. isabella is already with crockett when they find out yero has trudy, and gives them advice (she runs the drugs in on the boats with them). the trailer doesn't get blown up after they get trudy back, no hospital scenes, totally different action set pieces in the cargo park or wherever it's supposed to be

no shot of montoya's back

why are mann's director's cuts pretty much shittier than the theatrical cuts across the board?

I think he works better with whatever small constraints a theatrical cut imposes in that it cuts out the last 5% of the cruft that we really didn't need.

there is an all regions UK Blu Ray release of the theatrical cut fwiw.

sweet! There seem to be a bunch of random stores on amazon that keep selling region-free UK copies of films. I think the version of Zodiac I have is actually the brit one.

why are mann's director's cuts pretty much shittier than the theatrical cuts across the board?

If you're going to spend a mil or two shooting a speedboat race, you might as well put it somewhere if it doesn't make final cut.

xpost

Ha, yeah, just bought the UK bluray of Zodiac too. Apparently the 2 Disc American release is slightly better in quality but it's OOP and going for big bucks.

i got laughed at irl this weekend for saying that i really like this movie

^^^i have been there

ppl are idiots

I just tell people it's going to be bad the first few times, and after that amazing.

in general ppl look at you like an alien if you say you like michael mann

in general ppl look at you like an alien if you say you like Miami.

well yeah that too

do you like....mojitos

whenever Sarge returns we take my catamaran to Havana to cool it with some mojitos.

sounds like you're a fiend for them

i would like a mojito rn

http://philadelphia.foobooz.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/07/miami_vice_mojo.jpg

i got laughed at irl this weekend for saying that i really like this movie

― J0rdan S., Tuesday, 15 May 2012 16:04 (45 minutes ago) Permalink

fuckin' Philistines

in general ppl look at you like an alien if you say you like michael mann

― J0rdan S., Tuesday, May 15, 2012 11:09 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

wtf is wrong with people?

first they came for the challopers and I said nothing

This is like the awkward party conversation where someone is like "I don't really like CSI or whatever tv show, but I like movie crime stuff" and I'm like "well, do you like 'Silence of the Lambs' and that type of thing because there was this movie by Michael Mann who starred the one dude from CSI and it's called Manhunter..." and then I get mocked about the fact there is a movie called Manhunter directed by Mann

many you guys need to hit better parties

*man

story of my life

still easily the best action film i've ever seen. too nervous to watch it again in case in doesn't live up to what i remember.

is the Director's Cut worth a watch just for the boat chase bit? the 'cold' opening is so good i can't believe there's a version, any version that *doesn't* start that way.

There are some good extra character scenes (more Trudy iirc) so it's worth seeing. But yeah I'd rather jettison all of that for the in media res club bit.

man i love the boat race opening. it feels so expansive but cold (dunno if miami cold is like louisiana cold but kinda clammy and unnatural) and empty. the transition from that into the neon claustrophobia of the club is pretty awesome.

love this fuckin movie

many you guys need to hit better parties

― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, May 15, 2012 12:48 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

so sad because this happened at _my party_

Boat scene is cool, but there's a chunk of stale exposition on the shore afterwords setting up the club sting that kind of kills it for me.

so I like this movie now!

Colin Farrell's hair though = so so so gross. It's like he poured crude oil over it.

It is so much fun to love this movie.

and the film was a hit:

Miami Vice opened at No. 1 in the United States, knocking Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest out of the number one position at the box office that weekend, after Pirates led the box office for almost a full month.[20] In its opening weekend, the film grossed over $25.7 million at 3,021 theaters nationwide, with an average gross of $8,515 per theater.[21] The film would go on to earn $63.5 million domestically.[21] Miami Vice would fare better internationally. The films aired in 77 countries overseas, grossing $100,344,039 in its international run.[22] Overall the film grossed $164 million worldwide[21] helping to further surpass the reported $135 million budget.

