Song to Song (Terrence Malick, 2017)

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John Shade
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Re: Song to Song (Terrence Malick, 2017)

#76 Post by John Shade » Fri Mar 10, 2017 3:23 pm

This really only makes me like him more. It's something all of us have suspected for years--between "Edge of Seventeen" and "Dookie" what other pop culture artifacts does he enjoy?

All of it reminds me of a great line from Only Lovers Left Alive between Yelchin and Hiddleston: something like, "You know man, the more reclusive you are, the more people are going to want to find out about you....Yeah? What a drag..." (it's all in the delivery, though, and youtube has let me down)

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domino harvey
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Re: Song to Song (Terrence Malick, 2017)

#77 Post by domino harvey » Fri Mar 10, 2017 3:59 pm

The man loves Zoolander, I know that much

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PfR73
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Re: Song to Song (Terrence Malick, 2017)

#78 Post by PfR73 » Fri Mar 10, 2017 11:25 pm

He did not appear before or after tonight's premiere of Song To Song at SXSW.


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The Narrator Returns
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Re: Song to Song (Terrence Malick, 2017)

#80 Post by The Narrator Returns » Fri Mar 10, 2017 11:57 pm

An excellent article that nonetheless peaks at the throwaway mention of Malick loving Jason Derulo's "Talk Dirty".

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domino harvey
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Re: Song to Song (Terrence Malick, 2017)

#81 Post by domino harvey » Sat Mar 11, 2017 12:21 am

This is getting brutalized on Twitter, apparently 20+ walked out even

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DarkImbecile
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Re: Song to Song (Terrence Malick, 2017)

#82 Post by DarkImbecile » Sat Mar 11, 2017 12:35 am

Doesn't look much different than usual for his films of late: a minority in strong support, a sizable group feeling mixed about it, and some people absolutely furious that there isn't a clear narrative.

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DarkImbecile
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Re: Song to Song (Terrence Malick, 2017)

#83 Post by DarkImbecile » Sat Mar 11, 2017 12:37 am

Also, this was a public screening at SXSW, not critics reactions from Berlin or Cannes, so I'd actually have expected more negativity.

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tenia
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Re: Song to Song (Terrence Malick, 2017)

#84 Post by tenia » Sat Mar 11, 2017 4:56 am

I'm seeing this tomorrow. I'll try and write something about it next week.

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Re: Song to Song (Terrence Malick, 2017)

#85 Post by AnotherAccount » Sat Mar 11, 2017 12:02 pm

Image

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hearthesilence
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Re: Song to Song (Terrence Malick, 2017)

#86 Post by hearthesilence » Sat Mar 11, 2017 1:26 pm

DarkImbecile wrote:Doesn't look much different than usual for his films of late: a minority in strong support, a sizable group feeling mixed about it, and some people absolutely furious that there isn't a clear narrative.
As a strong admirer who was not a fan of To the Wonder and beyond, I'm actually digging the fact that he's fracturing and obscuring narrative so that it's more about sensations, thought and memory rather than a clear plot line. The reason I wasn't won over by the last few films was that they felt pretty thin, like he didn't have much new to say - it was almost like he exhausted his resources with The Tree of Life. This one sounds promising for the context, but I'm hoping the film doesn't look so banal as the clips that have been released - the wide-angle hand held work in those clips have little of the visual poetry that's been an essential element to pretty much all of his work.



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domino harvey
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Re: Song to Song (Terrence Malick, 2017)

#89 Post by domino harvey » Sat Mar 11, 2017 1:55 pm

Entertainment Weekly's uber-negative review of this is embarrassingly juvenile, but then the reviewer just started posting actual narration from the film and I had to reevaluate my objections in the wake of:
SpoilerShow
“The birds said we’d love each other forever.”

“I don’t like to see the birds in the sky because I miss you.”

“They have a beauty in their life that makes me ugly.”

“Save me from my bad heart.”

“I want all the pain to be for something.”

“I never knew I had a soul. The word embarrassed me.”

“I’m a beast. Still not unhappy about it.”

“Mercy was a word. I never thought I needed it.”

“You get used to drifting, waiting. They say follow the light.”

“I took sex, a gift, and played with it. I played with the flame of life."

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Re: Song to Song (Terrence Malick, 2017)

#90 Post by John Shade » Sat Mar 11, 2017 2:57 pm

I think this is the first time I've ever heard him speak before. Some interesting stuff there.

Not all of those lines are totally terrible. Some of them could be Dostoevsky/Faulkner b-sides...(key word: some). Also, DarkImbecile is pretty much spot on about 2010 Terry films and the reaction.

edit (again): I like how a Polish woman asked him, "What is the purpose of this?"

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hearthesilence
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Re: Song to Song (Terrence Malick, 2017)

#91 Post by hearthesilence » Sat Mar 11, 2017 4:11 pm

“I want all the pain to be for something” ain't necessarily bad. The others, hard to see how they wouldn't be.

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whaleallright
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Re: Song to Song (Terrence Malick, 2017)

#92 Post by whaleallright » Sat Mar 11, 2017 6:16 pm

This must be the first time he's spoken publicly about his films since 1974. (Aside from a few times he's introduced one of his films with a few token words.)

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bdsweeney
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Re: Song to Song (Terrence Malick, 2017)

#93 Post by bdsweeney » Sat Mar 11, 2017 8:00 pm

At a guess, he's been pressured by his producers and distribution to put some effort into publicizing the film and trying to recoup some of the costs.

Am I right that the timeline of the filming of the last three films (discounting the documentary) all blurred a little into each other? If so, that would suggest he got the finance for them before those who gave him money had any idea of their 'difficult/non-mainstream' style, lukewarm critical reaction and lack of money at the box office.

