and Mann fell the fusk off after Heat. Miami Vice looked like somebody wiped their ass with the negative. dude needs to learn how to shoot digital or go back to film.
DocMcCoy"Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,917 Posts
Heat is better than any movie ever.
Can you explain why you like this movie?
I wanted to like it, but found it a struggle to sit through.
Heat is the pinnacle of the crime thriller genre.
That's quite a claim. How familiar are you with the history of film?
i also don;t get why heat is so highly rated by some. felt it was a major drag and the performances (especially pacino v deniro which some had been waiting a generation for)were flat out disappointing. that movie is at best merely competent hollywood boiler-plate.
LA Takedown, Michael Mann's made-for-TV joint which is effectively a dry run for Heat, is a much more concise and, in some ways, better movie. Of course, it doesn't have the Rumble In The Jungle star power of Heat, but I always felt that kind of overshadowed the later flick anyway. Heat is good, but it ain't even the pinnacle of Mann's filmography, much less an entire genre.
If it ain't already been mentioned, I nominate Short Cuts as a good LA movie, and I'll throw in Spike's underrated The 25th Hour as a good New York movie because it's underrated and I don't expect anyone to give it a shout.
DocMcCoy"Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,917 Posts
25th Hour anyone?
I'll throw in Spike's underrated The 25th Hour as a good New York movie because it's underrated and I don't expect anyone to give it a shout.
Well, raise my rent.
DocMcCoy"Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,917 Posts
To Live and Die in L.A. >>>>>>>>> Heat
Absolutely.
dollar_binI heartily endorse this product and/or event 2,326 Posts
Escape from New York SHITS over Escape from L.A. a million times over.
1) Calling either of these movies a NY or LA movie is pure folly, studio backlots for days. 2) Comparing Escape from LA to escape from NY is like comparing Godfather 3 to Godfather 1 & 2.
The Conversation is better than 96% of the movies mentioned in this thread.
Most days I'd side with NY, but then again Sunset Blvd. is the closest thing to a perfect film I've seen, and The Long Goodbye isn't far behind.
DocMcCoy"Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,917 Posts
Miami Vice was a total fraud.
You didn't find Gong Li as the uber Cuban/Chinese Narco-trafficker to be believable?
haha. one of many head scratching plot elements.
but really my biggest issue was just how radical a departure it was from the series, i.e. had nothing to do with it. why not just give it a totally different name? oh yeah, because he wanted to trick people into seeing it. yes mad doggie.
Me too. The TV series was a straight game-changer in so many ways - it at least paralleled the emergence of the long-form music video (if not led the way for it) simply by applying music video techniques and production values to TV drama. It may not have been the kind of development everyone welcomed, but it was undoubtedly a radical one. Also, I remember when Three Kings came out and everyone was saying how remarkable it was that a Hollywood movie could be so blatantly political. Sorry, but in the mid-80s Miami Vice was in millions of American homes taking sideswipes at US foreign policy in South America almost every other week at one point. Trouble was, nobody was looking past the rockstar cameos and Don Johnson's pastel-coloured sports jackets with the sleeves pushed up.
I thought the movie was good, but in hindsight it was an attempt by Mann to do what he did with LA Takedown and Heat - make the later version more multi-layered and complex - but what he ended up doing was sacrificing the energy and the directness of the TV series and working in a load of that moody digital chiaroscuro stee he utilised on Collateral. Where's the inscrutable existentialist Castillo, for example? The movie just has a grumpy cop from central casting. As has been pointed out already, it's a good solid popcorn movie but not a whole lot else. Naomie Harris is hot, though.
Nah, I ride for the TV series. Some of it looks dumb and dated now, sure, but at its best it was pretty groundbreaking.
DocMcCoy"Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,917 Posts
That Bruce Willis villian episode where Crocket rides to In The Air Tonight changed the game.
LOLOLOLOL
BATMONTALK
Miami Vice was the first show to really work their steez like a music video.
It was a str8 up embrace of the MTV Generation style of viewing.
You beat me to it.
I did a film studies course in 86/87, and one of the first things I wrote for it was an extended essay on music in film and TV that referenced Miami Vice as the first example of TV as extended music video.
I wanted to like it, but found it a struggle to sit through.
Heat is the pinnacle of the crime thriller genre.
That's quite a claim. How familiar are you with the history of film?
i also don;t get why heat is so highly rated by some. felt it was a major drag and the performances (especially pacino v deniro which some had been waiting a generation for)were flat out disappointing. that movie is at best merely competent hollywood boiler-plate.
