mr. and mrs. smith [contains spoilers, but who cares]

ron burgundy calls jane smith.

ring ring
smith: hello?
ron burgundy: i just had to ask you something.
smith: yes?
burgundy: what did you really think the first time we met?
smith: you first.
reflective, pining pause
burgundy: i have to tell you, you reminded me of christmas morning.

etfuckingc.

oh yeah, i forgot to mention that the whole revelation that the "hit" was a macguffin to set them against one another felt perticularly irritating to me. and the complete non-resolution of the shootout, again, which felt like it flowed directly from that ex machina. the problem was that nothing was at STAKE in that shootout except proving that they could kill lots of other people. so, once they had, why did that make their problems go away!?

if it had descended instead into a complex heist plot with them learning about eachother or a mi:2 style identity-fuck, then it coulda gone somewhere.

five points i want to make

1) the best acting that jolie does is outside the screen, her sexualised personae (ie her sheer fuckability) is almost impossible to screen in people who are obbsessed against an R movie--this movie plays that, and also reheterosexualises brad pitt--strangely enough the movies where hs is the closest to being a pure subject of gaze/desire is in context with other men (ie river runs thru it, legends of the fall, fight club, se7en). the other thing is that the gaze is more projected on pitt here then it is on jolie--or least eaually which is different then it usually is.

2) it conflates sex and violence--which is not unsual in american movies--but most american movies do one of two things 1) either treat this as sinful (ie movie of the week/perils of pauline women in danger) or treat it as a translating/replacment (ie guns as phallic pla). This one actually talks about an apoclyptic sexualised fury that does not nessc. exist in many american movies.

3) on the same track--the idea that fucking can destroy, destroy literally the same, asethically secure suburbia--it is a coded reference to the recent crises in hetrosexual marriage? this can also be contained in the the chase scene, with the minivan, and the sqaublling and the amazing scene where the double doors seem to be useful (other movies with minivan joke: the last ice cube, several tom arnold comedies, beethoven, etc)--movies with minivans and car chases tend to put them in a question of domestic peril and not danger.

4) the most dangerous seen in the movie, where it is shot in the dark shadows of domestic melodrama, and it looks like domestic violence, like the video for where the thunder rolls by garth brooks--to suggest that marriage can exist in dangerous bdsm power games is radical in a 60 million dollar hollywood movie.

5) limans use of geopolical power as thriller, of memory and lacunae matched in a kick ass drama (the two burne movies) continues here, hes good at folding in. and its shot well, its shot wtih a pristineness, where the housing porn comes thru all sorts of way--look at how personae of the charachters, and the metapersonae of the actors (including their previous roles) connect to tradtionally ignored things like costume and set design (which critics only seem to pay attenion to in melodrama but maybe useful in other genres--what happens if we look at the politics of interior design in the james bond films rather then the politics of interior design in douglas sirk---this movie does that)

if you're not into hermeneutical analyses of stupid irrelevant bullshit, this place ain't for you

I don't really wanna see this movie, but I'll happily pass off Anthony's analysis as my own if anyone ever asks me if I've seen it.

many of anthony's posts seem to be mapping cliché terms from contemporary cultural studies--"superwords" if you will--very loosely onto the plot dynamics of mainstream films. sometimes i can see where you're going with it, other times it just seems like sophistry with lot of overly broad or just unfounded historical evidence, like " tradtionally ignored things like costume and set design" (?). the result is that you convinced me that you're a smart man, but i'm rarely convinced that you've illuminated any aspect of the film(s) in question. imentioned on the other thread the "dazzling sophistry" on much film academics and this reminds of that, only not as dazzling (like michael rogin or kaja silverman or somebody).things labeled as "subversive" are revealed, with a moment's reflection, to be things that are in basically tons of hollywood films. which just goes to show that via liberal use of familiar clichés you can make pretty much whatever argument you want (provided you're not concerning with it being true in any agreed-upon fashion). the historical claims made sotto-voice, but which are actually a linchpin of the argmt, are dubious, and the perhaps-not-made-but-necessary-for-me assertion that some of this stuff (these endless varieties of "subversion') is actually a part of the movie's "message" to most folks, part of its effects, doesn't convince me at all. as evidence of what anthony can spin out of most any given movie, as a wholly idiosyncratic response, it's theoretically interesting (although not so much after the 10,000th time) but as anything else i'll take a pass.

and i don't "hate" you! it's just that the times when i've actually tried to argue with you, have been very unsatisfying as you'd repeat the same thing in an increasingly faux-naive manner. i really don't have anything against you personally! i don't make long posts like these because i'm afraid they'll upset you! so i sometimes end up making cryptic little snipes. i'm not sure which you'd prefer.

