The Informant! (Steven Soderbergh, 2009)

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Jeff
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Re: The Informant! (Steven Soderbergh, 2009)

#26 Post by Jeff » Mon Jul 13, 2009 11:42 pm


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justeleblanc
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Re: The Informant! (Steven Soderbergh, 2009)

#27 Post by justeleblanc » Tue Jul 14, 2009 12:34 am

Jeff wrote:poster
It worked for 40 Year Old Virgin.

Cde.
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Re: The Informant! (Steven Soderbergh, 2009)

#28 Post by Cde. » Tue Jul 14, 2009 5:06 am

Well, there goes what I thought I liked about the poster.
Two colour gradient + big dazed looking head is the new big bold red text for comedy marketing these days.

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Antoine Doinel
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Re: The Informant! (Steven Soderbergh, 2009)

#29 Post by Antoine Doinel » Thu Jul 30, 2009 3:00 pm

The UK gets a pretty cool poster too.

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Murdoch
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Re: The Informant! (Steven Soderbergh, 2009)

#30 Post by Murdoch » Sat Sep 19, 2009 3:43 pm

Saw this last night, and it's my favorite film I've seen so far this year - although I haven't seen many. Matt Damon plays his character with an at-first dopey pigheadedness and then becomes more sinister, and the film's blessed with a great supporting cast of some Soderbergh regulars and others - Joel McHale especially who balances the humor of his FBI agent with the more dramatic bits and gives a surprisingly nuanced turn. Soderbergh once again accompanies the film with a great soundtrack, like something right out of the 70s.
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Also loved how the film progressed from the tale of an ignoramus informant(!) and then turns the tables to show how Damon's character is the perpetrator of receiving kickbacks and forging signatures, and suddenly this likable character becomes this conspirator where even the audience is left questioning if he ratted out his company simply so he could be the only power player left.
And despite seeing this at midnight, most of the audience stuck around, which I found surprising. I was unfamiliar with these events before this movie and I think it was probably best to go into the movie knowing nothing about what actually happened since it made the second half somewhat of a twist.

Grand Illusion
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Re: The Informant! (Steven Soderbergh, 2009)

#31 Post by Grand Illusion » Sat Sep 19, 2009 10:16 pm

Great performance. Watch what Damon does with his eyes.

Very well-written.

Clever reversals of audience expectations.

Creative and funny use of non-sequitur voice over.

Ugliest cinematography I've seen in years for a feature film with a budget over $50k.

Jack Phillips
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Re: The Informant! (Steven Soderbergh, 2009)

#32 Post by Jack Phillips » Sat Sep 19, 2009 11:10 pm

Grand Illusion wrote: Ugliest cinematography I've seen in years for a feature film with a budget over $50k.
Huh. I saw it digitally projected, and the colors looked great. :?

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LQ
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Re: The Informant! (Steven Soderbergh, 2009)

#33 Post by LQ » Sat Sep 19, 2009 11:34 pm

Murdoch wrote:I was unfamiliar with these events before this movie and I think it was probably best to go into the movie knowing nothing about what actually happened since it made the second half somewhat of a twist.
I too went in knowing almost nothing about the film-thank god the trailer didn't give it all away!- and ended up very pleased with the final result. It was excellently put-together... like a Russian doll of a film, one layer of deception hidden within another..and really entertaining as well. Sardonic, smart, and funny...never more humorous though than during Whitacre's oft-absurdist, fascinating inner ramblings. Hilarious stuff, that.
Damon's performance was stunningly good. It was a hoot in the beginning and then increasingly more intriguing to watch as plot twists bring new information to light. Great supporting cast too. My only gripe, echoing Grand Illusion, was that the film was steeped in such a dusty, jaundiced stain of ugliness.

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knives
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Re: The Informant! (Steven Soderbergh, 2009)

#34 Post by knives » Sat Sep 19, 2009 11:42 pm

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Best shaggy dog story in a long while. The character left a lot of strong moral questions of if it's worth supporting him also
I liked the weird way Soderbergh ran with his typical themes. While the performances, '70s esque look, bizarre soundtrack, and clever story were all wonderful the thing that puts it into the great category for me has to be that voiceover. It's absolutely pointless in context and is filled to the brim with non-sequitur, but it also reveals a lot about the character. I'm not sure if I'd go as far as Murdoch, but I'm edging close to that territory.
Loved the ugliness too.
OT
This film reminded me of another one where a character is wire tapped and ensures that the FBI can't hear by screwing with his junk, can't remember which movie though, I think The Departed.

