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One of the Academy Award frontrunners is “Boyhood,” a semi-autobiographical movie directed by Richard Linklater (“Dazed and Confused”) about growing up in Texas. It was shot a few days at a time over a dozen years, with the cast aging naturally.
It’s a cute concept and a nice movie, even if one lacking in incident. If I were running “Boyhood’s” PR campaign, I would get more people to write articles denouncing “Boyhood” for being about a white boy. The movie seems most interesting when it’s being attacked for what it is.
For example, from the Wall Street Journal:
What ‘Boyhood’ Shows Us About Girlhood
In Richard Linklater’s Oscar-nominated movie, a boy grows independent even as his sister loses her self-confidence
By SHARON MARCUS and ANNE SKOMOROWSKY
Updated Feb. 6, 2015 4:33 p.m. ET
The Oscars are coming, and Richard Linklater ’s “Boyhood,” already a critical favorite, is a contender for many of the big awards. As the title declares, the film is very much a boy’s coming-of-age story, but “Boyhood” is also about girlhood. Mason has a sister, Samantha, who grows up alongside him over the course of the 12 years it took to make the film.
Linklater cast his daughter as the boy’s older sister. Not surprisingly, at a very young age, Miss Linklater is already quite an entertainer. Initially, she distractingly overshadows the handsome little boy cast as the title character. As the years go by, however, the boy matures as an actor and can carry more of Linklater’s autobiographical movie.
For the first half of the film, as Mason dreams, Samantha competes with him. She dominates, teases and outperforms her younger brother (in reality, the actors playing the brother and sister were born only months apart). When Samantha first appears, she whizzes by Mason on her bike, calling him home for dinner. She taunts him by singing a Britney Spears song, speaking pig Latin and reminding him that he flunked first grade.
Even in early adolescence, Samantha remains outspoken, challenging her controlling stepfather about the pointlessness of dusting, worrying about her stepsiblings when he turns abusive and her mother flees the house.
But in the film’s last hour, Samantha starts to fade. Her speech and voice start to disintegrate audibly: She speaks less, signals uncertainty with the constant use of the filler phrase “I mean” and punctuates many of her statements with a nervous laugh. At Mason’s high school graduation party, she makes a toast only after being prompted to do so.
By contrast, as Mason gets older, he speaks in a loud, deep voice and expresses himself in well-formed sentences, unhampered by nervous tics and distracting phrases. The teenage Mason is full of ideas and grows in confidence with every passing year.
What explains these differences in their development?
Hormones?
Wrong!
Pivotal scenes in which adults confront each of them offer a key. In one, Mason’s photography teacher accuses him of laziness and gutlessness. “Who do you want to be, Mason? What do you want to do?” When Mason responds vaguely that he wants to make art, his teacher demands, “What can you bring to it that nobody else can?”
In an earlier scene, the mother confronts Samantha with a similar existential question after she has failed to pick Mason up after school: “Do you want to be a cooperative person, who is compassionate and helps people out? Or do you want to be a self-centered narcissist?”
Mason’s teacher pressures him to think about how he can express his individuality; Samantha’s mother offers a false choice: either help others or be an unlikable person. The boy is asked to take himself way too seriously, while the girl is chastised for a single instance of having put herself first. …
One of the achievements of “Boyhood” is to show us how girls are discouraged from putting themselves first. A boy can dream, the film suggests, but a girl…not so much.
—Dr. Marcus is professor of English and dean of humanities at Columbia University. Dr. Skomorowsky is an assistant professor of psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center.
But does she pull a Sofia Capollo?
Lorelei Linklater totally ruined the film for me because 1) she looked like she was high on drugs throughout the whole film and 2) she appeared as if she were adopted by Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette.
My daughters are half-Asian and they look more white than Lorelei Linklater does. Her role really damaged the documentary-like believability in my view.
The girls ran sewing machines until they figured running printing presses paid lots more and they could do it better than the boys. More sweat shops closed and more sweet shops opened. Such is business.
Writers stay free. http://curbed.com/archives/2015/02/04/ace-hotel-writers-residency.php
It is a miracle that NYT folks can even muster the courage and strength to get out of bed, let alone venture out into the big, bad world without a lot of help. Maybe we should increase our taxes to support them, or maybe not.
Meanwhile, real life somehow goes on every day outside Manhattan.
Steve, thoughts on Jupiter Ascending?
Have the Wachowski Siblings made a good movie since they stopped being the Wachowski Brothers?
I saw "Jupiter Ascending" on Sunday, and while its certainly not as good as "The Matrix (the original film, that is), or "V for Vendetta" (a very uneven film that is unquestionably excellent in some parts), its definitely not as bad as we're being told. My teenage son loved it, and I didn't regret seeing it either.
Yeah that’s what I was wondering. They’ve been making nothing but bombs for years now. The Matrix was almost 20 years ago. I don’t know how they get the studios to give them such huge budgets.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharon_Marcus
Photos of Ms Marcus, sure looks like she likes the being the center of attention.
https://www.google.com/search?q=SHARON+MARCUS&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=szHYVN7qBcyhgwTe8oK4CQ&ved=0CCcQsAQ
Photos of Ms SKOMOROWSKY
https://www.google.com/search?q=ANNE+SKOMOROWSKY&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=IjPYVPkayKM2uomCqAo&ved=0CC4QsAQ
http://www.slate.com/authors.anne_skomorowsky.html
What the hell Psychosomatic Medicine????
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychosomatic_medicine
Conclusion:
Two talentless angry lesbian Colombian University Jewish SJWs pissed that a successful male goyim from flyover country has written and directed an autobiographical movie that folks actually enjoy and can relate to.
Is anybody surprised??? The only question is why anybody should care about their nonsense whining????
Make your own dam movie or get me a sandwich!!!!
For 'women' are into girl power, they sure love to look like boys.
The sheer lack of conflict is what makes BOYHOOD such a dull movie.
DAZED AND CONFUSED is more special because of the conflicts between generations and subcultures.
The parents in DAC just don’t get it. And what the coach expects and what the kids wanna do are also in conflict. Though we know which side Linklater is on, he gives everyone his due.
But in BOYHOOD, who is the boy and who is the man? Ethan Hawke as the father is a perpetual kid, in some ways less mature than his little son. He’s like those X-ers who never grew past the age of 18 or maybe 21. It’s slacker parenting. So, we get permissiveness plus permissiveness. We also get Tolerance plus Tolerance. The mother is just another PC college professor. The father is an Obama supporter. An ‘anti-racist’. And of course, that’s the way it must be!!
DAC had different voices and attitudes. It even has nasty hazing. Unpleasant and something I don’t endorse, but it was a world of free speech and tough hides.
But the world of BOYHOOD is all sensitivity. Sure, some kids are bullies and use words like ‘fa**ot’, but it’s like everyone is on the same PC millennial wavelength. Kids are so free but they don’t seem rebellious or assertive. Indeed, their style of freedom has been pushed by their X-er parents who want to be ‘cool’ with the kids.
