the movie wonder boys starring michael douglas tobey maguire frances mcdormand robert downey jr directed by curtis hanson

this movie is relevant to my interests

i watched this the other day on netflix watch instantly. how could you leave katie holmes out of the thread title. ;_;

i watched it for the first time in a couple years the other night--i used to watch it a lot in college; it was kind of a comfort movie--and it made me think of that "best comedies" thread where people were talking about whether or not anyone made sort of... "normal" comedies anymore, that arent like aggressively weird or ironic or parodic. and anyway this movie is a "normal" comedy and its sort of sweet and easy and charming and everyone is really good in it

xp i watched on netflix too!!

it is charming, even michael douglas somehow.

xp tbh i think i watched it because you and nabisco were talking about it in that fuckin novels thread

and yeah sorry i left out the following people who rule in this movie:

• katie holmes
• rip torn
• jane adams

ari wont watch it with me because it makes her anxious, that all the bad things happen to michael douglas

still don't know why i love katie holmes so much, but i do. rip.

bits of it are sort of michael chabon-cutesy but for some reason it doesnt bug me

its hard not to love her she is very pretty btw

has she even been in anything lately? i feel like she devotes most of her energy to clothing her child

i don't know why it doesn't make me anxious, but something about the vibe of the movie is so comforting, the bad things that happen to michael douglas don't seem threatening. also for once he's not playing a horrible asshole so he seems like he's going to react to things with equanimity

xp she's going to be in something soon but she is not the same girl she was

it's hard to do much when you are stuck to flypaper.

hes a model of "reacting to things with equanimity" in this movie

her wiki pic has an ominous weirdness to it...

I liked this movie okay but I found the novel extremely irritating. I'll prolley never read another Chabon novel.

her = Katie.

i often think of this movie when i'm drinking orange juice. only saw it once though

i like its dylan song a lot.

i was going to say! i still dig that song.

my roommate made me watch this and it was good but I don't remember any of it, I should watch it again I guess

this movie has something to do with writing and collegiate life rite

p much that's all it has to do with

I really disliked this but I don't remember what happened other than SPOILER I GUESS his book flying away in that scene

Michael Douglas is really good despite being miscast.

This was one of the few times I saw people walk out of a movie -- during the ooh-shockah scene of RDJ and Tobey Maguire in bed.

tobey maguire looks so young in this

we were all so young then...

yeah

max, wd ari hv watched it with you if Grady was a big chubby guy like in the book?

watched this about a month ago for the first time in a long time and thought it kinda funny that it had dylan, neil young, tim hardin, leonard cohen, john lennon, AND van morrison on the soundtrack.

no John Prine though.

i remember enjoying this pretty much but the only things i remember from it are katie holmes in them panties and some kinda corny anti-pot pro-family epilogue and that katie holmes character had had several stories published in harpers (as an undergrad!) but this wasn't considered remotely notable or a big deal which seemed unlikely to me. what i recall about the ooh shockah scene are iron man and spiderman are in bed but they don't even kiss or anything right? just two men lying in the same bed right? how homophobic do you have to be to bolt at the sight of that?

Seemed pretty pot neutral if not posi to me.

what i recall about the ooh shockah scene are iron man and spiderman are in bed but they don't even kiss or anything right? just two men lying in the same bed right? how homophobic do you have to be to bolt at the sight of that?

I wasn't standing outside at the Human Rights Campaign table

This movie's better than the book, actually, which is crowded with incident.

this movie was so much better in theory... it kinda sucks dude

solitary man is like wonder boys 2.0, and better

this movie has one of my least-favourite movie-ending cliches, where the book the main character writes is actually the wonderful events of the movie itself

i just banned you from this thread, c ya

It's fun enough. Michael Douglas indulges his favorite tic: to get through a difficult bit of dialogue he'll end the sentence with a small sigh (Julia Roberts used to clear her throat).

i remember enjoying this pretty much but the only things i remember from it are katie holmes in them panties and some kinda corny anti-pot pro-family epilogue and that katie holmes character had had several stories published in harpers (as an undergrad!) but this wasn't considered remotely notable or a big deal which seemed unlikely to me. what i recall about the ooh shockah scene are iron man and spiderman are in bed but they don't even kiss or anything right? just two men lying in the same bed right? how homophobic do you have to be to bolt at the sight of that?

― balls, Thursday, September 2, 2010 10:28 PM (48 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i thought they were all mfa students? actually i think i thought that because she has a bunch of stories published. the 'anti-pot' stuff is mild but yeah its sorta grating. and slockis right that the ending is p lame. but i dunno. this movie just charms me into liking it

didnt work because premise of thread is false - u have no power here

ur banned, please leave

i really wanted to like this and i can remember digging the vibe and stuff but man, fuck a curtis hanson. what a wussy director. always cops out so hard with the ending. la confidential sucks too

i liked la confidential too

now YOU'RE banned

I like "Huck's Tune" from Lucky You more than "Things Have Changed," which borrows from Leonard Cohen's "The Future" or perhaps Chris Rea's "The Road to Hell." But I liked this movie a lot. Didn't like L.A. Confidential.

max were u a big 'in her shoes' guy too

i saw this and thought it was ok but i really don't remember much. i do remember when this came out and it sort of flopped despite some decent reviews and i do recall the posters/ad campaign were pretty awful with an extreme closeup of douglas looking "incorrigible" and frumpy.
paramount realized they screwed up and tried to rerelease it but didn't really work (what a disaster for paramount!)

just borrowed this and according to the cover peter travers thinks this movie is a 'comic dazzler'

yea

I want to produce a Michael Douglas movie where he operates an arthouse down the block from max's revival house.

it was shot at Carnegie Mellon, as was Smart People.

tho it seems like a generic, writerly college that alumni of diff places could project their colleges experiences onto, which i guess is part of the appeal of the movie?

yeah totally

btw scott thanks for alerting me to kinjite forbidden subjects

not sure how to describe my reaction to the plot synopsis but basically: O_O

that movie is nuts. in troo bronson fashion.

