Come anticipate David Fincher's "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"

the trailer looks gorgeous.

saw the trailer for this the other day & meant to start a thread -- looks fantastic

Except for Brad Pitt (and his fake accent) it looks like it might be interesting.

very strange lit piece to become a huge-budget movie. I smell Fight Club box-office disaster again.

Yeah this is a bit of wishcasting to imagine this as any sort of box office smash.

I mean, Fitzgerald -- I think every film of Gatsby has died...

the re-use of Morricone's "Days of Heaven" music is mighty queer. was it not recycled in another movie fairly recently?

fight club was a box office disaster???

It was a "disappointment."

In US theaters, FC grossed less than half of what it cost.

I bleeve that music from DoH is in fact Tchaikovsky?

the re-use of Morricone's "Days of Heaven" music is mighty queer. was it not recycled in another movie fairly recently?

-- jed_, Tuesday, June 17, 2008 5:09 PM (58 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

it's used everywhere. last time i remember seeing it in a movie was in "femme fatale," but that's just because it's become the cannes music, and the openign scene is at a cannes premiere.

xp to morbius: it's actually saint-saëns, "the aquarium"

weird. everyone i knew saw it---i thought that, for better or worse, it had become one of those movies that everyone has seen

xp

I still haven't seen it!

i just saw it again like two weeks ago. i still like it ok but the ending is atrocious

oh, is it? i thought it was Morricone. it's still way overused, though.

many xposts

im sure it has, by now

thinking back to its actual release though, i do recall it being a disappointment

anyway i think we can all agree that the fact that hollywood gave fincher tons of dough to make this is a good thing

xps

morricone riffs on it for the DOH score xp

Fight Club was a BOMB. It did well opening weekend, and when the frat boys discovered it was not a hurray-let's-fight bonecruncher, it died.

(I'm sure it went into the black eventually in its retail afterlife)

when the frat boys discovered it was not a hurray-let's-fight bonecruncher, it died.

It isn't?

no, honey

it is, but its themes were much to intellectual for its target audience to get a handle on

-_-

drink yr urine, deez

trailers usually have some random-ass music that's not in the film, right?

Quite often.

i feel like i've seen eight hundred trailers recently using that really bombastic track from Kill Bill.

Or the theme from Requiem For A Dream.

ya it always happens. lots of them use the music from "aliens"... or "solsbury hill"... etc etc

there seem to be trends in it too

yeah "Solsbury Hill" used to be cliched in trailers but after that fake Shining trailer I think it's just hilarious.

"in da club"

In US theaters, FC grossed less than half of what it cost.

Budget
$63,000,000 (estimated)

Gross
$37,023,395 (USA) (27 February 2000)

"Did not make back estimated budget," yes. "Less than half," no. "Slightly more than half," yes.

(I'm sure it went into the black eventually in its retail afterlife)

"Fight Club won the 2000 Online Film Critics Society Awards for Best DVD, Best DVD Commentary, and Best DVD Special Features,[52] while Entertainment Weekly ranked the film's two-disc edition #1 in its 2001 list of "The 50 Essential DVDs", giving top ratings to the DVD's content and technical picture-and-audio quality.[53] In 2004, after the two-disc edition went out of print, the studio decided to re-release it due to fans' requests.[54] The film grossed $55 million in video and DVD rentals.[55]"

Anyway, this like pretty great. I was curious if the whole "aging backwards" thing would be done in ludicrous Jonathan-Winters-on-Mork-&-Mindy stylee, but seeing the trailer, I think the execution looks really, really cool.

xp to morbius: it's actually saint-saëns, "the aquarium"
There is a great animated version of this on HBO's Classical Baby 2.

you can throw Fox's marketing costs into the FC theatrical release. I always read the budget was about $75 M.

holy shit what a great trailer!

the shot of the bullets coming at him on the boat is like :O

quicktime version here

the idea of a young babyface carrying the weight of loss/experience by the end makes this so much more intriguing than your run of the mill oscar bait. that and Fincher, obviously. Camerawork is totally on par for him. stellar.

woah

and robert redford cameo too?

wow, this looks incredible the HD trailer.

http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMTczMjIzOTY2M15BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMzM3NTYyMQ@@._V1._SX274_SY400_.jpg

this guy he is from ork

zodiac's probly my fav serious movie of the last 10 years or so and this looks like some old bullshit imho

music in trailers is often recycled when the movie score isn't finished yet.

