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FBG Movie Club - DotM: Richard Linklater (1 Viewer)

I finished The Last Detail and I'm about 2/3 through Last Flag Flying. One of the questions I had when I looked at the list of Linklater movies is what drew him to some of these drama movies that I wouldn't normally associate with him. These read like road movies with few characters and anti-establishment undercurrent that populates the movies I do associate with him, so it makes more sense. We are off for a few days this weekend so the plan is to finish the last little bit of the book and watch both of those movies next week. Then finish off the month by watching his newest 4.
Is the last detail streaming anywhere?

God help you if you say criterion channel.
Lol.

Looks like it might be on Prime/Showtime. I ordered them through my library.
Thanks for pointing this out. I’ve had it on my IMDb watchlist for a while and never had seen it show up on a streamer but it is on prime.

I can definitely see the tie ins to linklater. It is basically people doing relatively ordinary things and talking a lot, but also doing things that are somewhat interesting and sometimes out of their comfort zone. Felt like cuckoos nest a few times with the way Nicholson acted with the other two who were kind of mild mannered but he pushed them to do some different things. Enjoyable watch even though there was really no arc for anyone.
Yeah, that's what I kept coming back to as I read them. I thought both books were decent, but had a few issues with each, especially Laat Flag as it had too much sequelitis. Both were quick reads though.

If you have interest, it looks like Last Flag Flying is also on Prime. Not sure who else was in Detail, but Carrell, Fishburn, and Cranston is not what was in my mind as I read.
I am interested, but how exactly does it relate to last detail?
The books are sequels. It involves the same 3 characters and set decades in the future. Similar "road trip" feel and structure. I didn't know that before doing research for this, have never seen The Last Detail, and thought it would be a good reason to do a book tie in to DotM.
I would never have guessed that this was a linklater movie visually. So much cleaner and more still. Still don’t understand the exactly tie-in with last detail, as these are not the same characters. I guess in the book they were the same characters but linklater changed the names and backstory for the movie? It was a good watch and hard to go wrong with those 3 actors. Certainly a similar style of relating to one another as the guys in the last detail.

@Long Ball Larry

I started watching this on break, and the switch is a bit weird.

In the books, the characters in Last Flag are the same 3 people as in The Last Detail. In the movie for whatever reason they switched the names of the characters, but all the plot point are the same.

Larry = Steve Carrell = the soldier they were escorting to prison in the first movie.
Cranston is a stand in for Billy (Nicholson) in the first movie. In the book Billy owns a bar and Larry shows up one day...
Fishburne is a stand in for Mule in the first movie. In the book, after he visits Billy, he gets him to drive him to meet Mule on a Sunday - he is now a preacher.


After I finish the movie I will see if I can find some info on why it was done this way. I imagine it's probably as simple as not having the rights to the character names or something.
 
Unfaithfully Yours (1948)

Linklater's ten favorites films list in the OP was pretty heavy sledding. Unfaithfully Yours was one of only two comedies that made his top ten. Coincidentally, it's also one of Quentin Tarantino's eleven favorites.

It's a Preston Sturges movie, one of his later and lesser known ones after his string of hits at Paramount during the early WWII years. The comedy is darker and less frenetic than Sturges' early crowd pleasers. Rex Harrison stars as orchestral conductor Sir Alfred De Carter, who suspects he's being cuckolded by his wife played by Linda Darnell. Harrison's character is an eccentric artiste with a huge ego. I only knew Harrison as an older actor from My Fair Lady and Doctor Dolittle but he's tremendous as Sir Alfred; he's equally adept at delivering Sturges' witty dialog, performing physical comedy and doing a very credible job as a conductor.

