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Ben X

Baby Driver (Boss Baby Successor)

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Baby Driver was cool and fun and exciting, but it had already left my thoughts by the time I got home.

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Baby Driver was fantastic. Absolute blast to watch and I left the theater with a real sense of joy. Have been listening to the soundtrack on repeat since seeing it last night.

 

It's a beautiful film, with both action and regular scenes choreographed perfectly to the soundtrack. The film isn't just edited to the music, the scenes are acted in sync with the music in long takes and it's mesmerizing to watch. It's like the jukebox scene from Shaun of the Dead extended to an entire film. The story is super simple, basic car chase/heist film pastiche and knowingly so. It's almost singularly focused on dazzling you and it's well worth it, IMO.

 

:tup::tup:

 

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There are some posts in the megathread about it but why have a dedicated thread for freaking Split and not this? Anyway, the action is great and easy to follow and the way everything syncs to the music is a lot of fun, but outside of the action itself nothing really left an impression on me at all. I guess the thinness of the plot and characters really held it back for me. That said I still had a lot of fun and wouldn't mind seeing it again to pay closer attention to the choreography since on the first viewing I was mostly just focused on following what was happening.

 

Also

no way he's getting out in five years. How many cops got murdered over the course of the movie? I don't care how many purses you give back, they're gonna throw the book at you.

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REPOST.

 

I saw Baby Driver tonight. I wrote a thing about it, but mostly I was just baffled that it wasn't a comedy. It should have been. Good action, thin characters. For about the first hour I thought it'd be my least favorite Wright film (the central romance is awful) but once it gets into it's home stretch it's appropriately fun and exciting. 

 

If you haven't read it this interview with the editor on the pre-production process is pretty fascinating. 

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4 hours ago, Professor Video Games said:

why have a dedicated thread for freaking Split and not this?

 

Because somebody made one!!! (Thanks for making one.)

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On 7/3/2017 at 11:31 PM, Ben X said:

Baby Driver was cool and fun and exciting, but it had already left my thoughts by the time I got home.

This. 

 

5 hours ago, Professor Video Games said:

Also

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no way he's getting out in five years. How many cops got murdered over the course of the movie? I don't care how many purses you give back, they're gonna throw the book at you.

 

Also this.

 

I really enjoyed Baby Driver and man it was really well put together, but yeah it didn't stick with me the way any of Edgar Wright's other work has. And it was weird how many people got murdered and then he was given a tiny sentence. I feel like I owe it a second viewing because of how much I let it just wash over me.

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Did that "words of the song appear in graffiti behind Baby" thing of the coffee run happen at any other point in the film?

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It's always been a bonus rather than the key reason why I like Wright films, but I felt a little disappointed there weren't more in-jokes and little Easter Eggs and wondered if that background lyric thing carried through the whole film. But also you can never notice everything in an Edgar Wright film the first time so I guess that will just have to wait for the home video release.

 

Edgar Wright is my favorite contemporary director and I worry that the thing I've always loved was actually his collaboration with Simon Pegg (I am not a big Scott Pilgrim fan) but part of why he's my favorite contemporary director is that he is so monumentally talented and has such vision, so even if he never reaches the heights of Hot Fuzz again I'm always gonna tune into what he's up to. Baby Driver is definitely a unique film, even if it isn't the full package. I hope it does well? I worry he'll never be able to get big studio budgets again but also I worry that he will and he'll be stuck doing some X-Men movie or something. 

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There's a bit during the foot-chase sequence where he runs into a clothing store and the in-store hip hop music beat-matches perfectly to the already playing Hocus Pocus by Focus. There were so many little moments like that. All the clips he watches on the TV get called back later in dialogue (Baby using that Monsters Inc. line *twice* was a great gag!) The entire soundtrack is lying there on the floor when he comes home to find his place trashed. Kevin Spacey's little speech about how his handlers always leave a "Bananas" message, and the corrupt cops appearing at the end shouting "Bananas!"

 

I thought the comedy in this film worked especially well because the film was otherwise so straight-faced. I guess I just left the film thinking about the dazzling stunts and meticulous setpieces more than anything else. Every scene, even the simplest dialogue scenes, almost felt like action setpieces! I haven't been able to *stop* thinking about this movie for days now..

 

Also, I'm really happy that it seems it did well already. Made on a $34 mil budget and its US box office numbers are already at $39 mil I think (unless that's an estimate?). :tup: Would've been sad if this was the end of big budget Edgar Wright movies.

