A thread for free-floating hatred of "Away We Go" a.k.a. the Dave Eggers movie

We went to the movies this afternoon and were confronted with this:

Umm... Seriously? This movie hasn't even been released and the trailer alone makes me want to go on a tri-state killing spree. Except I can't because I've already stabbed my eyes out.

I will join you in this glorious crusade of loathing.

haha, eggers + director of american beauty. all it needed was zach braff for some kind of trifecta of shit

jim from the office in a serious role is a fine substitute in that regard

I swear, ILX is the *only* place around that is this rampantly, endlessly vicious and cynical about Eggers/Braff/Kelley/etc etc.

I mean they're not a pantheon of the gods or anything but I dont understand the unrepentant loathing.

But...they suck.

I liked Egger's autobiog *shrug*. I *LOVE* Jon Safran Foer. I thought Scrubs was a great TV series and yanno, Garden State is watchable enough too.

I'm not saying I adore any of em but kill murder death hate? Zuh?

It just makes me think that whats at play here is actually "cynical middle aged men who think the stuff 18 year old girls like is loathesome"

even if it is, is there a problem with that?

u r 18??????????????

Nah that was the Twilight thread.

i am a cynical middle aged man, and i will not be silenced!

It just makes me think that whats at play here is actually "cynical middle aged men who think the stuff 18 year old girls like is loathesome"

I'll go with cynical middle aged men who loathe a rewrite of Juno for the thirty/fortysomething set.

Seriously though, do you think this movie is being marketed to 18 year old girls?

yeah this looks horrendous - echoing elvis' sentiment, it's my generation's "look at how quirky we are!" pop culture (she staples his itinerary to his jacket - the fuck outta here) for our parents

I admit I wasnt talking specifically about this new movie, I will watch the trailer and if it looks shit I'll happily say so.

yall were out of control on that where the wild things are thread but this looks like a pretty fair target for frothing at the mouth hatred

So it's basically Children of Men except the baby isn't actually needed.

Nick Drake-ish acoustic guitar/gentle voice music has been a plague on movies and movie trailers in the last five years or so

OK eh now I've watched the trailer, I'm pretty meh, but because it looks like utter feelgood schmaltz, it comes across more pukey "Marley and Me" than "OMG Eggers is a cunt and should go to hell", but whatevs.

Isn't that john Martyn on the trailer soundtrack? I kinda like Dave Eggers but yeah this looks like just another nail in the already rusty and pillaged coffin of US indie cinema.

This looks so obnoxious and terrible. I don't think there's a cliche from the quasi-indie, 'we so sad and dysfunctional, but we shall see it through with our love and retro stylings and ipods', quirkfest genre that was left unused. Fucking gag.

"White Winter Hymnal" makes me think of trailers like this. And vice versa.

i hated on juno like nobody's business but tbh hating on twee fake-indie* films is getting to be the hating on special-effects driven summer movies de nos jours. not necessarily wrong, just boring.

*not a super-useful descriptor at any time

yeah this almost looks like a hoax! BUT i will rep for Eggers as a writer. We Shall Know Our Velocity was awesome (the staggering genius one too)

So in order to be exciting and one step ahead do I need to be either loving these piece of shit movies or at least indifferent to their existence, rather than hating them?

i think the inside thing is to REALLY LIKE THEM based on the trailer and nothing else.

I would love it if about halfway through there's a scream, startled looks, several fast fades down and then up on frightened faces, lightning flashes, and a menacing silhouette approaches with a goddamn machete.

"Are we losers? I mean we're like 34.."

"33."

"Yeah. And -- what was that noise?"

lol

"hey - I found this old board game, I used to love as a kid!"

"That is so cool! Don't you sometime think we lost something when we..."

*Lynch backwards voice effect - Office Jim wears a rabbit mask on his head*

miranda july also has a movie coming out this year, don't use up all your hate on this

good lord guys

this looks okay to me. i actually laughed 2 or 3 times at the trailer alone. there are plently people on this thread more loathesome than eggers, imo.

So I've learned in the last 24 hours that ILX dislikes Dave Eggers, Hotel California, and Dora the Explorer. Good work, ILX!

IHX

Mordy the list is far longer than that

Not that I've learned in the last 24 hours.

Could sombedy pls explain the widespread hate of Eggers? For me, he's just that "staggering genius" guy - am I missing sth?

Hipster’s Head Explodes During Away We Go Trailer
Mar 17th, 2009 | By Dan | Category: Ham, The Films

Williamsburg-based Hipster Dan Rice died last night after viewing the trailer for the upcoming film Away We Go, directed by Sam Mendes and co-written by Dave Eggers. Upon watching it, his mind was literally blown, causing his skull to explode in his bedroom.

Rice’s roommate, and fellow hipster, Matt, found him moments later.

“I was reading my Believer magazine when I heard what I thought was Dan remixing the new Deerhoof album,” said Matt, who later realized that the explosion was not part of a noise-rock exploration. “I ran in with my washtub bass to join the action and found him on the floor, with the Away We Go trailer playing on his computer.”

The film considered by many to be a “hipster’s dream” stars such hipster darlings as Maggie Gyllenhaal and Allison Janney. While its male lead, John Krasinski, operates outside the indie world, his mainstream appeal is masked by a thick beard and thicker glasses, making him the ultimate hipster.

While these factors all contributed to Rice’s unfortunately hip death, it was the reveal that the screenplay was penned by none other than hipster icon, Dave Eggers, that was the final straw.

“Dan loved Dave Eggers,” recalled Matt. “But not in the ironic way that he loved Judy Blume. In the ‘downloading his NPR podcasts and listening to them on the subway even though he had no reason to leave the house’ sort of way.”

A forensic unit was able to uncover more causes to the head explosion.

“We watched the trailer afterward for clues,” said the Chief Investigator, who claimed not to know what a Dave Eggers was. “We think the title cards were written in same font as Juno’s titles. That combined with the soft song by an under-the-radar singer songwriter certainly did not help.”

I <3 maggie gyllenhaal. Also Revolutionary Road was pretty good, I loved Staggering Genius, but I was about 17 when I read it. I met Eggars at a reading once and he was really nice and incredibly hot.

I don't see where Scrubs comes into it, doubt the real thing will be such an iPod ad.

I don't mind Eggers but Mendes is consistently dreadful.

i meant to say surprisingly hot instead of incredibly : / at freudian slips

ha, certainly the trailer is pretty bad (but then it's a carefully marketed trailer), but I read Staggering Genius just last year and thought it was great, and now I feel like I'm celebrating Dick Cheney's humanitarian efforts.

Also not quite sure what Zach Braff has to do with anything.

Allison Janney is a hipster darling?

You know hipsters like the West Wing.

haha, if you guys hate this wait until you see robert pattinson's new film, opening on ifc festival direct april 29

nice

: )

but then it's a carefully marketed trailer

salient point. i usually hate trailers of frat pack movies. so coarse. but im still their biggest stan.

the first adventureland trailer was repulsive, but i know i'm going to love that film.

miranda july also has a movie coming out this year

Awesome! I thought her collection of short stories was great. And I laughed a lot during "Everyone You Know is We and Me" or whatever.

Allison Janney is a hipster darling?

She played the sassy stepmom in "Juno."

Is there a trailer yet for Jim-from-The-Office's directorial debut: An adaptation of David Foster Wallace's "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men"? (Seriously).

I think some people think Eggers doesn't "deserve" his success, which, as a former fiction writer, is a sentiment I can partly understand. His novel is terrible, mostly; his autobiography was very good but it was ubiquitous for a few years and ILX dislikes ubiquity when it's anything other than pop music. Also, I think a lot of people (particularly who maybe haven't met Eggers) think he is smug and an asshole, although I don't think he is.

this preview doesn't actually seem that bad, it would be about 100 times better with different music

Seems to me he's got a pretty good thing going - he fell into a lot of money, which he put back into some really cool projects. The kinds of thing that I imagine a lot of creative writer people say they'd do if they suddenly had a bunch of money: Publishing a very unique magazine in a really cool way (which almost definitely loses money, right?); publishing books by interesting people; opening a non-profit volunteer-led writing center for kids; helping his friends out.

This had better be a Ron Pickering biopic.

Shannon, that's all well and good but that inadvertantly suggests the trap of thinking that because someone is a nice person therefore their creative work is equally worthwhile (conversely, the similar trap is thinking that because someone's creative work is worthwhile that therefore they're a nice person).

I guess I'll go stand in the lonely camp of pro-Eggers people. I enjoyed his autobiography and What is the What.

Nah, I'm there as well. Will I see this movie? Probably not. But that doesn't really change my opinion about him.

i dont really have anything to contribute here but i feel as though its necessary for me to have some kind 'opinion' about this--can someone help me out

as far as i can tell my options are (in order of level of hipness)

1) be really excited for this movie due to an unreserved love of eggers and john krascinski (aka be the girl in my office who went to the pillowfight event this weekend)

2) loathe this movie due to a loathing of eggers & whoever else derived from a general loathing of some conception of "hipsters" (aka be the first third of this thread)

3) loathe this movie, but also loathe kneejerk loathing reactions to this movie (aka be the second third of this thread

4) have some kind of cautious measured response involving a defense of eggers (aka the final third of this thread)

5) make some kind of labored, pithy meta-joke about people having opinions as a way of avoiding saying anything definite & hedging your bets

i think it's possible to be annoyed by an artist's public persona but still enjoy his or her work

i see youve chosen option 4

the "nabisco," if you will

hahaha yeah i guess? only not as tl and maybe less OTM?

its still a nabiscian gesture imo

The Nabiscian Gesture by Robert Ludlum

I swear, ILX is the *only* place around that is this rampantly, endlessly vicious and cynical about Eggers/Braff/Kelley/etc etc.

So I've learned in the last 24 hours that ILX dislikes Dave Eggers, Hotel California, and Dora the Explorer. Good work, ILX!

I think some people think Eggers doesn't "deserve" his success, which, as a former fiction writer, is a sentiment I can partly understand. His novel is terrible, mostly; his autobiography was very good but it was ubiquitous for a few years and ILX dislikes ubiquity when it's anything other than pop music.

I love the concept of big bad ILX groupthink that always pops up when there's a consensus among the first 8 people to post on a thread. guys, we're such a scary mob!

i think that was a pretty bad trailer - especially the last gag which i guess they figured would be their big laff - but this movie looks like it was nicely shot!