I watched Unfaithfully Yours looking for connections to Linklater's works. There aren't a lot of obvious similarities; both favor long takes and share a love for the spoken word. Unfaithfully Yours also has an extremely minimal plot--it's not a stretch to say that almost nothing happens in the movie except in Sir Alfred's head. About a quarter of the running time is devoted to three fantasy sequences brilliantly set to the music that Harrison's orchestra is performing in concert. Sturges cleverly contrasts Sir Alfred's fantasies to his bumbling actions in reality. Unfaithfully Yours is a quite theatrical product of the 1940s and bears little resemblance to the kind of movies Linklater is known for. I suspect some of the love that Linklater and Tarantino have for this film is admiration for Sturges who battled the studios to get his vision on screen and can be viewed as a forerunner of modern indie filmmakers.

The print on YouTube is very good with only one short audio dropout.

 
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His top 10 I linked (pun intended) is a bit serious. I do love the tie ins we are getting to our DotM selections though. In the book he credits seeing Raging Bull while working on the oil rig as what made him want to make movies.
 
Holy crap did that month fly by. 3 days left of Linklater. Did @Ilov80s get around to any Before movies?

I ended up getting through the books and watches of The Last Detail and Last Flag Flying. With both, I ended up liking the books more (not that big of a surprise). As a movie I liked the Linklater "sequel" a little better. Not sure how much is on him though, it's more that I think the story itself has more weight and more of a touching story.

I still haven't dug for the answer, but I do think they did a disservice to the story in 2 ways. First, as I posted with Long Ball, they changed the characters and I found it a bit annoying. Same plot, but having the 3 same guys going on a similar road trip felt more natural. The other is that they changed the branch of service they were in. I thought one of the more interesting dynamics of the books was the friction and interaction between the 3 Navy guys and the Marines they were taking him to. In the sequel, that played differently because Larry's son joined the Marines instead of the Navy like his dad. There was some interesting tension and dialogue missing when they changed them all to Marines.

I also liked Hitman well enough and echo thoughts from the thread above. Good movie, but not a favorite Linklater. I am stopping 80s action for the month, and I am going to try to get to at least 2 more Linklater movies. I've liked the movies I watched this month, but for me the highlight was taking the chance on the book I mentioned above about Dazed. I am still getting through it, but I think this might be one I buy for the shelf. Just a great insight into the movie and people around it. Because of that I am thinking for the last 2 I might rewatch Slacker since it's been ages since I watched that and bump up the Apollo movie in the new era because that seems to contain some autobiographical stuff. I will also rewatch Dazed yet again after finishing the book, whenever that is. I think I'll leave Bernadette for later and sometime I want to read Scanner Darkly and watch that. I had read enough fiction so I didn't get to it this month.


Thanks for the selection this month, 80s - it was a fun one. In an ironic twist, I think the 4k Criterion of Dazed and Confused will be my DotM purchase for the month. Still not my favorite Linklater, but I also own my favorites. I have the Criterion Before Trilogy, and we have School of Rock. I also have the EWS!! bluray from the video store days. ( Boyhood and Bernie, for that matter). I still need to get my other Wilder purchase, but I've been waiting for the 50% Criterion sale to get Some Like it Hot. Unfortunately I used my Villeneuve on Dune 2. ;)
 
For July we are ramping up the blockbuster numbers again. Multiple 150M movies and dozens of Academy nominations. We have somebody similar to Spielberg for me. What I mean is that that highs are very high, and the lows are very low (again, for me). He is responsible for 2 of my all time movies, and like Steve, he is responsible for 2 sequels I hate the most. I laughed when I looked at his filmography because it seems like my hatred for those experiences means I think I have only seen 3 of his 17 movies from this century, so I have plenty of stuff to watch.

:popcorn:


After this we will also be switching tones of movies. August will feature a female director, and I don't think anything blows up in a movie. Sept is my month and we will get our first foreign language director (I haven't decided the director, I just know the country/region), and October will feature a tie in to the Horror 201 countdown that happened a couple months ago. And no - it will not be James freakin' Cameron. Aliens and T2 aren't horror in these threads, baby!!
 
Funny it’s my birthday month and I picked the director and I’m way behind on my watching. To be fair I had a lot going on. Finished the school year which was also accompanied by a job change so I had to totally move out of my office. New summer job. Trip to Italy. Babysitting my MIL with dementia at her cottage and we are getting a puppy Monday!
 
