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Post by honeybees on Jan 24, 2018 0:10:28 GMT
I was shocked that Jordan Peele got a directing nod over Luca Guadagnino and angry that Woody Harrelson got a supporting nod over Armie Hammer. I’ve talked to people about Get Out (it’s available on OD so I may watch it this weekend) but every one of them has said the movie is not Oscar worthy. What I’m really pissed about is the James Franco snub over the silly accusations of these women. I watched two of the women on GMA this morning and they were laughable. One was from his sex scenes acting class and the other the former girlfriend who said he tried to force her to give him oral sex in a car. These women should be made to sit in the courtroom of the monster in Michigan and listen to the stories of TRUE sexual assault victims. Back to CMBYN and the Oscars, I think Ivory has the best shot at winning for adapted screenplay because the category is not strong and his name. I would love for Sufjan Stevens to win but I fear a Disney song will probably take the award. Plus Diane Warren is nominated - she’s like the Meryl Streep of Best Song Oscars. Hammer really was robbed. A lot of the development of Oliver in the book was cut from the film. Elio is seen watching him with the little neighbor girl and seeing in him a kind and loving person. Elio has been bullied for his Judaism and Oliver's strength in the face of such things inspire him a lot more, too. Both plots really flesh out the character. I have two friends - one a straight lady and one a gay man - who had real discomfort with the age difference early in the film but both agreed that it was Hammer's performance that made Oliver seem vulnerable and not predatory and made the relationship seem equal. The film doesn't really work without either Hammer or Chalamet. I liked Michael Stuhlbarg, but the big monologue is practically verbatim from the book and it's awesome what he does with it, but it's the writing. Hammer actually saves the movie from being super problematic.
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Post by honeybees on Jan 24, 2018 0:16:24 GMT
I was shocked that Jordan Peele got a directing nod over Luca Guadagnino and angry that Woody Harrelson got a supporting nod over Armie Hammer. I’ve talked to people about Get Out (it’s available on OD so I may watch it this weekend) but every one of them has said the movie is not Oscar worthy. What I’m really pissed about is the James Franco snub over the silly accusations of these women. I watched two of the women on GMA this morning and they were laughable. One was from his sex scenes acting class and the other the former girlfriend who said he tried to force her to give him oral sex in a car. These women should be made to sit in the courtroom of the monster in Michigan and listen to the stories of TRUE sexual assault victims. Back to CMBYN and the Oscars, I think Ivory has the best shot at winning for adapted screenplay because the category is not strong and his name. I would love for Sufjan Stevens to win but I fear a Disney song will probably take the award. Plus Diane Warren is nominated - she’s like the Meryl Streep of Best Song Oscars. Hammer really was robbed. A lot of the development of Oliver in the book was cut from the film. Elio is seen watching him with the little neighbor girl and seeing in him a kind and loving person. Elio has been bullied for his Judaism and Oliver's strength in the face of such things inspire him a lot more, too. Both plots really flesh out the character. I have two friends - one a straight lady and one a gay man - who had real discomfort with the age difference early in the film but both agreed that it was Hammer's performance that made Oliver seem vulnerable and not predatory and made the relationship seem equal. The film doesn't really work without either Hammer or Chalamet. I liked Michael Stuhlbarg, but the big monologue is practically verbatim from the book and it's awesome what he does with it, but it's the writing. Hammer actually saves the movie from being super problematic. Oh, and I might as well keep it in this thread even though it is slightly off topic but I saw The Post and liked it a lot more than I thought I would. Meryl did deserve her nomination and I wouldn't be at all upset if she won. I have no interest in seeing Three BIllboards, though, so I should stay silent. Tom Hanks was fine but didn't really deserve a nomination. He's really just a foil for Streep. However, Bob Odenkirk did probably deserve a nomination over Richard Jenkins. And I just thought of this - Jenkins is fine in The Shape of Water, but he plays the tragic, lonely gay who can't be happy in a cruel world. Hammer played a passionate gay/bisexual man who loves life and falls in love, and it's irksome that the former is rewarded rather than the latter - even though I do like Jenkins and don't blame him for that.
