I looooooved this. Now I want Jennifer Lawrence to win the Oscar?And Bradley Cooper too!!
I looooooved this. Now I want Jennifer Lawrence to win the Oscar?
Jali Awards Best Actress 1920-1925
1920 Tora Teje, Erotikon // 1921 Pola Negri, The wildcat
1922 Anna May Wong, The toll of the sea // 1923 Marion Davies, Little old New York
1924 Marie Prevost, The marriage circle // 1925 Gloria Swanson, Stage struck
Yea it's a really great performance despite not being given a ton, IMO.Originally Posted by veritas
Yes. Although I would rank Riva and Her Realness™ above JLaw, she's a very deserving winner as wellI looooooved this. Now I want Jennifer Lawrence to win the Oscar?
Cate Blanchett
The Beautiful and Talented Godgend Señor El Diablo Blanchitto
Returning to Hollywood with a Vengeance in 2013
And Jacki Weaver too?I looooooved this. Now I want Jennifer Lawrence to win the Oscar?
Anyone is a better option than Hathaway...And Jacki Weaver too?
Jali Awards Best Actress 1920-1925
1920 Tora Teje, Erotikon // 1921 Pola Negri, The wildcat
1922 Anna May Wong, The toll of the sea // 1923 Marion Davies, Little old New York
1924 Marie Prevost, The marriage circle // 1925 Gloria Swanson, Stage struck
Saw this last night, and was more than pleasantly surprised by it!
Silver Linings Playbook (Russell, 2012)
To say that Silver Linings Playbook shouldn't work as a film is a wild understatement. It should collapse completely, weighted down by the wildly shifting tones, the continual melange of weirdly bitter comedy and repetitive conflict. The script seems like it's trying to be Little Miss Sunshine and The Tuskeegee Experiment at the same time, which is probably one of the worst ideas ever. Jennifer Lawrence is about ten years too young to be playing her role of a world-weary, mentally shattered widow; characters randomly flit in and out of the film without any real rhyme or reason, except to prop up Pat/give Pat things to react to.
...that being said, I enjoyed Silver Linings Playbook a lot, despite all of its logical problems. This film is the exact opposite of your Les Miserables - it is extremely well-constructed, filmed beautifully, and acted to precision. It's the plot and characterization, or the gaping holes in both, that are the real problems here. While watching the film, everything is conducted with such specificity that the film seems tight as can be. A big aid to that is the two leads, Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence, who turn in potentially career-defining performances. Cooper, who introduced himself to the world as "Asshole Boyfriend in Wedding Crashers", is like a completely different person here, someone who embodies all of the paradoxical elements of Pat, someone who professes to be living life to its most positive while often being crushed and quelled by small quirks of reality. His portrayal of a bipolar man is not showy, doesn't rely on plate-smashing, and, because it doesn't fall to cliche, is painfully real and relatable. I particularly liked that Cooper punctuated a lot of the more intense scenes in the film with unbridled sobs, something that, to me, made him even more realistically human and broken. And enough cannot be said about how Lawrence takes Tiffany and makes her somehow toxic and winning at the same time. In the hands of a lesser actress, Tiffany would've seemed as flat, transparent, and abusive as any number of Japanese harem series "female protagonists" (the worst of which being Suzumiya Haruhi from the series of the same name) who do little to deserve their lovers' adulation and leave their respective partners coming off as complete masochists. But Lawrence is able to take scenes like Tiffany's diner breakdown and paint them truthfully - this woman is broken beyond belief, and it is not the obvious displays of violence and selfishness that attract Pat to her. It's the quieter moments she has, her willingness to take back her wild actions and defend Pat after accusing him of harassing her needlessly.
That being said, there's a lot going on in the script that makes little sense. Every time Pat gets in trouble, it seems like the same scene is being repeated ad nauseam, with no bearing on the story and no propelling the narrative. (The big climax at the dance is set up after the last of these "Pat in trouble" sequences in a gigantic dump of exposition, instead of being naturally threaded through the movie proper.) Similarly, with Tiffany, . There's an interesting idea presented midway through the film - - that is never elaborated on further or even mentioned. That last one is a personal pet peeve of mine in romantic films in general - the need for this is one of those films where it would've been to the script's advantage to leave things ambiguous.
The whole movie's tone, additionally, is incredibly ambiguous, in a somewhat bizarre way. The two leads suffer from various mental disorders, and those are portrayed rather realistically and with dramatic weight. Ditto to Robert DeNiro's gambling addictios, which is treated with serious, life-changing weight. But the potential mental problems of Pat's friend Danny, and his constant arrests, are played for laughs, as are DeNiro's superstitions, that whole bit with Pat knocking over the magazine rack, and pieces of Tiffany's diner scene. The film can't decide whether it wants us to sympathize with its characters, or if their actions are so ridiculous that they need to be laughed at. The constant flux between humor and drama isn't handled exceptionally well. Neither is anything requiring exposition - The dialogue itself is very realistic, and the actors handle it well, but the script's structure is all over the place.
Weirdly, I wasn't bothered by these things when I was watching the movie. Like I said, the movie has a lot of things going for it, things that make it easy to overlook how fucking weird the entire setup is. The usage of various different methods of telling the story - steadicam, hand-held, super close-ups in dialogue, Glee spinning camera moves - give the proceedings appropriate gravity, especially during the dance rehearsal sequences, filled with joie de vivre, and during Pat's futile search for his wedding video, which utilizes the claustrophobia and franticness of the handheld camera shots well. The acting is uniformly well done, as stated earlier (and on the big Jacki Weaver debate, I thought, though she didn't do much, she gave a nice sense of understated grace to her performance as the one person in the neighborhood with her shit together); there is no fault to be found in the technical details, especially the editing and cinematography, which are varied and rich. But after reflecting on the film, the illusion of greatness really fell apart in my head. It truly is held together by the strength of Cooper and Lawrence.
