Anticipating Michael Mann's 'Public Enemies', with Depp, Bale, et al.

Trailer coming out later today.

Those apostrophes mess up a title, don't they?

Bale as Chuck D
Depp as Flavor Flav

Bale = Cagney
Depp = Harlow

Clip here.

my brother was an extra in this in some courtroom scene w/ i think both depp & bale, looking forward to finding out if he's gonna be visible onscreen at all.

Anticipating Michael Mann's 'Public Enemies', with Depp, Bale, Shipley et al.

max are you in it too? my brother told me they were filming at your school.

lol

OK OK, here's the trailer. Rated R for "gangster violence."

not 100% on these music choices tbqh

i'd like to see this filmed by Anthony Mann

great, really productive fuckin comment, thanks.

fyi morbs

In 1967, Mann died from a heart attack in Berlin, Germany while filming the spy thriller A Dandy in Aspic.

how insensitive

"too soon"

ya terrible music choices... still, hope this is good

i'd like to see this directed by thomas mann.

i'd like to see thee unmanned

honestly, the trailer for miami vice is the highpoint of moving-picture technology, and so this was bound to disappoint a bit.

will DV be at odds with period settings? can't wait to find out this summer

also, OTM

The fake trailer Mann and Benecio Del Toro made for Mercedes in '02 is one of my favorites.

I was completely expecting Chris Cornell and Timbaland to end up on the soundtrack to this one.

it's miami vice in costumes

looking forward to it.

weird to think bale and depp have never been in the same scene together.

is it?

A 21 Jump Street movie would have been better than the Miami Vice movie.

not 100% on these music choices tbqh

― Jesus Lulz (special guest stars mark bronson), Wednesday, March 4, 2009 3:34 PM (40 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ya terrible music choices... still, hope this is good

― s1ocki, Wednesday, March 4, 2009 3:49 PM (26 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i would say that michael mann has been more or less consistently the worst director in terms of music choices since 1990 or so, which is weird considering how amazing the music for miami vice TV and manhunter are

honestly, the trailer for miami vice is the highpoint of moving-picture technology, and so this was bound to disappoint a bit.

― Jesus Lulz (special guest stars mark bronson), Wednesday, March 4, 2009 3:51 PM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

couldnt agree w/ u more, one of the few places where a ridiculous & terrible song actually ended up working 100%

I think I prefer the proposed Anthony Mann directed version as well.

well i wish stanley kubrick directed it - imagine!!!

or fw murnau - he'd be perfect because he lived when dillinger was alive

that would be an interesting take because he died before dillinger's most notorious deeds were committed!

I think I prefer those proposed versions too.

i wish, instead of a movie, it was a comic book, instead of being directed by michael mann, it was written by cervantes, and, instead of starring johnny depp, it was filled with photographs of rachel weisz

http://www.imfdb.org/images/thumb/f/fb/DillingerLobby-Card.jpg/300px-DillingerLobby-Card.jpg

I know I'm hoping Zack Snyder makes a movie out of that comic book.

max, you've seen Lawrence Tierney!

i wish this was directed by a directing genius who hasnt even been born yet but he will be regarded as one of the finest talents in the industry in the future!

Years ago, I got to see the Lawrence Tierney version of Dillinger with Tierney himself offering up a hilariously aggressive running commentary throughout. Great stuff!

Music notwithstanding, the trailer alone looks better than most of the other swill that's supposed to be released this summer.

I wish this was directed by a labradoodle.

Music notwithstanding, the trailer alone looks better than most of the other Christian Bale swill that's supposed to be released this summer.

Bale is making a Medellin this year

weird to think bale and depp have never been in the same scene together.

― Jesus Lulz (special guest stars mark bronson), Wednesday, March 4, 2009 10:01 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

is it?

― s1ocki, Wednesday, March 4, 2009 10:03 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

understated british humour.

the whole "we're here to rob the bank's money, not yours" line was such bullshit in Bonnie & Clyde and it's bullshit here too.

eh?

it's not bullshit in 'heat' though.

dillinger makes a great and compelling movie subject but when they start dropping things into the script to make him seem like some sort of robin hood character i draw the line. the same exact thing happened in bonnie and clyde.

im not sure that michael mann reads the scripts of his movies

Milius' "Dillinger" is pretty sweet.

this looks incredible

Mann's definitely putting the DV stuff to good use. Love the way his stuff looks. If dude can get the tommy guns to sound as good as the assault rifles did in Heat, I'll probably love it. Shame about the music.

Killing innocents or cops during a robbery is an incidental, and in Mann's world the true professionals know it is best avoided. This ensures that the robber protagonists aren't so outside the audience's moral compass as to completely alienate them. Notable how Cruise's hitman is seen as a morally reprehensible villain in all stages ("you're missing essential parts").

