Gone Girl

Variety really seems to like it. Two reasons I read the book: I heard Fincher was directing it, and Pike was starring in it. It's being looked at heavily for Oscar nominations this year.

Anyone else plan on seeing it?

http://variety.com/2014/film/reviews/film-review-gone-girl-1201308847/

Graced with a mordant wit as dry and chilled as a good Chablis, as well as outstanding performances from Ben Affleck and a revelatory Rosamund Pike, Fox’s Oct. 3 wide release should push past its preordained Oscar-contender status to galvanize the mainstream.

....Still, as its title suggests, “Gone Girl” belongs to its leading lady. Pike is the sort of elegantly composed blonde beauty with whom Hitchcock would have had a field day, and some may well quibble that the actress’s cool British hauteur doesn’t fully capture Amy’s America’s-sweetheart side. Yet as evidenced by her years of solid supporting work, she also possesses the sort of ferocious charisma that magnetizes the screen, and it’s a thrill to watch her fully embrace the showiest, most substantial role of her career. Hers is the low, seductive voice we hear coaxing us through the story’s early passages, and hers is the character who ultimately exhibits the most dynamic range: In any given scene, her Amy can seem vulnerable, aggrieved, calculating, heroic, overmatched, viperous and terrifying.

Flynn’s novel has drawn criticism in some quarters for its alleged misogyny, a highly debatable charge that is largely neutralized here by the atmosphere of gender-blind misanthropy that pervades much of the director’s work. And in the end, Pike’s performance is too singular and vivid to be reduced to simplistic terms of degradation or empowerment; suffice to say that Amy Dunne earns her place alongside Mark Zuckerberg and Lisbeth Salander in Fincher’s gallery of pitiable-yet-monstrous protagonists, whose refusal to beg for the audience’s sympathy is exactly what makes them such undeniable objects of fascination.



ROLLING STONE:
For Pike, a Brit best known for supporting roles (Pride & Prejudice, An Education), this is a smashing, award-caliber breakthrough you'll be talking about for years. Does she possess the role of Amy, or does the role possess her? Either way, she's dazzling, depraved and dynamite.

Certain books I buy or are given because they are things I have to read rather than want to. Anything by Malcolm Gladwell for example. Gone Girl falls into that category. Got two or three copies kicking around. I suppose I better read it before the film comes out.

Interested to see Pike is in it. She looks so old these days. Childbirth really wrecks some women.

Erica Ambler wrote:

Certain books I buy or are given because they are things I have to read rather than want to. Anything by Malcolm Gladwell for example. Gone Girl falls into that category. Got two or three copies kicking around. I suppose I better read it before the film comes out.

Interested to see Pike is in it. She looks so old these days. Childbirth really wrecks some women.

Old? Well, she is pushing 35, so yeah, I guess she is. But I don't think it was the childbirth that prematurely aged her; it was getting involved with that older man that she got pregnant with, when she could've gone on to an even bigger mistake with a much older guy like me.

I mean, seriously, I would push a nun in front of a speeding bus if I thought Rosamund would look twice at me.

Yeah I will see it, but I should read the book first. There was a radio station in Melbourne that began discussing it and promoting it because the host was so in love it with that he had to get others reading it, so he started something up on twitter (not sure what it was though). He ended up getting so many people buying it that it sold out in a lot of stores, and the publisher sending some for them to give away.

Plus it'll be good to see Rosamond Pike

Erica Ambler wrote:

Interested to see Pike is in it. She looks so old these days. Childbirth really wrecks some women.

I think you should try toast instead of iron filings for breakfast.

I said 'some' not 'all'. Many women benefit tremendously. Particularly those who can afford nannies. Like Pike.

Of course, could be that Pike was very badly lit in The Worlds End. Also she's not helped by the Daily Mail running Eon's Die Another Day publicity pic with its Gone Girl reports. Cinema goers are going to think she's aged 15 years in just two months.

Pike looks her age.
Thankfully there is a never-ending supplies of 18-year olds for those men who insist on peak nubility.

Not 18. Men make a sensible compromise between stupidity and nubility.

The academic journal Evolution and Human Behavior reports that men - regardless of their own age - think the ideal woman is in her mid-20s. Sample size was 12,500 and seems to be biologically sound given that 24 is peak fertility.

But God forbid we should generalise...

A sample of 12,500 is far higher than average. That said, these things are completely meaningless when it comes to measuring individual attraction. I use my penis for that.

I don't think you do. I think you use your brain.

Correct. But I thought penis was funnier.

I'm not Brian.

That makes two of us. I don't know about the rest of the forum.

Erica Ambler wrote:

Not 18. Men make a sensible compromise between stupidity and nubility.

The academic journal Evolution and Human Behavior reports that men - regardless of their own age - think the ideal woman is in her mid-20s. Sample size was 12,500 and seems to be biologically sound given that 24 is peak fertility.

I thought you would require peak pertness, Ambler. Surely you know that by 25, gravity will have started taking its toll.

Salomé wrote:

Erica Ambler wrote:

Not 18. Men make a sensible compromise between stupidity and nubility.

The academic journal Evolution and Human Behavior reports that men - regardless of their own age - think the ideal woman is in her mid-20s. Sample size was 12,500 and seems to be biologically sound given that 24 is peak fertility.

I thought you would require peak pertness, Ambler. Surely you know that by 25, gravity will have started taking its toll.

I'm interested in the individual, pert or otherwise.

Ten years ago, my partner was 11 years younger than me and my mistress was 15 years older, which is the reverse of the norm. It's fair to say that their age wasn't a factor. That said, I think women get both kinder and more imaginative with time. Perhaps they have to.

Erica Ambler wrote:

Salomé wrote:

Erica Ambler wrote:

Not 18. Men make a sensible compromise between stupidity and nubility.

The academic journal Evolution and Human Behavior reports that men - regardless of their own age - think the ideal woman is in her mid-20s. Sample size was 12,500 and seems to be biologically sound given that 24 is peak fertility.

I thought you would require peak pertness, Ambler. Surely you know that by 25, gravity will have started taking its toll.

I'm interested in the individual, pert or otherwise.

Ten years ago, my partner was 11 years younger than me and my mistress was 15 years older, which is the reverse of the norm. It's fair to say that their age wasn't a factor. That said, I think women get both kinder and more imaginative with time. Perhaps they have to.

Couldn't that just be growing up, gaining more maturity and life experience in the process?

Salomé wrote:

Erica Ambler wrote:

I think women get both kinder and more imaginative with time. Perhaps they have to.

Couldn't that just be growing up, gaining more maturity and life experience in the process?

I'm sure that's part of it, but the most frequent complaint I hear from English women once they're past 40 is that they feel invisible. It can make them overly grateful for attention, sometimes even of the worst kind.

Caught this last night. Pike was great, but if you're not so fond of Fincher's unrelenting coldness, that's moot, of course. Especially the parts where she turns into a fatty from the bayou.

Anyone else seen this, or is just me and Wade?

Saw it, enjoyed it.

Pike's American accent was pretty unconvincing though.

I'm not sold on Gone Girl (it's a bit overlong, and, as usual, Fincher's aesthetic is severe and mannered to the point of being suffocating), but as a contemporary dialogue with Hitchcockian narrative tropes, you could do worse. The final stretch is very funny.