LA Takedown, Michael Mann's made-for-TV joint which is effectively a dry run for Heat, is a much more concise and, in some ways, better movie. Of course, it doesn't have the Rumble In The Jungle star power of Heat, but I always felt that kind of overshadowed the later flick anyway. Heat is good, but it ain't even the pinnacle of Mann's filmography, much less an entire genre.
If it ain't already been mentioned, I nominate Short Cuts as a good LA movie, and I'll throw in Spike's underrated The 25th Hour as a good New York movie because it's underrated and I don't expect anyone to give it a shout.
Pacino-DeNiro scenes were actually the least compelling part of Heat.
It was all about Kilmer (yes, Kilmer), Sizemore, Voight, epic bank shootout, Ton Loc, great LA shots.
Most of all, it was an interesting crime story but not "OVER THE TOP MULTI-LAYERED INTERTWINING PLOTLINE CRIME SAGA!!!!" which is what too often passes for "good" crime drama these days. The ability to do a straight-forward, but still interesting crime story (without overdoing it) is very rare indeed. Heat achieved it IMO.
still, pinnacle of Mann's filmography = Last of Mohicans.
Escape from New York SHITS over Escape from L.A. a million times over.
1) Calling either of these movies a NY or LA movie is pure folly, studio backlots for days.
Ill agree that its not filmed in NYC. BUT Manhattan is portrayed as the Future Hell Hole that folks saw as its inevitable future. 1981 NYC is still Dirty.
Manhattan is one of the characters in the movie.
That wouldnt have worked in any other city.
Escape From LA shouldnt even be mentioned in this convo.
Is Die Hard really an LA flick? McClane is NYPD handing out an ass kicking while in LA for less than 24 hours. The LA force didn't come out looking all that great in the movie IMO.
dollar_binI heartily endorse this product and/or event 2,326 Posts
The Conversation is better than 96% of the movies mentioned in this thread.
Are you f*cking kidding me dude?
- spidey
Please note I left 4% free for anyone to insert their favorite hometown movie into the master list. I suppose the fictional "Nakatomi Plaza" means about as much to LA as the Glass Tower means to San Francisco.
I'll throw in Spike's underrated The 25th Hour as a good New York movie because it's underrated and I don't expect anyone to give it a shout.
Well, raise my rent.
On that same tip, I tried to throw a bone to The Player but I think you are right -- Short Cuts much better as a true L.A. movie. As far as Altman, man, I don't get a lot of his movies. I watched The Long Goodbye right after I read the book and, while it was a unique angle, I'd have rather seen a straight ahead take. But Marlowe's neighbors...
I'm glad everyone can agree that Coppola was dude -- casually putting out a masterpiece between the two Godfather flicks...
NY is a much more visually interesting setting for movies and I lean towards New york for the win. But there have been so many more movies made in Los Angeles. Hollywood loves to make movies about their own backyard. In fact my favorite movie ever "Repo Man" is definitely an LA movie; but regional bias wins so I say NY.
(By the way, "Heat" and Michael Mann in general = quite overrated)
Also, the short stories that "Short Cuts" is based on are set in the Pacific Northwest so I think it is a bad example of an "LA film"; or perhaps it is a good example of how generic the landscape of LA has become after we seen so many films and TV shows filmed there.
Also, the short stories that "Short Cuts" is based on are set in the Pacific Northwest so I think it is a bad example of an "LA film"; or perhaps it is a good example of how generic the landscape of LA has become after we seen so many films and TV shows filmed there.
But "Short Cuts", the movie, doesn't take place in the Pac Northwest. It's not like we were supposed to confuse the settings there for Portland; Altman deliberately relocated the storylines to L.A. It's hardly an argument for the "genericness of the LA landscape." That'd be like saying "High Fidelity" confuses Chicago for London. It's set in Chicago even though the OG book was set in London.
I liked "Short Cuts" but I always thought "Nashville" was a superior take on the same structure. Both > "Magnolia" though.
Comments
Goodfellas
Fingers y'all.
Woody Allen's career. NYC owns this.
and the Mack was filmed in Oakland.
and Mann fell the fusk off after Heat. Miami Vice looked like somebody wiped their ass with the negative.
In The Air was used Twice.
In the very first episode which was the pilot and also in Eps 7 of the first season with Bruce.
YES
LA Takedown, Michael Mann's made-for-TV joint which is effectively a dry run for Heat, is a much more concise and, in some ways, better movie. Of course, it doesn't have the Rumble In The Jungle star power of Heat, but I always felt that kind of overshadowed the later flick anyway. Heat is good, but it ain't even the pinnacle of Mann's filmography, much less an entire genre.
