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Masterpiece? Best American film of the year? High praise indeed. Very interesting.

Demme is great, Hathaway is the MEGAHOTNESS but it doesn't sound like anyone gets OWNED in this movie.

Glad to hear, Dave. Glad to see Demme is back on track with fiction films. Eventually he'll be as hailed as his contemporaries.

I'm excited to see Hathaway and Irwin.

Props for calling this one out of the gate DP.

Rachel Getting Married and Slumdog Millionaire as Best Pic contenders? Who considered THAT when the year kicked off???

...hate to offer a dissenting voice cause I was REALLY looking forward to this, but I was really let down by "Rachel." It was as self-indulgent (and ultimately wearying) as a recovering junkie. And while I loved Demme's casual multi-culturalism in the past, it was really laid on with a trowel here.
Hathaway, DeWitt and Winger are splendid; the film, not so much.
I'd be surprised if it does any better for Sony Classics than "Jane Austen Book Club" (a considerably more commercial film) did for them last fall. As far as dysfunctional family/wedding pics go, I'll take Baumbach's underrated "Margot at the Wedding" any day.

HATHAWAY = B O N E R.

Nice.

Congratulations to Lex on his newest success.

Best Altman movie in 15 years?

Can't possibly be true. Can't be better than Gosford Park.

Other than the sound editing with overlapping voices, I don't really see much Altman in this. I definitely saw more Vinterberg and really, Demme, than I saw Altman. It's got touches of A Wedding, for sure, but I think it's closest in spirit to Demme's 80's work than any of Altman's films.

i love demme's 80's stuff, noah, remember 'swing shift'? 'married to the mob' and 'something wild' get mentioned so often in demme's 80's lexicon (and deservedly so, i think both are terrific) but i have a soft spot for 'swing shift', too, with it's great cast and unique premise.

movieman, i'm i bit worried now you didn't like 'rachel', i hope i disagree with you on this one if it ever makes it into a cinema down here. but i did really like 'margot at the wedding', (nice to see kidman sink her teeth into something darker again, and leigh is always great), dysfunctional families provide such great movie fodder!

Um, no. There are some special moments in the film (thanks to Hathaway and DeWitt), but the movie gets tiresome. This is one of the most annoying families to grace the screen in recent years, and Demme stretches our time with them to a ridiculous 115 minutes.

There are long stretches of the film where we're just watching the parts of the wedding unfold - people dancing, musicians playing, guests chatting, on and on and on and on.

If I had cared more about the central characters, maybe these stretches wouldn't have felt so long and pointless. But despite Hathaway's considerable performance, her character, Kym, is the equivalent of nails on a chalkboard. She's a nasty, self-centered, inconsiderate mess, and while you feel sorry for her, you're also thankful when the movie ends because it means you'll no longer have to be in her miserable company.

Wasn't Swing Shift sorta taken away from Demme at some point? Even at that -- and that I haven't seen it in twenty years -- I remember rather liking it.

HANDLE WITH CARE and MELVIN AND HOWARD are EXCELLENT; Think I rented CRAZY MAMA one time and was a little underwhelmed but found it affectionate enough; I really need to check out that FIGHTING MAD that Leydon's always talking up next time it plays on FMC.

SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, though, really is his masterpiece, with SOMETHING WILD and MELVIN not too far behind; Haven't seen PHILADELPHIA in a long time, but liked it in its day... though I wonder if it's aged poorly as an overly P.C. relic of its era; I'd hope the performances and direction make any evenhanded preachiness somewhat moot.

After that, his notable, distinctive voice has just become unpredictable and (at least fiction-wise) not prolific enough; PTA used to name-check Demme as one of his absolute biggest influence, something that's totally obvious in his first two features.

But BELOVED, whatever its merits, just seemed beige and scotch-guarded, didn't even look like Demme's work. As mentioned in the Thandie Newton thread, I liked TRUTH ABOUT CHARLIE quite a bit and it seemed like Demme was just on fire and having a blast stylistically there.

