2021 Media Roundup: Film
Dec. 29th, 2021 07:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabby Late addendum to my film roundup post.
Don't Look Up was absolutely my favourite film of 2021 and one of the best films I've seen in ages. I will be happy to take questions at the appropriate time.
Don't Look Up was absolutely my favourite film of 2021 and one of the best films I've seen in ages. I will be happy to take questions at the appropriate time.
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Date: 2021-12-30 08:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-12-30 12:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-12-30 01:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-12-30 02:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-12-30 05:25 pm (UTC)On the "don't want" side: end of the world stuff doesn't roll off me. I sometimes enjoy it anyway. I liked Severance ok and loved Station Eleven. But like, totally unrealistic/supposed to be a comedy "Seeking a Friend for the End of the World" made me hide under the bed. I think I stopped watching. I'm just too able to get into the headspace of "what would it be like to know that it's actually all over?"
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Date: 2021-12-30 05:38 pm (UTC)It's, I think, a little too real to be watching under the current circumstances. It made me wish it had come out in 2019.
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Date: 2022-01-03 03:05 pm (UTC)But it was a great film. I loved it. I'd easily give it noms for best performances and screenplay.
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Date: 2021-12-31 04:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-12-31 01:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-01-03 03:07 pm (UTC)(Film critic: "But climate change isn't LIKE a big meteor with six months. It's all about industrialized living and a real solution would force us to change our way of life and live with other people we don't know in mind and this film has NOTHING to do with that!" and I'm just like....//boggle)
Also a good one after the past two years: "If this was REALLY happening and the science was real they would be giving briefings on the news every night, not on some kind of glorified talk show"
(Remember when Fauci HAD TO GO ON TALK SHOWS because the WH would not LET him on news shows like Maddow? Let alone nightly news broadcasts? He was fucking doing phone-in shows and podcasts. But nooo, so unrealistic and stupid!)
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Date: 2022-01-03 03:57 pm (UTC)It is very telling that the people who hate it (beyond climate deniers) are film critics and vulgar Marxists, whereas climate scientists are like, no, this is absolutely what it's like.
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Date: 2022-01-03 03:59 pm (UTC)I also liked that the movie showed when a young woman flipped out, she was immediately dismissed and laughed off, but the male scientist's freakout was apparently taken much more seriously. Even tho when he did it, it was too late.
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Date: 2022-01-03 05:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-01-03 05:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-01-03 05:28 pm (UTC)It's not even accurate. The only paper they can talk to is the NY Herald, and that THROWS THEM OUT when the NASA person throws them under the bus. But gee, someone apparently feels a little stung!
If anything, the movie kind of fell down at portraying how scientists now try to get out a lot of information on Twitter and sharing knowledge that way -- I'm thinking of Trevor Bedford at the very start of the pandemic -- but that actually would have been hard to film, and taken away from the comedy.
"one, we just had a massive climate summit in Glasgow. Like, this is a collective action problem. That's what climate change is."
THE ONE ALL THE HUNDREDS OF GIANT OIL AND GAS LOBBYISTS ATTENDED? THAT ONE?
People also seem to be ignoring that the other countries do try a launch at one point which results in a terrible disaster, and the actual NASA launch is CANCELLED when Not!Elon Musk finds out there's potential profit, and the launch at the end is of his unproven private mining missile which doesn't work either.
"I mean, there's that little performance by Timothee Chalamet as, like, a Christian skateboarder. That's pretty funny."
Yeah no. IDEFK. -- And his character isn't comic, he is very clearly a Holy Fool type, and at the end he recites the blessing over their literal last supper and is told "you got church game!" It's a small part, but it's not just a goof. In fact I would argue almost nothing in that movie was a throwaway goof.
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Date: 2022-01-03 05:52 pm (UTC)They showed that, but yeah, it's just not very visual.
People also seem to be ignoring that the other countries do try a launch at one point which results in a terrible disaster, and the actual NASA launch is CANCELLED when Not!Elon Musk finds out there's potential profit, and the launch at the end is of his unproven private mining missile which doesn't work either.
Yes and it's strongly implied to be sabotage. Like one of my friends posted that the only thing unrealistic is that in this specific instance, China would have built something to blow it up in 4 hours, which is true. But...it's a movie, specifically intended to get Americans to do things.