If it ain't already been mentioned, I nominate Short Cuts as a good LA movie, and I'll throw in Spike's underrated The 25th Hour as a good New York movie because it's underrated and I don't expect anyone to give it a shout.
Well, raise my rent.
Absolutely.
1) Calling either of these movies a NY or LA movie is pure folly, studio backlots for days.
2) Comparing Escape from LA to escape from NY is like comparing Godfather 3 to Godfather 1 & 2.
The Conversation is better than 96% of the movies mentioned in this thread.
Me too. The TV series was a straight game-changer in so many ways - it at least paralleled the emergence of the long-form music video (if not led the way for it) simply by applying music video techniques and production values to TV drama. It may not have been the kind of development everyone welcomed, but it was undoubtedly a radical one. Also, I remember when Three Kings came out and everyone was saying how remarkable it was that a Hollywood movie could be so blatantly political. Sorry, but in the mid-80s Miami Vice was in millions of American homes taking sideswipes at US foreign policy in South America almost every other week at one point. Trouble was, nobody was looking past the rockstar cameos and Don Johnson's pastel-coloured sports jackets with the sleeves pushed up.
I thought the movie was good, but in hindsight it was an attempt by Mann to do what he did with LA Takedown and Heat - make the later version more multi-layered and complex - but what he ended up doing was sacrificing the energy and the directness of the TV series and working in a load of that moody digital chiaroscuro stee he utilised on Collateral. Where's the inscrutable existentialist Castillo, for example? The movie just has a grumpy cop from central casting. As has been pointed out already, it's a good solid popcorn movie but not a whole lot else. Naomie Harris is hot, though.
Nah, I ride for the TV series. Some of it looks dumb and dated now, sure, but at its best it was pretty groundbreaking.
The Warriors -NY
You beat me to it.
I did a film studies course in 86/87, and one of the first things I wrote for it was an extended essay on music in film and TV that referenced Miami Vice as the first example of TV as extended music video.
Pacino-DeNiro scenes were actually the least compelling part of Heat.
It was all about Kilmer (yes, Kilmer), Sizemore, Voight, epic bank shootout, Ton Loc, great LA shots.
Most of all, it was an interesting crime story but not "OVER THE TOP MULTI-LAYERED INTERTWINING PLOTLINE CRIME SAGA!!!!" which is what too often passes for "good" crime drama these days. The ability to do a straight-forward, but still interesting crime story (without overdoing it) is very rare indeed. Heat achieved it IMO.
still, pinnacle of Mann's filmography = Last of Mohicans.
Are you f*cking kidding me dude?
- spidey
Hmmm, yea. I can get behind this.
Two different eras in both cities "gang" history.
The Warriors - based on an 'old' book filmed in '78 NYC.
Colors - 1988- Hip Hop Informed LA Cop + Gang flick.
Mandrill vs Ice T.
Ill agree that its not filmed in NYC. BUT Manhattan is portrayed as the Future Hell Hole that folks saw as its inevitable future. 1981 NYC is still Dirty.
Manhattan is one of the characters in the movie.
That wouldnt have worked in any other city.
Escape From LA shouldnt even be mentioned in this convo.
b/w
Omega Man > I Am Legend
One of the best movies ever.
One of my fav Neo-Noir joints.
indeed
off topic, but totally agree.
movies in sf (esp that era) are awesome.
Please note I left 4% free for anyone to insert their favorite hometown movie into the master list. I suppose the fictional "Nakatomi Plaza" means about as much to LA as the Glass Tower means to San Francisco.
On that same tip, I tried to throw a bone to The Player but I think you are right -- Short Cuts much better as a true L.A. movie. As far as Altman, man, I don't get a lot of his movies. I watched The Long Goodbye right after I read the book and, while it was a unique angle, I'd have rather seen a straight ahead take. But Marlowe's neighbors...
I'm glad everyone can agree that Coppola was dude -- casually putting out a masterpiece between the two Godfather flicks...
(By the way, "Heat" and Michael Mann in general = quite overrated)
hell yes
But "Short Cuts", the movie, doesn't take place in the Pac Northwest. It's not like we were supposed to confuse the settings there for Portland; Altman deliberately relocated the storylines to L.A. It's hardly an argument for the "genericness of the LA landscape." That'd be like saying "High Fidelity" confuses Chicago for London. It's set in Chicago even though the OG book was set in London.
I liked "Short Cuts" but I always thought "Nashville" was a superior take on the same structure. Both > "Magnolia" though.
The young Elliot Gould = suave as f---.