Up In The Air [2009]

While this may not be everyones (or anyones) this looks very much like my cup of tea.
love the cloontang, love melancholy comedies.
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elbarto1 said:

While this may not be everyones (or anyones) this looks very much like my cup of tea.
love the cloontang, love melancholy comedies.

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Saw it with my wife on NYE. Good stuff -- eye candy for both men and women, with a good story overall too. It's by the same group that did both Juno and Thank You For Smoking. MUCH closer in tone to Thank You For Smoking, which for me is a good thing. Like Aaron Eckhart in TYFS, Clooney has a way of making you actually care about a guy who is (professionally, anyway) a real bastard...

Agreed. Great film. And Jason Reitman is - surprisingly, for me, at least - turning out to be the only real American drama/comedy auteur working now. Robert Altman is dead, and while Reitman probably never will make a movie on a McCabe & Mrs Miller or Nashville or even MASH level, it's still nice to know that there's an American comedy director with the balls to be subtle.

And I don't say auteur lightly - Reitman has a directorial style or voice or signature that shines through on all the three main projects of his, even when he's been collaborating with vastly different screenwriters/authors.

Saw this one over the weekend with my lady. We both enjoyed it but I was a bit underwhelmed.
It was a good story, well written and well acted but I guess I just wanted/expected something more along the lines of "the royal tenenbaums" and this was more straightforward.
regardless, its a good film, just not what I was expecting which translates to: I'll love it more when I see it again on DVD knowing what to expect.

Off topic:

we get to the theatre before the previews and there is one row of loud 20 somethings behind us, so we sit closer to the middle of the (otherwise empty) theatre in an attempt to avoid possible problems.

:wat: a few minutes later a group of 40 somethings come in and sit in the seats DIRECTLY in front of us. so, I get all huffy to myself and move down a few seats to the right. A few other people come in and the previews start.

:| Then 2 big fatass [strikeout:1us35u08]cows[/strikeout:1us35u08] women sit down directly behind me and proceed to talk/breathe loudly through the previews....ok.

:mrgreen: movie starts, still talking. labored breathing.
then I hear a bag of candy(?) opening and I hear at least one of them slurping on it loudly. then a loud sickly sounding *COUGH* then a disgusting *SNORT*, *COUGH*. more loud talking.
repeat all

:x we are now 5 minutes into the movie - I lean over and tell my girlfriend I have to move. she gets huffy because she has carried her female survival pack (reallllly big purse) and coat and popcorn, soda and doesnt want to move now.

:-x so, I get up and move back to the left behind the 40 somethings and begin to watch the film.

:smile: not 2 minutes later the fatties get up and leave the theatre because the movie isnt funny.
I move back.

:?: Normally I ask people to be quiet or yell at teens but how do you handle 2 obese black women who carry themselves like farm animals?
/rant/storytime

P.S. for those that need visual aides this was more or less what happened:
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I feel for you elbarto1...I always seem to have problems at the cinema and girlfriends end up not wanting to go with me because I tell people to be quiet or keep moving seats to get some peace. The last was some kid kicking the back of my seat. I asked him to stop and 30 seconds later he started again. Sometimes I leave the theatre pulling my hair out and not because the film is crap. Why can't they make snack wrappers less noisy?

....anyway very funny post.

I liked it a lot, particularly the ending. However, I had three problems with it, two small, one big:
1) The fantasy bit wherein Zach prepares to shoot up his workplace was funny, yes, but out of place with the rest of the movie's empathy for the unemployed. Should've been cut.
2) Did Clooney have to fall in the water in order to rescue the cutout? No, he did not. That beat belonged in a lesser movie.
2) The (spoiler!) Vera Farmiga plot twist. Please! All that conversation, and the situation was never mentioned? I just don't buy it. It would have been much better if it'd been discussed at some point during the wedding.

Overall, though, very good; Reitman's best film by far. A-.

glad to see you liked it Gaith, I am planning a extended edition reincorporating the deleted scenes which I felt were quite good.

I agree with you about the scenes that felt out of place but I liked the zach sniper bit and some people do snap when fired as we see in his lead up scenes (tossing stuff, bleach, etc) so I dont mind it.

You are right about the fall in the water, it wasnt very funny/necessary and I agree that it belongs in a "lesser" matthew mcconehey type romcom. I will consider a cut there

The end twist was great IMO, as I didnt see it coming until the house was revealed and w/o it the end wouldnt have much of an impact but rather just peter out.

I liked the film alot more on my second viewing and feel it will grow on me more with each viewing.

elbarto1 said:

The end twist was great IMO, as I didnt see it coming until the house was revealed and w/o it the end wouldnt have much of an impact but rather just peter out.

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Would that have been so bad, though? The final scene is so ambiguous and low-key, I think a petering out would have been a brave and potentially very rewarding artistic choice. Instead, it tried to have it both ways: he bails on the dramatic speech! he runs through the airport, even though he's under no real time constraint! there's a big, totally unbelievable plot twist! It's like every other rom-com!

Oh, except it's not, because there's a much subtler and better coda. If only the'd had the guts to go with that tone the whole way, imho.

As for an extended edition... dunno, I'd have to read some account of what's in the deleted scenes, but it seemed long enough to me as is.