just seen this. i hope you recommended it because it's material befitting my query and not because you like it. im having a hard time coping with what i just watched. i also just found out this is gus van sant, the guy who did the shot for shot remake of psycho.
I ran into him at the Calcutta Film Festival and asked him why in the hell he'd come up with that bright idea. "So that no one else would have to," he replied serenely. With his new film, "Gerry," he has removed another project from the future of the cinema and stored it prudently in the past. He is like an adult removing dangerous toys from the reach of reckless kids.
Originally posted by Great White Mark
Film is art? Just a tip, it's called show business, not show art.
I mostly recommended it because of its similarities to INTO THE WILD, but I don't think it's a bad flick. Although I certainly understand why anyone would decide that it is. Van Sant has made three movies like this, which I watched in the following order: ELEPHANT, LAST DAYS, GERRY. I loved ELEPHANT, but felt like I had been punk'd after LAST DAYS. By the time I caught up with GERRY I think I knew to expect something pretty spartan. But really, all three of these movies are pulling the same stunt, they all have the same numb, non-emotive characters being pulled through life with some sort of existential tugrope, with actual "plot" reduced to an absolute minimum. So if I try to be objective as possible I think they're all pretty equal. There's one scene in GERRY I really love: where one of them is stuck up on top of a boulder trying to figure out how to get down. PARANOID PARK takes a lot of the tricks Van Sant learned with these films and applies them to an actual plot, and I think it's a great film, maybe Van Sant's best. I think ol' Gus is a pretty interesting filmmaker to watch, and I actually think he was at least trying to prove something interesting with that shot for shot PSYCHO remake.
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