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Sound of Metal (2020)

ElectricBoogaloo

By ElectricBoogaloo
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snickers

snickers

This movie is on Prime, i highly recommend, it is slow moving so it might be good for a saturday or sunday afternoon viewing....

I hope Riz wins, I think I read he spent six months learning ASL for the role and it shows

As someone who is somewhat familiar with the Deaf community, i think this movie did a really good job showing the effects of hearing loss and

Spoiler

how getting the cochlea implant is a not a "quick fix" and i really liked how it showed once it is first turned on, that voices sound more mechanical

 

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SunnyBeBe

SunnyBeBe

I watched this movie recently.  I thought it was pretty good.  
 

I wish he had stayed in that supportive community.  It had a lot to offer, but I must say that I don’t understand why they were opposed to regaining their hearing. I’ve heard of this philosophy before and I don’t get it.   

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snickers

snickers

On 2/7/2021 at 11:30 PM, SunnyBeBe said:

It had a lot to offer, but I must say that I don’t understand why they were opposed to regaining their hearing. I’ve heard of this philosophy before and I don’t get it.  

Well, the guy who ran the community sort of explained it...the Deaf community (the way I understand it, don't want to speak for them)....do not look at Deafness as an impairment so there is "nothing to fix" and cochlear implants are VERY controversial and have been ever since they came on the market....

 

 

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ElectricBoogaloo

ElectricBoogaloo

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Producers Guild of America nomination!

Darryl F. Zanuck Award for Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Motion Pictures

“Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” (Amazon Studios)
Producers: Sacha Baron Cohen, Monica Levinson, Anthony Hines

“Judas and the Black Messiah” (Warner Bros)
Producers: Charles D. King, Ryan Coogler, Shaka King

“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” (Netflix)
Producers: Denzel Washington, Todd Black

“Mank” (Netflix)
Producers: Ceán Chaffin, Eric Roth, Douglas Urbanski

“Minari” (A24)
Producer: Christina Oh

“Nomadland” (Searchlight Pictures)
Producers: Mollye Asher, Dan Janvey, Frances McDormand, Peter Spears, Chloé Zhao

“One Night in Miami” (Amazon Studios)
Producers: Jess Wu Calder, Keith Calder, Jody Klein

“Promising Young Woman” (Focus Features)
Producers: Josey McNamara, Ben Browning, Ashley Fox, Emerald Fennell

“Sound of Metal” (Amazon Studios)
Producers: Bert Hamelinck, Sacha Ben Harroche

“The Trial of the Chicago 7” (Netflix)
Producers: Marc Platt, Stuart Besser

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ElectricBoogaloo

ElectricBoogaloo

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(edited)

BAFTA nomination!

LEADING ACTOR
RIZ AHMED Sound of Metal
CHADWICK BOSEMAN Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
ADARSH GOURAV The White Tiger
ANTHONY HOPKINS The Father
MADS MIKKELSEN Another Round
TAHAR RAHIM The Mauritanian

SUPPORTING ACTOR
DANIEL KALUUYA Judas and the Black Messiah
BARRY KEOGHAN Calm With Horses
ALAN KIM Minari
LESLIE ODOM JR. One Night in Miami…
CLARKE PETERS Da 5 Bloods
PAUL RACI Sound of Metal

Edited by ElectricBoogaloo
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ElectricBoogaloo

ElectricBoogaloo

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Directors Guild of America nomination!

Outstanding Directorial Achievement of a First-Time Feature Film Director
Radha Blank, The Forty-Year-Old Version (Netflix)
Fernando Frias de la Parra, I’m No Longer Here (Netflix)
Regina King, One Night in Miami (Amazon Studios)
Darius Marder, Sound of Metal (Amazon Studios)
Florian Zeller, The Father (Sony Pictures Classics)

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ElectricBoogaloo

ElectricBoogaloo

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Oscar nominations!

