The Yesterday film, yes or no?

No, the film made at least three times its budget.

 

I thought Kate McKinnon was miscast as the music agent and she almost ruined the film for me. Loved the film otherwise, I have no problem with fantasy.

 

Ah, but did you see what they did in that scene? The girl he was singing to (is she famous? Afraid I didn’t recognise her) was all made-up and coiffed to be on television and was shot with the kind of focus guaranteed to make her look even better than she may look in real life (hst, she may be one of those sickening people who look great under any light at any time of day! ) - whereas Lily Cole was shot in bed, wearing glasses, without (much) make-up and in a darkened room. So, the odds were somewhat stacked against her .....

 

No!

The subject didn't appeal to me.

 

You probably did read that. People tend to play fast and loose with facts when they don't like something.

 

I thought it was good. I'm glad I saw it.

 

The silly part is that she was complaining about Jack's looks... when she was already managing Ed Sheeran!

Ed comes across as a very nice guy with a great sense of humor in this film, but he could only really be considered a "handsome Rock star" when compared to Mick Jagger.

 

if they were seriously trying to make Lily Cole look like a plain-jane, I didn't notice.

 

She plays the same character in every movie, which as far I can tell is just herself. I feel like directors just tell her to improvise and do whatever she wants, which leads to these over the top cartoon characters that are never grounded in the reality of the film. It's like she showed up on the day of filming, was told she'd be an agent, and then thought "Okay what does an agent act like...I don't know, who cares. I'll just be wacky."

 

I would agree with you about Ed Sheeran: he always comes across well but I find his music almost mesmerically unmemorable. I don’t find it ‘offensive’, though.

His appeal is mysterious to everyone under the say of, say, 30.

 

You mean mysterious to everyone over 30, right?

 

Yep, that’s what I meant!

 

Oh, is Lily Cole in it?

Hmm..

 

I do see it as syrupy, but it works for me. Not sure where I read it, but Graham Nash pulled a similar stunt on a talk show when the interviewer ask him to write a song. Nash's time was about up so he came u with Just A Song Before I Go on the spot. So the scenario with James Corden isn't too preposterous.

 

Jack's romantic hesitancy is the hardest part of the story to understand in my opinion. And yes, Ellie is a stunner.

 

I agree with your point but it's Lily James.

 

Ah right. Good.

(Cav: I like Lily Cole, mainly because she looks like our Amber, but also because we enjoyed her TV series on contemporary art)

 

It isn’t the fact that he seems to come up with a song on the spur of the moment that bothers me, it’s the cheesy way he ‘serenades’ her.

 

Watch the way she’s looking at him. I just thought he was lost in her gaze.

 

I think you're probably both correct...

 

The premise is completely unworkable.

Now, I am coming to it from the perspective of someone who has been reading speculative fiction for close to 50 years now. I fully grok the actual intent of the filmmakers, to make the premise into a rom com, but as alternate history it simply doesn't even begin to get off of the ground.

The gestalt of the time is strongly against the rich guitar pop that would be their core appeal. There really isn't any better outcome than him playing some dank bars and seedy festivals here and there, some people intrigued while most completely ignore him. There isn't any extant radio format which will get him any airplay, no room in the (heh) prefab pop world that we currently inhabit for him to market the tunes in question, and most crucially no audience primed to explode at the right place and time in history.

Now you tell me that many if not all of the bands that they influenced are still around? Leaving aside the highly improbable causal chains necessary for that to be true, there's a pernicious Catch-22 involved: if these bands are around (most notably Oasis), then he will lose a lot of his thunder and simply be seen as an imitator (Lord knows how many knockoff bands are left in the wake of the success of the original act, and the Beatles themselves are the primo exemplar of that of course). But dropping those tunes into an alternate 2010's where these bands also never existed (throwing in REM & U2 for good measure), completely divorced from the time and place that they were originally crafted, will utterly fail too, since there will be no audience who has been primed to accept their music. On top of that, the personalities of the original 4 young men were a large amount of their appeal. [Someone upthread said that he had little charisma and playing talent, and that won't help his cause, either. Just watched the trailer, and I was similarly unimpressed]

Imagine putting them not 50 years into the future but 50 years back, 1914 (ok we have WWI to deal with, so -60, 1904). Would fail with just as quiet a thud, be completely incomprehensible to the musical audience of the day, zero resonance. At best he'd become a cult act, some weirdo playing quaint guitar tunes which very few 21st century people have any interest in.

Napoleon once said that without the revolution he is nothing (possibly apocryphal, but point remains). Note I am not criticising the filmmakers here so much as I am the current state of the musical art; in such a situation as in the film I am likely buying every ticket and record I can get my hands on, understand.

 

Lotsa "Lilys" out there these days.

Lily James.

Lily Cole.

Lily Collins.

Lily-Rose Depp.

Lily Tomlin!

 

Oasis aren't around. It's one of the film's "jokes".

 

So, he’d have been better off co-opting Oasis songs, certainly at first, having more currency in the modern time..

 

Not really. He was hugely successful co-opting Beatles songs, and if we are looking for a more realistic film, then the film wouldn't really exist. Vanished from the face of the Earth.