The film stands as one of Michael Mann's top three most financially successful films, next to Heat and Collateral.[23]

i remember going to see this opening weekend and being forced to sit on the stairs

The story I've told before is that when I went to see this some weekend afternoon, it was bright and sunny when I went in, and when I went out everything was drenched, there were branches, leaves and other refuse strewn about everywhere, street lights were blinking yellow. It was like some hurricane hit outside in the middle of the movie. Very memorable.

the UK bluray has the theatrical version?!?!?!?

Colin Farrell's hair though = so so so gross.

Zappa stache.

Hey, Jose Yero is starring (with Jimmy Smits) in a play at Steppenwolf, and I'm going to opening night next week. Will try to shake hands with Cochi Loco and will send him all your ILX love.

Yes it does. The lack of that opening on the American Blu Ray is why I refuse to plop 7 bucks down for it.

really stoked that it's available in some form though, region free blu ray players are cheap these days

Uk version is region free

I gots it

oh snap

good rec for a region free BD player?

Holds up on the 12th viewing.

If only the climactic deal were underscored by the original "In The Air Tonight" instead of the nu-metal version...

Mann has pretty awful taste in music in general

"I'm a fiend for mojitos."

"I'm a fiend for Linkin Park."

You have to give Mann credit for working with Lisa Gerrard though.

LIMIT

So what's up?
Anything could be in those crates out of Odessa.
This one has too many moving parts, too many unknowns.
It's your call.
Where you at?
The message from Yero locates the agency and the office
where the leak is coming from. I call that progress.
So, let's take it to the limit one more time.

We need some Jose Yero gifs.

would kill for a theatrical cut on Blu Ray

there is an all regions UK Blu Ray release of the theatrical cut fwiw.

― circa1916, Tuesday, May 15, 2012 11:10 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I sometimes have problems with the PAL/NTSC thing tho.

Blu ray has no difference, hd

oh really? That makes sense. I tried my Day Today DVD on a plasma I used to have, and it worked fine. Tried it on an LCD some time later and it said it couldn't read the signal. But yeah, the HD thing makes sense. Will investigate!

I'm gonna tell you what's gonna happen
People are gonna come in here
You know what they gonna say?
They gonna look around and go
'Ola Hijo. That's some crazy motherfucking wallpaper
What is that? Jackson Pollock?'
No, viero.
That was José Yero.
Got splattered all over his own wall.

http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/miamivice.html

FADE IN:
EXT. OCEAN - CLOSE UP:  WATER - MORNING LIGHT
We are at the delicate interface between ocean and
air...liquid and gas...the event horizon where molecules
evaporate.  This interchange is ethereal.  Then, low
frequencies rumble through depths...louder...closer, now...
And the ocean surface is torn by a 46-foot catamaran and the
ROAR of 2,700 horsepower, rocketing at us at 140 knots...

I think the "director's cut" has that open and it's not as good!

The prose is amazing.

This continues to improve on the 12th or so viewing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLFd6k1BHDk

what a strange, brief movie. i think i loved it? i don't think i know what to make of it.

(side note: hbonow got me flipping from leftovers to john adams and then to this; i swear, universe, i'm not the world's biggest justin theroux superfan)

forgot he was in john adams

I had to check that claim. Apparently he's in the episode of "John Adams" I never rewatch.

that's the one you never watch???

I stick around for Jefferson's silken menace.

all this john adams talk reminds me i need to get around to watching san andreas

i forget every time until this movie starts that justin theroux is even in miami vice, he just kind of in the background a few times

feel like you need to watch the leftovers to really love justin theroux. and maybe some goofy stuff he scripted

just moved into our house, no internet until tomorrow, guess what i pulled out of ye olde dvd box?

http://40.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mbptw0YrnP1ra202ro1_500.png

Buster?

Forgive Us Our Debts might be one of the most powerful episodes of the original series that i know of.

