Episode 146:
SPOILERS ALERT!
National Board of Review gave their highest honor this year to Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air. The boys in the third row along with Matt Gamble managed to catch this latest effort starring George Clooney and we’ll let you know what we thought with another full-fledged spoiler review. Also, after checking out the confusing trailer from Jim Sheridan’s remake of Brothers, we weren’t quite sure what to think. We do now and we’ll let you know what that is. We’ve got some DVD discussions and a long overdue top five list.
Thanks for listening!
Click the Audio Icon below to listen in:
http://www.rowthree.com/audio/cinecast_09/episode_146.mp3
|
|
TIME LISTINGS:
Intros/Opening: :00
Up in the Air (SPOILERS!): 11:15
Brothers (SPOILERS!): 44:42
Other recent viewings: 1:13:35
DVD picks: 1:31:33
Next week/closing thoughts: 1:15:50
Outro music: 1:58:05
MAIN REVIEW:
Up in the Air (Kurt’s review)
OTHER REVIEWS:
Brothers (Andrew’s review)
DVD PICKS:
Andrew:
– LOST (season 5)
Kurt:
- The Cove
Matt:
BLU RAY: Kurt: OTHER TOPICS:
Andrew:
– Behind the Mask: Rise of Leslie Vernon (Andrew’s review)
- Public Enemies (Kurt’s review)
The Michael Mann debate (again).
Youth in Revolt
Gentlemen Broncos
Mammoth
The Red Violin
Hey guys, on Itunes your Born to Douche podcast is actually last weeks Fantastic Mr Fox Podcast, that may need to be corrected.
Otherwise keep up the great work
Thanks for listening and for the heads up, Ray. But I just checked the iTunes feed (downloaded it myself) and all appears fine. Can you tell me the feed you’re using?
Make sure you’re subscribed to the following feed and all should be fine:
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=269530318
Ray is correct. You guys have last week podcast on.
Problem fix by unsubscribing and erasing Row Threee and then resubcribing.
The Brothers discussion was really good. I shouldn’t've listened to before going to sleep. It got my blood boiling!
Andrew did a good job I thought.
Andrew had the dignity not to get too worked up as I started spewing vitriol from all orifices.
There were part of that movie that I did indeed like, but the bads have an uncanny way of overshadowing the good!
I think you were way way off about taking the afghanistan scenes.
The film you’re suggesting I’ve already seen. It’s called Castaway. By moving his ordeal to the end they rob his character’s development of any meaning. He’s just a guy who goes though a harrowing ordeal… of some sort.
To be fair I think Castaway fails for more reasons than just breaking up the island stuff. But that choice was a dramatic miscalculation that changes how the film is processed.
Also, Initially you’re saying to take out the afgahn stuff completely and leave it up to our imaginations. That’s a huge criticism that would completely change the movie. But when Andrew points to the power the film gets from it (McGuire and the kid) you kind of back track and say the “reveal” should be moved to the end, and told not shown. Now, that’s just a nitpick, you’re just shuffling around the parts but they still add up to the same whole.
Without seeing the Afghanistan stuff it’s just a movie about a guy who becomes an asshole all of a sudden. The transformation has no meaning. I’m not saying it’s profound now (I agree, it’s very simple) but that would just be assinine. “you know, war’s hell and stuff… I guess”. The specifics are what give it meaning.
Well, really it is all just an excuse to get LESS tobey McGuire in the film…
I recognize this.
Watched Up In the Air right before the podcast to avoid spoilage.
I really enjoyed it and it took on meaning for me when full disclosure: a place I’ve been contracting with forever who had been promising me a full time job turned out to be making promises they couldn’t keep, and so thus jobwise I’m a bit adrift lately. This and getting laid off last time around Christmas… it’s easy to agree with it as a “movie for our times”.
And I thought it was generally perfect for a good while, but I kind of didn’t care as much about the wedding stuff, and indeed the ending isn’t so great. But overall what I did like I liked strongly enough that in spite of its faults its a 4.5/5 from me.
I have to disagree about Anna Kendrick though. Knowing her from Rocket Science and seeing her here, I absolutely adore her and her performances, I didn’t see her as cold so much as the uber professional who isn’t taken seriously and has something to prove. And she indeed is very smart and can really shake things up, but is also kind of fragile knowing she can be taken down. I don’t think you can say she’s cocky or arrogant.
The only thing I find distracting about her is that her forehead is weird. Yup, I mean Mena Suvari has a shitload of forehead, and Anna’s hairline comes in at weird angles, like it’s invading the rest of her head.
George Clooney is Clooney at his best, what else can you say there. Overall its my favorite of Reitman’s films (which isn’t the toughest to do since I hate Juno) so I came away happy.
I think Kurt may be pronouncing Aaron Eckhardt wrong, but I’m not sure
Andrew, I’ve been powering through s5 of Lost again with friends who arent caught up. its like watching children open a christmas present… we’re right at the part where they go see Mrs. Hawking… watching minds blown
i finally got around to watching the Cove, which was very good, though not as climactic as I would have thought given the buildup through the movie.
I’m not sure if I’d have seen it without Gamble’s hype, but he did also spoil a lot for me.
Playing catch-up a lot these days and just wanted to once again agree with Andrew, I watched Brothers and I think Tobey’s performance is fine in the film. I don’t think subtlety is always called for in every performance, and those times his character goes unhinged, it does not seem unnatural to me that he would be that uncalculated in how he explodes. I agree with Andrew’s rating too, 3.5/5, some of the narrative transitions were clunky, but the performances and the story were compelling enough to make it as a whole worth seeing.
Also I agree that the Brothers script is script-y, and I can see the Paul Haggis association (I particularly hated the bonding over a U2 song) but I agree again with Andrew, you cannot take out the Afghanistan component of the story and think that would improve it.