Elephant-Gus Van Sant
Elephant-The Website
Has anyone else gotten to see this movie? I drove about 75 miles yesterday to take it in at the only theater I could find showing it. It is a fantastic movie. The decisions made regarding the film were very challenging to carry out in my opinion and I felt that they were done almost perfectly. I'd be really interested to hear from anyone else who has gotten to see it or is at least interested in it.
Nick
Has anyone else gotten to see this movie? I drove about 75 miles yesterday to take it in at the only theater I could find showing it. It is a fantastic movie. The decisions made regarding the film were very challenging to carry out in my opinion and I felt that they were done almost perfectly. I'd be really interested to hear from anyone else who has gotten to see it or is at least interested in it.
Nick
Comments
when were the men repressed by women?
Originally posted by trumptman
Elephant-The Website
Has anyone else gotten to see this movie? I drove about 75 miles yesterday to take it in at the only theater I could find showing it. It is a fantastic movie. The decisions made regarding the film were very challenging to carry out in my opinion and I felt that they were done almost perfectly. I'd be really interested to hear from anyone else who has gotten to see it or is at least interested in it.
Nick
I would agree that it is a great movie, but I felt in some cases it was style/form over content. In other words, I felt like he wanted to make a movie in that style (long shots, documentary style, minimal sound design) rather than about the subject.
I felt the film was very engrossing up until a point. A very specific point - when the girls go in to the bathroom to all throw up together. It felt extraneous and caused me to completely loose indentity with the characters. It actually made be laugh because it was so incredibly cliche, something the rest of the film is not.
my 2 cents.
Originally posted by buckeye
I would agree that it is a great movie, but I felt in some cases it was style/form over content. In other words, I felt like he wanted to make a movie in that style (long shots, documentary style, minimal sound design) rather than about the subject.
I felt the film was very engrossing up until a point. A very specific point - when the girls go in to the bathroom to all throw up together. It felt extraneous and caused me to completely loose indentity with the characters. It actually made be laugh because it was so incredibly cliche, something the rest of the film is not.
my 2 cents.
I agree that I couldn't identify with the girls in the bathroom and that it was cliche. However I missed a bit about the long shots. I felt they were used to stop any sense of rising action/building energy and in that regard they were quite effective.
Nick
Originally posted by alcimedes
so wait.
when were the men repressed by women?
Your time will come house slave...
Nick
ELEPHANT / ****
...
Let me tell you a story. The day after Columbine, I was interviewed for the Tom Brokaw news program. The reporter had been assigned a theory and was seeking sound bites to support it. "Wouldn't you say," she asked, "that killings like this are influenced by violent movies?" No, I said, I wouldn't say that. "But what about 'Basketball Diaries'?" she asked. "Doesn't that have a scene of a boy walking into a school with a machine gun?" The obscure 1995 Leonardo Di Caprio movie did indeed have a brief fantasy scene of that nature, I said, but the movie failed at the box office (it grossed only $2.5 million), and it's unlikely the Columbine killers saw it.
The reporter looked disappointed, so I offered her my theory. "Events like this," I said, "if they are influenced by anything, are influenced by news programs like your own. When an unbalanced kid walks into a school and starts shooting, it becomes a major media event. Cable news drops ordinary programming and goes around the clock with it. The story is assigned a logo and a theme song; these two kids were packaged as the Trench Coat Mafia. The message is clear to other disturbed kids around the country: If I shoot up my school, I can be famous. The TV will talk about nothing else but me. Experts will try to figure out what I was thinking. The kids and teachers at school will see they shouldn't have messed with me. I'll go out in a blaze of glory."
In short, I said, events like Columbine are influenced far less by violent movies than by CNN, the NBC Nightly News and all the other news media, who glorify the killers in the guise of "explaining" them. I commended the policy at the Sun-Times, where our editor said the paper would no longer feature school killings on Page 1. The reporter thanked me and turned off the camera. Of course the interview was never used. They found plenty of talking heads to condemn violent movies, and everybody was happy.
...
Originally posted by Scott
Looks like I'll have to wait for this one of DVD. It's nowhere near ann arbor and by the time I get back to Chicago it looks like it will be out of the theaters.
Want me to bring my camcorder to the theater and record it for you?
Just kidding folks.
Originally posted by bunge
Want me to bring my camcorder to the theater and record it for you?
Just kidding folks.
Does that mean you are going to go see it or already have?
Nick
Originally posted by alcimedes
so wait.
when were the men repressed by women?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!
Originally posted by Scott
So I went to check out the Ebert review, 4 stars, and found this paragraph. I love this guy.
ELEPHANT / ****
good paragraphs
Originally posted by Scott
You know I checked again and it's not showing movie listings for next weekend yet. So maybe it will be there on Saturday?
i think it's only showing in NY and LA right now isn't? i think i read that