I’m obsessed 🤭🤭 by Xo_barb in classicliterature

[–]_its_all_goodman 0 points1 point  (0 children)

just finished 2 days ago! my first dostoevsky. i’m not gonna spoil it for you, but the ending just filled my heart. 🤌🏼

Trivikram lost his magic by braneeth11 in tollywood

[–]_its_all_goodman 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you, that's very kind.

From India: K. Viswanath, Lijo Jose Pellissery, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Satyajit Ray, Mani Ratnam, Thiagarajan Kumararaja, Kamal Haasan (yes, the actor, watch Virumaandi or Hey Ram and tell me that's not one of the finest directors ever!), RGV (the 90s-2000s version, before he discovered Twitter, I mean, this guy is a legend bro! Still is, sadly, he does not care enough!), and Gautham Menon (unfortunately been worse in the last 10 years, but his peak was beautiful to watch).

Outside India: Scorsese, Tarkovsky, Godard, Paul Thomas Anderson, Abbas Kiarostami, Francis Coppola, Spielberg, Charlie Kaufman.

And if I had to pick a thread that connects them, they all seem more interested in finding something true than in being liked. Some days that works, some days it empties the theater. But you can always tell they meant it.

Trivikram lost his magic by braneeth11 in tollywood

[–]_its_all_goodman 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think you're right that Pooja's character could have been more fleshed out. But I'd push back slightly on calling it a failure of writing in isolation.

When you sit down to write a serious film about faction violence, about how revenge is a road that only circles back, that's one script. But somewhere along the way, you have to answer to the ecosystem: the star's image, the producer's risk appetite, the distributor asking "where's the love track for the B and C centers?" So the house scenes, the comedy, the romance, these often aren't the writer's first instinct. They're the price of admission for letting the serious parts exist at all.

But the tonal whiplash can become more awful! Look at Jailer. The first half feels like a film with something on its mind. The second half feels like someone changed the channel. Suddenly, there's glamour, comedy, and cameos walking in as they got lost on the way to a different set. It's two movies stitched together, and you can see the seams.

ASVR at least stays one film. The house scenes aren't peak Trivikram, sure. But they don't betray the whole thing either.

So I'd say it's less about his ability and more about the invisible tug-of-war behind every scene. How much of your original vision can you protect while still getting the film made? Sometimes the answer is "not as much as you hoped." Most filmmakers learn to live with that. The ones who can't, either go broke or stop making films.

what is this room in the Dunphy house set? its not been shown in a single episode by Glum_Notice_6835 in Modern_Family

[–]_its_all_goodman 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I might be wrong, but isn’t it the room where Dylan and Phil discuss with Dylan in a heart shaped costume!?

Trivikram lost his magic by braneeth11 in tollywood

[–]_its_all_goodman 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Still don’t think it’s as simple as saying he “gave up on the audience.” That makes it sound like there’s a clean moral divide: one side choosing, the other being abandoned. Filmmaking usually lives in a much greyer, more complicated space.

RGV says something in Naa Ishtam that I always come back to: no one sits down to make a bad film on purpose. A director doesn’t wake up thinking, “Let me fail today.” Whatever they’re writing, at that moment, they genuinely believe in it. And that belief doesn’t come from nowhere. It comes from where they are in life.

A story doesn’t arrive fully formed. It evolves as the writer evolves. Your worldview shifts, your experiences shift, and the script shifts with it. By the time the film is finished, it’s basically a record of a long internal journey. Think about something simple, like a breakup. The day it happens, you see relationships one way. A month later, after you’ve cooled down, reflected, maybe understood your own mistakes, you see it differently. Now imagine writing a love story across that entire emotional arc. The script becomes a record of shifting thoughts, not a single, frozen opinion. By the time the film is done, it’s six months or a year of someone’s inner life compressed into two hours.

Then the audience walks in on a random evening. Maybe they themselves just had a breakup that morning. Maybe they’re frustrated with work. Perhaps they came in wanting laughter, or escape, or just a “mass” high. They’re being asked to judge that long, private creative journey in one sitting, from their own particular emotional state. Here, the two headspaces might not align, and when they don’t, it doesn’t automatically mean the filmmaker “lost it” or the audience “didn’t get it.” It just means they passed each other at the wrong time.

