Life During Wartime (STRONG LANGUAGE - ADULT CONTENT)

Editsound · 22 Jun 10 :: 20:20

Have you guys seen Chris's head shot which is on the Life During Wartime site
http://www.wercwerkworks.com/projects/lifeduringwartime

It is in the cast pictures at the top of the page. At first glance my thought was "what a creepy headshot", then I looked again, and saw a vulnerability that was pretty interesting. Now I'm not sure what I think.

TheCentralScrutinizer · 22 Jun 10 :: 20:58

That's actually one of the three headshots he gave us a couple of years ago that a friend of his shot for him. That was the very first one he sent us in fact. The full-sized color version is in the gallery. I think he really likes that photo. Some don't. I do. I used it as a wallpaper for a while.

TeeJay · 22 Jun 10 :: 21:57

Here's the color version of it:

I personally am not very fond of it.

-TeeJay

TheCentralScrutinizer · 22 Jun 10 :: 22:30

I bet it fits the movie though, so probably a good choice for that particular one.

Editsound · 23 Jun 10 :: 05:00

True, it does fit the tone of the movie.

TheCentralScrutinizer · 23 Jun 10 :: 05:05

Sweet. You're right, Rick. He's doing his vulnerable face. The shirt is distracting. I like a tighter shot with that one, honing in on his face. The version they're using on the site is cool. I like it.

therealshell · 24 Jun 10 :: 01:08

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/20 … --20100623

TheCentralScrutinizer · 24 Jun 10 :: 01:34

Here's the poster, embedded. Thanks for the link, Shell. It creeps me the hell out! But Chris's name is on it, so...

justme · 24 Jun 10 :: 02:01

Yep, there's his name all right. Right there around the hem of that kid's shorts. :puke: Kinda creeps me out, too.

TheCentralScrutinizer · 24 Jun 10 :: 02:14

Hey, woman. You're online kinda late, aren't ya? Whaz up?

BiggestChrisMarquetteFan · 27 Jun 10 :: 02:04

That movie cover is pretty weird. They could do a whole lot better.

TheCentralScrutinizer · 09 Jul 10 :: 01:17

Got Happiness from Netflix today. Gonna take the plunge this weekend since I'll be busy next weekend and hopefully seeing the movie the following weekend. Feeling kinda trepidatious.

TeeJay · 09 Jul 10 :: 09:25

They posted my order of the LDW DVD today. Even though they say you should allow 3-5 days for shipping, with play.com it usually takes over a week. I'll definitely let you know what I thought. And of course there's going to be screencaps and stuff. I still remember Happiness and it's going to be interesting to see how LDW ties in with that one.

-TeeJay

CappuGirl · 09 Jul 10 :: 19:38

i just watched this movie. Or rather the Chris-bits of it. I did a lot of fastforwarding... Chris was good. Not as great as in some other roles, but maybe its the director.. Damn depressing movie. The little brother was a bit funny.

TheCentralScrutinizer · 11 Jul 10 :: 23:15

I don't wanna watch Happiness. I've tried to make myself, but I just can't get in the mood. I made the mistake of reading this synopsis someone posted on IMDb...

Happiness is an ensemble drama that skips around between multiple storylines. The protagonist, Joy, is the youngest of three sisters. The film opens with her breaking up with a man. He responds with unreasonably malicious vitriol and ultimately takes his own life a few days later. In an attempt to contribute more to society she decides to work at a refugee education center, where she is despised by her students for being a scab during the teachers strike. The only student who is kind to her seduces her only to rob her and then request $1,000 (to which she complies).
Joys middle sister, Trish, is a housewife who claims to be happily married, and casually remarks to Joy how their entire family assumes that Joy will be a terrible failure. Trishs husband, Bill is a therapist and, in addition to instructing their son how to masturbate and having fantasies about going on shooting sprees, is also a pedophile. He develops a fixation on Johnny, a friend of their son and eventually sodomizes him after drugging his entire family when Johnny is sleeping over. Bill later rapes another of his sons friends and is eventually accused and indicted.
Joys eldest sister, Helen is a conceited author who writes fiction that she herself recognizes as empty and exploitative. She desires to know what it is like to be raped and abused. Coincidentally, her neighbor Allens hobby is making obscene phone calls to women (including Joy) while masturbating. Allen eventually calls Helen and she unexpectedly demands that he meet her. He agrees and when she discovers that he is her homely, shy neighbor she rejects his advances and demands that he leave. Allens feelings of loneliness and isolation, which he expounds upon in great detail to Bill, his therapist, are eventually quelled when he finally pays attention to Kristina, another tenant who lives down the hall. While on a date with her, Kristina confides in Allen that she was raped by the doorman of their building. Subsequently she broke his neck, chopped his body into pieces, placed the pieces into Ziploc bags and stored them in her freezer. She has been smuggling them out of the building piece by piece for the last week.
Joy's parents are also unhappy. Her dad separates from her mother but upon trying to have sex with another woman, discovers that he simply cannot feel any emotion for anyone or anything. The end of the movie finds the three sisters sitting at dinner with the parents, everyone condescending to Joy. Meanwhile Trishs son is out on the balcony and finally, at long last, successfully masturbates. The dog races over to lick up the ejaculate only to return to the dinner table and lick Trish on the mouth. The boy races into the kitchen and proudly declares, I came!

