CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

HogPilot · Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2015 5:14 pm Post subject: Whiplash

If you're a fan of jazz, music in general, or even just excellent cinema, give Whiplash a watch. Made me want to pull my sax out and get back to playng.

I only watched the iTunes rental, but I imagine the BD release will have some breathtaking, dynamic audio and video great for showing off your theater.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7d_jQycdQGo

Of course, not everybody is a fan of this movie: http://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/whiplash-getting-jazz-right-movies

ecrabb · Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2015 9:31 pm Post subject:

We felt exactly the same away about Whiplash, Hog. GREAT move, and like you said, especially if you're a jazz/music fan. It really had us missing our old HT and wishing for a new one, because the sound really was excellent. Very dynamic! Good characters,

When we had the theater, we always had friends asking us what movies we were watching and what we thought of them, so my wife started doing little reviews for Tumblr or Twitter. Recently, she set up a Facebook page a few months ago so people would actually see them - Minute Movie Reviews. They're kind of "Twitter" style, so very short, and she gives them letter grades. She'd love it everybody visited and liked her page, and shared and commented.

https://www.facebook.com/MinuteMovieReviews

Speaking of negative reviews, those people are almost never all happy with a movie. I generally trust their opinions as a group more than audience ratings, but I still always take their opinions with a grain of salt. Most of them don't have a creative bone in their bodies. Plus, people's tastes are just different.

We just really enjoy most movies. I've also done enough video work over the years to really appreciate very much the amount of effort that goes into making a movie, so we're not as hard on them as some are. We even enjoy comedies, often even when reviewers are hard on them. Personally, I find enjoying a stupid comedy like Dumb and Dumber To or Tammy no different than enjoying a good In-N-Out cheeseburger and fries. We don't feel the need to judge In-N-Out against Ruth's Chris, so why trash a comedy because it doesn't live up to some unattainable film-making ideal.

Speaking of different tastes, Rotten Tomatoes reviewers were 93% positive on Birdman, and of course it won Best Picture, yet my wife and I just didn't find it as smart as people gave it credit for. It wasn't bad by any means, but we just didn't find it worthy of so much accolade. I suppose part of it is I just don't appreciate the Broadway genre like some so couldn't connect with it on that level, and of course the movie is a little bit about Hollywood making fun of itself, when I find film as an art form much, much more involving and fulfilling than Broadway. My wife was a little harder on it than I would have been, but I don't quite understand the accolades.

Cheers,
SC

garyfritz · Joined: 08 Apr 2006 Posts: 12088 Location: Fort Collins, CO

My brother (a high school band director and rabid jazz fan) **hated** the movie. But not for the music -- he objected to the way music education was portrayed.

ecrabb · Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2015 10:30 pm Post subject:

CIR Engineering · Posted: Sun Mar 08, 2015 1:30 am Post subject: Re: Whiplash

CIR Engineering · Posted: Sun Mar 08, 2015 1:35 am Post subject:

**Curt Palme** · Posted: Mon May 11, 2015 5:46 pm Post subject:

CIR Engineering · Posted: Mon May 11, 2015 6:10 pm Post subject:

So my wife and I watched this based on the thread here... to each his own. We must be outliers because we both thought Whiplash was absolutely terrible. We debated between rating it one or two stars on Netflix and wound up giving it two. For us, this movie was nothing but continued yelling, humiliation, and interspersion with drums.

I sure don't recommend it.

craigr

CIR Engineering · Posted: Mon May 11, 2015 6:12 pm Post subject:

...also, my wife and I are heavily involved in live music performance and are music lovers. It wasn't a lack of interest in music that killed this movie for us. We just thought it was a crummy movie.

craigr

**Curt Palme** · Posted: Mon May 11, 2015 6:38 pm Post subject:

Well, no it's not a thinking man's movie I'd say. To me it was somewhat inspiring. I related to it due to my music teacher being a scaled down version of the show, and while my guess is that the actor couldn't drum as well as the soundtrack, he did a really good job of nailing most of the drumming actions to the soundtrack. That seems to be a bit rare these days.

I'm not a big fan of jazz, but Whiplash was one tough piece to play.

Getting back into sound stuff, once in a while I see myself as a tiny fish in this big pond of customers that I have no chance in, and movies like this inspire me to push forward. that's just me though.

ecrabb · Posted: Mon May 11, 2015 9:52 pm Post subject:

draganm · Joined: 08 Mar 2006 Posts: 8990 Location: Colorado

this was a good movie, and unfortunately there are people in teaching positions like this guy who believe you have break someone down in order for them to re-build themselves to their best. That works sometimes, except for the kid who hung himself in the dorm.
As a parent, I wanted to punch that instructor in the nose, but I did connect with the movie emotionally. A little surprised that some people might not feel that but books and movies are like that, you either relate to them or you don't.