Probably more important is that a good robbery takes meticulous planning and a strong work ethic, and Mann LOVES work.

also he sure loves cars too

Though of course, "Manhunter," "The Insider," and "Mohicans" have nothing to do with robberies. Or cars. I suppose "Heat" is the apotheosis of all his cop themes, from "LA Takedown" to "Crime Story" and "Miami Vice" (TV and movie versions). And I suppose just about everything he has done, right up to "Public Enemies," begins with this scene:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfetsPmDWAk

Two other thoughts:

-Mann's DVD "director's cut" are all oddly inferior to the theatrical versions, especially "Miami Vice," which changes one of the coolest things that movie had going for it (that abrupt "right in the middle of the action" opening).

- "Risky Business" is the teen sex comedy Mann never made. Chicago, Tangerine Dream, dreamy cinematography ...

Oh, and great "Thief" essay here (which includes a link to that scene):

http://kirbydotsmovies.blogspot.com/2009/02/thief.html

Sums up Mann thus:

"It is worth noting that as much as Mann's films deal with characters that identify to a compulsive degree with their vocation or career, the characteristic malaise of a Mann protagonist is actually the longing to escape that vocation."

Which I suppose does make "Public Enemies" somewhat anomalous, even if Bale's underwritten character clearly fits this template.

suppose "Heat" is the apotheosis of all his cop themes, from "LA Takedown" to "Crime Story" and "Miami Vice" (TV and movie versions).

i always used to think Heat was meant to be the movie where he got that stuff out of his system, but he's spent most of this decade disproving that theory.

-Mann's DVD "director's cut" are all oddly inferior to the theatrical versions, especially "Miami Vice," which changes one of the coolest things that movie had going for it (that abrupt "right in the middle of the action" opening).

waht?! really?! i love that opening :(

miami vice was pretty dope but the more i have seen it the more i wish there was more focus on luis tosar as opposed to john ortiz, who seems like such a bullshit weak villain.

haha i dont even remember the villain.

i'm a fiend for mojitos~~~~~~~

will poor sonny ever find love???

x-post Yeah, lame director's cut of "Vice" opens with a boat race (often shot from underwater) that leads into the nightclub scene. Completely unnecessary. The theatrical abrupt open was one of the coolest things I've ever seen.

i like both versions!

the dir-cut has herc from 'the wire' and the boat race is dope.

lol is herc mann's new ted levine

Director's Cut pads some other scenes, I think. And it's the only one available on Blu-Ray :(

Herc from the Wire is in the theatrical cut, too. And he's in Public Enemies!

Herc, vocation, criminals being careful not to drop bodies... am I reading a The Wire thread?!?!

The same site with the "Thief" essay (and other perceptive essays on Mann) posts this rave:

http://kirbydotsmovies.blogspot.com/2009/07/dying-breaths-some-thoughts-on-public.html

Even if one disagrees with his assessment, I stand by my assertion that for all its flaws there's an awful lot left to address in this movie.

>>Damn this movie looks *amazing.* You really feel like you've got 20/15 vision... the muzzle flashes lighting up faces, the manufacturers stamps on the guns, signs, store facades, the glare from lighting flares. Once you get past the initial strangeness of seeing the 1930s filmed in DV

this is totally otm - i left the theatre feeling like i was seeing SUPER clearly which is like what happens when i get new contacts or something

― a poppy seed NAGL (J0rdan S.), Friday, July 3, 2009 2:06 AM (6 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Huh, this film mostly just looked kind of shaky and blurry to me. When they showed the Manhattan Melodrama scenes, I wished the whole thing had been shot in B&W on film.

Also, maybe it was the theater, but everything looked sort of washed out and/or underlit.

Did you see it at the Davis or somewhere with good picture/sound?

man i saw this today and thought it was great. it's funny and a little surprising so many people on this thread didn't like it. i was totally absorbed, even though i'm not sure why (true, no particular reason to care about the characters), and the ending was sort of devastating for reasons i'm equally unclear on. i'll have to think about it. one thing that occurred to me is that in some ways i felt like it did some of the things that other people said they saw or felt in the dark knight (where i totally didn't see or feel them at all). i mean in terms of the moral ambiguity of the clash between order and chaos etc. but it's not really a message movie or anything. its effects are a lot more close-up than that.

the action scenes just totally bristled. the whole movie bristled. it bummed me out, but i wanna see it again.

i really didn't LIKE this portrayal of dillinger -- he seemed like a grade-a douchebag and not even an entertaining bad-guy douchebag (a la pacino). why should i care? why should i root for him?

he did more or less seem like a douchebag, but that's probably par for the course among bank robbers. i liked the portrayal, because it made him sharp and charismatic enough that he made sense as the guy who things revolved around, but not really very smart or likable. and of course he wasn't, because how smart and likable can a guy like that be? he was sort of feral, basically, surviving from day to day.

which is no reason to root for him -- i don't think the movie does, exactly -- or even to care. but i'm not sure you have to care about dillinger for the movie to work. he's not really its moral center; he's more like the subject of its inquisition.

it's crazy though... the look of this movie is so bizarre for period, it's really really in yr face

yeah, thinking about it some more, the rawness of the video in a lot of places is really jarring and effective. thinking especially of the big shootout at the lodge in the woods, where you get all the graininess of nighttime video resolution and up-close handheld stuff with depp as he's caroming around from room to room. never seen anything quite like it.

