DRINKER, WHALER, FOLGERS, PIE

HS/SS vs. TTSS: GO!


10:24 AM The Contessa: that better be the title of our review.
10:25 AM Mattie-O: absolutely
11:01 AM The Contessa: the subtitle: SPOILERS AHEAD
11:02 AM Mattie-O: spoiler alert: The Contessa thinks everyone was gay
The Contessa: everyone WAS gay
and they cried A LOT
11:03 AM I mean, I cry a lot at work too, but in the bathroom, by myself and I'm not a fucking cold war-era undercover agent trained to withstand torture
me: that guy shed, like, ONE TEAR
11:04 AM Mattie-O: who else cried besides Benedict Cumberbatch?
The Contessa: WHAT? Colin Firth, Tom Hardy and the German dude
11:05 AM Mattie-O: which German dude?
OH right
The Contessa: Elsen-something
Mattie-O: on the runway
The Contessa: the only 2 who didn't cry were John Hurt and Gary Oldman
Mattie-O: = totally appropriate
11:06 AM I don't think Toby Jones did either
The Contessa: so only, Gary Oldman, John Hurt and the guy best known for playing Truman Capote didn't cry/weren't gay
11:08 AM Mattie-O: well now you make it sound like Steel Magnolias
11:09 AM The Contessa: Tom Hardy and his terrible wig are Julia Roberts
both ruined otherwise decent casts
11:10 AM Mattie-O: the wig maybe
11:11 AM I liked Tom Hardy though
The Contessa: meh
Mattie-O: even though he looked like Andy Samberg
I'm trying not to let the fact that Christopher Nolan loves him influence my opinion
The Contessa: he did, indeed. A middle-aged boring Andy Samberg. Everyone in that movie was the most middle-aged man ever
11:12 AM Mattie-O: yep. the color pallette ranged from "whiskey" to "old cigarettes"
11:13 AM The Contessa: middle-aged men, whiskey and cigarettes. Otherwise known as: my 20s
11:14 AM Mattie-O: point: Contessa!
11:16 AM anyway, it sounds like I liked it more than you. surprise, surprise
11:17 AM The Contessa: I loved it
11:18 AM Mattie-O: well shows what I know then
11:19 AM The Contessa: spies, the 70s, Gary Oldman, Budapest, London. It reminded me of everything I like about movies from the mid-late 70s but with the extra added Gary Oldman being awesome for 2 hours bonus. I only wish Roy Scheider were still alive - he would have been a perfect, perfect American tough-guy agent cameo
11:20 AM Mattie-O: wait, he's dead? damn
11:21 AM The Contessa: I didn't call you and cry about this? I must have been too broken as a human that day.
Mattie-O: clearly I have blocked it out
11:26 AM Mattie-O: I know it was a joke, but now that I think about it, I did feel about it pretty much how I felt about Mission Impossible
11:27 AM not all that emotionally involved in the plot, but so well directed
well, and gary oldman
vs. tom cruise
11:28 AM that's not really fair
The Contessa: no, it's not.
it's also not fair to the universe that Tom Cruise is a mega-star and Gary Oldman is Commissioner Gordon
11:29 AM Mattie-O: yeah but did Gary Oldman climb the Burj Khalifa? I think not
checkmate!
11:33 AM The Contessa: but he did make Colin Firth cry
11:34 AM Mattie-O: I could have used a bit more Ciaran Hinds
The Contessa: where the fuck did he go?
I was thinking about that this morning. They just forgot about him in the end. Did they cut his crying scene?
11:35 AM Mattie-O: he probably had to leave to be in 45 other movies
11:36 AM The Contessa: with Michael Fassbender
Mattie-O: fine by me. every movie should have that cast
11:37 AM esp. Steel Magnolias
I would LOVE to see a remake of that with a bunch of Brit character actors
The Contessa: only if Ciaran Hinds plays Dolly Parton
11:38 AM Mattie-O: and 2x Toby Jones heads CGI'd as her tits
The Contessa: Yes!
