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This is coming out tomorrow in the U.S., but seems to have been screened elsewhere in the world (festivals, etc.) Anybody see it? Ebert and Roeper and David Denby of the New Yorker are really hyping it (I think Denby said it was the best American film since Mystic River)?

http://www.apple.com/trailers/lions_gat ... large.html

So, have the americans started to make european films now? Or has the influence of Magnolia finally crept its way into the filmmaking subconsciousness?

Looks interesting in a "seen that, done that" kind of way.

I pretty much have no interest in seeing this..... It looks more like Grand Canyon than Magnolia.

And to answer your question, I thought American have been making foreign films for a while now.

Wow. COLD! Seriously, I saw posters for this in the lobby, but never took a close look, and then the commercials started and I heard Haggis's name. I like Million Dollar Baby quite a bit, but I'm not enamored with it like some are, and I've got mixed feelings of Haggis's past work on thirtysomething, E.R., etc. (which sort of echoes Kasdan, so the "Grand Canyon" comparison seems amusing).

Denby hypes things a bit (I liked Mystic River, too, but not nearly as much as Denby) and it's tough to trust Ebert for the same reason, but still, any film they like that much usually is worth seeing.

The TV commercials don't do a good job telling you what to expect, and from what I hear, it's supposed to be about racial tensions. Some say a contemporary 'slice of life' in L.A., which may be misleading,
not to mention VAGUE, and doesn't really entice me (so was "Short Cuts" and dozens of other films, but I didn't like them because they were just a 'slice of life'). Cheadle was on Conan O'Brien talking about this, but despite O'Brien's passing remarks about great reviews, they barely talked about the movie at all. They spent most of their time talking about some house Cheadle stayed at while making "Ocean's Twelve" and when Cheadle talked about it, didn't say a word about racial issues. You only catch a glimpse at the end of the clip they show (something Cheadle's character says about Latinos to his girlfriend) but by then the interview's over and that's it. Regardless of the film's quality, they're doing a pretty lame job pushing the film.

hearthesilence wrote: it's supposed to be about racial tensions.

Yes.

hearthesilence wrote:Some say a contemporary 'slice of life' in L.A., which may be misleading, not to mention VAGUE

That's what they call "marketing". They use the phrase to suck people into thinking it doesn't deal with a "big" topic such as racism and is just another piece of light-weight entertainment.

hearthesilence wrote:Cheadle was on Conan O'Brien talking about this, but despite O'Brien's passing remarks about great reviews, they barely talked about the movie at all. They spent most of their time talking about some house Cheadle stayed at while making "Ocean's Twelve" and when Cheadle talked about it, didn't say a word about racial issues.

Have you ever watched a late-night talk-show before? They rarely if ever discuss the film as serious piece of work. Late Nite with Conan O'Brien isn't the same thing as Charlie Rose, most likely because Conan is a comedian/comedy-writer and Charlie Rose is an interviewer. A serious discussion on racial issues is never going to happen on Conan, or Leno, or Letterman. This is the U.S. entertainment industry in Hollywood we're talking about here, not a round-table at the Lincoln Center. This is the standard form of promotion applied over the past decade or so. What exactly were you expecting?

hearthesilence wrote:something Cheadle's character says about Latinos to his girlfriend

I believe it's about how all Spanish-speaking Americans somehow learned to park their cars on their lawns. It's a good line, even if it's totally racist.

I watch Letterman more often than Conan, and at the very least they talk about something connected with the movie coming out. It's usually something light like a joke they played on a co-star or how they had to wear a lot of make-up/latex or something like that, but still it's something related to the current work. I think they spent maybe ten seconds talking about "Crash" at the very end. Cheadle just says he produced, you don't see many movies like this, they show the clip, and that's it.

Yeah, you're not going to get an intellectual discussion on these shows, but I think Cheadle would have preferred to push his current movie instead of talking about old movies like Oceans Twelve and Boogie Nights.

hearthesilence wrote:... but I think Cheadle would have preferred to push his current movie instead of talking about old movies like Oceans Twelve and Boogie Nights.