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Re: The Informant! (Steven Soderbergh, 2009)

#35 Post by ArchCarrier » Sun Sep 20, 2009 3:07 am


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Re: The Informant! (Steven Soderbergh, 2009)

#36 Post by mfunk9786 » Sun Sep 20, 2009 3:58 am

I'm going to go all Armond White here, but let me make a quick Spielberg reference in my review of my favorite film so far this year, The Informant!. In my opinion, Spielberg's best film is the giant bubblegum con film Catch Me if You Can - which takes the approach of being absolutely in love with its main character. We are asked to root for him, to hope he gets away with his cons at every turn - he's stylized and made to seem nearly invincible. Everyone in the film is made likable: The FBI agent pursuing him; his father; hell, even his fiance's father who forced her to undergo an abortion under the knife of a golf buddy of his. Spielberg wraps us up in a warm and fuzzy world of old Hollywood cat-and-mousery through and through. This certainly makes for an entertaining film, and I don't fault Spielberg's approach. I love Catch Me if You Can.

So imagine my surprise when Steven Soderbergh takes the absolute opposite approach by making his characters, including his main character (played masterfully by a never better Matt Damon), absolutely unsympathetic. Soderbergh never once asks us to root for any of these characters, and he never has to - because it wouldn't work. Even as the first half of the film unfolds and it seems like a pretty simple good guy/bad guy setup, there doesn't seem to be anyone who is really worth rooting for. The film looks aggressively ugly (everyone looks like they've been dipped in a pitcher of Tang), Whitacre has bored us (in the best way) with his every thought... it's a deliciously icky experience, and a hell of a lot of fun at the movies because of it. He finds every comedian (Joel McHale, Patton Oswalt, Tony Hale, Scott Adsit), every great character actor you forgot existed (Scott Bakula, Clancy Brown, Thomas F. Wilson) - and crams them into a movie that seems to have been designed to make sure that you never forget that you're at the movies, and you shouldn't take all this too seriously - that you should have a damn good time watching these people's lives fall apart. And it's rare that a film takes such a huge stab a this and actually succeeds. But The Informant! never forgets to make sure you're having a great time at the movies.

Oh, and that's just the first half! I thought the film was winding down (admittedly, I'm never a good judge of time), when the film takes a screeching U-turn into unexpected territory -
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which began, for me, with a brilliant moment in which Matt Damon adjusts his toupee - it was almost like he was jimmying the cork off of the shaken up champagne bottle of a third act that was to come
- and somehow retains the same level of enjoyment. Because, you see, we were never really rooting for anyone in this story - we just wanted to see how it turned out. And it never lets up - and unlike your typical corporate corruption snoozer (Michael Clayton, anyone?) - it never forgets to make sure that the audience is having a good time.

Steven Soderbergh now has the unique distinction of having created the most boring film of 2009, and the most enjoyable. Oh, and the most orange. Bravo!

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Re: The Informant! (Steven Soderbergh, 2009)

#37 Post by whaleallright » Sun Sep 20, 2009 7:51 pm

This is about the look of the film: Did anyone else find it a bit, uh, sickly?

I can see what Soderbergh was going for, I think: a early-70s "New Hollywood" graininess and dullness (in the color scheme), with lots of low-light photography, etc. But the limitations of the 4K HD camera he used for shooting seemed to reveal themselves in the overall murkiness of the imagery (at first I thought the projector bulb was dying), the inscrutability of the dark shots (it was often hard to make out characters' facial expressions in shot/reverse shot sequences), and the unforgiving over/underexposure of shots in which there was one very bright portion (say a dim interior with sunlight coming through a window).

It was clear that someone competent was behind the camera, and that there was a "design" to the whole thing, and yet I thought it looked... queasy, if not plain ugly.

I admit I'm (over)sensitive to this stuff, and it only spoiled the first 30 minutes of the film for me, at which point I got reasonably used to it. But it does point up some of the potential problems with shooting in HD as if it were film (as opposed to shooting HD and welcoming many of the qualities of digital, as Michael Mann has done with mixed success).

I imagine some of these problems will go away, or at least won't be too obvious, on DVD. Did anyone else notice similar issues with films like Zodiac when they were projected from 35mm?

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Re: The Informant! (Steven Soderbergh, 2009)

#38 Post by haga » Mon Sep 21, 2009 11:31 am

jonah.77 wrote: It was clear that someone competent was behind the camera, and that there was a "design" to the whole thing, and yet I thought it looked... queasy, if not plain ugly.

