The MICHAEL MANN Appreciation Thread - Page 2

Coolest thing ever to come out of Delaware? I don't think there can really be any argument.

One of my absolute fave scenes encapsulating everything I love about Mann’s films is the subway sequence in COLLATERAL. Right when Jamie Foxx and Jada Pinkett’s characters leave the elevator, the music ignites with visceral, driving punch, all the while Mann’s camera is shooting both actors running in an almost dance-like pattern, complementing the score’s rhythm and tension.

I'm pretty sure that's somebody doing Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come." I think Al Green.

The period detail in LOTM is incredible (like the formal military courtesys exchanged between the French and the British at the fort's surrender ).As a black powder enthusiast,I still lust after Killdeer, Hawkeye's rifle.
Heat is Mann's best work, though. I agree he has captured how LA looks better then any other Director.
The only one his films I have seen I would not give an A to is "ALI',and that would be a solid B.

That's a good one. Mine is probably in Heat when DeNiro says so long to Voight, and the drive through the tunnel afterwards.

That's my beef with people who complain about Heat's length - those are the kinds of scenes which would get clipped.

I wonder what happened to that gun.

Reading about Day-Lewis' training for the films is interesting stuff...Michael Mann, from the above website:

Sort of olympic training, he would have to sprint a certain distance, then fire at a target.

The physical training Mann gives to his actors is unmatched. Will Smith moved like Ali, Tom Cruiseand his efficient killing moves in "Collateral". Day-Lewis did what we do in the infantry, a stress shoot, which is damn good training and pretty intense for an actorto do I'd think. But its that extra level of realism that just gives them the confidence to be brilliant. Its like on the "Heat" SE where Kilmer talks about a Marine who told him that in basic the drill sergeant made special attention to Kilmer's gunfight magazine change. Carrying an M16 every single day, I can tell you, theyare all indeed damn good and trained on that weapon. It's amazing.

I would bet quite a bit of money that is currently hanging on the wall of either Mann's or Day Lewis's home.
You don't let a beautiful piece of work like that get taken home by some prop guy.
Or, since I am sure then had a couple made in case one was damaged, both Mann and Lewis got one.

Be a good question for an interview. I remember Pacino's car from Heat was up for auction a few years ago.

All right, one more thing and I'll be done wanking over LOTM:

It features Pete Postlethwaite in a non-speaking role. That's like ten kinds of geek cred right there.

I remember reading he and Wes Studi really hit it off, became really good friends on the set.

But isn't it Posthelwaite who arrests Day-Lewis after he helps the settlers escape?

Thank you Brendan for making a thread about arguably the best director of all-time.

For my bones, Heat is the greatest film ever made. Truly a wonderful piece of work that I can't understand why it's been overlooked all these years.

No problem. The Last of the Mohicans and Ali aren't bad films at all but they're not up to the quality that I know Mann can do. Still great films for what they are.

'Bout damn time people started to appriciate Mike Mann.

And don't forget Colm Meany who is listed in the end credits as "Ambrose". I've never been able to find any of Meany's scenes in either version of the Last of the Mohican DVDs, so was he cut from the film or am I just blind? He definitely did film scenes because I found a picture of him on the following site. Just scroll down on the page and you'll see him posing with Wes Studi.

http://www.mohicanpress.com/mo06040.html

Meany, IIRC, appears in a couple of scenes but has no speaking parts. Maurice Roeves, Col. Munro, was also on an episode of ST:TNG...

I hate double dips but LOTM I think deserves another release with Commentary, and some Docs. The sound and the pic are up to snuff particularly in DTS.

A Studi/Posthelwaite team-up directed by Mann would be awesomness to the MAX.

would be great but The Insider is a Warners picture so they always keep it in house

your cover is still to busy for a criterion

LOTM is definitely up there with Mann's best, it's "Ali" I find myself riding in to defend from its lackluster reputation. This thread is encouraging though. I know Subotai, myself, and others have started Mann-themes threads before, but only since "Collateral" have we seen them start getting replies like this.

The Insider was Warners?

THE INSIDER was Disney/Touchstone.

