627 The Game

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flyonthewall2983
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Re: 627 The Game

#76 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Sat Sep 01, 2012 5:34 am


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The Narrator Returns
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Re: 627 The Game

#77 Post by The Narrator Returns » Thu Sep 06, 2012 5:20 pm


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Drucker
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Re: 627 The Game

#78 Post by Drucker » Mon Sep 17, 2012 1:40 pm

Fincher's Lost Classic at Salon.

No mention of the impending blu ray release! #-o

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Professor Wagstaff
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Re: 627 The Game

#79 Post by Professor Wagstaff » Fri Sep 21, 2012 9:13 pm

Did anyone else already get their copy from Amazon? The site had the release date wrong (September 18th) and at a decent price (still do at $24.99). The picture's a great improvement over the dreadful R1 DVD. The movie has never been one I've connected with, but experiencing it with stronger sound and picture has greatly changed my perception of the picture for the better.

Has Fincher ever cited particular films that influenced this one? Many elements feel influenced by John Frankenheimer, with much of the tone and style seeming influenced by Seconds
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Particularly once Douglas enters the CRS lunchroom with all the actors, which vibed heavy on the atmosphere from those scenes in that film where Rock Hudson surrounds himself with others in the rehabilitation process.

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Re: 627 The Game

#80 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Sat Sep 22, 2012 10:08 am

One strange thing about this is that it's the last listed credit of Jack Kehoe (plays one of the detectives, also was in The Untouchables, The Sting, Midnight Run and The Friends Of Eddie Coyle). IMDB says he hasn't done anything since and there isn't a death listed.

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Jeff
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Re: 627 The Game

#81 Post by Jeff » Sat Sep 22, 2012 12:04 pm

Professor Wagstaff wrote:Did anyone else already get their copy from Amazon?
Yes, my pre-ordered copy arrived from Amazon on the 18th.

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tenia
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Re: 627 The Game

#82 Post by tenia » Sat Sep 22, 2012 3:26 pm

Jeff wrote:
Professor Wagstaff wrote:Did anyone else already get their copy from Amazon?
Yes, my pre-ordered copy arrived from Amazon on the 18th.
Same here.

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Re: 627 The Game

#83 Post by swo17 » Mon Oct 15, 2012 4:10 pm

So I watched the CC over the weekend (coincidentally, during the timeframe that "the game" takes place, October 12-20, IIRC) and I think I'm willing to let the ending slide:
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Christine is clearly positioning Nick to a specific point on the roof. (She's sort of walking backward but keeps looking behind her to make sure she's heading in the right direction.) We already know that she wants him right in front of the door that the party guests are going to open, so it's not too far fetched to suggest that she has also maneuvered him to the precise distance from the door that he would need to be to beeline it to the edge of the roof at the right spot. (The part of the roof behind him appears to be cluttered with pipes and so would not be an option.) In any case, this doesn't seem like much more of a stretch than several of the other events of the game (e.g. predicting that he would get his gun and seek revenge in the first place, though I suppose the screenplay would argue that this was foreseen by the psychological profile.
Either way, I've never had too much trouble suspending disbelief for this film. Even for as dark as it gets, it's probably Fincher's most playful film, and I still got a kick out of it during this, my third or fourth viewing. One thing that struck me this time (certain events of my life in the past few weeks having resembled their own kind of game) is that the film might be construed as a kind of hopeful allegory for life, with CRS as a stand-in for God, fate, or what have you, i.e. in hard times, life may seem cruel, unfair, or even as though everyone is conspiring against you, but in the end, this is often when we are able to grow the most, or to open ourselves up to new, once feared experiences.

