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Author Topic: #376: Top 5 Actor-Director Reunions / Shame / Tomas Alfredson  (Read 4923 times)

Adam

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#376: Top 5 Actor-Director Reunions / Shame / Tomas Alfredson
« on: December 08, 2011, 07:35:04 PM »
Inspired by the re-teaming of "Hunger" duo Michael Fassbender and Steve McQueen for "Shame," Adam and guest host Josh Larsen play big-time Hollywood casting directors to countdown the Top 5 Actor-Director Reunions they most want to see. Plus, director Tomas Alfredson ("Let The Right One In") discusses his new Cold War spy movie "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy."

Coming soon
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GothamCity151

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Re: #376: Top 5 Actor-Director Reunions / Shame / Tomas Alfredson
« Reply #1 on: December 09, 2011, 12:00:03 AM »
Adam, Kurt Russell is reteaming with Tarantino for Django Unchained.

oneaprilday

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Re: #376: Top 5 Actor-Director Reunions / Shame / Tomas Alfredson
« Reply #2 on: December 09, 2011, 12:08:29 PM »
Interesting, Adam, that Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy brought T. S. Eliot to mind for you; I thought immediately of Eliot's "Burnt Norton" after reading verbALs's review of the film back in September:

I can't wait to see Tinker, Tailor, and your description, verbALs, here,
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
. . . This 70's London is the one I remember being dirty and grimy, full of traffic fumes and smoky rooms. Those qualities of drifting stale air have a  familiar feel in memory, and the director's scenes have a resultant feel like half-faded newspaper cuttings being flicked through by Smiley and the rest of his ghouls. That dry emotion- betrayal is picked at and indexed, these are men who trade in other's weaknesses and those emotional cracks are to be pried at and teased open. . . .
along with everything I've heard about it, a film of an atmosphere of "musty tweed," among descriptions, brings T. S. Eliot's "Burnt Norton" immediately to mind, his line in it, "Men and bits of paper" has haunted me ever since I first heard it. 


Perhaps I should post this in the poetry thread but I hope you'll indulge me if I copy a section here:

Here is a place of disaffection
Time before and time after
In a dim light: neither daylight
Investing form with lucid stillness
Turning shadow into transient beauty
With slow rotation suggesting permanence
Nor darkness to purify the soul
Emptying the sensual with deprivation
Cleansing affection from the temporal.
Neither plenitude nor vacancy. Only a flicker
Over the strained time-ridden faces
Distracted from distraction by distraction
Filled with fancies and empty of meaning
Tumid apathy with no concentration
Men and bits of paper, whirled by the cold wind
That blows before and after time,
Wind in and out of unwholesome lungs
Time before and time after.
Eructation of unhealthy souls
Into the faded air, the torpid
Driven on the wind that sweeps the gloomy hills of London,
Hampstead and Clerkenwell, Campden and Putney,
Highgate, Primrose and Ludgate. Not here
Not here the darkness, in this twittering world.


Great interview with Alfredson, btw, - can't wait to see the film myself and looking forward to your full review next week!

moviephiliac

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Re: #376: Top 5 Actor-Director Reunions / Shame / Tomas Alfredson
« Reply #3 on: December 09, 2011, 01:47:13 PM »
Adam I was initially really surprised to hear you so lukewarm on Shame, but you explained yourself well as always. I think Josh hit the nail on the head though. This film had a strange effect on me. I guess the sense of tension and emotions conveyed through different elements of the film really unnerved me.

1SO

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Re: #376: Top 5 Actor-Director Reunions / Shame / Tomas Alfredson
« Reply #4 on: December 09, 2011, 02:01:02 PM »
Josh got off easy saying Bringing Out the Dead is anywhere near the quality of Taxi Driver.

FLYmeatwad

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Re: #376: Top 5 Actor-Director Reunions / Shame / Tomas Alfredson
« Reply #5 on: December 09, 2011, 02:28:24 PM »
Interesting take on Shame. I certainly found McQueen to be channeling that 18 minute single sequence from Hunger, but not as much when he was out on the date as much as he used it during the conversation between Brandon and his sister with a cartoon of some sort playing in the background. The Hunger scene, I think, is still stronger, but as the final set up for the big emotional climax I think it works tremendously. Not as much gravitas as Hunger, but still a spectacular sequence without the single take getting in the way of the scene itself.

Adam

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Re: #376: Top 5 Actor-Director Reunions / Shame / Tomas Alfredson
« Reply #6 on: December 09, 2011, 03:47:11 PM »
Josh got off easy saying Bringing Out the Dead is anywhere near the quality of Taxi Driver.
You got to admire his pluck!
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Jared

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Re: #376: Top 5 Actor-Director Reunions / Shame / Tomas Alfredson
« Reply #7 on: December 09, 2011, 04:05:24 PM »
Josh got off easy saying Bringing Out the Dead is anywhere near the quality of Taxi Driver.

true, but I am with him on it being very underrated Scorsese. Id call it his 2nd best of the 90s myself.

Lobby

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Re: #376: Top 5 Actor-Director Reunions / Shame / Tomas Alfredson
« Reply #8 on: December 09, 2011, 05:33:31 PM »
Just wanted to throw in some appreciation for Josh Larsen. He's got a good way with words and a nice chemistry and just the right amount of disagreement with Adam.

A great co-host. Would love to hear more of him! (Adam is OK too I reckon but we take you for granted.  ;))
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Jared

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Re: #376: Top 5 Actor-Director Reunions / Shame / Tomas Alfredson
« Reply #9 on: December 09, 2011, 06:15:06 PM »
while I realize that all of these guest hosts have an existing life in the film criticsm (and in one case, film) business, have any of these guest host apperences been auditions for the permanent slot?

Everyone has been really good over these last several episodes