Miami Vice

[grady]

adam, I'd say don't hold your breath on old Ridley. Of course, that is just me though.

Brian, I too have always hated that fucking line in Collateral, and me being the Mann apologist/defender rationalizes it that he originally had something more 'classic' in there but then was unable to secure rights to whatever that may have been, but then was able to get a snippet of Miles Davis from Bitches Brew.

Huh? What doesn't make sense here? Why wasn't her dialog redubbed or fixed in post?

To quote the Chewbacca defense from that one episdoe South Park, "THAT DOES NOT MAKE SENSE!??!??!??!"

So now we can confirm two people saying Miami Vice=FUCKING AWESOME.

Now what we need is Manhola Darghis to write a love letter/make love to Mann with words, carassing him and the film in Friday's NY Times on the day of the films US release. Then follow that up with a nice verbose review from David Denby in the New Yorker where he references his own review of Collateral from 2004 and expounds on it further for MV as Vice being an extension of the filmmaking techniques Mann was beginning and exploring in Collateral both within his own asethetic approach to filmmaking and the use of digital technology.

Of course the above is all conjecture, but if it turns out to be half true, the audience may not get it and rather, will wait and see something else again, thinking the film Miami Vice is nothing more than what the film version of Starsky and Hutch or The Dukes of Hazard were.

[stimpee]

Looks like its coming to Holland quite soon. This was in the cinema magazine Preview...

[grady]

Originally Posted by stimpee

Looks like its coming to Holland quite soon. This was in the cinema magazine Preview...

Nice. I was wondering how different some of the international artwork would be, doesn't appear to be much change.

[grady]

Here is an interesting piece from Slate.com about the trials and tribulations of shooting Miami Vice and the ego of Jamie Foxx, now an Oscar winner conflicting with the controlling, demanding, and precise director Michael Mann.

There are no real big spoilers in the piece, but rather a discussion of two sides of the story of creating a film and dealing with a strong, dominant, and controlling director and actor whose ego grows exponentially from an award being bestoyed upon him.

Reading Mann's comments in the piece they seem very measured and somewhat terse. He's not going to bullshit about it, but he's not going to tell all and create a dramatic fued, instead, just maintain a bit of prefessionalism.

[GforGroove]

Grady.. so???!!! how was it?
Im going tonight. run run

[grady]

An odd film, a strange episodic film that is like an episode exploded for the confines of a cinema. I saw it last night with a audience full frat boys/high school football players. It was not the ideal viewing audience. I saw it again later today and found myself not wincing as hard as before, and just getting soaked up in all the digital grainy look which is quite a stark contrast to Collateral.

I really enjoy the film in the way it just starts and stops. You're literally thrown into the scene. Just in the way you're dropped into the film, you're pulled out as well. It just ends.

Obviously my affinity to Michael Mann's films and asethetic make it harder for me to discern sometimes the bad from the good. I wanted to like it more and I wanted it to be better. But already I find more to look at and enjoy in the film than say Ali, which was a difficult film to like, despite it's many good and bad points.

Another point of discussion in the film:Sex and sex scenes. Sex feels very odd in Miami Vice and at times uncomfortable. I can't find a better adjective at the moment, maybe wierd or strange as well. When we're introduced to Vincent Hanna in Heat he's making love to his wife in the morning. The scene is shot with very tight shots and perspectives and cut together in such a way to create that sense of passion and the heat of the moment spontanaity. It works. In Miami Vice Jamie Foxx has a humorous bit when he and his girlfriend begin to become intimate post showering. Colin Farrell has to follow Foxx's lead by being in the shower and then having Gong-Li join him. So you've got sex and showers going on.

The look of the film is really peculiar too as I mentioned above in being a stark contrast from Collateral. The DV is not clean in some places and is down right dirty and and raw with splatters of blood on the lens and shaky shaky shaky handheld running around from person to person. I was expecting things to be cleaner as the film was being set in Miami and you think of the city as being slick and glossy. But this isn't a TV show, this is the film. They're different entities, hence the different approach.

