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MichaelB
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Re: The Long Goodbye

#51 Post by MichaelB » Thu Dec 12, 2013 9:46 am

And to prove that the film divides audiences to this day, here's Film Intel.

(Despite being headlined "Blu-ray review", it's entirely about the film itself - the disc doesn't even rate a passing mention.)

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matrixschmatrix
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Re: The Long Goodbye

#52 Post by matrixschmatrix » Thu Dec 12, 2013 10:06 am

I'll never understand reviews that just pick an aspect of a movie that's clearly part of the intended design (the tonal mismatch brought on by the inherent out of placeness of Marlowe in the 70s, with the attendant rather shocking turns from comedy to horror) and declare that a flaw, rather than actually arguing about whether it works or not.

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otis
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Re: The Long Goodbye

#53 Post by otis » Fri Dec 13, 2013 2:45 pm


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Re: The Long Goodbye

#54 Post by Yojimbo » Sat Dec 14, 2013 12:55 am

matrixschmatrix wrote:I'll never understand reviews that just pick an aspect of a movie that's clearly part of the intended design (the tonal mismatch brought on by the inherent out of placeness of Marlowe in the 70s, with the attendant rather shocking turns from comedy to horror) and declare that a flaw, rather than actually arguing about whether it works or not.
It works, and I love the Chandler novel: unquestionably his greatest.

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domino harvey
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Re: The Long Goodbye

#55 Post by domino harvey » Sat Dec 14, 2013 10:49 am

matrixschmatrix wrote:I'll never understand reviews that just pick an aspect of a movie that's clearly part of the intended design (the tonal mismatch brought on by the inherent out of placeness of Marlowe in the 70s, with the attendant rather shocking turns from comedy to horror) and declare that a flaw, rather than actually arguing about whether it works or not.
I don't understand, wouldn't picking on it indicate that aspect doesn't work for the reviewer? I like the film even less than the reviewer and I don't think his criticisms are particularly off-point or outrageous. I don't especially want to get into this in a thread filled with people who are foaming at the mouth over their effusive love of the film (and it's not like I'm immune to Gould-starring Altman, as I liked M*A*S*H and loved California Split and Nashville), but if you don't think Altman's approach to the material works, then that's indicative of a subjective flaw. Like, of course, right?

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matrixschmatrix
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Re: The Long Goodbye

#56 Post by matrixschmatrix » Sat Dec 14, 2013 3:29 pm

Hmm, I think it's that the way they're presented in the review makes it sound to me as though things that are clearly choices on Altman's part are accidental rather than part of the design of the film. I don't have an issue with not liking that design, but it comes off to me like someone pointing out as an obvious flaw that Breathless is full of jump cuts.

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repeat
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Re: The Long Goodbye

#57 Post by repeat » Sun Dec 15, 2013 3:57 am

matrixschmatrix wrote:I'll never understand reviews that just pick an aspect of a movie that's clearly part of the intended design (the tonal mismatch brought on by the inherent out of placeness of Marlowe in the 70s, with the attendant rather shocking turns from comedy to horror) and declare that a flaw, rather than actually arguing about whether it works or not.
Story of my life. I've found the "clearly" bit to be the stumbling block for many people, as also seems to be the case with that particular reviewer: it's just not "clear" to him at all what Altman is up to. The Long Goodbye is actually one of my favourite films and, seeing it misrepresented like that, I can't resist a little tangential trot on my favourite hobbyhorse:

Film tone. What the hell is it about this concept that seems so hard for some people to understand? Or, to put it more gently, why is it that there seems to be two types of moviegoers/critics/filmmakers: those who view tonal consistency as some unviolable sacred axiom of filmmaking, and those who don't (or even, like myself, often find it boring and are excited by successful intentional modulation of tone). Critics of the former ilk love to use the word (and expressions like "tone-deaf"), as if they sort of recognize what's going on, but instead of appreciating it, they treat it as evidence that the filmmaker obviously doesn't know what they're doing, as they can't even hold a consistent tone for 90 minutes. (I've seen more than my share of genuinely tone-deaf films, which is why it always amazes me for these people fail to differentiate between intentional tonal modulation and actual inability to handle tone).

