Winter's Fail
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I don't think so. Magical realism is when there is magic (usually subtle) in an otherwise realistic setting. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was magical realism because it had somebody living backwards in what was otherwise an ordinary world.Starke said:
OT: Now I kinda want to see this movie, if only for Devil-Smith.
Well, now I really, really want to see this. Oh, if only I had a girlfriend, I could totally score a home run just by making jokes through the whole thing.
To be honest i do kind of want to see it now. I always had a certain fondness of overproduced, overambitious What-were-they-even-thinking movies.
Well... at least it sounds like the entertaining kind of bad rather than the bland, formulaic kind of bad. There are certain moods where that brand of special awfulness can be just the tonic. I swear there was a time when Russell Crowe was better at picking his roles.
It makes me wonder whether this was originally conceived along these lines or just the victim of multiple re-writes. I mean if it's that incoherent, someone in the production team must have known it was absolute tripe.
I can't wait to see what people like Doug Walker make of this movie, although that may be a terrible thing to say - I get the feeling that they die a little inside every time they finish viewing a film like this. What a bizarre, baffling, bumbling, boggling, butt-munching production it sounds like. Boo.
Um. He just did. I mean, unless you want him to go over the technical stuff in more detail, there's not much left to talk about. (Maybe he'll just spend the whole review going FUUUUUUUUUUUU)Andrew Siribohdi said:
"an Earthbound former Angel who he once helped turn human"
If that role wasn't played by Nicholas Cage, I officially hate this movie.
If that role wasn't played by Nicholas Cage, I officially hate this movie.
Thank you, Bob, for your sacrifices. I personally appreciate it.
However...I'm going to watch this movie (with a TON of alcohol) when its out on video just to see Will Smith as the Devil. And also because it sounds like a good drinking game.
However...I'm going to watch this movie (with a TON of alcohol) when its out on video just to see Will Smith as the Devil. And also because it sounds like a good drinking game.
Hell, I'm willing to give it a shot just for that. And I have to say that lately Bob and I have been on the opposite ends of the enjoyment spectrum, so I think this may turn out as a winner for me. The last movies we agreed on were things like Drive, Transformers, The Great Gatsby, and Warm Bodies. If this movie turns out to be good, I may just declare Bob my new Roger Ebert and only watch the stuff he dislikes and avoid like the plague anything he raves about.UFriday said:
Okay... (*deep breath*)
I read the book some years ago at the prompting of my sweetie. I rather liked it. And if you've read the book, you know that the only way to make a movie out of it would be to have Peter Jackson split it up into at least three movies, each no less that 2-1/2 hours long.
Author Mark Helprin (not to be confused with right-wing hack Mark Halperin) has a way of writing about places and environments on a scale that makes words like, "vast," and, "massive," wholly inadequate. The closest imagery I can reach is in the Fritz Lang silent film Metropolis, whose shots of the city and its Babylon Tower suggest that kind of scale. Helprin writes New York City on that scale. It's the same New York you know -- there's an extended sequence in the constellation-covered ceiling of Grand Central Terminal -- but Helprin writes things so that things seem vastly larger, more ethereal, and much more wonderous than their real-world counterparts. Think of the ballroom dance scene in the movie The Fisher King. That sort of thing would be entirely at home in Helprin's New York.
As a consequence, describing Winter's Tale the book is very difficult because of that ever-present ethereal quality. Several of the characters exist "out of time" -- not exactly immortal, but not bound to exist through all the days from then until now. Perhaps a cleaner way to imagine this conceit would be as semi-cohesive spirits who de-incarnate in the late 1800's and reincarnate in the present day. I suppose doing this lets Helprin write a story whose scale matches the environments and places he's writing. It all contributes to the book's near-omnipresent other-worldly feel.
There are also a number of parallel plots running, with [em]many[/em] more characters, and this is where the movie runs into trouble. The love story between Peter Lake and Beverly Penn is just one of several. And though it has significant impact, it is not [em]the[/em] main story in the book. So to make the movie, they had to rip that single story out, snapping all the interconnecting threads and support structure. They apparently then filled in the mangled bits with Spackle and called it a movie.
Here's the smallest example of how bad a mismatch the movie is with the book. When I saw the previews for it in the theater, I and my sweetie (who [em]adores[/em] the book) looked at Russell Crowe's character, and we both immediately thought to ourselves, "Pearly Soames isn't that tall." Now, what that should tell you is that Helprin conjured up some pretty powerful, lasting imagery in his book, because we both [em]immediately[/em] spotted the mismatch. It seems the filmmakers whiffed on the rest of the book's aspects as well.
