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Steve Holt as A SERIOUS MAN decided to be THE INFORMANT upon UP IN THE AIR of The Toronto Film Festival!!
Hey folks, Harry here with a report from the dashing young Steve Holt and his thrilling adventures in the fabulously international metropolis known as Toronto and its recent soiree that they call a Film Festival. I loved THE INFORMANT - and I've nearly no doubt that I'm a future lover of A SERIOUS MAN and UP IN THE AIR! As I'm sure you will be as well. Here ya go...
Hey Harry
TIFF 09 this year has been dynamite as usual. You cant wander the streets of downtown Toronto without seeing a celebrity of some kind. Me and my buddy were even followed for 2 blocks by Megan Fox and her boyfriend!!!! But enough about that. You want to know about what I saw!!!
The Informant!
This is Stephen Soderbergh's return to populist cinema after Che and The Girlfriend Experience.
Matt Damon, about 30 lbs above normal, plays a whistle blower for a company that produces glucinate, a corn based extract that apparently is used in just about everything. He feels there is something rotten with the way his company is conducting business so he enlists the aid of the FBI. From this basic synopsis things spiral out of control to a point that everything from there on in is breeded by an elaorate web of lies. Seems a kind of boring topic for a movie but it's told by Soderbergh in Ocean's 11 mode so it's filled with odd ball characters and even odder scenarios.
I dont think I've seen Matt Damon put in a better performance. He's essentially taken his character from The Talented Mr Ripley, completely chubbed him out, added a really bad hair piece, and injected him with a whacked out personality disorder. It's a hilarious performance that demands notice. The subject matter was inherently dry, but with the constant, stream of consciousness voiceover by Damon, it was made to be interesting and hilarious. Everyone else in the movie have to be praised for playing off of Damon's eccentric quirks, especially Scott Bakula and Melanie Lynsky. It's certainly a fun movie born out of a really dry topic and I think will have a lot of people laughing.
A Serious Man
Ok, so the Coen Brothers followed No Country For Old Men with the piece of fluff know as Burn After Reading. I say fluff as the subject matter wasn't as weighty as its predecessor, however I found Burn After Reading to be consistently funny and interesting. I thought they would follow that up by going back to some serious subject matter. Errrrr....no...I was wrong. They followed it up with what I see as a 60's Jewish fable that I think would be best enjoyed if you were "of the faith". Don't get me wrong, there were some really funny scenes but I think that's all it seemed to be. A series of amusing set pieces held together by some observation on Jewish faith. And not being very familiar with the customs of that faith it left me a little cold. I'm sure a good chunk of the audience I saw it with on premiere night must of been Jewish because they seemed to lap it up but I just didn't get it. There were isolated funny scenes, especially involving the main character and his stoned, horny next door neighbor, but I found the overall tone of the movie uninvolving. And don't get me going on the ending. If you thought the end of No Country For Old Men was baffling, wait til you get a hold of this.
Up In The Air
Right. I'm going to go out on a limb. Best movie of the festival. Ok, I'm going to go further out on that tree branch. Best picture of the year!!!!!!!!! This movie affected me that much. It was out right hilarious, it was touching, it provoked feelings in me that wanted to make me immediately hug my wife afterwards, which unfortunately is not possible as she is out of town until later this week. This movie is built on two things, great performances and a pitch perfect script to solicit those performances. The dialogue in this is pure gold!!!!!!! A little synopsis? George Clooney plays a guy who has to travel around the country to different companies, firing people on behalf of people that are too chickenshit to do it themselves. Scenario seem a little weak? It's not!!!! What this basic storyline milks about basic human nature and the state of the current economy speaks volumes. Clooney puts in, bar none, the best performance of his career, and that's saying a lot. It's a character that on the surface you should probably despise, but you absolutely do not. He's a guy that is just simply good at what he does and loves what he does for the perks that it bears forth. I wont say anything more than that because I don't want to spoil it, but I think it's one of the best characters to come around in awhile. Every single supporting character I think is also flawless. Everyone from Vera Farmiga, who essentially plays Clooney's female counterpart, to JK Simmons and Zach Galifianakis who have cameos as fired employees. I think you should essentially discover it for yourself without me delving into too much detail. I promise you it's not going to end the way you think and I guarantee you will be reevaluating the way interact with others afterwards.
If you use this, you can call me STEVE HOLT!!!!
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interesting than that! Jeez!
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The fact that this one has another confounding ending makes me even more excited. No Country's ending makes sense if you liked the movie enough to really examine it.
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The trailer for this new movie just didn't work at all for me. I hope it's not too indicative of the movie.