Did you see it at the Davis or somewhere with good picture/sound?

At the Davis. :/

xpost -- it's sort of weird that not many of the reviews i've read talk much about the filmmaking, which seems like the most important part of the movie to me. (as usual in a mann movie.) talking about historical accuracy and suchwhat seems pretty beside the point.

most movie reviewers are eng lit grads, basically.

the most annoying reviwing trend is from the trade or vaguely tradey writers like that woman at the daily beast. they almost want mann to fail to prove some obscure point. it actually did okay last weekend, so anne thompson at variety is all 'expect it to drop off!' well yeah, it probably will. it's not clear what kind of movie they do want. the daily beast lady just hammered away at 'michael mann is a tough guy on set'.

an exception is scott foundas' review, which is good and pinpoints exactly the shot that most startled me:

Visually, Public Enemies seems like the summation of something Mann has been steadily building toward ever since he first incorporated video-shot footage into the dynamic opening training montage of Ali in 2001. Where digital methods have gradually become the industry standard by simulating the dense, luxuriant textures of film, Mann embraces video precisely for the ways in which it is unlike film: for the hyper-real clarity of its images, for the way the lightweight cameras move through space, and for its ability to see sharper and more deeply into his beloved night. At every turn, Mann rejects classical notions of cinematic "beauty" and formulates new ones. The sounds and images rush at you, headlong, and before you can fully get a handle on them, something else takes their place. (I am haunted by one particular shot, of Dillinger being wakened by gunshots, the camera springing off his body as if it, too, had been startled from sleep.)

(I am haunted by one particular shot, of Dillinger being wakened by gunshots, the camera springing off his body as if it, too, had been startled from sleep.)

Haha waht? He reacted like Jack Sparrow being told all the rum had gone at that moment.
Dear me.

Mann stans are some real die-hards huh? Fair enough.

great use of music in this, video was pretty startling in this, even moreso than how it looked in Miami Vice and Collateral I think because of the period setting

amazing film. i have no idea if it was any good (maybe the script felt rushed or almost incompetent at times), but seeing movie-scale stories and emotions on crisp HD is v. powerful to me, and i was kind of a wreck in the last ten mins.

still feel like there are serious and ugly technical problems with motion blur and rapid camera movements on this F23 thing.

these are interesting if you are camera dork like me:

http://www.studiodaily.com/filmandvideo/currentissue/Co-Producer-Bryan-Carroll-on-the-Tech-Behind-Public-Enemies_11048.html

http://www.studiodaily.com/main/topstory/DP-Dante-Spinotti-on-Public-Enemies_11045.html

how do you know if it's "amazing" if don't have any "idea how good it is"?

as in it amazed me

anyone seen:

http://www.moviegoods.com//Assets/product_images/1020/360935.1020.A.jpg

aka "guns, sins and bathtub gin"

Red for a Beef?

Red for a Crook.

same film

http://www.moviegoods.com//Assets/product_images/1020/203919.1020.A.jpg

these are interesting if you are camera dork like me:

http://www.studiodaily.com/filmandvideo/currentissue/Co-Producer-Bryan-Carroll-on-the-Tech-Behind-Public-Enemies_11048.html

http://www.studiodaily.com/main/topstory/DP-Dante-Spinotti-on-Public-Enemies_11045.html

― caek, Thursday, July 16, 2009 8:01 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

d*mn that's some interestin ass shit caek thanks for postin thats the ikind of thing i wanna see more of, less GAMES AS ART style analysis imo

cool i will check that

Saw it again. Still crappy.

does anyone still rep for or even remember this flat ugly boring pos

I remember it because I went to a fucking theater to see it. So in a sort of "never forget" way, yeah.

me tooni wonder is there scope for a class action or at least a survivors group

I have little memory of it aside from hating the super-digital video looking outdoor night gunfight scenes.

Which still makes it the most passable Johnny Depp movie since Sleepy Hollow.

There were gunfights? I remember nothing of this but I know I saw it on HBO at some point

Gun battle between the FBI and Dillinger's gang at a house in the country, I think? Or a hotel?

I love bits of it. Don't think it hangs together all that well.

it's definitely the best Depp movie in recent memory that i've seen. cotillard and lang are particular standouts and i agree w/cankles upthread about crudup. it's got a completely historically inaccurate rogues' gallery of villains, it reminds me of the warren beatty version of dick tracy in that regard. on that level i really liked it.