I think this was the movie where I realized how much I hated heavy hollow narration. "then we went to this character's house" over shot of car pulling in character's driveway, "But I really loved her" over scene of Michael Douglas not particularly conveying much love for Frances McDormand.

Aside from that, the I-stopped-smoking-pot-and-the-pain-went-away ending and one of those typical erudite-white-dudes-peeling-away-from-lower-class-violence scenes, all I can remember is some likable actors doing what they've done in movies I enjoyed more.

Basically, this movie had no scenes of Frances McDormand frying Michael Douglas' weed in the microwave.

one day RDJ will come along and "discover" me

he should have gone and lived with her character from this movie:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f2/Laurel_canyon_poster.jpg

wow, kinjite forbidden subjects. i must have picked up that video box 1000 times in my young life and never rented it.

black rain is pretty tight iirc. remember when we were all afraid of japan lol

― goole, Friday, September 3, 2010 6:11 PM (59 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

when i run an arthouse theater im going to do a week of 80s/90s movies about how scared we were of japan, incl. rising sun, black rain, die hard

― max, Friday, September 3, 2010 6:16 PM (53 minutes ago) Bookmark

this is a dynamite idea

'the informant!' kinda riffed on this iirc

pearl harbor, too, in a way

lol

u know what movie is a good example of good actors just chilling and doing their thing is the anniversary party

woder boys more like wonder bread

s

n

where are todays fear the chinese movies?
I guess osama derailed them.

anniversary party makes my skin crawl

so why don't you marry it

I think this was the movie where I realized how much I hated heavy hollow narration. "then we went to this character's house" over shot of car pulling in character's driveway, "But I really loved her" over scene of Michael Douglas not particularly conveying much love for Frances McDormand.

Aside from that, the I-stopped-smoking-pot-and-the-pain-went-away ending and one of those typical erudite-white-dudes-peeling-away-from-lower-class-violence scenes, all I can remember is some likable actors doing what they've done in movies I enjoyed more.

― da croupier, Friday, September 3, 2010 10:55 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

I think this was the post where I realized how much I hated run-on compound modifiers.

elmo otm, fuckin horrible movie

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b0/Year_of_the_dragon_poster.jpg

Mentioned already, but:
http://www.movieprop.com/tvandmovie/reviews/gungho.jpg

http://www.rankopedia.com/CandidatePix/78019.gif

http://www.otrnow.com/store/dvd/VCI/December_7th.jpg

Just spent too much time trying to GIS for the Japanese bad guys in Diva.

I'm a teacher, not a Holiday Inn.

when i run an arthouse theater im going to do a week of 80s/90s movies about how scared we were of japan, incl. rising sun, black rain, die hard

― max, Friday, September 3, 2010 6:16 PM (53 minutes ago)

yes! this does seem strange in retrospect

also lol at the symbol of michael douglas sloughing off the sins of his past being...upgrading to a PERSONAL COMPUTER

I def. like the movie better than the book but the movie did lack my favorite part of the book: the adopted father of the dude's ex-wife. He wz a great character.

who was scared of Japan in Die Hard?!

Alan Rickman was so scared of Japan he kidnapped a Japanese.

Watched Lucky You tonight. I don't remember it at all--must have come and gone quietly. It's okay, but should have been better. I like poker movies: California Split and Rounders and (sort of fits) The Gambler are great, vaguely recall The Cincinnati Kid being pretty good, and there was a TV movie with Shirley Jones I liked as a kid. The poker's the best thing about Lucky You, and there's lots of it--the poker and Robert Duvall. The love story's silly; it allows the screenwriters to get in all their clunky poker metaphors (breaking up = "a good fold"). Michael Shannon has a small but striking role--weirdly enough, there are two different Michael Shannons in this film. The biggest problem for me was Eric Bana. So bland.

In the review of Closed Circuit that's been syndicated to the Voice media papers, the reviewer mentions having to resist the urge to add an 'l' the end of Eric Bana's name whenever they have to type it.

what does Lucky You hafta to do w/ Wonder Boys, plz?

ok, Hanson. You mighta said so.

when i run an arthouse theater im going to do a week of 80s/90s movies about how scared we were of japan, incl. rising sun, black rain, die hard

― max, Friday, September 3, 2010 1:16 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

blade runner

god i love this movie.

and the novel too.

ok, Hanson. You mighta said so.

Looked for a poker/gambling movie thread, couldn't find one. I should have mentioned Owning Mahoney, The Cooler, and Croupier in the short list I made. Liked the last, first two nothing special.

Was thinking of a poll--any obvious poker-specific films that should go on? (Sorry, Curtis Hanson...maybe suggestions could be relocated here: ILX Poker Players Unite.)

:(

still haven't seen The Silent Partner, which Hanson wrote.

aw, RIP Mr. Hanson.

the chair on netflix is riyl wonder boys

just sayin