^^^ option 6

lol yes i forgot option

6) faux-or-real obliviousness to cultural "import" of eggers et al; theoretically sincere opinion about possible quality of movie with no reference to "hipsters" (aka slocki's last post, or, the "pinefox")

i heard the sound mixing is really fresh

don't overlook shit like that unless you really dont care if your movies look and sound like shit

wouldnt the pinefox be more like "I do not understand who this 'Dave Eggers' is but he sounds dreadful. I do not think I will enjoy this film, or movies of its like."

I cringe now whenever I see that FOCUS title card appear before any preview.

maybe s1ocki's last post should be called "the s1ocki"

wouldnt the pinefox be more like "I do not understand who this 'Dave Eggers' is

faux-or-real obliviousness to cultural "import" of eggers et al

but he sounds dreadful. I do not think I will enjoy this film, or movies of its like."

theoretically sincere opinion about possible quality of movie with no reference to "hipsters"

o i thought you were saying my option 6 was the pinefox option. just make it option 7

your option and "the pinefox" are the same option dummy

noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

i think s1ocki gets his own category

i wasnt pretending to be oblivious i just didnt want to repeat one of the 1-5 eggers opinions cuz everyone else had done a pretty good job of it already

hence faux-obliviousness

like, if a thread is basically about one dude, and whether or not one should hate said dude, and then you post something, and ignore the fact that this dude is the writer of this movie, i think, you are being, oblivious, to the dude

I cringe now whenever I see that FOCUS title card appear before any preview.

― •--• --- --- •--• (Pleasant Plains), Monday, April 6, 2009 4:42 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is kind of aspie man

like, if a thread is basically about one dude, and whether or not one should hate said dude, and then you post something, and ignore the fact that this dude is the writer of this movie, i think, you are being, oblivious, to the dude

― rip dom passantino 3/5/09 never forget (max), Monday, April 6, 2009 2:49 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

my opinion of eggers was coded into my post - look harder dude

i think maybe my scale doesnt work in canada then

it could be a passover thing

This had better be a Ron Pickering biopic.

Best post on thread.

i like jim's beard in the trailer--and his glasses

i think it's possible to be annoyed by an artist's public persona but still enjoy his or her work

I'm kind of the opposite of this for Eggers - I mostly know his public persona and don't really have a problem with it, in terms of what he puts out and seems to do with his time/money/influence. But I've only read Staggering Genius, after having tons of people tell me how wonderful and life-changing it was and I seriously hated it which soured me on anything else. Granted I was like 29 and married when I read it so maybe it wasn't quite for me, but still. My wife really loved What Is The What so I might read that sometime.

I also hate the Eagles beyond merely hating Hotel California, but not having seen Dora the Explorer I'll withhold judgement.

anyway i've watched the trailer now and apart from the music, don't really have a big problem with this film being in the world. maybe tim from the office should think about bucking the fuck up and shaving once in a while, and maybe get a haircut.

is dora the explorer actually in this movie or did she just work on it

his american name is jim

xpost

Shannon, that's all well and good but that inadvertantly suggests the trap of thinking that because someone is a nice person therefore their creative work is equally worthwhile (conversely, the similar trap is thinking that because someone's creative work is worthwhile that therefore they're a nice person).

Totally agree. And this movie looks fucking TERRIBLE. But it doesn't seem to me that most of the EggersHate out there has all that much to do with his creative work!

maybe tim from the office should think about bucking the fuck up and shaving once in a while, and maybe get a haircut.

really wanna say otm to this but i wonder...

http://www.coverbrowser.com/image/life/1691-1.jpg

My Eggers-hate comes from McSweeney's which usually reads like the worst aspects of the New Yorker's "Shouts and Murmurs" condensed into one place.

so you hate McSweeney's online, not Eggers

Whichever

If this movie indirectly results in more kids having books and after-school activities, play on, Eggaz.

ah, the old 'might be good for someone somewhere' defense

And speaking of playing on, complain all you want now, but this movie is going to work like Spanish Fly.

I honestly can't believe they got Jeff Daniels w/beard for this. It's this frightening, non-Parker Posey, probably-Devendra Banhart world of indie flicks.

More Chuck Klosternman than Banhart.

so you hate McSweeney's online, not Eggers

when a writer starts founding or editing publications and websites that have a range of popularity and influence beyond just what they personally write, people might start judging them as much by those institutions as by that writer's own work, gasp shock horror.

that's pretty stupid

wouldnt the pinefox be more like "I do not understand who this 'Dave Eggers' is but he sounds dreadful. I do not think I will enjoy this film, or movies of its like."

Leaving off the value judgement from the first half of this is called "The Tuomas."

But it doesn't seem to me that most of the EggersHate out there has all that much to do with his creative work!

I dislike Eggers based entirely on his work. Specifically the "stolen wallet" chapter of Heartbreaking Work

I'm not saying I adore any of em but kill murder death hate? Zuh?

ilx has intellectual self-loathing down to a science is the thing

I hate anyone who makes things

i narcissize anyone with small differences from me

is it "intellectual self-loathing" to like books enough that you actively dislike people who write books you're not into, or do you only call it that if said authors are corny precious indie types?

if you hate them enough to fantasize about violently killing them, then you've definitely got something going on

lol at dude thinking I have any horse in a race that concerns popular modern literature, which is not the sort of stuff I read at all

LOL nice one

got me good

how can it be self-loathing, i didn't write any of his books?

I don't believe you

settle down everyone!

fuk u modern literature

how i loathe you, intellectual self

I TOOK A SHIT RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE STAFF RECOMMENDATIONS END CAP AT BARNES & NOBLE!

BURN IT DOWN!

I planted a flag in M@tt's shit and sang the anthem

fuck anyone who tries
if you try you will probably fail
so no try

I punched Terry Gross in the cooter!

ok just watched trailer w/ sound, looks like a shitty movie to me!

I know I say this every time, but I will say it again: McSweeney's is a fiction journal that comes in print; the thing that seemed like bad Shouts & Murmurs was a website full of short things, many of them reader-submitted; I make the loudest and most embarrassing groaning sound when people constantly talk all knowingly about hating the publication when they don't necessarily seem to have isolated precisely what the publication even is (sorry)

ya but i would still give it the benefit of the doubt and violently hate the magazine's founder.

mcshittys

M@tt consider yourself excelsior'd

uh oh I'm having a murder fantasy about a famous author

People who have had good material published in the journal, BTW, include: David Foster Wallace, Aleksandar Hemon, Lawrence Weschler, Haruki Murakami, Lydia Davis, George Saunders, Paul LaFarge, Ben Marcus, Zadie Smith, Kevin Brockmeier, AM Homes, Joyce Carol Oates, Myla Goldberg, Jonathan Lethem, John Updike, Harry Mathews, etc. etc. etc.

^ Usually fonder of the Believer, though

THOSE GUYS ALL SUCK AND DON'T KNOW WHAT'S GOING ON NABISCO YOU STOOGE

more like, david foster shitace, aleksander shiton, lawrence shitter, haruki shittakami, shit-ia davis, george shit-ders, paul lashit, ben marcus, zadie shit, kevin shitmeier, am shits, joyce carol shits, myla shitberg, jonathan leth-shit, john shitdike, harry shitthews, et shit, et shit, et shit

^ poll

could you not think of anything funny to say about ben marcus

shit marcus

ben shitbird

haha I know, it's like he wants to avoid burning any bridges for Columbia grant money

john shitdike is pretty great

This thread has become much more entertaining than me complaining about a trailer.

more like, david foster shitace, aleksander shiton, lawrence shitter, haruki shittakami, shit-ia davis, george shit-ders, paul lashit, ben marcus who is totally awesome and we should work together you rise above this list like steam from a pot of shit only I mean that in a good way, zadie shit, kevin shitmeier, am shits, joyce carol shits, myla shitberg, jonathan leth-shit, john shitdike, harry shitthews, et shit, et shit, et shit

looks pretty terrible

at least the whole idea and character and story and the jokes are laid out completely in the trailer so v few people have any right to be disappointed if they do choose to watch the movie if there is actually a movie and it's not just a trailer

It took me this long to realize that the best thing in that list is clearly "A.M. Shits"

You actually asked me the question: 'Are you taking any steps to keep shit real?' I want you always to look back on this time as being a time when those words came out of your mouth.

The thing is, I really like saying yes. I like new things, projects, plans, getting people together and doing something, trying something, even when it's corny or stupid. I am not good at saying no. And I do not get along with people who say no. When you die, and it really could be this afternoon, under the same bus wheels I'll stick my head if need be, you will not be happy about having said no. You will be kicking your ass about all the no's you've said. No to that opportunity, or no to that trip to Nova Scotia or no to that night out, or no to that project or no to that person who wants to be naked with you but you worry about what your friends will say.

No is for wimps. No is for pussies. No is to live small and embittered, cherishing the opportunities you missed because they might have sent the wrong message.

as a guy who abhors human company, I can't exactly say I agree with him, but his heart's in the right place

Weird -- when this thread started the Flaming Lips came to my mind all of a sudden as a comparison point to Eggers in terms of late-nineties impact-and-afterecho. Maybe I'd read that before and half-consciously remembered it.

Oh how gloriously comforting, to be able to write someone off

so true

I mean really there is a grand literary tradition of embracing "no" in favor of all the "yes and also yes" that can only live in your head if you stop engaging with the world and start withdrawing into your typewriter

not the point of the eggers piece but if this:

A few months ago I wrote an article for Time magazine and was paid $12,000 for it I am about to write something, 1,000 words, 3 pages or so, for something called Forbes ASAP, and for that I will be paid $6,000 For two years, until five months ago, I was on the payroll of ESPN magazine, as a consultant and sometime contributor. I was paid handsomely for doing very little. Same with my stint at Esquire. One year I spent there, with little to no duties. I wore khakis every day. Another Might editor and I, for almost a year, contributed to Details magazine, under pseudonyms, and were paid $2000 each for what never amounted to more than 10 minutes work - honestly never more than that. People from Hollywood want to make my book into a movie, and I am probably going to let them do so, and they will likely pay me a great deal of money for the privilege.

is true i dont know why anyone has ever wondered why magazines are dying off

also: david shit-gers

ilx pays me 4k for every post

it's awesome

I agree about the place of the heart and its rightness, concerning the whole not-saying-no bit, but there's this part of me that thinks hey, that's probably a way easier and more positive attitude to have when your parents both died when you were youngish -- or rather it's an attitude I can totally see someone in that position coming to, in a good way.

