The Song Fight Bulletin Board

I'm really happy to see that Leonardo DiCaprio has continued to get decent acting roles after the novelty of his post-Titanic pseudo-heart-throb status wore off. He does an amazing job of portraying Howard Hughes, and actually made me feel sympathetic towards him.

Now I feel that I have a better understanding of Hughes and his quirky behavior, rather than just knowing that he went crazy and peed in milk bottles for a while after making a giant airplane, like what most of the various references to him make it seem like. The amount of passion which DiCaprio portrays Hughes with makes me even want to honor Hughes' memory by referring to his behemoth as The Hercules, rather than the Spruce Goose (which, incidentally, was mostly made of birch).

The very real drama which unfolded around the various defense contracting and the subsequent pork-barrel scandals (also thanks in no small part to the brilliant non-Hawkeye Pierce performance by Alan Alda) really helped to put a lot of things into perspective, as well.

Cinematographically, the movie was pretty good. I feel that it relied a bit too much on CG-assisted impossible shots, but when they did use CG they did a good job of hiding it (most of the time I could only tell when specific things were CG because of how it would have been impossible to do them otherwise).

After watching the movie I felt I had to read up on the real Hughes a bit, and found that the movie glossed over a few details which would have made the audience somewhat less sympathetic, though on the other hand they manage to pull off a positive image of him even with portraying his illicit (but platonic) relationship with a 15-year-old, so maybe those details were really just left out because they weren't particularly interesting.

It also comes across as quite a bit of an underdog movie, which is interesting considering that most underdogs don't already have a vast inherited fortune available to them. But Hughes comes across as an everyday man who is simply pursuing his quixotic dreams, and just happens to have a large amount of money available.

Anyway, yeah, uh, see this movie. It's good.

I really, really liked this movie. Leonardo DiCaprio was very good, as was Cate Blanchett as Katherine Hepburn. I never even got bored during its entire 168 minutes. Very well done. A

fluffy wrote:After watching the movie I felt I had to read up on the real Hughes a bit, and found that the movie glossed over a few details which would have made the audience somewhat less sympathetic, though on the other hand they manage to pull off a positive image of him even with portraying his illicit (but platonic) relationship with a 15-year-old, so maybe those details were really just left out because they weren't particularly interesting.

I did read somewhere that a lot of the insanity stuff, especially later in his life, was intentionally left out to focus on the great things that he's done.

Everytime I've seen Howard Hughes in a movie he's been a smelly old man with a moustache (he looks like he'd be smelly). Now it's like, here's a guy with no moustache who isn't old or smelly and I don't know if it'll be as fun.

He got his moustache later in life, to cover up a scar he got in an accident (one of his compulsions was that he could only look at pure, undamaged skin - no scars or tattoos).

He also wasn't smelly, he was just very particular about how his waste was disposed of.

Wow. I wasn't expecting an actual reason for the moustache not being in this one.

Nobody does.

Okay the moustache was in the movie and so I am happy.

A-

One of those times at the movies where you're into it from the very beginning and you don't come out until it's over. Nothing really Earth-shattering about it, but just a supremely entertaining three hours in the company of a whole lot of very talented actors under the helm of a confident, sure-footed master director. What a pleasure this movie was. I for one couldn't wait until Cate Blanchett's next scene. I was also compelled to learn more about Hughes afterward.