it's not out till the autumn: doubt the picture is even locked, knowing fincher.

i love trailers that are all music, maybe some VO & little to no dialogue or sound from the scenes you're seeing

New trailer brings out how problematic the story could be for film, but it looks, uh, ravishing.

http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/thecuriouscaseofbenjaminbutton/

how do you mean?

i think it brings out how problematic brad pitt could be for film.

xp, structurally. To see the premise in effect on screen makes me worry, but the screenplay is supposed to be OK so perhaps all is well. Definitely looking forward to it.

amazed that eric roth could put the line "in life you never know what's coming to you" in a movie after writing gump's "box of chocolates, never know what you're going to get" line. shameless

i am way more interested in the second disk in that criterion edition than watching the movie ever again

ya i have the feeling this might be one of those cases where i enjoy teh making-of more than the movie

wow, one line pissed you off in 160 minutes?

I thought it was some of the best Hollywood craftsmanship since Ratatouille!

morbs did u actually like this??

I did, at least I teared up a couple times. Not as much as Kent Jones did. I'd put it my top 15 of last year (admittedly a shit year).

I'd put it my top 15 of last year (admittedly a shit year).

me too

I did, at least I teared up a couple times. Not as much as Kent Jones did. I'd put it my top 15 of last year (admittedly a shit year).

― Dr Morbius, Thursday, May 7, 2009 2:21 AM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

did you like forrest gump? serious question

never saw it.

this was meh in the extreme and I really wanted to like it. the biggest problem for me (aside from annoying framing story and useless katrina ) was cate blanchette. I mean, she is incredibly beautiful, but also was really unlikeable in this. maybe she was trying too hard to pull off her accent or something. tilda swinton's character had 1000x more charisma in the one minute she was in it.

I haven't seen this movie but I had a dream last night that I was watching it. And boy did the movie piss me off just like when I saw the previews.

not enough of "a ride" to be popular.

A new video essay on the film by Matt Zoller Seitz, along w/ the text:

By stripping away the political context that made Gump a pop culture hot potato, Button isolates and magnifies the story's emotional appeal: the sense that, no matter how strongly we believe in the notion that each person is the captain of his or her own ship, the unfortunate fact is that most of us are passengers on this voyage. ... Button is entirely about this sense of life: the realization that we’re quite small and powerless in the great scheme of things, and the most sensible response to this realization is to try to be as caring and decent as we can and appreciate the life we’ve got.

It seems odd to describe a $150 million Brad Pitt movie as unconventional, but in the context of commercial narrative cinema, the label fits. Show business is exactly that, and one of its imperatives has been to give viewers an escape from the world they know—a world in which it's damned hard just to get through the Department of Motor Vehicles line during lunch hour, let alone win the love of your ideal mate, show some two-bit thug what's what, or save your town, your nation, or the galaxy from evil....

None of the above should be construed as a condemnation of the usual modes of movie storytelling. They've been around for over a hundred years, they're descended from models hundreds, even thousands of years older, and they've inspired many satisfying and occasionally profound entertainments. But there are so many examples that it's easy to forget that there is another way of doing things—another kind of story, one that addresses the hard reality of everyday existence even as its imagery and situations reach toward the mythic, the symbolic, and the dreamlike.

http://www.movingimagesource.us/articles/present-tense-20090508

this movie is all eye candy, zero content beyond a sort of glazed-over wistfulness.

not enough of "a ride" to be popular.

― Dr Morbius, Sunday, May 24, 2009 6:35 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

a "ride" is all BB is. it's like a CGI demo reel stretched out to three hours. the main character is a total zero, just a really cool special effect.

I empathize with all attempts to defend it, but mostly think the movie's long and relentlessly underwhelming.

honestly i went in really rooting for it... but the script is just terrible. cuts the movie off at the knees.

this movie is all eye candy, zero content beyond a sort of glazed-over wistfulness.

― s1ocki, Wednesday, May 27, 2009 10:15 AM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is OTM. the whole time i was watching it i was like "this looks beautiful... why does it suck?"

Except for that CGI hummingbird, that looked fuckin awful

which is totally recycled from the forrest gump feather scene too

not exploring new territory heah

i still say watch it again when you begin to feel old.