If you've seen just two or three Michael Mann films, you know what to expect. Strong male lead characters with a dedication to work that superceeds the term workaholic by leaps and bounds. Everything else in the character's life takes a back seat to the first priority at hand, the job/the score/the truth/etc. Colin Farrell is that character this time around. He has his contemplative moment staring at the ocean, ruminating on God knows what. (It just looked better in Heat with Deniro in that empty Malibu home staring at the sea and Russel Crowe looking out at the Gulf in The Insider before going to give a court deposition in Mississippi.)

Now that I've seen it twice I'm gonna let it sit for a while. Think about it some more, read some essays(one.two.three.four.) that have been nagging at me for a review about Mann and his style. Maybe try and put some thoughts down on paper about Mann as an exercise. In school a couple years back a wrote a lengthy piece for a professor on Mann and his films. Perhaps it's time to return, if only to keep the mind limber and able.

I'll leave it on this note. A quote I came across in this AP wire piece from yahoo Mann in regards to making a film out of the series.

"The whole idea was to do `Miami Vice' for real and to do it now, and it would take place now. And if you're going to do it for real, then the first question you have to ask yourself is: Do I have those points of connection to the show?" Mann told The Associated Press. "It's nostalgia, and I find that passive and not interesting. ... If you're going to do `Miami Vice' for real, you're not going to get into the cartoon stuff, and you're not going to try to trigger recall of the show."

Did you see it yet Jerry? Brian?

[b.miller]

I saw it today.

(minor spoilers but not really)

I think there's more good than bad in it, but I couldn't help but wish for more... I actually really liked the grainy DV look of Miami at night but really wanted some shot-on-film vividness to the day stuff... I was really hoping this movie would be the melding of Collateral's night/very close-up shooting and Heat/Insider's stunningly beautiful exterior stuff... but the day shots ended up being kind of dull and video-y to me... I much preferred the night stuff.

Certain parts I liked very much... there just weren't enough of them.

The story... is what it is I guess. I had some problems with it... but I guess that's up to everyone. Kind of like how it bugs some people in Collateral that of course the last target on Cruise's list is Pinkett Smith because there was that random cab ride in the beginning ("you like the classics too?"). So here, of course certain things are going to happen I guess... most of them are in the trailer too ("there's deep undercover and then there's which-way-is-up") and part of me hoped all that would get chopped like the "do you know what forboding means?" bit (or is it verboten? neither word makes a whole lot of sense in an undercover vice cop movie)... but certain standards to the genre are still here.

So I don't know why but I was somehow hoping for something special, and ended up with more of a by-the-numbers approach. Except Crockett and Tubs are both painfully cool... Foxx's goatee man... I wanted it to get caught in a garbage disposal or something... except both of these guys are WAY to cool to ever wash dishes, so that scene was out.

And yeah, the sex stuff in here is just plain weird. Close-ups of Foxx's back... huh?

I was also happy to see that one guy get work. I really liked him on that old Denis Leary TV show called The Job.

so yeah, I'd say I liked it. I'd put it between Thief and Ali as far as my favorite Mann movies go (Heat's at the top, followed by Insider then Collateral, Manhunter, Thief, this, Ali, Mohicans... haven't seen The Keep).

oh well.

[jOHN rODRIGUEZ]

yaaaaaawn.

[cured]

It was better than I thought it would be. You get dropped right in a hectic scene (perhaps the most tense of the entire movie) and you aren't slapped over the head with where the story is supposed to go. You piece it together as it goes along, which does give it that feeling of being a misplaced "24" episode but that helps the replay value vastly.

The sex scenes? Eh they're for the girls, too, y'know

The end fighting sequences were fun but it did seem to take a big page out of an average paintball tournament. Some deaths did have a nice degree of humor in them, kind of a hard line to walk with this kind of movie but they did it really well.


Good movie, I'd buy the DVD

[GforGroove]

yup i saw it but not friday because it was freaking sold out in whole NYC..
i tried 3 cinemas and nop nop... I think was a booomboxoffice.. besides not being a fabolous movie but nice one. Well i saw 'Road to Guantamo" instead on friday that is pretty damn good. and i saw yesterday Miami Vice..

OK. for not remember anything about miami vice series and being a zero action movies fan but a completely fan of Mann (not as you grant!) It was
really entertaining and good for the eye.. Is just that Mann makes everything look good. But it didn't make me crazy.. i like that satire mood when they kill people but i didn't believe Foxx for a second to be a tough dude.

It was ok though. I prefer Collateral much more.