Magnolia (movie!)

[Pandora]

Wow, I just saw this film.  Excellent, IMHO.  And a lot of similarities to Lost.

Firstly, the whole thing is about unexplained connections between people.  Much like Pulp Fiction or Crash, it's the interwoven tale of many stories...except some of the connections are stranger in this one.

Also, I was confused at the end and went online to understand get more analysis on it, and found a wealth of info.  One of the other similarities to Lost (which I didn't notice as I watched Magnolia the first time) was that there are repeated Easter Eggs of the numbers 8 and 2.  By the end of the story, we are supposed to realize that this is a biblical reference to Exodus 8:2 (I won't give away why here).

PS:  Other things in common I just noticed--April Grace, actress who plays Ms. Klugh, plays the interviewer!!  Also, the movie is ALL about father issues. Great story.

Has anyone here seen the movie?

[uofapiglet]

Wow, I just saw this film.  Excellent, IMHO.  And a lot of similarities to Lost.

Firstly, the whole thing is about unexplained connections between people.  Much like Pulp Fiction or Crash, it's the interwoven tale of many stories...except some of the connections are stranger in this one.

Also, I was confused at the end and went online to understand get more analysis on it, and found a wealth of info.  One of the other similarities to Lost (which I didn't notice as I watched Magnolia the first time) was that there are repeated Easter Eggs of the numbers 8 and 2.  By the end of the story, we are supposed to realize that this is a biblical reference to Exodus 8:2 (I won't give away why here).

PS:  Other things in common I just noticed--April Grace, actress who plays Ms. Klugh, plays the interviewer!!  Also, the movie is ALL about father issues. Great story.

Has anyone here seen the movie?

Good movie!

If you like those interwoven, Easter Egg-type stories then you should also check out:

Go, Babel and Amores Perros (both by Alejandro Inarritu), The Tasseract & The Beach (both by Alexander Garland), Rules of Attraction, and Dot the I... I'd even mention some M. Night Shaylaman stuff too but his brilliance is overshadowed by his megalomaniac pride thus making some of his work too obvious or overrated...

Anyway, if I think of any more, I'll be sure to list it... As you can tell, I'm a big Gael Garcia Bernal fan and he's in most of these odd indy flicks...

And if you're an avid reader, then I would highly recommend that you pick up some of Alex Garland's books because they are hella better the movies. Both "The Beach" and "The Tasseract" take place is real-life places and I can confirm their once or current existence in Thailand and the Philippines. I think "The Beach" has some similarities to LOST in terms of a society of people learning to live together on a semi-secluded island, facing the elements and death, as well as co-existing with so-called others.

Bret Easton Ellis is a decent writer too, he wrote "American Psycho" and "Rules of Attraction", though he has more of a darker side to his morbid but fascinating tales...

[Pandora]

Cool.. I'm going to have to check those out!  I saw The Beach (though not recently, since I started watching Lost, going to have to see it again), and Tassaract seems interesting because of the name...

Yeah, I like interwoven movies, I used to know a name for them, but now I can't remember... I have seen quite a few of them now. They're the types that are totally confusing in the beginning...

[uofapiglet]

I know exactly what you mean, I was trying so hard to remember what those type of movies like Memento and Magnolia are called in the film industry... I think that the cinemtaic term we're looking for is "cross-cutting" or "parallel action" or something along those lines...

I know that a "McGuffin" is a Hitchcock thing, kind of like an insignificant "red herring" or "Easter Egg"... but there's just too many literary or cinematic terms to remember that I get them all confused...

"The Tasseract" is a decent book taking place in the Philippines... the book is a whole lot better than the movie, even though Jonathan Rhys Myers is in the flim version...

Oooh, and I have another split-screen movie for ya, it's called "Conversation(s) with Other Women with Helena Bonham Carter and , it's eh, so-so... It's just interesting to watch both screens at once and HBC has been doing too many Tim Burton flicks that it's difficult not to typecast her...

Pandy, I'm glad we like the similar movies...

[RAC]

Magnolia is one of my favorite movies. Babel and The Rules of Attraction are both really good too.

[lostincali]

No real connections to lost, but if you liked Magnolia you should check out the movies Short Cuts and Twenty Bucks. They're both kind of in the same vein of films as Magnolia, though it has been a while since I have seen all three of the films.

[kukuruza]

Yes I saw, cinema a bit strange, but it was pleasant to me