Oliver Stone
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DarkImbecile
- Ask me about my visible cat breasts
- Joined: Mon Dec 09, 2013 10:24 pm
- Location: Albuquerque, NM
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flyonthewall2983
- Joined: Mon Jun 27, 2005 7:31 pm
- Location: Indiana
- Contact:
Re: Oliver Stone
Didn't have to click to see Bill Simmons is somehow involved in this. Unless it was the same project I think Stone wanted to cast Charles Bronson in something else too.
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flyonthewall2983
- Joined: Mon Jun 27, 2005 7:31 pm
- Location: Indiana
- Contact:
Re: Oliver Stone
His new book sounds pretty good.
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Matt
- Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 4:58 pm
Re: Oliver Stone
Alexander Revisited: The Final Cut
I got the 4K UHD from Amazon because it was $16. I had never seen it and have been on a peplum kick over the last couple of month, so I thought I'd satisfy my curiosity with the fullest cut in the best available version. Well, it froze up three times during the film and it's already on its way back to Amazon.
BUT! I sort of liked the film. I can't imagine what the second cut (the original DVD "director's cut") or the fourth (!) 2014 "ultimate cut") that focus more on action are like because the action scenes (except for a small part of the battle of the Hydaspes which is the high point of the film) are the worst parts, made especially worse by useless on-screen text trying to identify the various flanks and nationalities of each part of Alexander's army (e.g. "Macedonian Left") when the entire scene is a muddle of Saving Private Ryan-inspired gory close-ups and rapid-fire cuts. However, this cut seems to earn its runtime, and there really isn't much I would want to see excised except for most of Anthony Hopkins' green-screened framing segments as Ptolemy.
The movie is very shouty—its baseline is raised voices and the volume only goes up from there—and weirdly obsessed with snakes (see, Alexander's mother is just like a venomous snake!), mythological parallels (see, Alexander's fate is just like that of Oedipus! No, actually, Achilles! No, actually, Heracles!), and Patton-esque (or Vince Lombardi-esque) pre-battle pep talks.
BUT! It is very queer in a way that I can see would have been wildly misunderstood and strongly reacted against in Bush-era America, laying out a spectrum of sexuality and what kind of sex between men was considered appropriate and inappropriate by various cultures and how Alexander transgressed all of these norms.
I think the movie was somewhat derided for its performances, but these are all excellent actors (well, maybe not Jared Leto or Jonathan Rhys Meyers, who I don't think I've liked in anything). Farrell's performance, despite his sometimes terrible wigs, is actually very good, as is Val Kilmer's, which has echoes of Frederic March's Philip II in the 1956 Robert Rossen film. The problem is Stone's direction, constantly trying to make the actors go bigger than what's called for in the scene, hence the shoutiness I mentioned. I think it was also derided for the variety of accents used, but I usually don't care about that. If actors are speaking naturally in a way that is not distracting, I'm not bothered. I'd rather that than everyone trying to do Queen's English and failing. Angelina Jolie speaking in a borderline incomprehensible, turn on the captions, Russian/Roma/Greek accent, though...
Matt Zoller Seitz's commentary makes a parallel between Anthony Hopkins' framing story/narration and Citizen Kane, but I think, given the lack of multiple perspectives, the real parallel is with The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, as Ptolemy essentially says at the end, "when the legend becomes fact, print the legend." This "final cut," which in fact was not the final cut, rejiggers segments of Alexander's life all out of chronological order in pursuit of a more thematic or character-based story arc, and it's very confusing to be whipped around in time and location every 15 minutes. But in all seriousness, if you pay attention to the length of Alexander's hair instead of the on-screen titles, you can follow it much more easily. The best use of hair-as-anchoring-device since eXistenZ.
It's very much an Oliver Stone movie in that it's a frustrating, occasionally brilliant "behold, a complicated man" biographical sketch, but I'm glad I finally took the time to watch it.
I got the 4K UHD from Amazon because it was $16. I had never seen it and have been on a peplum kick over the last couple of month, so I thought I'd satisfy my curiosity with the fullest cut in the best available version. Well, it froze up three times during the film and it's already on its way back to Amazon.
BUT! I sort of liked the film. I can't imagine what the second cut (the original DVD "director's cut") or the fourth (!) 2014 "ultimate cut") that focus more on action are like because the action scenes (except for a small part of the battle of the Hydaspes which is the high point of the film) are the worst parts, made especially worse by useless on-screen text trying to identify the various flanks and nationalities of each part of Alexander's army (e.g. "Macedonian Left") when the entire scene is a muddle of Saving Private Ryan-inspired gory close-ups and rapid-fire cuts. However, this cut seems to earn its runtime, and there really isn't much I would want to see excised except for most of Anthony Hopkins' green-screened framing segments as Ptolemy.
The movie is very shouty—its baseline is raised voices and the volume only goes up from there—and weirdly obsessed with snakes (see, Alexander's mother is just like a venomous snake!), mythological parallels (see, Alexander's fate is just like that of Oedipus! No, actually, Achilles! No, actually, Heracles!), and Patton-esque (or Vince Lombardi-esque) pre-battle pep talks.
BUT! It is very queer in a way that I can see would have been wildly misunderstood and strongly reacted against in Bush-era America, laying out a spectrum of sexuality and what kind of sex between men was considered appropriate and inappropriate by various cultures and how Alexander transgressed all of these norms.
I think the movie was somewhat derided for its performances, but these are all excellent actors (well, maybe not Jared Leto or Jonathan Rhys Meyers, who I don't think I've liked in anything). Farrell's performance, despite his sometimes terrible wigs, is actually very good, as is Val Kilmer's, which has echoes of Frederic March's Philip II in the 1956 Robert Rossen film. The problem is Stone's direction, constantly trying to make the actors go bigger than what's called for in the scene, hence the shoutiness I mentioned. I think it was also derided for the variety of accents used, but I usually don't care about that. If actors are speaking naturally in a way that is not distracting, I'm not bothered. I'd rather that than everyone trying to do Queen's English and failing. Angelina Jolie speaking in a borderline incomprehensible, turn on the captions, Russian/Roma/Greek accent, though...
Matt Zoller Seitz's commentary makes a parallel between Anthony Hopkins' framing story/narration and Citizen Kane, but I think, given the lack of multiple perspectives, the real parallel is with The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, as Ptolemy essentially says at the end, "when the legend becomes fact, print the legend." This "final cut," which in fact was not the final cut, rejiggers segments of Alexander's life all out of chronological order in pursuit of a more thematic or character-based story arc, and it's very confusing to be whipped around in time and location every 15 minutes. But in all seriousness, if you pay attention to the length of Alexander's hair instead of the on-screen titles, you can follow it much more easily. The best use of hair-as-anchoring-device since eXistenZ.
It's very much an Oliver Stone movie in that it's a frustrating, occasionally brilliant "behold, a complicated man" biographical sketch, but I'm glad I finally took the time to watch it.