#movies about journalism

[disappointingyet]

Between The Lines

Director Joan Micklin Silver Stars Lindsay Crouse, John Heard, Jeff Goldblum, Jill Eikenberry, Bruno Kirby, Gwen Welles, Stephen Collins USA 1977 Language English 1hr 41mins Colour 

Classic indie ensemble piece – before that was a thing

If you’d seen this at the time, which of the male actors do you think you would have picked out as the future movie star? The obvious thing to say is one of the rectangular-headed blonde guys, especially because John Heard is sort-of the male romantic lead here. But then again, this is the 1970s, the era of Al and Bobby, so maybe you go for Bruno Kirby – the short Italian guy who had actually shared scenes with De Niro in The Godfather Part II.

Watching in 2023, we know it's the tall, weirdly magnetic Jewish dude who seems all limbs who would become much more famous than the rest. The film ends with the camera locked on Jeff Goldblum and he’s fully formed here – the day after I saw Between The Lines, I watched an episode of Search Party from last year that he’s in, and if the mannerisms are a little more extreme now, they were certainly already there. 

It’s a formidable cast of then up-and-comers. It’s not quite a 1970s equivalent of Short Term 12, but almost all of these people went on to have good careers: Kirby and Heard as beloved character actors and Jill Eikenberry and Stephen Collins as leads on hit TV shows (as was Marilu Henner, who has a memorable few scenes in this film). Maybe I think of Crouse as bigger than she is because House Of Games was a very-much-talked-about film back in the day and she was a Columbo villain, which puts her in the company of Donald Pleasance, Janet Leigh, Rip Torn and Johnny Cash. (She’s also in the worst Buffy The Vampire Slayer storyline, but that’s not her fault.)

Never imagined John Heard and Lindsay Crouse as a cute couple

And it’s Crouse who gets the most screen time in this packed ensemble. She plays Abbie, a photographer working the Back Bay Mainline, an alternative weekly newspaper in Boston. Heard is Harry, one of the paper’s star writers and her sometime boyfriend. Goldblum is Max, the rock critic. Collins and Gwen Welles are Michael and Laura, both writers, but he’s the one working on a pompous-sounding book and she’s struggling with being in his shadow. Kirby (27 but looking much younger) is the newly joined boy reporter and Eikenberry is the long-suffering office manager. 

In a lot of ways, this a classic American indie movie about a bunch of bright young folk (eg, the already mentioned Short Term 12). Only that wasn’t really a thing yet in 1977. There were plenty of  films at the time, though, shot in scruffy, believable locations with sprawling casts (indeed, a few of the stars of this had been in Robert Altman pics). It was in the 1980s, I guess, that things started to separate out again. It was shot in only two weeks so I’m assuming the budget was pretty low – there are a couple of aerial shots that feel designed to make you sense this is proper movie.

And it’s a good example of the ensemble movie, a movie that makes us feel immersed in this little world, a very likeable film, funny in places, sharply written. And I don’t think it wrong to say Joan Micklin Silver is clearly bringing a woman’s perspective here – it’s easy to imagine a film that would have indulged and glorified Harry and Michael, rather than exposing their fragile egos. (There’s also a couple of good exchanges between Laura and Abbie that pre-figure the Sally/Marie ‘I don’t think he’s ever going to leave her’ riff in When Harry Met Sally.)

Between The Lines treads fairly lightly in boomer regret and nostalgia – there’s a bit of stuff about the passing of the counterculture, references to the early days of the paper as part of the underground press and the idealism of that moment, contrasted with the mid-1970s when it’s professional enough to be the target of a takeover by a guy who in that earlier moment would have been described as a breadhead.  But that never becomes the main theme — this isn’t the Return Of The Secaucus Seven or The Big Chill. Maybe it was a bit too early for that, and that's probably a good thing.

What feels like it was maybe intended as the movie’s marketing trump card is the presence of Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, who were famous as Bruce Springsteen’s mates. They are on the soundtrack, mentioned in the plot and then play at a party. Never really been a fan – they represent the brassy bar band side of Springsteendom that I like less – but it’s kind of fun to have them here. 

At the time I write this, MUBI have a bunch of Joan Micklin Silver films up, aiming to get a serious consideration of her career. This is the first one I have seen, and I’m fully sold. 

