If it is a choice between Richmond and Death... I choose Death.

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... was the line that got the biggest (only) laff when I went to see 'The Hours' at Richmond Filmhouse last nite. I have mixed feelings about the film. It was an impeccable realisation of a book I love dearly; Julianne, Meryl and Nicole (even if she had been given George Eliot's nose by mistake) were great (not to mention John C Reilly, Claire Danes, etc etc); and I approve of quiet, gentle, thoughtful films about the determined pursuit of happiness…

But I had gripes: about what they left out– a kind of Frank O’Hara flightiness in the New York streets, for example – how a book which is open to momentary delight becomes more purely morbid in David Hare’s script; how Philip Glass’s music smothered everything in arpeggiated low-key tastefulness; about the absence of playfulness in a film which seems determined to keep camp at arms length(Streep makes a fleeting appearance in the book, for example – her role in the film could have been an opportunity for the film to poke out of its elegant formal corset and suggest other, less solemnly tidy worlds).

Maybe it’s churlish of me to have these reservations about what is a beautiful, serious, moving film. What do you think?

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Monday, 17 February 2003 10:46 (twenty-two years ago)

There was a thinkpiece in the Independent On Sunday focussing on this very line and the laugh it got. It trod familiar ground.

(Personally I like Richmond. I've not seen the film.)

― Tom (Groke), Monday, 17 February 2003 10:56 (twenty-two years ago)

(Also, on Brian's Brain on CD:UK one of the questions had the answer "Virginia Woolf" re. the film - surely a first!)

― Tom (Groke), Monday, 17 February 2003 10:57 (twenty-two years ago)

This could only be the Nipper's handiwork.

People who attack 'suburbia' now are obviously barking up the wrong silver birch. On that much we can probably agree.

Come to think of it, we've had that debate before (Home Truths).

Jerry, you make your phrases with characteristic brio. You surprise me by declaring your love for the book: I can't recall you saying this before, and we've surely discussed it many times.

I think I agree with the direction of your comments - but that's somewhat meaningless, as I've yet to see the picture. Looking (yet) again at what you've written, 'beautiful, serious, moving' surprises me again.

I would imagine that the bigger problem is the relatively intractable one of lit--> film: Cunningham wrote a book of beautiful sentences, most of which are presumably absent from the film. I doubt it can substitute very precisely for the pleasures they offer.

'elegant formal corset' = sounds ok by me.

― the pinefox, Monday, 17 February 2003 12:07 (twenty-two years ago)

The Entertainment Weekly review baically agreed with the Nipper.

― Vic (Vic), Monday, 17 February 2003 14:53 (twenty-two years ago)

drinks and friends by the river thames, its a suburban ego war

― stevem (blueski), Monday, 17 February 2003 14:58 (twenty-two years ago)

I have been to see SOLARIS instead.

STORY AND CHARACTER: INTERVIEWS WITH BRITISH SCREENWRITERS edited by Alistair Owen talks about this sort of thing in an entertaining and enlightening way. I thought it talked about THE HOURS, but upon closer inspection, it doesn't.

Is THE HOURS book really that good? I thought it would be a load of soppy old cock.

― PJ Miller (PJ Miller), Monday, 17 February 2003 18:41 (twenty-two years ago)

This movie wasn't about the determined pursuit of happiness, it was about how women can't be complete with regular lesbian soul-kisses.

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Monday, 24 February 2003 15:56 (twenty-two years ago)

Haha - 'The Hours' (the movie) = the Norah Jones of this year's Oscars. (NB: I like Norah, and Avril and Pink.)

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Monday, 24 February 2003 16:03 (twenty-two years ago)

I would have accepted the movie as deep and meaningful if I'd thought it had anything deep and meaningful to say. I really, really, really wanted to like the movie, but there wasn't anything to it beyond a couple of excellent scenes (the intercutting between Nicole and Julianne when Julianne was in the hotel room and Nicole was talking about her book and the final scene between Meryl and Ed).

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Monday, 24 February 2003 16:09 (twenty-two years ago)

I have concluded that Meryl Streep is terribly overrated. I got so sick of looking at her blank face, I was GAGGING for the breaths of fresh air that were Clare Danes and Alison Janney.