Finished the month last night with Slacker. I had never seen it and actually didn’t know anything about it other than it centered on Austin weirdos, was a big movie for the 90s independent movie scene and is considered a GenX landmark. I was caught off guard by its unique form. I guess shouldn’t have been, Linklater loves 2 things: dialogue and unique form. He had those both going from the jump. It was interesting and I loved the local color but I can’t say it was a great watch. I won’t return to it but I’m glad I saw it.
 
I watched Slacker again and had a similar reaction again. I also watched Apollo 10 1/2 last night to finish off the month. I will post more later after work and fire up July's DotM then as well.

Any guesses?
 
I watched Slacker again and had a similar reaction again. I also watched Apollo 10 1/2 last night to finish off the month. I will post more later after work and fire up July's DotM then as well.

Any guesses?
I still have seen no Linklaters. :shrug:

I'll guess that July's director is Ridley Scott.
 
I watched Slacker again and had a similar reaction again. I also watched Apollo 10 1/2 last night to finish off the month. I will post more later after work and fire up July's DotM then as well.

Any guesses?
I still have seen no Linklaters. :shrug:

I'll guess that July's director is Ridley Scott.
Why no interest in Linklater?

Scott is a director where I am all over the place with his movies but I do appreciate the old school nature of his work. Like an old school studio director. He’s not an auteur, he’s willing to tackle a wide variety of genres, he stays very busy. Maybe it’s great, maybe it’s awful. Who knows, but he’s just out there working.
 
I watched Slacker again and had a similar reaction again. I also watched Apollo 10 1/2 last night to finish off the month. I will post more later after work and fire up July's DotM then as well.

Any guesses?
I still have seen no Linklaters. :shrug:

I'll guess that July's director is Ridley Scott.
Why no interest in Linklater?
Everyone like sandwiches. I know I should like sandwiches. I can't eat sandwiches.

My wife was at the grocery store the other day. She texted me, "Do you want any lunch meat?" My answer was, "Not really. I just can't."

Linklater movies look like lunch meat to me. :shrug:
 
I never understood the love for Dazed and Confused.
Sure it's got a great cast.
But it's 1 3/4 hours of the same stupid dorks that I went to high school with that I would rather forget.

Boyhood was good, but way too long.
Before Sunrise was very good.
 
I never understood the love for Dazed and Confused.
Sure it's got a great cast.
But it's 1 3/4 hours of the same stupid dorks that I went to high school with that I would rather forget.

Boyhood was good, but way too long.
Before Sunrise was very good.
A.K.A. - Lunch Meat
 
Here is the one of the things that stuck with me most after the rewatch of Dazed and going through this book. Much of his point was to show that the 70s sucked. The shoot turned into High School b.s., it features hazing and not nice people, and Wooderson is a bit of a creepy pedo. It has grown on me, but I get what you are saying - I never liked hanging out with this group of kids. They weren't my people the way some other teen/HS movies are. That said, I think Linklater should get a ton of credit for his ability to capture and recreate the "feel" of High School. Despite not loving the characters, he nailed the tone and pointlessness that would have been a day like this. Driving around, bsing, being a terror to people's mailboxes and property, annoying Seniors harassing people, and instead the party at the typical rich kids house, it has a more natural meeting point of the tower. All of these 100% also describes my HS 20 years later in small town WI. He does a fantastic job of plopping you in with this group of people, and I'd guess your reaction to that will also reflect your feelings on your HS experience. My experience was closer to the geeks in 16 candles and lovely fast food and mall world of Fast Time, but Dazed was Linklater's experience right down to the hazing and the feelings of being the start QB and walking away.

Love is still not the right word for me, but I have developed a great appreciation for Dazed and Confused and what Linklater was able to accomplish here.
 
Well that was really stupid, I should have ended on that, not a more negative tone. I didn't like Apollo 10 1/2 much at all. I enjoyed the animation style, and like Dazed it features some really great specific nuggets of nostalgia. The problem is for me the end product felt little more than somebody showing me slides of their family from 1969, and a large part of that is the constant narration through the movie. It's fine I wanted to get to some movies from these directors I haven't seen at all, but I think I should have stuck to my original idea and read Scanner Darkly and watch that and Waking Life.
 
