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One Last "All is Lost " thread

26K views 168 replies 74 participants last post by  jzk 
#1 ·
From the NY Post:

Robert Redford was snubbed by the Oscars on Thursday, and he then bashed the distributors of his film, “All Is Lost,” saying, “We had no campaign.”

Redford was put into a nightmare p.r. situation on Thursday when the same day he’d been overlooked by the Oscars in the best actor category, he had to address the media at the annual opening press conference of his Sundance Film Festival.

Appearing at the Egyptian Theater in Park City, Utah, a moderator asked Redford about his exclusion from the Oscar nominations as the very first question. But while he said, “I’m not disturbed by it,” Redford couldn’t help but take a swipe at the film’s indie distributors, Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions. “Let me speak frankly about how I feel about it,” Redford said, before adding, “In our case, we suffered from little to no distribution… I don’t know why… they didn’t want to spend the money or they were afraid… were just incapable, I don’t know.” “It would have been wonderful to be nominated of course,” he said at the Sundance press conference. “It is a business and we couldn’t conform to that… I was happy to be able to do this film because it was independent and it stood the chance of having a wider distribution had they stepped up.”

He summed up, “So that’s what’s on my mind… the rest of it is not my business… it’s somebody else’s business. I’m fine.” And he also mused, “Hollywood is what it is. It’s a business…

There’s a lot of campaigning… it can be very political,” but, “I’m not disturbed by it or upset by it.” The film has made $6.1 million at the box office since its release in October, and is currently playing in 67 theaters. Redford had been considered to be an Oscar frontrunner. He was at the Golden Globes awards Sunday night as a nominee.
 
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#37 ·
I liked it. His human reactions (not his perfect sailor reactions) were what impressed me. Sitting on a bunk after some disaster with his mind slowly churning through fatigue and pain, he looks here, he looks there, something occurs to him, he acts. This was the stuff that seemed real to me. Another movie would have him instantly recognizing problems and impressively resolving all of them per Chapman's. What seemed extraordinary about the movie was how tensely it could be told without dialogue. I saw an interpretation above about the fire and the lifeboat and rising to the hand in the water. Another interpretation was that the rising fire in the lifeboat was not unintended and that this was either going to work or not, but it was going to end right there. And obviously the alternative interpretation to the hand is that in fact he meets his God and not the hand of a mortal savior. Whether he is saved or not is a whole other conversation swirling around the movie. But as I said, I liked it for a picture of how I think most sailors would be under the circumstances (or maybe how I think I would be), not how they think would be. That is, making mistakes, bowing to fatigue, plodding on. Anyway, my two cents.
 
#38 ·
I just watched it last night. I'm glad Im not the only one who was disappointed with the technical errors. I'm also kind of excite to see I noticed some of the errors that you really experienced sailors noticed, that was kinda cool. Aside of the annoyance of the technical inaccuracies(I have learned to never hold Hollywood in too high of a regard for that anyway), I liked the movie. It was an interesting study in human response to a catastrophic situation as it unfolds. I thought it was worth the rental fee on Amazon, but if I see it on Netflix I'm going to be pissed! LOL
 
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#41 ·
Actually with the current celestial alminac a watch set to GMT and fifteen min you can learn to get your fix off the sun by taking a morning mid day and afternoon reading 9 am 12 noon and 3 pm you can do it within a few miles of actual location
 
#44 · (Edited)
In fact I challenge anyone to come up with any event in the movie that so impossible that I can't invent a plausible backstory for that would explain it.

Every event in the movie is unlikely so it has to be impossible not just unlikely.

I'll bet that everything that happened in the story has happened at least once probably several times to one or more people.

In fact I believe it is pretty well established that most catastrophes once investigated are the result of a cascade of failures each one highly unlikely and individually either benign or recoverable.

So you got anything the director let in the movie that was both impossible and was a necessary part of the failure chain.
I suspect there are one or two I just can't think of one.
 
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#45 ·
In fact I challenge anyone to come up with any event in the movie that so impossible that I can't invent a plausible backstory for that would explain it.......
Cool. This could be the most entertaining outcome of the movie.

He used an adjustable crescent wrench to tighten a round mast head antenna connector. (while watching a storm approach from the horizon)
 
#50 · (Edited)
He stopped trying to fish/eat because a shark snatched his first catch.

