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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

BYOB Ho Ho Ho

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24 Responses to “BYOB Ho Ho Ho”

  1. Not David Bordwell says:

    Hey, y’all…

    In the spirit of Joe Leydon, I thought I’d tell anyone interested that Not David Bordwell is now Dr. Not David Bordwell, or perhaps Good Dr. Not Bordwell, having earned his Ph.D. earlier this month!

    Look for my academic treatise “Lex G as Faust” at a bookstore nowhere near you!

  2. Joe Leydon says:

    Congratulations! So where can we read your dissertation?

  3. Don R. Lewis says:

    Congrats, man! If I could stop screwing around in places like HERE, I might finish my thesis and get my MA. What’s your Ph.D. in, Doc?

  4. Don R. Lewis says:

    Also…

    I saw TRON: LEGACY today on probably one of the best movie screens around (George Lucas’ guinea pig theater in Nor Cal) and I fell asleep. It had zero pacing and I was baffled as to WTF was going on and just ended up tuning out and dozing off.

    Throughout, well, before I nodded off, I wondered why video director Chris Cunningham who did a Bjork music vid that Tron:Legacy totally ripped off as well as some other very cool, avant-garde stuff that would have made this film better all around. Or even Michel Gondry.

    There was some cool stuff visually and idea-wise but overall, what a mess.

  5. IOv3 says:

    Don, you are about as hip as a fanny pack. Yep, you are the film reviewing equivalent of a fanny pack. Also, the fact that you stayed awake for some shit movies this year, most likely some stupid fucking horror film, and feel asleep during TL. Shameful.

  6. IOv3 says:

    I just realized that the above post should have a šŸ˜‰ in it. Passing out during a movie is never cool but the above does not need to be that snarky.

  7. Don R. Lewis says:

    Dude! I assure you I *wanted* to know WTF was going on….I certainly didn’t mean to fall asleep. I even had 3D glasses on and still….no dice. Geek Pride aside, don’t you think they could have found a better director for Tron?

  8. Foamy Squirrel says:

    My viewing seemed to have “designated pee breaks”. Seriously, there were sections where about 10 people at a time got up to go to the toilet.

    (People were coming in too, so I’m assuming they weren’t just walking out)

  9. IOv3 says:

    Don, I think Jo Kosinski is going to be one of my fave directors over the next few years, and this leads to me really looking forward to his Black Hole remake and the Tron sequel. I understand that Legacy does not work for everyone but it worked for me, and passing out with the 3D glasses on must have sucked.

    It still has a 7.6 over at IMDB from close to 13000 people. That’s a good damn average for a film that some folks rather freaking loathe.

  10. ThriceDamned says:

    I saw Tron Legacy for the second time yesterday and enjoyed it even more the second time around. Conceptually, aesthetically and sonically more than story/character wise, granted.

    But, without wanting to appear too snarky, I can’t fathom all these “I couldn’t understand wtf was going on” comments that I see popping up. Do people seriously not have the attention span to follow a relatively straight forward narrative with ample (if clumsy) exposition and relatively few characters?

    It’s not the best script around, but saying that the film is hard to follow is just incorrect.

  11. IOv3 says:

    Thrice, I brought this point up to my friend this morning, and had the same conclusion. Seriously, it’s not like it’s that hard to understand but there so many reviews that seem to miss the damn point of the film completely. It’s fucking weird sauce. Total weird sauce.

  12. Eric says:

    I didn’t really enjoy Tron Legacy but the story was pretty straightforward. They stuff it with a fair amount of gibberish but it’s not too hard to separate the plot details you need from the world-building paraphernalia you don’t.

    The world of The Grid was just kinda boring to me. We saw the arena, the nightclub, and the portal. There’s not a lot in there to make me understand how the world works or why Clu was supposed to be so bad for it. There was the genocide story, but it’s really hard to care about that when it was told in a brief, cursory flashback.

  13. cadavra says:

    “Do people seriously not have the attention span to follow a relatively straight forward narrative with ample (if clumsy) exposition and relatively few characters?”

    No, they don’t.

  14. Al says:

    Finally caught The Kids Are Alright (very alright) and was dismayed/amused to find that midway through the film Lex popped into my mind in a scene where Mia W looked particularly ‘fetching’/’demure’. I’m sure I can’t be the only hotblog regular (reader) to whom this happens.

    She is actually quite beautiful though. Ruffalo’s had a pretty decent year. And Bening made for an almost shockingly convincing middle aged lesbian

  15. Don R. Lewis says:

    I think if the film had pulled me in, I wouldn’t have fallen asleep. That lead dude sucked and had negative 5 personality. Everything he said throughout was some stupid monotone 1-2 word thing like, “let’s play” or, “cool.” I liked some things on the grid but when poppa Flynn showed up, the film bogged down and got boring. For me anyway. Then I fell asleep repeatedly.

  16. IOv3 says:

    Garrett Hedlund is awesome. Seriously. He’s tremendous.

    I also have no idea how someone can be bored by the grid. Seriously, sentient life is happening inside of a network somewhere and you find it boring Eric? Really? Oy to the vey.

  17. shillfor alanhorn says:

    Can we put a moratorium on TRON talk, please? IO we get it: you liked the film (as did a few other commenters) and others did not. Chalk it up to a difference of opinion and press the NEXT button. OK? That would be a Christmas gift to us all….

  18. IOv3 says:

    Shilli, serious question: who died and made you boss the blog? TRON LEGACY DISCUSSION WILL CONTINUE! RESISTANCE! MERRY XMAS TO ALL AND TO ALL A GOOD NIGHT!

  19. Telemachos says:

    If you’re going to endlessly pimp a movie, couldn’t it at least be an interesting one?

  20. IOv3 says:

    Puddle. Puddle. Puddle. Awww… it’s snowing.

  21. sanj says:

    hey DP – when the oscar nominaitons finally come out – is it easier to get interviews with the same actors / directors again ? do you end up in a huge movie lineup with
    lots of other people trying to interview them ?

    are there some actors / directors that go to you first for interviews ? do you have that power yet ?

  22. Joe Straatmann says:

    Well, the man wants a discussion on TRON: Legacy, best give it to him….

    http://spoonyexperiment.com/2010/12/19/vlog-12-1910-tron-legacy/

    ROUND ONE, FIGHT!

  23. IOv3 says:

    Been there done that Joe Straatmann and I won that fight… WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! Once Brad Jones is on your side… ALL WILL BE WELL!

Quote Unquotesee all »

It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” ā€” some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it ā€” I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury ā€” he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” ā€” and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging ā€” I was with her at that moment ā€” she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy namedā€”” “Yeah, sure ā€” you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that Iā€™m on the phone with you now, after all thatā€™s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didnā€™t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. Thereā€™s not a case of that. He wasnā€™t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had ā€” if that were what the accusation involved ā€” the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. Iā€™m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, ā€œYou know, itā€™s not this, itā€™s thatā€? Because ā€” let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. TimesĀ piece, thatā€™s what it lacked. Thatā€™s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon