metropolitan streaming on hulu.

- dave 8-18-2008 2:18 am

i watched it a few nights ago--it seems better with time and compression. i love the scene in the bar with aging UHB; that guy is perfect
- tom moody 8-18-2008 2:24 am [add a comment]


thats good to know. i was expecting it to seem less than what i thought it was. last days of disco was a disappointment. wonder how that holds up. stillmans career was stillborn. maybe he can make a comeback with someone else writing.
- dave 8-18-2008 2:35 am [add a comment]


more fanfare.
- dave 8-18-2008 2:37 am [add a comment]


in one of those interviews WS said Met. was set in the late 60s/early 70s. I just assumed it was the 80s/early 90s and that preppy urban haute bourgeois conventions were timeless.
- tom moody 8-18-2008 2:51 am [add a comment]


  • well he mentions the discreet charm of the bourgeoisie which was made in '72. i think he just wishes it were set in the late 60s. the exterior shots make me think 80s. just saw an ad for ballys park place casino on top of a cab that was prominent in a shot. the casino didnt open until 1980. he sure didnt work very hard to create the impression he later says he wanted.
    - dave 8-18-2008 6:11 am [add a comment]


    • although i suppose he didnt have the internet at his fingertips to research these incongruities. but even the cab was more modern than mid-seventies. earlier he had used an older model which was more in keeping with his conception.

      and he squirms out of it by proclaiming within the movie that its set "not so long ago." he should have just stuck with the temporal ambiguity.
      - dave 8-18-2008 6:32 am [add a comment]


      • He mentions the Scribner's store which became a Brentano's and I believe it's now a Benetton store (he says something else).

        When your budget is 250,000 you can't do insane Oliver Stone-like recreations. It's much less interesting to me if set in the '60s.
        - tom moody 8-18-2008 2:22 pm [add a comment]



i never thought of it as a period piece either. i also noticed plaudits from richard brookheiser. that and the fact that hes adapting a christopher buckley book would brand him as a hipster conservative despite those terms being mutually exclusive.
- dave 8-18-2008 2:58 am [add a comment]


Ha, i just read that brookheiser. I wonder what he would say now that Bush's son has destroyed every shred of UHB credibility, with Christian crackers being Jr.'s only base.
- tom moody 8-18-2008 3:44 am [add a comment]


I like this exchange:

Tom Townsend: Maybe I'm not really a Fourierist.
Charley Black (assenting): I wouldn't want to live on a farm with a bunch of other people.

Speaking of Fourier, I lived in Dallas 13 years and never knew Reunion Tower and Reunion Arena are named after La Reunion, a (failed) Fourierist commune located 3 miles from downtown Big D, founded in 1855. The commie roots of Dallas must be embarrassing to some.
- tom moody 9-01-2008 8:34 pm [add a comment]





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