Buffista Movies Across the 8th Dimension!
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 don't have that as a favorite movie, so it doesn't effect me as much. Somehow, because he was a theatre actor, I "knew". Already It is a really small world. Especially if it was "known" by me in Rochester years ago. Henry and June was the movie I liked Kevin Spacey in.
My guilt issue is with Weinstein/Miramax. I mean, I really love Enchanted April. But a whole bunch of movies are Miramix associated [link]
Sophia, ugh. So many. I don't think I had fully processed just how many.
I'm usually pretty good at separating the artist from the art, but films are so much the work of so many people, and the actors are so much the embodiment of everything that's valuable and enduring about them, that I'm finding this sort of fractally difficult. He and Weinstein committed deeply personal, violating crimes against specific individuals, which is incredibly awful, but they also involved themselves in public works and tainted the work of hundreds if not thousands of other, better people. The personal crimes are more than monstrous enough, but it feels almost personally shameful for me that I can't separate it all out enough to still honor the art of their collaborators. But I can't.
For me at least part of it is that they are still alive, they were terrible, and people still defend them. And it is so new. Also, that they used their art to find and in some cases groom their victims. So I am wondering, each time I watch, if something happened that we don't know about, so it takes me out of the film.
For me at least part of it is that they are still alive, they were terrible, and people still defend them. And it is so new. Also, that they used their art to find and in some cases groom their victims. So I am wondering, each time I watch, if something happened that we don't know about, so it takes me out of the film.
Yes, and that the victims are still alive, and (possibly/probably) still in pain.
It's not quite the same, but it's similar to the JK Rowling transphobe thing. On one hand, my enjoyment of and participation in that fandom is mine, and she can't take it away from me. On the other hand, I don't want it to seem like I support her and her transphobia.
I guess I should be thankful my distaste for Dennis Leary kept me from ever watching the movie, so it's one thing Spacey can't ruin for me. Well, and given his characters in The Usual Suspects and Se7en, I guess I could watch those again without him bothering me.
I'm meh on Leary in general, but the screenwriter for
The Ref
(Richard LaGravenese, who also wrote
The Fisher King, Bridges of Madison County
and
A Little Princess,
all of which I fucking love), knew his strengths and wrote to them beautifully. The whole production is just a goldmine of sharp writing and great character acting, and it used to be one of my great pleasures to show it to people who'd never even heard of it and watch them discovering it. And Spacey has (for me, anyway) drained all the joy out of all their work on it.
The Harry Potter movies are a little easier, just because Rowling created the source material but played no active role once the cameras started rolling; each one is very clearly the work of its individual director, building these worlds within worlds along with the actors and set and props and light and sound and costume people and absolutely everyone else. The books themselves make me uncomfortable now, and I'm not sure when/if I'll reread them or how it will feel when I do, but the films are just enough removed from
her
that it's not visceral or tainting in the same way.
God, I love The Ref. I haven't seen it in years, though. I'm not sure how I'd feel about it now.
I agree about Se7en and The Usual Suspects, though. I actually just watched the latter last week.
I can't wait to see Little Women. I just want it to be ... everything I want it to be. There's no perfect version for me yet -- I'm strangely partial to the 1950s one, although June Allyson as Jo is just weird. I really did NOT like the recent PBS one, but I know I have incredibly intense feelings about the story, so.
I can't wait to see Little Women. I just want it to be ... everything I want it to be.
I've read reviews that say the movie actually makes Amy an awesome character instead of a simpering whiner, which makes me so happy. (I don't understand the hate for Amy -- her growth and character arc are fantastic.)
I can't wait to see Little Women. I think Laurie and Amy are perfect for one another and he gets to be part of the family. I am still waiting for the adaptations of The Old Fashioned Girl and Eight Cousins/Rose in Bloom!