I admit I'm (over)sensitive to this stuff, and it only spoiled the first 30 minutes of the film for me, at which point I got reasonably used to it. But it does point up some of the potential problems with shooting in HD as if it were film (as opposed to shooting HD and welcoming many of the qualities of digital, as Michael Mann has done with mixed success).

I imagine some of these problems will go away, or at least won't be too obvious, on DVD. Did anyone else notice similar issues with films like Zodiac when they were projected from 35mm?
Hi, first post here.

I saw this on Friday and it was one of the best I've seen this year. I did have some issues with it though. I agree with the above poster that the HD didn't quite work for me here, especially after Public Enemies. I was also a little annoyed at first that Soderbergh went again for that whole early 70s caper comedy style, with the music and the opening credits. There was a disconnect when I then saw that this was supposed to be set in the 90s. Yeah, it's cheesy and corny (no pun) and successful in that respect, but I thought he could've made some more original choices than digging up that whole Ocean's trilogy style and dipping it in some corn colored dye to give it a Midwest look. The 90s were cheesy and corny enough as they were, no? He got the costumes and the hairstyles right, why not go all the way?

Also, what is it with smartass disclaimers before the opening credits lately: (paraphrasing) "This film is based on a true story but some characters are compounded and some of the dialogue is dramatized. So there." I saw something similar with 500 Days of Summer. If this is going to be a new hip trend, I'm not going to like it. So there.

Anyway, I loved it other than that. The voice-over and the performances especially, and the whole third act came as a huge surprise to me as well, since I went in fresh and didn't know anything about the true story it was based on.

so lightly here
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Re: The Informant! (Steven Soderbergh, 2009)

#39 Post by so lightly here » Wed Sep 23, 2009 2:43 pm

Does anybody fall asleep during Soderbergh films? I did yesterday during The Informant! I ran what little I have seen from him through my mind and found that I couldn't stay awake during sex, lies and videotape, Solarus, and both parts of Che.

If people are saying he does all the filming then why the heck is everything in The Informant! so mushy and Che so TV movie-of-the-weekish?

The Marvin Hamlisch score was grating. Hamlisch wrote "The Way We Were" for god's sake. He is terrible and that may be why Soderbergh chose him but it was like adding insult to injury for me.

I am going to stop seeing his films and just take a nap, it is cheaper. Oh yah, I didn't even chuckle, let alone laugh.

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Re: The Informant! (Steven Soderbergh, 2009)

#40 Post by Adam » Wed Sep 23, 2009 3:33 pm

so lightly here wrote:If people are saying he does all the filming then why the heck is everything in The Informant! so mushy and Che so TV movie-of-the-weekish?
Your question doesn't really make sense in syntactical terms.

But answering what I think is the heart of it:

Because, uh, he's capable of choosing a different look for each film? Most professionals are.
He is his own DP, under the name Peter Andrews. So if you don't like the look (and it appears you don't), then you can entirely blame him.

so lightly here
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Re: The Informant! (Steven Soderbergh, 2009)

#41 Post by so lightly here » Wed Sep 23, 2009 4:12 pm

Adam wrote:
so lightly here wrote: If people are saying he does all the filming then why the heck is everything in The Informant! so mushy and Che so TV movie-of-the-weekish?
Your question doesn't really make sense in syntactical terms.

But answering what I think is the heart of it:

Because, uh, he's capable of choosing a different look for each film? Most professionals are.
He is his own DP, under the name Peter Andrews. So if you don't like the look (and it appears you don't), then you can entirely blame him.
You are right, my question wasn't clear. Now that I think about it, the mushy look of The Informant! was consistent with at least the new portly Matt Damon and perhaps with the overall feel of the movie. Maybe it is that mushiness that lulled me into dreamsville. On the other hand I don't think Soderbergh would have wanted people to think of Che as a movie-of-the-week. So, I am not sure what his intentions were on that film other than to say that part one (the Cuba section) covered some of the same period of time as Soya Cuba. I never fall asleep when watching that film.

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Re: The Informant! (Steven Soderbergh, 2009)

#42 Post by Brian C » Mon Sep 28, 2009 2:08 am

haga wrote:I was also a little annoyed at first that Soderbergh went again for that whole early 70s caper comedy style, with the music and the opening credits. There was a disconnect when I then saw that this was supposed to be set in the 90s. Yeah, it's cheesy and corny (no pun) and successful in that respect, but I thought he could've made some more original choices than digging up that whole Ocean's trilogy style and dipping it in some corn colored dye to give it a Midwest look. The 90s were cheesy and corny enough as they were, no? He got the costumes and the hairstyles right, why not go all the way?
I think he was just having some fun with shooting a "period" piece by throwing in a few attention-getting anachronisms. It's deliberately ironic, like the nonsense dialogue in SCHIZOPOLIS or the relentless product placement in CHE ("¡Ay caramba, Fidel, mucho disfruto del gusto revolucionario de Pepsi!").