He didn't try to keep the LR cover to protect him from the sun.

He let 2 ships sneak up on him (too late for the flares) after waiting for several days just to get in the shipping lane.

Then he burned his liferaft down.
 
#51 · (Edited)
He stopped trying to fish/eat because a shark snatched his first catch.

He didn't try to keep the LR cover to protect him from the sun.

He let 2 ships sneak up on him (too late for the flares) after waiting for several days just to get in the shipping lane.

Then he burned his liferaft down.
He no longer had any equipment to fish with. It was lost during the shark problem. I thought that was obvious.

I don't remember the LR cover sequence please remind me. I don't know what you mean by LR in any event.

Notice the challenge wasn't that every move he made was perfect from a monday morning quarter back perspective.

The challenge was to show something that happened in the movie that couldn't have happened. People that are tired, hungry and thirsty can make mistakes in fact I think you can count on them making mistakes.

I've already explained the burning down the raft. It may have been the most prudent course to give it his all and take a chance that a big stinky rubber fire would get some attention if he knew he wouldn't survive much longer anyway.

But since no one can come with anything that was impossible I'll extend the challenge to include seamanship choices.

He did a lot of things I would not have felt comfortable doing but none of those activities directly lead to worsening his situation.

What did he do wrong as a seaman, I'll bet I can defend everything he did.

I'm assuming the time frame was maybe the 60's when the radio he had was state of the art. I'm also assuming he had normal gear for his day for that kind of boat not anything cutting edge.

This one I'll probably regret as someone has to come up with something.:)
 
#52 ·
LR = Liferaft.

As for impossible - my misunderstanding.

Okay - I'll stick with my damage analysis from the container. No freakin' way a boat gets holed like that by the corner of a container - ON THE AFT TOPSIDE - WHILE SAILING - ON A CALM DAY!
 
#153 ·
As David said, unlikely, definitely not impossible. Our Man asleep below, boat strikes moving container (driven by wind and current, as well as pitching due to motion of the ocean), even at a large, obtuse angle it's goint to punch a hole.
 
#55 ·
There are mistakes in the movie, just like in real life. I wonder how a mid aged, tired, thirsty, concussed (possibly), frustrated person would do in real life.
Having witnessed this first hand in the battlefield you would be surprised what happens. (5 tours in the middle east)
Generally older more mature individuals adapt well and are able to rationalize risks and fight of fear/panic exceptionally well. (35-50 age group)
I have found that young (18-25) have the hardest time dealing with agonizing life and death issues. Not all, just some. I'd rather have a Army of 30-35 yr olds. Strength and brains.

This is why i had a hard time understanding his mental condition during the film. Ever heard the phrase"fight or flight".

It would have been much better if it hadn't been filmed in a pool and had somebody that made bad decisions rather then curled up in a ball and cried. (essentially) Don't know to many sailors that would behave like him.
Would have been better if he tied an anchor to his foot and jumped overboard with it; at about the 15 minute mark. But then again, that would have interupted my nap.
 
#56 ·
You know what bugged me the most (besides his complete lack of emotion (squint, stare, frown, shout a bit, repeat...); water-logged water-proof electronics; turning to starboard to bring the above-the-water-line-but still-pouring-buckets-of-water-into-the salon gaping hole below the water line, when a turn to port would have brought the hole further out of the water; taking a sighting through the clouds; etc. etc. etc.)?
What bugged me most was that he used a pen to mark his charts. A pen!
 
#60 ·
You want an impossibility?

Hooking a drogue up to the sea container in a flat sea would never flip it. The physics for that doesn't add up. A real anchor would have given a downward force and could have rotated the container if the math worked out but the drogue would simply float alongside…
 
#61 ·
You want an impossibility?

Hooking a drogue up to the sea container in a flat sea would never flip it. The physics for that doesn't add up. A real anchor would have given a downward force and could have rotated the container if the math worked out but the drogue would simply float alongside…
Actually that was one of the weird things he did that made sense the drogue would increase the current pull on the container and him sailing against the current would dislodge the impaled container from the sailboat
 
#64 ·
His boat received a second hole in the cabin from the dismasting. Personally I feel that he should have found a way to stop or at least slow down the ingress of water through that hole by maybe stuffing a cushion or something in it. Anything to give him some time to remove the water from below.

EDIT: That was a direct cause of his possible death because it was what sunk the boat.
 
