(On some browsers you'll need to refresh this page in order to see the comment you just left.)
2fs - 2004-08-16 10:58:15
Re Mamet: Rebecca Pidgeon is definitely cute - but the stiff, unnatural performances (since they're common to most the actors) are clearly a directorial decision. Though the results are not at all the same, it reminds me of Hal Hartley films, in that initially, the acting and dialog seem incredibly wooden and fakey. It's just that neither director is going for naturalism (which you get, I know). I'm not sure, though, what you're seeing in Pidgeon's acting that makes it seem less suited to the Mamet's movies than that of the other actors.
-------------------------------
Paula - 2004-08-16 11:11:42
I'm not sure, though, what you're seeing in Pidgeon's acting that makes it seem less suited to the Mamet's movies than that of the other actors
It's not less suited--it's the very essence of Mametry. I still find it annoying.
Hal Hartley and Guy Maddin (hi Tom!) use the stilted dialogue approach, too, but somehow none of their actors bothers me.
-------------------------------
Paula - 2004-08-16 11:13:54
Also, someone pointed out that I used the word "mitigate" recklessly and wrongly. I apologize.
-------------------------------
Richard (Nixon) - 2004-08-16 12:48:58
Perhaps, instead of "mitigate" you meant "watergate"?
-------------------------------
Baby Party - 2004-08-16 12:56:05
Rebecca Pidgeon is also a musician and was in a band in the late 80s/early 90s called Ruby Blue. But I've never heard them.
-------------------------------
Sue - 2004-08-16 12:56:09
I am coming out of the closet as a Pidgeon fan. I was actually disappointed that she didn't appear in "Spartan." I think her best role is actually in "That Winslow Boy" -- rent it sometime and see if you don't agree.
WTF is up with Mamet, according to the IMDB (http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0414181/), writing & directing a Will Ferrell movie called Joan of Bark: The Dog that Saved France?
-------------------------------
Tom Ronca - 2004-08-16 13:01:09
I have to agree w/ Paula here -- Pideon's "acting" is stilted and wooden; Hartley and Maddin (I would also add Wes Anderson to this list) use a 'stylized' manner of directing their actors, and it slways seems clear to me why they are doing so -- both directors are more interested in presenting a kind of photoplay of the interior of their minds more than presenting some kind of 'drama' - and consequently a less naturalistic acting style seems more suited to that purpose.
I never got the impression that that's what Mamet was going for, so I've always found his rather wooden direction of his actors (especially his wife!) rather mystifying and offputting. He still makes good movies from time to time. Anybody see 'Homicide'? One of his best!
-------------------------------
Bob - 2004-08-16 13:27:36
There's a difference between pointless drivel and highly amusing drivel, and Hartley achieves the latter in his good films, whereas Mamet.... An' I think that the difference stems from Hartley tending to have a context, (usually Long Island, an exemplary context for trying-too-hard dorkiness, particularly if one has a real and fond 'appreciation'), and thus, even for those who don't know the context... a palpable resonance. As opposed to the lack thereof of a Mamet or a David Lynch. Changing the subject a little from just-dorky manneredness, I've always hated Lynch's movies, because their alleged "weirdness" doesn't strike me as such, because it has no insight behind it to stir uncomfortable chords. Which is probably precisely why his films are successful.
-------------------------------
Joe - 2004-08-16 13:42:24
Pidgeon's gotten better. She was terrible in SPANISH PRISONER, but by STATE & MAIN, she'd gotten the hang of her husband's dialogue. She's no Wolliam H. Macy (who's worked with Mamet since the '70s), but she's getting there.
-------------------------------
Sharps - 2004-08-16 14:00:47
Put me squarely in the yay Hartley/nay Mamet camp. And after WILD AT HEART and the disappointing implosion of TWIN PEAKS, I was pretty much in agreement with Bob about Lynch BUT--Bob, have you seen MULHOLLAND DRIVE? Someone had to twist my arm into seeing it, but that fucker blew me away. Weirdness abounds, to be sure, but it's never gratuitous, and I felt there was a ton of wisdom and heart behind it. It's one of my very favorite movies of the past five years.
-------------------------------
Bob - 2004-08-16 14:22:11
I was about to say that Lynch's next film should be titled "Twisting the Rubber Knife"... but that he's not insightful enough to call it that. But now I'll have to see M. DRIVE first before dismissing him as hopeless. Since after all, there was the one funny scene in WaH, when an all-wound-up Defoe kept insisting "Say it!" with a knife to pee-pee-dance girl's throat, until she said "fuck me", to which he said "Not now, I gotta go!".