Altman is an obvious example of a master manipulator of tone whose critical reception has always mirrored this division; other particularly divisive masters (and personal favourites) would be Kiyoshi Kurosawa and James L. Brooks. One of the great mysteries for me is how Bong Joon-ho (whom I also love) gets away with it with unanimous praise: has anyone ever seen a review of The Host accusing him of tone-deafness?

Edit: Pardon my ignorance, apparently it's one of those scriptwriting 101 things. This has got to be the funniest damn thing I've read in a while - this guy certainly nails it: "If you don’t get this right, you will feel an overwhelming sense of disappointment in your film, perhaps without even knowing why, and its marketability and commercial potential will be severely compromised." :D

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knives
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Re: The Long Goodbye

#58 Post by knives » Sun Dec 15, 2013 4:18 am

repeat wrote: One of the great mysteries for me is how Bong Joon-ho (whom I also love) gets away with it with unanimous praise: has anyone ever seen a review of The Host accusing him of tone-deafness?
I have, but the reviewer usually cancels it out with a racist, "That must be a Korean thing," every time. Also as Dom noted with regards to himself, and even Matrix notes, these tonal shifts in the Altman are able to be well criticized as not succeeding to make a functionable film (though that is not my own opinion).

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repeat
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Re: The Long Goodbye

#59 Post by repeat » Sun Dec 15, 2013 4:24 am

Oh yeah, of course they are in all of those people's films - but what functions for each of us is so subjective it shouldn't be the stuff of critical reviews at all. To me ignorance of something so basic as this just functions to reveal the worthlessness of a critic. (Edit: That came out a bit harsh - just meant that personally I tend to ignore personal "reviews" in favour of more critical analyses, unless I'm somehow passionately interested in the reviewer themselves)

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Re: The Long Goodbye

#60 Post by Jack Phillips » Sun Dec 15, 2013 8:57 am

Edit: Pardon my ignorance, apparently it's one of those scriptwriting 101 things. This has got to be the funniest damn thing I've read in a while - this guy certainly nails it: "If you don’t get this right, you will feel an overwhelming sense of disappointment in your film, perhaps without even knowing why, and its marketability and commercial potential will be severely compromised." :D
Here's what I find really funny: "Tone is difficult to define, but it will click eventually. It is related to mood and style, but there is more to it than that. The best way to describe it is by saying that a film’s tone is essentially its flavor." So, tone = flavor? Yeah, thanks. Why not tone = hue? Tone = aroma?
Tone = the squishy feel of something you just stepped in?

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repeat
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Re: The Long Goodbye

#61 Post by repeat » Sun Dec 15, 2013 10:34 am

His introduction of the culinary metaphor also invites a rather unfortunate comparison of the "marketable" movie to a full course dinner where everything tastes consistently the same for two hours straight. Actually when I got to the James Cameron bit I honestly thought for a sec that this must be a mischievous parody of those Hollywood screenwriter handbooks...

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domino harvey
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Re: The Long Goodbye

#62 Post by domino harvey » Sun Dec 15, 2013 10:42 am

It is possible to be perfectly aware of what Altman is doing and still find the final product awful. Don't assume that someone who dislikes a film you love is just ignorant-- based on this approach, the film is infallible and incapable of being criticized (if you don't like it, you don't "get" it), which is the opposite of the serious approach to film you seem to desire

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repeat
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Re: The Long Goodbye

#63 Post by repeat » Sun Dec 15, 2013 11:05 am

No, I don't mean that - like matrixschmatrix above, I don't have a beef with anyone having a different taste, but that sort of thing doesn't make for very valuable criticism when you're actually writing a review like that. A critic who is perfectly aware of how the film is working should be able to write about it in an articulate way and still, if they feel compelled to, add as a side note that it rubs them the wrong way personally, without presenting that as a flaw in the film (like I think that reviewer was doing - although I've certainly seen worse.) Didn't mean to derail this thread.

