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• lipranzer says:

  December 21, 2011 at 6:01 pm

  I’m also a huge fan of Crowe, was also very dis­ap­poin­ted in ELIZABETHTOWN (though after re-watching it recently, it did improve some­what on second view­ing, though it would have been bet­ter with bet­ter lead act­ors), so I was hop­ing this would be a return to form. It does get off to a rough start, but gradu­ally the movie did work for me. Most of the time, Crowe does avoid the sen­ti­ment­al traps inher­ent in the story (though I was one of those who thought Rosie was more one-note than endear­ing), and the rela­tion­ship between Damon and Ford is really well-drawn.

• Peter Damm says:

  December 21, 2011 at 7:35 pm

  Too bad about Tintin. I’ll prob­ably see it anywa,y but I doubt it will be as good as my ima­gin­ary film ver­sion of The Calculus Affair dir­ec­ted by Miyazaki. Which is a case of using one film­maker to beat the oth­er over the head I guess. So instead, I’ll just say that I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark on the big screen for the first time. And damn, that pic­ture works. Which is to say that I think Tintin and Spielberg have already col­lab­or­ated even if it’s only a case of con­ver­gent evolution.

• Oliver_C says:

  December 21, 2011 at 7:50 pm

  ‘The Calculus Affair’ dir­ec­ted by Miyazaki? I like to ima­gine Robert Altman doing ‘The Castafiore Emerald’, myself.

• dan says:

  December 21, 2011 at 8:59 pm

  ELIZABETHTOWN is the worst film I had ever seen, and I don’t think I exag­ger­ate, it really is. I really can­’t under­stand why any­one would try put­ting a defence for it, as there is simply none what­so­ever. Is there a chance Trey Parker wrote FREEDOM ISN’T FREE scene in TEAM AMERICA with Crowe’s film in mind?
  ALMOST FAMOUS is also an hor­rible film, i think, and it gets really uncom­fort­able as it pro­gresses, as if the dir­ect­or can see no wrong in writ­ing a film about how his young self knew good music and how spe­cial was his know­lege in that peri­od when in fact it was kind of basic, no?

• bill says:

  December 21, 2011 at 9:30 pm

  I like ALMOST FAMOUS. It’s very good. On the oth­er hand, I caught about thirty minutes of SAY ANYTHING on cable not so long ago, hav­ing not seen it in ages, and, to para­phrase Harlan Ellison on the sub­ject of try­ing to carry on a con­ver­sa­tion with Roland Emmerich, it made me want to chew threw my own wrists.

• Nort says:

  December 21, 2011 at 10:05 pm

  Does this Dan guy really think ALMOST FAMOUS is about know­ing good music?

• dan says:

  December 22, 2011 at 8:30 am

  Nort, yes i do. nice you caught up with the fact Dan is a name of a guy, good for you!

• James Keepnews says:

  December 22, 2011 at 9:56 am

  I almost walked out of ALMOST FAMOUS once they star­ted singing along to “Tiny Dancer,” and I rather wish I had, if only to avoid more of Kate Hudson’s twitchy self-regard and Crowe’s trade­mark mawk­ish­ness trad­ing as sin­cer­ity (what brand of beer, indeed – too early for Arrogant Bastard, but laugh through those tears. I’ll just laugh through my groans…). It’s ostens­ibly auto­bi­o­graph­ic­al and I don’t believe any of it. Don’t even get me star­ted on Lester – no, actu­ally, go ahead, get me star­ted on Lester. No way in hell would he have ever called The Stooges “Iggy Pop”. Not even first thing in the morn­ing, which is – whoa! – a little heavy for break­fast, Mr. Bangs! You sure are one rock­ing guy, alright, aren’t you?
  That Crowe’s bland manip­u­la­tion is taken ser­i­ously by any­one nev­er ceases to amaze me. The tra­di­tion sure appears to continue.