The one interesting scene in the movie was with the college professor stepfather who begins to lose it, turns alcoholic, and becomes abusive. Scary but there was real tension to the movie. And one wanted to know why and how he became like that. But the family just leaves him and we return to dullness and boredom.
Also, Linklater chose the wrong kid and was overly generous. He took a big risk by choosing some kid for the role. The kid might grow up to be interesting or boring, and the kid he chose turned out to be booooring. I fail to see how the sister is made to look worse later when he progressively grows duller in personality.
It’s pretty good I guess but I didn’t get anything from it. Tom Wolfe said fiction needs to record what is happening with real people in our times, and maybe Linklater is trying to do something like that. But I could have seen the stuff in BOYHOOD in any bunch of dumbass millennial youtube videos.
Also, it’s all about style than substance of character. Okay, the kid is creative and artistic. He likes to take pictures. But none of his creativity comes across. In one scene, we see him in the dark room developing film than working in the classroom. The character’s attitude toward the story is like that. He’s moping in his own darkroom of the mind than coming out and acting like a character we can care about. Unless he shows himself as a character, he is all about style–‘creative’ eccentric type–than substance as a human being with personality and dreams.
I think Linklater didn’t simply want to tell the kid what to do. He wanted to work with the kid and have the kid express himself in his own way. Well, he chose the wrong kid cuz this kid is dull, dull, and dull.
Linklater is a fine director but not much of a personality. And the characters he identifies most closely with tend to be lackadaisical and too laid-back. I love Pink in DAC, but if the movie were mainly about him, it’d be dead. It works because it has a great cast of colorful characters. Even the jerks–especially the jerks–make the film come alive. Ben Affleck as O’Bannion. Clint the bully. Also, I love how someone’s enemy is someone’s friend, and how a friend can be an enemy, and etc. It’s the strange social chemistry of high school where someone who is so cool with one bunch of guys can be so nasty with another bunch. Clint the bully gets along fine with Pink and the older guy(Matthew McConahey or something), but he’s nasty to the Jewish kid.
Because Linklater tends to identify with some rather bland character, he needs powerful personality to play off him. This is why ME AND ORSON WELLES works so well. The bland kid is played against the giant personality of Welles.
But in Boyhood, it’s just the boy moping around mostly.
In some ways, it’s good that Boomers and esp Gen Xers have been more tolerant and understanding of their kids. Unlike boomers who totally didn’t get their parents(as in All in Family), Xers and millennials grew up with post-60s rock culture. But, the downside is it’s too much like perpetual teens raising teens. Archie vs Meathead was so much more fun. Or Fred G. Sanford vs Lamont. Or the Mr. Roper guy vs Benjamin Braddock in THE GRADUATE. I love that scene.
When I first saw ALMOST FAMOUS, I really liked it. Then I thought about it and it sounded gooey. I recently saw it again and nearly puked. It’s just too feely good and groovy and ewww.
I want Archie Bunker and Slats Grobnik.
GONE GIRL is another style over substance movie. I mean will these idiots ever grow up? Amazing Amy indeed. GONE GIRLHOOD.
In the movie, the nutty woman says the Amazing Amy character took things further than the real Amy did. Real Amy got hurt in volleyball and quit. But Amazing Amy made varsity.
I got the feeling that the idiotess who wrote the novel used a similar logic. She used her sicko fictional character to do stuff that she dreams of but would never do. And her fantasies? Utterly trashy and moronic and narcissistic. All style.
These idiots need to grow up.
Still, GONE GIRL had me glued to the screen though I hated every minute of it.
BOYHOOD bored me mostly but I guess it’s a decent enough movie.
Well, at least it aint TREE OF LIFE. That was interminable and totally cuckoo.
Okay, the kid is creative and artistic. He likes to take pictures. But none of his creativity comes across.
In that scene where he's driving to college and he stops in the ghost town and takes a picture of a rusty old lantern, I thought, "That's the sort of cliche subject that photography teachers tell you to avoid."
Well, he chose the wrong kid cuz this kid is dull, dull, and dull.
I wonder about that too. In the photo of the young kid on the poster, he's a very good-looking kid. But as a teenager he was just schlumpy and not particularly interesting. I don't think he's destined for stardom. It's like in Harry Potter, they cast a girl as Ginny Weasley, Harry's love interest, and as the actress got older it was clear she had no screen presense whatsoever.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sh4FS8OOn3A
It is a very theistic piece of art, for sure.
"Boyhood" struck me as a very personal, intensely subjective (perhaps self-involved) nostalgia. Although I appreciate the craftsmanship that went into making it, I found all, I mean ALL, the characters totally unappealing (with the exception of the old, gun-toting Christian couple who became the in-laws of Ethan Hawke's character - I mean who doesn't like in-laws who give your son by another woman the family heirloom of a side-by-side shotgun?).
It’s amazing how many columnists for major newspapers and serious journals are what we would call “trolls.” That is, they make asinine, tendentious arguments for the sheer joy of knowing they are annoying people.
One of the things that’s amazing about the NY Times these days is that you look to the paid journalists for uniformed, emotion-laden, rigidly ideological writing, and then sift through the comment section to find fact-based, reasonable, even-handed responses.
It is amazing how often I see this throughout all media on the net nowadays.
I wonder if the journalists even read the comments anymore, because they are so often schooled by the commenters.
It may be selection bias (in fact, I am sure that it is), but it seems to me that PC articles and comments are the most thoroughly debunked.
Most of the people who write, produce, or edit the columns of the popular press live in such a bubble (in my opinion) that they do not even recognise that their "points" are irritating to most people. In fact, I strongly suspect that, aside from a few ignorant rubes in flyover country whom they vaguely are aware exist, they believe that everyone else shares their views.
Surely you've heard the decades-old joke about the 1972 election? Where two Upper East Siders are commiserating over the land-slide victory of Richard Nixon over McGovern? "How could Nixon have possibly won? I don't know anyone who voted for him."
The world starts on Park Avenue, and ends on Lexington. There's this rather odd, foreign country called "New Jersey," and even some lands rumoured to be beyond even that out-post. But it's "here be dragons" territory for sure.
These people have no clue - at all - what most Americans are actually thinking.
One might nitpick that they do not know, or do not think of themselves as, annoying people, but they sort of do know that they are annoying, they just don't think of it as annoying, they consider it educated or hip or New York or tolerant or whatever: the right side of history.
You mean “Sofia Coppola”? And yes. She did.
Lorelei Linklater totally ruined the film for me because 1) she looked like she was high on drugs throughout the whole film and 2) she appeared as if she were adopted by Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette.
My daughters are half-Asian and they look more white than Lorelei Linklater does. Her role really damaged the documentary-like believability in my view.
