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So... anyone else ready for the Oughties?!

Here, Here!!!

ptatler wrote:So... anyone else ready for the Oughties?!

Is that a cool way of saying the 2000s? If so then I am ready, I'm currently zoning in on a swapsie.

I wonder if it wouldn't be better to simply cover the first 5 years of the 2000s.

Murdoch wrote:

ptatler wrote:So... anyone else ready for the Oughties?!

Is that a cool way of saying the 2000s? If so then I am ready, I'm currently zoning in on a swapsie.

What exactly is a swapsie? I gather unavailable in R1 but am probably wrong.

The aughties are going to be a boring vote; I would be shocked - shocked - if the top two films from the forum's 2006 poll budge from their respective perches.

Tom Hagen wrote:The aughties are going to be a boring vote; I would be shocked - shocked - if the top two films from the forum's 2006 poll budge from their respective perches.

The ensuing years have had their share of darlings however. I can think of one film that could be #2 with a bullet, if not #1.

I'm personally excited. I think that the '06 is poorly representative of the decade's offerings thusfar. Plus, if the 90s vote is an indicator, there are more people willing to weigh in this go-round.

knives wrote:What exactly is a swapsie? I gather unavailable in R1 but am probably wrong.

It's a way of proselytizing for a film that might otherwise be overlooked. One member names a film and any other member who watches it for the first time can name a film of their own for the first member to watch in exchange.

ptatler wrote:

Tom Hagen wrote:The aughties are going to be a boring vote; I would be shocked - shocked - if the top two films from the forum's 2006 poll budge from their respective perches.

The ensuing years have had their share of darlings however. I can think of one film that could be #2 with a bullet, if not #1.

I'm personally excited. I think that the '06 is poorly representative of the decade's offerings thusfar. Plus, if the 90s vote is an indicator, there are more people willing to weigh in this go-round.

I'm excited as well, I think if there is enough diversity of lists as there was with the 90s then it will be interesting. Unlike the other decades I have no definite number one (or even any films that will definitely make my top five), I'm excited to see the suggestions.

Was there a previous 2000-2005 poll, then?

thirtyframesasecond wrote:Was there a previous 2000-2005 poll, then?

Yes, it's on this page.

As a respectable period of mourning for the nineties has passed, I will now open a Noughties discussion thread. I don't remember what the results were last time (just that they weren't as calamitous as the first stab at the nineties), but I'd be alarmed if our take on the decade hasn't evolved somehow in the past few years.

And it's definitely the whole decade that's being covered - that's why we delayed the vote until the end of January 2010. There's never going to be a time when we can assume that all the great films of the decade are readily available to everyone, but at least they'll all be in the running.

zedz wrote:I liked L.A. Confidential when it came out, but haven't seen it since. I admire a mainstream Hollywood film with a gay hero that isn't about having a gay hero.

Please explain. I've seen it more than once, and don't quite remember that.

Isn't Kevin Spacey's character pretty clearly gay? (At least that's how I recalled it, in regard to the male starlets he ogles.)

I'm pretty sure Zedz is right, but I haven't seen it in about eight years.

He never came across as gay to me, although he does obsess over the murder of a gay young man, but he definitely never "ogles" him, if anything he brushes off everyone until the murder provokes his interest. I've seen the movie more times than I can count due to the regular cable airings and the only of the leads that came across as homosexual to me was Guy Pearce, although that's shot to hell since he has sex with Basinger.

The scene where Vincennes looks at the Bettie-Page type pictures shoots down that theory for me.

I thought we already established that every character in every movie is gay.

swo17 wrote:I thought we already established that every character in every movie is gay.

There you go again confusing real life with the movies

I looked at a couple of scenes in the movie again last night and Spacey's acting choices still make it seem pretty obvious to me, particularly in that central scene where he swaps winks with his protege from the TV series (with the camera lingering a little on the guy's gaze across a crowded room - and we're also told that this is the guy Vincennes spends plenty of time 'rehearsing' with, so he can "get his walk right") and the arch way he gives his "oh really?" response to the 'revelation' that the DA is queer. Of course, he's never going to reveal this secret to anybody, least of all Sid, and, like everybody else in Hollywood at the time, he knows just what hoops he needs to jump through to provide himself with an alibi (which is why we -and everybody else - see him dancing with the lesbian actress in his opening scene). And in terms of character motivation, you have to ask yourself why it takes "the murder of a young gay man" in particular to spur him into action. I mean, you can choose to ignore all of these little things, but joining the dots seems to make much more sense of the character to me.

The scene where he first meets the gay male actor DeVito is exploiting implies, I think, that Vincennes is not gay and perhaps slightly uncomfortable talking to the guy (but his body language might be ambiguous here). Then later, when he finds the body, you get that very touching reaction shot where he's obviously distraught. It's one of the best moments in the film, and a rare moment of unaffectedly emotional acting from Kevin Spacey (this is definitely one of his better performances overall, I think). I never thought it meant he had actually been attracted to the actor, just that he was sorry such an innocent, likeable person had been murdered in the course of this exploitative scam he makes a living out of. But it's been years since I saw it, so there may be a subtext there that I missed.

Edit: just saw zedz' post, and indeed those are things I don't remember picking up on.

I never picked up on those either, although it makes a compelling argument. Hanson certainly didn't shy away from homosexuality in the film, and what I like about the film is there's more to it than pastiche. I think I was always focusing on Exley's sexuality rather than Vincennes since he never seems to be doing anything but working, Vincennes and Bud we get hints as to their life outside the job, but Exley is always shown at work or investigating something and his private life is nonexistent. But he has sex with Lynn, so it's hard to explain that away and you should just ignore me as I'm thinking out loud...

You know, I think one thing you can't overlook here is the undeniable influence that The Big Nowhere had on Hanson making this. Hanson has said it was really The Big Nowhere, and not L.A. Confidential, that made him want to adapt Ellroy. And in being given the monumental task of adapting the massive, sprawling novel into a compact feature film, it has always seemed clear to me that he and Hegeland solved it simply by grafting Confidential's story onto the compact structure that Ellroy laid out in Nowhere. The "three protaganist" structure that Hanson uses matches the beats of the earlier novel so much that its uncanny (granted, it simply comes from identifying what was already in Ellroy's work, he being a writer who obsessively uses the same elements and structures over and over again, but in new ways).

I mention this, because I've always noticed what zedz did. I, too, kind of brushed it aside as inconsequential. But now that he mentions it, I agree the hints are to conspicuous to be brushed aside. And this might be more understandable if you're willing to concede that Hanson and Hegeland used The Big Nowhere as a legend in navigating L.A. Confidential:

The Big Nowhere spoilers, although I'll try to be as vague as possible

One of the three lead cops in that novel turns out to be a deeply closeted gay man, so deep in the closet that he seems to have repressed it even from himself (the small clues along the way perhaps gave Hanson and co. the blueprint on how to subtly code Vincennes, especially if he's so deep in the closet that he'll "never reveal his secret"). And much like Spacey's conscience is awakened by the murder of a gay hustler, its a series of gay-targeted serial killings that awakens this character's conscience. And there's another very big parallel for those who know the novel, but that I wont spoil

Wow, that's very interesting. Thanks for the insight (and more evidence of what an unexpected resource this forum can be).