mrbellamy

Maybe should be reiterated he only used Ross on the Star Wars films, while continuing to fly solo on BFG and The Post in between. He stopped working with Pope because he stopped needing anyone outside of the heavier workload with Star Wars. Who knows why he went with Ross to help out instead of Pope or Karam or you or me. Maybe Ross was better qualified in more areas. Maybe Ross has incriminating photographs.

The thing is that the guidelines represent the status quo in Hollywood already and will especially favor major studios who don’t actually have to do anything based on this. Indies lacking in internship programs and marketing/distribution arms will be more pressured to diversify the films themselves.

Agree, more or less.

I saw someone make the point that there’s no economic factor in the internships requirement and therefore, really, producers could recruit from their friends’ Beverly Hills High School buddies as long as a couple of them identify as bisexual. If they actually wanted to shake things up they could require kids from families making <$25k.

Even if you disagree, I don’t know why it would be baffling when it’s obviously the popular consensus. Unless you’ve been baffled for 12 years running.

Which is why I said coincidentally since it would be ridiculous to assume he’s doing this on purpose but just the fact that it keeps happening is annoying since I’d obviously like music from JW and Spielberg was until recently the only guarantee of anything. And I know West Side Story has become his pet thing but I mean, honestly, Steven. I’ll see it, anyway, hope it’s interesting enough.

I’d be curious to know what Best Picture nominated movies would have been deemed ineligible with this. It seems like you’d have to seriously go out of your way to hire exclusively white dudes at every single level. Movies like The Godfather and Amadeus don’t meet Standard A but have Standard B covered since they had women heading creative departments. The studios would have just had to meet C or D at the time so if they had some female interns and/or marketing execs then there you go. Perhaps not. These days I’d be surprised if studios aren’t meeting both groups of criteria so theoretically any movie’s cast and crew could still be a white sausage fest and get nominated. But isn’t this already pretty much considered the bare minimum? I’m skeptical their goal here was spurring change rather than just to cover their asses by putting it in writing.

For The Master??

I think he meant Elfman

Yeah but there’s still a lot of Marty in there, and plenty of Altman influence in Boogie Nights as well. I always think of them as sister films, plus with all those actors in common.

As movies, neither Bridge of Spies or RPO left me feeling like I missed out on guaranteed instant classic scores or anything. But I always want moar, of course, and they would have been up to his recent standards. It is irritating that Spielberg has this habit of coincidentally interfering with other JW prospects when he has a whole lot of nothing going on the rest of the time, except it’s biting him back now. And yes that he felt like he had to do West Side Story now when he could do literally anything else while Williams is around. Don’t care what happens with Indy if it’s not Williams. I hope he’ll do it but I feel more and more like he might just pass on it. But who knows, maybe he’ll be itching to finally get in front of an orchestra again, period, and have some more fun with his LA peeps.

I'm with Cremers that Punch-Drunk Love seems to resonate with me most as I go along, emotionally and aesthetically, which isn't how I used to feel. I've rewatched Boogie Nights, Magnolia, and There Will Be Blood in the last few years and I think all are still pretty great but Boogie Nights held up for me as the most enjoyable from those. I haven't rewatched Hard Eight/Sydney since seeing it but would like to do so at some point, don't remember it very well except for how some of the camerawork and staging in the casino scenes are heavy on Scorsese and anticipated Boogie Nights and Magnolia, stylistically. I think his last three are excellent, thoughtful films but not anything I would pop in casually, personally, and I feel like he's losing something in that way because he really can be such a showman. I think about some of his best setpieces like the deal gone wrong in Boogie Nights, the frogs in Magnolia, the derrick fire in There Will Be Blood and what a great action/suspense/spectacle director he could be if he wanted. He has those chops and he's become more contained but still one of a kind. I know whatever he does will be pretty much unlike anything else, especially now that he's shedding/obscuring his influences. I'm glad I read Inherent Vice before seeing the movie because I think I would have been lost. It's the only Pynchon I've read but I remember as an adaptation feeling like it was a good example of a movie evoking the sensibility, vibe, ethos of its novel. Binging PTA interviews at the time also helped me kinda get the gist of what the movie was doing. But on a certain level I feel like if it's not really communicating that on its own, devoid of context, then maybe it doesn't work as it should. That said there are beautiful standalone sequences, this one chief among them. I remember his interview on Marc Maron's WTF podcast at the time distilled it pretty well. The whole thing is a great listen, by the way, going through his life and career in a really casual and fun conversation, but I always think of a couple of those exchanges when considering the "point" of Inherent Vice.

After, I think. He was apparently diagnosed in 2016 which is the year Civil War came out.

Coogler’s statement saying he was “shielded from details” seemed to imply that he knew he had cancer but not much else. I don’t think he knew the extent of it, treatment etc. Spike Lee said he didn’t know at all.

I heard Angels before I was aware of The Natural and so that one did pretty much blow me away as a kiddo. Nice theme. Leave It To Beaver is another nostalgia sweet spot for me.