I just saw Mystic River last night

[China_cat]

did anyone besides me find this movie a BIG waste of time?

[swag]

1. It was awful.

Though it was excellent for groaning, guffawing, and hooting derision.

[Calliope]

6. Watch it for Laura Linney, Tim Robbins, and Marcia Gay Hardin

Sean Penn's performance in my opinion, is decidedly underwhelming.

[ET Awful]

2. It was watchable. . . but depressing as all hell.

I don't see why it was so well liked by so many people.

[ElsewheresDaughter]

3. i thought it was a great movie but depressing

[still_one]

4. the acting was outstanding

[Tallison]

5. Laura Linney & Marcia Gay Harden were the best things about it

Sean Penn normally does such stellar work, but his performance in MR I thought was a real disappointment.

[Kathy in Cambridge]

13. Laura Linney's accent was so bad it was distracting

I winced whenever she spoke.

[Tallison]

16. That's too bad

Being from the south I remained blissfully ignorant of it.

[Kathy in Cambridge]

17. It was SO BAD!!!

Sean Penn's was fine, so was Tim Robbins'.

Here was a thread I started on it a few weeks ago:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=105&topic_id=3670471

[China_cat]

19. Yeah, I kept wondering if she was supposed to be doing Irish.

[Tallison]

21. LOL

The wav links especially. "Everybody get out of here. The bar's on fire!"
:rofl:

On edit: I wasn't even going to try spelling out the phonetics of that..

[Kathy in Cambridge]

23. That link cracks me up too

:rofl:

[Montauk6]

7. I thought it was great...

and one of the most cynical endings I've seen in a while. It was as if Eastwood stepped back and let Bigas Luna drive it home.

[caty]

8. I read the book a few months before I

saw the movie. Great book, but in the movie they changed one detail and left out an explanation of something that I think would have helped the movie.

[Darth_Kitten]

10. What was that detail they left out?

I saw the movie, very depressing. :(

[caty]

12. It has to do with the relationship between

Kevin Bacon's character, Sean, and his wife. Remember the phone calls he would get from her where she never spoke. His wife had left him for another man. Then she left that man and went back to Sean. Then she found out she was pregnant with the other man's baby. She wouldn't have an abortion so she went off by herself to have the baby. After the baby was born, she would call Sean but couldn't bring herself to speak. Finally, Sean took her back and you see the three of them together at the end. The movie just left you hanging on what was going on there.
Also, in the book, Katy wasn't shot at first. The two boys shot her car causing her to hit the curb. When she got out of the car, she saw the two boys with the gun. She knew one of the boys because he was her boyfriends brother. The boys then chased her into the park where she hid in the back part of an old drive-in theater. They found her and shot her. This made her death more senseless because they killed her just so they wouldn't get into trouble for having the gun.
This story was an example of the domino effect. One bad thing happens that leads to more bad things happening. What happened to Dave when he was a child, what happened to Katy, and what happened to Sean and his wife.

[China_cat]

14. I think having Dave's story line at the very start of the movie

really did an injustice. You pick him up as a suspect almost at the beginning. It would have been better to play it out all the way through. Make more of a suspense.

[caty]

15. Dave's story was what started the book.

In the book you start thinking Dave killed Katy to get even with Jimmy for not being as close a friend after what happened to him. But, the truth was that Dave's mother kept them from continuing their friendship.

[China_cat]

18. Then that should have been included in the movie

because it just didn't make sense (except to think that Dave was just a loony) the way they played it.

[caty]

20. You mean about their friendship?

Dave's mother would make him come home from school for several years and would not let him go out. She was trying to protect him from the shame of what had happened to him. In the movie, when Dave was brought home after he ran away from those men, you see his mother draw the shade at the window. That act hinted at her decision to keep Dave secluded. Dave didn't realize his mother's intentions and thought that Jimmy and Sean had deserted him. There were a lot details in the book that were not in the movie that would have helped. They barely touched on the relationship between Jimmy and Katy. After he got out of prison it was just the two of them for years. They were extremely close.

[bertha katzenengel]

9. Excellent acting, a very sad story. n/t

[Jade Fox]

11. Totally over-rated....

Boring, badly lit, terrible music.

The book sucked too.

[Trajan]

22. I have seen 'Plan 9 From Outer Space' ....

I would watch it again (if I had time) ...

Why ? .. because Art is wonderful ... Even bad art ....

Because even BAD art is better than child abuse, war, hatred and greed ....

I will never understand why people focus on what they 'hate' about works of art ...

Is it to improve art itself ? ...

I doubt it ...

Let's hear of what Art you LIKE ....