this is a great film.
prove me wrong.
>film
more like a flick desu
>>62763056
> SMELLS LIKE BALLS AYY LMAOO
It's not great but it's good an 8/10 but you're just gonna get greentext buzzwords, memes and reddit this and that
>>62763056
It's very good, but not quite great. Great performances, great direction and cinematography, great score, bit of a muddled script though which was its downfall. It was a little too much, left with no real takeaway or clear vision.
>>62763090
I'll fucking kill you.
>>62763169
I thought the script was really juvenile in some parts, but ironically it worked as a spectacle which is funny given the obvious parodies
>>62763282
Good point. It was similarly overstuffed and grandiose, as well as exhilarating.
>>62763282
>This place is horrible.... smells like balls.
Into the trash it goes
>>62763169
> Fake One Take
> Great Cinematography
I don't think so.
>Birdmeem
>film
it's a movie, plen
>>62763105
>>62763385
what's the purpose of your shitty posts?
no one is laughing at your stupid memes.
i mean do you even enjoy yourself while posting this stupid shit?
is there any satisfaction in knowing that there are other people who shitpost the same shit over and over, just like you?
come on, man.
why don't you try getting into a discussion of something that you really like, or doing something that will actually give you some satisfaction. shit, even making fun of things and trolling on the internet could be fun and interesting.
why do you have to post the same stupid shit over and over and over? it wasn't funny the first time, it's not something anyone cares about longer than a few minutes.
>>62763416
Everything was put together really well. It obviously wasn't one take, that's pure autism and a ridiculously massive undertaking, but there were a lot of REALLY long ones in there where everyone did great.
I will admit I didn't really notice it and it felt like more of an attention-grabbing gimmick than anything done either to entrance the audience or challenge the filmmakers.
It was great, but Whiplash was better.
>>62763056
I had more respect for plebs and less respect for patricians as a result of the argument I thought the director was making.
Then I found out it was supposed to be antipleb and his message completely backfired.
A film is good when the director accomplishes what he set out to do. In this case he got the opposite of what he wanted.
>>62764893
Yes, whiplash was better. If only because of how hilarious it was seeing J. K. Simmons beat the shit out Miles Teller and call him a faggot.
>>62764949
>supposed to be anti-pleb
It is? That's not what I got from it at all. Are you sure? What about that speech Emma Stone gives Michael Keaton in the lobby about normalfags?
Never found her super-attractive but God she was fuckable in this film, if only for being the only basically decent normal person. Well, and Naomi Watts I guess.
>>62763056
>(pretentious drumming intensifies)
>>62763648
Hello reddit
>>62763056
>dat footage of Keaton putting his acceptance speech back in his pocket when he didn't win
I LOLed so hard
>>62764949
>anti-pleb
>anti-patrician
But it shat on everyone. Artists, pretend artists, blockbusters, what have you.
>>62765262
>being this plen
>>62765262
how could that possily be pretentious?
>>62765479
it doesn't emphasise the one and the three
>>62763169
Yep. Part of me felt like reading some analyses online to see the interpretations of the ending, but I just couldn't bring myself to care enough. I wanted to see where the movie was going, but once it got there I lost interest.
The best scenes were when they were on stage acting. They should have just taken out the whole "aging superhero actor" aspect. Why was Emma Stone nominated for this movie? She has no memorable scenes and was basically just a stock character. The role could have been played by anyone.
>>62765551
Oh come on, she was a really great foil for her dad
>>62765479
not my tempo
the people i've talked to that dislike this movie have never really articulated a reason, they mostly just say it's overrated and pretentious. I don't get it (essentially because that's not a reason) but I also don't lose sleep over it. People like blood sausage.
>>62765654
I like blood sausage
I also like Birdman. I don't know why someone would call it pretentious. It took the piss out of pretentious actors more than anyone else.
>>62765654
To be clear, the drumming in birdman was better than the drumming in fucking whiplash, which can suck me off tbqh.
Is it me, or does everyone in this movie sound like they have a stuffed nose? Lots of cocaine man.
This is going to be interpreted as an SJW statement, but I was genuinely distressed when Edward Norton tried to fuck Naomi Watts onstage.
>>62763416
Do you realize how impractical it would be to actually shoot it in one take?
Even Hitchcock's Rope wasn't actually one take.
You really just have to have the slightest experience in film production to appreciate it.
>>62765778
What was that film that actually was? Russian Ark? been meaning to watch that.
