Tuesday, December 01, 2009

The Road in 150 Words or less

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Probably the best movie that could be made from the book. All the actors are good - Viggo it goes without saying, and I was happy Smit-McPhee acquit himself nicely (happy because he definitely seems a good fit for the Right One remake now) - and the film is beautifully shot. Death and squalor never looked so lovely.

But where McCarthy's astonishing prose tipped the scales from merely being an intellectual exercise where these no-named symbols move around expressing concepts to feeling like so much more than only the parts of the sum, Hillcoat's not there as a film-maker to bridge that gap visually, emotionally. That's not really as big a slam on Hillcoat as it might seem - McCarthy's such a good writer I don't know who could bridge that gap, really. Noble, beautiful, well pieced together, but ultimately thwarted. Read the book.
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3 comments:

  1. the road is playing NOWHERE
    its almost like the studio is trying
    to kill it. The revenues from last
    weekend are tiny. What gives?

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  2. I'd have to double-check it but I do think it's getting the slow platform type release, crazycloud, where it's just opening in a few markets at first and branching out from there. I think. I could be wrong - who the fuck knows with the Weinsteins?

    Oh and I checked IMDb before publishing this and IMDb just listed Thanksgiving as the date with no specifics on it opening in just a few cities or what, so I don't know. Hrm. Effin' Weinsteins.

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  3. When I saw the action packed theater preview I thought -- that is not the movie that I pictured in my head when I read the book.

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