Here is the one of the things that stuck with me most after the rewatch of Dazed and going through this book. Much of his point was to show that the 70s sucked. The shoot turned into High School b.s., it features hazing and not nice people, and Wooderson is a bit of a creepy pedo. It has grown on me, but I get what you are saying - I never liked hanging out with this group of kids. They weren't my people the way some other teen/HS movies are. That said, I think Linklater should get a ton of credit for his ability to capture and recreate the "feel" of High School. Despite not loving the characters, he nailed the tone and pointlessness that would have been a day like this. Driving around, bsing, being a terror to people's mailboxes and property, annoying Seniors harassing people, and instead the party at the typical rich kids house, it has a more natural meeting point of the tower. All of these 100% also describes my HS 20 years later in small town WI. He does a fantastic job of plopping you in with this group of people, and I'd guess your reaction to that will also reflect your feelings on your HS experience. My experience was closer to the geeks in 16 candles and lovely fast food and mall world of Fast Time, but Dazed was Linklater's experience right down to the hazing and the feelings of being the start QB and walking away.

Love is still not the right word for me, but I have developed a great appreciation for Dazed and Confused and what Linklater was able to accomplish here.
I view this one quite differently. This day was hugely important for Mitch. He won a baseball game, got hazed, joined a new social circle, smoked weed for the first time, stayed out all night for the first time, made out with a girl for the first time, and is now officially entering the next stage of his life. He's passed a social initiation ritual -- it's a rite of passage that he's successfully navigated.

I know that Pink's encounter with authority is a little cliche and corny, but the film ends with him and his buddies road-tripping to buy Aerosmith tickets, which would have been the most important thing in all our lives when we were in HS. It serves as a reminder of simple times, when we could see adulthood on the horizon but didn't have to worry about it quite yet.

I find this movie downright heartwarming. Sure, we all knew some ###holes in HS, but youth was good.
 
Here is the one of the things that stuck with me most after the rewatch of Dazed and going through this book. Much of his point was to show that the 70s sucked. The shoot turned into High School b.s., it features hazing and not nice people, and Wooderson is a bit of a creepy pedo. It has grown on me, but I get what you are saying - I never liked hanging out with this group of kids. They weren't my people the way some other teen/HS movies are. That said, I think Linklater should get a ton of credit for his ability to capture and recreate the "feel" of High School. Despite not loving the characters, he nailed the tone and pointlessness that would have been a day like this. Driving around, bsing, being a terror to people's mailboxes and property, annoying Seniors harassing people, and instead the party at the typical rich kids house, it has a more natural meeting point of the tower. All of these 100% also describes my HS 20 years later in small town WI. He does a fantastic job of plopping you in with this group of people, and I'd guess your reaction to that will also reflect your feelings on your HS experience. My experience was closer to the geeks in 16 candles and lovely fast food and mall world of Fast Time, but Dazed was Linklater's experience right down to the hazing and the feelings of being the start QB and walking away.

Love is still not the right word for me, but I have developed a great appreciation for Dazed and Confused and what Linklater was able to accomplish here.
I view this one quite differently. This day was hugely important for Mitch. He won a baseball game, got hazed, joined a new social circle, smoked weed for the first time, stayed out all night for the first time, made out with a girl for the first time, and is now officially entering the next stage of his life. He's passed a social initiation ritual -- it's a rite of passage that he's successfully navigated.

I know that Pink's encounter with authority is a little cliche and corny, but the film ends with him and his buddies road-tripping to buy Aerosmith tickets, which would have been the most important thing in all our lives when we were in HS. It serves as a reminder of simple times, when we could see adulthood on the horizon but didn't have to worry about it quite yet.