The movie is also semi-autobiographical for actor Ethan Hawke, who plays, more or less, his own father, an actuary in Texas. Linklater and Hawke have been making movies together for a long time.
Because the Matrix continues to make insane amounts of money. Last year Keanu Reeves made over $80 million, over half of which came from his Matrix deals.
https://www.google.com/search?q=SHARON+MARCUS&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=szHYVN7qBcyhgwTe8oK4CQ&ved=0CCcQsAQ
Photos of Ms SKOMOROWSKY
https://www.google.com/search?q=ANNE+SKOMOROWSKY&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=IjPYVPkayKM2uomCqAo&ved=0CC4QsAQ
http://www.slate.com/authors.anne_skomorowsky.htmlWhat the hell Psychosomatic Medicine????
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychosomatic_medicineConclusion:
Two talentless angry lesbian Colombian University Jewish SJWs pissed that a successful male goyim from flyover country has written and directed an autobiographical movie that folks actually enjoy and can relate to.
Is anybody surprised??? The only question is why anybody should care about their nonsense whining????
Make your own dam movie or get me a sandwich!!!!Replies: @Anonymous, @Priss Factor
I hope you like tuna – extra tuna – on rye.
DAZED AND CONFUSED is more special because of the conflicts between generations and subcultures.
The parents in DAC just don't get it. And what the coach expects and what the kids wanna do are also in conflict. Though we know which side Linklater is on, he gives everyone his due.
But in BOYHOOD, who is the boy and who is the man? Ethan Hawke as the father is a perpetual kid, in some ways less mature than his little son. He's like those X-ers who never grew past the age of 18 or maybe 21. It's slacker parenting. So, we get permissiveness plus permissiveness. We also get Tolerance plus Tolerance. The mother is just another PC college professor. The father is an Obama supporter. An 'anti-racist'. And of course, that's the way it must be!!
DAC had different voices and attitudes. It even has nasty hazing. Unpleasant and something I don't endorse, but it was a world of free speech and tough hides.
But the world of BOYHOOD is all sensitivity. Sure, some kids are bullies and use words like 'fa**ot', but it's like everyone is on the same PC millennial wavelength. Kids are so free but they don't seem rebellious or assertive. Indeed, their style of freedom has been pushed by their X-er parents who want to be 'cool' with the kids.
The one interesting scene in the movie was with the college professor stepfather who begins to lose it, turns alcoholic, and becomes abusive. Scary but there was real tension to the movie. And one wanted to know why and how he became like that. But the family just leaves him and we return to dullness and boredom.
Also, Linklater chose the wrong kid and was overly generous. He took a big risk by choosing some kid for the role. The kid might grow up to be interesting or boring, and the kid he chose turned out to be booooring. I fail to see how the sister is made to look worse later when he progressively grows duller in personality.
It's pretty good I guess but I didn't get anything from it. Tom Wolfe said fiction needs to record what is happening with real people in our times, and maybe Linklater is trying to do something like that. But I could have seen the stuff in BOYHOOD in any bunch of dumbass millennial youtube videos.
Also, it's all about style than substance of character. Okay, the kid is creative and artistic. He likes to take pictures. But none of his creativity comes across. In one scene, we see him in the dark room developing film than working in the classroom. The character's attitude toward the story is like that. He's moping in his own darkroom of the mind than coming out and acting like a character we can care about. Unless he shows himself as a character, he is all about style--'creative' eccentric type--than substance as a human being with personality and dreams.
I think Linklater didn't simply want to tell the kid what to do. He wanted to work with the kid and have the kid express himself in his own way. Well, he chose the wrong kid cuz this kid is dull, dull, and dull.
Linklater is a fine director but not much of a personality. And the characters he identifies most closely with tend to be lackadaisical and too laid-back. I love Pink in DAC, but if the movie were mainly about him, it'd be dead. It works because it has a great cast of colorful characters. Even the jerks--especially the jerks--make the film come alive. Ben Affleck as O'Bannion. Clint the bully. Also, I love how someone's enemy is someone's friend, and how a friend can be an enemy, and etc. It's the strange social chemistry of high school where someone who is so cool with one bunch of guys can be so nasty with another bunch. Clint the bully gets along fine with Pink and the older guy(Matthew McConahey or something), but he's nasty to the Jewish kid.
Because Linklater tends to identify with some rather bland character, he needs powerful personality to play off him. This is why ME AND ORSON WELLES works so well. The bland kid is played against the giant personality of Welles.
But in Boyhood, it's just the boy moping around mostly.
In some ways, it's good that Boomers and esp Gen Xers have been more tolerant and understanding of their kids. Unlike boomers who totally didn't get their parents(as in All in Family), Xers and millennials grew up with post-60s rock culture. But, the downside is it's too much like perpetual teens raising teens. Archie vs Meathead was so much more fun. Or Fred G. Sanford vs Lamont. Or the Mr. Roper guy vs Benjamin Braddock in THE GRADUATE. I love that scene.
When I first saw ALMOST FAMOUS, I really liked it. Then I thought about it and it sounded gooey. I recently saw it again and nearly puked. It's just too feely good and groovy and ewww.
I want Archie Bunker and Slats Grobnik.
GONE GIRL is another style over substance movie. I mean will these idiots ever grow up? Amazing Amy indeed. GONE GIRLHOOD.
In the movie, the nutty woman says the Amazing Amy character took things further than the real Amy did. Real Amy got hurt in volleyball and quit. But Amazing Amy made varsity.
I got the feeling that the idiotess who wrote the novel used a similar logic. She used her sicko fictional character to do stuff that she dreams of but would never do. And her fantasies? Utterly trashy and moronic and narcissistic. All style.
These idiots need to grow up.
Still, GONE GIRL had me glued to the screen though I hated every minute of it.
BOYHOOD bored me mostly but I guess it's a decent enough movie.
Well, at least it aint TREE OF LIFE. That was interminable and totally cuckoo.Replies: @Harry Baldwin, @Twinkie
Hafta agree with you mostly about “Boyhood.” It held my interest and had some good scenes, but at the end you think, “What was that all about?”
Okay, the kid is creative and artistic. He likes to take pictures. But none of his creativity comes across.
In that scene where he’s driving to college and he stops in the ghost town and takes a picture of a rusty old lantern, I thought, “That’s the sort of cliche subject that photography teachers tell you to avoid.”
Well, he chose the wrong kid cuz this kid is dull, dull, and dull.
I wonder about that too. In the photo of the young kid on the poster, he’s a very good-looking kid. But as a teenager he was just schlumpy and not particularly interesting. I don’t think he’s destined for stardom. It’s like in Harry Potter, they cast a girl as Ginny Weasley, Harry’s love interest, and as the actress got older it was clear she had no screen presense whatsoever.
I couldn’t get more than a few minutes into it. Have no idea why it was made or released.