I've rewatched it yesterday for the first time since 2006 and it's funny because it had left no impression on me initially but right now, I think it's the most exciting and glorious movie ever !
Everything's been said about it in this thread but a little trivia : Gong Li was 11 years older than Farrell at the time. That must be pretty rare that the female is older than the male in a Hollywood movie.
And their boat trip to Cuba is so stunning.
Anyway, I might need to watch it again soon...

Just realized I've never seen the theatrical version of this, just the director's cut. Very strange and disorienting.

Some of these night scenes are grainy AF

I'm hardly a Michael Mann fan, but I love this stupid film

Which way is up

I miss the sweet boat race from the beginning of the director's cut

Starting in media res in the nightclub works better IMO

^ agreed

Tho that boat opening is cool n good, the exposition afterwards not so much.

Also I really wish he had a better handle on pop/rock music in this stretch of his career. Cheese then and time hasn’t helped.

Using digital video before it was truly ready and the “grain” involved actually a huge part of the aesthetic appeal for me. Love it.

The nightclub opening is better

John Ortiz has played likable dudes or cops in everything I've seen him in since.

Was nice to see him be a badass baddie in this. Tho dude needs to play more Battlefront or somethin, just walked out in the open and got shotgunned

I'm a disco guy

Did my annual watch of this last night, for the first time with some fancy-ass Bose headphones, which helped a ton with throwaway lines that end up being essential to the story.

So much of this feels like listening to a police scanner and trying to make sense of it.

The scene that suddenly seems ridiculously bad, for the first time, is when the Vice crew is badgering Nicholas in his penthouse to make the introduction to Yero. The lines, the editing, the information we're supposed to take in...all just bad.

Not just because of Farrell, was reminded of True Detective Season 2 this time: the ominous/serious tone taken to an audacious, the exceptional design on every level, the quips that pull you out of a scene, and what seems like obsessive research and accuracy of details that ultimately make both exceptional within their genre. That, and ridiculous moments that make both a solitary pleasure rather than having a hope of "turning anyone on" to them.

This was a better article than I expected it to be! Worth reading.

https://www.vulture.com/2021/10/miami-vices-journey-from-misfire-to-masterpiece.html

https://talkingcovers.com/2012/09/12/vintage-contemporaries/

An excellent history of vintage contemporaries paperbacks embedded in that vulture link

https://i.imgur.com/oyQnmIX.jpg

i'm long overdue for a rewatch. one of my favorites. that cold open is all time.

just the way the movie is shot is a lot of my appreciation, which I'm glad that article talks about at length.

I did enjoy how the 80s MV fanboys were up in arms about how "this ISN'T Miami Vice!!!". I love the show too but it and the movie are their own individual things.

Where is the theatrical cut available? I own the director's cut DVD but have never seen the theatrical version.

the director's cut is the first version I saw, and I like that speedboat opening

there's nothing wrong with the opening per se, esp since I saw it the week after I got home from SoBe and was amused to hear them reference some of the hip clubs there, but...

there was something really cool to the movie just cutting into the club with Linkin Park/Jay-Z "Encore" playing, and within seconds, you see Crockett and Tubbs. like I got an endorphin rush the first time.

I do recall having a difficult time following the movie the first time, but I saw it three times in week of release.

It's really more than that. You're dropped in en media rex, it's loud, you can barely hear what anyone is saying or tell what they're doing, just that they're in the middle of an undercover operation. And just as it gets going they get notified to drop everything, and the movie just shifts to something else entirely. I've never seen anything like it.

Because it can be hard to find:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qDC2X5j6yY

Except in the theatre it was super fucking loud and awesome, too.

yeah you don't even know what kind of operation they're on, you just get little hints of it based on context clues. the director's cut of course fills in the blanks of the operation, but you go in blind in the original.

there's also that one bit where Foxx physically strikes someone and immobilizes them in the midst of the club and manages to keep it discreet and under the radar, not just to the club crowd, but the viewing audience too.

there's a local professional Orlando theatre actor in the movie. I don't really know him, but he taught a few of my friends in an acting class, and I met him once or twice. named Stephan Jones, plays one of the Nazis, is the Nazi that gets shot at the end and drops next to his horrified buddy who watches from his left.

it wasn't for years after I saw the movie that I even knew Eddie Marsan was English.

