Geez

I can't believe this is real. It looks *horrid*. I love Parker Posey, too, so it's disappointing. I mean the joke about a self-absorbed architect is funny but can it be sustained for an entire movie? Ugh.

oh.  my god.  this looks awesome.  he even has a scarf.

if architects had no sense of humor, there would have never been pomo.

i bet the realtor has a 'style' for the house.  something like 'country italianate.'

<3

It looks like a reboot of "Mr. Blanding builds his Dream House," but Melvyn Douglass' character is replaced by the architect.

Followed of course by its sequel, "The Client". 

Here is a clip: "The color scheme is hot pink and tan, get it? I like the hot colors and the neutrals. You got that?"

Another clip: "Yeah, um, can you make each room bigger? (makes hand motions to further show what bigger means) "... while making the overall smaller?" (hand motions for emphasis).

Yes, please!

James Frain is fantastic... such a great weasel type as far back as 24.  And as a pompous ass, poking our smugfuck colleagues in the eyeball with a sharp stick?  I'm in.

Yes, shades of Mr. Blandings as well as lots of The Money Pit.

We can only hope for a scene in which he extravagantly wastes the tuition dollars of naive young idol-worshipers in architecture school.

I propose an Archinect viewing party at my house.  

^ I'll bring the pot

lol...now that's a movie id like to watch. Sheds more insight into reality than not, bravo.

and tintt for the win..LOL

there should be interns in the movie.  complete waste if they didn't think of adding the interns.  what, is this guys supposed to be howard roark?  been done, was boring. 

lowest common denominator

"Often, the opinion of the client must be disregarded, for his own good."

:)

Seems pretty dead on to me.

i think the writers spent a good deal of time on archinect.....what a horrible looking movie.....although a former employer of mine said in his career at least 4 times the wives tried to hook up with him and 2 threatened to leave their husbands for him.....we get paid to listen - that doesnt mean we actually like you.

The frustrating part is that the film will create (or maintain) a popular image of the the architect.  But I'm also not sure that we are ready to relinquish the image of the architect as a cultural monster.

I'll wait for this to appear on AMC late night, but in the meantime, I'm thinking about which real architects I would have modeled that character on.

the actor playing the role of the architect looks like a kid lost inside a  grownup costume. i doubt he will give the role anywhere near what, for instance, Meryl Streep gave to fashion magasine editors in that other movie.

the couple look like any other lightweight Hollywood movie romcom couple, regurgitated then reingested then regurgitated ad infinitum. the vapidity of the trailer alone  is already giving me a slight headache.

yeah i couldnt watch that trailet twice. and the house is Organic......less is more when more is too much(or something).....whuut.

Okay, we'll put you guys down as "noes."

I have to admit the second time I watched the trailer the actor playing the architect seemed to be doing a better job but, I agree with you, chatter. Meryl Streep in Devil Wears Prada somehow made me LOVE her and how awful she was.  This character just seems half-baked, and the actor seems uncommitted.

For me, this kind of broad humor just isn't funny. IMO this movie needs the wry wit of Bill Murray.

this does beg Marc's implicit question: what sort of architect/s would you model the character after...and the corresponding choice of actor and why...

z111, I could totally see Bill Murray modelled after Frank Gehry giving people the middle finger. funny...but also with the pathos that Murray knows very well how to convey.

ashton kutcher as Thom Mayne.

Bill Murray as Rem

take it to another level with complete full on satire. Starchitect Wars, a film where high profile prima donna starchitects battle for a prestigious commission, undercutting one another, placing mole interns in other offices to sabotage other the work of others. it would be a cross between the fountainhead and the great race and its a mad mad mad mad mad world.

Melissa McCarthy at Zaha's ghost.

Perfect light weight summer entertainment movie for average intelligence. I hope it hits the airlines, the only place I watch Hollywood movies. This is how our image as architects in the popular culture caricatured. This is what property ownership custom residential real estate decorating service provider design shop business brought us. As long as we stay away from political thinking and staying away from larger social issues and staying close to dwell magazines and the likes, stylizing endlessly, we will be relegated to this image. We are as architects, just another part of this consuming material culture in transition from our suburban backgrounds to a more urbane material conscious getting get got type fashion victims. Architecture is just a symbolization of modern professional class family , a target for marketing business, a prop like vehicle to pronounce the material people's world. Probably the punch line of this movie will be like "money can't by happiness and simple things in life are free, you should stay humble and should never demo that Jesus house, but here is the redemption."

In contrast to this slap stick feel good cartoon, last night I finally watched the film Louis Kahn's son made on my computer. It was more like watching a true portrait of an architect I can connect to and somewhat appreciate. Architecture in it was so well shown.

Orhan, again the voice of wisdom here.

I love what you say "As long as we stay away from political thinking and staying away from larger social issues and staying close to dwell magazines and the likes, stylizing endlessly, we will be relegated to this image"

nothing compares to the Louis Kahn documentary. pretty sure i teared up a few times, and it wasnt about the family issues.