Yeah no. IDEFK. -- And his character isn't comic, he is very clearly a Holy Fool type, and at the end he recites the blessing over their literal last supper and is told "you got church game!" It's a small part, but it's not just a goof. In fact I would argue almost nothing in that movie was a throwaway goof.
It's very intentional, and he took the part because of it, apparently (they'd initially offered him a bit role and he was like...maybe? and then after some talk about what was missing in the film, he agreed). Utterly brilliant character imo.
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Date: 2022-01-03 06:04 pm (UTC)the only thing unrealistic is that in this specific instance, China would have built something to blow it up in 4 hours
HAH, absolutely true!
Aww, I didn't know that about the part. I was first kind of ehh about it because I thought Oh no, they might do the "there are no atheist scientists in foxholes" thing, but the movie was actually too smart for that. He's also the one person other than Mindy and Oglethorpe who treats Kate like she has value. (I was pleasantly surprised Oglethorpe didn't die before everyone else did, too.)
-- Oh yeah I also found it weird the critics are like "It's America's job to solve! All the other countries are ignored!" when there were actually a bunch of shots of OTHER PEOPLE AROUND THE WORLD throughout the movie, and also, COLONIALISM! Yes, probably this one giant superpower has the only chance to fix the problem, because it STOLE ALL THE RESOURCES. I remember scientists around the world freaking out when Trump gutted the CDC years before corona showed up. Only a lot of them were worried about a flu pandemic. Hi ho.
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Date: 2022-01-03 08:39 pm (UTC)It's up to interpretation, of course, but I thought it was implied pretty heavily.
Aww, I didn't know that about the part. I was first kind of ehh about it because I thought Oh no, they might do the "there are no atheist scientists in foxholes" thing, but the movie was actually too smart for that. He's also the one person other than Mindy and Oglethorpe who treats Kate like she has value.
I thought they were going there too, but they were so deliberate about it. Like the way they framed him as explicitly lumpen proletariat, someone for whom the dominant culture has no regard, and he's very much a white, working class, religious man who would be very much looked down upon by the sort of liberal elite that people keep accusing the filmmakers of being. But no, he and Oglethorpe are the consistently ethical people in the movie.
(I was pleasantly surprised Oglethorpe didn't die before everyone else did, too.)
Right? I thought that too. I also suspect the framing was meant to highlight that he was specifically dying at the exact same time.
-- Oh yeah I also found it weird the critics are like "It's America's job to solve! All the other countries are ignored!" when there were actually a bunch of shots of OTHER PEOPLE AROUND THE WORLD throughout the movie, and also, COLONIALISM! Yes, probably this one giant superpower has the only chance to fix the problem, because it STOLE ALL THE RESOURCES. I remember scientists around the world freaking out when Trump gutted the CDC years before corona showed up. Only a lot of them were worried about a flu pandemic. Hi ho.
YES THIS.
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Date: 2022-01-03 04:03 pm (UTC)Delta CEO: sends actual letter to actual head of CDC telling them to cut the number of days in isolation because two thousand flights were getting cancelled a day and THE ECONOMY.
CDC: Okay!
Like, the film critics are saying "it was lent accidental relevancy by covid." It's not ACCIDENTAL. It's RELEVANT because this has been the approach to ALL disasters which even marginally threaten giant corporations' profits for decades.
https://news.delta.com/sites/default/files/2021-12/delta-letter-to-cdc-december-21-2021.pdf
https://www.npr.org/2021/12/29/1068731487/delta-ceo-asks-cdc-to-cut-quarantine
But even now it's not news? It's been true for two years that the "essential workers" can either choose between having a job or risking their lives. But now, it's just "get back to work, we don't care if your bodies pile up, we need to keep the profit engines running." It's amazing how open it all is. If you don't count the mainstream media.
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Date: 2022-01-03 05:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-01-07 09:20 pm (UTC)We watched the other night. I found it funny because it's accurate, and L found it not funny for the same reason.
I did derive extreme pleasure from the implied fate of Not!Elon and his cohorts.
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Date: 2022-01-07 09:27 pm (UTC)