Steve Jobs (Danny Boyle, 2015)

[domino harvey]

Where Natalie Portman and Kate Winslet refuse to tread, there goes Katherine Waterston

[Jeff]

Where Natalie Portman and Kate Winslet refuse to tread, there goes Katherine Waterston

I believe that the article is incorrect. The role Waterston is playing is different from the one Portman turned down, and it looks like Winslet is still in play for that role.

[knives]

I don't know if anyone else has gotten this ad, but it reeks of desperation to me.

[PfR73]

I don't know if anyone else has gotten this ad, but it reeks of desperation to me.

They probably need a crowd to be the audience in the product introduction scenes. Doesn't seem like that surprising a way to recruit unpaid extras. They used to just put similar ads in the paper or use radio announcements.

[mfunk9786]

Knives, correct me if I'm wrong, but are you implying that extras give a hoot which movie they're going to be working on, and that this project is so down in the dumps that they've got to work extra hard to get people to show up? Because I respectfully disagree with that idea and I wish to point out that people will step over their mother to be an extra in anything. See: That time Nathan For You faked a Johnny Depp movie shoot

[hearthesilence]

It'll probably do the trick, but man does that ad look corny, especially for something that was once meant to be a David Fincher movie. (Even his worst movies are elegantly designed.) Fassbender and Rogen's expressions look amusingly embarrassed. On the left, "…fucking hell…" on the right, "Yeeeeah, we're kind of in a bind and need extras…"

[PfR73]

Yeah the ad looks totally corny, but I doubt the ad would have looked any different if David Fincher was directing the film. The production certainly didn't design the ad; it was either made by the extras casting agency or someone the agency hired. This is how extras get recruited for crowd scenes all the time, even for big productions. If you look at the site, they're recruiting for multiple films, not just the Steve Jobs one.

[knives]

Knives, correct me if I'm wrong, but are you implying that extras give a hoot which movie they're going to be working on, and that this project is so down in the dumps that they've got to work extra hard to get people to show up? Because I respectfully disagree with that idea and I wish to point out that people will step over their mother to be an extra in anything. See: That time Nathan For You faked a Johnny Depp movie shoot

I just had never seen an advertisement on the Internet for extras work, and as said above what a corny ad, which I found to be unusual and desperate. If it is not unusual then apologies.

[mfunk9786]

If you go looking for them (or in this case, Google goes looking for them), they're definitely out there when a production company needs a large group of extras. And as PfR73 mentions, it's in no way a comment on or indictment of the quality of a film.

[hearthesilence]

CNET has published their own photos of the location dressed as Jobs' garage.

[Jeff]

That was a pretty quick turnaround. The film is being released October 9.

[flyonthewall2983]

First look.

[hearthesilence]

I've grown more wary about this project with time. I think I posted my disappointment when David Fincher and Christian Bale left the project, but even if they stayed on, my enthusiasm still would have waned. Jobs may have espoused New Age and hippie values, but he was very much a cold, ruthless businessman, and at this point, it feels like that's the person the world really embraced. Given the negative aspects of Apple's accomplishments and how they reflect worsening global problems, I can't say I'm thrilled about something that could be celebrating business and ignoring the real cost of what has been labeled a gargantuan success. When Jobs died, the media was quick to draw parallels to Thomas Edison, even while acknowledging that he wasn't truly an inventor or an engineer, but those comparisons have grown more apt for less than flattering reasons. There's been a much more thorough re-evaluation of Jobs lately (including Alex Gibney's documentary), and it'll be interesting to see how this film goes about it.

[domino harvey]

Variety review reveals the film's three acts are filmed using different cameras/stock

[T]he picture’s major visual coup is the decision to shoot the three acts on three different formats: grainy 16mm film for 1984, lustrous 35mm for 1988, and sleek, high-definition digital for 1998.

[hearthesilence]

Not sure I'd call that a major coup. In their own way, Martin Scorsese's The Aviator and especially Todd Haynes' I'm Not There took that idea much, much further, and they're far from alone. If anything, it's a defacto unimaginative attempt at being creative merely by changing things up in a logical, predictable way.

[domino harvey]

If anything, it's a defacto unimaginative attempt at being creative merely by changing things up in a logical, predictable way.

That's a pretty big charge to lob at this movie. Do you really feel comfortable calling a film you haven't even seen creatively bankrupt based on the barest of technical details regarding how it was filmed?

[beamish13]

Jobs may have espoused New Age and hippie values

His ethos were more in line with Zen Buddhism

[hearthesilence]

If anything, it's a defacto unimaginative attempt at being creative merely by changing things up in a logical, predictable way.

That's a pretty big charge to lob at this movie. Do you really feel comfortable calling a film you haven't even seen creatively bankrupt based on the barest of technical details regarding how it was filmed?

That is a completely rational and valid point, and the answer should be an obvious no.

But if I was a gambling man, I'd have to consider that I haven't been a fan of any of his films, and I can't really say the odds are good that he's going to surprise me.

