La La Land--the return of the musical

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by The Panda, Nov 6, 2016.

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  1. mds

    mds Forum Resident

    Location:
    PA
    The movie was OK, however the buzz going on for "Best Picture" of 2016 makes me like it less because it is far from "The Best". Light far, decent songs and dance, no where near the "old" timers. Impressive that RG learned the piano parts for the movie along with the dance numbers and the acting lines, that is a lot to ask of one person.
     
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  2. PROG U.K.

    PROG U.K. Audiophile-Anglophile

    Location:
    New England
    I would venture to guess that was all visual trickery.
     
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  3. Monosterio

    Monosterio Forum Resident

    Location:
    South Florida
    Me too. In Whiplash it looks like Miles Teller is playing everything you hear, and there's no way that's the case.
     
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  4. mds

    mds Forum Resident

    Location:
    PA
    From listening to interviews, he played the piano.
     
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  5. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

    I have to admit, there is a third director I've written off - Peter Greenaway. I was part of a film society, and we got hijacked by a Greenaway fan, and I've seen his entire miserable body of work. Great stylist, dreadful director.
     
  6. Monosterio

    Monosterio Forum Resident

    Location:
    South Florida
    I just looked it up and he and the director say it's all his playing. If true, that's extremely impressive.

    (It doesn't make the movie better or worse for me either way, though.)
     
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  7. MikaelaArsenault

    MikaelaArsenault Forum Resident

    Location:
    New Hampshire
    I know for a fact that it's really him playing (even though I haven't seen the movie) is because Ryan is actually a musician.
     
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  8. Monosterio

    Monosterio Forum Resident

    Location:
    South Florida
    This is all starting to remind me a bit of Boogie Nights: Paul Thomas Anderson told Roger Ebert that's all Marky Mark at the end too. :D
     
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  9. MikaelaArsenault

    MikaelaArsenault Forum Resident

    Location:
    New Hampshire
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  10. Ghostworld

    Ghostworld Senior Member

    Location:
    US
    Thank God Greenaway pretty much has vanished. I thought his movies were lousy. I like Lars Von Triers "Meloncholia" I mean I absolutely loved it. The rest of his film, ehh. But the one with Willem Dafoe getting his willy clubbed was pretty good. Or at least was quite beautiful.
     
  11. The Panda

    The Panda Forum Mutant Thread Starter

    Location:
    Marple, PA, USA
    well, the OP has seen it, gotta warn ya.........

    SPOILERS BELOW!

    The ending was a real let down for me. It was like a nod to Scorcese's New York New York. After taking us to the spirit of the 40's/50's with some of the best fantasy sequences I've seen in years, they bring the thing to a crashing ending. It's as if to say that finding love and attaining your dream are mutually exclusive. Two people, totally right for each other, who obviously bring out the best in each other, just drift apart. She obviously knows she could have had a good life with him as we see by her dream sequence. But we're supposed to believe she's like "yea, well." I'm sorry, but these two people should have been put back together--you started it with the 40's, finish it that way, dammit. If he's trying to say that fantasy love never works in real life, then it's almost like I've been had. Like he's laughing at us--'hop on this wonderful ride with me, but oh yea, forgot to tell you, this ride isn't wonderful'. And if they had had some sort of scene to explain why they could never connect, like she was unfaithful in Paris, or he became a depressed attict working with Legend, then I could get it. But the ending just felt tacked on, like he wants to show that he's a rebel or that he doesn't really want to win best picture. The wife and I are wondering if he is pandering to people who have a lost love; you know, everyone has one, even me; but I am happy and I've moved on. Don't play me like a violin. You want to talk real world, real world is people leave their lost love behind, move on, and find real happiness and contentment that doesn't involve singing and dancing. Looking at this movie doesn't make me pine for her. Please, someone tell me why the ending is supposed to make me feel good............

    Venting over!
     
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  12. Monosterio

    Monosterio Forum Resident

    Location:
    South Florida
    I'm recalling the same thing happened to the young jazz drummer in Whiplash -- though of course that relationship wasn't the central part of the picture, as it is here.

    I'll just say I found the La La Land ending heartbreakingly beautiful and leave it at that.
     
  13. Monosterio

    Monosterio Forum Resident

    Location:
    South Florida
    @The Panda, see if this makes the ending more palatable for you:

     
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  14. Monosterio

    Monosterio Forum Resident

    Location:
    South Florida
  15. The Panda

    The Panda Forum Mutant Thread Starter

    Location:
    Marple, PA, USA
    thanks, helpful. We will ponder that....................
     