-------------------------------
Bob - 2004-08-16 14:40:12
Or "Not now, I need to be somewhere", or whatever it was. And the pee-pee-dance refers to Dern's much earlier, side-of-the-road display, which was supposed to be enthusiastic rather than bladderific.
-------------------------------
Sharps - 2004-08-16 15:01:36
And if you totally hate M. DRIVE, don't blame me alone - the comedy team of Wechsler and Stone were the arm-twisters wot convinced me to see it.
-------------------------------
Walter MittyGate - 2004-08-16 15:04:28
But does weirdness really require insight? Cannot the very lack of insight stir uncomfortable chords?
What I always liked about Lynch is that he can be sublime (Mulholland Drive, the initial Twin Peaks episodes) and troooly bad (Eraserhead, all the other Twin Peaks episodes).
-------------------------------
Paula - 2004-08-16 15:07:02
Let's not forget The Straight Story which was also sublime and so unweird as to be remarkable. I think there's a purity in all of his work--images straight from his subconscious get hurled at us. He's a meditator, ya know.
-------------------------------
Sharps - 2004-08-16 15:10:08
Depends. President Bush's weirdness and lack of insight certainly stirs enuf uncomfortable chords. But I think it's better if film directors seem to know what they're doing.
-------------------------------
Twin Fs - 2004-08-16 15:50:54
Well, I like the Mamet films I've seen, and I never felt, watching Pidgeon, that I was only watching Director's Cute Wife that distracted from the movie. As for Lynch: I've never felt his "weirdness" is gratuitous - quite the opposite, in that it always feels meant, significant, if only in his interior landscape. It helps, too, if you remember he's initially a painter: many of his screen images work best on a purely visual image (I'm thinking of the recurring images of that stoplight in the TP series). I think the second season of TP is underrated: too bad the DVD doesn't exist to confirm this, but the problem was they took quite a while to get the Windom Earle plot going, and before that there were several inane, interminable subplots (Dickie and Nicky or whatever; James & Evelyn). I'd say edit out about, oh, 5-10 minutes from about 4-6 episodes, and you're good. And of course, Lynch was usually neither writing nor directing the series by that point: not really his to blame.
-------------------------------
Sharps - 2004-08-16 16:04:48
One more heads-up to would-be MULHOLLAND viewers: I think the film is about 2.5 hours long. Budget five hours, enough time to watch it once, go "Huh....Wha....?", and then watch it again to try to figure out what the fuck just happened.
-------------------------------
Bob - 2004-08-16 16:15:50
Well, I guess purity IS purity, even when it comes to vacuity. My reaction has always been something to the effect of of course there's stuff like that in his ass, or his subconscious, or his dreams;; but that if he can't give me something that resonates, it's pap, and f'rinstance nature is weirder, in both random and dictatorial ways.
-------------------------------
Bob - 2004-08-16 16:18:48
Though that's not a reaction to MULHOLLAND. (I didn't just go watch it in an hour... and am willing to give it a chance.)
-------------------------------
Bob - 2004-08-16 16:40:58
And I meant 'purity IS "purity"', or meant 'I suppose' instead of 'I guess';; I wasn't trying to insinuate anything. (I just have trouble bein' clear live.)
-------------------------------
Bob - 2004-08-16 17:16:35
And I don't need movies to be meaningful;; evocative can work fine for me. Or stimulating, touching, disturbing, amusing, whatever. But if you think I'm hypercritical now, I was a lot worse in college, to the point that when Paula told me that I should see "Stranger than Paradise", she added that I should wait ten years to do so. (I even took her advice on that, and she was probably spot on.) With Lynch's movies, though, maybe it's just a question of whether they're evocative for you or not.
-------------------------------
Bob - 2004-08-16 20:21:29
To be perfectly clear, how 'bout:: Well, I suppose a purity IS "a purity", even when it comes to vacuity. But hey, I know when I should've quit a while ago.
-------------------------------
Bob - 2004-08-16 20:44:19
Oh, and just to clarify something that someone was actually interested in, I guess by lack of insight I meant a lack of psychological/human-nature insight to exploit, and I don't see how a dearth of that could strike uncomfortable chords, though I can see how it could make someone GENERALLY uncomfortable, with, say, a president or psychiatrist.
-------------------------------
add your comment:
back to the entry - Diaryland