One of the things that's amazing about the NY Times these days is that you look to the paid journalists for uniformed, emotion-laden, rigidly ideological writing, and then sift through the comment section to find fact-based, reasonable, even-handed responses.Replies: @wren, @DWB, @Simon in London, @Art Deco, @Suburban_elk
One of the things that’s amazing about the NY Times these days is that you look to the paid journalists for uniformed, emotion-laden, rigidly ideological writing, and then sift through the comment section to find fact-based, reasonable, even-handed responses.
It is amazing how often I see this throughout all media on the net nowadays.
I wonder if the journalists even read the comments anymore, because they are so often schooled by the commenters.
It may be selection bias (in fact, I am sure that it is), but it seems to me that PC articles and comments are the most thoroughly debunked.
I liked, no loved, every bit of Boyhood for too many reasons to state in a long reply. I have seen EVERY movie since Melies…so not kidding – I had very, very eccentric, highly educated, parents who loved movies & theater. Boyhood will become an iconic film.
My boys love D & C also; it is one of their “collection of movies you must see” for their friends. I totally disagree with SM and AS as far as their lame bs about the Samantha character I have trouble understanding the general bs of American women today who are weirdly, 10-20 years younger than me..WTF? So many grievance collectors of all types and genders these days.
My sons felt that every aspect of the film when Mason was on screen is genuine…it resonated with them. I have watched this movie several times and played it to all my friends since Thanksgiving – everyone just loves it. And, yeah, you probably had to grow up in a marginally stable and loving household to appreciate this movie…so it will not work for many people, I am assuming. It will win an Oscar…well deserved. I mean, what’s not to like about a movie completely about existentialism? There is no “higher meaning” or purpose to life; I hate that line, “everything happens for a reason,” no, it doesn’t….things happen but there is no reason.
So FY to anyone who even thinks I want a reply to argue. I will hate you if you do. Plus, right now, one of my sons finally, finally got home from a long, snowy drive from skiing in Vermont…and I gotta get some rest for tomorrow. SO NO replies or I will hate on you like a Norse witch.
Even so, I didn't notice much of an advantage in what Linklater did. All in all, a gimmick movie... like the Russian Ark, a movie that no one would have cared about but for its single continuous take. But to what end?Replies: @Twinkie
Old timers smoked and drank themselves to death. The future is the thing to sell. The so called singularity. The space films are better funded than the actual space missions. The 30’s writers figured out that crime didn’t pay as much as writing crime scripts. Send them to Mars and send the bankrupt public broker statements showing huge gains in investment banking. Write bad government backed mortgages. The kids can get stuck with all the bills to keep the malls open and the car dealers dealing. We had drive by shootings and now we have mall shootings. The dope dealers are walking around with a half a million dollars and the customers are all getting a fat government check backed by debt. The airports used to make insane amounts of money. Now? Corporate welfare and subsidy to keep slobs with plastic cards and gambling problems jetting off to lose the retirement money. This is like Nazi Germany without the close families and national pride.
“Then I thought about it and it sounded gooey. ”
The thing about Cameron Crowe movies: they are all paean to groupies. Crowe himself is a form of groupie; he was married to a rock star for nearly a quarter of a century.
Say Anything, Singles, Jerry Maguire, and Almost Famous all celebrate the glories of devoted love, which is always rewarded in the end. Squicks me out.
One of my personal favorites is this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ILqbD6XXkA
The (fictional) Cid is someone who loved and was devoted to his woman, his king, his country, and most of all, his God.
In this article “Boy moms more social in chimpanzees”, the idea is posed that since females are the limiting factor in reproduction, then assuming less risk, stepping into the shadows, staying in solitary or protected small groups is a superior reproductive strategy in chimps and perhaps also in humans.
Boys on the other hand are encouraged to be more gregarious, to get out there and stick their nose in it, to learn to be social, to be assertive, to be competitive. And to fight.
http://phys.org/news/2014-11-boy-moms-social-chimpanzees.html#inlRlv
The article states that chimp mothers with sons tend to enter more social situations, particularly more of those situations with males. The idea is that by exposing the male to more male examples then he can possibly do better in the rough and tumble competitive society of chimps.
At the end there was this blurb:
“Social exposure has a potential downside too. Females with low rank are known to experience more social stress in large groups, and there is always a risk of infanticide against the young chimpanzees. Perhaps the best way to avoid having infants killed is to steer clear of groups, which the mothers do up to 70 percent of the time.
“Mothers with infant daughters were likely to be avoiding competitive and stressful situations,” Murray said. “While mothers with sons seem willing to incur those costs for the benefit of having their sons socialized.”
In this article “Chimps with higher-ranking moms do better in fights” …
http://phys.org/news/2015-01-chimps-higher-ranking-moms.html
…it is detailed that the offspring of higher ranking females do win more fights.
Two reasons were given. First, that the genes of both the higher ranking female and the higher ranking males she has access come to bear in her offspring and the son prevails in fights between young male chimps. The second was the idea that perhaps the presence of this higher ranking female in typically close proximity had a factor, perhaps some fear she may intervene on the son’s behalf.
Interestingly enough though, they rarely did intervene in fights, on 10 cases of intervention in 131 observed fights.
So basically our two lesbo gripers, MARCUS and SKOMOROWSKY, can complain about society not teaching girls to “lean in”, but the reality is, girls don’t really want to. It doesn’t make sense in a profoundly deep subconscious sense given their reproductive value.
But moms are telling boys, “Get out there and kick some ass, and if you are getting your ass whipped, don’t look to me for help, you pussy.”
When I watched youth football in the progressive haven of Boulder County, it was always the moms that would come over to sideline, even when the coaches had told parents to leave the boys alone during the games. And they would grab boys by the facemasks and scream at them to “hit somebody”. And then dance and scream with delight on the sidelines when their boy actually did. The fathers just looked at each other and nodded. They weren’t allowed to act like the assholes that the women had no problem portraying.
Probably some chimp thing I guess.
TLP. Always TLP. The moms don't have the violent alpha partner they wanted, so they can at least have a son who is.Replies: @Brutusale
well, soccer moms are supposed to be a special breed, no? I have had more experience with mothers discouraging fighting even though sometimes its all for the best to let them tussle, as long as brass knuckles don't come into it. I've had guys say that if a mother tried to teach her son not to fight it'd be like castration. You just can't win.
I don't know. If I had a son, I'd leave an awful lot up to the dad after the age of about 2. Wonder how that would work out.
Unless the boy in the film is having gay sex with other men and boys I’m going to have to believe this film is cynically homophobic as well as blatantly racist and sexist.
Props to the Wall Street Journal for finally giving Jewish liberal females a voice in the American media!
Mazel tov!
My boys love D & C also; it is one of their "collection of movies you must see" for their friends. I totally disagree with SM and AS as far as their lame bs about the Samantha character I have trouble understanding the general bs of American women today who are weirdly, 10-20 years younger than me..WTF? So many grievance collectors of all types and genders these days.