[drbtinglecannon]

In Knives Out Blanc wanted to do the murder mystery investigation with Marta so bad, but she was certain she was guilty so she spent a good amount of the movie avoiding/hiding stuff from him

Meanwhile in Glass Onion Helen was fucking carrying the investigation, even while accidentally getting drunk, and even went to investigation lengths Blanc was hesitant to do

[bmpmp3]

sorry to be a bit of a hater but i do wish youtubers weren't so scared of making their videos just like, "reviews", whys everything gotta be a "video essay" all the time. every day my recommendations are filled with 40 minute videos titled "_____: An Underrated Masterpiece" where the first like five minutes are reading the wikipedia definition of "masterpiece" in a somber voice with dramatic themed text on screen. please just tell me how good or bad you think something is and use the rest of the runtime to explain why. you dont need to put on all these airs

[aquickstart]

do you guys ever think about how out of them all farleigh was the next real thing. felix haunted the hallways of saltburn with his electric rays of light of naiveté, not malicious but borne of wealth and shelter, and oliver reached for that light like it was the sun. the cattons were adjacent, fantastical islands of that pool of light, and oliver was a drying plant that never saw the real thing and mistook a lamp for a life. an insidious parasitic vine, it's his nature. he offered felix the attention, the quiet adoration, he offered the other cattons the stares, the touch, the longing. and felix was a fantasy, a ghost since day one, a promise of warmth.

but farleigh was there. he was real. he was burning with anger and rage and boiling just beneath the skin. and it irritated oliver, it made him feel something that he couldn't control, and he couldn't control farleigh because he had nothing to offer him: not attention, because farleigh could see right through that front, not control, because you cannot control a 20-year-old incessant fire, not the surrender of it because power and wealth has been a low-hanging, spoiled fruit for farleigh, he yearns for and despises it, he has no desire for it.

killing off a lamplight is painfully reversable, mundane, easy; switch on and off at will, you will not feel a moral dillemma. it is in oliver's nature. but farleigh was real. and what can you do, accustomed to imitation of heat, when met with the raging warmth of life? do you guys think that alive and angry, farleigh was the next real thing. do you think he must live because oliver must know that there is a life at all. do you think

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Drew WWX and LWJ after I finished my rewatch of The Untamed a few months ago. I have gotten marginally better. May this set a benchmark for what to expect from this blog.

June 2023 redraw, June 2024 redraw

[rexscanonwife]

I guess there's fewer days better than today to finally confess that I have a secret giant crush on Rouge the bat and I've been meaning to make a sonic self insert for AGES 😭😭😭

[lego-ninjago]

It will ALWAYS be cool to draw yourself as one of your favorite characters and then put stickers around it. I should have been the green ninja for real...!

[micahdotgov]

feeling very attacked by this fake review from an atpm parody sketch

[fisherrprince]

another thing abt arr/hw alphinaud. Maybe current alphy. Just while I’m looking backwards at cutscenes. he has a tendency to look at a situation that’s gone topside and go ‘well this is wrong’, which I think says something about how much he plans in advance, how often things just do go according to his smart little plans because he’s good at them, and something about how thrown off he gets when things do not go according to the ten step plotline he made up in his head

[bassiter2]

did anyone else ever try to keep a diary as a kid NOT to actually hold thoughts/feelings that you needed to write down or anything, but just because it seemed like The Thing To Do, and for that matter you were writing it like you were trying to make it a story that just happened to be in a diary format

[travllingbunny]

So, according to Ali Abbasi's interview, there was a scene in The Apprentice script where Trump, after meeting Roy Cohn a few times, starts having dreams about him with a "slightly homoerotic undertone", and they filmed that, and it involved Jeremy Strong, per his own idea, being in a full body frog costume(invoking Cohn's infamous plushy frog toys collection) and singing "I am What I Am" from Le Cage des folles (the soundtrack to which Cohn is actually known to have really liked) while lying in bed with Sebastian as Trump.

And for Dan Snyder, the rich Trump supporter who was somehow dumb enough to finance the movie thinking it would lionize him, that scene was one of the things that upset him the most and that he walked out on during the private screening of an early cut.