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Re: 627 The Game

#84 Post by cdnchris » Mon Oct 15, 2012 4:55 pm

I love the film, have always defended it, and like you I was always able to susped disbelief throughout, but the one thing about the ending I can never get around
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is that he was still able to survive the fall. I could buy and always suspected they sort of aimed him for one side of the building, where he would unconciously pick the side they wanted him to jump from, and hell, exactly where he would jump from (I just noticed with my last viewing that it's almost like a series of pipes are directing him on where to walk to) but that they apparently knew he would

a.) jump out far enough to hit the skylight and
b.) he wouldn't hit any of the beams while crashing through said skylight

was stretching it for me, even though I was able to accept every other absurd thing in the film. I do chuckle that he does manage to hit that X right on when he lands.

That's always bugged me. But then I have to remind myself it's beside the point. It's more about the character arc than anything else, and in that regard the ending works and the image of him falling looks great and seems appropriate. I think it was in the booklet but the comparison made to A Christmas Carol describes the film perfectly.

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Re: 627 The Game

#85 Post by matrixschmatrix » Mon Oct 15, 2012 5:36 pm

I just always feel like the process that Douglas goes through is inevitably going to induce schizophrenia

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Re: 627 The Game

#86 Post by movielocke » Mon Oct 15, 2012 6:02 pm

cdnchris wrote:I love the film, have always defended it, and like you I was always able to susped disbelief throughout, but the one thing about the ending I can never get around
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is that he was still able to survive the fall. I could buy and always suspected they sort of aimed him for one side of the building, where he would unconciously pick the side they wanted him to jump from, and hell, exactly where he would jump from (I just noticed with my last viewing that it's almost like a series of pipes are directing him on where to walk to) but that they apparently knew he would

a.) jump out far enough to hit the skylight and
b.) he wouldn't hit any of the beams while crashing through said skylight

was stretching it for me, even though I was able to accept every other absurd thing in the film. I do chuckle that he does manage to hit that X right on when he lands.

That's always bugged me. But then I have to remind myself it's beside the point. It's more about the character arc than anything else, and in that regard the ending works and the image of him falling looks great and seems appropriate. I think it was in the booklet but the comparison made to A Christmas Carol describes the film perfectly.
What startled me more than that bit was early on in the film, when he jumps/slips from the fire escape into the garbage dump, that was a much, much smaller target and the edges of those garbage bins are pretty unforgiving. It's interesting that the mundane garbage jump is what started to convince me that maybe it wasn't just a game afterall, that CRS had nefarious purposes, and they were now 'outside the lines' of the game CRS intended him to play.

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Re: 627 The Game

#87 Post by Niale » Sun Oct 21, 2012 4:54 am

Say what you want about the film, but the trailer! That puppet swaying... Fantastic.

I'm not sure how much I really cared about the story, I was just glad that the plot provided an excuse for Fincher to shoot in a lot of very interesting places. It sort of felt like a cinematic scavenger hunt.

It may be irrelevant, but I love how Fincher shoots vehicle scenes. And im not just talking about the cab in the ocean,
which was brilliant, but simple A to B in route stuff. Shooting in an actual moving car, and just totally absorbing all that energy in the frame, is something I actually wish he would return to. Some of the vehicle scenes in Dragon Tattoo are simply not as good as these. Also, his tinted 16mm good ol days footage is leagues more effective than the similarly colored flashback footage in Dragon Tattoo.

For me the best thing that can be said about the movie is that it allowed Fincher to go a lot of places and film a lot of disparate scenes that normally could not be contained in one film. Well... There is Sean Penn too, he is completely amazing in this.

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Re: 627 The Game

#88 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Sun Oct 21, 2012 6:02 pm

Agreed about Fincher's car scenes. Some of the best scenes in Se7en and Fight Club take place in them, not to mention that terrifying sequence in Zodiac out in the middle of nowhere at night. Aside from the aforementioned taxi scene (which provided a great trailer moment), there's also the scene towards the beginning that pays off the opening scene of the birthday party. He could make a hell of a road movie if he ever had the chance too.