My sons felt that every aspect of the film when Mason was on screen is genuine...it resonated with them. I have watched this movie several times and played it to all my friends since Thanksgiving - everyone just loves it. And, yeah, you probably had to grow up in a marginally stable and loving household to appreciate this movie...so it will not work for many people, I am assuming. It will win an Oscar...well deserved. I mean, what's not to like about a movie completely about existentialism? There is no "higher meaning" or purpose to life; I hate that line, "everything happens for a reason," no, it doesn't....things happen but there is no reason.
So FY to anyone who even thinks I want a reply to argue. I will hate you if you do. Plus, right now, one of my sons finally, finally got home from a long, snowy drive from skiing in Vermont...and I gotta get some rest for tomorrow. SO NO replies or I will hate on you like a Norse witch.Replies: @Priss Factor
“I liked, no loved, every bit of Boyhood for too many reasons to state in a long reply.”
It’s like Blunder Years. Ewwww.
Better movie of its kind is BEST OF YOUTH.
I must say one advantage of BOYHOOD is it allowed a natural-seeming gradual flow from childhood to young adulthood. Otherwise, Linklater would have to use several actors to show the kid as boy, older boy, and young adult. That would have seemed less natural.
Even so, I didn’t notice much of an advantage in what Linklater did.
All in all, a gimmick movie… like the Russian Ark, a movie that no one would have cared about but for its single continuous take. But to what end?
Personally, the films about childhood and growing up and such that resonated with me the most in recent years are…
“Platoon” and “Leon” (aka “Leon the Professional,” “The Professional,” etc.).
Hey, where are y’alls goin’?
BTW, did anyone else think that the main boy actor in “Boyhood” was a cute kid earlier on but then kinda aged badly and became, er, less than handsome? (My wife said “Wow, what happened to him?”) I guess that’s the risk you take with that kind of lengthy filmmaking.
Same goes for Patricia Arquette, who, like a lot of middling Hollywood actresses, seemed to have aged badly from too much drugs and men or something.
I haven't seen the movie, but based on his IMDB profile, he looks like a fairly ordinary fellow, to me. He actually reminds me of one of the two guys my stepson tends to hang out with. If an ordinary person shows up in a film, everyone is so shocked that someone so "ugly" has appeared on-screen. No criticism intended; I just find it amusing.Replies: @Twinkie, @dcite
Even so, I didn't notice much of an advantage in what Linklater did. All in all, a gimmick movie... like the Russian Ark, a movie that no one would have cared about but for its single continuous take. But to what end?Replies: @Twinkie
But at least it was very pretty and all.
The thing about Cameron Crowe movies: they are all paean to groupies. Crowe himself is a form of groupie; he was married to a rock star for nearly a quarter of a century.
Say Anything, Singles, Jerry Maguire, and Almost Famous all celebrate the glories of devoted love, which is always rewarded in the end. Squicks me out.Replies: @Twinkie
I agree!
But, don’t you think that there are other, worthier expressions of celebrating “the glories of devoted love”?
One of my personal favorites is this:
The (fictional) Cid is someone who loved and was devoted to his woman, his king, his country, and most of all, his God.
One of the things that's amazing about the NY Times these days is that you look to the paid journalists for uniformed, emotion-laden, rigidly ideological writing, and then sift through the comment section to find fact-based, reasonable, even-handed responses.Replies: @wren, @DWB, @Simon in London, @Art Deco, @Suburban_elk
De facto, that (apparent trolling) is the result, but I think you are giving the chatterers too much credit. You presume a self-awareness that is not there.
Most of the people who write, produce, or edit the columns of the popular press live in such a bubble (in my opinion) that they do not even recognise that their “points” are irritating to most people. In fact, I strongly suspect that, aside from a few ignorant rubes in flyover country whom they vaguely are aware exist, they believe that everyone else shares their views.
Surely you’ve heard the decades-old joke about the 1972 election? Where two Upper East Siders are commiserating over the land-slide victory of Richard Nixon over McGovern? “How could Nixon have possibly won? I don’t know anyone who voted for him.”
The world starts on Park Avenue, and ends on Lexington. There’s this rather odd, foreign country called “New Jersey,” and even some lands rumoured to be beyond even that out-post. But it’s “here be dragons” territory for sure.
These people have no clue – at all – what most Americans are actually thinking.
But in the film’s last hour, Samantha starts to fade… What explains these differences in their development?
This is dumb. The reason Samantha becomes a more minor character is well known to anybody that reads about the movie: Lorelei Linklater was tired of performing in the role every year and wanted out of the movie. So her dad gave her a less demanding part.
Linklater movies are hit and miss affairs, especially the Hawke & Delpy talkfests, still I have mostly enjoyed them. Linklater always shows some balls.
The girl doing the discouraging of Lorelei having a greater role later on was Lorelei herself not the scriptwriter or director.
(If only Sofia Coppola had been as assertive.)
One of the things that's amazing about the NY Times these days is that you look to the paid journalists for uniformed, emotion-laden, rigidly ideological writing, and then sift through the comment section to find fact-based, reasonable, even-handed responses.Replies: @wren, @DWB, @Simon in London, @Art Deco, @Suburban_elk
Good point!
Marcus and Skomorowsky, eh?
I suppose we’re all used to opinion masquerading as science. It is nothing new, but today it is common. Psychiatry seems to have moved into a new category of anti-science. Maybe it is the people attracted to it, but it seems that everywhere it turns up in public discussion, it is as a veneer of respectability over a crackpot assertion.
Love tuna, especially on rye , as long as it’s fresh from the can and I enjoy it with out the WHINE!!!
Could be that, or simply scheduling issues. or that with many child actors, they go through awkward years, both physically and emotionally where being in front of camera is no longer as much fun.
Linklater movies are hit and miss affairs, especially the Hawke & Delpy talkfests, still I have mostly enjoyed them. Linklater always shows some balls.
screeds of the form “what X shows us about Y” = tune out, click away to something else
“When I watched youth football in the progressive haven of Boulder County, it was always the moms that would come over to sideline, even when the coaches had told parents to leave the boys alone during the games. And they would grab boys by the facemasks and scream at them to “hit somebody”. And then dance and scream with delight on the sidelines when their boy actually did. The fathers just looked at each other and nodded. They weren’t allowed to act like the assholes that the women had no problem portraying.”
TLP. Always TLP. The moms don’t have the violent alpha partner they wanted, so they can at least have a son who is.
See Paul McHugh on some of the systemic problems of psychiatry which other disciplines within medicine have not faced since the 19th century. Psychiatry used to be worse than it is now. (See McHugh on this point, and Fuller Torrey as well. Both have contended that the research programs prevalent from 1935 to 1975 were essentially sterile).
My own view on psychiatry is big chunks of it have been made absurd with advances in biochemistry and genetics. That leaves a large number of people in the field searching for a purpose.
