"Gus Van Sant's Last Days"

I'm confused, I thought Pitt had written a few tunes for the film?!?

I haven't seen the film (yet). Not really interested, apart from seeing Kim G playing, what, a manager type?

I've read that it's just like Elephant but bad.

It's hard to tell what Kim is playing, other than herself in a 'meta' way (one scene).

It's like Sunset Blvd done by Chantal Akerman on a bad day. (only w/ boys stripping)

I don't know, I was never much of a Nirvana fan, so I'm not that interested in a vague bio.

http://villagevoice.com/film/0528,fclover,65777,20.html

"Cobain was a sucker for this kind of project and probably would have dug it. But not counting a few lyrics, in his own art he took a more conventional path, and that conventionality was an essential component of the charisma Van Sant refuses to engage. Cobain was an arty, hypersensitive pretty boy, absolutely. But he wouldn't have been Elliott Smith if he hadn't rocked dynamite hooks like a motherfucker. The self he seemed to inhabit was animated by a populist passion Van Sant has no gift or taste for."

Does Dennis Lim really believe this bullshit?

(possible spoiler)

"[Blake]—in an amazing sequence—nods out to Boyz II Men's "On Bended Knee" video. Van Sant interpolates the whole damn thing, and the worlds-collide dissonance, the swelling tension between the video's madly dissolving montages and Blake's somnambulist biorhythms, practically causes a fold in time—an effect the director augments by approaching the moment twice with one of his now customary temporal pretzels."

NO, it's just a pointless digression.

you can't wait to see it?

Who could give a damn at this point?

i love this new catchphrase of Alex's. does GVS even give a damn? or is the the point maaaannn?

this sounds pretty pointless.

But Alex Cox, really. The only film he made that could approach "Pvt Idaho" or "Drugstore Cowboy" was "Highway Patrolman."

There are so many beautiful moments in MOPI. Watching the sparkling Criterion edition a few months ago it became abundantly clear that River Phoenix had as much (if not more) to do with the characterization of Mike and the direction of the film than was previously suspected.

And Keanu's fine. No complaints. His callowness works for his character.

You're reading far too much into it, bro, rather like my students when, hard pressed to enjoy a story for its own sake, will interpret anything as A SYMBOL. There are American archetypes (cowboys, the road, the open range, male-on-male homoerotica) but I see nothing here that represents the Collapse of The American Dream; that's quite overheated.

I agree with you about the Shakespeare lifts, but I made my peace with that a looooong time ago.

yr right tho, it is a movie that feels the weight of its own seriousness... it never really lightens up. but that's okay - that fits the "what, you mean you aren't REALLY gay and no one loves me?!?" teen angst.

uh, that's the whole movie.

Maybe you're thinking of Ewan doing the Bowie-Mick-Ronson-mimed-blowjob routine during "Baby's On Fire"? Or the sequence where they're gazing at each other goofily over "Satellite of Love"? Or the love soliloquoy scene where they have Barbie doll stand-ins?

man that movie is so great.

Damn you, Shakey. Now I gotta see the film again.

It grieves me to say that William Richert is better as Falstaff than Orson Welles, who, looking distracted, doesn't suggest one-tenth of Falstaff's wit.

I'm not a fan of hers or the film in question, but isn't this kinda like saying "Kirk Douglas ruined Spartacus"? I mean, for cryin' out loud, she's the star of the damn film.

This is in essence a form-content debate. I mean, Nirvana had cracking tunes, even better production, and were a sturdy band. Are Van Sant and Cobain a bad match?

As a contrast, I did actually like the overlong shots and the rhythm in Elephant, putting aside whether it was actually a good Columbine movie (which it wasn't).

So what is Van Sant's explanation for Finding Forrester? It's not half as bad as its reputation, but I don't even understand why Van Sant was involved in it.

richert is very good (the best thing in private idaho, i think), but he plays a more conventional falstaff. welles deliberately downplays the wit, and i think it works in the context of chimes at midnight. a funny, vibrant, harold bloom-style falstaff wouldn't make sense in that film; he'd just laugh off the rejection (which is really what happens in the play; we don't hear that falstaff has died of a broken heart until henry v). welles' falstaff is no genius, just a puffed-up, rather pitiful old man about to be swept aside by history. i don't think welles was ever more moving than he was during the close-ups of the scene when hal banishes him. welles often gave mediocre performances in his own films (macbeth, othello, mr arkadin) but this wasn't one of them.

one thing van sant adds is the homoerotic subtext - there's none of that in the welles.

it's too bad that private idaho hasn't generated more interest in chimes at midnight (which i think is more or less the best movie ever), but i guess legal problems are to blame for its seemingly endless unavailability.