But yeah, the level of coordination and astronomical monetary risk if anything fucks up makes it horrendously impractical.
>>62765654
Iñárritu has some gall to use a phrase like "cultural genocide" in reference to the state of, well, anything--not only in his film, but also in interviews. Apparently because it was too good a line, or at some point we weren't giving him enough attention for one of his everything-is-connected ensemble pieces. (Which sadly-ignored, nomination-hoarding ensemble piece is he angry about? I dunno. Babel?) I was on the beat long enough to know how many critics resemble "Tabitha Dickinson" in both attitude and objective--but Birdman itself resembles Dickinson a lot more than it resembles any of the great artists that it talks about. That the film would set up its pins like this--and imply that any of them wouldn't know the terror of putting yourself out there for the world's examination--implies a contempt for expression, for people. It's a vicious contempt, and certainly not praiseworthy. It's a contempt that would provide a screamed version of Macbeth's nihilistic soliloquy, without once considering it alongside Macbeth himself, or anything else from the goddamn play. A contempt that wants to talk all day about the complexity of love, but has no faith or patience for the rabble, or what the phrase "I love you" would mean to any of them. They were all too busy, those dastards, wowed by golly-stupid superhero films that weren't made by Iñárritu. "Perhaps," he says, "you would know more about love and art if you watched more of my films, which are about love... and art." His voice takes a sudden, malefic tone. "So give me the Oscar for recognizing the unexpected virtue of your ignorance, or I'll make a movie about how you're a fraud and a war criminal." I'd... I'd do what he says, man.
>>62765807
Yeah, Russian Ark.
>>62763056
Birdman is to art what most self-satisfied exercises in audience wank social features that plagues every awards seasons usually are to whatever issue they pretend to defend (can we call it the first feature of actor exploitation?). This is almost beyond criticism as one either goes along with its self-congratulatory tribute to itself or feels very much left behind by the whole thing. The supporting cast (especially Norton and Stone) is rather good and help move things along as nicely as possible despite the film's total failure at making its tension believable outside of some broad heavy handed strokes. The film it made me think about the most was Robert Altman’s vastly overrated The Player, an equally worthless piece of pretense satire that does nothing beyond building an altar to the same cultural industry it pretends to be an outsider option to, but at least that film is shot with a modicum of genuine intelligence (I might not be Altman's biggest fan but man has a genuine point of view even in a lesser project instead of a sense of entitlement) while Birdman is just the work of a hack that believes he is an artist. Very few filmmakers are so ill suited to this sort of stunt, as Iñárritu has no idea how to animate large action; there is no natural movement inside the frame, he has to go pirouette his camera around not only because he confounds that with artistry (which he does), but because he needs to keep actual change in space to offscreen as much as possible and he has no idea how to imagine it otherwise.
>>62765773
there's nothing SJW about that
that's the exact emotion the film was trying to impart
it's probably some metaphor about how actors are under a lot of pressure but have to put up with it and many unpleasant things to keep the crowd happy and allow the show to go on
which can be generalized to a metaphor about life in general - even if something is unpleasant for you, you don't quit because you have a show to put on
On one level, it's an old-fashioned theatre farce along the lines of Twentieth Century, and a wide-range skewering of pretensions is part of that formula. But I've never seen this kind of satire served with such bile, and in the thick tangle of reversals and negations I see a strong, very contemporary insecurity about art. Innaritu doesn't know what to do with Carver, but he wishes he did, so he traduces the writer and then mocks himself for doing so--and I guess you could add another layer of "meta" to the mix if you want.
This is a movie that both panders and condescends in every direction: it laughs both at "art" and the people who scorn it, and does the same for big-budget Hollywood movies. Beneath all the humour is a sense of cultural intimidation and guilt: the movie reflects a mindstate, probably quite common, in which art and entertainment are opposing forces, one pretentious and the other frivolous. As I see it, Birdman is one long, tortured attempt to transcend this bogus dichotomy--in other words, a waste of time.
>>62765854
>>62765876
tl;dr
I recommend Livejournal
>>62763648
It's best to ignore idiots, you'll live longer. It's like an itch - just don't scratch.
