Anticipate Peter Jacksons The Lovely Bones

The first trailer:

http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/thelovelybones/index.html

A mix of a subdued indie drama and glossy CGI supernatural mystery. After two years in the making, it's finally being released - in Oscar bait season, so someone's confident.

he's lost a shedload of weight!

Looks a bit "What Dreams May Come." Was hoping for something in a similar vein to "Heavenly Creatures" but not really really feeling this trailer. Eno is doing the soundtrack though

he's lost a shedload of weight!

He lost that pre-King Kong.

ah right, i've not seen him since the oscars.

from wiki:
For the film's ending, Eno uncovered a demo he had done in 1973 and reunited with the vocalist to create a proper version for the film.

who's the vocalist?

Chrissy!

but yeah looks stupid. trailer basically tells the whole story. Jackson had a helluva run but its hard to escape the conclusion that he peaked with the LOTR films. CGI's ruined a lot of the inventiveness that made that run of Meet the Feebles/Braindead/Heavenly Creatures/LOTR so nuts and interesting.

He hasn't done anything good since Forgotten Silver.

i may be alone in thinking that king kong was pretty entertaining and dope

If this has any scenes of Mark W talking to houseplants, I will be satisfied.

Was hoping for something in a similar vein to "Heavenly Creatures" but not really really feeling this trailer.
Exactly the same for me. Actually I hate this trailer ! Big disappointment.

trailer suffers from being structured like every other stupid fucking Hollywood drama trailer

CGI's ruined a lot of the inventiveness that made that run of Meet the Feebles/Braindead/Heavenly Creatures/LOTR so nuts and interesting. - Whether you liked it or were bothered by it, there is no arguing that LOTR was not rife with CGI. The thing about LOTR, tho, was that Jackson & co went as far as they could with tactile stagecraft, props & such & then used CGI to fill in the (admittedly many, gaping) spaces. This made all the difference IMO, & made the films substantial in a manner completely lacking from, say, the Star Wars prequels (where Lucas would have *dazzled* us with a shit-rainbow CGI mess of a Hobbit village instead of using, you know, wood & stuff).

I think Jackson should have hired out Guillermo del Toro (or whoever does his FX) for the fantasy world sequences, b/c from the looks of this trailer, we'll be treated to the same variety of selective de/over saturation & rampant Photoshop "diffused glow" filtration on which LOTR leaned so hard & which has now been imitated past the point of cliche. Or, as Butthead would say, "these special effects aren't very special."

Story looks interesting, tho. I'll check this out.

This made all the difference IMO,

yep

I actually kind of liked this novel, as fucked up and not very good as it is. I mean, for a massively popular book, I thought it was alright. It's too bad Lynne Ramsay didn't get to make this as I suspect it would be more interesting than Jackson's take.

trailer would've worked better without the girl's voiceover, i think.

I do want to see this but actually it seems that Lynne was best off out of it.

i may be alone in thinking that king kong was pretty entertaining and dope

― omar little, Wednesday, August 5, 2009 5:02 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

No you are not. Everything after the weirdly paced first hour is amazing.

Strange, but I don't remember much from King Kong. Except that big monkey.

I remember that in King Kong, the characters run through a stampede of dinosaurs and no one gets crushed. FAIL.

ghosts that is not even real

Super creepy Stanley Tucci, though.

ohhhhhhhhhh, my goodness gracious.

In a good or bad way?

In a more "egregious mismatch of filmmaker and material" way than I feared. And I feared!

The "inbetween" afterlife looks like a megabudget Ambien commercial.

how was wahlberg!?!?!?

adrift. Trapped by a lousy script.

I hope the afterlife looks like Wahlberg.

This covers most of the bases:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/nov/24/the-lovely-bones-film-review

morbs otm

too bad. I know this book is controversial and people love to hate it but I thought it was rather good, and had high hopes for this, but it sounds like that robin williams film from a few years back. Ramsey would have done it proper.

Afterlife/"dying's fun!" bits are v overdone and awful, as is Mark Wahlberg as per usual, but otherwise (which is 80% or so of it) I loved it

Wow. This was just a spectacular misfire on every level. I love Wahlberg in the right role but he was obviously going to struggle here. That said, he's probably the least of the film's problems.

ooof.

this is not the sort of movie that should elicit chuckles.

