Film Excess - Free Ukraine - Stop Putin - End the war NOW!!: The Bling Ring (2013)

6/11/2013

The Bling Ring (2013) - An S. Coppola misfire; boooooooring

♥♥

A promising, amusingly made sunglasses centered poster for Sofia Coppola's The Bling Ring

A group of privileged Los Angeles resident teenagers rob celebrities for about 3 mil. $ worth of luxury goods before getting busted.

The Bling Ring is written, co-produced and directed by New-Yorker master filmmaker Sofia Coppola (The Virgin Suicides (1999)), whose 5th film it is. It is based on the Vanity Fair article, The Suspects Wore Louboutins (2010) by Nancy Jo Sales (American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Life of Teenagers (2016), which details the real-life case of the seven person gang, who burglarized around 50 homes of the rich and famous from 2008-09.
Coppola apparently fell for the contemporary quality of the glittery, ridiculous fringe story, but the obvious challenge in order to make such a film work is, of course; how to make the spoiled, robbing, coke-sniffing ~~brats~~ youths likable or at least entertaining enough in order for people to bother seeing their fairly predictable downwards spiral and invest a bit in what happens to them. This utterly fails, and based on this Coppola quote, it seems the filmmaker did not realize how disengaging and frankly boring the film becomes, when the audience have no stake involved in the protagonists: “They were 16 and perhaps their brains hadn’t formed completely yet.”
If anything is to be learned from The Bling Ring, it must be not to start a huge film with main characters that you as the filmmaker feel are dumb, and not terribly amusing, (which functions as the attraction in, for instance, many of the Coen brothers' moronic characters pieces.)
A good thing in The Bling Ring is the fact that Emma Watson (The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)), one of the loveliest young actresses out there today, gives a great performance as one of the misguided girls. She lifts several scenes, and if anything does, she is what makes the film worth watching. Leslie Mann (This Is 40 (2012) plays one of the really loopy LA-parents. If anyone besides themselves are to blame for these adolescents' misbehavior, it would be the parents, though the Hollywood Hills area probably also inflicts some insanity.
The film is shot by cinematographers Christopher Blauvelt (Meek's Cutoff (2010)) and Harris Savides, (Greenberg (2010)), a truly great photographer who died of brain cancer during production, and the film is therefore dedicated to him.
Bling Ring does also gather some short-lived, initial interest because we get to visit the lavish fashion, jewelry, and mansions, (Coppola got permission to shoot two weeks in Paris Hilton's house, despite the fact that she had been among the actual victims of the criminal group.) But nothing much dramatically happens for most of the film, as we simply witness more and more break-ins and drugs taken, - and never a single hangover or any scenes that make us sympathize with the characters.
They have likely continually seemed shallow and unlikable during the film's research process and therefore still do. This makes the whole affair very boring and pointless. The Bling Ring is based on the really unreliable premise that it shows a fascinating, contemporary phenomenon, (celebrity/reality-culture craze/obsession.) But this, in my opinion, is not nearly fascinating enough for this unfunny, undramatic ride to work.

Related posts:

Sofia Coppola: 2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED IV]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]

2013 in films - according to Film Excess

Top 10: Best 'flop' rank movies

2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
Somewhere (2010) - S. Coppola's phenomenal existential character study

Watch the trailer for the movie here

Cost: 8 mil. $

Box office: 20.1

= Box office success (returned 2.51 times its cost)

[Bling Ring premiered 16 May (Cannes Film Festival's Un Certain Regard section) and runs 90 minutes. Shooting took place from March - April 2012 in California, including in Los Angeles. The film opened #21 to a 214k $ first weekend in 5 theaters in North America, where it peaked at #10 and in 650 cinemas, grossing 5.8 mil. $ (28.9 % of the total gross). Its 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Italy with 4.1 mil. $ (20.4 %) and France with 2.7 mil. $ (13.4 %). Coppola returned with a music video, a commercial and a TV special prior to her theatrical return, The Beguiled (2017). Watson returned in This Is the End (2013). The Bling Ring is fresh at 60 % with a 6.20/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of The Bling Ring?

No comments:

Donald Sutherland has passed away

Born in Canada, Sutherland battled polio as a child. His first credit was in Suspense (1963, TV-series) and his first film was The Castle of the Living Dead (1964). Later credits in his remarkable career include The Saint (1965-66), The Dirty Dozen (1967), M*A*S*H (1970), Kelly's Heroes (1970), Klute (1971), Don't Look Now (1973), 1900 (1976), Casanova (1976), The Eagle Has Landed (1976), Ordinary People (1980), A Dry White Season (1989), JFK (1991), Outbreak (1995), Fallen (1998), Virus (1999), Fierce People (2005), Pride & Prejudice (2005), Lord of War (2005), The Hunger Games (2012), The Undoing (2020, miniseries) and many more. He passed away at age 88. R.I.P.

Roger Corman has passed away

Born in Detroit, Michigan, Corman had a sprawling, intellectually hungry life as a youth and young man before arriving with his first film in 1955, Five Guns West. He would follow that with titles such as Apache Woman, It Conquered the World, Attack of the Crab Monsters, Teenage Cave Man, A Bucket of Blood, House of Usher, The Little Shop of Horrors, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Intruder, The Raven, The Terror, The Masque of Red Death, The Tomb of Ligeia, The Wild Angels, The Trip, Bloody Mama and many more. As a producer he was behind almost 500 films. Arguably among the most important filmmakers of the 20th century, Corman passed away at age 98. R.I.P.

