Podcast: Joy & Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Sunday, December 27, 2015 at 8:00PM In this week's podcast Nathaniel and Nick return happily to that galaxy far far away and go off consensus to enjoy the Jennifer Lawrence hit Joy. (Plus miscellania but you'll have to listen to see how Carol and Batman v Superman show up since you know how we do...)
43 minutes
00:01 Written on the Wind (1956)
03:00 David O. Russell's Joy feat. Isabelle Rossellini, Virginia Madsen, Robert De Niro and Elisabeth Röhm
12:00 Loving Star Wars: The Force Awakens and sexy Oscar Isaac.
27:00 Childhood fascinations with the original trilogy and minor quibbles with the new/old plot and the First Order.
36:15 Nasty Baby & Mississippi Grind (2015)
40:10 The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989)
Further Reading for Context:
Nick's Oscar Isaac Theory & Ordinary People Tweet
David Ehrlich's A24 Article
You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes.
a gif of poe biting his lip while talking to finn pic.twitter.com/GGm4mm5oze
— Nicole (@hughmhd) December 22, 2015
Reader Comments (12)
Fellow lover of all the weird ass characters/things in Star Wars! More weird ass shit in our franchises!
Everybody's saying Poe is queer. Now I'm finally *really* looking forward to seeing this New Year's Eve morning.
Funny story on Christmas Day I talked my whole family into going to see Joy, but when we got to the theater the showing was sold out and we had to watch Star Wars instead. We are probably the only people in America that went to see Star Wars as a second choice.
The force is strong with Jennifer Lawrence, she was amazing in Joy!
I only knew of Elizabeth Rohm from "Law & Order," with her character ridiculously coming out in her last episode as nothing more than a plot development. I thought she was great in "American Hustle" (think how much more age-appropriate she would have been in J-Law's role), but pretty terrible in "Joy" where I don't see a character at all but only a plot device of negative bullshit. Nope. No go for me. One of many flaws in the worst David O. Russell film I've seen yet.
Look at that gif and tell us we are not all truly #blessed
Nathaniel, is "The Fabulous Baker Boys" your favorite Pfeiffer performance? I always assumed it was "Batman Returns." FWIW, those two plus "White Oleander" are my favorites.
Also, you guys talked about "Joy" for almost 10 minutes and not once brought up Lawrence. What did you guys think? It's the first time I actually loved her in a movie. Her age didn't seem to be a problem. She seemed perfectly in sync with the film's moody undercurrents, plus I super appreciated that she never once played "Joy" as someone condescending to her family, despite them being a very tempting bunch to condescend to. In short, I thought she was superb.
Loved the shout out to CZJ's evil lesbianism!
I saw Joy yesterday and was very disappointed. I've loved most of Russell's output and I REALLY wanted to love this, but the script was just woeful. At times, the film's dialogue was borderline parody for me. I wasn't sure if they were making the script sound like a soap opera on purpose or not. I went home afterward and read Annie Mumolo's script and whilst it was more conventional, it was a hell of a lot more constructed and developed than Russell's version. They are so different though, there is barely any resemblance between the two.
That being said, I thought Lawrence was really great. Total movie star charisma. Despite the fact she was still too young for the role, she has a wonderful quality that makes you forget this. I particularly love the gravitas and ease she delivers dialogue, which was quite a feat given what she had to work with. Rossellini was also delicious. Ladd & Ramirez & Polanco also do what they can are excellent. The others are merely just there. I also had no idea what Madsen was going for in the first half.
I agree that the QVC part was also the best section of the film. The scene when Lawrence sells the mop on TV was wonderful. I'm not certain, but I reckon that section was edited by Tom Cross (1 of the 4 editors), due to it's succinct and snappy nature.
O. Russell REALLY needs someone to work on his scripts because Joy brought to light some of the problems with American Hustle. There were so many unbelievably horrible cliches in Joy. Like would Joy really verbalise her entire interior monologue eg: "I feel like I'm in a prison" etc. It makes Lawrence's casting, with her beautiful, emotive face, seem pointless. Also the cutting the hair cliche. *cringe*
Probably the biggest disappointment of the year for me. If it gets a script nomination over Ex Machina I will cry.
I have mixed feelings about Joy, but overall I liked it, the first 30 minutes are a mess. The relationship between De Niro and Rossellini felt very truncated, they meet on the phone and all of a sudden they are a couple? The soap opera stuff and the voiceover are introduced early on but then go missing. That said, Lawrence is pretty darn great in the film and once the film finally finds it's footing it really soars, and that middle section is absolutely thrilling.
I appreciate what you said about not being "spoiled" by any previous info on Star Wars. I really enjoyed the film because I hadn't seen a hundred clips and read a bunch of reviews. That's how I feel about all films. It's really hard to avoid the internet, and even the headlines in news feeds on Twitter and other apps do the damage anyway. I try hard not to read your big posts and reviews (as well as other online film sites) until after I've seen the movies--not because you spoil too much, but because even the littlest thing is no longer a surprise. For example, I think at this point I know all I need to know about Carol from TFE. And I love reading TFE every day...so I'm conflicted.
Thanks for a great year of movie stuff! Happy New Year!
The weird thing is... I thought Joy was bad, and a worse movie than Silver Linings and American Hustle. And yet I think I liked it more than those two? Lol. Maybe because I didn't have to deal with it being overhyped and overrated like I did with the others. I don't know. I liked it more than Silver Linings, not sure about American Hustle tho.
It was at least the first time I believe JLaw as a mom, despite her still being too young for the role. And I thought her performance in this was a lot more even than her performances in the last two David O Russel pics.