Cheadle and his representatives (agent, publicist, etc) have a great deal of input about what exactly will be discussed during the interview. It's not like he's completely unprepared for what Conan will bring up during the interview. It's all prepared in advance. If Cheadle really wanted to get into what the film is about, he could have requested that the interview include such material. Of course, this is all restricted by the demographics that watch the show. O'Brien's audience skews younger than Letterman's, so it's no surprise that they decided to talk about less relevant material and centered the interview around anecdotes from Ocean's Twelve. If Cheadle gets a spot on Letterman or The Daily Show, I'm sure they will go into the racial issue a bit more, but I guess the distributors and producers decided that Conan's audience overlaps the demographic that is most likely to see the film (which I'm much less sure about).

Have you seen the movie yet, by any chance? I'm going to try and see it this weekend, but I'm supposed to see "Hitchhiker's" with people who I doubt will be interested in "Crash."

hearthesilence wrote:Have you seen the movie yet, by any chance?

Sadly, I haven't been able to see it yet because the film hasn't opened here. I'm fairly certain that it opens here this weekend, so I'll probably catch it sometime soon. Of course, the weather has just started to improve, so there will probably be a few BBQs that I'll be tempted to drop in on. Also, most of my friends will probably want to go see something like House of Wax. #-o

So, I finally was able to watch Crash yesterday night. The film is commendable in its attempt to address the racial tensions that permeate through the US, and specifically Los Angeles. Race is an important issue in America that must be explored in greater depth, considering it remains a raw nerve in many areas of the US (while it's been silently swept under the rug in Canada amid our "cultural mosaic"). Films such as Crash deserve some praise for attempting to illustrate and explore racial issues within our culture, and for not making another morally bland "racism is bad, so white people should feel bad" message movie. However, I hate to sound all Armond White about this (I haven't actually read his take on the film), but the film is misguided at times and verges on being racist within its own structure. To put it as offensively as possible, Crash feels like it was written by a white dude.

Crash is another example of the types of "serious drama" that are so celebrated in Hollywood/North American media culture. They focus entirely too much effort on writing and acting, without much thought to vision. These types of films are written in order to be excessively heavy in order to appeal to actors that want momentously somber roles that they "can sink their teeth into" after collecting a guilty paycheque on their previous project. The problem is that these types of projects often confuse themselves on the way to their final destination. They spend so much time in staging the important actions and huge events while simultaneously allowing enough elaborate showcases for its acting talents, they usually forgot about how their images and how those images relate to one another, and worse, how these images may weaken their position.

The acting and dialogue in Crash are accomplished and genuine almost throughout the film. By far the best scene occurs between a Latino locksmith father and his daughter when he arrives home to discover her hiding under her bed. Within this single scene, which could have become ultra-cheesy, Haggis is able to subtly touch on issues dealing with race in an effective manner, without the need to become heavy-handed. Instead of having his characters spout off racist dialogue and artificially discuss racial issues, the father and daughter simply talk about moving away from a dangerous community to a much safer community, and we witness the sacrifice the father has had to make afterwards when he must answer a late-night service call. Sadly this subtle, effective, delicate scene is later exploited in the most melodramatic fashion.

Unfortunately, a few missteps really made the film a failure for me. First, it’s the use of Larenz Tate and Ludacris as comic relief. I really don’t have a problem with these two black men being portrayed as car-jackers. It’s a stereotype, but the film chooses to tread in occupational stereotypes for its characters. At the beginning of the film, for the most part, these two black characters are reasonably eloquent in their discussions on race towards, even if the arguments are old news. Unfortunately, they quickly become the film’s source of comic relief, with their one-liners, poor logic, and absurd theories on racial persecution and in doing so, the filmmakers undermine the importance of these types of characters within our culture. Thus the film also undermines the significance of the racial struggle that young African-American males must engage in to establish themselves in society, by reducing them to nothing more than a joke. It's a bad case of "let's take a moment out of our day and laugh at black people saying stupid stuff".

