should we anticipate Clint Eastwood's J.Edgar?

on one hand: it's Eastwood
on the other hand: it's also Dicaprio and thats the trailer:

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

Which is positive and which is negative at this point in history

where's Ricky Cruz?

is eastwood or dicaprio the bad one

I hate biopics

also Lenny

i will watch any biopic.

the more ridiculous and filled with "and that's JUST how it happened!" moments, the better.

why couldn't Oliver Stone have directed? why??

okay yeah I would watch a Stone pic about J. Edgar

he's too busy secretly prepping the clinton biopic i've been dreaming of for years now

omg @ the "old" makeup

i wouldn't watch anything from Stone. havent we suffered enough?

not as long as we keep electing new presidents

Dubya was hilarious

looks really dour

i'm really tired of the bleach bypassing on all of clint's pictures, it just feels like a gimmick to me at this point - how about some color, pal!

man YouTube pulled the scene between Bob Hoskins and "My So-Called Life" Puerto Rican gay boi poolside.

if stone was directing this would definitely have included agent tricycle's warning about pearl harbor being summarily ignored by hoover

"yes, mother"

jesus

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1982/aug/12/the-fbi-and-pearl-harbor/

Couldn't be looking forward to this less.

"i'm really tired of the bleach bypassing on all of clint's pictures Dicaprio, it just feels like a gimmick to me at this point"

haha you love clint eastwood and hate oliver stone? ilx may not be the message board for you pal

i don't know if i "love" eastwood.(sometimes i do, sometimes i dont)
but i surely don't love Dicaprio.

how many 20th-century political figures are left that haven't been biopic'd yet?

wilson?

it's like madeleine albright, pol pot, and a comptroller from iowa.

i dont mind leo, but he's no broderick crawford (or billy crudup)

wish clint would go back to making goofy flicks like blood work (i guess gran torino's the closest we'll get)

how many 20th-century political figures are left that haven't been biopic'd yet?

LBJ, because nobody likes him

blood work

jesus christ are you insane this was fucking awful

also the last time I saw an Eastwood movie

actually an lbj biopic could be pretty great

especially if it starred liam neeson doing a texas accent

what is an example of a great political biopic film?

LBJ bio could be awesome done right! i wonder if anyone has the rights to the caro

blood work was hilarious - he's trying to solve a murder, but first he has to take a nap!

Given that the Milk screenwriter did this one, it's obv gonna be too damn gay.

http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1235982293p5/1618522.jpg

blood work was hilarious - he's trying to solve a murder, but first he has to take a nap!

lol this is true... maybe I'm just bitter that I paid theater ticket prices to see it for some reason

There was a Woodrow Wilson biopic in 1944, got plenty of Oscar attention. I saw it once, it was stupefyingly dull.

I'm to understand all the gay has been taken out.

i'd watch the hell out of a wilson bio if done by one of those weirdo tea party production outfits

the weirdest thing about this is that the aged-dicaprio just looks sorta like matt damon

he's probably wearing the original kane prosthesis

dicaprio is really bloating

Prosthetic Leo looks more like Jedgar than I'd have suspected.

Anyway, as to evidence on whether JEH and Clyde Tolson's relationship was sexual, we have no smoking johnson.

man no one called it "bloating" when deniro purposefully packed on all those pounds for lamotta or pupkin. they called it ACTING.

smdh @ the way you people underestimate poor leo

When De Niro made his reputation, he did not look like a beautiful teenage girl.

Ruper Pupkin, fat?

missed the pupkin fat scenes

It's also an easy go-to term for standard bland Hollywood claptrap that just happens to appeal to "discerning" middle-class folk i.e. The King's Speech

i use mental images of judi dench when i oscarbait

but it is now overused to include meritorious non-mush.

by you?

I think it's fair to call some people out on Oscar Bait intentions, i.e. Ron Howard dramas or anything Hilary Swank has starred in since Million Dollar BabyKarate Kid 4.

fixed

I did. It's pretty good, for a movie that doesn't involve God telling people to.

