Anticipate Peter Jacksons The Lovely Bones

The first trailer:

http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/thelovelybones/index.html

A mix of a subdued indie drama and glossy CGI supernatural mystery. After two years in the making, it's finally being released - in Oscar bait season, so someone's confident.

he's lost a shedload of weight!

Looks a bit "What Dreams May Come." Was hoping for something in a similar vein to "Heavenly Creatures" but not really really feeling this trailer. Eno is doing the soundtrack though

he's lost a shedload of weight!

He lost that pre-King Kong.

ah right, i've not seen him since the oscars.

from wiki:
For the film's ending, Eno uncovered a demo he had done in 1973 and reunited with the vocalist to create a proper version for the film.

who's the vocalist?

Chrissy!

but yeah looks stupid. trailer basically tells the whole story. Jackson had a helluva run but its hard to escape the conclusion that he peaked with the LOTR films. CGI's ruined a lot of the inventiveness that made that run of Meet the Feebles/Braindead/Heavenly Creatures/LOTR so nuts and interesting.

He hasn't done anything good since Forgotten Silver.

i may be alone in thinking that king kong was pretty entertaining and dope

If this has any scenes of Mark W talking to houseplants, I will be satisfied.

Was hoping for something in a similar vein to "Heavenly Creatures" but not really really feeling this trailer.
Exactly the same for me. Actually I hate this trailer ! Big disappointment.

trailer suffers from being structured like every other stupid fucking Hollywood drama trailer

CGI's ruined a lot of the inventiveness that made that run of Meet the Feebles/Braindead/Heavenly Creatures/LOTR so nuts and interesting. - Whether you liked it or were bothered by it, there is no arguing that LOTR was not rife with CGI. The thing about LOTR, tho, was that Jackson & co went as far as they could with tactile stagecraft, props & such & then used CGI to fill in the (admittedly many, gaping) spaces. This made all the difference IMO, & made the films substantial in a manner completely lacking from, say, the Star Wars prequels (where Lucas would have *dazzled* us with a shit-rainbow CGI mess of a Hobbit village instead of using, you know, wood & stuff).

I think Jackson should have hired out Guillermo del Toro (or whoever does his FX) for the fantasy world sequences, b/c from the looks of this trailer, we'll be treated to the same variety of selective de/over saturation & rampant Photoshop "diffused glow" filtration on which LOTR leaned so hard & which has now been imitated past the point of cliche. Or, as Butthead would say, "these special effects aren't very special."

Story looks interesting, tho. I'll check this out.

This made all the difference IMO,

yep

I actually kind of liked this novel, as fucked up and not very good as it is. I mean, for a massively popular book, I thought it was alright. It's too bad Lynne Ramsay didn't get to make this as I suspect it would be more interesting than Jackson's take.

trailer would've worked better without the girl's voiceover, i think.

I do want to see this but actually it seems that Lynne was best off out of it.

i may be alone in thinking that king kong was pretty entertaining and dope

― omar little, Wednesday, August 5, 2009 5:02 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

No you are not. Everything after the weirdly paced first hour is amazing.

Strange, but I don't remember much from King Kong. Except that big monkey.

I remember that in King Kong, the characters run through a stampede of dinosaurs and no one gets crushed. FAIL.

ghosts that is not even real

Super creepy Stanley Tucci, though.

ohhhhhhhhhh, my goodness gracious.

In a good or bad way?

In a more "egregious mismatch of filmmaker and material" way than I feared. And I feared!

The "inbetween" afterlife looks like a megabudget Ambien commercial.

how was wahlberg!?!?!?

adrift. Trapped by a lousy script.

I hope the afterlife looks like Wahlberg.

This covers most of the bases:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/nov/24/the-lovely-bones-film-review

morbs otm

too bad. I know this book is controversial and people love to hate it but I thought it was rather good, and had high hopes for this, but it sounds like that robin williams film from a few years back. Ramsey would have done it proper.