***/*****
i liked this a lot and it's almost only because of jennifer lawrence who might not have transformed for the role but she is blazing onscreen like a genuine star.
“Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing.”
I finally watched this last after having read the book a while ago. Angelina was supposed to play Tiffany first, wasn't she? Well, even as a non-Jolie fan I have to say that bookTiffany would have been a good (if small) role for her. MovieTiffany though was perfect for Lawrence and the chemistry between her and Cooper was amazing. Yes, the age thing sucks (Tiff is in her late 30s in the book) but Lawrence has an ageless quality about her on screen IMHO.
I was a bit baffled about the complete reversal on Pat Sr.'s character. In the book he doesn't talk to his son for weeks after he returns from a FOUR YEAR stint in a mental institution. It's clear that the role was changed into something entirely different to give an awesome actor something which again, was fine.
The change I didn't like was Chris Tucker's character. Not that it was so much better in the book where he was constantly refered to as "my black friend Danny" but his appearances here were just bizarre and didn't go anywhere. The new characters of the boy asking for an interview and the policement could have been easily skipped but the script called for quirky characters popping up randomly so they apparently needed three of that.
I agree with Largo though, for all its flaws it's still an enjoyable movie and the problems it has didn't bother me while watching. I still would have liked to see them dance all seriously to "Total eclipse of the heart" with Bradley Cooper sporting yellow tights
ETA for LeonardShelby: This was not a case of all black people look the same, but a genuine mix up of two names, not actors :-(
Last edited by solly79; 01-20-2013 at 02:54 PM.
Life's too short not to
Chris Tucker. Get the freaking name right.I finally watched this last after having read the book a while ago. Angelina was supposed to play Tiffany first, wasn't she? Well, even as a non-Jolie fan I have to say that bookTiffany would have been a good (if small) role for her. MovieTiffany though was perfect for Lawrence and the chemistry between her and Cooper was amazing. Yes, the age thing sucks (Tiff is in her late 30s in the book) but Lawrence has an ageless quality about her on screen IMHO.
I was a bit baffled about the complete reversal on Pat Sr.'s character. In the book he doesn't talk to his son for weeks after he returns from a FOUR YEAR stint in a mental institution. It's clear that the role was changed into something entirely different to give an awesome actor something which again, was fine.
The change I didn't like was Chris Rock's character. Not that it was so much better in the book where he was constantly refered to as "my black friend Danny" but his appearances here were just bizarre and didn't go anywhere. The new characters of the boy asking for an interview and the policement could have been easily skipped but the script called for quirky characters popping up randomly so they apparently needed three of that.
I agree with Largo though, for all its flaws it's still an enjoyable movie and the problems it has didn't bother me while watching. I still would have liked to see them dance all seriously to "Total eclipse of the heart" with Bradley Cooper sporting yellow tights
Did she tell Naomi to stfu?
This was cute. Cooper and Lawrence were excellent.
That is all.
FYC Oscar consideration, Miss Sally Field, as Mary Todd Lincoln
Yeah. This.
I never get why a movie like this lands a ton of Oscar nods, though. But whatever. Lawrence is winning.
To clarify, she tells Dustin Hoffman to "shut the fuck up" and says "fuck you" to Naomi Watts.
LOL I just love La Huppert there. So cool and calm. She's more concerned about her hair and lipstick!
She is amazingly cool in that video!LOL I just love La Huppert there. So cool and calm. She's more concerned about her hair and lipstick!
This was so average except in the acting department. And I thought Cooper was MUCH better than Lawrence. Actually I don't see anything remarkable in her performance.
Aww, this is really sweet. It's been two months since I saw this film, and yeah, the mental illness part is probably the part that resonates the most - the toll it takes on the family, the shame of it all, etc. Not surprised O'Russell took a lot of inspiration from his own life.
SourceIn a telephone interview last weekend, the director’s voice shook with emotion at times as he described how he was inspired to make the film to honor his 18-year-old son, Matthew, who suffers from bipolar disorder as well as obsessive-compulsive disorder.
“It’s by far the hardest thing I’ve ever had to deal with in my life,” Russell said.
Matthew first exhibited emotional disturbances as a small child, as Russell was directing his 1999 war drama, “Three Kings.” The boy later attended Kenter Canyon Elementary School in Brentwood for a time, but by the time he was 12, his symptoms had shifted, and Russell and his then-wife, Janet Grillo, had to make the heart-wrenching decision to send Matthew to a boarding school in Connecticut that could better help him cope. “It was devastating to me when he went away, but it was probably the best thing we did for him, because it put such a specific order in his life,” Russell said.
“It’s almost making me cry right now, because the shame would almost be crushing for [him] if the illness wasn’t,” said Russell, who is Russian-Jewish on his father’s side of the family and Italian-Catholic on his mother’s. “It’s the shame of, ‘Look at me, I just keep wrecking things.’
“But my son also taught me the value of finding the silver lining in any situation, that you shouldn’t go down any dark path too long — and the gratitude you have for everyone around you, because it takes everyone, the entire family, to deal with this kind of challenge, and that’s what the film is about.”
De Niro...crying?!
http://video.katiecouric.com/service...=2142527286001
That's a nice interview.
I've seen this movie three times now, and while I was kind of lukewarm on it the first go around, it's really grown on me with every rewatch. I'd much rather this win than Argo, lol.
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