I also wonder if now there's been some time between these three films and the new one he's preparing in Europe, if this new film will represent a different style from the previous three.

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hearthesilence
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Re: Song to Song (Terrence Malick, 2017)

#94 Post by hearthesilence » Sat Mar 11, 2017 9:30 pm

bdsweeney wrote:At a guess, he's been pressured by his producers and distribution to put some effort into publicizing the film and trying to recoup some of the costs.
Pretty sure you're right about that. The man likes his privacy, but if you want to spend millions of other people's money on personal projects that have been losing more and more money each time out, business is going to take a much bigger priority. (Also, remember that big lawsuit against Malick from financiers who felt like he had misspent their millions? The pressure is definitely there.)

To a lesser extent we saw it with Jodie Foster and The Beaver - she was putting in a lot of public appearances and making herself much more accessible to the press. Not a surprise when tens of millions of dollars were spent on a film that was headlined by the scandal-plagued Mel Gibson (and they weren't going to ask him to do any press).

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Re: Song to Song (Terrence Malick, 2017)

#95 Post by solaris72 » Sat Mar 11, 2017 10:54 pm

bdsweeney wrote:I also wonder if now there's been some time between these three films and the new one he's preparing in Europe, if this new film will represent a different style from the previous three.
At his NJ appearance he said that Radegund is a return to a more planned production shooting from a finished screenplay.

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tenia
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Re: Song to Song (Terrence Malick, 2017)

#96 Post by tenia » Sun Mar 12, 2017 9:17 am

hearthesilence wrote:“I want all the pain to be for something” ain't necessarily bad. The others, hard to see how they wouldn't be.
To be fair, most Malick have relatively cheesy lines.
bdsweeney wrote:At a guess, he's been pressured by his producers and distribution to put some effort into publicizing the film and trying to recoup some of the costs.
I'm wondering if it's not his own decision. Maybe his latest movies have done so poorly that he felt he might not be able to do too many more, and thus take the decision to at least do a bit of publicity to boost them ?
bdsweeney wrote:Am I right that the timeline of the filming of the last three films (discounting the documentary) all blurred a little into each other?
You're right about this. Some discarded Tree of Life footage even ended up in To The Wonder.
The documentary isn't much aside either : the investors have been chasing Malick for years, asking him to deliver the documentary he had to. IMDB trivia even said he started shooting some footage for it back in 2003.

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Re: Song to Song (Terrence Malick, 2017)

#97 Post by oh yeah » Mon Mar 13, 2017 8:44 am

Malick is such an odd director because he's changed his style so much in key ways (while still remaining the same in others), so it's hard not to have a love-hate relationship with his films.

I still think his first three features are absolute masterpieces, but Knight of Cups is the only one after that's come anywhere close to them. And even that film I feel may lack the richness of the first three. I really need to see The New World again -- I thought it was okay, but it's been a while and I'm curious how it might fit into my hunch that working with Lubezki is a big part of what has changed Malick's films the most (or at least the look of them, but I think this kind of affects everything else). Suddenly with Malick's 21st century work we get all this handheld, and not really much variety in terms of the camera work. From scene to scene and film to film he seems to keep on using the same little flourishes, but it comes off as not so much an endearing auteurist tendency as a maddeningly repetitive/unimaginative semi-gimmick. Doing these Z-axis push-ins just don't convey some sense of wonder anymore after the 500th time.

Additionally, the narration in his films has just gotten worse and worse, basically. It wasn't bad in Knight, but it still had that same listless, breathy whisper that is now the norm. I feel like a film like Knight would've been perfectly fine, better even, without any narration. The only Malick films where the narration is necessary are the first three, with the first two in particular having some of the most memorably unique and fitting narration in cinema. But it almost feels like he thinks he has to keep on putting in narration now, or something; I just don't understand the value of the clunkers we get in Tree of Life, for example. I appreciate Malick's move to a more impressionist and experimental style, but I think putting this narration in there that seeks to explain some aspect of story or character doesn't work because the film is already doing that for us -- and these narrations are so abstract, anyway, that it's not like without them the audience would be completely lost. I think maybe the only recent film of Malick's where the use of narration made sense was To The Wonder, with its exploration of different characters's perspectives.

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tenia
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Re: Song to Song (Terrence Malick, 2017)

#98 Post by tenia » Mon Mar 13, 2017 9:52 am

Song to Song is a direct stylistic extension to TTW and KoC and a direct thematic extension to KoC. If you liked those 2, it's very likely you'll like Song to Song but if you're like me, you'll find lots of debatable elements.
This being written, Fassbender, Gosling and Mara are impeccable. Blanchett only has about 4 min of screen time. Portman has more but her character still feels tertiary at best.
And Malick again takes on sex here much more than he did in the past, except for KoC, and it feels again quite candid and superficial. Thematically, it's probably the movie's weak point.

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domino harvey
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Re: Song to Song (Terrence Malick, 2017)

#99 Post by domino harvey » Mon Mar 13, 2017 5:05 pm

Is this actually opening near anyone? It's not set to play either the art house or mainstream cinema here

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Ribs
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Re: Song to Song (Terrence Malick, 2017)

#100 Post by Ribs » Mon Mar 13, 2017 5:10 pm

It's opening in DC next Friday, 3/24, which is pretty much the usual for limited releases (I think the usual pattern is NY/LA, then the next week Chicago/DC/Austin/SF/etc, then (if applicable) to some smaller markets.) I'd wait and see before worrying about it very much, as some theaters can't verify their schedules until the week they're opening it.

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