Afterlife/"dying's fun!" bits are v overdone and awful, as is Mark Wahlberg as per usual, but otherwise (which is 80% or so of it) I loved it

Wow. This was just a spectacular misfire on every level. I love Wahlberg in the right role but he was obviously going to struggle here. That said, he's probably the least of the film's problems.

ooof.

this is not the sort of movie that should elicit chuckles.

No he isn't

There seem to be a lot of reasons that people thought this was awful, but I thought it was pretty great. I've never read the book, so my viewing couldn't suffer from any adverse comparisons or complaints about favorite characters/scenes gone missing. I don't understand why people hated the heaven CGI effects so much - they were silly but who cares, they were fun to watch. And there lots of other visual effects that were very effective. I thought Stanley Tucci was very good and Susan Sarandon was great. All the actors held up their end. I liked that it didn't try to obtain closure in the usual Hollywood way. I can understand people being creeped out by it. I debate whether I would let a pre-teen daughter watch this if I were a parent, but there were lots of them in the audience, and I guess it's appropriate that this was PG-13 so it could be appreciated by people the same age as the narrator.

I hated hated hated the book, so I'm not sure if I have any interest in seeing the film version. I have never been more, let's face it, angry at the ending of a book than I was with this pile of crap. I liked it well enough from the start and liked the direction it was heading in... I liked how the investigation was starting to unravel. But then, wow, the ending just sucked so hard. Her "reason" for being caught in-between was so lame and the way they tacked on the wrap-up of the killer's storyline was so lame. Just really made me angry to have wasted my time on the book.

what makes the bones lovely anyway, do they ever answer that

what i want to know is there gonna be a porno called the lovely boners

I have never been more, let's face it, angry at the ending of a book than I was with this pile of crap. I liked it well enough from the start and liked the direction it was heading in... I liked how the investigation was starting to unravel. But then, wow, the ending just sucked so hard. Her "reason" for being caught in-between was so lame and the way they tacked on the wrap-up of the killer's storyline was so lame. Just really made me angry to have wasted my time on the book.

I agree. I liked the first two thirds of the book, but oof, the ending is rotten. I would recommend Laura Lippman's What the Dead Know instead -- it is about the disappearance of two teenage girls set in the same era, but without the lame elements that ended up ruining The Lovely Bones.

Thanks for the recommendation, sounds like it just might rinse the bad taste of this book out of my mouth.

I might just watch Heavenly Creatures again rather than bother with this.

The film starts sucking at a much earlier point than the book.

Well, that certainly helps me make up my mind to save the money.

the lovely morbs

This was posted on the Ebert thread, but it deserves mention here, too:
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100113/REVIEWS/100119992

Woof. What a review. I believe I'll be skipping the movie and the book.

http://images.dawgsports.com/images/admin/Oh_God_You_Devil_movie_poster.jpg

the lovely burns

I just read the plot synopsis for this book and wow it is a total dick; why the hell would anyone want to read that, let alone make a movie out of it???

Ted Wass was a genius in that movie.

The film starts sucking at a much earlier point than the book

I'd always written the book off as something that I wouldn't like (reflexive snobbishness alert), but hearing people compare it favorably to the movie has made me want to read it.

zero desire to see this

oh it's out! now maybe they will stop with all the damn commercials for this crap

"what makes the bones lovely anyway, do they ever answer that"

from the book:

"These were the lovely bones that had grown around my absence: the connections — sometimes tenuous, sometimes made at great cost, but often magnificent — that happened after I was gone. And I began to see things in a way that let me hold the world without me in it. The events my death brought were merely the bones of a body that would become whole at some unpredictable time in the future. The price of what I came to see as this miraculous lifeless body had been my life."

Much prose from the novel is V/O'd throughout in a breathy whine by Saoirse Ronan (sp).

Yes, that part was in the voiceover, though from what I've read elsewhere, the movie cut out a lot about the various connections that were formed in her absence. Seems like a reasonable decision to me, given the constraints of a 2-hour running length, and the decision to structure the movie more as a suspense thriller with supernatural overtones, rather than a drama about personal relationships.

