Belated Thread for Steven Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience (now with Amy Seimetz/Lodge Kerrigan 2016 Starz TV series)

Thoroughly enjoyed this. Very much in the same collage style as The Limey.

I love that it has a Las Vegas tarmac scene that's identical to Ocean's Thirteen but also completely different.

(Screenplay by the same writers as Oceans Thirteen, too.)

This is streaming on Netflix now, if anyone's curious.

best film to directly engage the financial meltdown I saw this year. (I'm sure I can think of a second... hmmm... well, American Casino is better, I guess.)

This was worth watching.

Any time i recommend this to someone they act all incredulous like they've just assumed it's terrible or something.

It could have been 60 minutes shorter, but it was fine.

I'm watching it as I type!

are you truly?

Am recommending to all my "self-hating Jewish friends" for the last scene alone.

I tried to watch this but turned it off.

after you were "finished"?

My favorite Soderbergh in years. Glenn Kenny and the New York Magazine writer very amusing. Her boyfriend is teh hot (looks a bit like a non-plasticine James Marsden).

yeah, he was a looker.

he was a looker, she was a hooker

lets call the whole thing off

I dunno. Sort of vag-lippy imo.

http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BNzg5ODA4MzUwOF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwODI0MDU2Mg@@._V1._SX322_SY400_.jpg

after you were "finished"?

I wish!

I thought the acting was atrocious across the board, and the script seemed very unpolished to me.

I'm not sure how much script there was! Sounds like Glenn Kenny wrote much of his dialogue, for one.

I watched this last week, and thought that it was a lot better than I thought it'd be. Times are tough all around, right?

The pre-election bits made me grind my teeth a little after listening to all the partisan bickering on the news leading up to the healthcare vote, though.

I'm not sure how much script there was! Sounds like Glenn Kenny wrote much of his dialogue, for one.

Not surprising!

Not sure where to post this, so here may be as good as any:

http://thejasminebrand.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/game-5.jpg

So not gonna happen:

http://thejasminebrand.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/game-6.jpg

What would be funnier, a life-sized cut-out ?uestlove to post with, or a whole life-sized cut-out cheerleader team to pose with?

Interesting story about Grey's PR campaign for her new book. (Warning: Link is NSFW.)

TV series adaptation coming to Starz next year, exec produced by Soderbergh, all eps co-written/directed by Lodge Kerrigan and Amy Seimetz (!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I40Z6pp8-30

The movie would be a good double feature with Lizzie Borden's Working Girls.

kind of feel like we need to take the thread in a different direction for the tv show, because it's very much its own thing

not only is amy seimetz the director/writer for much of it, shane carruth (who she worked with on his film, upstream color) does the music and has a cameo appearance

oh yeah, and amy seimetz is in the show as the sister of the main character!

what is this on again?

oh yeah STARZ

well i haven't even seen the oldtimey hospital show yet

starz, unfortunately

they have an a la carte streaming option now, I hadn't realized that until this weekend

I think that one was on cinemax

so confusing to to keep up with these second-tier subscription channels

Starz has done plenty of great or at least interesting stuff! Have you all forgotten that they gave us Party Down?

Anyway this was pretty damn good. More 1/2hr dramas please

Party Down was what, five years ago?

I enjoyed those Spartacus series but that's more of a guilty pleasure

Spartacus was great, super underrated imo.

see also: Outlander.

yea the 1/2 hr drama format is odd but im into it too

tbh the world's been overrun by hour-long dramas

Party Down was seven years ago

I think the last season aired right around when I bought a house, which seems not that long ago

rip me, killed by the slow and steady passage of time

Heard good things about this, even the debates about whether or not the show is problematic have been intriguingly problematic!

outlanders has things to recommend it, black sails is better than game of thrones, i never got around to watching the missing

counter to some reviews complaining about the sound design, I think this gf experience show does it well? there's at least one scene with characters walking down empty hotel hallways and that nondescript humming, where you wonder if it's the ventilation system or a combination of the ice machine and a distant vacuum cleaner is audible

if nothing else, I could write a small essay on the way this series has captured the feeling of high-end hotels and luxury city apartments, with some parallels between the two that could be an indictment of luxury living

The total change of venue in ep. 12 makes the use of those environments extra notable imo

Also, the season does something very interesting on a structural level where

---

OBLIQUE SPOILERS FOLLOW

----

The "plot" of the season ends in episode 11, with the last two acting as sort of standalone / "coda" episodes. Very cool idea.

the first half of the season is wondering when things are going to break, with a couple hints and misfires before anything happens

I also like the way some episodes seem to span months whereas a couple are more or less realtime

there's also a point to be made about the high-paid professional class and when, and where, the expression of emotion is allowed

basically I've read a lot of negative reviews that are, imo, criticizing all the wrong things

figures. I'm all for more "difficult" / less consensus-making TV.

I think I only laughed once at the whole thing, at the line (iirc) "it's important that people find you sympathetic." Troll game strong.

I chuckled at a line that approached an in-joke when they said something about grandfathers

what with the lead having a reasonably notable grandfather

Keough freaks me out a little in that she evokes literally 9-10 other (mostly) contemporary actresses just off the top of my head

There are multiple parts of the ongoing plot that are about identity and its perception, and that definitely plays a part in it

There were scenes where she could be subtly mistaken for any number of attractive women

interesting re the sound design stuff. i think i knew it was carruth but hadnt paid attn til this latest ep (#3 "retention") it def reminded me of his last film, very horror vibe

there also appear to be not unobvious things happening w shadows and angles that im prob too dense to fully grasp, tho have noticed kate lyn shiela character is almost always shown mostly in profile

the Carruth score reminded me so much of Cliff Martinez's work on The Knick, like I wondered if Carruth used the same synths

Had no idea she was Lisa Marie Presley's daughter, or hell, that she was in Fury Road!

I should track it down, I swear it was a dialogue coupling that involved "nice jawline" combined with something about a grandfather that made me laugh

"You have nice cheekbones!"

cool that soderbergh is basically giving work to a bunch of super-edgy indie directors who probably have a really difficult time getting films financed.

not sure how I ultimately felt abt this, the show; feels v standalone, like is there talk of another season?

parts of it reminded me of gone girl, tho I do like how its much more oblique i.e. christines sister's question to her of 'did something happen to you as a child that you never told anyone abt?'

best ep imo was the real-time 1 @ the firm when the vid is circulated

p good recent vulture piece where zoller seitz interviews seimetz & Kerrigan on this

Season 3 seemed promising: futurist VR desire data feedback loops set against corporate alienation seems like such an obvious backdrop for this show, but the great setup never gets the follow-through it deserves. A thousand different perverse lateral turns this could have gone but it just loses focus and the cast isn't good enough to keep it going. Avoid.