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Post by Will68 on Jan 24, 2018 2:20:31 GMT
Even though CMBYN has had nominations at different awards shows it's not winning. Unlike Moonlight which didn't have any gay sex at all, except for a hand job, the scenes in CMBYN were very sensual and I think that's turning many voters off. You'de think we would have come farther since 2005 and Brokeback Mountain and in a way we have but Hollywood is still not ready to shower a hot gay movie with awards. Even though they have no problem with a woman having sex with a sea monster.
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Post by honeybees on Jan 24, 2018 2:54:37 GMT
Even though CMBYN has had nominations at different awards shows it's not winning. Unlike Moonlight which didn't have any gay sex at all, except for a hand job, the scenes in CMBYN were very sensual and I think that's turning many voters off. You'de think we would have come farther since 2005 and Brokeback Mountain and in a way we have but Hollywood is still not ready to shower a hot gay movie with awards. Even though they have no problem with a woman having sex with a sea monster. Nope! Also, Moonlight was an African-American film, with a double other, while CMBYN shows white (if Jewish) wealthy and privileged young men exploring their sexuality and enjoying gay sex without fear and not any real sense of punishment. I know the book and movie have been criticized for being separate from political reality, but I think part of the appeal is that Oliver and Elio live in a judgment-free world where the worst homophobia does to them is make them be a little bit clandestine, which is only a turn on. It may be unrealistic, but it's beautiful. My feeling is Aciman and Guardinino are creating a modern story inspired by Greek mythology with Elio as a kind of Narcissus, lounging around with nymphs and enjoying the beauty and sensuality of youth. Oliver is a reflection of himself that he can't help but love. Criticize it for being "problematic" but it's a fantasy and a lush one. Not everything has to be a perfect representation or political or realistic. Also, my friend just hired me to write an article about the differences between the book and film so hold this space. I'll post it if and when he runs with it. Also, here I go being the a-hole who read the book: the book makes it explicitly clear what happens sexually between Elio and Oliver but it's done in an understated way. It's not written in a linear fashion in real time but as memory - so the film's suggestion of sexuality when what happens onscreen isn't quite as explicit is exactly in line with the book. It's hard to explain exactly what I mean but if you read the book - you'll get it. I actually admire Aciman for doing what he does in the book because it's sexy as hell but would be very difficult to censor for any reason.
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Post by honeybees on Jan 26, 2018 22:07:04 GMT
Okay, so I had to give a real, close academic reading to the book to produce my article, and I've changed my initial position about how the book portrays the characters' sexuality. I'm going to put in under spoiler bars because it is a pretty deep reading of the book and will contain serious book spoilers even more than I posted. Forgive my blathering, but it kind of shows that the movie might misunderstand the book. I don't know, but I'll have to see it when it comes out on video. The easiest way to read the book is, as a good friend of mine maintains, is to say Aciman is projecting Greco-Roman ideas about sexuality onto modern characters. Seeing them as gay or straight is never going to quite fit because that was his authorial intent (which he has stated).
I think that holds with Elio. However, I think Aciman is playing both sides in more ways than one, and after reading the book a second time - I think Oliver is deliberately written as gay and closeted.
Elio is the one raised by classicist father and academic mother in a kind of Eden that resembles the classical world. He is very much a Narcissus figure. In the book, which is from his point of view, his passion for Oliver is very autoerotic. He obsesses about the similarities between their bodies, fetishizes Oliver's clothes and sees Oliver as a mirror image of himself.