Saying "Pvt Idaho" is no freaking fun is nuts ... The living skin mags? (and the DVD reveals it was a 'Hollywood Squares' type set, not a process shot!) What about River's graceless [sic] motorcycle dismount? Just the concept of making that film in 1991 with the two cutest boys in Hollywood was a triumph.

I assumed the Last Days hangers-on were the kind of loser/leeches likely to be in any star/junkie's house. (Is it Lukas Haas who has the songwriting 'conversation' with Pitt? Doesn't seem to be in his band tho.)

Mike: "You know your math."

Michael Pitt's body language in every scene, he might as well be in slow motion while ever other character moves and talks at 24 fps, it's an amusing affectation and physical by-product of the mental state of a guy mentally drawn so very far inside himself that he's lost the will for human interaction of any sort. It's like Pitt's performance heavily foregrounds the Beckett-slaptick vibe Van Sant was working more subtley in Gerry. Blake/Cobain's portrayed as a gentle, profane, and skinny man hurriedly stumbling back and forth across a benignly pretty landscape. Pitt takes a real nice sloppy pratfall at one point early on and the the death scene emts accidentally let his dead body fall off the stretcher as a final gag as well.

I could have done with a few less moments in which time doubles back on itself in the narrative. A few times, the device works as an effectively charged point of transition. In excess, it seems gimmicky and simply derivative of "Elephant," maybe Van Sant should have waited after he worked through this heavily formalist phase to approach such a well known, loaded, and personal subject for him; I imagine he knew Cobain somewhat well since they did make and release and ep of music together.

Regardless of whether the lengthy Boyz-2-Men video excerpt is a "pointless digression" or not (and I don't think it is exactly) personally, I would be grateful for more pointless digressions in movies.

I see it as a similar variation on the scene when he encounters the telephone book salesman; a gag juxtaposing sloppy Blake/Cobain with a someone engaged in normal life. Boyz 2 Men are these confident performers, with seemingly no qualms about pop success or what they represent while Blake is a sloppy dude freakin out and falling down in his house but oddly he is a part of their pop music industry machine world. I don't think we're supposed to think he's like... above all that.

I wish I was like you
Eeeeeeasily amused

(seriously, not a majority)

seems this got kinda forgotten between elephant & paranoid park, kinda unfairly

not significantly inferior to either of those, imo

Paranoid Park wasn't very good either, it just didn't piss all over a grave

there was def that element of holding a candle for kurt

but i'm kinda chill about those 'quasi-fictional' treatments, and in any case the circumstances of his death have been dealt with far more tawrdily elsewhere

I found Last Days a much tougher watch than Elephant or Paranoid Park. It has really stayed with me, but at the time I remember my eyelids getting heavy at times.

Paranoid Park is shot through the filter of a mind in shock, giving it a kaleidoscopic wooziness. In Last Days, the mental filter was more like depression, so it had a heavy, deadened feel.

Love that scene with the Boyz II Men video. That's a whole generation of untucked, distressed young men looking through his eyes at those men in suits and saying Maybe I'm not the smartest one after all.

Paranoid Park is shot through the filter of a mind in shock, giving it a kaleidoscopic wooziness. In Last Days, the mental filter was more like depression, so it had a heavy, deadened feel.

― Alba, Thursday, 2 December 2010 22:53 (5 minutes ago)

ya that's a good summary

the end of last days is the 'trilogy's' only concession to the ~transcendental~ i guess

last days has a numbed out, thousand yard stare kind of feel. i was always struck by the first time (of many) pitt leaves the shot where we're left in the river staring at a fuckin craggy bank. i wanted very much to avoid thinking of this as allegory towards heroin. felt very indebted to herzogs treatment of solitary, voided men & their business in hating the physical.

surprised by how well this movie holds up

it's p hilarious the whole way through

Love it.

I imagine he knew Cobain somewhat well since they did make and release and ep of music together.

What is this?