The first 45 minutes or so of his MANCHURIAN remake I think recapture a little bit of that edgy, unsettling LAMBS vibe... but it too quickly turns cold, weird and too generically a Paramount military potboiler of its time.

Long story short, this totally looks to have a MELVIN vibe which is awesome, but also might be Demme at his most estro-tastic, which is not.

Also, didn't vintage Demme's "tint" used to be POWDER-BLUE???? Why does this look so TAUPE?

lex, whatdya mean by 'swing shift' being taken away from demme, was he a bad boy or something? no, really, i hadn't heard anything about that, i remember seeing him talk about making 'swing shift' in an interview along with hawn but that was so long ago i can't remember anything he actually said. ('silence' is definitely his masterwork; i don't think there's ever been another movie with so many close-up shots of the actors talking to the camera as if it were another character's POV, and he/they pulled it off)

Leah...

The Wiki entry alludes to the long-alleged creative differences:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swing_Shift_(film)

(I'm sure a better recounting is available elsewhere about the supposed "Demme cut.")

Heh; should've linked to this three minutes ago:

http://www.salon.com/ent/log/1999/11/10/swingshift/

There's a deep irony to Silence of the Lambs being 'Demme's masterpiece' (which I don't agree that it is) since, as a pumped-up pro-cannibalism thriller, it has so little in common with Demme's standard wacky, loose, everybody's crazy/liberal feelweird movies.

shades of Dave's initial Sideways review. I'm not at all surprised Hathaway is excellent, she gave by far the best performance in Devil Wears Prada. And Get Smart falls apart without her skill to bring off the straight man role.

There are plenty of Demmeisms throughout, from the heartland/Americana vibe (including the recurring flag imagery), the quirky character details, the use of indie/modern rock music, that affectionately semi-comedic scene where Foster interviews the victim's small-town friend with modest ambitions, the feminist scene where Foster's left in the examination room with all men, the kidnap victim rocking out to "American Girl" on her car radio.

All of these (humanistic) details are extremely Demme, and yeah, even though the film is intense and brutal and not an openhearted up-with-the-people mosaic, their inclusion intensifies the scare stuff.

And I didn't even mention that the color timing, framing, and lensing are almost identical to his previous two fiction films (though maybe it's just the remnants of the late 80s/early 90s ORION TINT... for that matter, Lost Angels, No Way Out, Cadillac Man and Colors all have the same color timing as the decidedly different Demme movies.)

Yeah, but it's still a thriller infused with Demme-isms and not a full-blown Demme movie, if you ask me.

Lex, I have to give you credit, I know of nobody, even my friends who are cinematographers, who pay attention to color timing as much as you do.

interesting, i'd love to see the demme cut! i still like 'swing shift', tho.

jeff, i think 'silence' is hugely demme (lex did a nice summary; demme's other films don't have all those disarming 'talking to the camera' close-ups i mentioned before tho, those shots are almost uncomfortably intimate), what do you think is demme's masterwork? just curious.

i love in the 'making of' on 'silence' how demme is fanatical about foster and glenn never actually touching during the film until their final handshake at the end, in order to maintain the very subtle sexual tension that builds up between them. brilliant.

This might not make sense, but I think that while Silence of the Lambs is the best film Demme has made, Something Wild is the best Demme film Demme has made.

Leahnz- I love "Swing Shift," too, Leahnz! Hell, it even made my 1984 10-best list (I was such a loyal auteurist in my youth, LOL).
But then virtually every Demme film made my top-10 between "Citizen's Band" and "Silence of the Lambs" (1979's "Last Embrace" is the one exception).
No one could be more disappointed by my tepid response to "Rachel" than I was. It was one of the most eagerly awaited films of the festival for me. And I wouldn't worry about it not reaching Australia (if perhaps not before "Australia"): I'm sure that it'll show up before year's end.

