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ROCKETMAN (2019) - Elton John Biopic

Started by DukeDeMondo, May 26, 2019, 10:24:12 PM

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gilbertharding

Quote from: DukeDeMondo on May 26, 2019, 10:24:12 PM
ROCKETMAN
I want Stephen Graham's Dick James to get his own spin-off picture. Runs away with the film, nearly, Stephen Graham. Wholly inaccurate, they say, his portrayal of Dick James, way up high up over the top – sometimes puts you in mind of nothing so much as Tom Cruise in Tropic Thunder – but it's a phenomenal performance and I laughed my fucking tits up.


gilbertharding

Quote from: maett on May 28, 2019, 10:10:18 PM
Could someone that hates every song that Elton John has recorded and who has little interest in his extravagant lifestyle/celebrity friendships still enjoy this?

I'm writing with a serious face.

I don't mind three or perhaps four of his songs, but same question.

BlodwynPig

All his songs are obnoxiously horrible pieces of nothing. A fat Jools Holland in a wig.

famethrowa

I was quite fascinated by Elt when I was a late teen; his early years seemed to have this weird dark veil drawn over them, mostly by the string arrangements and the fuzzy degraded quality of the second hand tapes I could get my hands on. I was intrigued by Sixty Years on and Madman Across the Water, didn't really care about Crocodile Rock or Kiki Dee or Jamaica Jerk Off or whatever. I'll be interested to see if this movie evokes the grim darkness of the early 70's that I heard.

madhair60

Quote from: BlodwynPig on May 29, 2019, 02:34:47 PM
All his songs are obnoxiously horrible pieces of nothing. A fat Jools Holland in a wig.

nah their good

DukeDeMondo

Quote from: maett on May 28, 2019, 10:10:18 PM
Could someone that hates every song that Elton John has recorded and who has little interest in his extravagant lifestyle/celebrity friendships still enjoy this?

I'm writing with a serious face.

I honestly don't remember there being very much in it at all about any celebrity friendships. Maybe there's the odd mention of this one or that here or there, but nothing that has stuck in my mind. The only thing in that line (no pun, etc) that I remember is some talk about Bob Dylan waiting to meet him backstage at one point. The most fuss made about other celebrities revolves around him missing out on meeting with some. There's no mention of Diana or anything like this, for example. Candle In The Wind only features for a very brief moment as Elton's footering about at the piano. Ten seconds, maybe.

Far as the music goes, I dunno. I mean, I wasn't much of a fan of his music at all beyond maybe a couple albums, but even the songs I liked less I still enjoyed enormously in this context. I would say it is largely only the Good Stuff that's represented here. Whole swathes of his discography are dismissed outright as "MOR shit" at one point. But whether you care for the music or not, I still think you'd have to work pretty hard not to be impressed by this.

maett

Sounds worth a watch then. As I do like a musical biopic.

BlodwynPig


Head Gardener

the 72-73 era songs were good, when I was 12 and heard them for the first time on a cassette, but now they have not stood the test of time except....
I still have a soft spot for the album Blue Moves

madhair60


a duncandisorderly

Quote from: Ballad of Ballard Berkley on May 29, 2019, 01:03:55 AM
By the way, I've just found out that Elton hasn't actually seen the film yet. He read the script and liked it......

Quote from: Ballad of Ballard Berkley on May 29, 2019, 01:38:01 AM
I'm talking bollocks, he apparently watched it for the first time a couple of weeks ago. Here be his thoughts.

imdb has him down as one of the executive producers. not exactly staring at the video-assist all day, but you'd think someone whose central to the flick & who's taken an EP credit would actually see the thing before it gets released, y'know, just in case he doesn't like it or something.

rue the polywhirl

I thought the first hour was OK. The singing throughout was a hammy horrorshow of ham but the set pieces for all of the songs were really well done. The acting, drama, pacing and character development was also spot on. The bit where Elton's dad asks for a signed album but addressed to someone else was proper heartbreaking. Stephen Graham was a scene stealer but the guy who plays Elton was top notch even though he couldn't sing and squawked some of the later numbers into submission.  The second hour just whizzed by without enough grittiness or connection to reality or fact when fact would have been far more interesting. Everything about the movie just started to feel like a giant piffling soufflé. It could have explored some interesting authentic new areas but settled for too much safety and half-baked invention the end. Compare it to Bohemian Rhapsody which builds up to the entire Live Aid Concert, this movie builds up to the I'm Still Standing video, which looks fabulous but is not quite so nearly as eventful and really was the closing punctuation mark on a two hour cinema odyssey on missed opportunity.