I'm sorry, but :puke:

TeeJay · 11 Jul 10 :: 23:30

That is an incredibly dry and matter-of-fact synopsis of the movie. And while it is in essence true, it makes the movie sound choppy and very in-your-face. While it's definitely not a movie you can truly "enjoy", I found it compelling enough to make me want to follow these characters through to the end. It is shocking and captivating at the same time.

-TeeJay

TheCentralScrutinizer · 11 Jul 10 :: 23:32

Is there anyone in it who's not despicable?

TeeJay · 11 Jul 10 :: 23:54

I think the only character who is really downright despicable is Billy's father. They're all very human, which includes all their flaws. I don't know what to tell you. It is not a movie where you're supposed to like any of the characters. It was made to show human weakness -- and it manages that terrifically. If you've been able to stomach An American Crime and Stephanie Daley, you should be able to watch this movie too.

-TeeJay

TheCentralScrutinizer · 12 Jul 10 :: 00:04

I need someone to latch onto in a movie or I can't get into it.

If you recall, I HATED An American Crime and still wish to this day that I'd never seen it. Everyone in it was awful, except the torture victim. I have absolutely NO desire to sit through a movie that's going to disturb me as deeply as that one did. I don't watch movies to have my head messed up for weeks.

Stephanie Daley didn't disturb me because I could identify with her and walk through the story with her. That one stuck with me in a great way. I don't think it has anything in common with An American Crime. It felt, to me, more like American Gun. I loved it.

I guess I'm just not in the proper head-space right now for something that sounds so gross and dismal. Maybe I'll manage to get through it between now and the 23rd. But it definitely won't be this weekend.

Editsound · 12 Jul 10 :: 00:12

I actually think the description is pretty close to how I felt the movie was. I didn't find the "humor" to be funny. I don't think ALL of the characters are despicable, but more than just the father is. I thought several others were as well, the obscene phone caller, and his neighbor (the description leaves out that it turns out she wasn't raped, and may not have even been with the guy, she killed him because he rejected her). and a few others. Some of the characters are just repulsive.

I liked LDW more, because there is some humanity in the film, and you can care about the characters a little.

BiggestChrisMarquetteFan · 13 Jul 10 :: 02:39

Happiness is dark but okay to watch at least once. I want to see Life During Wartime because of Chris.
Todd Solondz movies StoryTelling and Welcome To The Dollhouse are pretty good. His movie Palindromes is twisted. You can watch it on Netflix instantly online.

TheCentralScrutinizer · 13 Jul 10 :: 03:29

I have the Happiness DVD out from Netflix, I just haven't been able to make myself watch it yet.

domesticelefant · 13 Jul 10 :: 20:22

I think I'll just watch Chris's part from LDW and nothing more from these movies.

TheCentralScrutinizer · 16 Jul 10 :: 02:35

David Edelstein says...

Todd Solondz's Life During Wartime is a genuine, all-enveloping bad-dream movie, and I'm still wrestling with its squirmy mix of grotesquerie and humanism, stylized camp and acid realism. It's a sequel to Solondz's queasy 1998 Happiness, a broad satire of Jewish-suburban life with a subplot about a doctor who molests little boys. Life During Wartime has the same characters but none of the same actors, and the tone and look are different—less glib, more malignant. Largely set in Florida and L.A., the film bears no traces of the natural world: Everything is artificially colored and overbaked. Jane Adams, who played the youngest of three warped sisters, has been replaced by Shirley Henderson, the gap more vivid between her twittery little-girl voice and withering demeanor. Lara Flynn Boyle's husky-toned sexpot has aged into a drawn and twitchy Ally Sheedy. Cynthia Stevenson has been elongated into Allison Janney in full-tilt delirium. The male actors (Paul Reubens, Michael Kenneth Williams, Michael Lerner, Ciarán Hinds) either are ghosts or might as well be; they're finished. Stars of David, flags of Israel, images of carnage in Gaza show up in the background, but they're not belabored. Solondz conjures a world that's rotting away from the inside, in which only the children—freckle-faced Dylan Riley Snyder and Emma Hinz—weep over the loss of moral authority. This might be some kind of goddamned masterpiece, but I'm not sure I want to watch it again to say for sure.

Editsound · 16 Jul 10 :: 16:52

Thats about right

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