Karina Longworth on ‘Benjamin Button’ preview
Judging an entire movie by 20 minutes is madness, but SpoutBlog’s Karina Longworth has seen the preview of David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button at Telluride and she liked it. In my book, she’s kind of an anti-fanboy and also one of the sharper characters out there when it comes to indie films and the festival scene.
For my own Button virginity, I could only skim what she said in order to get the flavor before I passed it along to you so I don’t know everything she said, but here’s a spoiler-free paragraph.
First impression: it’s impressive. It’s absolutely gorgeous, for starters. Coming as it did after a show reel featuring excerpts from Fincher’s music videos and adverts (both cut into a montage set to “How Soon is Now?” by The Smiths, weirdly and unadvisedly divorcing both pop and product promos from what they were made to promote) and each of his features aside from Alien³, it’s clear that Fincher has moved beyond the cool blacks and blues with florescent highlights that have thus far defined his visual style. It’s a period epic, so the broader visual palette makes sense, but it came as a relief that, within all this beauty, the effects used to transform Pitt first into an 80-year-old man and then backwards into a child felt of a piece and not overwhelmingly effect-y.
For an alternative view, a couple of friends of Jeff Wells have weighed in as well.
Filed under: Film Festivals, Previews
Tags: Brad Pitt, David Fincher, Jeffrey Wells, Karina Longworth, Telluride, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
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I couldn’t imagine seeing a mere twenty minutes of a film, especially one I was looking forward to so greatly, and who knows if what you saw will be in the final cut, and, etc, etc. It probably will be, but who knows?
I think after reading her paragraph and looking in on the friends of Wells (does he really have any friends? shocking!!), I’m going to black out all things Button for myself as well.
It’s not just 20 minutes, either. It’s 20 minutes of selected scenes — is it any wonder that the naysayers groused about the editing and pacing of the footage?
Basically, they got the Cliff’s Notes version, so their opinion — while it may turn out to be true — should not be given too much weight.
Exactly. Someone complained about there not being a payoff? Morons.
It’s probably a bunch of Fight Club fanboys who don’t like Fincher’s change in tone. Screw ‘em.
Taraji P. Henson love, that’s all I got from reading Wells’ “friends” thoughts.
I like Karina Longworth and I value her opinion, but yeah… I’m kind of anal in wanting to see a movie from the beginning or not at all, so judging a movie on a mere 20 minutes (especially when it’s rumored to be over 3 hours) seems fairly pointless.