To read Elio as gay requires you to assume he's lying to himself about being attracted to girls, but it happens so often in the book and he seems to take delight in the fact - it's really hard to project that onto the text. There's also the business with the male/female hotel clerk in which he outright says he wants his lovers to be both male and female and between male and female. Also, future Elio has had other lovers (implied both male and female) and never loved anyone but Oliver. If he were gay, you'd think he would have found someone else (like in Maurice) but he doesn't. If you do the classicist reading, it's his own youth and all the perfection of his own body and that potential that Elio is longing for at the end.
Oliver is different, but we only see him from Elio's subjective point of view. If my reading is correct, it requires you to understand Elio as an unreliable narrator.
Elio is initially wildly jealous of all the town girls he believes Oliver is sleeping with. He imagines them and the encounters in great detail. Oliver takes showers at certain times of the day, which Elio believes are post-coital and logs in his head.
Yet, one night after their affair has begun, Elio finds Oliver sitting on a rock overlooking the ocean. Elio had expected him to be with one of the girls, but he's alone. Oliver admits that he knows Elio thinks he was off chasing girls but he was always there - thinking about his book, returning home and Elio. Part of this conversation is in the film on the balcony. This is where Oliver admits he touched Elio at the tennis game (volleyball in the film) and was spooked when Elio reacted like he had been molested.
He has also earlier (at the post office) said that he envies Elio. This is all fun and games for him, but Oliver says that it's different for him and he has to figure out what to do and what it means. I initially missed it and thought it was just that night that Oliver wasn't chasing a girl, but it sure seems like Oliver was only pretending to sleep with the girls in the village and never was. Also, one might speculate that Elio's mildly homophobic reaction to the gay couple hurt Oliver.
Years later, when Elio comes to see Oliver, he appears to be a loving and content family man. Oliver barely recognizes him and doesn't appear attracted to him, to Elio's chagrin.
This is what led me to initially think of Oliver as bisexual or heteroflexible. It's not like in Brokeback Mountain or Maurice where it's very obvious the men are not happily married and only pretending. Also, the presence of the little girl in Oliver's memory threw me, as he talks about her a lot and how he has thought about her all this time. But I think she represents some part of Elio symbolically for Oliver (they share the same birthday) or at the very least she represented a girl that Oliver could love without any pressure for it to become romantic.
But, Elio being a bit of a narcissist, misses this as he may have always missed the pain Oliver was in because he was so focused on his own.
I've seen a lot of people trash Oliver's character as only just using Elio and experimenting (which I sort of thought from watching the film). In fact, I think the roles are reversed. Oliver fears that Elio is just using him and experimenting. That's what the line at the post office "Of course you wouldn't" actually means. Moreover, when the men meet as adults, Oliver tells Elio he remembers him flirting with a girl and wanting to take her back to their hotel room but she was too high and so they all just watched the sunset. Elio doesn't put this in his narrative, but the conversation shows that Oliver remembers and certainly thinks Elio is not exclusively gay.
So, yeah, I've revised my position. Oliver is gay, and Elio is so focused on himself that he misses it, which I think makes him a tragic hero.
Elio does fit more of the classical mold, as the Greco-Romans believed that the most sacred and special form of erotic love was between men, but they also believed that it was something that shouldn't be domesticated. But the two men's worldviews just don't mesh.
Oh and just for fun: It's not impossible to assume this is all in Elio's head, that the little girl Vimini and Oliver are both Elio and this is all a Fight Club scenario. It's a stretch, but modern novels invite you to stretch. I prefer my above reading.
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Post by honeybees on Jan 29, 2018 22:05:29 GMT
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Post by bennyd on Jan 30, 2018 2:37:42 GMT
Good job, HB! I just texted your article to James because he’s just as fascinated by the differences between the book and movie too.
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Post by honeybees on Jan 30, 2018 2:47:16 GMT
Good job, HB! I just texted your article to James because he’s just as fascinated by the differences between the book and movie too. I'm glad. I am bummed that I didn't get to include more stuff about San Clemente Syndrome, which I think is the key to understand the author's symbolism but it's really hard to articulate and nobody clicks on that article because they want to hear a meditation on the nature of time and space. Also, I wanted to mention that Oliver has the wounds of Christ and/or Adonis and/or St. Sebastian but that just got a little bit deep. Tell James it's all about San Clemente Syndrome. None of that is in the movie (except for the wound).