Another thing in the film that rankled - Elton says to his mum over dinner towards the end that he's taken every drug and has shagged everything that moves. Throughout the movie you see him snorting and drinking which is about 2 different types drugs. And you see him sleep on screen with about 2 blokes tops, flash of orgy and not that much else. Definitely could have done with far more onscreen debauchery.

Ballad of Ballard Berkley

Quote from: a duncandisorderly on May 29, 2019, 08:14:15 PM
imdb has him down as one of the executive producers. not exactly staring at the video-assist all day, but you'd think someone whose central to the flick & who's taken an EP credit would actually see the thing before it gets released, y'know, just in case he doesn't like it or something.

He said he'd read and approved the script, but hadn't actually watched any of the footage until it was assembled into a film. I can believe that.

Ballad of Ballard Berkley


Rocketman Returns to mixed reviews
Rocketman With A Vengeance and The Lion King OST
Rocketman IV: The Quest for a Kighthood

Ballad of Ballard Berkley

Pocketman. Because Elton John wears suits and trousers with pockets.

Whimsy, you gotta love it.

BlodwynPig

Quote from: Ballad of Ballard Berkley on May 30, 2019, 07:12:51 AM
You're objectively wrong. Love ya, bye!

Stimmt. Waiting for the day we will agree on some cultural touchstone.

Twed

Quote from: Ballad of Ballard Berkley on May 31, 2019, 12:46:24 AM
Whimsy, you gotta love it.
PULL YOUR TROUSERS DOWN TO YOUR KNEES AND INSERT THE ROCKET INTO YOUR ANUS

Ballad of Ballard Berkley

GET BACK IN THE FUCKING VEHICLE REG DWIGHT

Ballad of Ballard Berkley

Quote from: BlodwynPig on May 31, 2019, 12:55:34 AM
Stimmt. Waiting for the day we will agree on some cultural touchstone.

"When you can love again..."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFy-j7XF0dc

You might enjoy the massive fuck off drum sound on this. Let's make up and be friendly.

Dex Sawash

What's that song George Michael did live, absolutely does it, and then Elton joins in at the end and ruins it and it was then that we all knew.
Is that how this film ends?

Ballad of Ballard Berkley


rue the polywhirl

Quote from: Ballad of Ballard Berkley on May 31, 2019, 04:38:10 AM
Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me.

That's probably his new personal mantra now that he's giving up touring so he can be a good house-father to his two boys.

SteveDave

I saw this yesterday and it was OK. I liked how they didn't try to make Taron Egerton look as young as the children he was in a band with near the start. I also enjoyed them playing fast and loose with the song timeline to fit the story.

Did they give Bryce Dallas-Howard bingo wings?

It's a shame they didn't have Aiden Gillen playing John Reid and then we could have a glam rock universe with "Freddie Vs Elton: Dawn feat. Tony Orlando" as a sequel.

I look forward to the Gary Glitter bio-pic.

SteveDave

I've remembered something else that tickled me in this- towards the end, when he's in the recovery group, he begins to speak like Garth Marenghi.

Noodle Lizard

I thought it was alright.  It's funny because it will probably always be unfairly compared with Bohemian Rhapsody, and even though it does basically hit the exact same "biopic beats", it has more personality and vision in one frame of it than that entire film did.  It's probably about as good as you could expect from a film like this.  The cast were all great, especially Edgerton whose "face acting" was remarkable and made good use of every close-up.  Not an easy role, but he nailed it.

That said, I didn't particularly appreciate how it seemed consciously geared towards an eventual Broadway/West End stage adaptation - something which I bet will come to pass within 5-10 years - and as a result felt less cinematic than it could've, but that's made up for with the consistent surreality of the whole thing.  It didn't quite work for me that these various songs were used to underline significant moments in EJ's personal life since he had nothing to do with the lyric-writing process, so that conceit often fell a bit flat (eg Rocket Man during his suicide attempt).  The big musical numbers were a mixed bag - some going on too long, some finishing before they'd even started.  It did seem like it had gone through a few different "visions" over the years and ended up quite uneven as a result, but that's what you get with huge projects like this.