The Julianne Moore storyline seemed the best realised to me, there was such a lot (of atmosphere, context etc) missing from the Kidman/Streep bits somehow. Well, particularly the latter. I haven't read the book yet, but I just believed in and cared more about the SOULS of Woolf and Laura Brown... maybe this is deliberate.

― Archel (Archel), Monday, 24 February 2003 16:12 (twenty-two years ago)

From watching BAFTAs

Films i def no longer care about seeing: Chicago, the Hoors
Films i was inclined to see, didn't, and now wish i had: The Warrior, Talk to Her

― Alan (Alan), Monday, 24 February 2003 16:14 (twenty-two years ago)

the Hoors

I have a feeling Dan would have liked this film better.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 24 February 2003 16:15 (twenty-two years ago)

OK - if I were to make a claim for it being deep and meaningful I would say it is a relatively novel insight into HOW ART LIVES... beyond the death of its author. And how ART ACTS AS A FRAME FOR THE POSSIBILITIES OF LIFE (in a kind of George Eliot way, cf those lines in 'Adam Bede': "Hetty had never read a novel; if she had ever seen one, I think the words would have been too hard for her; how then could she find a shape for her expectations?" - I actually only know that ref. cos Simon Frith used it in an essay on pop in an anthology called 'On Record'.)

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Monday, 24 February 2003 16:15 (twenty-two years ago)

(But as I said at the top... I think the book does this better.)

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Monday, 24 February 2003 16:16 (twenty-two years ago)

Blue Crush kicks The Hours ass

― James Blount, Monday, 24 February 2003 16:17 (twenty-two years ago)

Considering that "Blue Crush" is represented by burly surfer chicks and "The Hours" is represented by wispy literary lesbians with mental vapors, I don't see how "Blue Crush" couldn't kick "The Hours" ass, stuff "The Hours" in a locker and steal "The Hours"'s lunch money.

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Monday, 24 February 2003 16:34 (twenty-two years ago)

them surfer chicks ain't burly!

― James Blount, Monday, 24 February 2003 16:37 (twenty-two years ago)

You make it sound so good.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 24 February 2003 16:37 (twenty-two years ago)

Compared to the women of "The Hours" they are!

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Monday, 24 February 2003 16:54 (twenty-two years ago)

c'mon - Nicole Kidman's a porker!

― James Blount, Monday, 24 February 2003 16:55 (twenty-two years ago)

The Hours is a continuation of the Literary Fiction genre of US cinema (exemplified by American Beauty). If you ram enough showy actors together with a script which is non-genre (ie nothing really happens), and use signifiers of meaning (analogy, cross-cutting, actual bloody reference to literature) = this film is good. The Hours is perfectly passable - made so primarily by its ridiculously lush supporting cast, but in the end pretty unengaging. It also has the worst "old person" make-up since Frequency. The great pity is films like this, in aping (or even adapting) literary fiction tries to define "good" movies with relation to an already flawed definition of what is a good book. When cinema has already been much better at dealing with these deeper issues in its own visual and cinematic way.

Meryl Streep by the way: watch her hands when she is acting. They go a dime a dozen. Its her method.

― Pete (Pete), Monday, 24 February 2003 17:00 (twenty-two years ago)

This is the same argument as the Norah Jones thread: you are condemning a genre instead of the film. While it's in no way obligatory for a lit-adap to be great, it is perfectly possible to make a fantastic film from a great book: eg 'The House of Mirth' in recent memory. Or 'Lolita' or 'The Magnificent Ambersons' from slightly further back.

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Monday, 24 February 2003 17:04 (twenty-two years ago)

you are condemning a genre instead of the film

I think he's doing both really: the genre and the film instance. fair.

― Alan (Alan), Monday, 24 February 2003 17:07 (twenty-two years ago)

The reaction I'm having to "The Hours" is a milder version of the reaction I had to "Magnolia", a movie I actively dislike and one I consider to be a great example of a spectacular failure of storytelling.

And I liked "American Beauty" a lot, so I'm not dismissing the genre.

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Monday, 24 February 2003 17:09 (twenty-two years ago)

Blimey, Jerry, have you really read 'The Magnificent Ambersons'? Coo. I've never known anyone who has before...

