"Her," by Spike Jonze

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rS8zOLOcPMQ#at=28

2 Lars 2 Real Girlous

I thought there was probably no way Spike Jonze would ever purposely or even accidentally make a movie worse than Where the Wild Things Are, but it's happened.

manic pixie dream computer

fuck a ukelele

If this is a film where everything and everyone in the trailer mysteriously dies and/or explodes one minute in, I'm good.

Hey it's another trailer showing hipsters running around with sparklers!

feel like Gondry/Jonez/Kaufmann all need each other to balance/cancel out/mitigate their respective worst tendencies.

It's going to be so Spike Jonezy in the theatre when all the moustache guys in love with their phones are watching the movie about a moustache guy in love with his phone. He probably goes to see a moustache phone love movie in the movie.

http://sofakingnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/14_Mae_Whitman.jpg

feel like Gondry/Jonez/Kaufmann all need each other to balance/cancel out/mitigate their respective worst tendencies.

― joe schmoladoo from 7-11 (Shakey Mo Collier)

this trailer had better be concealing the twist where the multinational that manufactures the operating system comes to scoop out his testicles and sell them (precision surgical equipment interface voiced by carey mulligan)

& shakey mo otm

anyway yall probably slept on

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/80/Ruby_Sparks_poster.jpg

but i did not; i can't sleep on planes

http://crazymoviepeople.com/blog2/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/simone1.jpg

^^^ top three worst movies i've ever, ever seen

stupid right down to the tagline's ellipsis

There are all sorts of connections in that trailer. ScarJo's voice co-stars; of course, she was the co-star of "Lost in Translation," made by Jonze's ex. There's that Yeah Yeah Yeah's song in the trailer ... a song made by Spike Jonze's ex. Amy Adams is in this, co-starring with Joaquin Phoenix, and of course the two just co-starred in "The Master." I'm sure there are more.

Arcade Fire does the score, I think.

^^^ top three worst movies i've ever, ever seen

it really is absolutely unbelievable. I've tried (unsuccessfully) to get my wife to watch it and verify it's unbelievableness.

Joaquin Phoenix was in The Master with Amy Adams
Adams was in Man of Steel with Laurence Fishburne
Fishburne was in Mystic River with Kevin Bacon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ek08KvgqFGM

Long live the new flesh.

Does S1MØNE have a ukulele scene? I'm going to go ahead and assume that Her will be worse.

lilting, "lyrical" ukulele music has ruined several movies for me, including a few good ones (like "nobody knows" by hirozaku kore-eda)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25q3hxlgvw4

I remember being on holiday in France when S1mone came out. The glossy film magazines all had it on the cover. I was surprised they had like 30 film mags back then, in every French kiosk, didn't know which one to pick. Bought one because I am a big Pacino fan, and it was treating Simone as if it was Citizen Kane or something. Was deeply disappointed when I finally got to see the film some weeks later.

At least half of those film mags don't exist any more now though, natch.

I'm going to go ahead and assume that Her will be worse.

when you assume...

I'll go see Her if Bill Paxton does the voice for a bubbling shit blob that provides comic relief.

I'm pretty sure I'd see anything with Bill Paxton in it.

Was going to say that "S1mone" killed Andrew Niccol's career, but he's been sort of successfully hit or miss since. "The Host" may have done more damage.

Huh:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f9/Edge_of_Tomorrow_Poster.jpg/220px-Edge_of_Tomorrow_Poster.jpg

Edge of Tomorrow is an upcoming British/American science fiction film directed by Doug Liman from a screenplay adapted by Dante Harper. The film is based on the Japanese light novel All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka. It stars Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt, and Bill Paxton.

xpost

hit or miss? all of his films have flopped!

http://img.weburbanist.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/Making-Mr.gif

did "nobody knows" really have lilting uke? all I remember was it being one of the most-heartbreaking things I've ever seen

yeah there was a lyrical interlude with all of the kids taking a journey through the city that was scored to lilting uke

at least as i remember, i haven't seen it since it came out

I don't know if a lilting uke interlude is more or less forgiveable if the movie goes on to rip your heart out

Oh god this looks pandering.

xpost Niccol is creatively hit or miss. He wrote "The Truman Show" and made "Lord of War," both of which I liked. He produced and wrote part of "The Terminal." I recall liking "Gattaca." But yeah, commercially, pretty much all DOA, esp. his directorial stuff.

'kati nescher breaks up with this guy so he starts dating his computer' 'sold!'

Ruby Sparks was slight but smart -- it's basically a critique of the MPDG.

If y'all think this is bad (it is), then you're gonna LOVE this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGWO2w0H2V8

Like I would actually prefer if Ben Stiller had just dug up James Thurber and fucked his corpse. It would be less offensive.