Overall, not sad it exists or anything.  Probably wouldn't watch it again, mind, as it doesn't really do or say anything that hasn't already been done, but it's interesting enough.

thugler

I was expecting a decent narrative but didn't even get that. The depth of a tacky jukebox theatre musical, horrible singing voices, and ridiculously black and white character assassination all over the shop. Left out many aspects of his early career entirely, in favor of overstuffing it with elaborate dancing sequences which jarred badly with the dramatic scenes. Egerton was alright but I'd prefer to never see him sing again. Some of the aging makeup appeared to be lines drawn on people's faces in felt tip. I never saw bohemian rhapsody but I wasn't expecting this to be so poor. Why were they so afraid to let any of the relationships in his life have any room to breathe? A film just about his years in the closet and marrying that poor woman could have been more interesting, but wouldn't have been the musical dancetravaganza they were obviously going for.

a duncandisorderly

Quote from: thugler on June 06, 2019, 11:30:38 PM
I never saw bohemian rhapsody....

best keep it that way- it's an absolute shitfest of made-up shit & insufficient coverage, so that dexter fletcher (who should've been prepping 'rocketman' more thoroughly, by the sound of it) was left a dog's dinner to knock together.  do yourself a favour, especially if you like queen's music, & stay away from this lousy flick.


DukeDeMondo

Quote from: thugler on June 06, 2019, 11:30:38 PM
I was expecting a decent narrative but didn't even get that. The depth of a tacky jukebox theatre musical, horrible singing voices, and ridiculously black and white character assassination all over the shop. Left out many aspects of his early career entirely, in favor of overstuffing it with elaborate dancing sequences which jarred badly with the dramatic scenes. [...] A film just about his years in the closet and marrying that poor woman could have been more interesting, but wouldn't have been the musical dancetravaganza they were obviously going for.

Isn't that just you wanting a different kind of film? ["Aye, a good one!," says you] Fair enough if it's not your sort of thing, but it clearly knows very well how to go about being the sort of thing that it is. Leaving aside just how inventive and witty and affecting (for some) those musical sequences were, weren't they meant to jar with at least some of the things either side of them? And as for how many of them there are... It's a bit like saying Halloween would have been more interesting if it had just stuck to telling us about Jamie Lee Curtis looking after the wee boy, but it feels the need to throw in extended stalking and slashing sequences every fart's end.

I don't think the character assassination is all that black and white, either. The film announces upfront that it's going to be pretty difficult to determine who is telling the truth here, if anyone. Elton says something, but then we can't believe him because the flashback told a different story altogether, so maybe we can trust the flashbacks, but no, we can't trust them either because here they've erupted into massive song and dance numbers or reveries of one kind or another... And so on. Granted there are times when it's more difficult to tell if you're getting the actual truth of events or you're not, either because the distortion (a misrepresentation of a character, for example) arrives in the middle of a fairly accurate account of a larger episode, or because of a shift in how we're being asked to respond to proceedings emotionally (we're clearly meant to share Elton's sense of betrayal at the first big LA party, for example) - but even those moments often have new light shed on them later on (Bernie revealing that Elton's perception of what went on at the party that night was all skewed, etc).

I'm not saying oh, you're wrong, blah blah. If you hated what it did then you hated it. I just think the things you listed as reasons for hating it are also the kinds of things you might list if you were arguing that it was brilliant.

thugler

In terms of the musical scenes, i didn't think they went far enough with the inventiveness. A lot of it was really cliched and felt like any other jukebox musical. I mean, another scene of the star collapsing in to a pool and the record producer spotting him and an early performance in a rough pub? i didn't think it went far enough into his psyche and drug addled mind and could have used more bizarre imagery than that if they must do those big dance scenes. It wouldn't have taken much to make the boyfriend/manager and his dad at least have some shades of grey rather than be mustache twiddling villians. I didn't get a sense of them being proper living characters. That famous clip of him working out an early version of tiny dancer would've made a cool scene if a lot smaller scale than what it was going for.