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Re: 627 The Game

#89 Post by colinr0380 » Mon Oct 22, 2012 5:59 am

I often get the taxi hijack sequence from this one mixed up with the one in Tony Scott's Enemy of the State a year or so later, but this is the better version (although the Enemy of the State sequence does have a cameo from Gabriel Byrne as the cabbie!)

I got a very strong Total Recall vibe from the film on watching it again, mostly from the whole sequence at CRS of being 'sold an experience' and the questions of whether the situations are reality or fantasy role playing, but also in that moment just before Christine's apartment gets shot up where she has a similar line to Sharon Stone as the hero makes the (seemingly) irreversible decision to dive deeper into the rabbit hole, with no return: "Now you've done it!"

If I follow that train of thought, it is interesting watching Fincher working in the paranoid vein of another director and using one of Verhoeven's previous actors, although Douglas rather than Schwarzenegger! (And while I'm speculating wildly, perhaps the presence of Douglas and the San Francisco setting is a nod towards Basic Instinct! Although more likely that stuff can be traced back to another nod to the ur-film Vertigo, especially in the contrast between the blond duplicitous, yet exciting, multiple-personalitied actress vs the honest, open, yet ignored, dark haired wife)

Though I suppose another reference dotted throughout the film is The Conversation, especially in the incriminating hotel room with backing up toilet! I had also forgotten completely about the appearance of Carroll Baker, Baby Doll herself, as Ilsa the maid!

I agree with matrix's schizophrenia thought as all of the situations are created to allow the experience of utter, life destroying failure in a 'safe' context.
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But the goal of this seems a strange one: is it to make you value what you already have more highly? (In which case it seems pretty callous to use the motif of the father's suicide as a pretext for a party) Or instead is it to give someone who has everything the chance to strive again, which we see in that turn Douglas does in the Mexico section where just in body language he moves from total despair to resolve to bring the organisation down.

It reminds me a little of those self-aggrandising stories about self-made millionaires talking of having started their multi-national businesses from being given ten dollars and investing it wisely until they became who now are, and are able to tell others to do the same thing they did to rise to the top (without considering that they might have been pulling the ladder up behind them as they went). In a sense I could see CRS performing that role of giving the 'pulling yourself up from the absolute bottom' experience for people with inherited wealth who have never had to strive even in that way. Sort of an extension of people who go on safari treks or camping to see if they could survive in the wild for a week or two - something that isn't exactly roughing it, but near enough to pretend that it is.

But I don't really see that improving his relationships with his brother, ex-wife or even Armin Mueller-Stahl (this is where the party scene either falls down completely, or works really well depending on my mood when watching it, as Douglas talks to Mueller-Stahl's character in a friendly manner but at no point indicates that he has changed his mind on firing him. Has our main character simply learned how to fake sincerity rather than being obviously cold to others as in his now caring, yet still empty, conversation with his ex-wife that at least feigns interest in her new life. He can also share a bill now without being forced or feeling obligated to - well, whoopee!), in fact that process could potentially make him even more acquisitive because he felt the horror of losing everything.

It doesn't feel like self help but more like an initiation into a special circle (which I guess Fight Club picks up and runs with), with the essential truth being revealed that everyone is just working for your benefit, or hindrance! Maybe one day Van Orton will get the call to 'initiate' someone else into the cult, just as his brother did. There is the suggestion that maybe the relationship with Christine/Claire could lead to him getting further into the CRS world, maybe turning up as a background player in someone else's game. Or now that they have all of his details would CRS be calling on his services anyway at some point in the future?

Are we still in a created relationship at that point? Is it another part of the plan that Van Orton runs after Christine/Claire? Is she another one of his 'gifts'? Does it matter to Van Orton himself? Now that he has part-paid for the experience does he get to enjoy it further, turning it (and spoiling it, or at least making the experience cruder) into the escort agency present he had initially feared his brother had gotten him?