[Luke M]

I'm genuinely curious; can the average audience member really pick up on varying film formats? I'm sure the 16mm will certainly have a distinct look and texture to it but the 35mm film and digital? It often feels like something directors like to play around with but have next to no impact on anyone (except for a small minority of film enthusiasts) watching the film.

[EricJ]

I've grown more wary about this project with time. I think I posted my disappointment when David Fincher and Christian Bale left the project, but even if they stayed on, my enthusiasm still would have waned. Jobs may have espoused New Age and hippie values, but he was very much a cold, ruthless businessman, and at this point, it feels like that's the person the world really embraced. Given the negative aspects of Apple's accomplishments and how they reflect worsening global problems, I can't say I'm thrilled about something that could be celebrating business and ignoring the real cost of what has been labeled a gargantuan success. When Jobs died, the media was quick to draw parallels to Thomas Edison, even while acknowledging that he wasn't truly an inventor or an engineer, but those comparisons have grown more apt for less than flattering reasons. There's been a much more thorough re-evaluation of Jobs lately (including Alex Gibney's documentary), and it'll be interesting to see how this film goes about it.

As long as Bill Gates was running Microsoft, Jobs had a good image, no matter what he did in his private or work life--
He espoused a techno-Zen of what computers should be doing in the common people's hands for the 90's and 00's, while Gates just inherited IBM's "corporate monolith" image that he himself ironically helped to destroy.

We've become comfortable with deconstructing Jobs' "iGod" image, but that doesn't mean we're as bloodthirstily demonizing him as you want to be.
It's just means we want someone and something a little more incisive than Ashton Kutcher, and something that reflects the "real life Tony Stark" story of our last thirty years of computer awareness for good and bad.

(Which, again, Gibney may have done better, as well as PBS's "Triumph of the Nerds" documentary, and Boyle's film formats does seem to approach the "History we've lived to see" aspect of the story.)

[hearthesilence]

"Real life Tony Stark" alone suggests a highly inaccurate description of Jobs. Even Woz himself said "Steve Jobs played no role at all in any of my designs of the Apple I and Apple II computer and printer interfaces and serial interfaces and floppy disks and stuff that I made to enhance the computers. He did not know technology. He’d never designed anything as a hardware engineer, and he didn’t know software. He wanted to be important, and the important people are always the business people. So that’s what he wanted to do." And I'm sorry, but simply calling him out for less than respectable things he did indeed play a role in, and his vocal lack of care for those issues is not demonizing, it's just fact.

[Magic Hate Ball]

He was one of the most successful businessmen ever, I don't think our global culture will hurt any if he gets Salieri'd.

[ermylaw]

I'm genuinely curious; can the average audience member really pick up on varying film formats? I'm sure the 16mm will certainly have a distinct look and texture to it but the 35mm film and digital? It often feels like something directors like to play around with but have next to no impact on anyone (except for a small minority of film enthusiasts) watching the film.

For what it's worth, I saw a trailer for this before Sicario on Saturday, and I did pick up on the fact that different film formats were being used even though I wasn't previously aware of it and normally do not fancy my ability to notice such things. The trailer, with its changing levels of graininess and usual Danny Boyle erratic pacing, was rather off-putting for me even if I were otherwise interested in the subject matter (which I am not).

[hearthesilence]

This wound up feeling pretty lightweight, but it wasn't bad. The best reason to see this is the cast - as usual, the consistent Jeff Daniels, Kate Winslet and Michael Fassbender all do excellent work. It would be physically impossible for Fassbender to mimic Jobs, either in look or sound, but he does create a character that feels like a good impression. However, he doesn't (or perhaps can't) overcome the limitations of the script, which feels pretty thin. The dialogue is actually entertaining and sharp, and the actors elegantly navigate the pitfalls of Sorkin's dense bluster. (Lesser performances can succumb to it and mow on through, making it sound like wall-to-wall blather.) But except for the corporate maneuvering that's not actually the focus of the film, the explorations of Jobs' personal relationships come off too simple and easy. Even The Social Network had clunkers like "You're not an asshole Mark, you're just trying so hard to be," but lines like that were much easier to overlook, even when it caps the script, because the film as a whole felt like it was exploring so much more than that pat remark. "I'm poorly made" is harder to overlook because Steve Jobs seems to be hinging on it.

As for Boyle's direction, he's definitely much more restrained, but some of his choices still feel awkward. One that sticks out is the cutaways - to be fair, this could be the way it was written. (The Social Network's skipping through time was scripted from the start.) He does handle the actors very well - as mentioned before, they're mostly excellent and work very well together. The format changes seem very obvious on-screen - the 16mm footage definitely looks gauzy, and the HD footage is very well-defined, especially in the close-ups of the lead characters. I was skeptical about its usage, and while I'm not wholly convinced, I have to say it does do a fine job of showing the 'aging' process of the actors - shooting them in 16mm allows them to look younger (the way you'd filter a shot to make any actor look younger), and as many pointed out when HD was adopted, it's very unforgiving to faces when revealing the effects of time.

[hearthesilence]

“I wanted to know more about the launch of the iPad and the newer products. I think they focused too much on the old stuff.”

(Not from a satirical piece.)