― Andrew L (Andrew L), Monday, 24 February 2003 17:10 (twenty-two years ago)

Pete isn't condemning literary adaptations (weren't no book fer AMerican Beauty for instance); he's condemning these upper-middlebrow Oscar bait Sam Mendes types that clog up our cineplexes every winter

― James Blount, Monday, 24 February 2003 17:10 (twenty-two years ago)

I think people are mistaking 'The Hours' for a Merchant-Ivory film on this thread. I think it's much more interesting than that.

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Monday, 24 February 2003 17:11 (twenty-two years ago)

i really liked magnolia tho i seem to be the only person

― mark s (mark s), Monday, 24 February 2003 17:11 (twenty-two years ago)

i like the adam and joe versh of american beauty so i'm not dismissing the whole genre oh wait

― mark s (mark s), Monday, 24 February 2003 17:12 (twenty-two years ago)

Middlebrow bashing: classic or dud?

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Monday, 24 February 2003 17:12 (twenty-two years ago)

"Magnolia"'s big problem is that it sets the platform for a story about how the consequences of your actions have direct consequences on people around you and one shouldn't underestimate the power of coincidence, then went on to tell a series boring six-degrees-of-seperation stories about miserable people with a dash of unnecessary surrealism to make the whole thing look arty.

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Monday, 24 February 2003 17:17 (twenty-two years ago)

Maybe it should have just been a short film with the first ten minutes.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 24 February 2003 17:18 (twenty-two years ago)

James is spot on, though Jerry well knows my arguemnt in this area. What annoys me is the wholesale borrowing of some of the worst aspects of a literary genre (the genre that thinks it ain't a genre).

I have no problem with bashing middlebrow ambition by the way. Its a fundamentally dishonest and patronising mindset.

― Pete (Pete), Monday, 24 February 2003 17:22 (twenty-two years ago)

American Beauty/Pie courtesy of weebl

― Alan (Alan), Monday, 24 February 2003 17:25 (twenty-two years ago)

The clever thing about Magnolia is that it is all one big conceptual joke, in as much as it sets up a film which is anti-coincidence and proceeds to tell us six tales about coincidence.

The stupid thing about Magnolia is that this joke is three hours long and wasn't very funny to start off with.

(Punch-Drunk Love proves that PT Anderson has no sense of humour at all).

― Pete (Pete), Monday, 24 February 2003 17:25 (twenty-two years ago)

It is somewhat clever when viewed that way, Pete, but I didn't interpret the beginning as anti-coincidence so I had no premise for the joke to springboard off of.

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Monday, 24 February 2003 17:29 (twenty-two years ago)

i guess i just kinda liked the fortean times-ness of magnolia

i went into it knowing nothing abt it, which possibly helped

remains of the day has some of the clumsiest editing i've ever seen in a film not by ken russell

― mark s (mark s), Monday, 24 February 2003 17:30 (twenty-two years ago)

What I like about Magnolia is "here are six okay-ish but relatively run of the mill stories. What if there was a rain of frogs?". I like willful storytelling.

I thought "let's make an Adam Sandler comedy that isn't funny" was being a bit too willful.

― Pete (Pete), Monday, 24 February 2003 17:37 (twenty-two years ago)

i <3 remains of the day movie and book. sorry (about the movie, not the book, obv)

― Alan (Alan), Monday, 24 February 2003 17:40 (twenty-two years ago)

Is that line about the cigarette brands?

― Ian SPACK (Ian SPACK), Monday, 24 February 2003 19:25 (twenty-two years ago)

Well I enjoyed both Magnolia and The Hours (which I saw yesterday). Thought Phillip Glass' soundtrack was quite nice (wasn't aware that it was Glass at the time, though... although the arpeggio overdrive did make me wonder).

I don't know, I just think it was really well done. And Nicole Kidman was actually GOOD. (thank you LORD) Don't tell me that Streep wasn't good either. Come on, people!

The scene where Toni Colette (another gem) visits Moore's character was absolutely superb. It just had so many perfect moments. At first it made me think "jesus, this is a really over the top and insane rendition of the 50's in the USA" and then I realised "hang on, this is probably what it was actually like." Moore may have been blank and unemotive (and I don't like her much, anyway) most of the time, but do you notice that the only times she registers something powerful is when a) she kisses Colette, and b) she attempts suicide/plans to leave. Contrast people! Contrast!

Oh, and that was Claire Danes? No wonder I thought she was so cute.

― Andrew (enneff), Monday, 24 February 2003 19:58 (twenty-two years ago)

Also, I thought Magnolia didn't have much "point", but the performances by Cruise and "that guy from Fargo" were just too good to be missed. Loved it.