William Friedkin has died

Born in Chicago, Friedkin accrued TV credits prior to his advance to the big screen as the director of Good TImes (1967), The Birthday Party (1968), The Night They Raided Minsky's (1968) and The Boys in the Band (1970) before his major breakthrough, The French Connection (1971), for which he won his only Oscar. He followed it up with the even bigger smash, The Exorcist (1973), arguably the best horror film of all time, for which he was Oscar-nominated. Later credits include Sorcerer (1977), Cruising (1980), To Live and Die in L.A. (1985), Rampage (1987), Rules of Engagement (2000), Killer Joe (2011) and The Devil and Father Amorth (2017, documentary). Friedkin passed away at age 87. R.I.P.

Louise Fletcher has passed away

Born in Alabama to deaf parents, Fletcher got her first credits in late-1950s TV-series.She took a 10 year-long sabbatical to devote her time to motherhood after the release of A Gathering of Eagles, but then came back and soon saw her career's most important part, as Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), for which she won her sole Oscar. Later credits include Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), The Lucky Star (1980), Brainstorm (1983), Two Moon Junction (1988), Cruel Intentions (1999), A Perfect Man (2013) and many more. Fletcher passed away at age 88. R.I.P.

Jean-Luc Godard has passed away

Born in Paris, France, Godard lived much of his life in Switzerland. He wrote for French film criticism magazine Cahiers du Cinema and became foundational for the New French Wave that inspired new waves in scores of other countries across the world with his Breathless (1960). Later credits include A Woman Is A Woman (1961), Vivre Sa Vie (1962), Le Petit Soldat (1962), Contempt (1963), Alphaville (1965), Pierrot le Fou (1965), 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (1967), Weekend (1967), Every Man for Himself (1980), King Lear (1987), Century of Cinema (1995, documentary), Goodbye to Language (2014) and many more. Godard died of assisted suicide at age 91. R.I.P.

Wolfgang Petersen has died

James Caan has died

Caan was born the son of Jewish immigrants from Germany in New York. He got his start on TV in the early 1960s. His credits include El Dorado (1966), The Rain People (1969), Brian's Song (1971, TV movie), The Godfather (1972), - for which he earned his only Oscar nomination, - Slither (1973), The Gambler (1974), Funny Lady (1975), Rollerball (1975), Silent Movie (1976), Hide in Plain Sight (1980), - the only film he also directed, - Thief (1981), Misery (1990), Honeymoon in Vegas (1992), Bottle Rocket (1996), Eraser (1996), Dogville (2003), Elf (2003), Las Vegas (2003-07), Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009) and many more. Caan passed away at age 82. R.I.P.

Jean-Louis Trintignant has died

Born in Vaucluse, France, Trintignant's theatrical debut as an actor was in If All the Guys in the World... (1955). Later credits include ...And God Created Woman (1956), The Seven Deadly Sins (1961), Inferno (1964), A Man and A Woman (1966), My Love, My Love (1967), A Man to Kill (1967), The Great Silence (1968), Z (1969), The Assassination (1972), Three Colors: Red (1994), Amour (2012), Happy End (2017) and many more. He also wrote and directed two films in the 1970s. Trintignant passed away at age 91. R.I.P.

Ray Liotta has died

Adopted from an orphenage at a young age, Liotta got hooked on acting in high school. He had various TV credits in the late 1970s and early 80s, with his film debut in The Lonely Lady (1983). Later credits include Something Wild (1986), Field of Dreams (1989), Goodfellas (1990), Cop Land (1997), Hannibal (2001), Blow (2001), Narc (2002), John Q (2002), Identity (2003), Observe and Report (2009), Youth in Revolt (2009), The Details (2011), Killing THem Softly (2012), The Place Beyond the Pines (2012), Shades of Blue (2016-18), The Simpsons (2018, TV-series), Marriage Story (2019), The Many Saints of Newark (2021), Black Bird (2022, TV-series) and many more. Liotta passed away at age 67 in his sleep while on production in the Dominican Republic. R.I.P.

Philip Baker Hall has died

Born in Ohio, Hall didn't start acting until he was 30. His long list of credits include Zabriskie Point (1970), Miami Vice (1987, TV-series), Midnight Run (1988), Ghostbusters II (1989), Cheers (1993, TV-series), Hard Eight (1996), The Rock (1996), Air Force One (1997), Boogie Nights (1997), Seinfeld (1991-98), Rush Hour (1998), The Insider (1999), Magnolia (1999), The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), Bruce Almighty (2003), Dogville (2003), The Zodiac (2005), Zodiac (2007), Curb Your Enthusiasm (2004-09), Mr. Popper's Penguins (2011), Modern Family (2011-12) and many more. Hall passed away at age 90. R.I.P.

Film Excess - Free Ukraine - Stop Putin - End the war NOW!!

Eagerly anticipating this month ... (3-25)

6/11/2013

The Bling Ring (2013) - An S. Coppola misfire; boooooooring

No comments:

Post a Comment

Eagerly anticipating this week ... (2-25)

My Blog List