1101 Uncut Gems

[Never Cursed]

My guess is probably for the same reason Birdman was kept out of Original Score: the use of a large number of already extant songs alongside the score. This category is something that both the Academy and adjacent people/institutions have been extremely fussy about (see: the colossally overblown controversy over The Artist's use of a single existing song in its Oscar-winning score).

[therewillbeblus]

I seem to remember Inception being even more ridiculous with Zimmer only using one note from the Piaf song causing it to become ineligible.

[Dylan]

I seem to remember Inception being even more ridiculous with Zimmer only using one note from the Piaf song causing it to become ineligible.

Inception was nominated for Best Original Score, but it didn't win.

[therewillbeblus]

Okay good, I remember it being a silly debate

[The Elegant Dandy Fop]

I can’t imagine the bleeps and bloops of Oneohtrix Point Never being given an Academy Award. It’s of course far more sedate than his other earlier work (compare it to the opening track of Returnal), but like so much about this movie, it seems like its done as a reaction against the standards of contemporary filmmaking. I’m sure the songs will effect the film as there are large passages without score and there’s a few cues where he’s blatantly riffing on Tangerine Dream and especially Geinoh Yamashirogumi’s score for Akira. If any film is going to win best score, I see it easily going to Marriage Story.

[Big Ben]

I can’t imagine the bleeps and bloops of Oneohtrix Point Never being given an Academy Award. It’s of course far more sedate than his other earlier work (compare it to the opening track of Returnal), but like so much about this movie, it seems like its done as a reaction against the standards of contemporary filmmaking. I’m sure the songs will effect the film as there are large passages without score and there’s a few cues where he’s blatantly riffing on Tangerine Dream and especially Geinoh Yamashirogumi’s score for Akira. If any film is going to win best score, I see it easily going to Marriage Story.

Okay so I feel ever so slightly vindicated by this post because sitting in the theater I could have sworn I was actually hearing pieces of Akira's score.

[flyonthewall2983]

It felt less bleep-bloopy to me than Good Time, but no more than The Social Network which did win an Oscar. More movies need saxophones in their scores.

[whaleallright]

IIRC the score to The Social Network was much less obtrusive, though; even if the formal materials were unusual for mainstream movies, the function of the score was fairly familiar. The Lopatin score for Uncut Gems often seems to be aggressively antipathetic and discordant—working against the emotional grain of the scene, commenting on rather than underlying an emotion salient in the drama. (In this way it reminded me of some of Jonny Greenwood's scores.) I liked it a ton, but I'd be surprised if enough Academy voters—on average, a pretty conservative bunch—agreed.

[flyonthewall2983]

Daniel Lopatin and Josh Safdie on the score. Is Josh a musician?

[flyonthewall2983]

I seem to recall that b/c Sandler is contracted to Netflix, the deal set up for this picture gave Netflix foreign distribution rights, hence the "premiere" on that service outside the US...

An official Netflix Twitter account said today this will premiere in the US shortly after

[mfunk9786]

Surely to stem the tide of piracy the moment it goes up on services internationally

[Clarence]

Safdie brothers release new short film “Goldman v Silverman” starring Adam Sandler.

[domino harvey]

Basically an old school UCB NYC prank without a punchline

[mfunk9786]

Blu-ray coming March 10th, surprisingly thin on bonus features:

• "Money on the Street: The Making of Uncut Gems" Featurette

• Optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles for the main feature

UHD Digital release date is February 25th at a $14.99 price point.

[Oedipax]

Ugh, I hope there'll be a UHD disc as well. A shame if it's digital only.

[dwk]

Since it is a Lionsgate release of an A24 title, count yourself lucky it isn't a BD-R.

[mfunk9786]

Yeah, no UHD release. Despite several (most?) A24 films getting UHD digital releases, none have gotten a UHD disc except Moonlight.

Would actually love to see Criterion follow this model for the Criterion Channel - if a film has materials worthy of it, put out a UHD stream there, and then go right ahead and eschew the disc format all you want. Capping a stream at 1080p makes no sense in this day and age if materials exist for a higher resolution.

[Ribs]

The Witch was also released!

[mfunk9786]

The Witch was also released!

Oh yeah! Hilariously, I might add, that has a UHD disc but the code within only redeems an HD digital copy - there's no UHD digital version of The Witch. Lionsgate, baby! I'm sure A24 is thrilled every day that they entered into that agreement.

[chucktatum]

Also Hereditary and Ex Machina.

It's looking like these previous four titles are all we'll get from A24 on UHD disc, considering The Lighthouse and Midsommar went to Blu-ray only.

[cpetrizzi]

This is a phenomenal picture, and the thing that propels it above tentpoles of this milieu like The Gambler (my personal favorite representation of gambling addiction on screen) or Hard Eight is the propulsive approach to the filmmaking, which immediately manages to put the Safdies in the short list of the most exciting filmmakers alive - something I didn't expect this quickly if ever. Good Time was a good film that never quite lived up to the level of tension it could have delivered, so I expected that this could be similarly deliberate (the middle of that film, with Pattinson laying low, and the penultimate sequence in the apartment, are just a bit too inert for what they could have been had the plot packed on a few more surprises).

So imagine my thrill when it turned out that Uncut Gems feels a bit like being waterboarded, the level of second-hand stress sometimes seeming capable of making a sphygmomanometer explode. What the Safdies do so well outside of stellar NYC casting choices is create both small and large moving pieces early on that later pop up like whack-a-moles - "did Howard pawn X to Y? Who's that guy, and why does he need that back? Oh MAN, I remember... oh no!" - all of this has a cumulative effect that takes the viewer way down into the shit, and when the final artistic flourish occurs it feels like that "when you nut and she keeps sucking" meme (sorry, it isn't the most highbrow thing I've ever committed to this forum, but it does), and I left the theater vibrating like a tuning fork. A film I cannot wait to rewatch 100 times between now and the time my life becomes unprofitable. Who knew this decade was going to save one of its best for last?

I'm late to the Safdie party but glad I finally made it! I finished Good Time and saw Uncut Gems the following evening. I'm right there with mfunk and give it a 10/10 after a single viewing. Usually I need a few weeks to ruminate about a movie to turn it over in my head multiple times to call it a masterpiece. But there's something about UG that promotes it to the top of the list for me. I might need a few more viewings to understand why.

Another great point you made was the overall "stress" level effect throughout the film. It doesn't quite crescendo like most films; the effect is upon us the entire time. I feel like a lot of this was produced with the musical score, the harsh tones, and "grating" sounds, like fingernails across a black board. I didn't have too much trouble with following the plot, it seems to have organically unfolded throughout the movie. Jumping around quickly, I thought Sandler was terrific. However, his emotional crying bit near the end didn't resonate well with me. I guess it was suppose to be his "low" before his "high," so I get it. To me Sandler does somber well, just not sadness.

[mfunk9786]

Out on Netflix internationally (in over 50 languages, per the Safdies) tomorrow. Streaming for pay (iTunes, etc) on 2/25, not on Netflix in the U.S. until summer.

[Oedipax]

I don't get why Netflix wouldn't put it up in the U.S. as well at the same time, it'll hit backchannels immediately either way.

[knives]

Because they don't have the rights to.

[Oedipax]

Yeah I get that they split the rights between A24 domestically / Netflix internationally, I just mean making deals like this involving different release windows in the era of streaming seems like something that probably shouldn't continue for much longer.