Sunday!
Here’s the thing: I’ve been waiting on pins and needles to see Star Wars: Rogue One for about a year now.
To me, the trailer looked to be what I have always thought any new Star Wars movie should attempt to be: a story that took place in the Star Wars universe, but told a different (and different kind of) story than what has become the multi-generational famous family arc-of-history it’s been since the prequels came down. Better still, from the looks of the original trailer it seemed like it was attempting to cross breed two of my most guilty cinematic pleasures: the sci-fi action adventure movie, and the caper movie. (It may or may not be, for all I know at this point.) I think I’ve been more excited about Rogue One than I was The Force Awakens, and as the release date approached I even considered buying tickets in advance and braving the miserably long lines to get a seat so I could see it opening weekend.
And I tell you all of this so you’ll understand how odd it was when I finally had the opportunity to get to the multiplex last weekend, and decided that what I really wanted to see wasn’t Star Wars: Rogue One. What I did want to see was a film I hadn’t even heard of even just a few days prior: La La Land.
It might be the best call I’ve ever made when faced with a “what-do-I-see” multiplex dilemma in my entire life.
I’ll avoid too many specifics, as I don’t really want to ROT-15 my Sunday! post as I inadequately step in to fill Jaybird’s shoes for a day. But I decided that there were a few things that I could tell you that will not spoil the movie at all — or at least any more than its own trailer might.
La La Land is, in a twisted kind of way, the movie that L.A. Stories could only dream about being. It’s a film that revels in bleached, realism-soaked shots that lovingly show Los Angeles and its denizens in the fashion that so many indie flicks do. And yet it’s also a film that, at times, transports us to those same sets and surroundings that live in the ridiculously magical universe where golden-era Gene Kelly vehicles like Singing In the Rain and An American In Paris dwell. Amazingly, La La Land shifts between these two worlds constantly and effortlessly, to the point where you’re not always entirely sure where one world begins and the other ends.
I’m tempted to tell you that it’s a love story, because it very much is. It’s just that it isn’t the kind of love story you think of when you hear the phrase “love story.”
Each of the two protagonists, played by Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling, spend the movie trying to pursue art through their own particular mediums in their own particular idiosyncratic fashions. So great is the chemistry between Stone and Gosling, however, that it is forgivable to forget the art, and make the incorrect assumption that the movie is primarily a love story about the romantic love between the two of them. It isn’t until the final five or ten minutes of the movie — perhaps the most perfect final five or ten minutes of any movie I have ever seen — that you are reminded that the movie is, and always was, a love story about the love of art.
La La Land is simultaneously exactly like hundreds of movies I have enjoyed over the years and entirely unlike I have ever seen before, ever.
Even if you have refused to see La La Land up to this point on the basis of it being a “chick flick,” I encourage you to reconsider. It’s bloody fabulous.
So, what are you watching/reading?
I saw La La Land on the recommendation of my son. Let me state going in that I absolutely hate movie musicals and musical theater, so this was a big step for me, and I was pleasantly surprised. The opening scene had me braced for the worst, and I was getting ready to take a nap, but by the end, and I’ll agree with you, Tod, the ending was one of the best I’ve ever seen. I think what got me hooked was the production numbers kind of died off after the first half hour, allowing the story to be told by the characters instead of the songs.Report
La La Land looks interesting, and like Slade above, for the most part I loath musicals. But, and it is kind of a big but, I so rarely go to the movies anymore. Maybe a nice chance to take the wife out.