I would love it if about halfway through there's a scream, startled looks, several fast fades down and then up on frightened faces, lightning flashes, and a menacing silhouette approaches with a goddamn machete.

― Tracer Hand, Monday, April 6, 2009 3:21 AM

best post on the thread. i lol'd a lot.

mcsweeneys.xls

is true i dont know why anyone has ever wondered why magazines are dying off

for real. nothing maintains high literary/journalism standards like encouraging institutions to have no standards lolz amirite

lol @ zadie shit

Tracer A+. It's like Donkey Punch 2.

The film is the first studio production to adopt green filmmaking initiatives aimed to reduce CO2 emission. Garbage was reduced by half, thanks to the various bins for recyclable material. Caterers used ceramic and washed dishes as opposed to throwaway products. Vehicles on the set used biodiesel fuel.

the only dude on that nabisco list I like is harry matthews and thats only cuz he ripped off the right people

bins!

don't have anything in particular against the mcsweeney's empire (my bro and sis-in-law got me a subscription for xmas) but i do kinda hate Sam Mendes' movies, the ones I've seen anyway. This movie doesn't look very good, but I wouldn't be surprised if I see it, being a bearded, glasses-wearing guy with a pregnant wife.

Mendes is so fucking horrible

I give Eggers a pass on the pirate and superhero stores, those are cool

have zero interest in his writing

there's a spy store here in chicago

Wait, seriously, there's nobody in that list you're remotely fond of? I mean I know they're all of a particular "type" (i.e., the pocket of the writing world that would wind up contributing something to McSweeney's), but I'm surprised there's not, like, one in there you might care for, even if it's for non-fiction or something.

haha this is like the other day when Whiney was all "every adult swim show sucks" and i was like jeez there's not ONE you've ever enjoyed?

Like I would think that a Mathews fan might enjoy LaFarge's fairly OuLiPan The Facts of Winter (published, interestingly enough, by the McSweeney's press)

Hahaha I would think that a Whiney would enjoy Boondocks

well I've read something all the way through by pretty much everyone on that list so there's that
but nothing that I'm really like "I will stick up for those people as writers"

i like basically all of those writers to varying degrees

oh nm lawrence welscher is on that list
I really liked Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing that One Sees

Lethem's the only guy on the list I like and he's gone way downhill since around the time of Fortress of Solitude. Have no interest in most of the rest, actively hate several (Zadie Shite, John Shitdike)

good news, john updike is dead

stuff its possible to admire dave eggers for even if you think his writing sucks--

1) his extensive charitable commitments, the 826 project(s), etc
2) his commitment to high-quality design and, especially, printing and typesetting in all of his & mcsweeneys projects
3) the superhero, pirate, spy stores

its not zadie shite, its zadie shit

u are v.v. listy btw

Lethem's published, like, one novel since Fortress of Solitude?

zadie shit did write "shite teeth," maybe that's why he's confused

lists are the only way i can communicate my feelings 2 the wrld

I'd stick up for a lot of them, but obviously I'm the one who cherry-picked them in the first place: mostly Wallace, Hemon, Weschler, Murakami, Saunders, LaFarge, Smith, and Oates. In any case, I guess the original point was that I don't really have any complaint against a quarterly lit journal publishing decent work by this kind of field of writers; I'm not precisely sure why anyone would. I also like that this thread has reminded me to find a place in my new neighborhood where I can grab the Believer, because I haven't read one for almost a year, and I always enjoy them.

my gripe against McSweeney's is how it's the brass ring while other great imprints (Dalkey Archive, Open Letter) have to turn backflips to get any attention despite their deep & awesome catalogs - it's like, you gotta watch some very talented cats go hungry because their imprint lacks the savvy to position itself in the market

that's not not really anything you can blame on Eggers/McSweeney's though, can't blame a guy for selling books and stuff to people who want it, especially not when there's such a clear passion for the printed word at work

Last believer issue featured a guy who watched The Exorcist with his Colombian Chinese girlfriend and decreed that it isn't scary at all because there's no such thing as Satan.

I don't know that much about publishing but I was under the impression that dalkey and new directions were pretty high tiers as far as imprints go

Lethem's published, like, one novel since Fortress of Solitude?

Fortress of Solitude (2003) - pretty painful
Men and Cartoons (2004) - great
The Disappointment Artist (2005) - disappointing lolz
You Don't Love Me Yet (2007) - awful, awful awful
Rolling Stone James Brown piece - pretty good

Last believer issue featured a guy who watched The Exorcist with his Colombian Chinese girlfriend and decreed that it isn't scary at all because there's no such thing as Satan.

haha - honestly I have never found the Excorcist all that frightening/scary precisely because so much of the Catholic liturgy seems so goofy and silly to me. Good movie though.

so one non fiction book one short story collection and one novel

i wasn't defending him per se either--i've heard horrible things about You Don't Love Me Yet, and I thought Fortress was pretty awful. i still dig Girl in Landscape and Motherless Brooklyn though

McSweeney's figured out how to package and contextualize tricky writers. Not much Dalkey Archive or ND could do to get 10,000 people to buy and a Walter Abish novel (though when Abish came out with a novel through Knopf with an attractive Chip Kidd design, that probably upped his numbers a bit).

why do the ppl in these movies wear such ugly clothes?

I remember liking a good portion of the essays in The Disappointment Artist, but I don't really remember which ones or what they were about, which is disturbing me

b-but nd got devendra barnhart to write an intro to a patchen collection (I think)

Wait wait wait I just now watched the trailer (cause I don't have sound) and I can't believe nobody mentioned it's not just an Eggers piece, it's an Eggers / Vendela Vida collaboration!

so one non fiction book one short story collection and one novel

well yeah - he's done some other random stuff but I haven't read it all.

lol i bookmarked this thread 5 hours ago wtf was i thinkin

*DELETE*

This really doesn't look good (and if you guys think THIS looks unbearably cute, you should've seen the trailer for Gigantic) but I am curious just to see Maya Rudolph in a serious role.

I enjoyed his ripping on puck from the real world in 'heartbreakign'

"I shake hands with Puck. He is wearing long shorts and a white tank top. ...
When I hear Puck talk I immediately wonder if Puck is on some kind of ...
Maybe Puck is on speed. Is this what speed is like!- He will not stop talking.
He is talking about The Real Wotld and how he's going to tide it all the way"

This is all google books will display -- does anyone have the e-book version --
can you cut paste the passages with Puck?

For Oberon is passing fell and wrath,
Because that she as her attendant hath
A lovely boy, stolen from an Indian king;
She never had so sweet a changeling;
And jealous Oberon would have the child
Knight of his train, to trace the forests wild;
But she perforce withholds the loved boy,
Crowns him with flowers and makes him all her joy:
And now they never meet in grove or green,
By fountain clear, or spangled starlight sheen,
But, they do square, that all their elves for fear
Creep into acorn-cups and hide them there.

You Don't Love Me Yet was disappointing, but I liked The Disappointment Artist quite a bit.

this doesn't look THAT bad. and remember, i'm the one who hates the Believer and everything this crew does, for the most part.

I don't think this looks like the worst movie of its ilk, but the trailer definitely suffers from certain indie tropes of the last decade, by now very well worn -- tropes of a certain strain of indie culture, at least. I mean I don't want to fall into the trap of complaining about "DaveEggersAndMirandaJulyAndDavidFosterWallaceAndJonathanLethemAndTheBelieverAndJuno AndSquidandtheWhaleAndFeistAndTheShinsAndZachBraff etc etc." as though they were all the same thing and suffered from the same problem. But what I can generally identify in the indie culture that I'm talking about and don't like is a sense of wanting to get away from "irony" and toward something "real" and in the process actually getting even further from any real feeling. The forced sweetness and tenderness and enthusiasm just become replacements for irony; they serve just as well to avoid the more difficult elements of experience and no better to get at genuine emotional complexity.

^^truth bomb

otm

I would say it's a truth bomb except I don't think that applies to many of the examples given -- it seems to apply to something, but I'm not sure what.

To clarify, didn't mean all those things are examples.

Every time you guys mentioned The Believer I kept thinking "I dunno, I mean, that movie was kind of ridiculous but Ryan Gosling was good" until I just googled it now.

xpost - Actually I'd really like to sort out what it does apply to, if anyone has any ideas. (Especially examples that don't largely appeal to teenagers.)

Yeah, Hurting, I'm absolutely with you on those things not being connected in that way -- that's why I'm staring at the second part and saying it seems true, but of what?

I felt that way about Me and You and Everyone We Know, for example

And I feel that way when I listen to Feist, or She & Him.

Hmm -- something about "forced sweetness and tenderness and enthusiasm" seems wrong to me for the July movie; I'm not really sure how it'd apply to a Feist record

i don't know if the wording is exactly right, but i do feel that most of the artists in this broad indie art genre fail by replacing irony with "sincerity" that ends up being just as false and unrealistic

I always thought the major criticism of that kind of indie stuff was that it favored ironic distance and cleverness. The consideration that when it tries to be "real" it ends up being forced may be a reaction to that already existing concern. Maybe if you start from a place of cleverness, attempting to mediate distance, or bridge some irony, will feel forced.

It's not like Eggers is throwing up his Cosmo lifestyle and heading out to the woods for a decade either to commune with nature. A lot of this sincerity is fake. You can't be sophisticated and whatever-the-opposite of sophisticated is simultaneously. It doesn't make immediate sense that the Natalie Portman character in Garden State likes all that indie music, but that she's also naive and honest because of her simplicity.

