GDT's The Shape of Water

[mr.negativity]

[lhb412]

So happy! I was really rooting for Shape of Water and Get Out, so I was happy to see both Jordan Peele and GDT get Oscars and give their respective speeches.

And Nakajima on the 'In Memoriam' reel!

[TerranigmaFreak]

Holy "OH GODZILLA! WHAT TERRIBLE LANGUAGE!"!!! I never expected a monster movie to win.

[jellydonut25]

[Dr Kain]

I thought Bill Paxton was in last year's Oscars?

[jellydonut25]

[lhb412]

They always forget people in for the In Memoriam thing. I was gobsmacked that Nakajima and Seijin Suzuki were included.

Anyway: monster movie Oscar winner! Any chance the purse strings might open up for Mountains of Madness?

Hell, maybe with the obvious Gill Man basis of the film Universal will get wise about the way their monsters should be handled?


PS - Speaking about the Oscars: when Sufjan Stevens was performing I kept thinking "is that St. Vincent behind him on guitar?" Apparently, yes it was!

[jellydonut25]

[mr.negativity]

[jellydonut25]

I thought he just recently said something about something ELSE.
A remake of Nightmare Alley, IIRC.

[lhb412]

^Yeah, Nightmare Alley with a script written by Kim Morgan, who was his date to the Oscars.

[mr.negativity]

[jellydonut25]

He's "producing" PacRim Uprising in that he created the original so he's considered a producer. He's basically said, "After Charlie Hunnam wasn't coming back, I suggested making up a storyline for Stacker's son and then every once in a while they send me a design to approve," but that's about as much involvement as he's had.

[Jinzo Ningen]

Finally saw SHAPE OF WATER this weekend.

Not sure what to make of it. Gut instinct is that, while in many ways classic Del Toro, in so many ways it is a misfire. Not sure why in God's name it won Best Picture, honestly. If I were to pick among his list of films, I would've felt more proud (and agreeable) to him getting Best Foreign Film for PAN'S LABYRINTH, when that came out. Even HELLBOY II, with all its faults, is a more coherent and rewarding film experience.

Please bear with me while I sort this out...

Characters were horrifically one-dimensional. Makes the ones in PAC RIM look like the most well-rounded characters ever seen on film, in comparison.

Too graphically violent, for no other reason than for the hell of it, as none of what was shown made the film 'better' with the gruesome bits (specifically the ongoing gangrenous fingers shtick). And I am not a wimpy violence hater. HALLOWEEN and THE THING and other horror fare are longtime faves of mine. This was mean for meanness sake to me. Just like eating the cat, and yet the guy whose cat it was has no problem with it? WTF?!?!? Fishman or not, if that thing had eaten one of my cats I would've chopped its f*ckin' head off with a meat cleaver, not just shrugged my shoulders and acted like "Oh well, whatever. The rest of you guys stay away from that fish person!" So, so unreal and stupid.

I have the same feeling regarding the nudity/sex. There was NO REASON to show so much skin. The masturbation scenes could've been handled so much more tastefully without losing ANY of their impact in the narrative. And the evil bad guy hate f*ck scene with his wife? Same thing. I did NOT need (or want) to see hairy man ass and a nutsack swinging in the wind to get that this guy was a cruel hateful douche through & through. Less crudely framed and this scene wouldn't have been so crass and tasteless, IMHO. What disappoints me so much is that for the most part Del Toro has never indulged in these aspects so blatantly in his previous movies. it was, like, "right in your face, so THERE!" kinda feeling as I watched. I didn't feel like I was watching some beautiful natural acts so much as inadvertently forced into being a perverty peeping tom. I am no prude. I have no problem seeing nudity when it serves a purpose. To me most all of it in TSoW - except the consummation scene between the fishman & Elisa - was just nasty and wholly unnecessary. (And the bathroom love scene in itself was so dumb - let's stuff a towel under the door and of course the bathroom will fill up with water in no time at all and not collapse the floor from the terrific weight, blow out the window from the pressure, etc., etc., etc. Yeah, I know what Del Toro was aiming for, but it just came off stupid and uber heavy-handed to me.)

