La La Land strikes me as a weird film to take the "It's just a movie" perspective on La La Land makes a lot of bold, complicated choices and tries to say interesting things about love and art and nostalgia and a bunch of other shit. It's greatest strength for me lies in its willingness to use its form as part of this…

Richie was awful, but Reiner and friends understood that and so used him sparingly and generally well.

Contraception. They had one kid, and decided they had absolutely zero interest in more, and barely had any interest in the one they had.

While we're rightfully focused on MTM right now, it's also worth noting that this was emphatically not a mismatched partnership. This isn't a fat slob with a hot wife, as would become a cliche. Dick van Dyke is ALSO incredibly sexy on the Dick van Dyke show. It's an entirely believable portrait of two ridiculously…

Given the amount of sexual chemistry between them, my head canon is that separate beds was the only way for them to get any sleep rather than incessantly getting it on.

Uber-fanboys clearly didn't. But it's kind of interesting to think about the inconsistent visual cues the movie gives, and how most viewers interpret the scene somewhat illogically (I've always sort of passively assumed it was the equatorial trench- I've never thought about it).

All good points- I'm close to persuaded that we're meant to see the big early numbers through the eyes of Emma Stone, to whom they underscore her own insecurities.

That is absolutely not true. The Artist had a cute dog and is only an hour forty.

I mean…probably yes. There are interviews where Chazelle makes it clear the movie got funded because movie stars Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling signed on.

You're misremembering. She starts out happy, but as more disco-y elements are added, we see her standing stock still as people dance around her, staring at Gosling.

What's weird about it, is that it DOES give that respect. And then inexplicably has the character who devotes his life to respecting the black people who made and continue to make jazz…be played by Ryan Gosling.

I mean, to be fair, he is totally a pompous self-important ass about it.

There's nothing wrong with being a white person who loves jazz and wants to run a club. What's frustrating about La La Land is that it takes a racially complicated situation and pretends race doesn't exist. Gosling frequently positions himself as the only white guy in black spaces, as the defender of black culture,…

But why are the leads shown to have so much less technical polish than every random person in LA? If you want things to be grounded, why portray a Hollywood party as a technically bombastic Busby Berkeley pastiche? Out of curiosity, did the opener looks/sound horrible to you?

This is a really strong piece- especially O'Neal's comments. Thanks for doing this.

Just in case it changes your mind, La La Land is not a particularly happy movie in the final analysis

These allegations are credible.

But by quarantining Josh Gad in an obviously insufferable Lasse Halstrom movie, they saved us all from inadvertently watching Josh Gad in something else!

Emma Stone?

But don't you see it's COMPLICATED? We have to examine the context of him raping a child. We are we to say that child rape should be a "crime"?