wow, this is very interesting news. i've had a feeling this would hit big. loeb's script was most excellent. seeing it next week. i hope you didn't raise my expectations too high.

So you really hated Gone Baby Gone, huh?

Wells to alynch: I shouldn't trash "Gone Baby Gone" until I see it again. Even putting it that way is unfair. I didn't like some of it when I first saw it, but I need to go back and give it another shot.

Jeffrey, surely you've seen some of Susanne Bier's Danish dramas... why assume that it's Sam Mendes to do with the movie being as good as it is? (Yes, I've seen it) For all we know, he just found the script and got Susanne and the cast on board but to assume he was more involved seems like a backhanded compliment to this talented female director.

While I like Bier and the actors do their best, the script is ruthlessly conventional (The circumstances of Duchovny's death scene are so "fake movie noble man"), and I can't believe it was ever vaunted as one of the best unmade scripts out there. The scene where they keep underlining the point of the film's title...oof! We got it in the previous scene, kids! And Benicio's crazy instant-onset withdrawal just did not ring true to me.

It's certainly better than it could have been based on the elements attached, but Bier has a way of shooting that constantly searches for the unexpected moment in the frame, whether it's a hand gesture or a fluttering of eyelids. I wish the script was as truthful and curious as she is.

This is exactly why I never read scripts before watching a movie because you've already made your opinion on this movie, James, and probably won't give it a chance because of your expectations. The film's title reference is mentioned exactly twice in the movie... (SPOILERS I GUESS)

when she tells Jerry that they have a garage where he can live and during a dinner scene towards the end.

A lot can be done from the script stage to the final edit...things change in rehearsals, on set, in post-production and even after test screenings... and I'm amazed how many comments are being made on these boards about how movies with great scripts (that they haven't seen but only read) must in turn be great... or bad, for that matter. I'm assuming a lot of the posters aren't paid critics but I'd guess that those who do it professionally don't read the script before seeing the movie.

BTW, I Emailed our pal Tom earlier that Benicio is going to be one of the five actors nominated ... I'll put that in writing right here for anyone to hold against me if I'm wrong, but I don't think I will be.

Del Toro is very good in the film, but I have to respectfully disagree on just about every other point of Wells', esp. the high praise for Berry, who's playing a one-note rag I found hateful almost from the beginning (despite her loss). As for the kids -- way too cute, with hair way too distracting. (It took me awhile to figure out the boy was actually a boy.) Grief and grieving are difficult subjects, but this movie is nowhere NEAR the class of "Ordinary People" or, especially, "In the Bedroom." If this is Bier's best effort I won't bother seeing her other movies.

Wow, that's exciting stuff.

I knew I should have caught this back in January. Can't wait for my second chance. Hope this comes by Austin relatively soon.

Wells to Price: "Fire" screened last January in Austin?

Thanks, EDouglas, but I actually have seen the movie and that's what my opinion is based on. I had not read the script beforehand, so I'm talking about what is on-screen.

The dinner scene you mention is the "prior scene" I'm referring to as having established the title -- the moment in the film where anyone breathing "gets what it means" -- that is immediately followed by another scene with just Benicio and Halle where she reiterates everything we just heard AGAIN, actually SAYING the title, and underlining the concept that we just got. I think that's indicative of the script as a whole (less would have been more), and though Bier is a restrained presence, she can't work miracles.

Wells, who would you consider to be the other four or five Superman actors working today? I certainly agree that Del Toro is among them, and now I'm eagerly looking forward to this one!

Wells:
The true controversy of this project is why the title was changed from:

LET'S GET THE FUCK OF OUT PORTLAND

As Jerry states on page 104.

Wells is on spot about Gone.
Blows.

Wells:

This is LIFETIME MOVIE.

Larry Manetti should be the husband that dies for Cold Stone.

C'mon dude.

Your American Gangster review is losing credit if you like this shit.

I am pretty sure poland really liked the film. If I remember correctly he had Del Toro and Berry towards the top of his oscar choices in the last gurus, and also had it as a possible BP contender on his last charts. Maybe he was just speculating but it seemed like he had seen it.

