Does Charlie Kaufman’s latest surrealist mind-bender need a few nips and tucks?
The flick was originally at a four hour cut and then scaled down to a two hour and five minute cut at Cannes that was both praised and criticized in almost equal measure (though it does seem the older, fussier crowd just doesn’t “get” his work to be honest).
Jeffery Wells has noted that Hollywood Reporter scribe Gregg Goldstein thinks the film could be subject to some further tweaks, but Wells points out that the op-ed like piece features no quotes or reportage on his part and rather is just thinking-out-loud speculation (hey, it’s like he’s a blogger!).
Wells notes that the HR piece is titled, “Synecdoche could improve with edit.” Wells response to that posit? “No shit!” Evidently he’s not the biggest fan of the film either (honestly, we have yet to peg Wells taste and it’s rather disconcerting; he’s a bit all over the map).
Now before the Internet goes into shitstorm panic mode (“OMG, FRIST SPIKE JONZE, NOW CHARLIE KAUFMAN FORCED TO RECUT FILM!!! [JUMPS OFF CLIFF] I REGRET NOOOOOTHTTTTTINGGG!”), remember this is just one a-holes opinion and remember we’ve all got one so they don’t mean that much (PS, to all the jackasses that speculated that, “OMG, it remains ‘unclear’ whether Spike Jonze will be part of the ‘Wild Things’ reshoots through June, WB may have replaced him!”, yeah, you know who you are. You’re fucking utterly retarded. There’s been nothing to suggest otherwise).
We criticized ‘Synecdoche’ ourselves a little bit, but only cause we want people to actually see it and so we mildly suggested that the unpronounceable title maybe, might, kinda not be the best idea in the whole world and that the Cannes poster for the film was about as enticing as curdled milk. To the three jackasses that can’t read, we weren’t suggesting anything be changed to be more palatable for the ham n’ eggers out there, but we’re saying this: hey, if you keep going with the inscrutable route, don’t be surprised if this thing opens up at the IFC theater to a small, niche group of people [ed. hey, nuthin’ wrong with the IFC, we adorbs, but the Kaufman should be at a higher level by now thanks to his previous work – all we’re sayin’]
Hey, this is kinda like a rambling op-ed too! We’re on the interweb!
Jackass No 2: Variety’s Peter Bart
Speaking of jackasses on the Internet, Variety chief Peter “I Hate Blogs” Bart, has now decided if you can’t beat them, you should join them (how convenient) and started his own blog. Bart of course has apparently been a longstanding advocate against blogs calling them unprofessional and whatnot though one blog calls his haterade for blogs “overblown and uneducated declarations,” and hey, we’re down with anyone who loves to set the record straight. So maybe he isn’t a total blowhard.
Jackass No 3: Entertainment Weekly’s Lisa Schwarbaum
But one person who certainly is and yet another jackass on the Internet is Entertainment Weekly critic Lisa Schwarzbaum. During the recent Cannes film fest a certain unnamed film critic had a bit of a tantrum before the screening of James Gray’s “Two Lovers” that was overly-delayed. “I’m not going to wait an hour for fucking James Gray,” a “major U.S. film critic” snapped before storming away from the screening. Defamer put the blame on New York Times scribe Manohla Dargis. Turns out it wasn’t her.
So who just outed herself as the critic who had a meltdown cause the poor thing had to wait too long to see a free movie on the French Riviera? Schwarzbaum of course. The ostrich-like film critic took to the EW PopWatch blog to out herself in an unapologetic post called, “The Unbearable Lightness of Blogging.”
Dear reader, the storming, cursing critic in this international incident was me. And since I’m giving PopWatch readers a spectacular scoop, let me tell you what happened next: I extricated myself from the angry mob at 9:30 p.m., took myself out to dinner, had a nice bowl of pasta and a glass of wine, and returned an hour later to a crowd, albeit smaller, still waiting for f—–g James Gray. I got into the screening easily. And the theater was at least a quarter empty.
Note not the ounce of contrition, har har! Not surprising, we once saw the critic cluck up a storm at one of the early “Juno” screenings last December when the mere suggestion that she might not get in to to see the film ruffled the shit out of them fussy feathers. Yeah, we said it.