I thought so. I remember Mann being pissed about the ad campaign when it came out. I didn't mind it, Magua waiting with a tomahawk and a knife at the doors to the theatre wouldn't have kept me out, but I can understand how Mann would've wanted a more inspiring, 'Man of the People' (a title which was considered for the film) display. I also remember Pacino appearing on the Rosie O'Donnell show to give a plug on the Monday after the lousy opening weekend.

I also remember Mann having zero chance in hell of winning the Oscar with those negative mentions of Westinghouse in the film. Bastards.

"The Insider" is one of those timely, "important" films that I really don't think will ever be dated. Like how "All the President's Men" is still relevant, while "Network" feels quaint. The performances are too good, the themes too universal, the direction just too good. And yeah, the ad campaighn sucked. I saw it opening weekend but was in a near empty theatre. Mann got a nod, Crowe too, but they really didn't have much of a shot. Remember, "American beauty" was the best film of 1999 in every category right?

I think the stupidity of that particular Oscars has gotten more obvious every year. "The Insider" is holding up better than anything from that year. It's actually getting better.

yeah its touchstone somehow when I looked at my dvd rack insomnia which is black and 2 dvds over the logo looked like it was on the insider

Something I noticed while watching Heat, the moment we first see Neil McCauley, the same shot is used in Collateral when we first see Vincent. Mann also used the same location for the train.

Yeah, Collateral ends where Heat starts.

But on a side note - I watched We Were Soldiers last night, after having watched Last of the Mohicans last weekend. Again, WTF happened to Madeleine Stowe? Did she have surgery on her lips? Why would she mess with perfection?

Interesting, what makes you say this?

I've wondered this myself. It's easy for her to get lost amongst the accolades for LOTM because the men are so good. But she is truly excellent, and probably the best female performance Mann has ever gotten by a long shot.

This is an interesting point too. Mann definitely directs men well, but his movies, aside from LOTM, really have not featured women in any significant way. He casts his wife Diane Venora, but she never felt completely right even in "Heat". Her lines are the only really stiff ones in the film for me, hen the dialogue feels a bit forced. And then in "The Insider", not too good.

I'm not citing this as a negative, just a critical observation given this thread is all about Mann and his work. I'd be interested to see what Mann could do with a leading lady.

Mann mentions the Heat/Collateral same subway location in the Collateral commentary. I think it had just been built, and not even used by the public yet when they filmed the Heat footage.

While I'm here I'll throw out a great scene – in Collateral when Vincent kills the jazz man, the shot where he leans in and looks at him, you can see the muscles and tension in his face soften and his whole body kind of releases, then he jerks himself back into Vincent mode. Just for a second he sympathisizes with the situation. And at that moment you hear 'Steel Cello Lament' from Heat and there's a billow of smoke swirling above his head from the gunshots...Brilliant.

Just that it's the same subway stop at the start and the end of Heat.

Venora was probably the only weak link for me in The Insider. Her performance was a little grating, and not in a good way. But I don't think she's married to Mann. She was married to that guy who directed Doom IIRC. I liked her alright in Heat, though. You can feel her contempt when she explains why she slept with Ralph.

True story about Mann I got from one of my bosses...he was involved on some television show a couple of years back. I'm not sure which. Anyways his girlfriend ended up being involved in the show in some capacity, as an actress I believe. Her birthday rolls around and she wants breast augmentation. Michael Mann bought her one breast and told her she would have to pay for the other one. I thought that was beautiful. It made me respect him MORE.

I think he got a the best Ashley Judd preformance Ive seen in Heat, and the girl who plays Alice Johdi May I thought was better than Madeline Stowe what she does with what little dialouge she has is simply phenomanal

Mann could take the wood out of just about any tree and concoct a genuine acting performance.

Then there's hope for Ashton Kutcher yet.

I'm not just referring to the location at the beginning of Heat and end of Collateral, Mann introduces both McCauley and Vincent in the exact same manner, walking through a crowd in slo-mo.

I think that's abit of a stretch but you never know.

I watched THE INSIDER again today--hadn't seen it in a while. It amazes me how Mann can take what amounts to three hours of people talking and make it more intense, more gripping, than most thrillers.

And I love that Massive Attack cue at the end. Love.

I was flipping through Mike Wallace's new book today, and while he's obviously no fan of the movie, or Pacino's portrayal of Bergman for that matter (not Pacino's work necessarily, but he didn't see anything of Bergman in Pacino's performance), he does give kudos to Crowe and Plummer.