The forced sweetness and tenderness and enthusiasm just become replacements for irony; they serve just as well to avoid the more difficult elements of experience and no better to get at genuine emotional complexity.

does emotional complexity mean there can't be sweetness? or that all sweetness/tenderness/etc must be id'd as naive, oversimple, etc? if so that seems like as invalid a trap as the one in question

nb I don't see any of these movies mind I'm just kickin' the ball around

Maybe as much as anything I'm talking about a movie trailer kind of feeling, where you're being sold on this film that's supposed to shake you out of your stupor and wake you up to the quirky wonder of life and you feel kind of like an IV drip of anti-depressants is just starting to kick in.

yeah well I completely feel you there. I used to show up for trailers, now I try to miss them all.

and yeah the ones for these are the worst - "your adult life will be the disney version of your pre-adol life, only you'll also get some sex, and to feel cool sometimes!" fuck that

aw it won't? :*(

I love sweet and tender, my issue with this strain of indie is the sense of privilege I get from it (which may not even be justifiable).

I bought Paste last week for some reason, and even when whatever is being discussed interests me, there are always details that get on my nerves - "so-and-so indie filmmaker is doing X, along with helping his wife run her boutique ice cream business," the plot descriptions for mumblecore movies, etc..

All of it just seems like the work and culture of a bunch of upper-middle class kids (even when they're 30+), who could step out of their boho 'keepin' it real' existence at any time and get a boring office job with their Ivy degree. (cue "Common People")

Eh, I kind of want to say a lot here but can't really isolate a way to say it -- I don't know that I'm even convinced anymore that "this stuff" can't be grouped together as just a marketing & pop-culture category rather than some overarching artistic impulse that necessarily has its overarching flaws and issues ... or at least unconvinced that they need to be bundled for criticism in any way more confident than the way we'd bundle categories like "period drama" or "romantic comedy."

the bad movies of this stamp suffer from a severe lack of alan arkin

agreed that there's some hard-to-pin-down psychotherapy vibe at work here

Even the above trailer might not look as bad if it didn't have that fuzzy blanket of a song playing throughout.

"why am i such a misfit... well.. hopefully within the span of this feature film i can figure out how to be normal... in my own way"

"why am i such a misfit... well.. hopefully within the span of this feature film i can figure out how to be normal... in my own way"

― Tracer Hand, Monday, April 6, 2009 6:29 PM (19 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i hardly think 'short circuit' is relevant to this thread?

please keep it on topic

If I understand correctly -- the basic outline is couple who lives kind of isolated from other people, having first child, realize that his (probably emotionally distant) parents are moving abroad and suddenly start to get scared that they don't have anyone to depend on, so they go on some kind of road trip to visit people and figure out where they could live where they'd be near someone they know. I don't think there's anything wrong with this as an idea for a film, I just wish it didn't sell itself as the *adventure of life.*

haha n/a

"forced sweetness and tenderness" sounds like a good enough description, as in "the dude who was in deadwood and that miranda july movie had genuine sweetness and tenderness in the former, and forced sweetness and tenderness in the latter."

maybe you could sub in "implausible" or "contrived" for "forced" but "forced" sounds like it works OK.

By the way that song in the trailer is by Alexi Murdoch, have none of you heathens ever watched The O.C.

xpost - Just throwing this out there, Hurting, but ... maybe one thing that gets at you is the habit (shared by a few aforementioned things) of taking concrete real-life drama and sort of whimsically (sometimes with a wink) enlarging it into a metaphor or a narrative structure? In other words, per the description you just gave: it ceases to be the story of two people who lack human connections and becomes, in this metaphorical/narrative way, winkily the story of two people literally searching out human connection. Which is a sort of remove and self-awareness on the part of the storyteller, right, that it's about what it's about in this way that's ... not "novelistic" but seems to ape something about novels, maybe. I would absolutely be happy to pin this as a thing that's a common trait in a lot of stuff -- I'm reminded of it because Me and You and Everyone We Know is pretty much non-stop with literalizing metaphors this way, which is something I actually liked about it; it's like a whole world of glaring metaphors and characters that actually relate to them specifically as metaphors.

Umm anyway, is that something you recognize?

at this point movies like these (say movies filled with "glaring metaphors and characters that actually relate to them specifically as metaphors" which sounds interesting, and is something i had never considered, but which runs the risk of insulting/p'ing off the audience if the winkiness isn't earned, or if it's been done to death -- really though just this clutch of indie movies that i've personally seen at diff times over the last couple of years) generally just make me long for an OTT hard-ass kirk douglas performance or a bad keanu reeves performance or anything but mincing 30smthgs figuring out their issues with a few gentle pratfalls thrown in.

i think there's also something like the desire to sell a lifestyle or possibly help create, instead of court, an audience creeping through some of these that puts me off. like, take these disparate, marginally-popular and current signifiers of cool, and deliver it as a package with the edges taken off of each in service to the whole.

all that could be applied to tons of things other than these films, but...the borrowing seems more pronounced and cynical and receptive somehow with these, to me.

milo's post comes closest to putting on finger on why this trailer annoyed me.

The whole scruffy guy, cheap clothes, slummin'-it look of the characters combined with 'let's embark on a journey to find ourselves' is something a lot of people - I'd guess most people - don't have the option to do even in one of the richest countries. Especially at their age. It makes it even worse when these people make a living doing some kind of quirky and/or artistic shit.

It's not that it's unrealistic or anything, but it sort of makes me bitter (possibly envious?) considering the kind of background I come from.

Also, god damn it is time to lose the beard look. I'm not sure where to go from here. Been rocking the bushy beard for like four years now. Considering shaved head, head tattoos, and long goatee, after watching this trailer.

lol as soon as i saw that trailer i knew it was gonna get the ilx treatment

watching the trailer i had a premonition of my family strong arming me into seeing this and half heartedly praising it afterward to preempt my simmering i told you sos

lol yes xp i saw the trailer in the theater and thought to myself should start thread for clusterfuck purposes but then i forgot abt it until just now

btw what is the what is a super great book everyone

just realized that this looks a step away from "dan in real life"

jim in real life

"have none of you heathens ever watched The O.C."

what do you think of the O.C. vs Gilmore Girls re: Eggers/twee-ness?
Gilmore Girls being solidly more WASPish seems to fall on the self-indulgent preciousness side of the force while O.C. maintains a swarthier, more salt-of-the-earth flavor despite both being shows about really rich people and their non-problems. But on the other hand Gilmore Girls had Sebastian Bach. Conundrum...

everyone has real problems... the problem called lyfe

Yeah, I don't think there's anything per se wrong with the problems of the privileged as a subject.

To put David Foster Wallace in the same category as Eggers and Miranda July and etc. is a fucking abomination and an insult to his memory, imho.

But maybe it's more the dishonesty about privilege that bothers people?

It doesn't make immediate sense that the Natalie Portman character in Garden State likes all that indie music, but that she's also naive and honest because of her simplicity.

Manic Pixie Dream Girl archetype to thread

"To put David Foster Wallace in the same category as Eggers and Miranda July and etc. is a fucking abomination and an insult to his memory, imho."

DFW's treatise on rap and anxieties over enforcing Strunk & White on black students versus "Are Black People Cooler than White People"

btw what is the what is a super great book everyone

― ice cr?m, Monday, April 6, 2009 7:21 PM (56 minutes ago) Bookmark

valentino's coming to speak at my school, btw, and i am going to shake his hand

In the same way that swing dancing followed grunge, it makes sense that this style is what follows a decade of 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag and Very Bad Things and Shallow Grave, as far as mainstream arthouse cinema goes.

Eh, I kind of want to say a lot here but can't really isolate a way to say it -- I don't know that I'm even convinced anymore that "this stuff" can't be grouped together as just a marketing & pop-culture category rather than some overarching artistic impulse that necessarily has its overarching flaws and issues ... or at least unconvinced that they need to be bundled for criticism in any way more confident than the way we'd bundle categories like "period drama" or "romantic comedy."

― nabisco, Monday, April 6, 2009 7:28 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

not just as a marketing & pop-culture category but as a sort of 'lifestyle choice' like, uh, punk, or being a hippie, or whatever!

In the same way that swing dancing followed grunge, it makes sense that this style is what follows a decade of 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag and Very Bad Things and Shallow Grave, as far as mainstream arthouse cinema goes.

― Eazy, Monday, April 6, 2009 8:30 PM (31 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Just as swing dancing followed grunge, mock-formality follows the dressed-down years of Wazzup.

― Eazy, Wednesday, March 18, 2009 3:05 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

hahah

Manic Pixie Dream Girl thing is pretty much on point

Also, I love Harold & Maude but man it has been too influential in a bad way

Jesus, I thought I'd made that argument before but didn't realize I'd done it two weeks ago.

(Though I would say that the arch typefaces of McSweeney's also follow a decade of dirty-typewriter and Crackhouse fonts representing "youth" culture.)

E, I might have mentioned this to you once, but in 2000 I had an idea to write an essay about the "anti-design" of these three brands:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3154/2317720924_42fb55490c.jpg?v=0
http://philosophy.moneybackguarantee.us/images/philosophy_on_a_clear_day.jpg
http://images.tribe.net/tribe/upload/photo/732/4d5/7324d556-7604-4225-9ccf-54394061f180

Never got around to it, but I bet there's a decent Thomas Frank-style piece in there somewhere...

(Also, come onnnnn Shallow Grave deserves way more credit than those other two)

not just as a marketing & pop-culture category but as a sort of 'lifestyle choice' like, uh, punk, or being a hippie, or whatever!

yr "whatever" here is all-inclusive tho isn't it max? like, of everyone?

i do think there's a strain of… something running through a lot of what hurting mentioned and some of the authors you brought up upthread. ive been thinking about it a little bit this morning and, there's something roberston davies wrote where he talks about this idea of modern music and theatre having a steak of romanticism that's become warped into "emotion delivery systems" that it exists primarily as a way to give these jolts of concentrated feeling to the audience. and like, the whole manic pixie dream girl idea came out of a movie where it seemed like the point was to foreground the protagonist's emotional state to such an extent that everyone, not just kristen dunst's character, only really existed in relation to the generic indie dude lead and by extension the audience.

i think of these movies/books as emotional picaresque more than anything, and when hurting talks about their inability to "get at genuine emotional complexity" i think it's in large part because this sort of narcissism, like in garden state or even juno, where no one but the audience surrogate seems particularly real. and if you don't identify with the surrogate its kind of an uncomfortable feeling, this emotional deadness happens i think. davies also identifies this stuff as working against formalism, of taking pride in a sloppy, ad hoc sort of construction that really cares about feeling and mood but not about the more mechanical concerns and that ropes in for me a lot of the music and fashion and "design" stuff that connects via marketing to these movies and books.

there are definitely people like foster wallace or even miranda july that get lumped in with this emotional romanticism where the concerns and milieu overlap but the "overarching impulse" is less about giving this hit to the audience of emotional lyfe experience than other things. and i don't know how useful this is but again i really do think there is a category of work that we can talk about here.

i think i know what's wrong: all movie trailers suck, they should all be suggest banned

re: OK cola, I thought the Baffler already took them on (and won, seeing how there is no more OK cola)?