• Glenn Kenny says:

  December 22, 2011 at 10:21 am

  Boy, James, are you STRICT.
  I’m going to have to draw on a little bit of the cour­age of my 1999 con­vic­tions here and, in weak, halt­ing voice, defend, once again, the “Tiny Dancer” bit. Robert Wyatt’s “Elton John? Really?” remark (made in the con­text of a rave review for Gong’s “You,” and I believe the con­text counts here) not­with­stand­ing, a taste for early Elton among Zeppelin and/or Skynyrd-esque rock­ers of the early ’70s was hardly implaus­ible. Eclecticism was the name of the game, and Elton’s early de-emphasizing of the gui­tar on the first coupla albums WAS ACTUALLY CONSIDERED KIND OF HIP by cer­tain of the rawk cognes­centi. Now, play­ing this up for bonding-sentimentality movie-movieness is maybe an entirely oth­er mat­ter, I’m just say­ing it could hap­pen, okay.
  As for Stooges in the morn­ing, I always pre­sumed that, ideal­ized and defanged or not, the Bangs of that scene had simply not gone to bed at all. Given the scarcity of filmed mater­i­al on Bangs, I was very taken by how thor­oughly Hoffman was able to build on cer­tain man­ner­isms. But I see I’m not going to get any­where with you here.

• James Keepnews says:

  December 22, 2011 at 10:54 am

  Oh, sure you will, you darling man. :}
  The objec­tions here are reas­on­ably gen­er­al – not like I expec­ted them to be singing along to, say, Matching Mole’s “God Song” – and I really don’t mind early Sir Elton at all. I might not have felt so bad if they were singing along to “Honky Cat,” or some­thing. “Take Me to the Pilot,” maybe. EJ was almost Crimson’s lead sing­er, recall, except his first solo album (which went gold, let’s also recall) was deemed poor by one band mem­ber who also can­celled the ses­sions. Lines like “Night unfolds its cloak of holes” have lost so much for the absence of his honky-cat deliv­ery of them.
  And I’ll allow Mr. Crowe his way with act­ors of all ages, cer­tainly Tom-Boy, and most def. Ms. McDormand and Mr. Seymour-Hoffman (how I always think of him, like his name’s a hyphen­ate like Rhys-Davies or some­thing) in ALMOST, and yes, his Lester Bangs is a con­vin­cingly lived-in, crusty per­form­ance that roughly matches the rough charm and intel­li­gence of Bangs’ writ­ing. But not all the cough syr­up in the world and a few all-nighters in the bar­gain would’ve made Lester call the Stooges Iggy Pop – Ron Asheton would’ve hit him upside the head with a swastika fig­ur­ine, had he heard tell. And I bet he (Mr. Asheton) would­n’t have even las­ted long enough to hear “Tiny Dancer”.

• Chris O. says:

  December 22, 2011 at 11:21 am

  After see­ing this, the Pearl Jam doc and most of “Vanilla Sky” again earli­er this year, I’m won­der­ing when Crowe star­ted incor­por­at­ing his use of the kind of not-quite-mainstream-but-not-always-exactly-esoteric mont­age – where it’s as if he’s con­sciously try­ing (maybe too hard?) to sep­ar­ate his films from the con­ven­tion­al with these moments.
  Each one, includ­ing PJ20 and “Elizabethtown,” is not executed to advance plot and com­press time but char­ac­ter; it’s rooted in human memory and how memor­ies work for/against us. He played with the idea a lot, of course, in “Vanilla Sky,” but I thought the one in “Zoo” worked really well, too (*spoil­er, I guess?* and as I’ve men­tioned before I thought the ref­er­ence to “La Jetee” was fine in con­text, as did the shot of fig­ures dan­cing in the fore­ground before Damon’s char­ac­ter). This new trade­mark may not be Crowe’s biggest strength, but it’s far from his weaknes and I give him points for at least try­ing to do some­thing with it. Props to his edit­ors, too.