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Although I wish they didn’t put Mark Strong in a shitty wig. Let the bald man bald in peace.
 
She's the overwhelming faavourite to win Best Actress, but much as I'm excited to see it, it strikes me as the sort of film/subject that might be a bit too niche, and ultimately get overshadowed by something more CROWD PLEASING (probably Michelle Williams in The Fabelmans or Viola Davis in The Woman King).
 
I believe Michelle is going supporting. I think Michelle Yeoh would be the upset win. Because the Woman King was a hit I think Viola is a strong contender for a nom but I don’t see them giving her a second one for it.

However this is the kind of movie that gets best actress and maybe another nom because it’s about an unlikeable woman while a similar movie about a man would be cleaning up.
 
I'd love to think Yeoh could get it, and I'm reasonably confident she'll get a nomination, but there's still a lot of OLD FARTS in the Academy who will probably prefer a sentimental Spielberg performance or whoever plays the most convincing dead celebrity this year.
 
Had no interest in this when I thought it was a biopic (:D) but now I know it’s fictional I can’t wait.
 
Sarah Schulman who is one of my go-to QUEER SAGES has slated this film's premise of GENIUS but EVIL, PROMISCUOUS LESBIAN GETS HER COMEUPPANCE.

Cate bless her cotton socks has form with these LESBEVIL characters (see CAROL :eyes: )
 
Carol was evil? That’s absurd.

Cate Blanchett Drinking GIF by Film at Lincoln Center
 
For full reference I paste here her FACEBOOK SCRIBBLINGS on it, spoilering as she essentially tells you the whole film.

Dudley and I saw "Tar" - (thanks Dudley for the insights)
my review*ALLSPOILERS*SPOILERS*SPOILERS**************
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For the first 20 minutes I thought I was seeing one of the greatest films ever. It was so intelligent, riveting, unpredictable. The detail with which writer/director/producer Todd Fields brings us into- not only the world of classical music, but the music itself- was unlike the contemporary range of films which allude to a subject while wrapping it in a formulaic story.

And then it goes SOOOOOO WRONG. Wow, I have never seen something self-destruct that crazily. And I think the fatal flaw is that the creator hates the protagonist so much, and is so intent on punishing and humiliating her, that he blew up his own film.

Cate Blanchett plays a brilliant, super-accomplished, bold, insufferably pretentious yet deeply knowledgable classical conductor named Lydia Tar, at the top of her game. According to the story she is a protege of Leonard Bernstein but the chronology is off so that part doesn't make sense.

Tar is a Susan Sontag type, expensive tailored suits, speaks German and French, moves in the world of high culture. She is a woman in a man's game, but she is devoted to that game and excels at it. The plot is that she is preparing to conduct Mahler's 5th with a top orchestra in Berlin. And the film brings us deeply into her discovery of the piece with the musicians through a detailed and exciting rehearsal process.

Tar has a female partner, Sharon, and they have a daughter, Petra- all of whom live together in Berlin. Tar also likes to flirt with younger women. It is implied but not explicit that she also has affairs on the regular, with good looking and talented younger women. She helps them advance professionally. Tar is is blatant about these loves, and absolutely uncaring about the impact of her affairs on these women or on Sharon. She is a total narcissist without explanation or any redemption. And the filmmaker hates her for this.

There is one protege- Krista- where something went wrong- and the film is not clear if Krista refused a relationship, wanted a relationship, wasn't good enough or what- but Tar refused to recommend her for a job, essentially stopping her career. After sending a lot of emails that Tar ignores (either coldly, punitively or wisely-unclear) Krista commits suicide and Tar is implicated as having been inappropriate with her.

This combined with false accusations sent out in a severely doctored hate video causes Tar's position and relationship to be severely threatened, and yet she - inexplicably tries to move in on another young woman, a Russian cellist, who clearly is not sexually interested in her and doesn't even seem queer. Tar takes crazy risks with her orchestra and the media and her family to be around this girl at just the wrong moment, and this is not explained either.

Well, between the suicide, the false accusation, and this risky self-destructive pursuit of the Russian cellist her entire life gets destroyed.

And I mean DESTROYED. Fields, the filmmaker, smashes her to little pieces. He takes away her partner, her child, her job, her career, all her friends, her place to live. And then, he "humiliates" her even further by revealing that she is GASP working-class, and her real name is not Lydia but Linda.

There is this scene in her modest childhood home, where all her early musical accomplishments are carefully preserved. where she watches a tape of Bernstein's Lincoln Center concert for children ( in the early 1960's)- and it reminded this viewer that Bernstein did everything Tar is being vilified for: he had sex with people (men) that were not his wife, he promoted younger men professionally. And he got away with it entirely.

But in a finale that is so crazy, the audience literally gasped, the completely pulverized Tar, end up GASP GASP having to conduct a fetish event for furries in GASP Asia. What could be worse?

So, a film that starts out looking so progressive because it is about a great woman who is a lesbian, ends up pathologizing her completely and then punishes her relentlessly. There is no effort to have us understand her, or for her to understand herself. He hates her. The film, in the end, is a mind fuck.
 
