Author Topic: ZODIAC at 100% on Rottentomatoes.com with five reviews...  (Read 15422 times)

Offline MaineWriter

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Re: ZODIAC at 100% on Rottentomatoes.com with five reviews...
« Reply #30 on: March 04, 2007, 09:12:36 pm »
I agree with this review.  I like pajiba a lot, too, Leslie.  Again usually because they get the themes without giving too much away and because they usually agree with me.  He was also dead on, by the way (and no pun intended), about how that lake scene would make a fine short subject.

Barb, girlfriend...

When you and I finally get together, you can drink an Aqua Velva, I'll have an unoaked chardonnay and we will agree on everything....

L
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Offline Brokeback_Dev

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Re: ZODIAC at 100% on Rottentomatoes.com with five reviews...
« Reply #31 on: March 04, 2007, 09:40:29 pm »





Paul Avery (Robert Downey, Jr.) is the chain-smoking hard-drinking newspaper reporter who covered the story. Downey vibrates like a tuning fork, his offbeat rhythms responding to tones only he can hear. It is is heartbreaking to see the sensitivity that makes him a meticulous observer of the world he writes about begin to implode. The movie doesn't ask or answer whether the stress of being a possible target of Zodiac is what finally causes him to unravel or whether working on the story kept his fragile spirit together with a sense of purpose. It just shows us the toll that the story took on the man who happened to have the crime beat when the first letter came in.







Paul Avery also snorted cocaine at the bar where he was drinking the aqua velvets with Graysmith.  Its hard to catch him doing it as he used a spoon, popular back in the day.  You see him snorting the coke from the spoon in the sequence after he and Graysmith move to the booth, the table littered with empty and half emptied glasses of aqua velva.  Just my little side note

Offline MaineWriter

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Re: ZODIAC at 100% on Rottentomatoes.com with five reviews...
« Reply #32 on: March 04, 2007, 09:47:42 pm »
Paul Avery also snorted cocaine at the bar where he was drinking the aqua velvets with Graysmith.  Its hard to catch him doing it as he used a spoon, popular back in the day.  You see him snorting the coke from the spoon in the sequence after he and Graysmith move to the booth, the table littered with empty and half emptied glasses of aqua velva.  Just my little side note

Thanks, Dev...little tidbits for my next viewing...
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Offline ednbarby

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Re: ZODIAC at 100% on Rottentomatoes.com with five reviews...
« Reply #33 on: March 04, 2007, 11:19:17 pm »
I noticed that, too, Dev.  But I didn't put two and two together that the Movie Mom missed it.  Good call!

And yes, Leslie, I'll gladly drink the Aqua Velvas - vodka and Blue Curacao are my friends.  Well, until they make me good and stupid.  Ah, then they're still my friends.

Reminds me of a story.  ;)

One time Ed and I went to Ruby Tuesday for a quick Saturday night dinner - a "power graze" as he called it at their salad bar.  I was feeling peckish, so when the waiter came around and asked me if I'd like to try their special "Blue Whale Martini" while he was in the restroom, I said "Why not?"  They brought me out this very blue drink in, I kid you not, a fish bowl.  Umbrellas and fruit galore.  Ed comes out just after he'd deposited it in front of me.  We still talk about it.

(And it was goooooood, by the way.)
No more beans!

Offline delalluvia

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Re: ZODIAC at 100% on Rottentomatoes.com with five reviews...
« Reply #34 on: March 04, 2007, 11:44:35 pm »
the waiter came around and asked me if I'd like to try their special "Blue Whale Martini" while he was in the restroom, I said "Why not?"  They brought me out this very blue drink in, I kid you not, a fish bowl.  Umbrellas and fruit galore.  Ed comes out just after he'd deposited it in front of me.  We still talk about it.

(And it was goooooood, by the way.)

I forgot what the drink was - surprise surprise - but the Hula Hut in Austin on the river serves a drink that comes in a fishbowl as well.  By the time my friend and I polished off half of it, we left the restaurant, stealing a platter of beans and my friend had stuck the fishbowl in her purse.  When we got to the club, her ID was floating in it.

Offline ednbarby

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Re: ZODIAC at 100% on Rottentomatoes.com with five reviews...
« Reply #35 on: March 05, 2007, 04:14:12 pm »

While there were some excellent performances, and some brave attempts at excellent performances, the actors portraying the two main characters were the weak links in the film.  Both Mark Ruffalo as Inspector David Toschi, and Jake Gyllenhaal as San Francisco Chronicle political cartoonist, turned true-crime author Robert Graysmith, seemed miserably miscast. Neither actor were of sufficient age to carry off their respective roles, and in the case of Gyllenhaal, he appeared to de-age as his charectars obsession with Zodiac began destroying everything in his life.