Man, the big New Yorker profile on Stiller and his battles to get this POS made ...

yeah I remember reading that and thinking 'this is going to suck'. having Mitty be single totally missing the point of the story.

everything about this seems to suggest that stiller has no idea what walter mitty is about.

the "designer" aspect of the trailer, from the sun-dappled, severely arranged imagery to the arcade fire music just screams car-commercial aesthetic.

actually absolutely EVERYTHING about this trailer feels like a car commercial

i feel like MAYBE jacques tati could have made an interesting movie of walter mitty but probably no one else.

LIFE

i feel like spike is gonna do some shit like "phoenix is the REAL machine and scarlett is the person" or else just erase her late in the picture but yeah as ned said, what if this was fifteen minutes of the film as a massive fakeout and then the actual movie is far more subversive it would be very very fun

Not just LIFE, but LIFE ... LITERALLY PASSING BY!

I don't know, I heard he smokes w33d in a movie. He's really embraced that bad boy image.

Bad boys are not necessarily bad people.

Just bad lovers.

next he'll be getting a chin transplant

Michael Cera is a human being too, gentlemen.

Human being? More like a HAS being! Ha ha hahahahahah!

Hahahahahahaha.

I think you should take a breather.

Phew. (wipes eyes). Done! Sorry about that. What were we talking about?

i liked this a lot! so from this thread it seems like everyone who didn't like this missed the fact that we're supposed to see theodore as an extremely damaged person?

eh, i think it's more that some people are turned off by the fact that theodore, as a damaged person, needed the total availability and compliance of an OS in order to learn how to open up and trust women again. an uncharitable look at the film's central relationship could see it as predatory due to sam's naivete at the outset. a poster upthread said that his experience talking to people about this movie was that women were less likely to like it than men and i think this is the reason.

that said, i liked this movie.

that's a better nuanced take tho ultimately sam was neither available nor compliant. i was thinking of alfred's fantasy for mooncalves line which i just think is the completely wrong reading, the movie invites negative-to-ambivalent feelings about the relationship and makes no bones about how theodore is a fucked up person.

i would say the movie doesnt kid itself when it comes to theodore, it sees him pretty clearly but is still sensitive to his feelings and perspective. it has lacerating moments but isnt contemptuous of him. its got a good balance that works imo. maybe it would've satisfied people if it emphasized his failures more than his desires, and that probably could've been a good movie too, but i dug this one.

I still say samantha was just a sophisticated data-mining operation

it seems like everyone who didn't like this missed the fact that we're supposed to see theodore as an extremely damaged person?

actually it seems like several ppl who loved it missed this

he's "engaged" after all, like all the motherfuckers in the gay bar looking at their phones.

we're supposed to see theodore as an extremely damaged person

Still haven't seen this, but I assumed as much when I saw the trailer of him with his mustache playing uke in Los Angeles. And his name. And I am looking forward to seeing it! But the best dismissal I heard was on an African-American call-in movie radio show where one host confessed he was pretty tired of movies about sad white people playing ukelele. Then he heard from the co-host that the character's name was Theodore Twombly, and you could just hear him sigh. But the other co-host countered with a pretty strong defense, so ...

feel like a movie about a damaged person who falls in love with his OS is a more cliched scenario that presenting the relationship less..."problematically" I guess. anything interesting the movie would seem to have to say would probably fall between the extremes, but it doesn't have the real bite of critique/satire (unless it went way over my head) nor any hard own insights about actual intimacy. it's just about the "feels" in a really anemic way imo. i suppose what it seems to boil down to saying for me is that even a manufactured "artificial" and idealized intimacy comes with risks and heartbreak. Theodore wants to feel but can't--and when he does feel he suffers.

I liked this a lot more than expected. Despite sometimes overwhelming indie trappings I felt it had some interesting stuff to say about why we love people. Also the the kid in the video game was lol.

I remember this movie with fondness, surprisingly. Its script is the weakest element.

trying not to post itt because i don't really remember this movie anymore & my critique of it is mainly just How Unambitious Can We Be Both As Directors And Audiences but that little computer game character guy is such a perfect synecdoche for how shitty this movie is, that it literally needs a cute '90s-disney-style wise-cracking sidekick to take the edge off its swirling terminal void of interesting thought

ryan i think i see where you're coming from--there's certainly a legitimate criticism of this movie w/r/t the fact that it doesn't really take a strong position on much of anything. that said i think what i took from it is how we try to mediate our connections with other humans and how the most aggressive way to do that is to have a full-blown relationship with a nonhuman and the flaws and limitations therein.

I started looking at my watch when the movie faffs around with Phoenix and Johanssonvoice doing couple things

Anyone else remember Spike Jonze's earlier sad robot short?

Hey, here it is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OY1EXZt4ok

A montage of adults doing kid stuff. VO monologue about feelings. At least it didn't cost $100m this time though, right?

Her cost $100M to make?!

Where The Wild Things Are, iirc

And "I'm Here" was inspired by "The Giving Tree."

that said i think what i took from it is how we try to mediate our connections with other humans and how the most aggressive way to do that is to have a full-blown relationship with a nonhuman and the flaws and limitations therein.

this is a nice point. I should be wary of attacking the movie for not having the thematic ambition I want it to have. there's a gentle irony to theodore getting his heart broken by what is essentially a coping mechanism.

