Django Unchained, Vibrato and Winter's Bone

[chris_gerrib]

Over the weekend, I took in a pair of movies on the pay-per-view machine. (My floor's not sticky, the chair's more comfortable and the drinks are cheaper.) Herewith are my thoughts on the screening.

Django Unchained

Django Unchained is Quentin Tarantino's slave revenge fantasy. Set in 1858-1859, it's got Peckinpah-ish levels of violence, and at nearly three hours it's a bit long. There's a term in singing which I think is "vibrato" - taking one long note and converting it to multiple notes. It's very popular on the win-a-recording-contest TV shows as a way to showily demonstrate "artistic" talent.

Django Unchained has the movie equivalent of vibrato. There are dozens of subtle and not-so-subtle nods to various western movies of the past, and, perhaps deliberately, Tarantino's Mississippi looks shockingly like California. Overall, I found the movie merely okay.

Winter's Bone

If Django Unchained is full of "art for art's sake," then Winter's Bone is the anti-Django. Shot extremely starkly with handheld cameras, Winter's Bone is the story Ree Dolly, played by then 19-year-old Jennifer Lawrence, and her struggle to avoid loosing the family farm during an Ozark winter. It's bleak, filled with poor people cooking meth and shooting squirrels to survive. You could consider Lawrence's role as an extended audition for her role in The Hunger Games. Winter's Bone is an independent film, so it may be hard to find, but it's well worth looking for.

Comments

[bogwitch64.livejournal.com]

Winter's Bone--the novel--was amazing. Well worth the read. And I understand the movie did the book proud.

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

No, that's not vibrato - that's Mariah Carey Syndrome. That's what you do when you can't sing but it doesn't matter (http://baron-waste.livejournal.com/1767538.html).


> The reason this Mariah creature learned to do that stupid, scattershot hitting of six
> or eight notes when she should be holding one, is that she can't hold a note. That
> requires training and talent and she has neither. Any time she tries to sustain a
> note she immediately slides off-key - I've heard it again and again and again,
> whether I wanted to or not. (Earplugs are my friends during this holiday season…)

Update: Listen to Jeanette MacDonald (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanette_MacDonald) and you'll hear vibrato - taken to excess, in my view; the first time I heard her I remarked that she sounded like she was holding a Dremel tool to her larynx, which made my Dad laugh himself to tears.

[chris-gerrib.livejournal.com]

saying that somebody possessed of a five-octave range (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariah_Carey#Voice_and_timbre) can't sing is a bit of a stretch. On "Vision of Love" (her first single) she holds notes almost to excess. She also learned how to sing from her mother, an opera singer.

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

The similarity of tone here - Scriptural Authority quoted as rebuttal to the evidence of direct personal observation - reminds me of something I wanted to tell you:

http://baron-waste.livejournal.com/1956751.html


> [E]ver since being told with a straight face that Indiana Jones & Kingdom of
> Crystal Skull was the highest-grossing, most popular movie of the entire 'Indiana
> Jones' franchise, outshining even the original, I've learned to take these rave
> success stories with a fat chunk of salt.


It was actually the very same website you referred me to, that told of the runaway success of The Hunger Games, that delivered that industry-apparatchik pravda. That is apparently what it's for, to reassure investors in the age of Netflix - where as you say, the popcorn's cheaper and the floors aren't sticky…

In reality, of course, both titles dropped like rocks as soon as the media-hype engine switched off - yet I saw a poster for Raiders on Tumblr just the other day!


Meanwhile. being able to sing and knowing HOW to sing are two things (http://baron-waste.livejournal.com/1938653.html).

[chris-gerrib.livejournal.com]

Well, having personally heard Mariah hit all five of those octaves, I guess I have to say that our tastes differ.

Regarding " industry-apparatchik pravda," Hollywood is in the business of making money. If they didn't make a few truckloads on Hunger Games, we would not be waiting for a sequel, nor would they have already announced that they were splitting book #3 into two movies.

Money talks, bullshit walks.

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

Don't be caustic. Of course our tastes differ: You're a left-wing moonbat, I'm a right-wing nutjob! (I think I got those labels right.) But we overlap on the things that truly matter, like Getting Off This Planet, so it's okay.

As neither you nor I could name the actress who played 'Katniss' on a bet, I have no idea what she's up to these days, but I wish her well - 'breakout' roles come when they may. Look at Christopher Reeve, for example.

[You can see test footage of Stockard Channing playing Lois Lane on Youtube - C Reeve is so nervous there are big sweatstains under his costume, and she is SO good, has so much presence that she blows the poor newbie right off the screen! She didn't get the part because she was too big for it!]

[chris-gerrib.livejournal.com]

Sorry, you lose - actress is Jennifer Lawrence. She did "Silver Lining Playbook" which also made a few truckloads of cash.