I have to quibble with this.  While I agree that they didn't age Jake as effectively as they did Downey, Jr. and Ruffalo, he was indeed old enough to carry off the role.  Robert Graysmith was 24 when the Chronicle received the Zodiac's first letter.  Jake was 25 when he filmed this, and Toschi was in his 30s, as is Ruffalo.


There was very little in the way of flesh to his portrayal of Graysmith, which made it difficult to care about why he became so enthralled with the serial killer.  Ruffalo faired better as Toschi, in part, because much of his performance was paired with the ever entertaining Anthony Edwards as his investigating partner, who eventually requests a transfer off the case and out of the homicide department.  Stand out performances from Robert Downey Jr as the self-destrucitve Chronicle crime reporter Paul Avery, and John Carroll Lynch as the only real suspect in the killings kept me watching whenever they were on screen.

On this count, I don't think Graysmith has to have a reason for becoming obsessed with this case other than that he is an obsessive person.  Why are all of us here (perhaps present company excluded?) obsessed with Brokeback Mountain?  We've never really been able to find a common thread.  It just moved us for some reason that can't always be quantified and here we still are.

I did read an interesting interview of Graysmith, though, where when asked whether he was a reporter at the time, he said something like he wasn't even a writer but a political cartoonist, and he was a political cartoonist partly because he wanted to be a painter and a sculptor and many of the great American painters had started out as political cartoonists and partly because he thought that by being a political cartoonist, he could change things with his art - he could have a politician removed from office, for example.  He said that when the Zodiac's ciphers started coming, he was impressed by his artistic skill - how he had drawn all those symbols perfectly symmetrically spaced and sized without a ruler.  And he was impressed by the idea that this man was using his artistic skill to scare people while he was trying to use his to help people.

Do you think if they had spelled all this out in the movie, you'd have understood his obsession better?  To me, it was understandable.  The problem I had with the performance, and it pains me to say this, was that I don't think Jake pulled off, as Jeremy Fox at Pajiba said, "the unnerving intensity of the truly obsessed."  It bothers me that he didn't pull this off because I know he can.  He did it in "Donnie Darko" brilliantly, and he did it in "Jarhead" as well.  So why not here?  I have to say I was disappointed in his performance because I didn't feel that intensity this time.  He was good, don't get me wrong.  He is always good.  But he just wasn't quite at his best.
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Offline ednbarby

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Re: ZODIAC at 100% on Rottentomatoes.com with five reviews...
« Reply #36 on: March 05, 2007, 08:24:17 pm »
Hmmmm...  The plot thickens.  This just in: Robert Graysmith and other people from the period think Jake "nailed it" playing him.  Here's the youtube interview of Jake and the other Mr. G. on The Today Show from this past Saturday.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlDZ_3td1a8

"I didn't think I was obsessed until this man portrayed me."  Spoken like a true obsessive.  ;)

Just goes to show what the heck I know.

How 'bout that waistcoat, by the way?  Oh, to see that sans jacket...

« Last Edit: March 05, 2007, 08:28:53 pm by ednbarby »
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Offline oilgun

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Re: ZODIAC at 100% on Rottentomatoes.com with five reviews...
« Reply #37 on: March 05, 2007, 09:37:43 pm »
Thanks for introducing me to the Pajiba site folks!  (Any site that titles its article about Anne Coulter's latest idiocy, Transvestite Calls Candidate Faggot will definitely get bookmarked by me, lol!)

I too saw Zodiac and I pretty much agree with the Pajiba review.  I din't find the film long at all, I was engrossed throughout.  (Well, almost, there was a fire alarm at the theatre about 20 minutes before the end.  The screen went dark and we sat there for about 15 minutes before they re-started the film.  It kinda took away from the suspense but I got a free pass out of it at least.)

What really struck me about the movie, and the Pagiba reviewer mentions it as well, is how flawlessly the era is depicted.  It often feels like a movie that was actually filmed in the seventies, that's how good it is.

Offline MaineWriter

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Re: ZODIAC at 100% on Rottentomatoes.com with five reviews...
« Reply #38 on: March 05, 2007, 11:00:50 pm »
Oilgun,

Anyone I can turn on to Pajiba is a friend of mine. I love that site.

I agree...the period details are what kept me watching. How about the scene with Det. Toschi's watch....the watchband with those clip on snappy thingy's (I don't know how else to describe it)...I wore the same damn thing but mine was blue, not brown.

L
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