No he isn't

There seem to be a lot of reasons that people thought this was awful, but I thought it was pretty great. I've never read the book, so my viewing couldn't suffer from any adverse comparisons or complaints about favorite characters/scenes gone missing. I don't understand why people hated the heaven CGI effects so much - they were silly but who cares, they were fun to watch. And there lots of other visual effects that were very effective. I thought Stanley Tucci was very good and Susan Sarandon was great. All the actors held up their end. I liked that it didn't try to obtain closure in the usual Hollywood way. I can understand people being creeped out by it. I debate whether I would let a pre-teen daughter watch this if I were a parent, but there were lots of them in the audience, and I guess it's appropriate that this was PG-13 so it could be appreciated by people the same age as the narrator.

I hated hated hated the book, so I'm not sure if I have any interest in seeing the film version. I have never been more, let's face it, angry at the ending of a book than I was with this pile of crap. I liked it well enough from the start and liked the direction it was heading in... I liked how the investigation was starting to unravel. But then, wow, the ending just sucked so hard. Her "reason" for being caught in-between was so lame and the way they tacked on the wrap-up of the killer's storyline was so lame. Just really made me angry to have wasted my time on the book.

what makes the bones lovely anyway, do they ever answer that

what i want to know is there gonna be a porno called the lovely boners

I have never been more, let's face it, angry at the ending of a book than I was with this pile of crap. I liked it well enough from the start and liked the direction it was heading in... I liked how the investigation was starting to unravel. But then, wow, the ending just sucked so hard. Her "reason" for being caught in-between was so lame and the way they tacked on the wrap-up of the killer's storyline was so lame. Just really made me angry to have wasted my time on the book.

I agree. I liked the first two thirds of the book, but oof, the ending is rotten. I would recommend Laura Lippman's What the Dead Know instead -- it is about the disappearance of two teenage girls set in the same era, but without the lame elements that ended up ruining The Lovely Bones.

Thanks for the recommendation, sounds like it just might rinse the bad taste of this book out of my mouth.

I might just watch Heavenly Creatures again rather than bother with this.

The film starts sucking at a much earlier point than the book.

Well, that certainly helps me make up my mind to save the money.

the lovely morbs

This was posted on the Ebert thread, but it deserves mention here, too:
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100113/REVIEWS/100119992

Woof. What a review. I believe I'll be skipping the movie and the book.

http://images.dawgsports.com/images/admin/Oh_God_You_Devil_movie_poster.jpg

the lovely burns

Films that try to be books or plays are (almost always) crap, yes.

it's not heaven, Soto, it's THE INBETWEEN. Like a Buffalo Tom album.

Oof. (I still can't believe I had to put up with those guys once.)

I find it odd that Peter Jackson even bothers to make movies anymore - his career arc was one of a highly inventive outsider who lucked into conquering Hollywood via a successful adaptation of a highly popular and previously "unfilmable" franchise. Surely he must have realized that the only place to go from there was down and attempting to make further blockbusters would just be met with failure (or at least, failure in comparison to LOTR). Dude should've either gone back to making bizarre, high concept/low-budget movies or retired altogether...

Keep in mind that while all this is going on he's running Weta, who provided special effects for a certain alien smurf movie that's all the rage.

yeah, it's odd that a successful filmmaker would keep wanting to continue doing what he loves and has been richly rewarded for

it's not heaven, Soto, it's THE INBETWEEN. Like a Buffalo Tom album.

Now imagining The Lovely Bones as a My So-Called Life episode.

my so-called death

So the movie is basically this:

plus this

http://coolrain44.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/heaven_can_wait_dvd.jpg

yeah, it's odd that a successful filmmaker would keep wanting to continue doing what he loves and has been richly rewarded for

he loves making failed blockbusters?

Now imagining The Lovely Bones as a My So-Called Life episode.

Heaven is a place where flannel never really happens.

Films that try to be books or plays are (almost always) crap, yes

I don't really get how this was trying to be a book.

I just wonder what happened to his perverse/subversive streak, which was really prominent pre-Hollywood.... and now that he has the clout to make whatever he wants he makes shitty adaptations? really? its just a bummer.

x-post

hard to be subversive when you're on top.

Like most subversives, he's a closet New Ager.

guys has any portrayal of heaven in film gotten anywhere near 'a matter of life and death' because i suspect not

"Surely he must have realized that the only place to go from there was down and attempting to make further blockbusters would just be met with failure"

maybe his role model is george miller. from mad max to happy feet. (and lovely bones is his lorenzo's oil.)

I don't really get how this was trying to be a book.

― o. nate, Tuesday, January 19, 2010 3:54 PM

theres a bunch of segueway scenes showing a page turning

plus all those connective scenes with a wizened old man reading the book to his grandson

lovely bones is his lorenzo's oil.