“This is dumb. The reason Samantha becomes a more minor character is well known to anybody that reads about the movie: Lorelei Linklater was tired of performing in the role every year and wanted out of the movie. So her dad gave her a less demanding part.”‘
What Link asked of his daughter is nothing compared to what this guy did with his son.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photographic_Memory_%28film%29
Here’s a good movie about boyhood from 1983 . Tim Roth’s first movie “Made in Britain” . It’s Roth’s movie all the way no doubt but I especially like this scene with Geoffrey Hutchings.
One of the things that's amazing about the NY Times these days is that you look to the paid journalists for uniformed, emotion-laden, rigidly ideological writing, and then sift through the comment section to find fact-based, reasonable, even-handed responses.Replies: @wren, @DWB, @Simon in London, @Art Deco, @Suburban_elk
They’re regurgitating social fictions promoted the better part of a generation ago by the American Association of University Women and given a spirited debunking by Christina Hoff Summers. In mundane life, few women are particularly achievement motivated and many women are most strongly influenced by their aversions rather than their ambitions; these dames are telling us it’s all the fault of the big He.
I believe that the Wachowskis wrote the adaptation of Alan Moore and David Lloyd’s graphic novel V for Vendetta which is a superb coming of age movie emphasizing the female point of view but enjoyable by all.
One of the things that's amazing about the NY Times these days is that you look to the paid journalists for uniformed, emotion-laden, rigidly ideological writing, and then sift through the comment section to find fact-based, reasonable, even-handed responses.Replies: @wren, @DWB, @Simon in London, @Art Deco, @Suburban_elk
Nominated for comment of the year.
One might nitpick that they do not know, or do not think of themselves as, annoying people, but they sort of do know that they are annoying, they just don’t think of it as annoying, they consider it educated or hip or New York or tolerant or whatever: the right side of history.
Whether or not there is a higher meaning or purpose is for a person to decide. There is absolutely no way to demonstrate – in a fixed moment in time – one way or the other: that there is a purpose or not.
It is a fairly obvious statement to say that Life is its own Purpose, or that the Universe is its own, or that the Evolution of life in the universe is its own, and that purpose is a glimmering cognizance.
To maintain the argument that there is no purpose, appears to me to be a weak statement to the effect of, “the purpose is larger than i can apprehend or express,” or some other reduction of Purpose. Which reduction of its meaning would be, ironically, an acknowledgment of what it is, which is the meaning that we can’t get our heads around.
(This comment is not directed to the poster who was quoted, as that poster did not want any replies.)
We all have God-given free will. You can choose to strive for and attain a purpose in life or you could choose to make nothing of it and simply seek pleasure and avoid pain.
While we can argue whether or not there is divine purpose in the creation (I side on the yes side), we cannot argue with the fact that we *can* choose to have a purpose in our own lives if we so desire it.
A few clips from the site RedLetterMedia about how much they love Boyhood. NSFW for language:
“One of the achievements of ‘Boyhood’ is to show us how girls are discouraged from putting themselves first. A boy can dream, the film suggests, but a girl…not so much.”
Majoring in photography is putting oneself first? It would seem like a stupid career choice that won’t land him anywhere in life.
The problem with the kid is he doesn’t so much put himself first as put his musings first. He has no sense of reality. Thus, he will end up last. I mean he’s not even majoring in film or TV that might be of some use professionally. Photography in the age of Facebook where everyone takes 100 pics a day?
(TREE OF LIFE has to be the first ‘selfie’ movie. It’s like Malick with an apple iPhone shooting everything and uploading the crap to his facebook page.)
Besides, his girlfriend puts herself first and dumps him for some college Lacrosse player.
In a way, the kid in BOYHOOD does what he wants to, but he’s bound to fail precisely because he’s so myopic about life.
Though I like DAC, I was rather upset by the documentary accompanying the dvd. We see the grown up version of the baseball kid and the freshman girl picked up by Jodi Kramer(Michelle Burke). They didn’t turn out too well. Linklater’s a nice guy but a bad influence on kids. Both kids-as-adults seem to be chasing after some silly pipedream, some stupid ’cause’ that leads to nowhere.
Also, the above article is stupid because the movie is about the boy. Complaining that his sister has a secondary role is like complaining that supporting actor/actress doesn’t have a role equaling the starring role. I mean no kidding. That’s why it’s a supporting role.
I mean Tommy Lee Jones has a backup role in COAL MINER’S DAUGHTER and HEAVEN AND EARTH because the leading characters are the hillbilly girl and some Vietnamese woman.
His role was meant to be ‘supporting’.
Btw, the best movie of this kind may be C.R.A.Z.Y. It’s one of the few movies about homos that isn’t gooey propaganda. Even straight people can understand the pangs of growing up as portrayed in this most remarkable film. Not a message movie. (I dread to see Dallas Buyers Club by the same director because it looks like a message movie, the kind I can’t stand.)
And it has one of the greatest father roles in film. Now, that is a father.
https://www.google.com/search?q=SHARON+MARCUS&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=szHYVN7qBcyhgwTe8oK4CQ&ved=0CCcQsAQ
Photos of Ms SKOMOROWSKY
https://www.google.com/search?q=ANNE+SKOMOROWSKY&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=IjPYVPkayKM2uomCqAo&ved=0CC4QsAQ
http://www.slate.com/authors.anne_skomorowsky.htmlWhat the hell Psychosomatic Medicine????
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychosomatic_medicineConclusion:
Two talentless angry lesbian Colombian University Jewish SJWs pissed that a successful male goyim from flyover country has written and directed an autobiographical movie that folks actually enjoy and can relate to.
Is anybody surprised??? The only question is why anybody should care about their nonsense whining????
Make your own dam movie or get me a sandwich!!!!Replies: @Anonymous, @Priss Factor
Yikes, the authors(did they really need TWO authors to write that piece?) look so boy-like!! Shouldn’t they be siding with the boy?
For ‘women’ are into girl power, they sure love to look like boys.
Maybe the review would have been more sympathetic if Linklater had written in a part for Patricia Arquette’s tranny sibling, Alexis, born Robert.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2729503/Transgender-actress-Alexis-Arquette-sensationally-claims-slept-Jared-Leto-prior-gender-reassignment-surgery.html
Pivotal scenes in which adults confront each of them offer a key. In one, Mason’s photography teacher accuses him of laziness and gutlessness.
Damn it all, teachers of America! Why can’t you accuse girls of laziness and gutlessness? What are you, misogynists?
It teachers whipped boy children with a strap the feminists would still be demanding to know why teachers treat boys better.
I enjoyed Speed Racer, which wikipedia tells me they made as Lana was transitioning.
I had not heard Paul McHugh mentioned in a while so I googled him just to see what came up. I highly recommend doing just that. Back in the 70’s or 80’s, I forget when exactly, he was not all that controversial. Today he is the very symbol of evil, according to the usual suspects.