That's like saying listen to "Losing My Edge" when you turn 30. Pretty duh.

i won't deny there's some poignant stuff in this movie (especially the last 15 minutes or so which were kinda haunting). but it's not really earned and thus barely got to me.

i just do not get the point of the katrina framing device. I think my favorite part of the movie (aside from the tilda swinton section) was the beginning with the guy building the clock.

"earned" wtf

as in, i didn't care enough about any of the characters for it to seem any more than just... kinda spooky.

it wasn't enough to convince me that this movie was about actual human beings and not CGI-matting technology.

i mean this movie is basically the equivalent of a star wars prequel with a classy finish.

Yeah, the most interesting section of the entire film for me was the child-with-dementia angle. I was sort of disappointed that added up to about a minute and a half. I know stretching that out would've been unnecessarily painful, but I'd still prefer that to the crap about the buttons and the boat and the 10 minutes of Magnolia prologue leading up to Daisy's taxi cab accident.

the 10 minutes of Magnolia prologue leading up to Daisy's taxi cab accident

this was ridiculous - the whole "causality is crazy, man!" thing has been done to death so many times and HOW exactly was BB supposed to know all those details anyway!

i think we've done this and tho im a defender, i don't want to see it again too much. but i rarely agree w/ morbs and he is right about this.

i think the rainstorm katrina thing makes total sense. almost in a meta way: the film was set up for new orleans before katrina happened, and they worked it into the film. the meta thing being: david fincher is such a control freak, and his films are all "about letting go."

the whole "causality is crazy, man!" thing has been done to death so many times

maybe, but without such talent and shit? i thought fincher rocked it with that section anyway.

The justification for the Katrina framing device is weird. The framing device was already in there (w/o the hurricane), Louisiana offered better tax breaks so they chose there over Maryland. Then Katrina happened as they were about to move the production down there, and they thought "how can we ignore this?" I'm not sure I would have found that device compelling without the hurricane, but with it it just feels really off balance and distracting. Like this very significant weather event is an important part of the film, rather than just something they thought was dramatic or cool and was there for people to make what they will of it.

xp

The Sliding Doors thing is just completely anodyne and doesn't really make a point. Eric Roth's defence of it (apparently that and the lightning guy were the cuts suggested by the studio) was really unconvincing

fwiw i'm not mad at the katrina thing, i think it was a fine way to frame it

i think SOMEBODY's been listening to the creative screenwriting podcasts!

anyway that sort of causality shit is pretty much late-night dorm room stoner conversation level at this point, along with "what if we all see colours differently?"

anyway that sort of causality shit is pretty much late-night dorm room stoner conversation level at this point, along with "what if we all see colours differently?"

― s1ocki, Wednesday, May 27, 2009 5:51 PM (2 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

WHAT IF WE DO THOUGH?

hi i read boing boing (and don't i actually mention that podcast somewhere on this thread?)

haha.

i listen to it too!

and HOW exactly was BB supposed to know all those details anyway!

jeezus, this is like "how does Gavin Elster know Scottie won't make it to the top of the tower"

i think it was the spielberg thread i mentioned it actually. it is a good interview.

b buttons is a really interesting film, and in my head i want to see it again, but i remember being so frustrated by it the first time. i will probably end up with the criterion version though.

well how was he! i don't mind plot inconsistencies if they don't jump out at me but this was big enough to be a distraction xp

the making-of, from what i saw of it, was actually a much better movie

Katrina brings the finality of destruction and oblivion, just faster than a natural lifespan does

I liked the Matt Zoller Seitz stuff you pasted upthread, Morbs, but the drama, speed, uniqueness, etc. of Katrina doesn't seem to fit in with that view to the extent that it ends up rather than adding to a film like the one Seitz is talking about.

I thought Katrina made an old city young again.

ololo

(i meant to say "to the extent that it ends up _detracting_ rather than adding")

the curious case of why is this fucking movie so slow

what the fuck

made it one hour in, i surrender

punk ass forrest gump leaning posing the amazing oh gee never heard it before "what if everyone other than you got old and died" philosophical immortality quandry PIECE OF SHIT

Made me more angry than any film I've seen since Requiem for a fucking Dream. Worthless, vapid, self-important GARBAGE of the most execrable sort. Go fucking die already.