Lorenzo's Oil is a good movie!

can't help but be a little excited about this, by the way:

"On 18 May 2009, however, it was reported that location scouting was underway for a new live action filming of Mad Max 4: Fury Road."

One of the more novel portrayals of heaven I've seen was in Hirokazu Koreeda's "After Life".

http://filimadami.com/afisler/Defending_Your_Life%281991%29.jpg

Heaven requires white espadrilles.

Ha, a couple years ago, I rented After Life and Defending Your Life and watched them as a double feature.

ya lorenzo's oil is cool. just say it's his extraordinary measures—more topical, anyway

Mad Max 4: Fury Road.

*drives furiously*

how is DYL, jaymc?

Mad Max 4: Fury Road.

*drives furiously*

― ♖♕♖ (am0n), Tuesday, January 19, 2010 4:02 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

RIP pauliegualtieri_sm.gif

haha

Have you not seen it, Alfred? It's pretty good light comedy.

It's the only Brooks I haven't seen -- the white espadrilles frightened me.

hard to be subversive when you're on top.

another reason to give it up for raimi

Well, he did make a Sharon Stone western.

That movie is kind of hilarious though -- a few years back it would be on cable a lot and I would watch parts of it because Sharon is so miscast and she is funny/terrible in it.

adrift. Trapped by a lousy script.

― Feingold/Kaptur 2012 (Dr Morbius)

Yep. Utter, utter crap but also entertaining. We needed something to chuck at the screen though.

saw only a 1/4 of it but it may have almost ruined 'music for airports' for me

the eno really does just add to the wtfery

Stop despising this movie once we got to the Saucy Grandma Hollies montage, sure the concept is offensive but its not like Peter Jackson knew what the hell he was doing with this.

Stopped despising, I mean. Though jesus christ apparently I still have like half the movie to go.

so reading this thread in full tells me i should prepare to find this movie deplorable again soon

saw this recently, didnt think it was that bad aside from some of the effects-heavy scenes - it's genuinely moving at times, but maybe it's hard not to be when you're making a sorrowful movie about murdered little girls. ebert's review was funny but his way of looking at the movie wouldnt have occurred to me while i was watching it. jackson doesnt have a very subtle touch.

of course it's "genuinely moving" at times, it's about the murder of a little girl and has some good actors in it. It also has a slow mo scene of mark wahlberg getting the shit kicked out of him to "baby's on fire" while she cries what the fuck am i watching right now

morbz made a good point about how everyone in town should've immediately identified tucci's character as a rapist-murderer monster

the girl who played the sister looked uncannily like an ex of mine from an abusive background, so i ended up thinking about HER childhood during the movie which may have made it all extra affecting to me

lol ive never seen you admit to being moved by a movie dc

i found myself wondering how gus van sant wouldve shot this

more shots of that british dude, i reckon, maybe some skateboarders

ryan gosling was supposed to play the dad but he showed up to the set like 40 lbs overweight with a comedy moustache, apparently had a difft vision of the character than jackson

The twenty odd minutes I watched of it seemed shockingly poor, and I'm generally a Jackson liker.

re: "being moved" i'm a total pussy about sad movies, it just doesn't come up here much. I gotta give Peter Jackson points for trying to "have it all," this is probably the most incoherently grandiose, overbaked movie I've seen since I don't know what. the guy is cluelessly hopping between the effects of like nine genres to tell us a version of Ghost that's both more saccharine and more harrowing.

xpost "no, ryan, that's my vision of the killer." Wikipedia just says Ryan dropped out because he thought he was too young (he is, though that didn't stop them from casting a girl clearly older than ronan as her younger sister). Wahlberg apparently showed up the day before shooting started and right after The Happening - what a wild summer that must have been.

that susan sarandon wacky grandma montage is just gonna make less and less sense as this movie goes on

the guy is cluelessly hopping between the effects of like nine genres to tell us a version of Ghost that's both more saccharine and more harrowing.

haha yeah, the lack of tonal focus i think bugged me the most - it was just all over the map, and the lack of narrative discipline (there's no reason it couldn't have been 30 minutes shorter). i think i would've preferred it feel more naturalistic than the fairytale approach they went with. not familiar with the book.

oh great "The Big Ship" will now be known as "The Love/Body-Dumping Theme From The Lovely Bones" in my head. Did Eno run over Jackson's dog or something?

idk what it says that i didnt even realize eno's music was all over this movie until after it was over - i think something about the Zyrtec ads set in heaven made everything feel so generic