the sharpest knife in the west

[brendan62442]

- The Magnificent Ambersons is exciting but ultimately a let down. You can tell just from watching the release version what other things must have been in the one that got burned. Sometimes it gets really majestic and you think, "If only this were a real movie."

- There Will Be Blood is exciting but ultimately a let-down. Paul Dano was of course

Comments

[stillbornteen]

I don't think Daniel Plainview was really supposed to be a character with traces of humanity, like a entrepreneurial whatever-it-takes dude. He's a completely psychopathic and soulless character that's only going through the motions. But yeah, I have no idea what Anderson was thinking with Paul Dano. Although i suppose to be fair, any evangelical preacher under the age of 18 would probably cause me to raise an eyebrow. Did you find the soundtrack to be distracting at all?

[brendan62442]

I guess my problem is that the monster-character is kind of boring to cheer for. I never hope he'll turn good and I never pity his inner sadness or nothing; I just watch the next scene to hope he doesn't kill someone.

My only idea with the second thing is that maybe he wanted to telegraph how much Eli Sunday didn't know anything. I remember being disappointed by the soundtrack but not being distracted. Was there one scene in particular that it threw off for you?

[stillbornteen]

That's a good point. I guess what i liked about the character was how we kind of discover along the way his amorality, as there was a lot of teasing with salvation that went on before the final few scenes.

It was the scene when the oil erupts, i think maybe after Daniel's son was made deaf. The details are all hazy now, but i just remember Daniel running towards the oil all wide-eyed and sounds like winding clocks or something, as oppossed to actual music. And then after that scene, everytime music played i kept wondering if Greenwood was just brought along for street cred. It wasn't that it was bad. I guess i just felt like it drew too much attention to itself.

[brendan62442]

Maybe I thought it was bad because I expected Radiohead. The oil fire scene is one that would really depend on sound.

But I remember liking the Clockwork Orange move of silence and then classical music at the end.

[dustyasymptotes]

geez louise
it's as if you've appointed let(-)( )down as the town bicycle.

[brendan62442]

Do I overuse the word letdown?
Very well, then, I overuse the word letdown.
I am large; I contain multitudes.

I will take letdowns and you will take the Darjeeling. We'll both get yellow on MetaCritic and phone-call each other about what went wrong.

[dustyasymptotes]

Ok, let's.

(Did I mention you're pretty much all kinds of fantastic? But the latest posture, not so much. I think I'm just burnt out on hipster gentrification schemes.)

[brendan62442]

How easy was it to find the sarcasm? Chris only sort of found it. But Chris also claimed that he never really told me to piss off.

Am I infesting the hipster community with white people? Are hipsters infesting people's neighbourhoods with white people?

[weasel_seeker]

I (unfortunately) agree on the Cool. Lupe has an astounding sense of wordplay and (at least after his early mix tapes) an inflated sense of IMPORTANCE and a general lack of great hooks. And production can be same-y at times

[brendan62442]

I am completely okay with Kanye being just a producer even when he's a rapper, and I think I'm also okay with Kanye being full of himself. But I only know maybe a dozen of his songs -- singles and Chris's favourites -- so it's possible that this stuff gets more annoying on the deeper cuts. Jon Brion is maybe the best producer in music.

I haven't really discovered rap mixtapes, but I'm enough into Little Wayne that I've been meaning to look into them.

The Cool was a weird experience because I only listened to it when Chris insisted. I hated Chris for the hooks, but then I realized the words were clever and I got kind of confused. It took at least a dozen plays before I knew what I thought of it.

[weasel_seeker]

Well. I mean, I say that, but I am a Kanye fan. I just have to...I don't know. I love Kanye in spite of his faults and because of them

[brendan62442]

Have done research at OkayPlayer and ILoveMusic now. The Internet is smaller than it looks. Surprised you think drinking with Jay would go well. Really like the point where Kanye is best when he has to apologize.

My pumpkin cost a million dollars. It's got champagne in it.

I am completely okay with rhyming and rhyming and rhyming. I listened to enough Eminem years ago that I now think too much rhyming is the best part of rap music.