I'm gonna defend mcsweeney's a bit in that being legible isn't necessarily being a trendy reactionary against raygun font barf.

not just as a marketing & pop-culture category but as a sort of 'lifestyle choice' like, uh, punk, or being a hippie, or whatever!

yr "whatever" here is all-inclusive tho isn't it max? like, of everyone?

― Just one thing I was thinking about as I was getting on the copter (J0hn D.), Tuesday, April 7, 2009 12:36 AM (13 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i guess i am just totally fascinated by "this thing" that were all dancing around as a CULTURE or SUB-CULTURE or whatever and not just a set of sort of silly narrative & formal tropes

what should we call it

corny

a cabal

twee 2.0

what it is an artistic culture if it isn't just a set of sort of narrative & formal tropes?

btw

what is "art"?

lets figure it out

but i mean--i am intrigued by "this thing" & its manifestation as a whole lifestyle, of, like, going to flashmob pillow fights, instead of just "this thing" as a loosely-associated set of artworks

i'll bet if we had a graph of the social networks, you'd find that the majority of these offenders are fairly strongly connected to one another.
eggers --> spike jonze --> sofia coppola
that kind of thing.

are those arrows or penises?

lolz

hipster twee-way

a heartbreaking work of staggering penises

great album title

"my gripe against McSweeney's is how it's the brass ring while other great imprints (Dalkey Archive, Open Letter)"

Can you recommend me something from the Open Letter catalogue?

loooooooooool

movie trailers that effortlessly summarize the spirit of ILX threads

zooey must have finished this before her tragic drowning

id call her anal girl

Can you recommend me something from the Open Letter catalogue?

I subscribe - it is so awesome to get a new book from them every month. Vilnius Poker is pretty intense - not perfect, but consuming. I haven't read the Jan Kjaerstad yet but it's gathering partisans here and there who say he's just terrific.

what the hell is wrong with me, i want to watch both away we go and 500 days (tho barf at the smiths scene, at that point i thought it was the scary movie guys lampooning gsrden state)

It is lampooning Garden State.

Putting that Hall & Oates song in there almost made me think it was a parody too.

"You Make My Dreams Come True" = this decade's "Solsbury Hill"

http://www.restrictedtrailers.com/AwayWeGo/

http://www.indiewire.com/article/riding_to_perdition_sam_mendess_away_we_go/

Sam Mendes is quickly amassing one of the most idiotic contemporary bodies of work that otherwise reasonable people consider credible.

Those clips are zzz.

Film may be more dull than obnoxious.

Review worth checking out: http://theplaylist.blogspot.com/2009/06/review-away-we-go-sam-mendes-cold.html

...

It’s a reasonable understanding for the parents of Generation X and Post-Gen X, the worry that lifestyles lived independently of strong parental figures and underneath the sway of the information-and-technological age will leave them unprepared when they haven’t followed a financially lucrative muse. And of course there’s the more universal emotions emerging from a couple bringing a life into the world for the very first time. It’s intimidating in a socio-economic way, but also in the fact that you must now cater your life, loves, pet peeves and instincts towards another human being.

Sam Mendes sees it another way. In each trip, he sees a chance to expound on his seemingly TV-bound way of seeing people, leaning on the frame-filling two-shot to emphasize the barren thematic content of the movie’s conceit. The film attempts to present its characters as very real people, eschewing metaphor and symbolism in favor of genuine human relativity. If only the script, by Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida, was at any point interested in creating real people. The first half of the film is a huge miscalculation, marginalizing its protagonists as reaction shots as they encounter a number of over-the-top caricatures meant to emphasize the normality of our leads. With Krasinski’s limited acting repertoire (you’re never entirely certain if he’s being sincere - a TV actor if there ever was one), it often plays like a terrible episode of “The Office,” with Jim stranded in a sea of Dwights.

Moreso, the film portrays a fairly faithless portrayal of parenthood. In an early encounter with Verona’s former boss (Allison Janney, never worse), we see children cruelly at the mercy of their callous, chatty parents, a couple at two different volumes who not for a single moment acknowledging their partner’s often hurtful words. Later on, a contentious dinner table sequence with John’s childhood friend (Maggie Gyllenhaal, possibly inspired by some of Rudolph’s worst “Saturday Night Live” characters), Mendes places the camera behind the head of the scene’s single child so that we do not see his face during the altercation. This would be a provocative creative choice forcing the viewer to consider the mindset of said child until the sequence closes with the child being used as a prop during a deserved-but-still-cruel joke.

Mendes doesn’t trust any of his collaborators. Most, if not all, of the film’s dramatic beats are scored by songs from singer-songwriter Alexi Murdoch, which is first only mildly intrusive and eventually just lazy. When there’s a unique moment of dramatic heft, slipping a song under the proceedings might not hurt. When you’re dealing with very mundane situations in hopes they bear dramatic fruit, it undercuts any universal relatability to the situation.

...

haha this thread's title is so mean to Vendela Vida

by the way, I want to announce that I have finally encountered a work (of fiction) that makes me want to throw up based on the usual set of criticisms that I often find myself defending stuff against, one we were sort of circling around upthread

Netherland???

wtf no way, Netherland bears no resemblance to such thing!

yeah i was just joshing cause i tried to read it and got really annoyed, but please do tell what annoyed you

haha, yeah, Netherland is a slog for a while, in a very classic lit-fic novelistic way

(I don't want to name the thing I have in mind due to its author being a nice guy and acquaintance and its not being super-relevant, but it is / will be a big thing, and if there is ever a discussion of it I will probably expand on this)

yeah i gave up 150 pages in--i almost felt like i could have finished, and i still may pick it up again, but yeah it's totally sloggy

awwwww come on give us a hint a) you are at your ilx best when you discuss fiction and b) i'm fascinated by "bad" books that make you wanna throw up like The Diviners for me is A#1 example here

like i still read/look at The Diviners reviews from time to time wondering what people saw in it

nabisco maybe if you did it as some kind of rebus

or posted a youtube video of you spelling the name of the book in american sign language

put a number in the place of a l3tter

but it is / will be a big thing, and if there is ever a discussion of it I will probably expand on this

i'm just going to start a thread about every book that just came out or is about to come out and we will discuss it and then your hand will be forced

is it joshua ferris

his is the only book that fits this ouvre that I know came out recently
I mean I'm guessing it fits this ouvre by the cover font

http://www.drawnandquarterly.com/211bernard/uploaded_images/spivet-783214.jpg ?

mmm

^ seems like a good guess

xpst

yeah i was gonna guess the map book

was trying to google dude's name

'the selected works of t.s. spivet' reif larsen

ok well I should clarify that I'm presently reading it and think that in many ways it's really successful at what it's doing, and I have no doubt that over the course of it it'll remain well-formed and moving -- totally a great and praiseworthy accomplishment that I hope people enjoy -- but just in terms of a certain aesthetic style that it's working in, it is one of the first things that has made me really viscerally disappointed with a lot of the standard tropes and habits of a lot of modern literary fiction, and made me think really hard and discontentedly about what they're achieving and why they're so standard

(this is maybe better for another thread, because those things really don't have much to do with Eggers or that many people he's published; also the author, whose name I am avoiding typing here, has always seemed to me like a good guy and I think it's great that he's been successful with this, so I don't want to take out my aesthetic issues on just this one instance of those things)

haha this thread's title is so mean to Vendela Vida

is it?

haha well they co-wrote it! I know she doesn't have the name recognition her husband does, but still

sam mendes directed, he might think it's mean to him!

lol @ ao scott

Are we screw-ups? Verona wonders aloud. (I’m paraphrasing.) She and her boyfriend, Burt, expecting their first child, live in a ramshackle, poorly heated house and drive a boxy old Volvo. They are maybe a little scruffy, but they seem, objectively, to be doing all right, with jobs that don’t require them to go to work and a relationship that looks tender and durable.

Verona’s question may or may not be disingenuous, but the answer provided by “Away We Go,” the slack little road comedy in which it arises, is unambiguous. Far from being screw-ups, Verona and Burt, played with passive-aggressive winsomeness by Maya Rudolph and Jon Krasinski, are manifestly superior to everyone else in the movie and, by implication, the world.

full, blistering review here:

http://movies.nytimes.com/2009/06/05/movies/05away.html?src=twt&twt=nytimesmovies

god I hate Sam Mendes

To observe that they inhabit no recognizable American social reality is only to say that this is a film by Sam Mendes, a literary tourist from Britain who has missed the point every time he has crossed the ocean. The vague, secondhand ideas about the blight of the suburbs that sloshed around “American Beauty” and “Revolutionary Road” are now complemented by an equally incoherent set of notions about the open road, the pioneer spirit, the idealism of youth.

last line is the best

"And to all, a good night."

its seems like they go a lot of places in this movie - has anyone seen it - do u know where they end up

damn, that ao scott review. the last paragraph is wow.

its seems like they go a lot of places in this movie - has anyone seen it - do u know where they end up

― ice cr?m, Thursday, June 4, 2009 11:01 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

they go to montreal!

i wonder if i'll see them walking around

"a literary tourist from Britain"

lol at inferiority complex. srsly, a new york times writer would never say that of a french film director, however shoddy.

i'm sure they would if the french director had made a name directing shitty judgmental movies about the us of a

it's not the first time i've read that about sam mendes though.

more like away we shit

they do things like turn unlikely words into adjectives by adding the letter Y (Burt wants a “Huck Finn-y” life for their baby)

obviously Buffy fans

just watched that trailer for the first time and holy shit people need to stop soul searching on the moving sidewalk, been doing that for over forty years now.

haha

best graduate rip = jackie brown

more like away we shit

sorry, "more like away we BLOW" is the correct answer.

any time i'm feeling glum I should play this trailer or the one for garden state so that my innermost fears and doubts stfu out of embarrassment.

obv mendes sucks but is it all his fault if there's no recognisable social reality in the movie?? what i'm saying here is that dave eggers, also, sucks.

yeah, can't really blame characters and dialogue and "social reality" on the director.

although mendes does bite the big one.

the generally trustworthy onion av club likes it...