A lot of this speaks to the point Fincher makes in the commentary about teasing the audience with possibilities and film being about what is witheld as much as what is shown, to create that ambiguous feeling.
Anyway, this is a great edition just for making the old commentary track widely available. I was thinking when listening to Douglas talking about the actor needing to take centre stage without distraction from people moving around lights and so on that he gave perhaps the best and most eloquent defence of that Christian Bale rant avant la lettre!
Last edited by colinr0380 on Mon Oct 22, 2012 12:16 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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matrixschmatrix
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Re: 627 The Game

#90 Post by matrixschmatrix » Mon Oct 22, 2012 11:16 am

Just going to spoiler this whole thing, I guess.
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As I understand it, the idea of CRS is to take away one's feeling of control- Douglas is an asshole, and part of why he is an asshole is the degree to which he has shielded himself from his feelings and put himself in a permanent place of security.

CRS reminds him of a couple of things: the way normal people connect to others, the fallibility of one's plans, and finally, the fact that despite all the power and security his father had, the man killed himself- and Douglas is very much his father's son. For most people, this sort of thing could be done fairly simply, but Douglas is so powerful that removing him from his privilege takes the equivalent of a major engineering operation. If they'd started by just taking his money, he would likely have despaired, thinking money was all there was to him- but after the adventure they put him through, Douglas had both some faith in his non-money powers and a real goal outside his dumb financial speculation stuff. In that respect, it's all very delicately put together, a sort of very expensive intervention for someone hopelessly addicted to wealth.

The problem is, Douglas is never going to believe in anything again- there's always another layer of lies behind reality, and killing yourself and surviving seems like it's going to lock in the idea that at the bottom, you are totally invulnerable. Reminds me a bit of Inception in that respect, only here the whole goal is to erase the line between reality and non-reality.

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Re: 627 The Game

#91 Post by AnamorphicWidescreen » Tue Apr 23, 2013 2:44 pm

Recently saw 2012 The Criterion Collection release of "The Game" (1997), and was extremely impressed. I had seen the film before in both pan&scan & cropped/truncated widescreen DVDs, but this CC release is the first time the film has been released with the correct aspect ration, i.e. Anamorphic Widescreen (at least in R1); please correct me if I'm wrong here.

Seeing this in the correct aspect ration made a world of difference. Though it was always great, it's even better with this release. Really enjoyed the story, which really kept you guessing. The first time I saw the film, I didn't see the end coming at all, and even after multiple viewings, this still gets me. This is also one of those films that probably gets better each time you watch it, since you know what to look for.

I'm a big David Fincher fan anyway, & IMHO this is not only one of his best films, but one of the best movies of the '90's.

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Re: 627 The Game

#92 Post by manicsounds » Wed Apr 24, 2013 8:07 pm

I assumed the old US DVDs were in the correct widescreen. I just browsed reviews and they say the discs were in 2.35:1 aspect ratio, so nothing should be cropped. I have the UK special edition DVD and that's in 2.35:1 as well.

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Re: 627 The Game

#93 Post by AnamorphicWidescreen » Thu Apr 25, 2013 10:46 am

manicsounds wrote:I assumed the old US DVDs were in the correct widescreen. I just browsed reviews and they say the discs were in 2.35:1 aspect ratio, so nothing should be cropped. I have the UK special edition DVD and that's in 2.35:1 as well.
Good to hear that the UK Special edition of "The Game" is in the correct aspect ratio.

The previous US DVD versions I've seen of the film have fullscreen on one side, and cropped widescreen on the other (despite the back of the DVD box claiming it has the correct aspect ratio). This is false advertising, and has happened with other DVDs before - Thankfully, it's happening less these days (and I think all Blu-ray's have the correct aspect ratio). The way you can tell is that when the picture is cropped, it will only take up a small portion of the middle of the screen on a widescreen TV (I believe this was a carry-over from the older, square Cathode Ray Tube TV's, which were the norm during the DVD format's early years).

Conversely, the Criterion version of the film takes up the whole screen on a widescreen TV.

