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Post by RhodoraO on Dec 13, 2018 2:22:08 GMT
The text:
James L. Brooks on Adam McKay’s “Vice”
You’re well familiar with poetic justice. How about hilarious justice?
Remember the end of “The French Connection” where the villain just completely got away with it? Well, there was Dick Cheney slipping out the door of history with all those high and low crimes in his wake, when suddenly, there’s Adam McKay’s really cool hand on his shoulder. The jig is finally up for Dick.
Because, as the film’s opening crawl states with perfect comedy timing:
“The following is a true story. Or as true as it can be given that Dick Cheney is known as one of the most secretive leaders in recent history. But we did our fucking best.”
You can take that mission statement to the bank, because once again McKay has accomplished an impossible task of truth-telling, by making lunch out of the fourth wall and blowing up the roof. Nobody ever dug out the truth of an American Horror Story and rendered it with more dedication and skill.
Seeing it is a full-out emotional experience. You can be excused your tears as you take in the enormity of the evil. You will marvel that this is a comedy from the very beginning to its several ends.
And I think because of this film, because of the bewildering times we live in, and because of the outrage each engenders, you will finally experience a pounding love of country.
James L. Brooks won the Academy Award for directing “Terms of Endearment,” and was nominated for directing “Broadcast News.” He also created the TV series “Taxi” and “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.”
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Post by RhodoraO on Dec 13, 2018 23:44:33 GMT
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Post by ripley on Dec 17, 2018 17:51:04 GMT
The embargo is over.The critics are so divisive .
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Post by nathanmorgandrake on Dec 17, 2018 18:08:50 GMT
Was just looking at rotten tomatoes and it’s not a good sign for Bale or Adams to win a Oscar. Oh well..
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Post by fernanda on Dec 17, 2018 18:12:24 GMT
63 no MC with 16 reviews.
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Post by RhodoraO on Dec 18, 2018 0:02:22 GMT
I totally agree with Tuulia on all these points. In fact it's success so far is surprisingly refreshing given it's nature. It has two things to be divisive enough for any with conventional thinking: Controversial look on a controversial subject matter. And trend busting stylistic choices. The movie's chances were always going to be whether Bale gets in and is a threat to win. Amy Adam would likely get in. Any further nominations will show it really hit it with the academy with a possible surprise bonus win for editing. That's it.
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Post by Admin on Dec 19, 2018 15:23:27 GMT
Please DO NOT post Twitter reactions and Industry reactions here (unless they talk at length about movie or one of its aspects such as Directors on Directors segments). [Instead, post Twitter reactions and Mentions in the Release Reception ... Thread]
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Post by RhodoraO on Dec 19, 2018 23:11:24 GMT
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Post by RhodoraO on Dec 22, 2018 20:30:34 GMT
The first 10 minutes are a very cool review-discussion of the movie.
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Post by RhodoraO on Dec 24, 2018 18:36:49 GMT
A beautiful analysis of Bale's perf from a Top 5 performance list linked below: collider.com/best-christian-bale-performaIt’s a testament to Bale’s talent that when he was first announced as the lead in writer/director Adam McKay’s satire about former Vice President Dick Cheney, initial reactions weren’t of shock but instead excitement. Of course Bale is capable of transforming into a man he looks absolutely nothing like, and not only does Bale physically look the part in Vice, but he captures the essence of Dick Cheney in tremendous detail. Or at least the essence of Cheney through McKay’s eyes, as Viceadmittedly takes a very subjective view of its subject. But Bale shines throughout, and when he delivers Cheney’s final jaw-dropping monologue directly into the camera, the actor’s boundless talent is abundantly clear.
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Post by RhodoraO on Dec 26, 2018 13:13:30 GMT
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Post by RhodoraO on Dec 26, 2018 21:56:53 GMT
A rare director recommendation for a review. I'll post key text from it when I start posting reviews from real, probably after the awards season is over.
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Post by RhodoraO on Dec 27, 2018 21:46:12 GMT
Text:
Review: There are lessons in Dick Cheney biopic ‘Vice,’ for those who choose to heed them
Brainy, audacious, opinionated and fun, “Vice” is a tonic for troubled times. As smart as it is partisan, and it is plenty partisan, this savage satire is scared of only one thing, and that is being dull.
Written and directed by Adam McKay, who won a screenwriting Oscar for the dazzling “The Big Short,” “Vice” tackles a subject as unlikely to result in gleeful cinema as the 2008 financial meltdown.