The theatre was packed to the gills the Friday it opened. I had a mixed response at the time. I remember it as one of the last films fans bought on DVD/Blu-ray and watched over and over before the streaming era.

Tom Towles, who played the baddest Nazi ringleader, did a ton of theater in Chicago and seemed like a friendly bear in person. And the Russian who gets shot up during the early deal gone bad is one of Russia's great stage actors. (And Ciaran Hinds, who plays Castillo, does a ton of Broadway and London theater, too.)

I'm sure I've related the story in this thread, but I saw the movie if not opening day then perhaps that Saturday. I went to maybe the 2pm show, something like that, and it was only my love for Michael Mann that dragged me there, because it was sunny and gorgeous out. So I see the movie, love it, and then leave ... and I guess some time in those 2 hours there had been a *massive* storm I missed! Trees were down, it was dark, street lights were out, it was 20 degrees cooler, etc. I'll never forget it.

The other thing I remember from a Mann interview was his insistence that those giant Nazi guns sounded authentic, and how they went to great lengths to capture the exact sound one of those military grade rounds makes piercing the side of a car door.

watched for the first time in over 10+ years, loved every minute just as I always had. possibly even more.

"Only you get dead. do you believe that?"

it is the best movie ever made

Not related to the movie but not unrelated, the other day I heard this really shitty butt rock song by a band called Honeymoon Suite:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKE59-VfrBM

Sort of like the Cars "Moving in Stereo" if it was totally and unconvincingly macho. I'd never heard of them before, but I guess they're Canadian, and had a knack for getting their bad songs into movies and stuff, like "One Crazy Summer." Then on wikipedia I came across this:

In 1989, "Bad Attitude" was featured in the series finale of Miami Vice, played during a Ferrari driving segment that mirrored one from the series' pilot episode, continuing throughout Crockett and Tubbs' final battle.

So I thought, ooh, it's going to be a lost moody midtempo AOR song! But no.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOCI37y2umw

And that, my friends, is the difference between 1984 and 1989, and the first season of Miami Vice and the last.

American things

Not the band, though! Canadian Vice!

Which Canadian city is the most Miami?
This question has no answer

Halifax Vice?

I forget where I read it, but Mann’s original plan for ‘06 Miami Vice was to use the original Phil Collins “In The Air Tonight” (which could have been amazing) but then swapped in the nu-metal Nonpoint version instead (which does the job and fits the vibe).

what a weird project. i enjoyed the hell out of it tho

Halifax Vice?

― calstars, Saturday, November 6, 2021 1:53 PM (five minutes ago) bookmark flag link

Absolutely not.

i haven't seen a lot of Canada, but Vancouver? cocaine, waterways, central business district has noticeable aesthetic

"Vancouver Vice" is basically "The X-Files."

hahaha

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3iBN8yz-2s

Sick. I never really considered it before, but this movie in relation to Michael Mann occupies the same space in my head as Twin Peaks: The Return does to David Lynch.

Amazed that Sonny Crockett can go undercover with this accent:

This speech. Colin Farrell telling Brendan Gleeson he loves him. The emotion. The charisma… Toxic masculinity found dead in a ditch!!!! #GoldenGlobes pic.twitter.com/xWGngZ9UId

— Meech (@MediumSizeMeech) January 11, 2023

Buht ye got ye tan in Meeami

avclub circling the drain - their clickbait article (i clicked) on terrible films by great directors includes Miami Vice

Still fuckin rules.

There’s a fancy blu-ray coming, supposedly..

https://www.joblo.com/miami-vice-4k-shout-factory/amp/