The smug self-regard of this movie, directed by Sam Mendes from a script by Dave Eggers

this is really all i ever need to hear about this movie. i am already actively wiping any awareness of it from my brain.

this seems like the type of story that would be tolerable and possibly even okay on paper, but is never good (or at least appealing to me personally) on screen.

"the generally trustworthy onion av club likes it..."

just how connected is onion AV to onion proper? it seems like it would be conflict of interest if they weren't independent entities somehow. (Like if they were to do an Eggers bit)

obv mendes sucks but is it all his fault if there's no recognisable social reality in the movie?? what i'm saying here is that dave eggers, also, sucks.

see, with every post poor Vendela is getting wiped from the fabric of reality (although I guess in this case she gets to skirt neatly beneath the radar of blame)

to be fair, btw, that review actually puts in a positive nod for the writing, which I found interesting, because its criticisms were pretty blanket ones of the film's worldview -- it didn't explicitly locate that worldview in the performances Mendes was getting out of people or other directorial decisions

fabric, skirt, pretty blanket

jeff you didnt put your email in your webmail

fixed! sorry about that. i figured it would give you my address or at least have some sort of anonymous setup.

I don't think Mr Scott nails his hatred of this SMUG, FAUX-NAIVE, IRRESPONSIBLE & SECRETLY HATEFUL aesthetic and moral worldview as well as Xpsy Mothra did here and here, nearly four years ago in a thread on Eggers (&my first ilx post I think there too!). And I'm really not sure if there is this subject neglect/withdrawal and don't think it's something you could show, but, ANYWAY: I've not seen anyone get to grips with why it irritated them so much, or analyse why they're ready to bust out the morals on these reprobates. What is it they have staked in the proper treatment of the subject (&decent self-control&whatever) that makes THESE ppl not just blandly off the mark but uniquely despicable and perversely cathartic to shit on.

To clarify that last sentence: what is it the haters have staked in the x of x that makes th Eggers/VENDELA/Mendes axis not just off the mark but...

"thank you for forgetting to mention me in this thread"
http://www.cbc.ca/arts/images/arts_vendela-vida_392.jpg

In soviet union, movie hate you!

In the words of Artie Lange, 'I'm looking forward to completely ignoring this.'

man, i tried to read this whole thread just now and it's really really long. i couldn't do it. i tried!

Mendes is such a schmucko.

Allegedly he was a talented theater director? It sure does not show in his movies.

revolutionary road is pretty good but maybe that is despite him.

Hi, Nicole!

This film was worth making just so AOScott could write that review. His pans are DELICIOUS to my brain.

Hey Scott! Thanks for bringing up Tenspeed and Brownshoe! Happy memories.

This was not nearly as bad as Revolutionary Road.

Which is not to say that it was "good."

i saw this movie and i have no idea waht to say beyond what ao scott did... shouldnt have read the review :(

to me the weirdest thing was how traumatized this mid-30s couple was that dude's parents (who they clearly didn't really like) were moving to belgium for two years... did not understand how that was supposed to make two grown adults flip out and totally reconsider their lives.

this thing's getting utterly trashed in most reviews I've been reading.

they're sensitive lovers

I think it was Peter Travers in Rolling Stone who basically said "this movie isn't perfect but Maya Rudolph is fucking amazing in it"...?

ah yes, i recall that... that was years ago

down to a 57% on Rotten Tomatoes.. was up in the high 60s last time I checked.

lol @ ott tirade from variety
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118004844.html?categoryId=5&cs=1

This is the sort of sunny shit you get (and deserve) when you encourage nihilists like me to be more "life affirming."

Is that column the first iteration of "twat" in/on Variety, btw?

i love how maya rudolph character gets all pissed off when john krasinski has to act all chummy on the phone for his job... like how dare he not be 100% pure and authentic all the time

god this movie blows

I am glad I can still come back to ILX bcz when I saw this trailer for the first five times all I could think about was how much you folks must be eviscerating it, and how much I was missing out

still give trayce cred for opposing the hive yet again

the sad fact, to me, is the trailer (possibly the movie itself) would be 120kx improved by replacing office jim with basically ANYBODY ok maybe not nick cage

uh DEFINITELY nic cage

this is the kind of movie he should have never stopped being in!

ok ok anybody without the fucking preposterous beardo goggles

I mean jason statham with that hair + accoutrements would be insufferable

I maintain that whatever problems this movie had...at least it wasn't Revolutionary Road. That was some bullshit.

krasinkers is fine in this... i find him totally likeable... this movie's shittiness is not his fault and would not be improved with anyone else in that role.

the main problems here are all in the script. it's a terrible script.

c'mon man jason statham or nicolas cage would have made this movie incredible

the rock

that's not fair though, there's no film in the world that would be less awesome with statham in it. xp

I want more casting ideas based on the Rock as beardo star. Go!

the rock as paul giamatti in sideways

the rock as jeff daniels in "noah and the whale"

i do believe he would have encouraged his son's serious tennis ambitions more - perhaps even on pain of death

er, squid and the whale

I will always <3 The Believer for the awesome Godard DVD included a couple issues ago but,anyway, here'sEggers & Vida in the latest Interview

the rock as jeff daniels in "noah and the whale"

i do believe he would have encouraged his son's serious tennis ambitions more - perhaps even on pain of death

― Tracer Hand, Sunday, June 14, 2009 10:37 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

he would have been good as the tennis teacher

the rock as the guy who looks like john cale out of straw dogs

http://www.filmdope.com/Gallery/ActorsW/17942-18465.gif
http://www.gazette.uwo.ca/./2005/03%20march/09/scans/06a%20the%20rock.jpg

so have there been ~any~ positive reviews?

TV Guide loved it!

Heavy contender for most ever use of the words "quirky" and "offbeat" in reviews, looks like.

Composite positive review: "What an effervescently quirky respite from the usual big studio fare!"

Composite negative review: "Give me a fucking break."

is it better than Little Miss Sunshine? Because I hate that movie.

That was the previous quirky titleholder.

And I hate it, too.

I thought theprevious title holder was Juno? I thought that was alright.

No you're right.

Been a glut of quirk lately, hard to do the math.

Makes one nostalgic for when I <3 Huckabees was the quirky title holder.

Yeah! And that movie is actually... well... strange. Not just precious.

Is that David Warner above the Rock?

Love David Warner.

This would be vastly improved if they were attacked by snakes while on the plane ... and everywhere else.

i liked little miss sunshine!

the rock as michael gross on family ties (i.e., the beardo dad)

the rock as michael gross in Tremors would be pretty predictable.

agreed.

i think this movie is going to have a lot 2 say 2 me about lyfe and growing up and growing a beard. cant wait to d/l this sdtrk or applaud its best adapted scrnplay oscar

gah i hated little miss sunshine so much, what a terrible, phony movie

do u not yearn? at all?

lamp, are you carles?

haha

poster j0rdan S. i am a lamp. a lamp that loves movies about quirky independent spirits with beards and graphic wallpaper in their homes

thank god this film is going nowhere

were u scared to lose its msg?

i love lamp

The Stranger had a douchey review that was all "well this movie may not be for you but you can always go see The Hangover." I was expecting them to hate it.

Yeah, our Mercury here went positive for it also. Two write-ups even.

gah i hated little miss sunshine so much, what a terrible, phony movie

― s1ocki, Sunday, June 14, 2009 9:33 PM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

do u not yearn? at all?

― stone phillips i love u because u r my dad (Lamp), Sunday, June 14, 2009 9:38 PM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

No, of course he yearns! He yearns for so much. Be knows deep inside that everything is phony, especially adults. At night he dreams about a cliff, and a field of rye...

I felt bad for A.O. Scott after reading that review, as in, I felt his pain.

That movie has almost ruined my summer, and I haven't even seen it. Just knowing it's out there.

I also want to kick Little Miss Sunshine right in its soft stomach, rupturing several internal organs.

i'll probably never see this movie, but i love this thread. two thumbs up!

nobody should ever have to suffer thru lil' miss sunshine. they should just watch:

https://www.movieposter.com/posters/archive/main/11/A70-5752

My wife was telling me yesterday about how wonderful she thought "Little Miss Sunshine" was, from the script to the performances to the way it was shot, etc etc etc. I never saw the movie, so why the invective?

i would like to see The Rock remake old elliot gould movies.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2007/1820611454_626192b466_b.jpg

lil' miss sunshine isn't the worst thing in the world. it's just really obvious quirk by numbers.

it's like the people who made it went through a list of quirky sundance movies and just mixed and matched till they reached maximum quirk.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/51/156424161_6da36a045f.jpg

saw this today... have no idea where all the hate is coming from. i realise most of ilx may think i'm douche (or more of one) from here on out, but i thought this was funny and entertaining. i mean, it wasn't groundbreaking cinema, there were no new ideas being expressed, but alison janney was great (as always) and i felt a lot of empathy for the main characters.

I haven't seen the movie, so you may be right; I will say that the Slate review sort of scared me off because it seemed to be full of exactly the kind of critiques I would make of a movie like this.

i just felt like it wasn't trying to be anything other than it obviously was.. if that makes sense. it was a simple story about a couple in their early 30s, feeling kind of stressed about what the hell to do with this kid. sure, a lot of the characters were sort of caricatures but it wasn't trying to hide that. i dunno, it just doesn't seem worthy of all the hate. 'he's just not that into you' otoh REALLY deserves its own hate thread.

JMC, I think you'd like this movie.

What just1n3 said -- definitely caricatures along the way, but most road movies have that -- this one is much more like Broken Flowers than Little Miss Sunshine.

Oh, and now I can say that there' a Sam Mendes movie that I actually like.

saw this today... have no idea where all the hate is coming from. i realise most of ilx may think i'm douche (or more of one) from here on out, but i thought this was funny and entertaining. i mean, it wasn't groundbreaking cinema, there were no new ideas being expressed, but alison janney was great (as always) and i felt a lot of empathy for the main characters.

