Sure, we know you think we’re a bunch of sellouts. We brought you the exclusive clip and the rave review, and it just so happens that ads for Synecdoche, New York are plastered all over Hooksexup. I assure you, however, that I have received no payola. (At least, not yet. Cash is fine, fellas.) I just happen to be really high on the movie, but just to provide a little balance, let’s check in with Vinyl is Heavy. “Especially given that structures and their construction are such a major part of the film, it's hard to not see this as at best a missed opportunity, at worst as evidence of Synecdoche's ultimate failure: that it doesn't utilize form. No doubt, it's got some great ideas, ideas about space and time which seem natural to film; but they're not put together in any cohesive way. Things are jumbled, uneven. Leaving the theater, I couldn't escape the thought of what would've been if Kauffman had given things more time, allowed the form to unfold itself, gradually over time, so that we feel time slipping away from us as it slips away from Caden, so that the approach of the film's end really is that gradual approach of Death.” (If you want to read a really dissenting view, check out Rex Reed at the Observer, but be sure to wear your hazmat gear.)
“Some of Synecdoche’s detractors insist that the film is impossibly convoluted,” writes Karina Longworth at Spoutblog. “It’s not, but a first viewing can be mostly devoted to figuring out the specifics of space and time. Kaufman often jumps years ahead in the space of a cut, but this is almost always directly referenced in the script after the fact. If anything, this continual confirmation would seem like a flaw in the script, a transparent funneling of exposition into dialogue, if Caden’s inability to grasp or cope with the unstoppable march of time wasn’t one of the film’s key themes.”
At Beyond the Multiplex, Andrew O’Hehir interviews the Kauf Man himself. “It is about works of art, but it's also about what we do as people. What Caden is creating in his environment is what we do in our daily lives when we tell stories about what's happening to us. We try to organize the world, which isn't organized the way our brains want to organize it. We tell stories about the people in our lives, we project ideas onto them. We project relationships with people, we make our lives into stories. I don't think we can avoid doing that. There's no way to approach anything in an objective way. We're completely subjective; our view of the world is completely controlled by who we are as human beings, as men or women, by our age, our history, our profession, by the state of the world.”
After transforming into an L.A. Dodgers blog during the National League playoffs, Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule gets back to the rep house with a look at the early work of Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale. “Together, Zemeckis and Gale trafficked in the kind of nasty, caustic characters which, combined with the Bobs' authorial in-your-face prankishness and glee (especially in Used Cars), linked them directly to the morally adrift protagonists found populating late-period Billy Wilder comedies like Kiss Me, Stupid, The Fortune Cookie and One Two Three. The foul-mouthed abandon of Used Cars, suffused with loyalty to a vision of corruption and thoughtless ambition as key elements the quintessential American biography, particularly on the eve of the Reagan era, was equal parts chilling and exhilarating, like a belly laugh at the edge of the abyss.”
In List-o-mania this week, Cracked offers 9 Foreign Rip-Offs Cooler Than The Hollywood Originals. Number 9 is Yarasa Adam (Batmen). “There's a lot to love about the Turkish Batman, namely his ability to do more with less. Whereas the American Batman cloaks his severe mental illness with gee-whiz gadgets and, well, a cloak, Betmen has no need for capes, technology, or subtlety. He knows that dressing up like a deranged trapeze artist and borrowing the wife's Chevy Nova for the afternoon will do way more to frighten felons than any bat-shaped airplane.”