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Re: The Informant! (Steven Soderbergh, 2009)

#43 Post by neal » Mon Sep 28, 2009 10:46 am

This American Life. Beware: This episode does reveal some major plot points.

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Re: The Informant! (Steven Soderbergh, 2009)

#44 Post by Antoine Doinel » Mon Sep 28, 2009 10:13 pm

Saw this tonight and agree with the praise here: Damon and the cast were great, it's lot of fun, great score, great execution.

Regarding the look of the film, I loved it. I didn't think it was sickly at all. I think Soderbergh's choice of honeyed oranges, browns and yellows was a deception of the audience. It made it easier for the audience to side with Whitacre at the beginning of the film - loving family man, trying to do the right thing - and made the twists that open up the second half of the film all the more shocking.

Another knockout by Soderbergh.

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Re: The Informant! (Steven Soderbergh, 2009)

#45 Post by Svevan » Thu Oct 01, 2009 12:49 am

I thought the colors accurately represented the fluorescent lighting of garish office buildings, and other than the title font and some of the music, I was more reminded of ugly 80s-90s films (Closet Land, Labyrinth, Sex Lies and Videotape) than the 70s. Backlighting, hazy focus, low-light, etc.

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Re: The Informant! (Steven Soderbergh, 2009)

#46 Post by geoffcowgill » Sun Oct 04, 2009 9:52 pm

I thought that the seemingly anachronistic title fonts and music, twenty or so years out of date by the setting of the film, mirrored Whiteacre's presence as pseudo-narrator. These were stylistic flourishes common to films and TV that he would likely have grown up watching, and just as he references how his situation reminds him of Michael Crichton novels, I see the bold/tacky titles and the sub-James Bond and pre-jazz Woody Allen movie music (really redolent of Hamlisch's score for Bananas) as tantamount to Whiteacre telling us, "Woah, this is crazy, right?" Maybe I'm grasping to justify an unusual stylistic touch in a film that I really enjoyed, but that was my impression.

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Re: The Informant! (Steven Soderbergh, 2009)

#47 Post by Galen Young » Mon Oct 05, 2009 12:47 am

geoffcowgill wrote:...pre-jazz Woody Allen movie music (really redolent of Hamlisch's score for Bananas)
Written in the soundtrack liner notes --
Steven Soderbergh wrote: Spain, late July 2007. As I faced principal photography on CHE, I watched Woody Allen's Bananas with the hope it would provide ninety minutes of much-needed escape. As the opening credits sprayed across the screen, I was reminded of my longtime love of Marvin Hamlisch's spectacular score. I wondered to myself: when was the last time someone wrote a score like that? Then, reading my mind, my producer/AD Gregory Jacobs spoke from his position on the couch. He was watching the movie too. He said, "We should get Marvin for The Informant!" In response I could only say what Mark Whitacre (as played by Matt Damon) would eventually say repeatedly in the film: Absolutely!
Great score! Loved the film, one of the best this year. The voice over narration is spot on perfect.
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Damon adjusting his rug is classic!

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domino harvey
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Re: The Informant! (Steven Soderbergh, 2009)

#48 Post by domino harvey » Mon Oct 19, 2009 8:20 pm

I've said "One of Soderbergh's best films" so many times that it's lost all meaning, but nevertheless, this is one of Soderbergh's best films. As great as Damon is, I thought Bakula stole the movie with his mildly dopey agent. I loved how realistically unglamorous the FBI investigation is, with tedious scrawling in Safeway notebooks and lowkey throwaways like "If he doesn't show up, the government's billing him for the room." The look of the film is ace (though I could have done without the fonts) and I loved the score too. Damon's one-liners in the voiceover were killing me, especially the one about how he's like to go fishing with Bakula and "try out 'Bri'"

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Re: The Informant! (Steven Soderbergh, 2009)

#49 Post by HarryLong » Tue Oct 20, 2009 9:30 am

Marvin Hamlisch's spectacular score
Have those four words ever been combined within a sentence before?

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Jeff
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Re: The Informant! (Steven Soderbergh, 2009)

#50 Post by Jeff » Thu Dec 24, 2009 3:47 am

As part of Warner's ongoing effort to get Domino to go Blu, the Soderbergh commentary will be a Blu-ray exclusive.

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