One of the main problems is that none of it as clever as Iñárritu thinks it as. Every idea, joke or message either bludgeons the viewer with its directness, and worse with its smugness; or is hurled out without consideration or justification, packaged in an idiotic witticism like “popularity is the shitty cousin of prestige.” Iñárritu asks these constant broad questions, about art, performance, life and integrity but delivers few answers. Those that arrive are at best hackneyed and conventional, and at worst infantile. The one-take approach, other than being a talking point for the film and a piece of spectacle and showmanship, seems present mostly to mask the emptiness of the film. If Iñárritu and Lubezki whisk us along at such an intense pace whilst shouting CLEVER IDEAS at us, we won’t have the chance to actually think about them, and realise they make little sense. It’s a ride for sure, but far from a smart one.
>>62765551
She screams melodramatically and is popular. All you need for an oscar nom.
Yes, in “Birdman” Riggan has a crisis behind the scenes in the run-up to opening night. Yes, when he gets onstage, he delivers a climactic moment of life-meets-art drama. It’s a grand and self-sacrificing gesture that the stage audience sees, but which Iñárritu doesn’t show on camera, and, for all its tragic potential, it plays both like a goof and an exaggeration. It’s a desperate moment of the inadequacy of performance and of cinematography; it’s as if Iñárritu were admitting, through the character of Riggan, his own inability to invent a mode of performance all his own. What Iñárritu comes up with instead is a rejection of acting as such, a nihilistic blow that he himself failed to depict—because he held it up to his sleeve, cagily, for dramatic effect.
If “Birdman” is intended to prove what the actors—and especially Keaton—can do, it’s a success, but what has he done? He has done what the movie has Riggan Thomson do: he has reëstablished himself, has shown off his acting chops in a production that calls for his professionalism, not his imagination. What he hasn’t done here—as he doubtless can do (and it’s up to a director to inspire him to do it)—is to get outside the story and become a subject in himself, one that is opaque, adamantine, mysterious, explosive, and irreducible. That’s the essence of movie acting: not performance, not interpretation but (to borrow the fine idea behind James Harvey’s recent book) being.
Instead, “Birdman” trades on facile, casual dichotomies of theatre versus cinema and art versus commerce. It’s a white elephant of a movie that conceals a mouse of timid wisdom, a mighty and churning machine of virtuosity that delivers a work of utterly familiar and unoriginal drama. Of such things, too, can Oscar buzz be made.
>>62765965
I feel like you should have tripcode
Because you're a faggot
Not to derail the thread or anything, but would anyone kindly suggest any movies that tackle the subject of stage acting and theater? I've never been interested in theater at all, but this movie had me interested.
Director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (Amores Perros, Babel) presents the movie in what looks like one uninterrupted nearly two-hour-long shot — an irritating, showy and limiting concept. It’s never clear where this depressing, talky bullshit is really aimed. Is Birdman an indictment of Hollywood for playing to the crowds? That would be odd coming from a movie stuffed with camera gimmicks, eye candy, dirty jokes and stunt casting.
>>62765876
Just a heads up. 99.9% aren't going to read that. Learn to use paragraphs. They were invented for a reason.
>>62765933
Can't handle criticism of your new favorite pseudo -artist, reddit?
Enjoy your 4th month of realizing Nolantino isn't a genius
The occasional lip service paid toward mocking that self-seriousness is dissipated among outer elements like Galifianakis’ eagerness for ticket sales or the critic character who has raised the ire of actual critics but is in truth not half as pointlessly, humorlessly nasty in her strawman inanity than the film itself is toward its peers
Slamming that critic character Riggan points out that she can only define something by tackily comparing it to something else which ignores that art exists in a context but isn’t altogether unfair. Regardless here’s a few things I thought of watching this: Listen Up Philip, which follows an even more insecure officious piece of garbage as he sorts out his artistic and personal crises but does it with simultaneously more invective and more human observation and boasts close-ups that are thrillingly composed instead of perfunctory. Also Maps to the Stars which fails to capitalize on any of its weird ideas but also directly targets how women are perceived, marginalized, and set against each other in artistic circles codified by men. It even tackles an incestuousness that Birdman obliquely embodies with its style.
A few props: Keaton gives a fine performance, defined by tripe-wire nerves that fill even the simple act of walking around with crippling self-doubt or turn a testy exchange into as much a battle with his inner voice as a debate with a mocking critic or colleague. Galifianakis may steal the show, though, with his combination of exasperation and total investment, a reminder that for all the movie does to put focus on its on- and off-screen director, it’s the person who handles all the irritating shit like paying people and sorting out buzz who may really run the show. But then, the fact that the publicist and producer is the true king just seems one more cynical estimation AGI has of the line of work he’s in. God, imagine how pissy he’d be if people had realized from his first film, not his fourth, that he sucked.