My own view on psychiatry is big chunks of it have been made absurd with advances in biochemistry and genetics. That leaves a large number of people in the field searching for a purpose.
Is anyone bothered by those gray boxes? Makes things blurry for me, sort of a halo effect. Wish you could try something else.
Boyhood vs. American Sniper – two different pictures of America – one is innocent – one a hero killer – which picture represents our collective cultural psyche?
Isn’t “Boyhood” sexist because it’s not called “Girlhood”? I mean, do we need to go any further than that?
TLP. Always TLP. The moms don't have the violent alpha partner they wanted, so they can at least have a son who is.Replies: @Brutusale
Rule of thumb for sports parents is the amount of caterwauling is a direct inverse of the experience the parent has playing the sport.
Just pray it’s not followed by MANHOOD.
Damn
It is a fairly obvious statement to say that Life is its own Purpose, or that the Universe is its own, or that the Evolution of life in the universe is its own, and that purpose is a glimmering cognizance.
To maintain the argument that there is no purpose, appears to me to be a weak statement to the effect of, "the purpose is larger than i can apprehend or express," or some other reduction of Purpose. Which reduction of its meaning would be, ironically, an acknowledgment of what it is, which is the meaning that we can't get our heads around.
(This comment is not directed to the poster who was quoted, as that poster did not want any replies.)Replies: @Twinkie
Sure there is.
We all have God-given free will. You can choose to strive for and attain a purpose in life or you could choose to make nothing of it and simply seek pleasure and avoid pain.
While we can argue whether or not there is divine purpose in the creation (I side on the yes side), we cannot argue with the fact that we *can* choose to have a purpose in our own lives if we so desire it.
I found “Boyhood” to be quite magical, but I’ll admit I’m coming to it from a rather unique perspective: My wife and I are currently trying for our first child, so watching the progression was intensely interesting to me as a (hopefully) soon-to-be parent.
It was also interesting to me just as a reminder of how incredibly fleeting childhood is, and how our perception of time shifts as we get older. The movie starts out around, what, 2002 or 2003? That feels almost like yesterday to me, but this kid’s entire childhood took place in that brief span of time. My Dad always told me when I was growing up that time seems to go by faster as you age, and wouldn’t you know it — he was right. It felt like it took me a century to get from 11 (roughly the time I first started to get interested in cars) to 16, when I finally got my license, yet the equivalent span of time today feels like an eyeblink.
I would bet this movie will eventually achieve some kind of cult classic status among millenials whose childhoods roughly correspond with the timeframe of the movie. I tried to imagine a similar movie covering the era of my own childhood, and I admit it sounds compulsively watchable.
DAZED AND CONFUSED is more special because of the conflicts between generations and subcultures.
The parents in DAC just don't get it. And what the coach expects and what the kids wanna do are also in conflict. Though we know which side Linklater is on, he gives everyone his due.
But in BOYHOOD, who is the boy and who is the man? Ethan Hawke as the father is a perpetual kid, in some ways less mature than his little son. He's like those X-ers who never grew past the age of 18 or maybe 21. It's slacker parenting. So, we get permissiveness plus permissiveness. We also get Tolerance plus Tolerance. The mother is just another PC college professor. The father is an Obama supporter. An 'anti-racist'. And of course, that's the way it must be!!
DAC had different voices and attitudes. It even has nasty hazing. Unpleasant and something I don't endorse, but it was a world of free speech and tough hides.
But the world of BOYHOOD is all sensitivity. Sure, some kids are bullies and use words like 'fa**ot', but it's like everyone is on the same PC millennial wavelength. Kids are so free but they don't seem rebellious or assertive. Indeed, their style of freedom has been pushed by their X-er parents who want to be 'cool' with the kids.
The one interesting scene in the movie was with the college professor stepfather who begins to lose it, turns alcoholic, and becomes abusive. Scary but there was real tension to the movie. And one wanted to know why and how he became like that. But the family just leaves him and we return to dullness and boredom.
Also, Linklater chose the wrong kid and was overly generous. He took a big risk by choosing some kid for the role. The kid might grow up to be interesting or boring, and the kid he chose turned out to be booooring. I fail to see how the sister is made to look worse later when he progressively grows duller in personality.
It's pretty good I guess but I didn't get anything from it. Tom Wolfe said fiction needs to record what is happening with real people in our times, and maybe Linklater is trying to do something like that. But I could have seen the stuff in BOYHOOD in any bunch of dumbass millennial youtube videos.
Also, it's all about style than substance of character. Okay, the kid is creative and artistic. He likes to take pictures. But none of his creativity comes across. In one scene, we see him in the dark room developing film than working in the classroom. The character's attitude toward the story is like that. He's moping in his own darkroom of the mind than coming out and acting like a character we can care about. Unless he shows himself as a character, he is all about style--'creative' eccentric type--than substance as a human being with personality and dreams.
I think Linklater didn't simply want to tell the kid what to do. He wanted to work with the kid and have the kid express himself in his own way. Well, he chose the wrong kid cuz this kid is dull, dull, and dull.
Linklater is a fine director but not much of a personality. And the characters he identifies most closely with tend to be lackadaisical and too laid-back. I love Pink in DAC, but if the movie were mainly about him, it'd be dead. It works because it has a great cast of colorful characters. Even the jerks--especially the jerks--make the film come alive. Ben Affleck as O'Bannion. Clint the bully. Also, I love how someone's enemy is someone's friend, and how a friend can be an enemy, and etc. It's the strange social chemistry of high school where someone who is so cool with one bunch of guys can be so nasty with another bunch. Clint the bully gets along fine with Pink and the older guy(Matthew McConahey or something), but he's nasty to the Jewish kid.
Because Linklater tends to identify with some rather bland character, he needs powerful personality to play off him. This is why ME AND ORSON WELLES works so well. The bland kid is played against the giant personality of Welles.
But in Boyhood, it's just the boy moping around mostly.
In some ways, it's good that Boomers and esp Gen Xers have been more tolerant and understanding of their kids. Unlike boomers who totally didn't get their parents(as in All in Family), Xers and millennials grew up with post-60s rock culture. But, the downside is it's too much like perpetual teens raising teens. Archie vs Meathead was so much more fun. Or Fred G. Sanford vs Lamont. Or the Mr. Roper guy vs Benjamin Braddock in THE GRADUATE. I love that scene.
When I first saw ALMOST FAMOUS, I really liked it. Then I thought about it and it sounded gooey. I recently saw it again and nearly puked. It's just too feely good and groovy and ewww.
I want Archie Bunker and Slats Grobnik.
GONE GIRL is another style over substance movie. I mean will these idiots ever grow up? Amazing Amy indeed. GONE GIRLHOOD.
In the movie, the nutty woman says the Amazing Amy character took things further than the real Amy did. Real Amy got hurt in volleyball and quit. But Amazing Amy made varsity.