The hate is coming from the fact that it was directed by the dude who did "American Beauty"; I think 90% of the people here reflexively hate everything Sam Mendes touches (except Kate Winslet).

that's not where it's coming from.

i think eggers is a reason for as much if not more reflexive hate than mendes, but let me tell u, this movie earns its hate-itude.

It's coming from the entire douchey "indie" marketing approach, right?

its coming from the fact that this movie sucks major ass

i will read the new dave eggers book because i hear it is good. don't know how this impacts/destabilises this thread or anyone's core beliefs.

have also averted the syrupy temptation of going to see this because there's the michael cera love movie coming out that will hit the same buttons without clawing at my nerves so. ILX hatred for eggers as a figurehead is a little much though.

I'm in Ebert's camp on this one.

They are playful but also socially committed. Consider his wonderful project “826 Valencia,” a nonprofit storefront operation in San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Seattle, Boston and Ann Arbor, Mich. It runs free tutoring and writing workshops for young people from ages 6 to 18. The playful part can be seen in San Francisco, where the front of the ground floor is devoted to a Pirate Store. Yes. With eye patches, parrot’s perches, beard dye, peg legs, planks for walking — all your needs.

I submit that Eggers and Vida are admirable people. If their characters find they are superior to many people, well, maybe they are. “This movie does not like you,” sniffs Tony Scott of the New York Times. Perhaps with good reason.

ugh

tony scott huh

oh i guess his first name is anthony?

If their characters find they are superior to many people, well, maybe they are.

At this point I would like the Transformers to invade Away We Go and kill everything.

With their giant construction balls.

i'd rather be nailed to a cross by my nutsack than see this movie

ebert falls for this twee faux indie bs the same way he falls for boobs n' fx

(transformers 2 doesn't count that would break anyone)

Just see his fawning review of "Transformers 2"! xp: lol

I know it's not really fair of a relatively uncharitable person like myself to scrutinize Eggers here, but the 826 Valencia stuff always struck me as like 10 parts self-congratulation and stylization to one part charity.

accusing people of giving charity for self-congratulatory reasons is pretty low imo and honestly who cares

The auditors?

Maybe part of why it reminded me so much of Broken Flowers is that Bill Murray has that attitude, when going to see the people close to him, of who-the-fuck-are-they-and-when-did-they-get-so-weird. This movie is like that, in a mellower way. There's one part (the end of the Madison chapter) that seems to assume the audience is on the side of the main characters when we're not. Anyway, American Beauty is one of my bottom-three movies of all time, and thought Little Miss Sunshine was too carefully put together as a screenplay, and I don't like David Sedaris, but this one goes further than just aren't-all-families-wacky.

I have conservative friends who think that fuel effiency, eating well, and giving to charity is self-congratulatory as well.

At this point I would like the Transformers to invade Away We Go and kill everything.

A mashup where this happens is the only way I will ever watch either of these movies.

eggers cares so much so i don't have to

c'mon man jason statham or nicolas cage would have made this movie incredible

― Tracer Hand, Saturday, June 13, 2009 4:28 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

basically this is true about any movie

Does that mean G-Force will be incredible?

It looked pretty amazing from the trailer imo

haha!

Jason Statham beating up guinea pigs would have been better.

poor things

Just saw this last night, liked it a lot, and am ready to fight about it, please join me!

There are criticisms you could make, but not the ones that the negative reviews actually ARE making. That is: I'm honestly baffled as to how anyone could come away from this movie with a sense of either Juno-style "let's celebrate our indie quirkiness" an American Beauty-style "let's boringly complain about how suburban middle-class Americans are fat and uncool."

If this establishes my bona fides here at all, I agree with every word of A.O. Scott's review, as it pertains to American Beauty, and was kind of shocked that the man who could direct that pretentious and fraudulent turd could turn out a movie as charming and humane as this one.

Not gonna say it's perfect -- the yukfest first half is better than the more earnest, too slow second half.

But really -- where are people getting what's become the standard knock on this movie? E.G. what makes people think the protagonists are supposed to be indie and quirky? Am I nuts here? This a couple with mainstream professional jobs -- his in insurance, hers in medical illustration -- which they clearly care about, try to do well, and which they don't find find poor substitutes for being in bands or being transgressive poster artists or something. They display no interest in indie rock, collecting Pez dispensers, literature, or irony.

E.G.2 what makes people think this is another Sam Mendes "Typical Americans are fat suburban soulless morons" flick? I mean, _American Beauty_ is trying to say something, something stupid, about the typical American -- that's why it's called what it's called. Even Borat, as funny as it is, can be fairly knocked for this -- it sets itself up as an exploration of America and I think does at least pretend to believe (or pretend that its protagonist believes) that the people it's mocking can stand in for "Americans" at large.

But this movie doesn't in the slightest gesture at being about "America" unless you think that any overhead shot of a highway automatically means the movie is making a claim about the American condition. It's in fact a pretty simple movie which the reviewers seem to want to be part of somebody else's fight. I think it's just about a couple having a baby, who learn over the course of the movie that a) being a parent is complicated, and lots of people who start out just like them end up in weird-looking situations; and b) despite this, all the kids from all those weird-looking situations are probably going to grow up just fine so there's not much to do but go ahead and hope for the best.

I think a) is disputable but b) is not -- Scott seems to think the movie goes something like, "Bert and Verona are different from and superior to the typical American goons they meet, and, strengthed by the lessons they learn from said goons, will raise a perfect and superior kid" -- but if this were the case it doesn't really make much sense to have goon 1 and goon 2 be BERT'S OWN PARENTS, does it?

Or maybe we all just find slice of life demidramas boring and unnecessary? (Admittedly personal bias there.)

^ this. It's not necessarily the story that people were hating on or expecting, just the general tone and aesthetic of a Mendes movie or an Eggers script (and the combination that these two likely make) that I think people were predicting and hating. No matter what the script is about, I think Ned nailed what the movie probably is.

Or maybe we all just find slice of life demidramas boring and unnecessary? (Admittedly personal bias there.)

^^^^^^^^^

Or maybe we all just find slice of life demidramas boring and unnecessary? (Admittedly personal bias there.)

― Ned Raggett, Sunday, June 28, 2009 5:00 PM

^ this. It's not necessarily the story that people were hating on or expecting, just the general tone and aesthetic of a Mendes movie or an Eggers script (and the combination that these two likely make) that I think people were predicting and hating. No matter what the script is about, I think Ned nailed what the movie probably is.

― throwbookatface (skygreenleopard)

So has anyone here posting a slam on the movie actually seen it?

You know you're getting quirkfest when Randall Poster (who has been almost too influential for his own good) gets brought into a production to pick some folk-rock for the soundtrack.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0692922/

I'm just not interested in movies that are primarily "OMG Having a baby!" unless the baby is potentially the spawn of Satan or a hybrid human-lizard creature or something abnormal.

Well, for those who find hybrid human-lizard creature movies boring and unnecessary, this one's not bad.

I'm just not interested in movies that are primarily "OMG Having a baby!" unless the baby is potentially the spawn of Satan or a hybrid human-lizard creature or something abnormal.

^^^ x1000
people have been having regular babies forever; the least a filmmaker can do is give me a decent cinematic version of the tragic life and death of lobster boy. why has no one done that yet?

no real desire to see this movie but "i dont like movies about real life/babies/people who arent aliens" is a pretty weak argument against it!

I'm actually a huge fan of slice-of-life dramas as long as they're done realistically, with characters that feel human. From what I gather, this is not the case for Away We Go.

Maybe try seeing the movie before deciding whether it's realistic with human-feeling characters...?

Fair point. I'm just saying, the reviews I've read, and the people I know who've seen the movie, have led me to believe this is not the case. The words "broad" and "cartoonish" have cropped up on more than one occasion.

not trying to argue against this movie (no way i am going to see it) but rather in favor of lobster boy

Fair point. I'm just saying, the reviews I've read, and the people I know who've seen the movie, have led me to believe this is not the case. The words "broad" and "cartoonish" have cropped up on more than one occasion.

― great gabbneb's ghost (jaymc), Monday, June 29, 2009 7:07 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

Agree - someone pointed out upthread that I haven't seen the movie. I'm 99% sure how I feel about it without seeing it will be how I feel if I do see it, though, and I've read enough about it in reviews and from this thread to know what its flaws will be. I mean, I'm not saying it's a terrible movie, I'm just saying why I think I really don't want to see it. Speculating, but it's an educated guess.

Right, and that's the thing, I feel like 99 times out of 100 when I see a movie and read reviews I feel like "OK, the reviewer saw the same movie I did" even if the judgment of the movie's success is different. I felt like the movie depicted in the reviews is some weird conceptual "Away We Go" of the mind with little resemblance to what's on screen. The reviews almost dissuaded me from seeing this and I think that would have been bad. So I guess I'm endorsing the general utility of the "movies that get bad reviews from people whose values I share are probably bad" heuristic but saying that this movie is a special case where the heuristic broke down. Maybe because American Beauty really did get a lot of good reviews at the time, and reviewers who have now woken up to the crappiness of that movie are determined not to be snookered by Mendes a second time? Not sure.

the least a filmmaker can do is give me a decent cinematic version of the tragic life and death of lobster boy. why has no one done that yet?

pretend Tim Burton intended this as a rough storyboard:

http://homepage.eircom.net/~sebulbac/burton/oysterboy.html

oh wow, someone already pretended that:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phzO2qJ35sE

i have been known to enjoy oyster boy, but the story of lobster boy is better because it is TRUE! (grady stiles jr, look it up)
that makes it more ripe for the filmmaking

In 1978, Stiles shot and killed his oldest daughter's fiance on the eve of their wedding. He was brought to trial where he openly confessed to killing the man and was convicted of murder. He was not sent to prison as no state institution was equipped to care for an inmate with ectrodactyly. Stiles was instead sentenced to fifteen years probation.

Christ, no wonder they got someone to kill him, he was ABOVE THE LAW(BSTER)

they should have dropped him in a giant pot of boiling water imo

if it floats it is a lobstere

if it headbutts you in a drunken rage, it is lobster boy

I'm just not interested in movies that are primarily "OMG Having a baby!" unless the baby is potentially the spawn of Satan or a hybrid human-lizard creature or something abnormal.