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  16. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

  17. Monosterio

    Monosterio Forum Resident

    Location:
    South Florida
    It sure doesn't seem like a "personal" film for Chazelle, at least judging from the movies he's directed so far.
     
  18. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

    Cool, but the film is going to hinge on who they cast as Michael Collins. Gosling is a great actor, but for all the respect I have for Armstrong, he was personally as exciting as...someone raised by two accountants.
     
  19. KevinP

    KevinP Forum introvert

    Location:
    Daejeon
    Enjoyable overall, but not quite as good as I had expected. It began as a full-on musical with ties to the classical period of Hollywood musicals. The opening scene in what Carson used to call America's biggest parking lot was both modern and classic. But somewhere along the line--roughly the middle--it stopped being a musical and became a movie with music. I don't think any new songs were introduced past the halfway point. It's almost the sonata form: exposition, development and recapitulation. People stopped breaking out in song, and all the music we hear is diagetic: coming from characters playing the piano, in bands, etc. The movie started in one universe and ended in another.

    (I guess the music in musicals is technically diagetic anyway.)
     
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  20. Stone Turntable

    Stone Turntable Independent Head

    Location:
    New Mexico USA
    Wow, after a spate of page two raves this thread has taken a hard turn into shrugs and meh.

    I saw it today and had a complete and total blast. It really gets what makes film musicals so pleasurable and thrilling. I've read various put-downs and attempts to problematize La La Land, and they completely miss the comedy and self-aware wit that buoys the whole ride, not to mention the ravishing gorgeousness and old-school sexiness of it all. In particular the sourpuss hipster-backlash takes on the role of jazz, vinyl, and retro style (things I passionately love) in the film seem completely clueless.

    I'm especially happy and surprised because I *hated* the sadistic tortured Buddy Rich on bad acid treatment of jazz in Whiplash, despite the incredible acting and wickedly cunning filmmaking.
     
  21. The Panda

    The Panda Forum Mutant Thread Starter

    Location:
    Marple, PA, USA
    DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN IT

    Again, thanks for this. We watched it twice. I get it at some level. But what I don't get is why personal goals and love can't mix. I guess I was lured into the whole nether world of old time musicals and didn't see it as a new age kind of thing. (I am SURE that the video guy is young enough to be my son!!) This was (I guess) not a movie for my age group. These people were true soulmates, or maybe we misinterpreted it. I will say that they did not communicate well. There should have been a conversation before she went to Paris. There was not the sharing that should go on with two people who really love each other. The way she envisioned her life with him was not, to me, the thoughts of someone who's moved on, it was someone who had a deep connection with someone else. And Kevin's points above are well taken. Maybe this movie really had a left hand turn and when the musical numbers went out the window, the situation shifted to 2016 attitudes and realism of the younger generations. And anyone else who feels a little at sea, that analysis in the video is useful.
     
  22. Stone Turntable

    Stone Turntable Independent Head

    Location:
    New Mexico USA
    SPOILER WARNING FROM ME TOO

    I didn’t have a problem with the bittersweet ending at all—it didn’t embrace the romantic soulmates for life trope but instead went for playing the lost true love melody. And the big finale that races through the what-if dream of having them stay together and find every dream together, but not really, that too is a time-honored movie device that came through like a melancholy jazz standard. It reminded me of the quite different, but in other ways quite similar heartbreak/fulfillment/flashback/flash-forward ending of another great 2016 movie, Arrival.

    And La La Land from a certain angle did offer a happy ending, in that both Sebastian and Mia fulfilled their dreams thanks to being pushed and encouraged by the other.
     
  23. Just got back from the theater. Some of it I loved. Half of it I didn't, so overall a plus but nothing magnificent. The leads were charming.

    For a film about Hollywood, I liked the most recent Woudy Allen film so much better.
     
  24. tommy-thewho

    tommy-thewho Senior Member

    Location:
    detroit, mi
    I liked it more than I thought it would.

    Kind of got dragged to it as it's not my type of movie.
     
  25. Bryan

    Bryan Starman Jr.

    Location:
    Berkeley, CA
    My wife loved it. I enjoyed it and can add it to my small, single-digit list of musicals that I tolerate/like. The two opening numbers made me think all of the songs were going to be that elaborate, but most of them were pretty subdued. Stone and Gosling obviously can't sing well enough to really belt it out, though. Being from the LA area originally, I'm a sucker for movies that romanticize the city. The Academy eats this sort of film up, so I suspect it will lead the Oscar nominations.
     
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