I lol'd

Says Armond:

Larry Cohen’s 1976 The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover was a near masterpiece of human insight (Broderick Crawford’s soft, experienced voice beats DiCaprio’s hard, choppy delivery) and had a broad, deep, overview of political change. Cohen genuinely understood how people lived in their time with their feelings. Black’s contrast of human and social needs throughout Hoover’s life attempts something similar but sometimes errs as with Hammer’s smirky, flirty flamboyance—a p.c. ploy that sets-up acceptable vs. unacceptable styles of difference. Too bad Eastwood stages it as grand guignol.

Within about 30 seconds, Hammer uses the phrase "a little camp" and then tearfully throws a brandy snifter to the ground.

who the fuck is armie hammer?

gorgeous heir who played the Winkelvoss twins in The Social Network

A.O. Scott's review.

― lumber up, limbaugh down (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, November 9, 2011 9:42 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark

AO Scott otm that Hammer looks like Bill Tilden, which wd've been a more intriguing bio-film idea.

― Dr Morbois de Bologne (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, November 9, 2011 1:07 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

thats manohla dargis btw

youre right, I realized this subsequently

man, scott isn't even up on mainstream Hollywood scrapple.

"oh it's a biopic" is depressingly submissive, as if there couldn't occasionally be a good one (Kundun, Milk), or that some unusual stuff couldn't be snuck in. Glenn Kenny seems to think this is an example:

There's a very messy dread at the heart of the film that is evoked at some of the most seemingly offhand moments. They reach a crescendo in the crucial mother-and-son confrontation of the film, a scene so utterly fraught and pathetic that it could have been plucked out of a great Fassbinder picture. And also that while my evocation of a stiff solemnity may have evoked for TFB a "reaching for authority," or respectability, the way it played for me on screen was rather different, that is, not so much Richard Attenburough's Gandhi as Carl Theodor Dreyer's Gertrud. That's not an analogy that can stand up to formal analysis, and it's not meant to, I just bring it up relative to the predominant tone I got from the picture. The atmosphere is, I think, very much deliberately kind-of-suffocating, rather than actively elevating. A fancy way of saying, I suppose, that the movie is a bit of a bummer, and all the better for it.

http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2011/11/whats-that-termite-doing-on-that-white-elephant.html

Almost as depressing as people recycling the termite/white elephant diad when it suits them.

It's meaningful to people who see value in Farber's schematics, which I don't, much. (I LIKE it when the salesman leers at William Holden in Sunset Blvd, it's funny whether it's the effing 'Gimp' or not.)

I saw The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover at MOMI. Larry Cohen was there. He was a bit apoplectic about this film.

yes, same at Lincoln Center in August.

I like Farber, but the movies and styles he was writing about generally don't exist anymore.

"I like Farber." Sorry, that's actually an understatement. I love Farber.

Also, this:

not so much Richard Attenburough's Gandhi as Carl Theodor Dreyer's Gertrud

is such utter bull.

I like Farber but his white elephant/termite theory is too clever by half.

Not least because Gandhi, for all its stuffiness, is a more entertaining movie than Gertrud.

Not as funny, tho.

Haven't seen Gandhi in 29 years, but git outta town. Unless we're talking Timberlake-level entertainment. xp

I saw Gertrud a few months ago for the first time and was bored to tears – and I love ...Joan of Arc and Day of Wrath.

Day of Wrath is the one of the Dreyer quintet I'm not as high on as everyone else.

Needed more witches being tipped via fulcrum into pyres.

Gandhi?

I could understand saying that about Ordet, but not Gert. xp

but you can't stand Hou either, right?

But Gertrud is, I'll admit, one of the movies I'm glad most people don't particularly like. Makes my kinship with its sexuality (i.e. lack thereof) closer.

(to bring it back to J. Edgar)

i reread farber's review of the third man last night and every sentence was totally wrong except for the one saying there were too many tilted angles, which everybody already knows

but you can't stand Hou either, right?

Naw, I like Hou very much now. That summer I spent time with four or five of his movies.

Later Farber makes a lot more sense to me than early Farber.