In order for the movie to have been a "suspense thrilled" they must have really changed the ending from the book, because the way things wrapped up in the book was not thrilling or suspenseful AT ALL.

"thriller" obvs

because the way things wrapped up in the book was not thrilling or suspenseful AT ALL.

It seems to me that the suspense is in what leads up to the end - not in the end itself. So a movie can be suspenseful even if the end subverts the plot resolution we expect.

That's true, I was just thinking about (and this is what I'd hoped for more of in the novel) the typical Hollywood "suspense thriller" that builds up to and ends with the capture of the bad guy. Which is what I thought the book was building up to as well. The first half of the book set up the suspense nicely, but didn't capitalize on it and I fear the movie would do the same.

SPOILER ALERT--
In that case they didn't change the ending. But I just meant they focused more on the suspense part rather than the new relationships forming part.

I hated this book, but I read it so long ago, I don't remember why.

Oh look, I talked about it on ILX:

Basically, the first half of the book works because it's a gripping mystery, but once that ceases to be the focal point, then you're stuck with these characters who you realize have never really been fleshed out at any point but whom you're nonetheless supposed to have sympathy for simply because of the circumstances of the plot. Sorry, Alice.

So pretty much what j/v/c said.

Boy, if you think Sebold didn't flesh em out...

Along with the three dozen other things wrong with this film, everything about Stanley Tucci screaming RAPIST-KILLER kind of makes "suspense" beside the point.

what was alice's response?

ha

ha I am going to assume Tucci just spends the entire movie shouting "RAPIST! KILLER!"

Which is weird because in the book it's "BOXCAR!"

No, his mustache, wardrobe, and model dollhouses do the screaming.

xpoo

I just read the plot synopsis for this book and wow it is a total dick; why the hell would anyone want to read that, let alone make a movie out of it???

OTM, I have no idea why people would ever be interested in reading this book. also Ebert OTM:

The murder of a young person is a tragedy, the murderer is a monster, and making the victim a sweet, poetic narrator is creepy. This movie sells the philosophy that even evil things are God's will, and their victims are happier now. Isn't it nice to think so. I think it's best if they don't happen at all. But if they do, why pretend they don't hurt? Those girls are dead.

one especially didn't need a PG-13 version of this book.

The suspense was not around the identity of the killer - it was around whether/how they are going to catch him in time.

one especially didn't need a PG-13 version of this book.

^^^ yeah

The creepiness factor is actually a plus IMO and if it were played for a stronger subversive angle than what reactions/reviews lead me to believe, I would be all over this.

tbh I was really hoping that the twist in this story would be that they are convinced that the neighbor killed her and use her ghost as an excuse to kill him, only to find out that she killed herself and is now a Samara-level crazy spirit of vengeance

I actually find it creepier that such dark subject matter is bathed in a New Age glow and packaged for pre-teens than if it had been another graphic slasher movie.

The suspense was not around the identity of the killer

I'm aware of that, but that he is not unanimously suspected by the entire town is beyond ludicrous.

Keep the visuals/etc, just have them kill the neighbor and have the ghost be like "yes, a new spectral playmate! now I must tell you that I was wrong, the person who killed me was my sister"

HE BUILDS DOLLHOUSES IN HIS BASEMENT

So the movie is basically this:

http://www.best-horror-movies.com/image-files/i-know-who-killed-me-horror-movie-poster.jpg

Well, it didn't seem like such as small town that everyone would know this guy as well as we the audience did. A quiet guy who keeps to himself can go unnoticed for a pretty long time in an American suburb, I would think.

xxxp

"hi diddly bones!"

http://www.altfg.com/Stars/l/lovely-bones-stanley-tucci-1.jpg

Ned, I am really disappointed. I Know Who Killed Me is a modern classic, it does not deserve such comparisons.

http://fourfour.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/08/05/ikwkm_12.jpg
http://fourfour.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/08/05/ikwkm_16.jpg
http://fourfour.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/08/05/ikwkm_18.jpg

Yes but what if Lindsey Lohan had played Stanley Tucci's character.