Some more tasteful use of shot composition and dialing back some of the gore and this would've been a much better film. As it is... I generously give it 3 stars out of 5. (YMMV)

[eabaker]

The lack of subtlety about the violence and sexuality is part of the movie's overall insistence on spelling out everything, which is exactly what a movie needs in order to gets its "importance" through the skulls of even the most dense of academy voters.

[lhb412]

^ ^^ Very different reactions from the folks who complained we never got to actually see what the amphibian man had goin' on downstairs!

[eabaker]

I was considering feigning surprise that such people exist, but... nope, no surprise.

[Jinzo Ningen]

[Jinzo Ningen]

[O.Supreme]

[Jinzo Ningen]

Haven't seen either Disney film version, although I highly doubt it. Just talking about the subject matter in general, and how it's accepted... or rejected. It was romantic in B&tB but shocking and repulsive in TSoW. Not making a judgement either way. Just curious how folks are reacting to it, since nothing sex-wise is shown. Maybe it's because the gals in TSoW are "non-issue" accepting and almost dismissive while talking about it, as Elisa's friend is more interested in the mechanics of the act than the 'taboo' nature of the act itself.

[O.Supreme]

But to me it is different. You can have romantic attraction/affection for someone without it being sexual. That is one of the great things about Pacific Rim. At the very end GDT made a deliberate choice not to have Raleigh & Mako show any PDA, though you cold tell, there was definitely an emotional attachment. The same can be said for Beauty & The Beast. Belle gains knowledge he is human and under a curse, though she learns to *love* him, there is never any PDA shown until after his curse is lifted and they live "happily ever after". If TSoW had just expressed the fact that there was a special bond between Elisa and the fish man, that would have been fine, but they had to full on show them going at-it...which, to be honest, WAS disturbing to me.

Those of you that know me best, know I am non-political (so everyone can hate me equally ). But a few years back, I stated there would be a time when there would be an incident that would make headlines involving human *romance* with an animal, and the fight to make it legal. Now of course TSoW is only fiction, but with the majority of people being ok with it...I believe we have come that much closer to seeing such a story become a reality.

[Jinzo Ningen]

Del Toro gave his audience absolutely ZERO credit. Nothing was left for the viewer to work out for themselves. Rather than expecting that folks will figure things out on their own, everything is not just spoon-fed to us, we're practically bludgeoned over the head with it. The bad guy is shown to be villainous in most every possible way; (i.e.: his hand is rotting, just like the rest of him, etc.). About the only things they didn't do to further cement his utter evilness was to give him a greasy mustache to twirl & have him pull his belt off and beat the hell out of his kids. It was just ridiculous. The characters in this film are so one-dimensional as to be laughable. The general belonged in any of a number of '50 sci-fi flicks. (Where's Robert Shayne or Morris Ankrum when you need them?) Just... ugh. Only the black friend of Elisa and her husband were really interesting - to me.

The modern-day SJW politics were quite grating as well. The soda jerk rejects the gay guy's advances. Apparently you aren't allowed to not like someone of the same sex hitting on you. So to prove how socially wrong this is in our highly enlightened times, (despite the film being set in 1962, where his open revulsion to such a come-on wouldn't have even raised an eyebrow), his social inacceptance is demonstrated and his intolerance underscored immediately beforehand by having him crassly eject a black couple from the soda shop. Therefore, any hetero not gladly accepting the come-on of a LGBT person must be a hateful homophobe & and obviously a racist, too.

Such a shame all this extraneous BS couldn't have been trimmed prior to release (or better yet, in the film's initial planning stages). The movie is so beautifully shot and edited... and most everything else is so terrific. It's the feeling of uncaring crassness & the heavy-handed message crap that's piled on the back of this film that killed it for me.

[eabaker]

...and I put myself on the same side of an issue as someone who complains about "SJW politics."

I feel awfully dirty right now. I almost want to give The Shape of Water another chance.

Not quite, but almost.

[lhb412]