MCN Blogs
David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

BYOB: Let The Ball Drop! (A SPOILER BYOB)

Okay folks… have at it. Everyone should feel free to discuss anything they want about any movie… if you are shy about spoilers, please be wary!

(And “about movies” does not mean ocd fixations on specific women or body parts, thanks.)

And Happy New Year to all!

Be Sociable, Share!

23 Responses to “BYOB: Let The Ball Drop! (A SPOILER BYOB)”

  1. Aimee says:

    Anyone have thoughts on the last scene in Young Adult (Mavis and Sandra’s conversation, followed by Theron’s voice over)?

    I didn’t expect to like Young Adult, but I think I may love it. Extremely deceptive ad campaign but a film that will surely draw a cult following. It’s madness Theron is a dark-horse contender for Best Actress.

  2. Joe Leydon says:

    My question: What if Charlize Theron’s character is lying at that party near the end? Remember: She talks about her alleged miscarriage while Patrick Wilson’s character is out of earshot — and unable to contradict her. Wouldn’t she be entirely capable of making up something like that?

  3. yancyskancy says:

    So the only way to know if this thread contains spoilers for films I haven’t seen is to read it?

  4. David Poland says:

    Kinda crazy, huh, Yancy? It was Joe’s idea.

  5. JS Partisan says:

    That whole conversation at the end is a total slam of middle America, and represents more Diablo Cody weirdness. It’s also a placation of every crazy thing Mavis thinks by a woman who is not happy in her own life. It’s such a weird ending but a fitting ending for a Reitman/Cody movie.

    That aside, Joe, she’s a broken character, and that breaking her fits. She could have had the perfect happy life like everyone else at that naming ceremony, with the guy she always wanted to be with, but her body failed her. It failed her and what’s left is 37 year old Mavis, who is stuck wanting her happy past even if she sort of flipped it off while driving out of town.

  6. MarkVH says:

    Finally saw Hugo today. WONDERFUL movie. Seriously imperfect, but I’m so glad Scorsese was able to get it made, because it feels like he needed to. Just lovely.

  7. Rob says:

    I loved that last scene in Young Adult. I hope Collette Wolfe start’s getting more work because of this movie. I live in Iowa and although I don’t plan to be here the rest of my life (I’m only 21) I thought it was refreshing to be so blunt about something that is actually true. Some of us are just fillers and some are the matter. Alot of us have those feelings about our home towns. I liked Mavis Gary (I didn’t find her unlikeable at all despite others who feel that way. I guess I am used to people like that and if you aren’t you would think that character was unrealistic when she actually is. and after learning about her miscarriage I felt bad for her.
    Charlize makes my personal line-up for Best Actress šŸ™‚

    I also know alot of yuppies from my area including a cousin of mine that moved to Minneapolis to start her career after college at Iowa State. Diablo wrote an accurate depiction of life in this area, actually. and I love Minneapolis so it earned points with me right there šŸ™‚

  8. Triple Option says:

    Maybe a suggestion could be to put the MOVIE TITLE at the top of your post so then you can know whether or not to read the post. So far, so good. I can read about Hugo, as I’ve seen it. Haven’t seen Young Adult yet, so I’ve skipped those.

  9. Don R. Lewis says:

    I agree that the brutal honesty in YOUNG ADULT is what really makes it so great. Cody points out things that are mean to say but, well, accurate. I also think the miscarriage bit is true as well. Mavis may be a bitch but she’s pretty straightforward and honest. That scene is by far the most uncomfortable of the year. I thought the fist fight in TAKE SHELTER had that award wrapped up until I saw YOUNG ADULT.

    I also think Collette Wolfe is an outstanding actress. Hope she gets some more chances to shine in 2012.

  10. mike says:

    Mark, I totally agree on Hugo. I can see why people are praising it in parts.

    Finally saw The Descendants tonight and have to say that I just didn’t give a fuck about most of it. I didn’t care what they did with the land. Didn’t care if the lover showed up to the deathbed. But I am consistently disappointed in a lot of Payne movies. Thank God for the teenage daughter or I’d have been bored silly.