― incomprehensible Kool-Aid swallower (sarahel), Monday, June 29, 2009 9:44 AM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lol i just watched V The Final Battle today

no real desire to see this movie but "i dont like movies about real life/babies/people who arent aliens" is a pretty weak argument against it!

dude i like movies about robots and zombies too jeeeez

srsly though the trailer just makes this movie look so insufferable

I saw this yesterday and have been mulling over my reaction -- I didn't hate it but I walked away feeling like it was pleasant but unsatisfying (which incidentally sums up my feelings about the two Eggers books I've read). The main couple has gotten a bad rap in reviews, they seem like a couple of well-intentioned schlubbos who react to the lunatic stereotypes they meet pretty much like anyone else would react. Whatever "quirkiness" the movie has usually stems from them acting kind of couple-y and insular, which feels realistic enough and comes off as endearing if you buy into the portrayal, which I did.

I don't know though, the dissatisfying part to me was that the couple was positioned as this kind of "calm observer of a chaotic world" (a tad too many shots of them standing side-by-side staring at crazy people, delicate vistas, etc), but there wasn't a corresponding catharsis on the other end. I mean, there was -- there was a part where they talked about their kid and you can tell it's supposed to be the emotional highpoint of the film -- but it was tepid and the stakes didn't feel very high and all their concerns and insights were kind of boring and pedestrian. It's the same complaint I have about Eggers' books, I always think they're leading slowly to something new and meaningful and then they fall flat.

I guess you could argue that our quests for meaning rarely result in anything unique or interesting, so it's just being true to life. But that makes the movie the cinematic equivalent of putting on an Alexi Murdoch album and reading the parenting threads on Ask Metafilter, and I don't have to pay eight bucks to do that.

Also FYI the film starts out with John Krasinski eating out Maya Rudolph under a blanket so maybe don't bring your 14-year-old sister to see it like I did.

looooooooooooooool

putting on an Alexi Murdoch album and reading the parenting threads on Ask Metafilter

coincidentally I just posted this on the "YOUR BORING FRIDAY NIGHT" thread

that was an awesome review, reddening. and eephus! too.

you just reminded me that i took my parents and younger sister to see "election" in the cinema which was cool but i was kind of holding my breath after the "her pussy gets SO WET" line, like 5 minutes in.

There should be a special rating for movies that are appropriate for teenagers alone or adults alone, but not teenagers and adults together.

haha

has anyone on here seen this who has had a kid? wondering if that makes a difference to one's feelings about the movie (either good or bad).

Jaymc, I will refund the price of your ticket if you and your gal don't like this.

I haven't seen it although I do have a kid. I suspect any movie that revolves around people on the brink of parenthood having an existential self-exploration would irritate the hell out of me.

for the record i did see it and it sucks ass

just based on this thread, i kinda can't wait to see this movie, but i have a feeling i won't actually see it until it's $3.99 on dvd at the convenience store and i buy it drunk.

has anyone on here seen this who has had a kid? wondering if that makes a difference to one's feelings about the movie (either good or bad).

Data point 1: I liked this movie and I have a preschool-age kid.

Data point 2: you are married to Maya Rudolph

Jaymc, I will refund the price of your ticket if you and your gal don't like this.

Ha, really?

this seems like the ultimate kind of dollar movie, if dollar movies still existed

i'm just saying people who actually have a kid or made a decision to have a kid after a life of selfishness will like any kind of sappy shit. I know I do!

Really, J., yes!

So you liked it, huh?

kinda curious what kind of expectations people have would even have for a dave eggers movie. or is it all about haha eggers is a moran. i mean, if the movie were better would people who hate his "thing" admit it? or would they just make up another reason to hate it. like i said, i love this thread. so please do carry on. just wondering. cuz if he wasn't involved and this was the same sort of movie starring ashton kutcher or matthew perry there wouldn't even be a thread would there be?

don't mind me. just taking a break from pricing records.

did that make any sense? i think not. never mind.

Data point 3: I am having a kid in a few months and probably am going through many of the same thoughts and emotions as the characters in this film, but that doesn't mean I'd like the shit.

If this had been Ashton K instead of John K, there would have been an even larger "lol what the hell, Ashton" thread.

i mean it's a sport to hate him so how good would the movie have to be for people to actually admit liking it. people who hate him, that is.

no, i meant a similar sorta movie starring ashton but without the bookish people involved. it probably would just disappear without a trace. eggers is the draw.

scott i know the thread title seems otherwise but most of the hate ive seen so far is directed at good ol sam mendes, not at dave eggers

J., I wrote about it above, along with some other extended reviews from others that got lost in all the preview-hate. (I mean, I hated the preview for Children of Men so much that I didn't even think of seeing it for two years.)

I never read Heartbreaking Work. Most of my friends seem to have. Read and liked Velocity, and this one is very similar as far as being a road-trip movie from the point of view of characters who are very actively absorbing the local culture they're in. I didn't go nuts for either one in the long term, but I liked them both very much while I was experiencing them.

This movie minus Eggers plus Ashton probably equals Four Chritmases.

Just to repost Geephus's long post earlier, related to this:
But really -- where are people getting what's become the standard knock on this movie? E.G. what makes people think the protagonists are supposed to be indie and quirky? Am I nuts here? This a couple with mainstream professional jobs -- his in insurance, hers in medical illustration -- which they clearly care about, try to do well, and which they don't find find poor substitutes for being in bands or being transgressive poster artists or something. They display no interest in indie rock, collecting Pez dispensers, literature, or irony.

Sorry, I missed your stuff upthread.

this one is much more like Broken Flowers than Little Miss Sunshine.

Yes, that's a recommendation.

Although I'll say that even LMS I sorta liked while I was watching it, and it was only later that it began to leave a sour taste in my mouth.

made a decision to have a kid after a life of selfishness

...thanks?

I would love to see Sam Mendes and Ashton Kutcher team up for a documentary road trip titled America, You So Crazy! paid for by Twitter

scott fwiw i have neutral-to-friendly feelings about dave eggers.

chaotic neutral to friendly

and my main problem isn't necc with the main characters, despite their bizarre sulky entitlement (why a couple of 30somethings would flip out so hard when one set of their parents, who they clearly don't even like, decides to go on sabbatical is beyond me) but with the paper-thin, shrill and altogether boring supporting characters they turn up their noses at. the movie is full of the cheapest of shots.

...thanks?

― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, June 30, 2009 5:29 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

hahaha! yeah, really.

cuz everyone knows that having kids is the most selfless act on earth.

You know what quirky road-trip movie is the absolute worst, though? Transamerica.

transamerica 2: revenge of the fallen

haha

I had an idea long ago for a road-trip movie with Jim Carrey and John C. Reilly where they would play everyone in the movie. Like, their car breaks down and they walk into a biker bar, and all of the bikers are played by them.

speaking of ashton and road trips, this just might be the worst movie i've seen in years:

http://roddysrockinreviews.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/just-married.jpg

Also FYI the film starts out with John Krasinski eating out Maya Rudolph under a blanket so maybe don't bring your 14-year-old sister to see it like I did.

that sounds mega-awkward (haha both for you and in terms of Krasinki's beard), but on the other hand: 14-year-old boys probably can't even get through a day without seeing something related to blowjobs, so this probably qualifies as a positive message

hat sounds mega-awkward (haha both for you and in terms of Krasinki's beard)

Why did you even go there.

http://a0.vox.com/6a00c2252d77b88e1d00cd973bf6584cd5-320pi

i decided to hate this movie not for the obvious targets - eggers, mendes - but for vendelea vida. she needs to be taken down a peg or two

something for everyone to hate! they should use that on the poster.

i think i want that woman's doughnut...

who will you hate?

vendela vida sounds like a name of someone who wrongly thinks she is really important

That's clever.

thx

harbl's favorite writer name, obviously

lol true! sorry though it just sounds like one of those names

"who will you hate?"

maggie gylllllenhayllll. just cuz. or maybe jim gaffigan. can't be hating on jeff daniels or catherine o'hara.

dude from the office is such a non-entity to me. like he doesn't even exist. can't hate what you can't see.

and i ain't hating on maya cuz her mother is one of my gods on earth and in heaven. that would be liking hating jeebus.

if he were invisible this would be a more interesting movie

Maya Rudolph, her imaginary husband and her phantom pregnancy.

Loving You Is Easy 'Cuz You're A Hybrid Human-Lizard Creature

not imaginary, but invisible. they wouldn't have even needed the blanket for that opening scene, for instance.

on second thought, i guess they would since maybe maya rudolph wouldn't want to be on full display

i would watch jk and maya rudolph smashing if he was invisible

jfk

not imaginary, but invisible.

I prefer my take!

maybe it could be a big reveal at the end of the movie
omg HE'S NOT REAL

He's a ghost! The movie has run backwards in time! John Connor sent him back to prevent himself from happening!

Maya Rudolph sees dead people.

Gobble, gobble?

Haven't seen it, but I have to say, if I were about to have a kid I wouldn't be spending precious money I'd be needing to feed and take care of the child on an existential road trip.

The couple is living where they are living only because his parents are there, and his parents are moving away, and they both have jobs they can do from anywhere and are not slacker/bohemian/artist/writers but two professionals who can afford to figure out where they want to live.

I never said anything about their jobs, though.

I guess I'm an alarmist about money, though, especially when it comes to taking care of kids. (I don't have any, thank heavens, because I can barely afford to feed myself.)

I just saw this. It was okay. I can understand the knee-jerk reaction to want to hate it. It feels a little bit preachy, I guess. It's like the main couple is being held up as worthy of emulation, and many of the other characters they encounter are put there to teach a lesson by way of counter-example. It's a bit like "Pilgrim's Progress" in that regard - I guess the second part in which Christian is joined on his journey by his wife Christianna and they encounter characters such as Mrs. Inconsiderate and Mrs. Light-mind on their way through the city of Vanity to the Celestial City. It's like Eggers and Vida have swung so far in the anti-irony direction that they've ended up crafting allegorical tales of moral instruction. That said, I join Roger Ebert in finding this kind of willful uncoolness kind of refreshing.

Saw it recently too. Have a basic dislike for people with "jobs they can do from anywhere." Particularly the ones who move to Montreal and drive the rents up.

Best review ever.

This dude is AWESOME!

Dancing with the Stars? Might as well be Dancing with Space Aliens as far as I’m concerned. Who are these people?

http://images.cnhi.zope.net/images_sizedimage_352121937/med

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZXkHRi4sFY