^^^ olaf, lighten up.

i can only dream of the day when one would successfully pull off a drama movie/ series centered on architects just like how the legal profession does eg. Suits. hehe

Agree so much Orhan.  I read that post 3 times over.  It's the truest thing I've read on architecture in a long time.   

this is what a political architect looks like by the way, played by Charles Bronson

Death Wish (in an Orange Goblin video)

or see this podcast - One-to-One #22 with Bernard Khoury

Marc, I elect Bernard to be modeled after.

Gutsy move Olaf, heading down the Optimus Prime path...

I'm going to be waay off, but-

Zaha- Meryl Streep or Angela Basset. It depends on how you want the role played- calculating passive aggressive or steel-eyed, take no shit or prisoners.

Patrik- Ben Kingsley or Jonathan Frakes (Similar mannerisms in appearing knowledgeable, so is depends on the presence you want the character to have)

Jeanne Gang- Sigourney Weaver 

Denise Scott Brown- Dame Judy Dench or Diane Keaton

Bjarke- As himself (I know- too easy, so Leonardo DiCaprio)

David Adjaye- Adrian Lester

Rem- Willem Dafoe or Colin Salmon (extremes here)

Frank Gehry- Fred Willard (it's a reach, but could be entertaining)

Richard Meier- Jahn Mahoney

Le Cobusier- Bob Balaban

Imagine how lawyers feel. One recent movie depicts their profession as being controlled by Satan.
Then again, at least they are paid well and don't have Lawyer Beinnales.

Oh man, a Lawyer Biennale. That's a hilarious idea. I'd go! But it wouldn't be held in Italy, maybe Switzerland?

I can't wait to see this movie. It's based on my life.

I once heard something from a residential architect that many marriages end while couples  are designing their home...and that often the architect becomes the marriage counselor.  I recently did a landscape project where the couple argued about every single design decision.  The husband was very stubborn.  They fought in front of me during almost every meeting.  It was very uncomfortable. 

half way through the trailer i was hoping this was a horror movie.

Hey, at least it's a better image than this...

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oo18D-qHAYE

why is it that the legal, criminal  and  medical  professions form the basis of most profession-centred dramas (or comedies)?

it seems quite Foucault-centric.

^probably because they are surrounded by violence.  Violence sells and is easier to dramatize into a screenplay. 

yes, but being a teacher can also be dramatic...

they are certainly being presented as being dramatic but is it really that they are inherently more dramatic? i suspect  that most of the lawyers work is probably pretty mundane.

is it not rather because we are interested in the systems and instutions that govern us and whose ethos more consciously and proactively describe our limits, rather than being ones that merely lying within those limits? architecture, as is popularly and generally seen, lies well within the 'comfort zone', inside the civil space. it is internalized and seen as non subversive. architecture does no pose, relative to civility, existential problems or threats to the body of the society or to the body of an individual.

is that what you mean by drama then , quondam? i can understand that

^interesting point.  Haunted houses may be the exception to that though...

It would be really interesting to see a film that portrays the built environment itself as a threat or oppressive force...minus the supernatural element...The sci-fi movie Cube kinda does that, also, City of Ember, but not very successfully really.  I'd be interested to hear of others if anyone can think of any...

NCIS for architecture?

jla-x, but it is not a correct equivalency. we're talking about architecture as a profession and the people who work within that profession. haunted house drama/horror  is not the equivalent of dramas involving laywers, nurses/doctors, detective . what would be the equivalent is a drama involving architects and the practice of their profession.

on another note,  i would even suggest that haunted house horror films are, in a way of seeing things, anti-architectural. instead of life, they turn to death . instead of clear conscious planning of spaces and functions, they turn to the unexpected, the dark, the otherwise excluded, the unforseeable, what cannot be planned for. such horror movies explore everything left out of architectural rationalisation to take it over. yes, perhaps one can say that they do explore the anxiety dormant within the architectural but it is the anxiety not towards archtecture but towards what architecture could not bring under its aegis.

however there are other types of horror or suspense where architecture is the source of anxiety . architecture deliberately setup to trap and bewilder its victims, an architecture that forms a tool for a predator to use against its prey. This is just as much, if not more, the case  with landscape . ...but all this is another topic :)

Law and (Change) Order..

Education can serve as a backdrop for drama and has- The Paperchase, Fame, and to a lesser degree the white shadow. Let's forget Up the Down Staircase and the BBC is trying to resurrect To Sir with Love. 

Substantial Completion Closer 

starring the Change Order master

you guys know this one already? it won a lot of awards. by lucia small, glen small's daughter.

Orhan, given that the film looks like its in the NW, the building is Organic, any chance this movie might of watched Glenn's documentary? thoughts. (that's my other favorite documentary btw. Kahn and Small)

Oh dear, it reminds me of the dreadful twit I've become