The suspense was not around the identity of the killer - it was around whether/how they are going to catch him in time.

But thats my issue with the book, Sebold pretty much completely abandoned that by the final third of the book and I'm concerned that the movie would fizzle out in the same manner.

No, it keeps that going almost to the end, then it wraps things up sharpish.

I guess ghost sex was more interesting to her. And in most cases, I would be interested in reading about ghost sex! But she managed to make it very cheesy and contrived. xp

spoiler
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BODY TRANSFERENCE IS EVEN LAMER HERE, AND NO SCREWING

also, the lusted-after boy is a scholarly geekish type in the book, a junior GQ hottie here

Anyway I'm terribly disappointed in turn Nicole has accused me of not appreciating I Know Who Killed Me.

I wish someone had killed Peter Jackson so he could find out firsthand if this is what heaven looks like.

films are crap

I can't believe they found a way to make it lamer. xxxp

it's not heaven, Soto, it's THE INBETWEEN. Like a Buffalo Tom album.

Films that try to be books or plays are (almost always) crap, yes.

it's not heaven, Soto, it's THE INBETWEEN. Like a Buffalo Tom album.

Oof. (I still can't believe I had to put up with those guys once.)

I find it odd that Peter Jackson even bothers to make movies anymore - his career arc was one of a highly inventive outsider who lucked into conquering Hollywood via a successful adaptation of a highly popular and previously "unfilmable" franchise. Surely he must have realized that the only place to go from there was down and attempting to make further blockbusters would just be met with failure (or at least, failure in comparison to LOTR). Dude should've either gone back to making bizarre, high concept/low-budget movies or retired altogether...

Keep in mind that while all this is going on he's running Weta, who provided special effects for a certain alien smurf movie that's all the rage.

yeah, it's odd that a successful filmmaker would keep wanting to continue doing what he loves and has been richly rewarded for

it's not heaven, Soto, it's THE INBETWEEN. Like a Buffalo Tom album.

Now imagining The Lovely Bones as a My So-Called Life episode.

my so-called death

So the movie is basically this:

plus this

http://coolrain44.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/heaven_can_wait_dvd.jpg

yeah, it's odd that a successful filmmaker would keep wanting to continue doing what he loves and has been richly rewarded for

he loves making failed blockbusters?

Now imagining The Lovely Bones as a My So-Called Life episode.

Heaven is a place where flannel never really happens.

Films that try to be books or plays are (almost always) crap, yes

I don't really get how this was trying to be a book.

I just wonder what happened to his perverse/subversive streak, which was really prominent pre-Hollywood.... and now that he has the clout to make whatever he wants he makes shitty adaptations? really? its just a bummer.

x-post

hard to be subversive when you're on top.

Like most subversives, he's a closet New Ager.

guys has any portrayal of heaven in film gotten anywhere near 'a matter of life and death' because i suspect not

"Surely he must have realized that the only place to go from there was down and attempting to make further blockbusters would just be met with failure"

maybe his role model is george miller. from mad max to happy feet. (and lovely bones is his lorenzo's oil.)

I don't really get how this was trying to be a book.

― o. nate, Tuesday, January 19, 2010 3:54 PM

theres a bunch of segueway scenes showing a page turning

plus all those connective scenes with a wizened old man reading the book to his grandson

lovely bones is his lorenzo's oil.

Lorenzo's Oil is a good movie!

can't help but be a little excited about this, by the way:

"On 18 May 2009, however, it was reported that location scouting was underway for a new live action filming of Mad Max 4: Fury Road."

One of the more novel portrayals of heaven I've seen was in Hirokazu Koreeda's "After Life".

http://filimadami.com/afisler/Defending_Your_Life%281991%29.jpg

Heaven requires white espadrilles.