Next, it's the treatment of Matt Dillon's racist cop character, and his relation to the black married couple played by Terrence Howard and Thandie Newton. Now, I have no problem with having a racist portrayed as a human-being and allowing the character some explanation for his bigotry. In fact, we must show racists as humans rather than caricatures in order to demonstrate the nature of racism and avoid diminishing their mentality to mere cartoon-ish stupidity. My problem relies in the relief that the filmmakers grant Dillon's racist cop, that in effect absolves him of his actions, and further allows him to further emasculate Howard's husband. When Dillon's cop shows up at the crash site and decides to tear Newton out of her overturned car in order to save her from the potential explosion, the filmmakers decide to focus on the sexuality of the actions by framing the characters horizontality and in close proximity to one another. This is a smart move in theory, in order to illustrate the tension that both characters are struggling through within the scene, due to the cop’s earlier sexual-harassment of Newton’s character during a traffic stop that humiliated both her and, indirectly, her husband. During this early scene, Howard’s character is unwilling to stand up to Dillon’s lewd cop and is thus emasculated due to his inaction, which then results in a conflict within his marriage over his cowardly actions. Newton attacks and derides her spouse for not protecting her from danger, and essentially exclaims that he isn’t man enough, and even questions how “black” he truly is. Now faced with the need to allow the man that sexually-harassed her to save her, Newton is understandably unwilling initially to allow the cop anywhere near her. Of course, she must finally relent and allow him to cut her loose, since she needs to survive. There is a great deal of sexual tension and suggestion within the scene, with Dillon’s cop wrapping his body underneath and around Newton, moving her clothing (this time to cover her up to make her feel more comfortable), having her whimper and plead, having both stare into one another’s eyes, and the cop pulling out a knife from his belt to cut away the seat-belt at Newton’s waist in order to free her from danger. All of this tension is understandable, and the sexual nature of these actions must be addressed in some fashion in order to parallel the earlier threat, but the problem is the visual image seems to sexualize the scene to far too great a degree. The problem is probably due to the fact that we enter the scene from the cop’s perspective rather than the wife’s POV. It thus becomes a scene not of terror, tension, and finally forgiveness for the wife, but rather the cop's absolution, heroism, and ability to provide relief. The scene should end in a form of equality, but instead allows Dillon’s character to be granted even more power, because he is the one elevated through the action/event. It’s far too sexual from a male POV, while the terror of a female victim having to once again succumb to a weaker position in the face of her attacker doesn’t resonate at all. It gets even worse when Dillon does pull Newton to safety and the scene climaxes in a fiery explosion followed by a display of Newton’s relief. In essence, Dillon is allowed to provide Newton with the masculine protection from danger she requires, that her husband was not able to provide when the couple was originally threatened. It almost implies that Dillon is a much more capable lover than Howard, and it becomes even more offensive considering Dillon’s cop interrupted a sexual act between the couple when he originally pulled them over in order to force himself upon Newton. Though the scene is meant to show that even a vile racist such as Dillon’s cop is capable of redemptive, morally color-blind actions, it actually allows the racist cop to attain an even higher position within his environment and exert even more control over the lives of others. Granted this is somewhat balanced by his inability to help his ailing father, but it seems ineffective considering he ends the film by being redeemed and sympathetic in the audiences eyes, and his previous and potential racist actions are not dealt with.

A few other scenes really annoyed me in how obviously artificial they were. Most notable among these was the private meeting between Cheadle’s cop and Fintcher’s political aide, in which Fitcher’s character just blurts out something akin to “Damn Blacks!” out of nowhere. The racial ambitions within this scene are so contrived, they feel insanely false. Yet, this is only one example among a dozen. I know racism isn’t the most logical and it does appear arbitrarily, but it just seems rather odd that these people would continue to provoke one another time and again, and without thought to their own reactions.