#68 ·
Actually did not see any below the waterline structural damage that would account for the length of time that the boat stayed afloat. It appeared to be a sudden and unexplainable failure of a thru hull fitting in the vee birth forward starboard area that caused the vessel to finally sink.if it had been a continual leak caused by debris breaking it the boat would have gone down much earlier during the night in the storm. Looked to be a sudden catastrophic failure.
 
#66 ·
Someone asked if they really deepsixed the Cal39. The answer is no. I recently toured the Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, while on vacation in California. Imagine my surprise when the studio tour brought us right by the boat featured in the movie, which was quite safely and properly perched on Brownell stands.
 
#154 ·
It might have been used in some shots, but they actuall bought THREE Cal 39's here in So Cal, and took them down to Baja. None of those three came back.

(Excuse me if this thread has been considered dead, I just saw the movie last night, and had purposely avoided all of these threads until I had seen it for myself).
 
#70 ·
The loss of physical strength and taxing on his mental state would most certainly contribute when physically and mentally exhausted you rarely make good sound judgements and a properly deployed drogue would have prevented or at least minimized the broaching that caused the rollover and subsequent dismasting
 
#71 ·
When the DVD shows up in the five dollar bin at Walmart I'll buy it just so I can play the drinking game with my sailor buddies. There have been other movies with little dialog that are so much superior to this movie, most of Cast-Away (Tom Hanks) and Soldier with Captain Ron (Kurt Russell). Its time for Redford to sail into the sunset.
 
#74 ·
Just saw the movie yesterday. I was also frustrated watching it. I guess if you stretch your mind that a completely irresponsible sailor made it from America to the middle of the Indian Ocean with fair wind and following seas, wherein only then began a cascade of terrible situations and decisions, then sure it's plausible. Had he been off the coast of Catalina I would be fine with the "old boat/rusty sailor" excuse.

It doesn't make sense simply because the film makers were lazy. Somebody check me, but i thought i saw that he tied the bowline wrong in the first scene. He went in the hole instead of coming out. That kind of thing i can forgive, but not the sum total. It is the same issue with the recent Kon Tiki film. I re-read the book after watching the film. It is still exhilarating what actually happened. Why crap it up with ridiculous scenarios.

I like Redford, but his acting in this was wooden. If acting is behaving in a way that convinces us that he is really another person in a given situation, then he fails. Anyone who wakes up 1000 miles from nowhere with water gushing in their boat is going to freak the f#$% out, period. You would have thought a flying fish landed on the deck and he was getting up to kick it overboard. Unless his mysterious past was spending a decade in a Buddhist monastery, then his reaction was uncommon. If his calmness comes from his vast experience and inherent resourcefulness then he would have never been so unprepared. Maybe his stoicism comes from consistently finding himself in ****ty situations he created and this film just shows how it ended.

Last thing I haven't seen anyone mention. He abandoned ship with no supplies, ostensibly because he expected it to sink imminently, while tied to said ship. I was trying to suspend disbelief assuming they would just cut and the ship would be gone and we would pretend it wasn't attached in the previous scene. Then, low and behold, there is the ship in the morning, just like he planned? If it had gone down in the night, it would have pulled him down with it. If not, why abandon ship?

just mental laziness on the film makers part.
 
#76 ·
There are some compelling things about the movie I guess, but I found myself going crazy as the character in what should have been titled "The Knucklehead and the Sea" went from one really goofy decision/mistake to the next. I know I yelled "what are you doing?" at the TV like 20 times if I did it once. And it was really hard to suspend disbelief.

I just don't see the sailor who is confident/knowledgeable enough in their experience and ability to solo into the middle of the IO being simultaneously so goofy. The whole scenario felt like he wasn't a real sailor, but got drugged and deposited on a sailboat in the middle of the IO, as half the movie seemed like he was surprised at yet one more aspect of sailing and the ocean in general.

It was fun to watch once, but if I watched it again I'd be making notes and all the inconsistencies just to clown it on message boards. He wasn't snubbed for an Oscar nod, the movie simply isn't worth one.
 
#79 ·
all i lost was 3.99 and 2 hours.
I realy enjoyed this movie... it provided me with plenty of audience participation...
yes i was yelling at the tv many times....
NOW IS NOT THE TIME TO SHAVE !!!!!!!.....
found myself humming johhny cash ring of fire at the end.....

my only hope is that the boat got refitted and is sailing happilly someplace.. but i guess that hope was lost too.
 
