'Safe'
A place to talk about movies--old and new, good and bad, high art and high cheese. It's the place to place your kittens on the award winners, gossip about upcoming fims and discuss DVD releases and extras. Spoiler policy: White font all plot-related discussion until a movie's been in wide release two weeks, and keep the major HSQ in white font until two weeks after the video/DVD release.
I liked some of the ideas and I did watch the commentary to get the authorial intent, I just didn't realize it would be so ... annoying.
I do think some of the stuff he pointed out was really obscure and he was probably trying to do too much. Although I did like the story about getting the rights to use the Smurfs.
11/11/05
Oooh!
I'm still downloading the trailer -- I've got about 15 seconds of it so far. It looks a lot less -- something (bright? peppy?) -- than I'd feared.
The director's interpretation is craxy. Don't fret about it.
Unfortunately, I read the film almost exactly as the director intended me to (without having read any interviews/commentary in advance), and it was a giant steaming pile of pretentious crap. So I think it's less that it's craxy and more that it sucks.
(Of course, I also hate Rent, so my opinions may be cheerfully disregarded as those of a crazy person. I am dreading the day when that trailer hits theatres, because I know I won't be able to get that goddamn song out of my head.)
I'm of mixed feeling regarding Rent. There are parts of the music I love. There are parts of the show I love. There are other parts that I really really don't like, and it totally depends on my mood any particular day whether the good outweighs the bad or not.
There are parts of the music I love. There are parts of the show I love. There are other parts that I really really don't like,
Yeah, I agree with you on this, and the combination of the actors being mostly 10 years too old and what I expect from Chris Columbus is what makes me reluctant to recommend the movie to someone who wasn't already conditioned to love it.
Loved Donnie Darko. Made no diff that I wasn't quite sure what I was watching initially. Still loved it.
and the combination of the actors being mostly 10 years too old and what I expect from Chris Columbus
Yeah, these were both worrying me. From the trailer, the actors don't look quite as old as I was expecting, and I'd say the lower end of the age range most of them look overlaps a bit with the upper end of the reasonable character ages, if just barely. A few interviews I've read with Columbus still have me a bit wary of the second point, though.
I love Donnie Darko too. But it definitely makes no sense.
If I'm in a better mood tonight, I'll give it a shot.
ION, thanks to participating in a focus group, I just got three free months of Netflix. Whee!
Can I ask what's probably a stupid question?
Why do we hate Chris Columbus? Because when I saw his name, I had a vague sense of dread based on half-remembered comments I've heard about him, but then I looked at his iMDb listing and realized that, while he's never made a movie I loved to itty-bitty pieces, most of the films I've seen by him have been competent in a commercial family-oriented way. (I hate the Home Alone films, but I don't think they would have been any good under any director.) I'm not sure how that sensibility will work for Rent, but I don't know enough about directors to know for sure who would have been a better choice.
Apologies for the stoopid.