Equally frustrating is the sense of catharsis that shows up towards the end, where everything settles down and some odd form of peace is realized, that does nothing but calm and comfort the audience in order for them to sleep better at night. A bunch of racist folk change their attitudes slightly, and learn a bit more about “hatred” - snow falls and fires burn and LA continues on. So why exactly was the last two hours even remotely important, when all that’s been made clear is that “everyone is a bit racist”? Maybe that’s new knowledge for middle-America, but that’s not news for anyone whose skin is a few shades darker than white.

I saw this a week or two ago. For the most part I agree with what Andre had to say. Rosenbaum also wrote a very interesting review of the film for the Chicago Reader.

I disagree though with Andre's interpretation of the dillon/newton rescue scene in terms of its sexual implications. While there is a sexual undercurrent to the scene, because of dillon's previous encounter with newton, I don't think it is in anyway sensual or related to the masculinity of newton's husband. The current seems to stem entirely from Newton's fear of dillon. But, as soon as both of them realize that they're in a life or death situation the current becomes less about sex and much more about death. I think the point of the scene, is as Andre mentioned to show that Dillon a man who is a racist is still capable of acting morally and that Newton (who is a victim) must work with him to escape the situation. While the scene helps to humanize dillon (along with his relationship to his father) I don't think it negates his racism, I also think that a desire to negate this might have as much to do with the actor dillon and the audience's natural identification with him. Also, although Dillon's racism doesn't prevent him from (in this case) acting morally in his job, it does prevent him from helping his father - the implication of that scene, that a woman, who, doesn't appear to be racist, is presented (in the case of dillon's father) with a man who deserves help, chooses not to act morally, because of dillon's racism. I'm not sure if I agree with this, but the combination of these two ideas is at least interesting. That a racist can do the right thing inspite of racism. And that someone (who doesn't appear to be racist) can do the wrong thing, because of racism.

I think the biggest problem with the movie, as Andre talks about. Is that the movie attempts to look at a rather ingored subject (given its importance in American history) in a very standard generic way. The idea that it maybe never occurred to Haggis that in order to deal with race, he might have to abandon the model of a hollywood film, to divorce himself from using known actors, with who we have a preexisting sympathy, to lay off on the musical overtures that make sure we bleed our tears on cue, is frustrating. I don't understand how in America someone can make a movie about a person, cause, idea and in the end, instead of that person, cause or idea being celebrated, it's the movie that's remembered. Maybe that's the way it is everywhere, but ultimately it seems the accomplishment of this movie is Haggis's work as a screen writer and some good acting, he's left his issue on the back of the bus.

Ok...ok..I'll go and see this flick this weekend and give you all the definitive opinion on whether it's worthy or not....

Saw Crash yesterday and found the film to be moderately interesting- probably tried to cram a few too many storylines/characters into it's length and the slavish homage to Magnolia (ashes falling at the end - frogs in Magnolia, also the female sung song that drives the montage at the end- see Magnolia) take away from it's force. A little too much of trying to tie things up/coincidences, etc. but overall strong performances by mostly everyone ....

ashes? isn't it snow?

I thought it was ashes falling from the nearby bonfire ...could be wrong, however...

who is bobby dylan wrote:ashes? isn't it snow?

Sounds like a crib from Human Diastrophism. Does anybody who's seen the film have an opinion on that?

All arguments aside..worth checking out for the acting performances alone...I can count at least 10 at this moment. Who knew Sandra Bullock could get under my skin?

Short Cuts meets Magnolia.

bearcub wrote:Awful film, Ebert is way off on this one.

I do like the seen with the little girl under the bed though.

Yup, it has to be scene to be believed.

bearcub wrote:Awful film, Ebert is way off on this one.

I do like the seen with the little girl under the bed though.

He has been quite off recently. Still cannot believe that he ranked "Monster" as the #1 movie of 03. It has one greatish lead performance for sure, but overall the best movie of 03? Come on!