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Mr Sausage
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Re: The Long Goodbye

#64 Post by Mr Sausage » Sun Dec 15, 2013 2:33 pm

Am I right in assuming that what's rubbing people the wrong way is the writer's assumption that the movie is only the way it is--or could only be the way it is--because Altman was trying to do something more orthodox and simply failed at it? That the author isn't assessing whether the concept behind the movie is done well, he's assuming that there is no such concept, that the peculiar style could only be poor filmmaking?

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matrixschmatrix
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Re: The Long Goodbye

#65 Post by matrixschmatrix » Sun Dec 15, 2013 3:01 pm

That was what I was trying to get at, yeah. There are certainly any number of movies that intentionally deviate from the Syd Field approved filmmaking style in ways that I find irritating as hell, and certainly intending to do something dumb doesn't mean that it's above criticism- but it always just feels lazy when it's critiqued specifically for its deviation rather than any actual failure of execution.

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repeat
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Re: The Long Goodbye

#66 Post by repeat » Sun Dec 15, 2013 3:41 pm

That was my point as well: false expectations or genre and/or tone - and when the filmmaker is explicitly manipulating those, the result gets bashed by critics of a certain mindset. "I went to see this thriller and it wasn't at all suspenseful." And that's exactly what happens when people think that Altman is trying to do a neo-noir and fails, or that Brooks is trying to do a rom-com and fails, or that Kurosawa is trying to do horror and fails, or, you know, Cristi Puiu is trying to make a thriller and fails, whatever. (Can you believe this film? It's supposed to be a thriller and it's three hours of some guy walking left and right?). I'm not criticizing that casual moviegoers do this, it's inevitable, especially if you work in/near a genre. All I'm saying is that professional critics really should know better.

It would've been perfectly possible for that Film Intel guy to write effectively the same review but better, if he would've just considered that everything he thought was wrong about the film just might be there on purpose, and think about it a bit to see if there isn't maybe a consistency to it, maybe read a little bit on Altman to try and contextualize it against his other works, and maybe find out something. And what's best, he still could have told the world that he doesn't much care for that sort of filmmaking personally.

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Re: The Long Goodbye

#67 Post by MichaelB » Sun Dec 15, 2013 4:45 pm

AVForums rather likes it.

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zedz
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Re: The Long Goodbye

#68 Post by zedz » Sun Dec 15, 2013 10:37 pm

matrixschmatrix wrote:Hmm, I think it's that the way they're presented in the review makes it sound to me as though things that are clearly choices on Altman's part are accidental rather than part of the design of the film. I don't have an issue with not liking that design, but it comes off to me like someone pointing out as an obvious flaw that Breathless is full of jump cuts.
My favourite example of this was a reviewer (more than one, if I recall correctly) patronizingly scoffing at Do the Right Thing because the quotations that close the film contradicted one another - and clearly Lee didn't even notice this obvious flaw.

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Re: The Long Goodbye

#69 Post by repeat » Mon Dec 16, 2013 6:34 am

david hare wrote:As I said, this online review is really irrelevant because it simply doesn't recongnize a single important element of what the picture is doing. As for its complete neglect of the disc quality, well...
I don't want to pounce on that guy personally as the review isn't really below the standards of what is commonly accepted as "criticism" on the internets (and besides, he only ever promised "occasional added intelligence"!) - but what makes this doubly ironic is that for the missing context and background information he wouldn't have had to look any further than Arrow's plentiful extras, which he also entirely neglects to mention.