Best Picture
“The Father”
“Judas and the Black Messiah”
“Mank”
“Minari”
“Nomadland”
“Promising Young Woman”
“Sound of Metal”
“The Trial of the Chicago 7″

Best Actor
Riz Ahmed (“Sound of Metal”)
Chadwick Boseman (“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”)
Anthony Hopkins (“The Father”)
Gary Oldman (“Mank”)
Steven Yeun (“Minari”)

Best Supporting Actor
Sacha Baron Cohen (“The Trial of the Chicago 7”)
Daniel Kaluuya (“Judas and the Black Messiah”)
Leslie Odom Jr. (“One Night in Miami”)
Paul Raci (“Sound of Metal”)
Lakeith Stanfield (“Judas and the Black Messiah”)

Best Original Screenplay
Will Berson, Shaka King, Keith Lucas, and Kenny Lucas (“Judas and the Black Messiah”)
Lee Isaac Chung (“Minari”)
Emerald Fennell (“Promising Young Woman”)
Derek Cianfrance, Abraham Marder, Darius Marder (“Sound of Metal”)
Aaron Sorkin (“The Trial of the Chicago 7”)

Best Film Editing
“The Father”
“Nomadland”
“Promising Young Woman”
“Sound of Metal”
“The Trial of the Chicago 7”

Best Sound
“Greyhound”
“Mank”
“News of the World”
“Soul”
“Sound of Metal”

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caracas1914

caracas1914

(edited)

Loved this film.

Avoided the cliche of “rising above your affliction “ to more of the theme ( to me at least) of listening as opposed to simply hearing.

Riz Ahmed so inhabited his role and deserves all the accolades.

Just as impressive was veteran actor Paul Raci who plays the Director of the Deaf Community.  He’s one of those actors you’ve seen dozens of times through the decades but can’t quite place.  The Director emits such a weather beaten humanity and empathy in trying to help Ahmed’s character.

I’m one of those who are usually annoyed by “background stories” during award season, but reading after the fact how the 72 year old Paul Raci  was chosen  over several higher profile character actors , partly because he was raised by two deaf parents and is proficient in ASL since childhood, not gonna lie, I hope the man wins the Oscar.

So judge me. 

Edited by caracas1914
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kathyk24

kathyk24

On 2/10/2021 at 12:21 AM, snickers said:

Well, the guy who ran the community sort of explained it...the Deaf community (the way I understand it, don't want to speak for them)....do not look at Deafness as an impairment so there is "nothing to fix" and cochlear implants are VERY controversial and have been ever since they came on the market....

 

 

I've had deaf colleagues and Deaf people have their own language and culture. They don't see anything wrong with being deaf especially if other family members are deaf as well. Cochlear implants are trying to fix something that isn't broken. Hearing impaired people can benefit from cochlear implants.

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Empress1

Empress1

(edited)

Watched this over the weekend and really liked it. I liked that it was subtle, that it did a lot of showing rather than telling (you learned that Lou and Ruben likely met in rehab, since they were together for as long as he'd been clean and she also had self-harm scars). I'm a fan of Riz Ahmed and I think he did really good work - I loved seeing him progress learning ASL.

I think it also showed how valuable community can be - the sobriety community when Ruben got clean, and the Deaf community he joined. You don't see the sobriety community as much, but you do realize how he leans on it when he's in crisis, reaching out to his sponsor when he got the news of his hearing loss and the sponsor and Lou recognizing that he had to go somewhere to get help to cope.

Edited by Empress1
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ElectricBoogaloo

ElectricBoogaloo

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I finally had a chance to watch this movie and if nothing else, I hope it gets all the sound editing awards that it's up for. I remember when people made such a big deal about how amazing the sound editing was for Saving Private Ryan, and Sound of Metal went far beyond that to show the audience what Ruben was going through.

I think people often really take for granted that they can see and hear without an issue, so putting yourself in Ruben's shoes and imagining what it would be like to lose your hearing will hopefully create some empathy for what it's like to suddenly have to navigate the world that way.