― Andrew (enneff), Monday, 24 February 2003 20:00 (twenty-two years ago)

Also, fucking hillarious script.

― Andrew (enneff), Monday, 24 February 2003 20:00 (twenty-two years ago)

The soundtrack was the best part of the movie, IMO. I began looking forward to it.

Toni Colette should have been in more of the movie, that would have pleased me.

Tom Cruise was so wildly overrated in "Magnolia" it isn't funny; only his performances in "Eyes Wide Shut" and "Jerry Maguire" come close to matching the level of overratedness.

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Monday, 24 February 2003 20:02 (twenty-two years ago)

you forget "Born on the Fourth of July"

― James Blount (James Blount), Monday, 24 February 2003 20:04 (twenty-two years ago)

I never saw "Born on the Fourth of July" so I can't comment.

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Monday, 24 February 2003 20:05 (twenty-two years ago)

Dan, you MUST SEE THAT FILM.

"I just want a penis that WORKS!"
"Oh! How dare you! Never say that word in this household!"
"PENIS! PENIS! PEEEEENIIISSSSSSS!!!!!"

― Andrew (enneff), Monday, 24 February 2003 20:11 (twenty-two years ago)

plus it's the beginning of the historic Frank Whaley-Oliver Stone partnership

― James Blount (James Blount), Monday, 24 February 2003 20:18 (twenty-two years ago)

I've not seen The Hours and have no interest, for reasons that I've been trying to express for a while, but Pete articulates far better than I've ever got close to. (I would say almost identical things about some of the most intolerable issues of Neil Gaiman's Sandman, by the way. It's the grabbing of High Art signifiers as if that automatically confers artistic quality that bugs me.)

I thought Magnolia and Punch Drunk Love were both tremendously enjoyable and interesting films.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Monday, 24 February 2003 20:28 (twenty-two years ago)

The Nipper is OTM. Everyone who disagrees with him is wrong.

I can say this with more assurance now that I've seen the picture.

― the pinefox, Tuesday, 25 February 2003 12:20 (twenty-two years ago)

two years pass...

Now I've seen it again! And guess what - the above still applies!

More specifically, this time, this thought: Clarissa in NYC gets to think emotionally about life, family etc during the book - she is sensitive - but not overbearing. In the picture, no interior monologue, just monologue: she talks it all out at people - she is an emotive Yank. I thus wanted her to be a Type, to be Placed, by Streep and the picture - even for her to be an object of affectionate satire. But I'm not sure she is, I think she may in her emotiveness be taken very seriously by all concerned. But why don't I know, and how could I know? (As Michael Wood might now say, if he were writing this paragraph: It might be interesting to know, though there are lots of things we don't know, and it's interesting to think about them too.)

― the pinefox, Monday, 13 February 2006 17:40 (nineteen years ago)

one year passes...

ha. i'm not sure i follow that. overall, this is one of my favorite movies because of the acting. nicole kidman is AMAZING at portraying a disturbed writer on the verge of a thought (and a joint, it seemed?) at any moment. meryl will be meryl, and julianne is terrific. sometimes, julianna moore is so fucking funny in this performance -- the movie becomes high-quality camp drama, even if just in the lines on her face.

it's a very pleasant cinematic experience, decorated with stellar performances throughout. where it fails is in its schmaltz in dealing with the tragedy of life and death. while some of these moments are poignant, such as when v woolf lies down to look at a dead bird in its eyes, this sentiment comes too close to sappiness nearing the end. also, the philip glass score does overstay its welcome to some degree.

but overall, the sense of drama is not only touching, but sometimes downright hilarious. for me, it was like watching all my favorite female performers have fun with their talent. julianne moore's "...so i'm going to bake a cake. i'm going to make the cake for daddy's birthday" backed up by the score is a moment of pure genius, capturing the drama of female neurosis with utter camp and flair. too good.

― Surmounter, Thursday, 3 January 2008 01:55 (seventeen years ago)

one year passes...

it's really been too long

― I love rainbow cookies (surm), Sunday, 23 August 2009 08:03 (sixteen years ago)

my gosh nicole's voice, it's like she breathes tobacco

― I love rainbow cookies (surm), Sunday, 23 August 2009 08:04 (sixteen years ago)

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