>>62765999
More insults from the BrBa crowd. Stick to cartoons pleb
>>62765899
"it's probably some metaphor about"
Please don't do that. I can't stand people that try to explain to others metaphors and symbolism they think the director was going for. Jesus it's so shudderingly pretentious. Do yourself a favor and stop doing that.
Put aside your expectations and what we have here is a self-indulgent and generally tedious luvvie comedy where smug has been substituted for smart. It’s a bit like those mediocre films pumped out by Woody Allen in the 90s.
>>62766042
Jesus Christ
I don't like that you're writing a New Yorker review on fucking 4chan. Nobody gives a shit. Plenty of things to criticize though.
Go lick Paulina Kael's decaying clit, you enormous faggot
Iñárritu's overbearingly purposeful cinema is built on the ideas of a teenage film student high on his own supply, executed 20 years later, unedited and suggesting no gain in worldly experience, by the toked-out "auteur" who, to quote Armond, "wouldn't know a serious idea from a facetious one." BiRDMAN is no exception, as Lubezki's roving camera transforms the St. James backstage into Möbius strip, a series of interlocking corridors and private chambers which form the borders around an inevitably empty centre (The Stage!), but for all of its clear intent in the first half, when BiRDMAN opens its wings and moves out onto the rooftops and streets, dropping half of its supporting cast before the finale, the technique divorces itself from its thematic foundation and slips into outright indulgence, exposing itself as a mere pose; the arbitrary tissue failing to connect the muscle of an arbitrary film. It's symptomatic of Iñárritu's persistent inability to winnow the wheat from the chaff, and so he follows this one-shot gimmick like a pretentious arthouse hack to awards season; with embarrassingly relentless fortitude. The joke on everyone is that he won.
It's a fun movie. The constant uses of long takes was somewhat distracting to me though. Rather than making the film feel fluid and natural it ended up seeming like they were rubbing it in your face, with the fucking soundtrack being the drummer on the street and shit.
Did enjoy it though, I'll say it again.
>>62766141
The long takes were impressive in terms of coordination, but I stopped thinking about it after a while. I have to wonder what the point was, given that.
Indeed, so close are the linked worlds, ‘Birdman‘ speaks to Riggan, appearing as a gruff Christian Bale Batman voice in his head, the most literal approximation of the artist’s internal struggle possible. Riggan also assumes some of the powers his ‘Birdman‘ character had, swooping around Manhattan in a pointless scene that seems only to offer some variation to the one take gimmick, opening up the manhattan skyline to Lubezski’s virtual gliding just as the indoor scenarios are becoming stagnant. As Keaton swoops, all manner of CG creations arise around him and battle, before a snap back to reality dismisses them. In this offhand joke, Iñárritu dismisses the merit of all mainstream cinema, highlighting his own unwarranted snobbishness through a completely misfiring joke scene.
Iñárritu’s focus is on performance and on art, what it means to work and to create. Acting as counterpoint to Riggan troubled recovery is his lead actor Mike (Ed Norton, great in this and also in need of reinvention) who, in the film’s best and also most troublesome joke, is so committed to his method acting attempts unsimulated sex with co-star and half-girlfriend Lesley (Naomi Watts). Watts does her best with an undeveloped role, as do the props/partners that are Riggan’s daughter Emma Stone, girlfriend Andrea Riseborough, and ex-wife Amy Ryan. Ryan’s character, so blatantly only written in to advance plot, shows up halfway through unannounced, serves her one-dimensional purpose and disappears unceremoniously. The most clever character perhaps, is the introduction of a nemesis to all creators in vile theatre critic Tabitha Dickinson (Lindsay Duncan), whose bitterness colours her critical faculty – those who can’t create, critique right? Any critical rejection of BiRDMAN comes off as upset at the portrayal of critics, rather than genuine problems with the film’s considerable flaws.
Iñárritu's meta choice of casting Michael Keaton, the man made truly famous by Batman, as the psychologically unstable martyr for these crimes against artistic integrity - though this in itself is vaguely stated - is a good start, but the film reeks in this. He goes further by pulling in Emma Stone and Edward Norton, fresh off of Spider-Man and The Incredible Hulk respectively, but these build a sledgehammer of subtlety that comes crashing down with every psychological breakdown, which make up the film when the fantasy scapes of comic book film action are temporally broken.