Watched Specter on Netflicks last night, and boy is that a confusing hodgepodge of a movie. Even for James Bond it is ludicrous. Reading Gene Wolfs Free live Free.Report
I’m pretty sure I could never rope my husband into seeing LaLa Land despite his love of sunshine and palm trees, but I think I’ll try to persuade a few girlfriends. I’m not usually a huge lover of musicals, but this one seems enticing.Report
I have read things and watched things and listened to things like whoa this week, because home alone with no Jay and no work. But what I really want to tell y’all about are a few new podcasts I started listening to that seem like they’d be up some of y’all’s alleys. Some of them are political (gasp!) but I shall not wax political about them (and if other commenters could please refrain from doing the same, we shall stay in-bounds :D). And I realize some of them will be old news to everyone but me, too…
1) Dead Authors Podcast – this came to a deliberate close in 2015 but the archives are all still online and there’s a jillion of them. Paul F. Tompkins pretending to be H.G. Wells interviewing people pretending to be dead authors. Frigging hilarious (and they do make an effort to get through some actual info about the people although mostly they run off script and improvise on other topics in character). What I wish those guys pretending to be historical characters at local venues did.
2) BackStory with the American History Guys – take a current thing and talk about the history/context of that thing. Or interview the writer of a book about the thing – but still mostly about history and context. @richard-herschberger this made me think of you.
3) Longform – an hour of talking to a longform writer (books or long articles) about writing mostly but not only writing. Even if you don’t have a thing for reading about writing like I do, they get into some pretty interesting stuff.
4) Axe Files – Who knew David Axelrod had a voice made for radio? Not I. I’ve been enjoying his appearances on talk shows lately because he has big brain and smart words. Mostly one-on-one interviews / conversations.
5) Politico’s Off Message – the entire purpose of this podcast is to sit down with one journalist or politician (from either side of the aisle) for an entire hour and see if the host can get them to drop the mask (or at least the most outward mask) and just talk from the heart. So good. Inspired by WTF with Marc Maron if that gives you an idea. But more incisive, less funny :D.
6) Our National Conversation About Conversations About Race (shortened) to About Race) – 4 very smart people of different races, talking about their experiences and ideas and etc around race, Baratunde Thurston is on it which is why I was interested. Definitely has a political slant but you’d be surprised (or at least I was) at how comfortable / civil the folks on there are about bringing up stuff that challenges their assumptions and has made them think in ways that don’t fit their normal political beliefs.
I don’t make a whole lot of time for listening to podcasts even though I really love listening, but those 6 were so shiny I’ll be finding more time just for them.Report
Paul F. Tompkins pretending to be H.G. Wells
If Wells were a golden retriever.Report
One of the theater chains has something with Turner Classic Movies where they show a different classic movie on the big screen for one day each month. This month’s was Singing in the Rain (it’s a coincidence that Reynolds just passed away, but it was acknowledged in a title card right after the TCM host did his spiel)
I hadn’t seen the movie in years (maybe since I was a teenager), so I didn’t remember most of the set pieces. Nor did I realize until this viewing how meta the whole movie was, which makes it seem quite modern, even at 65 years old.
My main complaint is that nobody at TCM or the theater chain remixed the sound, so it was all coming out of the front center speaker of the theater. The movie sound was less ‘surround’ than the TCM dude introduction and finale. It annoyed me that we were paying full movie ticket prices, and I’m getting less sound quality than I get from a cellphone playing a movie over its built in speakers. (Though, this makes the entire experience even more meta)
(And definitely, you could see Princess Leia show up a bit in a few scenes)Report
Another thing that prevents the film from seeming dated is, paradoxically, that it was retro to begin with Almost all of its songs were old ones that MGM already has the rights to, and thus didn’t have to pay to use. One of the reasons for setting it back in the late 20s was to explain why the songs sounded so old-fashioned for 1952; if they seem old-fashioned today, well, nothing’s changed.
The specific jokes about how awkward shooting talkies was and how no one involved really knew what they were doing are very reminiscent of the Kaufman and Hart play Once in a Lifetime, which debuted in 1930, when the subject was brand-new.Report
The criticism I’ve heard of La-La Land is that it seems less like a movie musical and more like a “movie-musical-style movie”. As in, “this is the kind of movie musical that you would expect from someone who’d never seen a movie musical the whole way through but had read a listicle about The Twelve Songs From Movie Musicals You Need To See Right Now”.
Haven’t seen it, so I don’t know, but it’s out there.Report