Ha, a couple years ago, I rented After Life and Defending Your Life and watched them as a double feature.

ya lorenzo's oil is cool. just say it's his extraordinary measures—more topical, anyway

Mad Max 4: Fury Road.

*drives furiously*

how is DYL, jaymc?

Mad Max 4: Fury Road.

*drives furiously*

― ♖♕♖ (am0n), Tuesday, January 19, 2010 4:02 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

RIP pauliegualtieri_sm.gif

haha

Have you not seen it, Alfred? It's pretty good light comedy.

It's the only Brooks I haven't seen -- the white espadrilles frightened me.

hard to be subversive when you're on top.

another reason to give it up for raimi

Well, he did make a Sharon Stone western.

That movie is kind of hilarious though -- a few years back it would be on cable a lot and I would watch parts of it because Sharon is so miscast and she is funny/terrible in it.

adrift. Trapped by a lousy script.

― Feingold/Kaptur 2012 (Dr Morbius)

Yep. Utter, utter crap but also entertaining. We needed something to chuck at the screen though.

saw only a 1/4 of it but it may have almost ruined 'music for airports' for me

the eno really does just add to the wtfery

Stop despising this movie once we got to the Saucy Grandma Hollies montage, sure the concept is offensive but its not like Peter Jackson knew what the hell he was doing with this.

Stopped despising, I mean. Though jesus christ apparently I still have like half the movie to go.

so reading this thread in full tells me i should prepare to find this movie deplorable again soon

saw this recently, didnt think it was that bad aside from some of the effects-heavy scenes - it's genuinely moving at times, but maybe it's hard not to be when you're making a sorrowful movie about murdered little girls. ebert's review was funny but his way of looking at the movie wouldnt have occurred to me while i was watching it. jackson doesnt have a very subtle touch.

of course it's "genuinely moving" at times, it's about the murder of a little girl and has some good actors in it. It also has a slow mo scene of mark wahlberg getting the shit kicked out of him to "baby's on fire" while she cries what the fuck am i watching right now

morbz made a good point about how everyone in town should've immediately identified tucci's character as a rapist-murderer monster

the girl who played the sister looked uncannily like an ex of mine from an abusive background, so i ended up thinking about HER childhood during the movie which may have made it all extra affecting to me

lol ive never seen you admit to being moved by a movie dc

i found myself wondering how gus van sant wouldve shot this

more shots of that british dude, i reckon, maybe some skateboarders

ryan gosling was supposed to play the dad but he showed up to the set like 40 lbs overweight with a comedy moustache, apparently had a difft vision of the character than jackson

The twenty odd minutes I watched of it seemed shockingly poor, and I'm generally a Jackson liker.

re: "being moved" i'm a total pussy about sad movies, it just doesn't come up here much. I gotta give Peter Jackson points for trying to "have it all," this is probably the most incoherently grandiose, overbaked movie I've seen since I don't know what. the guy is cluelessly hopping between the effects of like nine genres to tell us a version of Ghost that's both more saccharine and more harrowing.

xpost "no, ryan, that's my vision of the killer." Wikipedia just says Ryan dropped out because he thought he was too young (he is, though that didn't stop them from casting a girl clearly older than ronan as her younger sister). Wahlberg apparently showed up the day before shooting started and right after The Happening - what a wild summer that must have been.

that susan sarandon wacky grandma montage is just gonna make less and less sense as this movie goes on

the guy is cluelessly hopping between the effects of like nine genres to tell us a version of Ghost that's both more saccharine and more harrowing.

haha yeah, the lack of tonal focus i think bugged me the most - it was just all over the map, and the lack of narrative discipline (there's no reason it couldn't have been 30 minutes shorter). i think i would've preferred it feel more naturalistic than the fairytale approach they went with. not familiar with the book.

oh great "The Big Ship" will now be known as "The Love/Body-Dumping Theme From The Lovely Bones" in my head. Did Eno run over Jackson's dog or something?

idk what it says that i didnt even realize eno's music was all over this movie until after it was over - i think something about the Zyrtec ads set in heaven made everything feel so generic