I got the feeling that the idiotess who wrote the novel used a similar logic. She used her sicko fictional character to do stuff that she dreams of but would never do. And her fantasies? Utterly trashy and moronic and narcissistic. All style.
These idiots need to grow up.
Still, GONE GIRL had me glued to the screen though I hated every minute of it.
BOYHOOD bored me mostly but I guess it's a decent enough movie.
Well, at least it aint TREE OF LIFE. That was interminable and totally cuckoo.Replies: @Harry Baldwin, @Twinkie
I don’t agree with Roger Ebert much, but I agree with him when he wrote that “The Tree of Life” was not a film, but a prayer. And what a stunning, personal, and epic prayer that was. Beautiful music too. I am not the only one who thought so:
It is a very theistic piece of art, for sure.
“Boyhood” struck me as a very personal, intensely subjective (perhaps self-involved) nostalgia. Although I appreciate the craftsmanship that went into making it, I found all, I mean ALL, the characters totally unappealing (with the exception of the old, gun-toting Christian couple who became the in-laws of Ethan Hawke’s character – I mean who doesn’t like in-laws who give your son by another woman the family heirloom of a side-by-side shotgun?).
Marcus and Skolorowsky spot the trend, but it doesn”t have any nuture significance. Girls hit their growth spurts before boys, so for a few years they tower over the boys and are dominant. It’s about the time children start to understand how they fit into a social structure, so girls develop a sense of power while boys often can feel weak and inferior. But pretty soon, the boys start growing and with puberty their muscles start growing as well and gradually they steal that dominance away from girls. I wonder it women can’t quite get over the ego injury that comes from being physically dominant and then losing it and knowing you’ll never reclaim it.
“Have the Wachowski Siblings made a good movie since they stopped being the Wachowski Brothers?”
I saw “Jupiter Ascending” on Sunday, and while its certainly not as good as “The Matrix (the original film, that is), or “V for Vendetta” (a very uneven film that is unquestionably excellent in some parts), its definitely not as bad as we’re being told. My teenage son loved it, and I didn’t regret seeing it either.
"Platoon" and "Leon" (aka "Leon the Professional," "The Professional," etc.).
Hey, where are y'alls goin'?
BTW, did anyone else think that the main boy actor in "Boyhood" was a cute kid earlier on but then kinda aged badly and became, er, less than handsome? (My wife said "Wow, what happened to him?") I guess that's the risk you take with that kind of lengthy filmmaking.
Same goes for Patricia Arquette, who, like a lot of middling Hollywood actresses, seemed to have aged badly from too much drugs and men or something.Replies: @Kevin O'Keeffe
“BTW, did anyone else think that the main boy actor in “Boyhood” was a cute kid earlier on but then kinda aged badly and became, er, less than handsome? (My wife said “Wow, what happened to him?”) I guess that’s the risk you take with that kind of lengthy filmmaking.”
I haven’t seen the movie, but based on his IMDB profile, he looks like a fairly ordinary fellow, to me. He actually reminds me of one of the two guys my stepson tends to hang out with. If an ordinary person shows up in a film, everyone is so shocked that someone so “ugly” has appeared on-screen. No criticism intended; I just find it amusing.
One of the achievements of “Boyhood” is to show us how girls are discouraged from putting themselves first.
The girl doing the discouraging of Lorelei having a greater role later on was Lorelei herself not the scriptwriter or director.
(If only Sofia Coppola had been as assertive.)
I haven't seen the movie, but based on his IMDB profile, he looks like a fairly ordinary fellow, to me. He actually reminds me of one of the two guys my stepson tends to hang out with. If an ordinary person shows up in a film, everyone is so shocked that someone so "ugly" has appeared on-screen. No criticism intended; I just find it amusing.Replies: @Twinkie, @dcite
Of course.
A lot of people would not pay money to see normal or ugly people playing heroic or romantic roles. I am for realism in films, but movies are still fantasy (at least a little).
My wife and I always joke (partly) about how more Americans would watch foreign films if the actors and actresses were a bit more attractive. But then we also say that the acting and scripts may suffer (for example, “The Departed” was a horribly butchered version of Hong Kong’s “Infernal Affairs,” but the actors in the former are more attractive than those in the original).
William Monahan’s tremendous script for “The Departed” was really based on the Whitey Bulger case in Boston, but the filmmakers couldn’t reach a deal with the writer of a Bulger book, so they bought the rights to Hong Kong action movie to protect themselves. It’s like saying The Godfather is based on Bonanza because they are both about a rich man with three sons.
I understand all that about the Whitey Bulger thing, but the whole narrative device of mole in the mob/mole in the cop trying to discover each other is pure "Infernal Affairs."
What really butchered the original in the remake was the ending. In the American-remake, the mob mole in the police is whacked by a cop in a revenge and "gets what he deserves." A typical Hollywood ending. In the original, he isn't killed - he is stuck with his secret, and must live out the rest of days living a lie. It's the concept of the perpetual hell, life worse than death (akin to the traditional saying "a brave man dies but once, but a coward dies everyday"). That crucial ending is COMPLETELY missing in the remake.
Spoiler alert. Don’t read if you intend to see “Infernal Affairs.”
I understand all that about the Whitey Bulger thing, but the whole narrative device of mole in the mob/mole in the cop trying to discover each other is pure “Infernal Affairs.”
What really butchered the original in the remake was the ending. In the American-remake, the mob mole in the police is whacked by a cop in a revenge and “gets what he deserves.” A typical Hollywood ending. In the original, he isn’t killed – he is stuck with his secret, and must live out the rest of days living a lie. It’s the concept of the perpetual hell, life worse than death (akin to the traditional saying “a brave man dies but once, but a coward dies everyday”). That crucial ending is COMPLETELY missing in the remake.
“And then dance and scream with delight on the sidelines when their boy actually did. The fathers just looked at each other and nodded. They weren’t allowed to act like the assholes that the women had no problem portraying.”
well, soccer moms are supposed to be a special breed, no? I have had more experience with mothers discouraging fighting even though sometimes its all for the best to let them tussle, as long as brass knuckles don’t come into it. I’ve had guys say that if a mother tried to teach her son not to fight it’d be like castration. You just can’t win.
I don’t know. If I had a son, I’d leave an awful lot up to the dad after the age of about 2. Wonder how that would work out.
I haven't seen the movie, but based on his IMDB profile, he looks like a fairly ordinary fellow, to me. He actually reminds me of one of the two guys my stepson tends to hang out with. If an ordinary person shows up in a film, everyone is so shocked that someone so "ugly" has appeared on-screen. No criticism intended; I just find it amusing.Replies: @Twinkie, @dcite
I think Ellar is interesting looking–cute/ugly in that Mick Jagger way. He did change a lot from little kidhood, but that lovely cupids bow but largish mouth was only going to get larger.