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Post by bennyd on Jan 30, 2018 3:35:30 GMT
Do you mind if I post your article to twitter? I’ve already sent it to several friends.
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Post by bennyd on Jan 30, 2018 3:37:04 GMT
Btw, James and I FINALLY saw Wonder Woman this weekend and LOVED IT! Very well done!
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Post by honeybees on Jan 30, 2018 3:54:32 GMT
Btw, James and I FINALLY saw Wonder Woman this weekend and LOVED IT! Very well done! I thought it got robbed at least in some of the technical categories. I mean, it was a really good superhero movie but not sure it was Best Picture worthy - but really good.
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Post by honeybees on Jan 30, 2018 3:57:12 GMT
Do you mind if I post your article to twitter? I’ve already sent it to several friends. Oh, send it to twitter. The site loves clicks! I actually like the movie more after reading the book, and I respect Armie Hammer more. You can see in the history of this thread that I was initially not on team Oliver. I think Ivory's script shortchanges Oliver in favor of Elio and a more pat narrative, but I also think Hammer read the book and tried to play the stuff Ivory cut out. I loved the movie, but as is often the case the book is just better.
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Post by honeybees on Feb 1, 2018 2:21:07 GMT
Okay, I rented God's Own Country tonight.
Poor God's Own Country - any other year it would be the queer/gay film of the year. It's really good and similarly arty like CMBYN - long shots, naturalistic shots and sound, lots of nature. There they part. GOC is about inarticulate, working-class men in rough conditions and damn I had trouble understanding their accents.
It's basically Brokeback Mountain, updated with more modern mores and made by a gay man for gay men. You can feel him not trying to appeal to straights. So, yes, it's got more explicit sex in it and full frontal and all that. The sexuality of the characters is never in question, even though it doesn't use words like gay or homosexual any more than CMBYN does.
For me, CMBYN is a far richer film because it is based on a highly literary novel and it's got the insanely good performance by TC at its center. But it's not a "gay" film in the same way GOC is. I guess films have a Kinsey scale just like people CMBYN is probably a 6 while God's Own Country is a 10.
Luca and Andre are using the male/male love story in CMBYN for symbolic purposes, with all sorts of androgyny and fluidity. In God's Own Country, it's a far more traditional love story, and masculinity is privileged visually a lot more. I mean, the guys in God's Own Country are butch farmhands that are gorgeous but not pretty in the way Oliver and Elio are.
Oh, and as we continue our book/movie club - how about the fact that Oliver and Elio's names are practically anagrams for. Take away a V (Vimini) and an R - and Oliver becomes Elio. Just saying.
It's a stretch, but we never do find out much in the book about Elio's future life and what we do find out is very similar to Oliver. I don't really think the theory holds, but I am sure Aciman toyed with the idea of Oliver and Elio being the same person who meet in a Joesph Conrad like time slip. Like The Secret Sharer.
Anyway, I can see why some people looking for a more traditional story would prefer God's Own Country.
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Post by honeybees on Feb 3, 2018 16:01:03 GMT
Here's a video of Aciman talking about the sequels. I'm glad he's going to be involved on some level because there isn't enough to sustain more movies in the book but they are his characters and the film would not be as vivid without his understanding of them.
He's also talking about how he now pictures Elio and Oliver as Timmy and Armie, just like other people.
I've mixed feelings about the sequel because it sounds like Luca is taking it in a very different direction, with the characters not living in the Eden like world that is part of the appeal of the book, but we'll see.
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Post by Will68 on Feb 3, 2018 23:23:07 GMT
I heard the part of the book that was left out of the first movies was only 20 pages long. So I guess he has to add a lot to it. It would b e hard to make a movie about only 20 pages of story.
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