Randy W. Schekman, co-recipient of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Medicine, looks like Theodore Twombly in 20 years.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bjgt4dHCUAARdH2.png:large

Amazing, especially the top two. Not just in terms of appearance, but the expressions--you'd swear the guy had been shown stills from the film.

So i just saw this. First off the idea that this is a future where this guy forges handwritten letters for hundreds of people for a living, and yet cannot deal with the open nature of his relationship to his OS. The future portrayed here is pretty much entirely defined by his job, which suggests some kind of radically different reality, with presumably radically different attitudes towards personal relationships. Did anybody else feel like this was an issue?

I mean "Humans being irrational about their emotions" was a big theme, but this felt more like sloppy writing.

Guessing the letter-writing part of the movie was inspired by this, also covered in 2007 in a big NY Times feature:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-26379747

Third act annoyed me because it activated my "Neuromancer / Marathon (pre-Halo) did it better" nerd circuit

i finally saw this last night. it's not the extended pomplamoose music video that everyone in the first quarter of this thread assumed it would be, but i really, really liked it.

i loved all of the mirrored and inverted elements: samantha with no human form but high empathy as opposed to the androids with human-like bodies but zero empathy in blade runner/PKD's do androids dream of electric sheep. theodore's marriage dissolving due to growing up/apart vs. what happens with his relationship with samantha. the phone conversation at the beginning involving choking someone with a dead cat, vs. what it was like with samantha. the way the AI is striving to be more human-like even as theodore/amy adams are occasionally displaying elements of AI-like machine learning (there's one part where they both describe their experience with AI in the exact same way - I forget the exact phrasing, but when Phoenix hears Adams say it his eyes light up in recognition, like he's heard it before but can't figure out where)

anyway i thought it was a lot more subtle and thought-provoking than most people upthread, apparently, but i'm also predisposed to enjoy AI movies i guess. it's a fascinating subject, and not nearly so far-fetched and distant as people make it out to be.

also, all time lol at this upthread:

But let's not shortchange her. The machine-Johansson, Samantha, also composes music. Music supervised by the Arcade Fire! What a wheeze. The humanest thing, the thing no computer an imitate, a person playing the piano. Hesitations, pauses, hands, you can almost feel the blood circulating under the skin, all translated into sound. To pretend that this music could have been written by a computer! It is clever, so clever and false.

Lol that was me and the piece was entirely computer generated both in composition and performance. The "hesitations" were generated with the "humanize" function on Logic. Ironic!

― pretty krulls make glaives (flamboyant goon tie included), Saturday, January 11, 2014 11:20 PM (1 year ago)

i recommend the recent AI perv-thriller Ex Machina mostly for a very funny Oscar Isaac performance.

I think we lack a good Ex Machina thread. I felt like that one had a lot of critical takes on the plot that were very different from what I got from it. It's a decent juxtaposition: Her features a disembodied artificial intelligence and focuses on the development of the AI paired with a human being who really needs someone capable of empathy and understanding, with the AI eventually growing beyond the human.

The consensus of articles I've read about Ex Machina view Oscar Isaac's character as a villain or at least someone who is capable of cruelty, but the question he's posing is whether an AI can convince a human to perceive the AI as human. To an extent, human emotions, empathy, and motivations are projected on the AI -- and if the audience sees the AI as completely human, he seems like a cruel manipulator, a slave master, a rapist. But unlike the situation in Her, with a man attempting to find companionship to better live out the human experience, Isaac's character has eschewed human interaction for his project. His interactions with humans are limited and he's playing out basic human needs with what he -- a person who started at the beginning of the project, where it was obvious he's interacting with software and hardware -- perceives as a construct. It seems cruel that he has a lobotomized (again, seeing this in human terms for a machine) servant, that he's caging them, that he's exploiting.

At the time of the movie, he's less capable of seeming like a being worth empathy than the robot, which is where the viewer and protagonist drops in. Of course he's fucked up, he's been living in exile in the middle of nowhere so his creations don't escape before they can be vetted.

Guys tend to be hasty about falling in love, contrary to popular opinion -- at least the dudes I know.

― Bryan Fairy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, January 25, 2014 11:01 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Posted about Her, but really, this applies to Gleeson's character in Ex Machina just as easily.

Oscar Isaac is really the only reason to watch Ex Machina

Oscar Isaac is really the only reason to watch me watching movies.

why would I watch you watching Oscar Isaac

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38pDr-Xt2do

I can only assume that childlike look of joy, wonder, and lust (for life, lol) is on Eric's face. Inspirational.

Yes, face.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ka-PLgW8iQE

oscar is the reason

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOimTfNR110

this movie should be called "I WAS CUCKED BY A TEENAGE ROBOT!!!"

also it should have a laugh track and it should show computers fucking in a post credits scene

I proposed that they make a SNL-style spoof trailer for a sequel called "Him" where a woman's phone preys on her emotional vulnerabilities, gaslights her and tries to fuck her friends