I'm guessing someone in Whollyodd optioned the book, then tried to give an elevator pitch for a film version of it, and everything in the film proceeded from that pitch -- except that such a pitch is impossible, because the book defies attempts to describe it. I've just spent the last half-hour and five paragraphs failing to do so. Winter's Tale isn't so much about story and plot points, it's about atmosphere and mood and titanic cities and tiny people against the sprawling tapestry of time trying to find their place in it all.
And a supernatural milk horse.
If you want to get a sense of Helprin's writing without plowing through the whole of Winter's Tale, go find a copy of another of Helprin's books, A City in Winter, which is ostensibly a children's book, but still has that same sense of vast scale.
I read the book some years ago at the prompting of my sweetie. I rather liked it. And if you've read the book, you know that the only way to make a movie out of it would be to have Peter Jackson split it up into at least three movies, each no less that 2-1/2 hours long.
Author Mark Helprin (not to be confused with right-wing hack Mark Halperin) has a way of writing about places and environments on a scale that makes words like, "vast," and, "massive," wholly inadequate. The closest imagery I can reach is in the Fritz Lang silent film Metropolis, whose shots of the city and its Babylon Tower suggest that kind of scale. Helprin writes New York City on that scale. It's the same New York you know -- there's an extended sequence in the constellation-covered ceiling of Grand Central Terminal -- but Helprin writes things so that things seem vastly larger, more ethereal, and much more wonderous than their real-world counterparts. Think of the ballroom dance scene in the movie The Fisher King. That sort of thing would be entirely at home in Helprin's New York.
As a consequence, describing Winter's Tale the book is very difficult because of that ever-present ethereal quality. Several of the characters exist "out of time" -- not exactly immortal, but not bound to exist through all the days from then until now. Perhaps a cleaner way to imagine this conceit would be as semi-cohesive spirits who de-incarnate in the late 1800's and reincarnate in the present day. I suppose doing this lets Helprin write a story whose scale matches the environments and places he's writing. It all contributes to the book's near-omnipresent other-worldly feel.
There are also a number of parallel plots running, with [em]many[/em] more characters, and this is where the movie runs into trouble. The love story between Peter Lake and Beverly Penn is just one of several. And though it has significant impact, it is not [em]the[/em] main story in the book. So to make the movie, they had to rip that single story out, snapping all the interconnecting threads and support structure. They apparently then filled in the mangled bits with Spackle and called it a movie.
Here's the smallest example of how bad a mismatch the movie is with the book. When I saw the previews for it in the theater, I and my sweetie (who [em]adores[/em] the book) looked at Russell Crowe's character, and we both immediately thought to ourselves, "Pearly Soames isn't that tall." Now, what that should tell you is that Helprin conjured up some pretty powerful, lasting imagery in his book, because we both [em]immediately[/em] spotted the mismatch. It seems the filmmakers whiffed on the rest of the book's aspects as well.
I'm guessing someone in Whollyodd optioned the book, then tried to give an elevator pitch for a film version of it, and everything in the film proceeded from that pitch -- except that such a pitch is impossible, because the book defies attempts to describe it. I've just spent the last half-hour and five paragraphs failing to do so. Winter's Tale isn't so much about story and plot points, it's about atmosphere and mood and titanic cities and tiny people against the sprawling tapestry of time trying to find their place in it all.
And a supernatural milk horse.
If you want to get a sense of Helprin's writing without plowing through the whole of Winter's Tale, go find a copy of another of Helprin's books, A City in Winter, which is ostensibly a children's book, but still has that same sense of vast scale.
I've said this on other sites, but initially this movie stuck out as an experiment to determine if it is possible to die from suffocation by Oirish.
But wow... Thank you for this, Bob. From the first time I saw the trailer on the cable VOD channel, I was curious to know just what the hell movie had resulted from the 2-3 stories stitched together. To learn there's at least 5-6 at work here is horrifying and strangely admirable.
I had a similar picture of the screenplay for this being dug out of a locker decorated with pictures of Celtic faeries. I thought 'Once Upon A Time: Neverland' was the worst bit of fan-fiction to actually be made into a Hollywood production. Clearly I miscalculated...
But wow... Thank you for this, Bob. From the first time I saw the trailer on the cable VOD channel, I was curious to know just what the hell movie had resulted from the 2-3 stories stitched together. To learn there's at least 5-6 at work here is horrifying and strangely admirable.
I had a similar picture of the screenplay for this being dug out of a locker decorated with pictures of Celtic faeries. I thought 'Once Upon A Time: Neverland' was the worst bit of fan-fiction to actually be made into a Hollywood production. Clearly I miscalculated...
What in the name of Judas Rocking Priest did I just read? I think I got high and went a little more insane just from what Bob described.