I wouldn't say you're doing anything unforgivable or beyond the pale but you might consider adapting your rhetorical style to better suit the person you're talking to.

also if the film had stopped before it was revealed that they'd won that big penultimate last battle it would have maybe been better, or at least more hong kong?

But yeah, like I said in my first post the entire movie is really about how Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are perfect together. Given the script, you can't really have two actors in those roles who don't completely spark off of each other because there's nothing else to hold the movie together (and I think that's intentional).

alex
what do you mean by zoinks

The movie was pretty good, Liman is definitely my favorite mainstream/pop action director going (mainstream/pop probably not necessary as a qualifier, I don't respond to fanboy-friendly action at all). His action scenes are coherent, well-choreographed and usually add a little something to the story, rather than being fight choreography for choreography's sake (or worse, too shaky/closely edited/etc. to even make sense).

My only problem with Anthony, other than not understanding many of his posts, is the same one I find with a lot of theorists/critics (theoretical critics? sorry, my education suxxx) - they don't think like artists, and don't seem to realize that artists don't (for the most part) think like theorists/critics, and end up assigning a lot of motives and depth where it probably doesn't exist. Art, IMO, is much more primal and unexplainable than Anthony's criticism would allow for. (But I was the dork in high school who hated Lord of the Flies because Golding dared write it with heavy symbolism and meaning in mind from the start.)

my only problem with anthony's reading is he sees the potential and hints where i feel the film promised lots of that, but then let me down.

if there had been, say, an affair thrown in the mix then there might have been a better parallelism between the action and the relationship stuff, the idea of discovering who someone really is, etc. liman could pull off the individual scenes well -- the weapons ones, the minivan, the gag of a home depot themed shootout, the goddamn tense dinner (which could have been played with more switches and twists, really) etc. each one sort of intuitively draws out or plays with a subtext latent in the action-cliche handbook. but he just couldn't string a real narrative out of them.

Ams usually seems hostile to anything but a formal reading of a film, IIRC. Which is a fair enough notion to attack (and maybe he doesn't even hold it! I don't really know) but calling him a homophobe is a little cheap.

w a scan i didnt see anything in anthonys reading that suggested conscious artmaking. my problem w reading the movie as subversive, offhand, is i wasnt drooling at anything. and i dunno if movies a dud or a hit. if its popular w everyone else then im more than ready to consider the implications. otherwise im more interested in what brought it abt in the 1st place, in its attraction, rather than its substance, guts, flesh

denying that this film is premised on what we already know about brangelina AND about how modern slick action films work is the most sophist and faux-naif move of all.

Not to mention, there would be WAY more security on a home depot than just that cheap lock on the back door. And, duh, a minivan couldn't outrace specially equipped bond cars. etc.

also i dont even remember any home depot shit so clearly i saw this on a wino tip! w class sry i ws onto the buzzwords, lacunae, i only meant, they seem to have a big house, a bruce wayne table, is this smthng we shd aspire to, that we shd feel discouraged from aspiring to, that ws my first thot. i dont think you cn think abt movie stars wo thinking abt money but sterling you know what your talking abt and im more sympathetic to you than i am to me

Also, the Home Depot sequence occupied most of the final 20 minutes of the movie!

is it a blockbuster? like i sd i respect whats unusual in the premise, it ws my most anticipated movie of the year. of the past cpl years even. i just didnt see a relationship, i guess. but im interested in viewing it as a series of setpieces and kind of want to see it again on that basis

-- firstworldman (3...), July 10th, 2005.

i found this funny in july, w.out knowing what firstworldman was on about, it's even funnier now.

brad pitt is a smug piece of shit.