Was definitely a little underwhelmed by "Crash". Does anyone believe that the ensemble piece might have been a better vehicle for Robert Altman or PT Anderson?

kieslowski_67 wrote:Still cannot believe that he ranked "Monster" as the #1 movie of 03. It has one greatish lead performance for sure, but overall the best movie of 03? Come on!

Theron did a pretty good Michael Keaton impersonation. She was better on Arrested Development.

Back on topic...

kieslowski_67 wrote:

bearcub wrote:Awful film, Ebert is way off on this one.

I do like the seen with the little girl under the bed though.

He has been quite off recently. Still cannot believe that he ranked "Monster" as the #1 movie of 03. It has one greatish lead performance for sure, but overall the best movie of 03? Come on!

Was definitely a little underwhelmed by "Crash". Does anyone believe that the ensemble piece might have been a better vehicle for Robert Altman or PT Anderson?

Worst is his recent gushes at Sundance about EVE AND THE FIREHORSE. You've gotta be kidding me?! The film is terrible - horrible acting by the parents, and a really aimless plot about Christianity vs. Buddhism. The dad goes back to China in the 70s in the film..except that you can't actually do that. due to the politics at the time. Was any research even done?!?

And CRASH. That totally out-of-nowhere attack on Scott Foundas' SLATE response is outrageous. Sorry, but I have far more respect for Scott's opinion.

I still think people could just listen to songs from the Avenue Q soundtrack instead.

Another scene that doesn't make sense is the scene between Tate's thug and Phillippe's young cop at the very end of the film that's really supposed to drive home the idea that "everyone's a little bit racist". The problem with the scene is that it escalates to a shouting match out of nowhere (it was like watching Spacey and Sam Jackson in the crapfest known as A Time to Kill). I also find it hard to believe that someone would reach to pull something out of their jacket while there is a serious threat of being shot. Wouldn't anyone else just take their hand out of their pocket and just say "buddy, calm down and put the gun away. I'm just trying to tell you that I carry around a statue of the same saint"? Instead, these guys start yelling like crazy at each other.

If I was a white cop and picked up some white hitch-hiker and he started to reach into his jacket to pull something out, I might feel threatened as well. Haggis' point is that even this young idealist cop who tries to be fair and attempts to conduct himself in an unbiased manner during his job, in fact has racist tendencies. Problem is that he isn't really racist in this scenario, and Tate's thug is kind of an idiot thinking he can reach into his jacket with the guy who just picked him up screaming for him not to do so. It doesn't matter that Tate's thug is cleaning up his act, or that he's got a statue of a saint in his pocket, or that he doesn't pose a threat in reality. The only thing that matters is that he appears threatening and he's kind of an idiot not to think of what his actions look like to the person who he just met two minutes ago that doesn't know him at all. He doesn't deserve to get shot, but he's a moron for not seeing the scenario from the other perspective.

I saw the film a while ago. While it had some good things in it, overall it was disjointed and flawed. The actors do a fine job and all, but a worthy best picture nominee. No sir. Not better than Walk The Line...... Or even Broken Flowers.

From DVDTOWN:

[quote]Lionsgate will release "Crash: Director's Cut Edition" on DVD this April 4th. The film is nominated for 6 Academy Award including Best Picture.

Special Features
Disk 1:
- Director's Cut Widescreen Feature
- DVD Introduction by Director Paul Haggis
- Feature Commentary with Paul Haggis, Don Cheadle and Bobby Moresco
-Trailers

Disk 2:
- Deleted Scenes (optional with Director's Commentary)
- Behind the Metal and Glass Making of CRASH
- On Paul Haggis Featurette
- L.A. "The Other Main Character" Featurette
- Unspoken Featurette
- Bird York “In the Deepâ€

dammit, I'm glad you put 2005 on the title. I'm still waiting for Cronenberg's version to come out in a SE.