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Re: The Long Goodbye

#70 Post by adavis53 » Tue Dec 17, 2013 2:19 pm

By the way does anyone happen to know what the situation is with the US distribution of this film? Is the MGM dvd the only way to get it for the foreseeable future?

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Re: The Long Goodbye

#71 Post by MichaelB » Tue Dec 17, 2013 3:19 pm

MGM owns it, so the ball's in their court.

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EddieLarkin
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Re: The Long Goodbye

#72 Post by EddieLarkin » Sun Dec 29, 2013 1:33 pm


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Altair
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Re: The Long Goodbye

#73 Post by Altair » Tue Dec 31, 2013 7:25 am

The Long Goodbye (Altman/73)

"And I even lost my cat."

Robert Altman's deconstruction of Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe by placing him in a strange, bizarre environment, LA of the seventies, is an excellent film, probably the best that I've seen from Altman. As an adaptation of the source novel, it of course fails, as it intends to, for as ever with this director, character takes precedence over plot. While on paper, apart from the updated setting, it might sound fairly faithful, the elimination of characters, the reducing in importance of others, and the final inversion of the novel's original climax serves to underline that the now much reduced, actually quite straightforward plotting is really only there so Altman can explore this man Marlowe. Aided by a superb Elliot Gould in his best performance, he gets under the skin of him, the mess of contradictions that define him and his resolute refusal to change with the times, leading him ultimately to failure (it's hard to see the finale as a triumph for him). His "other time" characterisation results him in being the only moral person in the film, Altman using Marlowe's utter disbelief at what the world has become to also transform into a critical commentary of America during this time period, a world populated by Terry Lennoxes and Marty Augustines (Mark Rydell whose shocking "That's someone I love. You, I don't even like." scene is the most powerful in the picture).

Vilmos Zsigmond's unique cinematographic appearance, all diffuse, soft lighting, that looks "blown out" is incredible and gives it a haze of the past, as if it were Marlowe's sleepy, laidback "It's okay with me" view of life that we're seeing. Yet it would be wrong to deny
that it's a perfect film; the friendship with Lennox that the film pivots is never established very convincingly. It's hard to see this Marlowe liking the sleazy Californian charm of Terry Lennox (Jim Boulton) here, and Nina Van Pallandt, while not as bad as I feared, doesn't stand up to roaring Sterling Hayden as the alcoholic writer Roger Wade or Gould himself. Still, these unbalances don't sabotage the film, and while I'm far from an Altman fan, this is certainly one of the essential American films from the seventies, in a decade full of them.

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Re: The Long Goodbye

#74 Post by FrauBlucher » Thu Jan 02, 2014 6:52 am


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MichaelB
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Re: The Long Goodbye

#75 Post by MichaelB » Sat Jan 04, 2014 6:06 am

It's not online (unless you're a digital subscriber), so I can't link to it, but Kim Newman has written a marvellous four-page piece on the film in the current (February 14) Sight & Sound, setting Altman's film in a context that spans Raymond Chandler's novels to the BBC's Sherlock and challenging quite a few critical clichés along the way. Since I've been spending the past month reading many of those clichés being rehashed (while wondering if anyone has anything original to say about the film any more), it was particularly refreshing reading.

Amongst Newman's many observations is the fact that not only was Altman's film not the first Chandler adaptation with a contemporary setting, but just two of nearly 100 pre-1950s Sherlock Holmes adaptations were actually set in Victorian London - something that's easy to forget, since their present-day settings have now become "period" with the passage of time. And I also liked his comment that it's ironic that Altman's film features Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jaws screenwriter Carl Gottlieb and a John Williams score, since these three would go on to play a major role in changing the shape of Hollywood and ensuring that films as wayward as The Long Goodbye would quickly become almost impossible to fund, at least by a major studio.

And I was very pleased to see that The Long Goodbye came in at no. 51 on DVD Beaver's DVDs and Blu-rays of the year list - no mean feat for a region-locked disc that only came out three weeks ago.

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