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I did notice occasionally that gun-shots or a person's hand-gestures while outlining a heist were timed to the music, so I'd like to watch it again looking out for that throughout.

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There was an absolutely crazy amount of that stuff throughout the film. The amount of preparation that must've gone into timing all of these things. I listened to this podcast interviewing Edgar and he says whenever they could they had the music playing on set while acting out the scenes. And when they couldn't they had a choreographer calling out the beats so everyone could time their acting to the music. Simple scenes like them just getting out of a car and getting into a new getaway car are so meticulously timed to the music it's absolutely bonkers. I'm pretty sure Darling never pops her gum without it being timed to the music. I vaguely remember a background character, a cop or a bystander, having dialogue that was identical, and timed, to the lyrics.

 

I'm very excited to see it again to be even more on the lookout for this stuff.

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Oh yeah, was that in the opening long take, where dialogue is matching the song? I could tell something clever was going on there but couldn't get a handle on it.

 

I was just reading that editor interview Patrick linked to, and it made me think, what I'd love is a viewing mode for this film where they visualise all of this - so maybe there's a dot in the corner flashing with the beat, but every time an action hits the beat, instead of the dot there's a visual outline of that action.

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I remember sitting in the theatre when the woman at the pizza place register answers the phone in time with the music and wondering, "How many takes did they have to film for that?" It was a meticulously planned moment with no impact.

 

Uh...and that kinda extends to my feelings overall...

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19 hours ago, Ben X said:

I did notice occasionally that gun-shots or a person's hand-gestures while outlining a heist were timed to the music, so I'd like to watch it again looking out for that throughout.

Apparently the screenplay for this movie is nuts because a ton of that stuff is explicitly called out. I hope that is true and not exaggerated for press tours, and is love to read the screenplay if so. 

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18 hours ago, Ben X said:

Oh yeah, was that in the opening long take, where dialogue is matching the song? I could tell something clever was going on there but couldn't get a handle on it.

 

I was just reading that editor interview Patrick linked to, and it made me think, what I'd love is a viewing mode for this film where they visualise all of this - so maybe there's a dot in the corner flashing with the beat, but every time an action hits the beat, instead of the dot there's a visual outline of that action.

 

Get the animator who did the ratatouille "senses" animations to do an overlay. 

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Oh my god, yes. They need to get Michel Gagné to do an overlay and include that on the Bluray or something:

 

 

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It just occurred to me that people who aren't Edgar Wright super fans might not have seen the music video Baby Driver is an expansion of:

 

 

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I really enjoyed this film, so much so that I went to see it a second time to pay more attention to the little details. I love how the scenes play along with the soundtrack, but it never feels over used or relied upon. I felt that the balance was just right. The story isn't the most interesting but it was enough to keep me engaged. It's definitely got that Edgar Wright re-watch factor. Spoiler related to that below:

 

 

For instance early in the movie when he's watching TV it pretty much spells out the scene late in the film when he gets out of the car to take on Buddy.

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On 7/3/2017 at 11:31 PM, Ben X said:

Baby Driver was cool and fun and exciting, but it had already left my thoughts by the time I got home.

Man this sums up my experience watching this movie.  I had a good time watching it, can't imagine I'll watch it again anytime soon. 

 

A year or two back I was listening to a podcast as it was coming out, Goodfellas Minute, where the hosts and their guests talk about Goodfellas one minute at a time, so an each episode is 10-15 minutes of people talking about a single minute of the film in order.  It works because there's so much going on between the actual film and the history of Henry Hill and the background and all the little details that come from someone like Scorsese.  Even the first minute which was just a black screen with the white titles scrolling by made for an interesting listen because they talked about the font and how Scorsese really liked the opening to Vertigo so he ended up just getting the same guy who did the Vertigo title sequence to do Goodfellas.  Listening to all 145 minutes of that podcast made me really appreciate how few movies there are that have so much going on that every individual minute of the film is interesting in it's own way.  Baby Driver is definitely a movie that you could dissect a minute at a time, easily.

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On 7/7/2017 at 0:26 AM, BigJKO said:

I thought the comedy in this film worked especially well because the film was otherwise so straight-faced. I guess I just left the film thinking about the dazzling stunts and meticulous setpieces more than anything else. Every scene, even the simplest dialogue scenes, almost felt like action setpieces! I haven't been able to *stop* thinking about this movie for days now..

 

I saw this last weekend with my wife and this pretty much sums up how we both felt about it. I had a big dumb grin on my face the entire time and it just felt good to watch. I could maybe nitpick at a few things but it was just too enjoyable for me to bother.

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