The performances are all handled with such intensity that they aren't exactly all sound or even clean enough to match Lubezki's numbingly beautiful eye. Keaton was more interesting and understated as a character in Tim Burton's Batman, ironically enough. Keaton takes the physicality as well as the deranged mayhem well, but it's never full of any real urgency or longevity. It is so focused on piling on absurdist levels of torment for his Riggan Thompson that the film is not once subdued. The ending tries to further the bleakness by balancing the misery on someone else, only it was never earned as I felt.
Birdman is full of its own pretension - I hate the word, but it is. It wants to eat its cake and have it too, and the result is a hit and miss mess of oft visual exhilarating storytelling but no real focus. Its narrative of a deteriorating psyche to condemn the torment of showbiz, and mostly modern Hollywood, is hard to look at seriously when it's all done by finger-waving at the audience; when all that's dumped on any point of blame of what happens to Thompson is just nil more than "society's meanness" by making a man become so immersed in a franchise that he can't cope without it. The irony is its pure thinness and superficiality in the act of satirizing the very thing that defines its best moments: the modern action blockbuster.
>>62766042
I was actually getting into your (well written) review until I noticed you were just copy and pasting some earlier shit you wrote on your blog
that's kinda sad..
>/tv/ now has a majority favouring Birdman
we are not far from reaching 100% reddit.I aint joking, bugger off reddit. this was a pure 50/50 on here and now star wars comes out and you choose to wander into non star wars threads
>>62763169
Great score? Are you fucking kidding me? It's was some 5 year old playing his first drum set in the background for 2 hours. By far the most pretentious part and obvious hipster pandering part of the film
>>62766141
I had a hard time not being distracted by the long takes as well but eventually forgot about it. I did like how it made it feel like a play which I thought was interesting to put it nicely. The shot of the drummer in the street was very self-reflective which I hate, but I also hate Jean Luc Godard.
I think it's really good.He shoots himself at the end though or jumps out the window. He's dead
That part made me sad.
>>62766442
Goddamnit when people on here stop using the terms:
meme
autistic
and start actually using their brain to construct original thoughts, arguments and ideas the world will be a better place
>NOW GO BACK TO REDDIT WITH YOUR AUTISTIC MEMES FAGGOT
>>62766461
Haha totally, gaaaaaaay. 100%
>Bleed out slowly
Internet high five breh.
>>62763056
It won in the Oscars.
Every movie that won best movie oscar past 2007 is completely shit.
>>62766636
no. now fuck off back there
>>62766734
Holy shit you're right! Jesus those movies were bad. I'd say Birdman is definitely the best of that lot though. Jesus though. Wow. Not that I had much respect for the Oscars but what a complete joke, I almost feel like it's gotta be just politics nowadays.
>>62766762
I've never been there, I'm assuming you have as you seem to be so educated on the place.
I believe that's irony.
>>62766372
Its multiple reviews from multiple places
>>62765255
>It is? That's not what I got from it at all. Are you sure? What about that speech Emma Stone gives Michael Keaton in the lobby about normalfags?
Exactly what I mean. Later it turned out that the director fit far more with the people you hated to the core. Seems like >>62765362 would be the best view on it, but even then I can't help but remember the scene when that family of fat, good natured plebs completely overlooked the method actor in favor of Birdman, and how it was intended to blow the method actor the fuck out.
It also didn't seem to portray the plebs as particularly stupid and even showed them in a fairly positive light, compared to the broadway types who were portrayed negatively throughout, displaying attempted rape, blatant selfishness, infidelity, and general pretentiousness.
>>62766828
Well that just makes it even sadder don't it.
>>62763056
>subjective statement
>proof
>>62766855
Someone copying others' reviews on the film and pasting them on 4chan, regurgitating what they don't have the capacity to articulate or argue isn't sad? Well I think it is.
>>62766883
Welcome to 4chan.
Every thread begins this way.
Try the lobster.
>>62766924
Good for you
>>62766819
I apologise, but birdman is shit
>>62766714
Go fucking kill yourself with your shitty indy rock and have fun dressing like fucking waldo.
First half is unbearable dogshit. The second half made up for it and really hit the feels. Very good film actually.
I've come to realize that the underlying reason for contrarianism.
Because to share an opinion with someone who either is dumber than you or obviously doesn't know as much about the topic than you is insulting. How dare they like the same movie as me? They're fucking idiots who don't know as much about film!
That, and the need to feel different of course.