    Saw The Artist the other day. It is a cute movie in the way that pretty girls don’t like to be called cute.

  11. sanj says:

    Into Eternity – a documentary that really makes people
    think about the future

    Trailer

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoyKe-HxmFk

    watched project nim – great documenary … they should
    pack this with the bluray of rise of the planet of the apes…

    the 50 people who should have had a dp/30 in 2011 – i really want them to get a dp/30 in 2012 ….
    a lot of them haven’t done any – sometimes they are at festival – sometimes they aren’t …grab them anyway.

    there are lots of tv hosts that should get a dp/30 ..
    cause some of them have been doing it for 10 years +
    and some have gone into acting – some have left hosting.
    – i’m not talking about reality tv series stars like ryan seacrest – a lot of low budget entertainment / travel music hosts …they got stories – they’ve done lots of interviews with lots of people .

    top 5 picks

    simon reeve – travel / bbc
    rachel perry – music – entertainment host
    jay ingram – science – discovery channel
    megan mccormick – travel – pbs
    david suzuki – science – cbc

    these people aren’t that hard to get – it would take less
    than 10 hours to check out the work they’ve gone on tv
    for a nice overview – chances of getting a dp/30 in 2012
    0/5 …. i gave it a shot.

    also my entertainer of 2011 is stephen colbert – he did things every month that were pretty cool – i remember all of his interviews – he doesn’t have the same guests other late night talk show hosts have – he is a great interviewer .

    i’m pretty sure i’ve seen 500 + different interviews this year … lots of dp/30 – g4 and nerdist and other podcasts. this is good thing for me – cause its super easy to turn to cnn and watch the same people for 2-4 weeks till they get bored of that person …
    anybody care about sarah palin ? she did try to get
    into the highest governement office and did a reality show.

    i’m not sure if this makes me smart or what .. but its way more interesting anything i learned in high school.

    maybe i’m an above average fan of dp/30’s .. i’m not even sure if super important film critics watch all of them like the should ..or if they don’t roger ebert beats them with a whip. and i’m also sure there’s some teen kid in a third world country who’s seen them all.

    yeah i know i know my writing style sucks and i’ve confused you peoples…but i just can’t write like diablo cody.

    also the tinman from wizard of oz needs a dp/30 …DP go around LA with a metal detecor and find tinman
    while you try to find banksy

  12. Krillian says:

    I loved the end of Young Adult too, but wasn’t it obvious that Collette Wolfe is saying everything wrong? She’s saying, “No, don’t grow up! Be selfish! Look down on others! Continue to be a mean-girl reality-celeb type!” So instead of Mavis growing and making needed changes in her life, she goes “Yeah, you’re all losers” and goes back to her empty life filled only with the comfort of thinking she’s better than the people in her home town.

  13. LexG says:

    How low-rent was the last act of DARKEST HOUR? Talk about a movie that shoots its load early on, with all the eerie barren city-scapes and cool bodies exploding and Olivia Thirlby showing her f–t (see what I did there)…

    Then at the end it comes down to Hirsch and some ill-defined Russian thugs killing three of the aliens in a train parking lot or something… I knew the movie was short but it’s always odd when you don’t realize you’re watching the BIG FINALE as it’s happening. Like if DIE HARD ended at the 85m mark with McClane killing The Huey Lewis Guy then telling Al on the walkie, “Now Hans Gruber’s gonna PAY!” and we fade out.

    Still enjoyed it. Especially Rachael Taylor.

    And I liked Rob’s post above about YOUNG ADULT; I think JS’s big problem here is he’s one of those HOMETOWN PRIDE guys who’s happy with where he’s from, and doesn’t relate to the TOTAL CONTEMPT some people, especially fame-hungry narcissists (like me, and like Theron’s character) have for their humble roots and people who are happy marrying their high school sweetheart and popping out kids working some lame job. For me the ending was practically orgasmic, instead of learning some lesson or something, Mavis (abetted by the awesome sister) retreating right back into her usual habits. Totally refreshing instead of the usual tame-the-beast bullshit we’d normally get.