It was revealed earlier that Snyder made them remove some parts of the movie that he had a problem with so he could stop blocking the movie, and that the only one of those they refused to remove from the final cut was the rape scene, because they thought it was too crucial for the movie.

I immediately figured out what those other parts he had a problem with were likely to be... and boy, was I right.

(Director's Cut when?)

[cutekoala1001]

November 2023

mood + habit tracker pages (Buster Moon)

Edit however you want for your personal use!

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[corviiids]

your characterization of characters is so good, especially your half-joking death note aus/hypotheicals... i feel as if youre a scientist who's spent years observing lawlight in a confined enclosure and is now sharing your accumulated expertise with the wider public. that being said do you think if light watched american psycho he would be self aware enough to notice the similarities

this is such an extremely nice thing to say to someone who only watched death note in literally february of this year. im humbled and honoured by this accolade. also mildly concerned about exactly how quickly light yagami became a part of my soul and personality

i actually have not read or watched american psycho but im willing to do so to complete this analysis if i must, although i do not really like horror films. unsubstantiated yapping hidden below anyway

my instinct (uninformed) is a soft no? light is remarkably self aware in some ways and absolutely, completely, 1000% untrustworthy about matters of his own self in other ways. my limited understand of american psycho is that mr patrick bateman is not driven to commit murder by a desire to enact social reform? please correct me if im wrong. i think on that front alone light would see someone committing atrocities, especially without being driven by grand ideals, and immediately distance himself from the character regardless of whether or not similarities exist beyond that

actually you know what im adding a condition. post-kira light would say no he's nothing like patrick bateman. pre-kira/yotsuba light would say the same thing but secretly doubt and fear

however this is a heavily caveated take because i need to watch the film and educate myself first

[aquickstart]

oh to be a black hole an oliver quick.

first unassuming, floating through space and suddenly crushing into the sun's orbit. felix catton is so bright and so welcoming; there is an entire system of cattons around him, under the same roof, yet so distant it would take a rocket to get a message through the sound waves of mindless chatter.

an oliver quick is a heavy, peculiar thing. it circles slowly, on the edges of the system. it chips away at the other, older planets, it leaves its holes and it takes their mass away, somehow. it carries on the pieces, contaminates planet elspeth with planet venetia, sir james with farleigh; she talks about her daughter for the first time in years, he suddenly addresses his nephew at breakfast. the cattons drift uncomfortably closer together in that summer. an oliver quick draws them together, and closer to the sun, although planets are not supposed to do that.

real, human boys are not supposed to do that, either.

and so it collapses. not really a boy, but something pretending, crushes into the sun with deadly velocity. and it only takes the sun to explode in on itself, to collapse in the middle of the system, in the center of the labyrinth, for the catton galaxy to disperse and wither.

and it only takes an oliver quick to carry the pieces on. with incessant, deadly velocity.

[ioannemos]

latest dream idea: what if anakin and obi-wan swapped origins? kinda, anyway (this is the kind of thing i'm honestly surprised i haven't already mused on to death, tbh)

the age gap was smaller - anakin was still younger, maybe 10, but obi-wan was like 15 (in canon obi-wan is what, 24? 25 when he meets nine-year-old anakin? so that's 14/15 years rather than like. 5). ("you're the closest thing i have to a father" says anakin. "then why don't you listen to me??" asks frustrated teen parent obi-wan lol oh no.) ANYWAY they weren't on tatooine either, but a similarly lawless place and there was still racing of some type and obi-wan was a racer. also no shmi 😒 i wonder if she was still anakin's mom and he'd just been found earlier?? could be. don't remember that part

the main thing i remember is obi-wan being all alone in this scary place, effectively faking an exit when he was otherwise going to be... idk, beat up i think? and i was briefly in qui-gon's place while following where he'd really gone and telling him quietly where to find me later. and a definite determination to save him

which i understand, as someone who loves obi-wan dearly, but idk what your thought process is here, qui-gon! bc if nine was too old i think everyone is going to think you have legit lost your mind walking in with someone halfway through his teens! and he ain't even a candidate for chosen one! there's defiance and then there's delusion, and then there's whatever this is

the dream ended before that became relevant, tho. so now i get to chew on a slightly more plausible swap... 🤔

[rexscanonwife]

Genuinely how it feels having ur s/i next to ur f/o sometimes