#80 ·
AS a pilot i'm always frustrated watching movies about flying. The directors never get it right. Many times it takes me right out of the movie. Finally, with the movie Flight, they got a lot of the tech stuff right. But Flight isn't a movie about flying. And "All is Lost" isn't a movie about sailing. That many didn't enjoy Redford's wordless performance neatly explains why most of us should never go to Sundance. It's what my friends and i call an artsy movie. Where the imperiled character shaves to do something normal one last time before he dies ,honestly, who's gonna get that other than an artsy film critic?

it's a movie that defies conventions and stereotype. As one friend put it, sailors are gonna be disappointed because it's not a movie about sailing, it's a movie about sinking. Those who like everything spelled out with a tidy ending are going to feel very cheated.

As for the technical omissions, even run of the mill action movies have our heros climbing out of cars wrecked at high speeds. You know, the kinda crash that sends anyone in them to an ER or morgue. Yet we enjoy those movies. We suspend belief. Relative to that, this movie was just fine.
 
#83 ·
That many didn't enjoy Redford's wordless performance neatly explains why most of us should never go to Sundance.
That old chestnut that states: "It's a great movie! If you didn't like it it's because you didn't understand it." doesn't always (often) hold water. Most of the time, including this time, the movie is crap plain and simple.

The whole 'suspension of disbelief' concept is critical to the effectiveness and popularity of a film. Why would movies about robots and spaceships, dwarves and wizards etc. have such mass appeal otherwise?

Most audiences know the impossibility of surviving car wrecks, plane crashes, alien invasions, zombie apocalypses etc. but we allow ourselves to buy into them because the plot, the acting, the cinematography, the music, etc. make us want to.

In the case of All Is Lost we weren't caught up in or distracted by the acting, the plot, the grandeur, the music etc. so we focused on the mundane realities of those things with which we are familiar. And we found them unrealistic.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar and sometimes a bad movie is a bad movie.
 
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#81 · (Edited)
They used 3 Cal 39's. All three were pretty much used up in the movie. One was holed for the exterior sailing shots. That boat was actually sailed daily in and out of a marinas while used in production. Another was used for interior shots, many flooded. the third was used for the rolling sequences. because CGI was used only to produce storm effects, the film's makers rolled a real boat to create the scenes.

I haven't found anything that tells of the fate of the boats, but sounds like they were pretty much done in by the movie's production.

That said, the film's producers own the boats and could be contacted to see if there is anything left worth buying if one was interested.

Interestingly, years ago, on the original Hawaii Five O McGarret's cars attracted a fan club. That Jack Lord, who played McGarret had an affinity for Mercurys played a part.

The original Hawaii Five o car, a 1968 Mercury Park Lane, was destroyed on camera in a collision and fire in about season four or five. 20 plus years later some guy tracked the car down to a warehouse in Hawaii spent a long time sorting out ownership Bought the car, which wasn't destroyed, restored it and uses it as a show car.

My way of saying, anyone who wants a cheaper Cal 39, make a phone call, ya never know!
 
#84 ·
They used 3 Cal 39's. All three were pretty much used up in the movie. One was holed for the exterior sailing shots. That boat was actually sailed daily in and out of a marinas while used in production. Another was used for interior shots, many flooded. the third was used for the rolling sequences. because CGI was used only to produce storm effects, the film's makers rolled a real boat to create the scenes.

I haven't found anything that tells of the fate of the boats, but shounds like they were pretty much done in by the movie's production.

That said, the film's producers own the boats and could be contacted to see if there is anything left worth buying if one was interested.

Interestingly, years ago, on the original Hawaii Five O Mc garret's cars attracted a fan club. That Jack Lord, who played McGarret had an affinity for Mercurys played a part.

The original Hawaii Five o car, a 1968 Mercury Park Lane, was destroyed on camera in a collision and fire in about season four or five. @0 plus years latter some guy tracked the car down to a warehouse in Hawaii spent a long time sorting out ownership Bought the car, which wasn't destroyed, restored it and uses it as a show car.

My way of saying, anyone who wants a cheaper Cal 39, make a phone call, ya never know!
If no one bought the Captain Ron boat, certainly no one is buying this one.:D
 
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