That would be a deep dive into the life and times of uncompromisingly uncharismatic former Vice President Dick Cheney, played by Christian Bale.
But, as McKay well knows, the word “vice” is not only a governmental title, it’s the opposite of virtue, and his film doesn’t hesitate to depict the two-time veep as a conniving eminence grise whose eight years in office resulted in some of the most troubling aspects of American political life.
Political scientists can argue about the truth of that. The fun of watching “Vice” is not in having your preconceptions appealed to or assaulted, but in enjoying the rousingly cinematic way the story has been told.
Unusual for a writer-director whose language possesses such snap and pizazz, McKay delights in throwing anything and everything up on screen, including type, unexpected news photos (Nancy Reagan sitting on Mr. T’s lap) and stock footage like a clip featuring Marvel’s Galactus, “Devourer of Worlds.”
More than that, in “Vice” McKay is keenly intent on playing games with structure. He drops a Shakespearean soliloquy into the dialogue, has Alfred Molina playing a waiter offering Cheney and company a variety of torture options as plats du jour, even makes believe he’s ending his film in the middle, complete with a fake credits roll.
Making it all work as well as it does is committed acting from stars Bale and Amy Adams, as Dick’s spouse Lynne Cheney, as well as an expert supporting cast of some 150 speaking roles highlighted by Steve Carell as Donald Rumsfeld, Sam Rockwell as President George W. Bush and a surprising Tyler Perry as Colin Powell.
Bale, first among equals, is known for his ferocious commitment to the roles he takes on, and “Vice” pushes that determination one step beyond.
As Cheney, the actor gained 45 pounds and worked especially hard on strengthening his neck because, he told the Hollywood Reporter, “when you get that no-neck, you feel like nobody can change your mind.”
Bale managed to endure almost five hours of daily makeup sessions by Oscar winner Greg Cannom as well as create a believably human true believer inside that shell, someone who unblinkingly says, “I will not apologize for doing what needed to be done.”
Adams, who played opposite Bale in both “The Fighter” and “American Hustle,” is clearly energized by his presence and rarely to better effect than here as half of a potent Washington power couple and the driving force behind her husband’s career.
“Vice” begins with two sequences nearly four decades apart, cutting between two extremes in Cheney’s life, asking in effect how a man could go from being an alcoholic roustabout to being hurried into the Presidential Emergency Operations Center for protection after 9/11.
More than that, Cheney is shown shocking Condoleezza Rice (LisaGay Hamilton) and others by unhesitatingly assuming presidential authority.
There was confusion, fear and uncertainty in that room, the film’s mysterious narrator (Jesse Plemons) tells us, “but Dick Cheney saw something no one else did. Dick Cheney saw an opportunity.”
As intricately constructed by McKay, “Vice” concerns itself not only with Cheney’s rise to power (“one of the most powerful leaders in this country’s history, and he did it like a ghost”) but the nature of political power in general.
For though he is a latecomer to it, Cheney, goaded by Lynne into abandoning his ne’er-do-well status, soon discovers a passion for, to quote Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “Hamilton,” being in the room where it happens.
In fact, when he gets into the congressional intern program in 1968, Cheney makes a beeline for Rep. Rumsfeld, said to use his position like a butterfly knife.
As that unidentified narrator (eventually shockingly unmasked) says, Cheney had “finally found his life’s calling: being a humble servant to power.”
Parallel to his rise in Washington, D.C.’s corridors of influence (and his surviving of multiple heart attacks), Cheney becomes fascinated with something called the unitary executive theory, which posits that presidents have absolute authority.
That might make being vice president to a genial George W. Bush (Rockwell’s feet-on-desk portrayal almost steals the picture) seem counterintuitive, but “Vice” posits that Cheney cannily found a way to effectively become co-president if not something more.
McKay is clearly not averse to taking swings at Cheney for a variety of matters, including the bitter family fight between sisters Mary (Alison Pill) and Liz (Lily Rabe) about gay marriage, but what seems to upset him most is something distinctly nonpartisan.
That would be the notion, broached early and returned to at the end, that “as the world becomes more and more confusing, we ignore facts that change and shape our lives. When we do have free time, the last thing we want is complicated analysis.”
Unless Americans of all political stripes pay attention to what’s going on, “Vice” insists, the results will be dire. A very dark warning from a very funny film.
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Post by RhodoraO on Dec 30, 2018 4:35:02 GMT
Thread by the director explaining why he chose to use unitary exec theory as the single cohesive ideology seemingly in use by VP Cheney.
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