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Is this reviewer an idiot? Yes, the whole audience was Jewish that's why they enjoyed the movie. What a tool. OR...maybe they have brains and can enjoy movies that deal with people of a different faith. Anyway, I read the script and the movie doesn't deal seriously with faith at all. It's about a modern day Job who is being tortured by life - which applies to much of the Coens' work. I also read Up In The Air and in the final analysis it's pretty superficial - well-written but as deep as a bottle cap. So of course he loves that one. The guy is an idiot.
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He was baffled by No Country For Old Men. I-D-I-O-T.
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Amazing.
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http://tinyurl.com/ogyrxj
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I don't think you're an idiot. I thought they were fairly well written capsule reviews. Rebeck2 on the other hand...
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http://tinyurl.com/p75e7t
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it will be fucking fantastic, and maybe the weirdest Coen bros since Barton Fink.
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Use wikipedia and it's links, you will get the info you need. Isn't the internet wonderful? No excuse to invoke ignorance anymore.
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After the trailer, i can't wait! Total must see.
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You might not like the ending, you might not think it works (legitimate points that I would disagree with) but to not GET the ending?
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Sep 14, 2009 5:55:21 AM CDT
Enough with these fucking articles titles
by guy who got a headache and accidentally
Why do you enjoy perpetuating cliches so much?
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Why do people always bring this up and act like it's the Coen brothers doing? For some fucking reason, no dumbasses were asking if The Road film was going to have a real ending, yet back when Burn After Reading was coming out every internet jackass without the ability to reason independently was all "SO IS THIS GOING TO HAVE A REAL ENDING?" I guess that'd be why they're dumbasses though.
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If you bothered to properly read my review before calling me an IDIOT then you would have found that I didnt say that I found the ending of No Country.. baffling. I said if people in general found it baffling then they will probably feel the same for A Serious Man. I found the ending of No Country.. fine but it still doesnt mean that I liked the ending for A Serious Man. Try interpreting what you read before going off and insulting people in talkbacks.
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Best film of the year? It's not even the best film I've seen in the last two days.
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Don't answer to it, or it'll try even harder.
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I found 'Up in the Air' to be incredibly commercial. In other words, everything doesn't happen for a reason. Nor does it happen organically. It happens because it needs to happen to get the story from point A to point B. So it never really feels like anything is at stake. The ending is a foregone conclusion, because he makes it very clear everything is already mapped out. And the device of talking to people losing or having just lost their jobs was smarter, deeper and more insightful than the rest of the movie deserved.
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It's one of the elements that make that movie so great. For once, the oscars got it right.
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Everything's going to be fine.
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don't engage the talkbackers....trust me.just step away...
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there will be blood for the win! i guarantee that if the coens name was attached to twbb and pta had directed ncfom, then twbb would have won a butload of oscars... as the coens are such critical darlings
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In fact, I'd argue that the Coen brothers are the polar opposite of Jason Reitman. They refuse to spoonfeed their audience, while Reitman insists on it. It's like he's sitting next to you, constantly elbowing you in the side and whispering "Did you get that? You got that, right?"
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It's Steve Holt! (Exclamation points matter)
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a review coming from a total moron calling a good movie not so good to me means the movie is probably really good.
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Not funny enough to be a comedy, not substantial enough for a drama and far less clever than it thinks it is. In short, Steven Soderbergh has made a Wes Anderson movie.
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Sep 14, 2009 3:16:54 PM CDT
There Will Be Blood and No Country For Old Men, both are brillan
by asimovlives
There Will Be Blood and No Country For Old Men, both are brillant. Any of the two movies could had won the oscar, and i would had been as happy as a clam. Any of those two winning would had been pure justice. No Country For Old men winning in no way diminishes the quality of There Will Be Blood. And There Will Be Blood's quality doesn't diminish the qulity of No Country For Old Men.In short, both movies are excelent, and beyond silly to try to have a feud between the two. It's totqlly possible to love both equally. I should know.
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Looks like shit, it looks like Fight Club for older people.
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I don't know about you, but that sounds AWESOME, not like shit.
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With an "e" like "key" as in "This girl has the key to my heart." That's how it's spelled. That is all.
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...holds up better than BURN AFTER READING.
(SPOILERS) In my opinion, the film ended up in a severe nose dive when the closet door opened and George Clooney emptied his gun into Brad Pitt's face. Not even the best efforts of J.K. Simmons, Carter Burwell and Clooney (in his subsequent freak-out scene) could pull it up. -
Anderson always seems to reach for the Oscar and the Coens just make the movie "they" want to make and it just so happens to almost always be amazing. No Country is better than There Will be Blood because....it never once misstepped. No sound > radiohead guy. Up In the Air will just serve as the launching pad for The Men Who Stare at Goats and Clooneys Oscar
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