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Milburn Stone

Milburn Stone

(edited)

This movie blew me away, and I didn't expect it to. I especially didn't expect it to when enduring the first 5 minutes of avant-garde heavy metal, which is not my cup of tea to say the least. But that's not what the movie is about.

To older people: I think you, like me, will be caught up in the story, because most of us have some hearing loss and the fear of it getting worse is always present for us, at least in the background.

To younger people: If, like all young people, you think that listening to very loud music will not harm you, you're wrong.

Edited by Milburn Stone
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ElectricBoogaloo

ElectricBoogaloo

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11 hours ago, Milburn Stone said:

To younger people: If, like all young people, you think that listening to very loud music will not harm you, you're wrong.

The younger generation is likely to suffer hearing loss down the road due to their lifelong use of earbuds. 

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ElectricBoogaloo

ElectricBoogaloo

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Cinema Audio Society award!

MOTION PICTURE – LIVE ACTION: Sound of Metal

Production Mixer – Phillip Bladh CAS
Re-Recording Mixer – Jaime Baksht Segovia
Re-Recording Mixer – Michelle Couttolenc Esparza
Re-Recording Mixer – Carlos Cortés Navarrete
Foley Mixer – Kari Vähäkuopus

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Schweedie

Schweedie

I really want to watch this, but man, as someone with a congenital hearing impairment/partial deafness I found the first fifteen minutes genuinely anxiety-inducing - especially the scene at the doctor's where the doctor is reading words aloud and Ruben keeps getting them wrong, because I've been there and done that and it was terrifying. My hearing deteriorating is one of my biggest fears. But perhaps that's why I should push through and watch the entire thing?

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Hanahope

Hanahope

I finally watched this and have mixed feelings.  while i thought it was a good movie to show that the deaf community is very supportive of each other and that silence can be better than noise,

i also thought it seemed restrictive, at least to Ruben.  it appeared that once he went into the house, all outside contact was denied, or at least severely discouraged.  he had his phone taken away (we are never shown it being given back to him or the keys to the airstream - though he had a hidden second set); he had to sneak around to use a computer and communicate with non-deaf people.  perhaps had he been provided with the ability to investigate the implant more, he would have learned that it was not the solution he thought it was.  same with being able to communicate with Lou, even by telephone or email.  but it seemed like he was not provided with such ability, and his choices very limited.  

the movie communicated that Lou did not really want to return to her former life with Ruben, though it wasn't really explained much either what it was that caused her compulsive scratching in that life.  was it Ruben or the way of life?  maybe we needed to see more of the before, or more of what she did while in Paris.  but i know its Ruben's story, not hers.

 

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angora

angora

24 minutes ago, Hanahope said:

i also thought it seemed restrictive, at least to Ruben.  it appeared that once he went into the house, all outside contact was denied, or at least severely discouraged.  he had his phone taken away (we are never shown it being given back to him or the keys to the airstream - though he had a hidden second set); he had to sneak around to use a computer and communicate with non-deaf people.  perhaps had he been provided with the ability to investigate the implant more, he would have learned that it was not the solution he thought it was.  same with being able to communicate with Lou, even by telephone or email.  but it seemed like he was not provided with such ability, and his choices very limited.  

It was a bit of a tricky situation, since Ruben was there in part to "learn how to be Deaf," but it was also a sober house/in-treatment rehab facility. I think that's where the restrictions came from--not, "You're in the Deaf world now, so you must ONLY interact with Deaf people!", but, "You're in rehab right now, so you can't go wherever you want/call whoever you want because we don't want you to fall off the wagon." That was the main reason Ruben got hooked up with that place, because Lou and his sponsor were worried that the experience would cause him to relapse but mainstream/hearing recovery resources wouldn't be accessible to him.