I find that point of view reductive and is used regularly against any movie with a complicated character especially when they’re queer.
 
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is obviously an anime expo and not a furry fetish event and that goes to show how out of touch the writer is. Ooh what are these sexual deviants doing to my classy lesbian that I want to be an angel
 
Phoenix said:
I find that point of view reductive and is used regularly against any movie with a complicated character especially when they’re queer.
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I mean it's used regularly against queer characters in cinema because there is a LONG HISTORY of presenting them as deviants and baddies throughout the ages.
 
Peekaboo said:
I mean it's used regularly against queer characters in cinema because there is a LONG HISTORY of presenting them as deviants and baddies throughout the ages.
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Yes and a lot of those characters have been 100% reclaimed by the gay community and are now celebrated, which I find so much more empowering than just reducing us to bland saints.

I think we have largely moved past the point where the majority of gay 'villains' / antiheroes are presented as interlopers that must be destroyed specifically because their sexual preferences constitute the threat to the heterosexual order in and of itself (coded or otherwise). But this current hand wringing about gay characters being villains or being killed off absolutely does feel reductive.
 
VoR said:
Yes and a lot of those characters have been 100% reclaimed by the gay community and are now celebrated, which I find so much more empowering than just reducing us to bland saints.

I think we have largely moved past the point where the majority of gay 'villains' / antiheroes are presented as interlopers that must be destroyed specifically because their sexual preferences constitute the threat to the heterosexual order in and of itself (coded or otherwise). But this current hand wringing about gay characters being villains or being killed off absolutely does feel reductive.
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What I find reductive is saying that gay characters can only be either bland saints or sexual deviants. You can present complex queer characters without falling into the old fucking cliché of the COLD, VIRGIN-EATING LESBIAN which MUST BE PUNISHED which no, thank you.

There have been some positive steps in the last few years in mainstream cinema, like Call my by your name or Moonlight (neither of which are particularly mainstream but have resonated with audiences, which is fair enough). I've not seen Call me by your name but the protagonist in Moonlight is hardly a BLAND SAINT.
 
I mean I literally just posted above that I feel we’ve moved past the ‘gay villain/antihero = sexual deviant’ trope but OK…

I have not seen Tar so I’ll pick this up in 3 months when it actually gets released here.
 
Call me by your name is as bland as they get. Two extremely good looking gays get it on in a beautiful villa. I’ll take a nuanced character piece like TAR over it any day. There’s more to gay stories than saccharine coming of age/coming out stories.
 
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a brilliant film. truly an astonshing performance from Cate.

I almost expected something too cold to really appreciate, but this is an immensely watchable movie, even at 2h30 I was never bored. it takes its time to pull back the layers and isn't concerned with giving you all the details you need. I like how it's essentially a cancel culture story, but doesn't give lip service to any of the bullshit arguments around that topic. instead it just lets you look inside the life of this woman at the top of her game and decide for yourself whether she's guilty and/or a monster.

cinematography in particular was A+, many of the frames were art. the only thing I'm unsure about is the ending... I feel it might have worked better if Lydia had gone on stage to direct #5 at the Berlin and completely self-destructed in public. I guess I thought it would get the big operatic Black Swan climax, basically, and instead that epilogue is the most cryptic part of the film and just opens up so many more questions.

fabulous piece of cinema though. give Cate everything!
 
Peekaboo said:
What I find reductive is saying that gay characters can only be either bland saints or sexual deviants. You can present complex queer characters without falling into the old fucking cliché of the COLD, VIRGIN-EATING LESBIAN which MUST BE PUNISHED which no, thank you.

There have been some positive steps in the last few years in mainstream cinema, like Call my by your name or Moonlight (neither of which are particularly mainstream but have resonated with audiences, which is fair enough). I've not seen Call me by your name but the protagonist in Moonlight is hardly a BLAND SAINT.
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I think once you've seen the film her sexuality (or gender) are totally irrelevant. it's simply the story of a powerful (possible) predator who has discrete workplace affairs and arguably abuses her power to groom impressionable young people. it's got nothing to do with queer tropes.

it's actually more powerful to watch because, seeing a woman in this position, your natural instinct is to think: but she's charming, she's beautiful, she's accomplished. how could she possibly be a predator? she's not coercing anyone, is having a workplace affair really that bad? and then you realise that perhaps she's fooled you, too. the writing is really incredibly subtle. there are no tired clichés here at all.
 
I too thought this was a biopic so wasn’t too keen. Again I’m more interested now I know it isn’t
 
I am CURRENTLY living through a SIMILAR SITUATION with the conductor of the band I'm playing in so I feel this is TOO TRIGGERING for me to be able to judge appropriately. One for the DVD (/torrent) pile I feel.
 