    Cody for SCREENWRITER in a LANDSLIDE. The best American screenwriter at least since Tarantino. HUGE fan.

  14. JS Partisan says:

    Krillian is right on with this one Lex and that’s why the ending works for this movie. It’s a movie about doing everything wrong because in the grand scheme of the movie, Mavis is just wrong. There’s no win there for her. She lost everything she ever wanted, so why not let her think she won by retreating to the Minny Apple.

    Also, why are you holding contempt for the small town? Seriously man, they are the people living and working and dying to keep America running. You can give them a little dap, man. A SMIDGEN! A FREAKING SMIDGEN OF DAP XD!

  15. Eric says:

    Krillian’s read on the ending is right. It totally pulls the rug out by giving Mavis an opportunity to retreat back to Minneapolis without learning anything whatsoever from her time spent back home.

    It’s horribly jarring, especially because the movie was unusually effective in how it developed Mavis and made her earn the growth we thought she was achieving. In most movies I roll my eyes when the character learns a lesson, resolves to be a better person, etc., but this one was careful enough about it all to be convincing. And then tossing it all out is shocking. But I’m not complaining– it was a screenwriter’s choice and it had its intended effect.

  16. Joe Leydon says:

    I know I have hinted at this elsewhere, but here I’ll just come out and say it: In the final scene of Ides of March, I thought, just for a moment, that Ryan Gosling’s character would go, “Fuck it, here’s what really happened, folks, and this is how corrupt this motherfucker is.” Indeed, since the movie actually ends before he responds to the reporter, I’m not 100 percent certain he doesn’t do this.

  17. Bennett says:

    Contraband just looks incredibly bad. I’m sure that it will gross better than Max Payne. But wow. What a cliche fest.

  18. Don R. Lewis says:

    To dig a little deeper…isn’t the ending of YOUNG ADULT touching on how America is so supportive of bad behavior and encourages it within the celebrity culture? It’s like Wolfe’s character would expect a “celebrity” to be nothing BUT petty, self-centered, rude and dickheaded. And frankly, it’s alot easier to be those things to people than to “try and be nice” which is something Mavis has no interest in.

    Such a good movie. Bummed it’s getting overlooked somewhat.

  19. sanj says:

    gq mags worst movies of the year 2011

    the future – war horse – green latern – tintin –
    we need to talk about kevin – larry crowne – new years eve

    http://www.gq.com/entertainment/movies-and-tv/201112/worst-movies-2011

  20. JS Partisan says:

    Come on Bennett. It’s fucking January. A half way decent action film in January is a good thing.

    Don, it’s getting overlooked because the ads do it very little justice. They sell a part of the story that is just skievy out of context of the film, and women don’t want to see movies about women going after married men. It’s just how it is, and it does suck.

    I disagree with you about how Mavis wants to be as a person. If everything goes right for her in high school. She’s different. It didn’t and what you have left is a wrecked human being trying to pick up the pieces. She peaked in high school, and everything else has sucked.

  21. Joe Leydon says:

    You know, seriously: I would love to see how the holy hell they would market Five Easy Pieces — or even The Sterile Cuckoo — to a contemporary audience.

  22. JS Partisan says:

    Joe, probably with trailers that featured very little actual dialogue from those films. Young Adult’s entire trailer campaign should have been based around Mavis singing Teenage Fanclub with some key scenes interspersed. Why they went all cutesy with it is still a mystery to me.

  23. sanj says:

    some tv comedies keep getting worse and there is no dp/30 for bad writing / bad acting. they can get away with it…
    therefore i will not watch any dp/30 2012 emmy watch …
    if there are any.

    watched work it – abc tv show .

    a bunch of guys get laid off — and the only work they can find is by dressing up as women for some office job.

    big review worth reading

    http://tv.ign.com/articles/121/1214220p1.html

The Hot Blog

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