That's very interesting. I mean of course, he'd sound like an idiot trying to argue that either Crowe or Plummer weren't fantastic. But really, Wallace does not come off well in the film, something that has stood out more and more to me on subsequent viewings. So it sort of figures that he wouldn't see any of Lowell Bergman in the Pacino role, in his opinion.

Really though, the film Wallace talks a good game about journalistic integrity, but in the end sides with the company and sells out Wigand. He has a nice speech trying to justify it, and a great scene of indignant anger wth Gershon, but I can see where the real Wallace would hate this movie.

Yeah, but that's the commonly accepted view of Wallace. I remember talking to my dad, a tv historian/critic about it when the movie came out on DVD, and he said that Wallace is and always has been a political player. Look at the way he sides with Don Hewitt (who, although he called the tobacco fiasco the worst moment in 60 Minutes history, hates The Insider) and then tells Hewitt "we fucked up" after the NY Times takes him to town. I don't get any remorse from the way Plummer portrays him at all--he's not upset because they did the wrong thing, he's upset because he looks bad.

It might not be the most flattering portrayal, but from all I've read and heard, it seems to be an honest one.

Also, it seems to me that exact impressions/portrayals were what Mann was going for. When I met Wigand in 2001, he said that while details were changed, both at his request and for "Dramatic licence," that Crowe and the film accurately portray his "emotional state" during that time, and there are a lot of little details throughout (use of slow motion, colors, that brief fantasy sequence), that back that up.

Although when I was talking to the guy for my school's paper, there were moments where if you closed your eyes, you couldn't tell if it was Crowe or Wigand. Pretty impressive for an actor who only met the guy a few times before playing him.

I gotta say, I'm a huge fan of Mike Wallace, and 60 Minutes (who isn't?) and I think we can see this was a moment of frailty where Wallace surrendered to fear and possibility. Not that's any excuse for letting Wigand sway in the wind; but I don't think there can be any doubt from watching the film that Mann holds Wallace, and 60 Minutes and good media in general, in very high regard.

On a side note, I was down at the National Film Board here in Toronto yesterday morning - they have terminals where you can sit and watch hundreds of documentaries. I saw a 1963 doc on Plummer, focusing on his work at the Stratford festival here in Ontario - really a remarkable thespian. He later sort of fell behind his rivals, including his former understudy Hopkins, in terms of film and TV recognition/popularity. It is gratifying to see Plummer come back in work such as The Insider and the upcoming The New World and Syriana.

I agree, but watching it again, I almost feel like Bergman/Pacino is the Mann surrogate for his feelings on the current state of network news. The film seems really summed up in that last line of Pacino's; "What got broken here doesn't get put back..." and I do think that's true, especially given what's happened to CBS recently.

There was a piece in the New York Times Book Review about the new book about the Bush National Guard scandal, and the reviewer made a point of describing how that, too, was born out of the tenuous relationship between reporter and source. I thought that was particuarly interesting given The Insider, the review seemed to make the point that in the recent case, the reporter/CBS went after "infotainment" and ratings rather than responsible reporting, and got burned for it.

And, of course, one only needs to look at Les Moonves's recent comments on how he wants to remake CBS News and how he's drawing on "Naked News" for potential inspiration.

But Mann (at least in my reading of it) seems to be using what happened with Wigand to show how much news has changed since the days of Cronkite and Murrow, and while he has great appreciation for Bergman and the legacy of 60 Minutes, his overall conclusion seems to be that what's changed in network news hasn't been for the better, and that CBS blinking here really began the shift from "news" to "infotainment." Imagine if it had gone the other way, if CBS and Wallace stood up to Brown and Willamson--things may have been a lot different, and I doubt that any court would have convicted them on the grounds of "tortious interference."

Those are some thoughts. You could even make the case that Mann's subtly allding to that shifting change in news with the shot of the paper of the Simpson aquittal. I find it interesting that of all the things he could have used to establish time, he chose to do that instead of using a cue card or subtitle.

Wonderfully said there Rath. I watched The Insider oh maybe 6 or so months ago and thats almost exactly the same thing I came away with.