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Almost Famous

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Comments

  • #32
    QikBax
    Registered Users Posts: 1,018 ✭✭✭QikBax


    Absolutely fantastic film. Funny, heartbreaking, really well cast and the music is great.

    Love Say Anything. Jerry Maguire is pretty good.

    Elizabethtown is an unmitigated disaster though. One of the five worst films I've ever seen. Horrible, horrible, horrible.


  • #33
    Sleepy
    Registered Users Posts: 24,038 ✭✭✭✭Sleepy


    I hate to admit it, but I prefer the theatrical release.

    The directors cut portrays the band in rather a more callous light than the theatrical. When there's at least a little mystery as to relationship between Penny and Russell (and whether they knew each other prior to William "introducing" them) I think we see things more through William's eyes. A few of the added scenes are of the band clearly attempting to manipulate William and I prefer it when we, as the viewer, are included in his journey through the experience of wondering if he's actually managing to make friends with the band etc.

    It has it's strengths (the elongated "tiny dancer" scene with Penny) and the sister's ex just hanging around in his room but all in, I think they got the theatrical release right: it captures the dream fulfillment of the 15 year old on tour with a rockband better when it glosses over the nastier elements of the exploitation of the young band-aids and the blatant attempts to manipulate William.


  • #34
    Obvious Desperate Breakfasts
    Closed Accounts Posts: 8,474 ✭✭✭Obvious Desperate Breakfasts


    I’ve recently rewatched this film. It is really wonderful. The Tiny Dancer is rightly revered but there are so many more great scenes. And I appreciate Frances McDormand’s part much more than I did when first seeing it two decades ago.

    I do have a minor quibble though and it stops the film from being an outright classic for me: the plane turbulence scene. I know it’s based on a real life Lynyrd Skynrnd plane crash but I find the exposition voiced in the scene very cheesy and hacky. It just felt like a lazy way to bring things to a head. I think I found it cheesy the first time I saw it too. It feels out of place. The bit with the guy shouting that he’s gay and then the turbulence stops - sigh, no. Baaaad. Russell’s adventure at the Topeka house party was played for laughs but fits in with the film but the turbulence scene seems like it’s from another, lesser film.

    It’s a shame.

    I really like the longer director’s cut though.


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