TS: "Short Cuts" vs. "Magnolia"

"Magnolia" sucked. So "Short Cuts".

the only bits in Short Cuts that I'd keep are Lily Tomlin-Tom Waits, Julianne Moore-Matthew Modine, and Jennifer Jason Leight talking dirty while holding a newborn. The rest is never dull but is what it is: a bunch of unrelated Raymond Carver stories strung together, clumsily, by Altman.

Hello, "Claire the Clown" car driving up to a funeral?!? NOT BRILLIANT???

Another demerit: Huey Lewis didn't get to sing once. Also: Jack Lemmon should have been the one to get hit by the car.

Short Cuts by a million miles. PTA is a hack, Altman is a genius

shit cuts more like.

haha 'altman is a genius', i must write these down.

i like both these, choosing carver vs aimee mann would cause emergency shudown for my brain

I disliked the histrionics of Magnolia, and though I haven't seen Short Cuts in 10 years, I found it to be pretty revelatory as a 14-year-old (and not just for seeing bush on camera for the first time).

Also, when it comes to these sorts of movies, I think I like it best when the film doesn't bludgeon you over the head with "OMG the interconnectedness!" -- which is another thing I think Magnolia might have been guilty of. (And which is why I didn't hate Babel, ultimately: I appreciated it as three or four separate short stories, told simultaneously.)

carver vs aimee mann

See, that's easy. I love Carver.

but don't you see, they're all singing the same song - CRAZY

"Magnolia" is a gigantic pile of putrescent taint.

yup, dan.

I think I like it best when the film doesn't bludgeon you over the head with "OMG the interconnectedness!" -- which is another thing I think Magnolia Short Cuts might have been guilty of

See, I don't remember it doing that. But I was young and impressionable.

"Magnolia" took a cool hook and did absolutely nothing with it. It was the most pointless "meaningful" movie I've ever seen (and I saw "The Hours").

lolz The Hours

to be fair, I loved Short Cuts when I was eighteen.

i hated 'magnolia' when i was a snotty auteur-worshipping movie geek.

In college, my girlfriend and I lied and told my snotty auteur-worshipping movie geek roommate that we drove to Grand Rapids to see a sneak preview of Magnolia (before it had been officially released), which we said was "totally awesome." Of course, he became immediately envious. "What? How come you didn't tell me?!?" etc. My girlfriend feigned having been emotionally affected by the film, saying, "Awww, the old man!" My roommate was like, "Jason Robards?" She said, "Er ... yeah."

Magnolia may not be perfect but what I call "the second hour" is quite extraordinary, a sustained build up of tension with no release. It pretty much jettisons every convention of dramatic pacing in film. Eventually, I get this extreme feeling of discomfort but equally cannot tear my eyes from the screen. Genius.

That wasn't genius, that was irritating crap that I couldn't possibly care less about.

bullshit!

it doesn't jettison every convention of dramatic pacing in any way whatosever. it's just scattershot; poorly-resolved with a trite deus ex that it tries to excuse with front-loaded manipulation (hi guy falling out the window) that we're supposed to believe something profound about

also what kind of dramatic pacing? it just cross-cuts all sub-altmany.

otoh, it has Tom Cruise really stretching his acting chops in a role of asshole cult leader

Its worst offense is its use of music IN EVERY GODDAMN SCENE. By the time the frogshower started I felt like I was having a root canal done through my ears.

Cruise is pretty great, actually
(xpost)

no

In the DVD extras, there are all of these scenes that were edited out of the movie because they featured non-white people characters who were apparently incidental to the movie, never mind that the entire thing is put together to make every single person in it an unimportant, annoying, worthless cipher who could only benefit from being punched repeatedly in the crotch.

(xpost to remy bean)

Exactly. There is no pacing at all. It's completely ... wrong in cinematic terms.

And I'm talking ONLY about the middle hour here, not the ending, which I make no special claims for.

dan why did you watch the extras to a movie you hated

1) I was watching it with other people who wanted to see the extras.
2) I wanted to see if anything redeemable had been left on the cutting room floor. (It had; pretty much every scene that gives some consequence to the actions/events of the movie was removed from the final version.)

"3) I was checking to see if PT Anderson was burned in effigy by Julianne Moore."

Normally movies with the level of acting exhibited by the cast of "Magnolia" star Cuba Gooding, Jr and are "Snow Dogs" or "Radio".

I was so satisfied with the way Altman translated Raymond Carver to 1990's Los Angeles. Short Cuts definitely gets my vote. So many great little moments like the scene where Buck Henry and Robert Downey, Jr get their photomat envelopes switched.

Even Andie MacDowell screaming "God Damn Yew" to Lyle Lovett couldn't sink this movie.

i love the bedroom scene after whasshisname returns from the dead-chick fishing trip, and tries to roger his wife.

I was so satisfied with the way Altman translated Raymond Carver to 1990's Los Angeles.

no it was shit! i read carver later and 1) he's brilliant 2) untranslatable 3) but could still maybe be done better than the man altman.

I think it's all the batshit movie polls today but I read this as "Short Circuit" vs. "Magnolia"

Number 5 doesn't sing any Aimee Mann songs = Short Circuit wins

I agree with the first two reasons given. You couldn't ever completely adapt a Carver story and remain 100% faithful. But I do think Altman did a reasonably good job of stringing along a narrative composed of Carver stories. There's a scene where the vacuum cleaner salesman calls on one of the characters, and I loved how the two stories were integrated.

Maybe someone could've put it together better than Altman, but balls if I know who that would be. As it is, Short Cuts worked for me. I'm glad that someone didn't try to recreate exactly the stories.

I am always befuddled by people that think books = films (or vice versa). Different mediums have different requirements and do different things. "Source materia" is basically beside the point, the real question is whether or not the film works based upon its own merits.

Unless, of course, you are talking about "Congo", a movie which is a total abortion no matter which way you look at it.

i'm with enrique here. Short Cuts is bloody awful. i pretty much loathe Altman though.

3) but could still maybe be done better than the man altman.

it just has - Ray Lawrence's "Jindabyne" (an adaptation of "So Much Water So Close To Home") is pretty good although not quite as good as his previous film, "Lantana".

how do you loathe altman? seriously, i though he was like the most eminently likeable guy ever?

Whether it's Chandler, Van Gogh's letters, or second-rate plays, Altman's been a genius at adapting novels and "source material" before. But short stories are different. He attempted to connect a dozen independent works of fiction that brought out the worst in him.

I didn't think Jindabyne made any sense actually (the marriage is at the center of the movie is so unrealistic that it slightly undermined the whole thing for me), but the acting is good and it's well put together.

As for the ACTUAL thread question. . . well both these movies are wildly uneven and have ridiculously terrible endings and some good acting mixed in with melodramatic overacting. Short Cuts is probably a little better because the Carver stories are better than anything that Anderson will ever come up with, but I'd be happy to not watch either film again.

I like them both, but Short Cuts is the masterpiece of the two.