That said, it bothered me that the Deaf recovery resources weren't really accessible to him at first either. Immersion can be effective for learning sign language, but when you're at NA meetings and stuff, it's important to actually know what people are saying. In that first meeting we saw Ruben attending, Joe interpreted HIS words to the other Deaf participants, but there was no indication that Ruben was given access to understanding anyone else's shares. So from a recovery standpoint, what was the point of him being there as opposed to a hearing NA meeting/rehab place? Obviously, Ruben could no longer understand spoken English but didn't know ASL yet. It would've benefited him to have an interpreter voicing the signed communication so that a live captioner could type it out for him on a screen. Access is so important to the Deaf community, and it really seemed like Joe and co. dropped the ball on Ruben's language needs in those early scenes.

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Hanahope

Hanahope

I do get that it was also a rehab facility, but aren't rehab patients allowed contact after a certain amount of time?  and yes there was the concern Ruben would relapse, but he was clean for 4 years.  i would think that at least after some amount of time at the facility, he would be given back his phone and allowed free computer access.  but maybe that was only allowed if he accepted the job.

they didn't indicate whether Lou ever made an attempt to contact Ruben again.  Did she just not want to, or was she told she could not?

and even with it being a rehab facility, the moment Ruben showed real resistance to accepting the silence forever, he was kicked out.  so it didn't seem like they were concerned as much with his potentially relapsing into drugs without support, as much as full acceptance of their philosophy on deafness.

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Simon Boccanegra

Simon Boccanegra

I saw this movie a while back, on initial release, but I think their relationship just wasn't as strong as they thought it was. Or it was very strong at one time, but that time has passed. By their Paris reunion, she's someone else, healthier and happier. The father's kind remarks to Ruben (essentially "I used not to like you, but now I can see you were good for her," past tense) suggest she's been more honest and direct with the father about Ruben than she can bring herself to be with Ruben. She still cares about him, but it's probably been a while since she was thinking about him every day. The final scene has Ruben alone, beginning to accept that he's someone else too, and Lou won't be part of this chapter of his life.

And that's the movie, really: a character who was desperately (if understandably) trying to reclaim things he'd lost, rather than accepting new things. 

It's a very good movie, although its timeline feels rushed, and some scenes are effective without being convincing. The biggest example is the one in which the implant is activated, and he's disappointed in the buzzy, distorted quality of the sound, no matter the adjustment the tech makes. I didn't buy that he'd be that unprepared. It's a major procedure, and he appears to have had less preop counseling than people get before they have a skin tag removed or a colonoscopy.  

It was interesting to me that Derek Cianfrance, the talented writer/director of Blue Valentine and The Place Beyond the Pines (and the upcoming Ryan Gosling Wolfman, another "serious" reboot à la the recent Invisible Man), based this story on his own life. Cianfrance was a heavy-metal drummer and he damaged his hearing, although he got out before it reached Ruben's level. He was originally going to make the film himself as Metalhead, but his co-writer Darius Marder (who also co-wrote Place Beyond the Pines) ended up directing. Very well, especially considering it was a first feature.

There's a strong thread running through Cianfrance's projects (which also include the HBO miniseries adaptation of I Know This Much Is True). He tells stories about characters living close to the ground, typically with modest financial means, intense emotions, and strained or fragile ties to loved ones. They're tough movies, probably too grim for a lot of people, but I've admired them.

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Mulva

Mulva

On 2/7/2021 at 11:30 PM, SunnyBeBe said:

I watched this movie recently.  I thought it was pretty good.  
 

I wish he had stayed in that supportive community.  It had a lot to offer, but I must say that I don’t understand why they were opposed to regaining their hearing. I’ve heard of this philosophy before and I don’t get it.   

Honestly, that community came across as a cult.  That scene where he had to give up his phone and car keys was ridiculous.  He's deaf, not a relapsing drug addict.  He needs to learn sign language and how to work around his handicap, not isolate himself from the outside world.

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