James, oh, you're right... that scene after the dinner one where she reiterates the title with the list was a bit off, but it was just one moment and it probably was to help those who still don't understand the title after it's explained earlier. Remember, we're dealing with a society that made The Game Plan #1 two weeks in a row.

EDouglas
LET'S GET THE FUCK OF OUT PORTLAND

is the TITLE

Wells to Malibugigolo: I'm not sure if I'm getting the gist or following the thread correctly, but the film is set in Seattle and was shot in Vancouver. And don't flatter the Lifetime folks so much. They'd like to be able to make something this good, but it doesn't seem within their grasp. If it was, they wouldn't be the Lifetime channel. You don't seem to understand what a tower of power Susanne Bier has become over the last five years. She's not just this "talented" Danish director. Every film she makes has a current that probes and runs deep. She understands families, and how vulnerable the family dynamic can be. She's dwelling & coming these days from a kind of Bergmanesque place (i.e., not where he was in the '50s and early '60s, but where he was from the late '60s to late '70s...something like that).

I didn't realize that she directed "Brothers". That suddenly makes me feel a whole lot better about this movie. That said, the trailer looks awful!!!

And the following comment upthread by James Leer:

"The dinner scene you mention is the "prior scene" I'm referring to as having established the title -- the moment in the film where anyone breathing "gets what it means" -- that is immediately followed by another scene with just Benicio and Halle where she reiterates everything we just heard AGAIN, actually SAYING the title, and underlining the concept that we just got."

That don't-trust-the-audience-and-explain-every-theme-like-we're-retarded filmmaking bullshit is just the sort of thing I'd expect from the movie based on that awful trailer!

Wells has pretty good taste and is usually pretty spot on, but I'm wondering if perhaps he was just feeling very receptive and emotionally available when he watched this. It's happened to me before - I watch a piece of pure melodramatic SHIT and for reasons having nothing to do with its quality (or more acuurately lack thereof) it just hits me. Could that have happened to Wells here? Because again, let me stress, the trailer for this movie is AWFUL!!!!!!

Wells to OddDuck: We've all noticed disconnects between trailers and the movies they're trying to sell. It's a fairly standard attitude among marketers to sell elements they think will work with audiences, with little or no regard for what the movie actually is, or how it plays or cajoles or seduces. But even in this bizarre realm, the disconnect between the "Things We Lost in the Fire" trailer and the film itself is...well, close to stunning. It's disturbing, actually. I re-watched the trailer yesterday and while it's obviously composed of "Fire" clips, the soul, mood and tone of Bier's film is not only unrepresented -- it's not even alluded to.

My goodness, Wells, that was some of the best, most persuasive writing I've seen from you on the site. I quit reading 1/3 of the way in because I like to be surprised by films, but your description of a man on traveling the road to redemption...I'm there!

ORDINARY PEOPLE was brilliant in a CATCHER IN THE RYE sort of way. I loved it because it wasn't SUBTLE or possessed SHADES OF GREY. When Timothy Hutton or Mary Tyler Moore starts telling people off--that's when it got good. I can still hear Mary Tyler Moore screaming at Donald Sutherland on the golf course of a swanky Texan country club: "I don't know what people want from me anymore." Or Timothy Hutton when he screams at Mary Tyler Moore: "Well, go to your goddam Portugal or your goddam Spain." If THINGS WE LOST IN THE FIRE is half as good as ORDINARY PEOPLE, then I'll go see it.

The trailer is awful. But does anyone remember the trailer for FEARLESS? They made it look like a screwball comedy (lots of shots that made John Turturro and Isabella Rossellini look like they were bobblehead dolls.)

Thanks Wells. I had planned on skipping it after seeing the trailer, but you've piqued my interest.

Never judge a movie by its trailer unless the filmmaker had an active hand in making it. Nothing good can come of it. Either it will give away too much of the movie or it will totally lie and tell you the movie is something other than it is.

No offense to the fine, talented people who make them, but they're not to be trusted.

"down-heady"?