I like the two or three insane Bob Hopkins scenes in Nixon; if they're not for you, here's the tedious, beige-ugly 140-minute version. I'm halfway through the Kael book, but I don't believe I'm being unduly influenced by that. I do think--not for the first time--that Eastwood's the very definition of her quote about knowing cab drivers who have film sense and directors who don't. Armie Hammer's old-guy makeup made me think of the grandfather in Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which I'm sure wasn't the intended effect. Was there any particular reason to skip over the McCarthy years? I know that would have made the film even longer, but it does seem like a conspicuous omission.

*oscar baits slowly*

This sequence from Paul Mazursky's Vanity Fair review (news to me) says a lot:

"Eastwood tries to answer all these questions. But in doing so, too often he left me puzzled...I wouldn’t have minded a bit more fun...But the script has (DiCaprio) doing scene after scene in exactly the same manner...That particular scene could have been sexier and funnier. So could the whole movie...Eastwood’s film is all just a bit too earnest...A great score would have made us soar with delight--rather than making us feel as though we’re riding a slow elevator."

And then, the last paragraph: "As critical as this review may sound, I would tell you to see the picture. In these days of silly movies, it’s important to see the adult work. And J. Edgar is an adult film made by serious people."

Which to me translates as: "This bored me to tears, but as a fellow filmmaker, I guess I should offer some dutiful praise for its intentions, and for not being Jack and Jill." Like when a friend once told me that Scorsese's Cape Fear at least wasn't Cop-and-a-Half.

Been reading this thread backwards and it took me a long time to be reminded of what the title was.

Gertrud gets points from me for starring the guy who played the mad scientist doctor who had the diseased liver transplant in The Kingdom.

so is this good? is much of it about his sexuality?

I was really impressed with this. It's a bit slower than it ought to be, and a bit confusing to start with, but damn if they didn't humanize old J Edgar. Not that you feel sorry for him or re-evaluate his actions but just that he gets some humanity, you can see him as a flawed person rather than a distant figure of history.

The prosthetics were distractingly bad though, probably the downfall of the whole thing. It felt like I was watching sketch comedy at times, it was hard to stay in the movie.

I'm a Leo fan for the most part, I felt like this was as good as his Howard Hughes, and some of his emotional breakdowns reminiscent of his early roles.

Clint did a nice job of this.

Oh and I feel like this movie manages to almost pull off what Iron Lady completely failed at.

In re: humanizing J. Edgar:

I would have to say that being bitter, suspicious and reflexively willing to fight dirty in defense of a rigid set of totems you embraced and then never re-examined is, if anything, just as human as a mother's love for her child or the desire to touch the surface next to a "Wet Paint" sign.

As I have said to many a school child, an explanation is not an excuse. imo Hoover's life was explainable, but many of his actions were inexcusable.

otm

When I saw this in a theatre, I found it bland and a majorly wasted opportunity--if anyone's life could have been made into an epic film that took in a lot of 20th-century American history, Hoover's only rival might be Nixon. I thought the movie might get better at home a couple of years later.

For me, it seemed even worse. DiCaprio's accent, the awful makeup, the stuff it glosses over or dodges altogether--I'll again mention the inexplicable omission of McCarthy (I think he gets mentioned in passing once)--meanwhile even stepping lightly around one subject it devotes a lot of time to, Clyde Tolson and Hoover's sexuality. Nor does Hoover's connection to the world we live in today seem to interest Eastwood much.

Boy, I wish this had been made by Oliver Stone in the early '90s.

Yeah, but this still had an even funnier Nixon than Dan Hedaya in Dick.

Don't remember Hedaya that well. I thought the Nixon here was as hard to figure out--as in, what is the intention here? is this supposed to be funny or is it just bad?--as everything else in the film.

I laughed, but I'm still not sure how intentional the comedy was (though given the strained seriousness of the whole thing I'd wager, not at all). For me its a toss-up as to whether this film or the latest X-Men has the worse Nixon.

what about John Cusack playing Lloyd Dobler playing Nixon? in Lee Daniels' The Butler?

Missed that one (on purpose).

No interest in The Butler, but you almost make me want to see the X-Men movie--can't imagine how they work in Nixon.

For someone so openly political, I was completely baffled as to what Eastwood wanted to say about Hoover. If he wasn't trying to say anything, if his only objective was a shaded, complex character, I think he failed badly, or at least cast the wrong actor.