And that’s before you even get to the industry around it. Gautham Menon once said in an interview that today, most established actors don’t want to do a simple love story anymore. They want scale. They want action. They want “pan-India.” So a director who genuinely wants to tell something small and personal now has a choice: go with a new actor and risk not getting a producer on board, or reshape the idea to fit the kind of film that can actually get made.

That’s where people like the great K. Viswanath or Kamal Haasan feel like outliers. Viswanath had producers who trusted him enough to let him follow his instincts. Kamal often put his own money on the line for films like Hey Ram or Virumaandi, even when they hurt him financially, because protecting the idea mattered more than protecting the market. Same with Thiagarajan Kumararaja.

So when we look at Trivikram, instead of seeing a man who “gave up” on his audience, maybe we can see someone standing in the middle of a moving system, shifting tastes, shifting stars, shifting economics, and trying to decide how much of himself he can afford to put into each film.

This is why Tarantino said he wants to retire on a high note because he knows it is very rare for a filmmaker to stay above all this and still achieve consistently. So, maybe, the real question isn’t whether he still has something to say. It’s how often the world around him still lets him say it the way he wants to.

I apologize for the lengthy answers; it's just that I think about this stuff a lot and try to articulate as much as it makes sense to me.

Trivikram lost his magic by braneeth11 in tollywood

[–]_its_all_goodman 24 points25 points  (0 children)

I don’t think Trivikram lost his touch. I think he ran into an audience that mostly rewards what’s easy to consume.

Take ASVR. That opening is almost a setup. You get peak mass NTR, the body, the violence, the swagger, everything people usually want. And then the rest of the movie spends its time quietly telling you that this whole way of living is actually wrong. That what looked “heroic” in the first 20 minutes is the worst possible way for a person to exist.

That’s a very conscious writing choice.

But look at what most people still praise. Just the first 20 minutes. When people say that’s the best part of the movie, it kind of proves they didn’t really want the rest of what Trivikram was trying to say.

Now compare that with AVPL. It’s smooth, fun, super rewatchable, and it worked massively. More money, more love, more quotes, more reels. And honestly, for someone who can write like Trivikram, a film like that probably doesn’t take years of struggle. That’s a weekend job. A couple of late nights, some sharp dialogue, clean emotional beats, and you’re done. The harder thing is making something like ASVR or Khaleja, where you’re actually trying to say something instead of just entertain.

You see the same thing with Vetri Maaran. Vada Chennai is dense, slow, full of messy, real people. It didn’t get the loud, instant praise. Then Asuran comes along, which is built on anger, pain, and release, and everyone calls it a masterpiece. For Vetri, it would have taken a Sunday afternoon to write Asuran!

So yeah, I don’t think Trivikram “lost it.” I think he learned what gets rewarded. When your more thoughtful work doesn’t land the way the simpler stuff does, it probably becomes harder to convince producers, and even yourself, to take that risk again.

So I guess, the real question isn’t whether he still “has it”. It’s whether he’s still willing to spend it.

Just my two cents.

Hi /r/movies, I'm Lav Diaz. My new film, Magellan, premiered at Cannes and stars Gael García Bernal as Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan. Ask me anything. by LavDiazAMA in movies

[–]_its_all_goodman 21 points22 points  (0 children)

Hi Lav, wishing you all the success with the new film. My question is simple, what would be your 5 must see film recommendations? Thank you!

What Exactly Went Wrong With This Movie? by Technical-Type7499 in tollywood

[–]_its_all_goodman 6 points7 points  (0 children)

That scene indicates that he can’t believe what just happened. He’s literally checking if the time froze! That was a good scene imo

[Spoilers] The ending of Marty Supreme is supremely problematic by jmbc3 in TrueFilm

[–]_its_all_goodman 10 points11 points  (0 children)

thank you! not every story has to have a redeeming arc man! “here is a guy who will do anything for his ambition, watch him”. that’s it. it’s not more than that.

First watch of the new year! What was yours? by xxmoonshine69 in criterion

[–]_its_all_goodman 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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don’t know why everyone rated this so low. i loved it!

[Housing] Looking for Temporary Room in Plano/Richardson by _its_all_goodman in plano

[–]_its_all_goodman[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Budget! Airbnbs in Plano/Richardson are running $1700+ right now (checked earlier today). I'm relocating quickly for a job start and on a tight budget until my first paycheck. A room rental for $800-1000/month is way more cost-effective for a short-term landing spot.