In any case, excellent & underrated film. Some of my favorite scenes included:

- The scene in the beginning in the restaurant when the waitress spilled something on the Douglas character - this was clever, since she was played by DKU, who you only really hear in this scene, but don't see much of - this wasn't something I noticed on the first viewing.

- The scene when Douglas is watching the evening news at his home, and it ends up being directed at him - very unnerving :lol:

- The scene in DKU's apartment, when Douglas quickly realized the place was a large prop. Interesting trivia here - DKU's roommate was played by Linda Manz, who has only been in a handful of films over the years, notably Terence Malick's masterpiece Days of Heaven (1978).

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swo17
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Re: 627 The Game

#94 Post by swo17 » Thu Apr 25, 2013 11:07 am

AnamorphicWidescreen wrote:The previous US DVD versions I've seen of the film have fullscreen on one side, and cropped widescreen on the other (despite the back of the DVD box claiming it has the correct aspect ratio). This is false advertising, and has happened with other DVDs before - Thankfully, it's happening less these days (and I think all Blu-ray's have the correct aspect ratio). The way you can tell is that when the picture is cropped, it will only take up a small portion of the middle of the screen on a widescreen TV (I believe this was a carry-over from the older, square Cathode Ray Tube TV's, which were the norm during the DVD format's early years).
What you are describing doesn't sound like cropping, but like a widescreen film not being presented in anamorphic widescreen. I'm pretty sure the old DVD was in the correct aspect ratio, and actually, I thought I remembered it filling out the edges of my widescreen TV without having to zoom in on the image. In any case, the Criterion release does of course provide a vast improvement in picture quality.

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Re: 627 The Game

#95 Post by manicsounds » Thu Apr 25, 2013 9:28 pm

Every review I read of the old 2001 US DVD says 2.35:1 non anamorphic. So there shouldn't be anything cropped out of the frame. You seem to be just talking about non anamorphic and anamorphic.

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Re: 627 The Game

#96 Post by The Fanciful Norwegian » Fri Apr 26, 2013 11:52 am

The Game was Super 35, so the widescreen version (anamorphic or not) would still be cropped on the top and bottom compared with a 4:3 version (though Super 35 films are often cropped on the sides in 4:3 transfers). Of course the widescreen version is still the correct one.

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Re: 627 The Game

#97 Post by Mr Sausage » Fri Dec 05, 2014 2:43 pm

Starting this Monday, the Criterion Film Club will be discussing The Game. If you love this movie, hate this movie, have any feelings about it at all, you should stop by and give your take on it. It doesn't even have to be more than a small capsule review. Just tell us how you feel.

Everyone's welcome. The more who participate, the more fun it is.

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Re: 627 The Game

#98 Post by DarkImbecile » Fri Dec 05, 2014 4:08 pm

Mr. Sausage, I asked this once before about the Lists Project threads and no one knew: Is there a reason that updates to the threads buried a little deeper in the forum (Lists, Film Club, etc.) aren't displayed in the Recent Forum Activity box on the home page? It know that's the way I primarily check for new posts, and I spent a few months visiting the forum before I stumbled across those other sections (I think because other members discussed them in threads that appeared on the main page).

For those who have found them and visit them, I know the threads are easily bookmarked, but it still seems like they'd get significantly more traffic and participation if they showed up on the main page like most other topics. It's perfectly likely that I'm missing an obvious reason for this out of sheer, unadulterated ignorance (my usual reason), but I thought it worth asking just in case.

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Re: 627 The Game

#99 Post by Mr Sausage » Fri Dec 05, 2014 4:27 pm

I have no idea, either. I don't use the "Recent Forum Activity" box on the front page. I'll PM Chris about it.

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Re: 627 The Game

#100 Post by jindianajonz » Fri Dec 05, 2014 4:33 pm

I was under the impression that threads in "other arts" don't show up because they require members to be logged in to access them. Perhaps the film club could be moved to the Criterion Collection subforum?

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