Do we know when this is coming to streaming? I seem to have missed it in the cinema in my area and I'd really like to see it :(
 
Peekaboo said:
I am CURRENTLY living through a SIMILAR SITUATION with the conductor of the band I'm playing in so I feel this is TOO TRIGGERING for me to be able to judge appropriately. One for the DVD (/torrent) pile I feel.
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please do tell us more :D
 
Fairytale of Nü Jark said:
please do tell us more :D
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I joined a local band my friend plays in and after my first rehearsal I was being chatty/friendly/flirty with the conductor, who is a nice posh bear, which within an hour of me getting home after play descended into WILL YOU PISS IN MY FACE text messages. Now I'm normally a very sex-positive person but I literally had met the guy three hours earlier and we were meant to be seeing each other every week at rehearsal. I tried the whole 'let's get to know each other' spiel but he kept messaging a TORRENT OF FILTH including UNSOLICITED 2-MINUTE VIDEOS of him SNIFFING POPPERS AND MASTURBATING. I stopped replying but he kept messaging for several weeks, after each rehearsal, with YOU PLAYED REALLY WELL TODAY :) WHEN CAN I GAG ON YOUR DICK? etc. I finally confronted him and said I really liked him but now I was being really put off by the fact that he was being SUPER PUSHY and that I wanted to play in the band and not make things awkward etc. and he got REALLY DEFENSIVE saying he was SUPER PROFESSIONAL :eyes: and that nothing we did would affect how he would treat me in the band... but SIDEWAY GLANCES and COMMENTS ABOUT MY MUSICAL ABILITIES have started to SEEP INTO rehearsals and he loves the POWER TRIP of telling me off. It's all A BIT AWKS so I have suggested we meet for a drink so we can talk things through before Christmas, we'll see how it goes but his INTENSITY is really off-putting. He even asked me at some point to GO AWAY FOR A WEEKEND OUTSIDE OF LONDON with him (I have perhaps exchanged FIVE MINUTES of OVERALL NON-BAND-RELATED CONVERSATION with him in person in the last two months). My boyfriend thinks he's going to murder me and bury me in some Kent field :D I can't believe he has BALLSED IT UP so much when I would have quite happily had sex with him if things had developed a bit NATURALLY. But the APREHENSION at going to band practice now is QUITE SOMETHING.
 
That’s awful and you’re being way too nice about it.
 
It's okay :D it's funny in some ways because I can see so obviously through the whole thing that I can laugh about it and try and engage with it in positive ways. He's not outright CRUEL and he can TEASE CHARMINGLY, it's more the fact that we haven't had a chance to talk properly about it so I can see the cogs in his head working to get a reaction out of me.

I'll talk to him and he'll soon realise I'm a BORE and a bit of a LAZY FUCK so he'll move onto his next prey (he tried the whole "this is the first time I do something like this in a professional environment" which is TRANSPARENTLY NOT TRUE :D).
 
Peekaboo said:
I joined a local band my friend plays in and after my first rehearsal I was being chatty/friendly/flirty with the conductor, who is a nice posh bear, which within an hour of me getting home after play descended into WILL YOU PISS IN MY FACE text messages. Now I'm normally a very sex-positive person but I literally had met the guy three hours earlier and we were meant to be seeing each other every week at rehearsal. I tried the whole 'let's get to know each other' spiel but he kept messaging a TORRENT OF FILTH including UNSOLICITED 2-MINUTE VIDEOS of him SNIFFING POPPERS AND MASTURBATING. I stopped replying but he kept messaging for several weeks, after each rehearsal, with YOU PLAYED REALLY WELL TODAY :) WHEN CAN I GAG ON YOUR DICK? etc. I finally confronted him and said I really liked him but now I was being really put off by the fact that he was being SUPER PUSHY and that I wanted to play in the band and not make things awkward etc. and he got REALLY DEFENSIVE saying he was SUPER PROFESSIONAL :eyes: and that nothing we did would affect how he would treat me in the band... but SIDEWAY GLANCES and COMMENTS ABOUT MY MUSICAL ABILITIES have started to SEEP INTO rehearsals and he loves the POWER TRIP of telling me off. It's all A BIT AWKS so I have suggested we meet for a drink so we can talk things through before Christmas, we'll see how it goes but his INTENSITY is really off-putting. He even asked me at some point to GO AWAY FOR A WEEKEND OUTSIDE OF LONDON with him (I have perhaps exchanged FIVE MINUTES of OVERALL NON-BAND-RELATED CONVERSATION with him in person in the last two months). My boyfriend thinks he's going to murder me and bury me in some Kent field :D I can't believe he has BALLSED IT UP so much when I would have quite happily had sex with him if things had developed a bit NATURALLY. But the APREHENSION at going to band practice now is QUITE SOMETHING.
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This was so nourishing. I hope the film is half as good.
 
Update: we have our first rehearsal of the year in two weeks and I haven't met him during Xmas (he's messaged filth but I've ignored).

Sorry to have taken over this thread Cate.
 
Saw this yesterday and loved it. The layers, the sophistication, the enigma, the CATE of it all.

I was gripped, there were so many ideas there and I really feel it's going to need another watch at some point. It's a frosty thing though, I can see people one starring it on IMDB after the first scene :D

And now I want to move to Germany again too.
 
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