I find this movie downright heartwarming. Sure, we all knew some ******** in HS, but youth was good.
This is a great point @IvanKaramazov and I should have expanded on that. In my mind this is included in the tone and feel of the movie. He very much captures that feeling of going to that first big party, getting in with a different crowd, and going to get tickets. These are all the things that have added to my recent growing appreciation for it.

My comment about the pointlessness was more the other things that happened - randomly driving around, waiting for the party to develop somewhere, etc... Just wandering around, and that's what we did as well. We did "ferry runs" here. There was about a 10mile loop where you drive by the lake blasting tunes, take the ferry across, drive back to town - rinse repeat until you saw somebody or something else came up.

So for me Dazed nails all those things 1000%, so that is where I am saying my fondness for the movie now lies, paired with understanding Linklater's background and intent with the movie. For me personally, the thing that keeps it a bit lower than a couple other similar movies - Fast Times is the easy comparison, is that I don't find it as funny as those and I Dazed doesn't conjure up specific situations for me, again like Fast Times does with the fast food stuff and being more of a dork like Ratner.

If I have to choose a HS movie, it's still going to be a couple others over Dazed. However, before this month and @Ilov80s ' selection I was much more in the camp of Andy and Mojo, but now I am much more on your side. It's a great movie, now in my Linklater top 5, and I will be buying the 4K and rewatching it soon. Stuff like this is why I wanted to try DotM and get me to rewatch and think more about my reactions.
 
I suppose those coming of age movies never appealed to me because I just did the teen years so differently. I lived in the country but not on a farm. All I really did was study and play sports (and yes had a few girlfriends but nothing ever got serious).

I remember fall semester of freshman year at college. I went with a group of people who were searching for a party - I walked with them for about 10 minutes but felt so out of place that I just turned around and went back to the dorm.

So things like Dazed and Fast Times just aren't ever going to speak to me, I guess.
 
Have not watched too many movies this past month due to vacation. Finally got around to Hit Man. Entertaining enough to keep me watching, but writing and plot felt a bit down compared to what usually get from Linklater.
 
Have not watched too many movies this past month due to vacation. Finally got around to Hit Man. Entertaining enough to keep me watching, but writing and plot felt a bit down compared to what usually get from Linklater.

His films have never been known for their razor sharp plots
 
Before Midnight popped up on the Roku channel last week, so I gave that a shot. Really liked the first third, especially the car ride between hawke and delpy which was so well acted and felt so realistic. Thought that the film went slowly downhill after that and became a little intellectually masturbatory as it went on and while the film continued to have the intimacy and feeling of reality, I ultimately felt kind of nonplussed about the relationship between hawke and delpy’s characters. I guess maybe they both are just discontented souls and they feel right with one another, but I didn’t totally buy them making up at the end.
 
Had been planning to watch the “Before” trilogy, but could not find on streaming platforms that I’m signed up for, and did not want to pay to rent.

So, of course, I just paid $50 for the Blu Rays as part of the BN 50% off Criterion sale.
 
Had been planning to watch the “Before” trilogy, but could not find on streaming platforms that I’m signed up for, and did not want to pay to rent.

So, of course, I just paid $50 for the Blu Rays as part of the BN 50% off Criterion sale.
I hope you like it. :oldunsure:

If it's any consolation, because of our brief back and forth about books and musical artists the only book I could find on my favorite artist and MAD31 frontrunner was a European import for $45. So far I love that purchase though.
 
Had been planning to watch the “Before” trilogy, but could not find on streaming platforms that I’m signed up for, and did not want to pay to rent.

So, of course, I just paid $50 for the Blu Rays as part of the BN 50% off Criterion sale.
I hope you like it. :oldunsure:

If it's any consolation, because of our brief back and forth about books and musical artists the only book I could find on my favorite artist and MAD31 frontrunner was a European import for $45. So far I love that purchase though.

No regrets here on the purchase so far. Before Sunrise blew me away, and was tempted to watch it again, but decided to move on to Before Sunset — finding it even better. Chemistry between them just jumps off the screen. Not sure why never got around to these before now.

ETA: That end of Before Sunset after my Nina Simone loving heart.
 
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