I must say, I'm glad to see so much love for Margot at the Wedding. I was under the impression I was the only one.

yeah, another 'swing shift' fan! (and movieman to boot! spooky) movieman, i'm in new zealand, but if 'rachel' makes it to australia, it will likely make that final jump across the tasman sea.

jeff, makes perfect sense to me. 'something wild' is a legend.

kam, see, you aren't the only fan of 'margot', with movieman and i that makes three. we can start a 'margot' fan club with t-shirts and badges (so long as we can fit it in around our other fan club of three, 'u-turn' ;) )

I'm another Margot fan. To me it was like a Bergman movie, except funny.

Margot was on my Top Ten list last year, so make room in the treehouse for me. It's, for me, a better film than Rachel Getting Married - but also, very different.

And Jeff, this was right on the money:

"...I think that while Silence of the Lambs is the best film Demme has made, Something Wild is the best Demme film Demme has made."

Movieman name-checks LAST EMBRACE. OWNAGE!!!!

Last Embrace is awesome; Scheider in that RIDICULOUS WHITE SUIT, John Glover OWNING, that awesome climax at Niagara Falls; Talk about a NON-DEMME DEMME Movie. I like Embrace a lot but ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS forget to include it in any Demme rant because I tend to forget he even made it. Even though it's awesome and Scheider ruled. A couple years ago, TNT and Encore would run it ROUND THE CLOCK; Is it even on DVD? Does Demme talk about it much? It's a good late-70s paranoid suspense thriller with some awesome setpieces (remember also the churchbell-enhanced gunfight????), but man... for all I usually remember, that could've been made by anybody.

lex, i think movieman meant that 'last embrace' didn't quite do it for him, that's how i interpreted his comment, but i wouldn't like to speak for movieman because he's a legend and i'd hate to get it wrong.

i just wanted to add that noah's comment about making room in the treehouse for him conjured up an image in my head of all of us crammed into bart simpson's treehouse for a 'margot' fan club meeting...lmao (i'd bring beer)

Oh, I realize he was saying he wasn't into Last Embrace; I was just pleased he mentioned it at all.

As a matter of fact I rather dug "Last Embrace," Lex. It just wasn't a 10-best list kind of movie for me in the same year as "Apocalypse Now," "The Wanderers," "Hair," "Maria Braun," Herzog's "Nosferatu" remake, "Being There," "All That Jazz," "Kramer vs. Kramer," "The Black Stallion" and countless other '79 movies I'm currently drawing a blank on.
Sorry for misidentifying your home base of operations as Australia instead of New Zealand, Leahnz.
I have no idea where I could have gotten that idea from, but mea culpa!
And thank you for referring to me as a "legend," lol. I am truly honored, great lady!

....not sure whether this made it before, so here I go again...
As a matter of fact, I dig "Last Embrace" just fine, Lex (Janet Margolin owns, no?) It just wasn't 10-best list worthy for me in a year that included "The Wanderers," "Apocalypse Now," "Maria Braun," Herzog's "Nosferatu" remake and "The Black Stallion" (among many, many others).
Please accept my sincerest apologies for misidentifying your base of operations, Leahnz. Yikes! Not sure how I could've done something as unforgivable as that.
And thank you sincerely for referring to me as a "legend," lol.
I'm truly honored, great lady!

Gee, I guess the previously posted comment decided to show up after all....sorry for the double-posting, gang!

movieman, you are most kind! :D
btw, i love that 'nosferatu' with kinski (my fave dracula movie); i took a film studies class in high school and i remember we had to get parental consent to watch herzog's 'nosferatu', 'chinatown', 'splendor in the grass', 'the deer hunter', 'west side story', 'blazing saddles', and '2001' each week after school (if i remember correctly, there may have been others that didn't stick) - needless to say it was sheer bliss!

silly me, 'cukoo's nest', not 'chinatown'... nicholson brain freeze. those days of yore aren't as crystal as they use to be

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