11:50 AM The Contessa: wow. There is really not that much to talk about when the movie is well-done, well-acted and slowly-paced (not an insult - it unfolded all Conversation-style, which I appreciate in its own right as a directing style and as an homage to the era of film that this one was set in). The most exciting thing that happened was the guy in front of us with the staff of ra
11:52 AM Mattie-O: that staff was unbelievable
11:53 AM also sorry, I have a stupid meeting in a few minutes. I'll try to think of something interesting to say
11:54 AM here's something: you know film nerds will love this movie because of all of the shots of people in windows, behind fences, etc.
movie nerds LOVE frames
throw some eyeglasses in there and the symbolism just overwhelms them
11:56 AM The Contessa: you can have Ryan Gosling's scorpion jacket. I'll take Gary Oldman's giant eyeglasses.
11:57 AM HS/SS Movie Review Meta-Dressing. We will need to start adding photos
2:50 PM Mattie-O: photos of us I assume you mean
2:51 PM The Contessa: in our jacket and glasses, respectively
Mattie-O: and our Ra staffs
4:22 PM Mattie-O: snark aside (for a moment), the bit with the glasses was great. I'm pretty sure that would be the only way to tell when a given scene was happening
I hope the script pages were color coded as "BNG" for "before new glasses"
4:32 PM The Contessa: Once I get my TTSSNG, I would like my life up to then to be labelled BNG. And I was following by context - I didn't even notice their clever little trick with the NG. I didn't find it hard to follow at all. And I wasn't surprised by the end result
4:33 PM mostly because SPOILER I knew that Colin Firth had a big scene with Gary Oldman. I couldn't think of another reason he'd need one. AND the code names of the people really involved, ARE IN THE TITLE.
4:36 PM Mattie-O: yeah, I suppose if I had a criticism its that it didn't really matter to me who the mole was, though I think you could argue that its beside the point
4:37 PM The Contessa: it only mattered to me that it wasn't Oldman. And the movie established that pretty quickly
me: like, if you're adapting a twisty cold-war spy novel to a 2 hour movie, I assume you have to cut out a LOT
like any sort of backstory/character sketches of the suspects
4:38 PM The Contessa: I guess - but I never trusted anyone who ended up being involved NOR distrusted those who weren't
I feel like I needed to question his cohort's motives more to make it really work as a spy movie
instead, I thought of it more as a character study/drama
Mattie-O: meaning Oldman's cohort? yeah, I buy that
4:39 PM The Contessa: which is worked beautifully as - it just wasn't a mystery to me
Mattie-O: exactly, I think the guy must have realized early on that that aspect of the book couldn't work in 2 hours, so he focused on what could work
4:40 PM The Contessa: everyone who worked with him - form Tom Hardy to Benedict Cumberbatch to the old guy to Kathy Burke
did you read the book?
Mattie-O: no, I was about to ask you that
The Contessa: should we? Maybe it's not meant to be a thriller in that way
4:41 PM Mattie-O: eh, either way I'm always in favor of trying to judge the two separately
4:42 PM its totally plausible to me that it "fails" as an adaptation of the book's themes and is still a great movie
which I don't know if that's true, but it could be
4:51 PM The Contessa: I'll go with that. I thought it was great and everyone in it was great, especially future husbands Gary Oldman (always) and Benedict Cumberbatch (have you seen the new Sherlock?? Amazing - they did the impossible and exactly what needed to be done - they made Dr. Watson NOT a hateful pretentious windbag of annoyingness. And BC is perfect as Sherlock)
4:53 PM Mattie-O: I really thought you were talking about the Guy Ritchie version for a second there
The Contessa: absolutely not. that fails on every description I just gave.
4:54 PM http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1475582/
don't read the descriptions from imdb users.
it will not make you want to see this. Or live.
4:55 PM Mattie-O: more or less true of all imdb comments
4:56 PM did it seem to you that Gary Oldman had about 20 lines of dialog, total?
which was awesome
The Contessa: he spoke through his soul
4:57 PM and his glasses
Mattie-O: that and the slightly twitching eyelid
The Contessa: so goof
good
ugh, typing
Mattie-O: well, that typo's staying in the final draft
The Contessa: nooooooo
4:59 PM I think we should end it on my comment about my 20s. All my cleverness for the day used up on that bit of truth.
let's cut and paste this like a message from Control to Karla.
5:01 PM Mattie-O: god bless john hurt