The Tracey Fragments (worst movie of the year)

C

c.g._eads

Veteran
Okay, imagine if the real life version of the crazy director from Entourage got totally high on shrooms, got ten film students, gave each of them a camera, then drove to random locations and told Ellen Page, "Say whatever the f*ck you want". Then imagine that he gave all 1,000,000 hours of this footage to the lovechild of Michael Bay and Amy Whinehouse to edit. But let's also say that both monitors broke during the editing process. So he/she couldn't even see what they were putting together. Then, after they were finished, the monitors started working again, and they gave 20 people off the street a chance to place any alternate take they wanted in a small video overlay somewhere on the screen. Welcome to The Tracy Fragments, the worst film I've seen this year, and maybe in the last five years.

I don't often wish bodily harm to people, but after this piece of trash, the director of this movie would be wise to avoid me.
 
Don't know a thing about it, so I looked it up. It won the Manfred Salzgeber Award at the Berlin film festival, Best Canadian Feature at the Atlantic film festival, and the Genie awards gave it Best Director, Best Editor, Best Sound, Best Sound Editing, Best Screenplay, and Best Actress.

Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 40%, and the IMDB voters gave it a 6.4.

Sounds like quite a mixed bag.
 
awww I just rented this flick tonight. I will let you know what I think later on. I also rented this is england, but that will be a new thread.
 
I don't know if any of you saw Terry Gilliam's last movie. The one with the little girl and Jeff Bridges? Well, this movie is about ten times worse than that. I probably gave it too much credit by describing it so weirdly (hence making it sound interesting). But this is really just bad filmmaking. The director is trying to hide the fact that he doesn't know how to tell a story by throwing up a whole bunch of stuff to distract you for 90 minutes He clearly hopes that it will be misinterpreted as "art". But it's a joke. There's no technique here. He doesn't understand the rules that he's breaking. I actually feel bad for the people who got duped into believing there's something of substance here. It's a classic case of "I don't understand it - so it must be good". Any person in this forum could do what this guy did. Take Ellen Page and make her say a bunch of nonsense and then clumsily edit it together with a dysfunctional "24" editing style cranked up a few notches. It's pathetic. I hate stuff like this.
 
I will say this. If you are an extremely extremely depressed person who hates him/herself, there might be something for you here - as Ellen Page regularly looks straight into the camera and says things like, "My name is Tracey. And I'm just your average 17 year old who hates herself".
 
Look C.G. I don't why you hate this film so much. the movie was made nearly 2 years ago on a dvx and final cut pro. It mixed in reviews, but to hate it for different approach and call it the worst film beyond the happening is strange to me. The happening was suppose to have a structure and it didn't. At least they tell you in the title this is going to be fragmented.

Also the website, don't know if it still does it, but they gave you the footage to cut with to make you're film. it fun to see ellen talk before or during takes. she says fuhck alot.

but its not the worst film.
 
Spidey, did you see the film? (I couldn't tell from your post)

Still, the fact that it was shot on a DVX shouldn't have anything to do with whether it was good or not.

What I will give this guy - the only thing I'll give this guy - is that he tried something different. But beyond that, I give him nothing. Because he completely failed. Personally, if you're going to do something different, I'd like your choice to be motivated by something. The only explanation at all for the awful abomination that I saw onscreen was that the title was The Tracey "Fragments" and there were all these fragments of video onscreen. Beyond that, it felt like a 4 year old pushing different colored blocks around and someone taping it for 90 minutes. It had no form. It had no structure. It had no point. Ellen Page and her extremely annoying and unlikeable character continued to talk nonsensically the whole running time. There was no reason why they put the other pieces of fragmented video up onscreen other than that they had footage ("So why not?"). The scenes themselves had no point and sometimes were deliberately edited to annoy you. A particular shot I remember is the mother slopping down mashed potatoes to tracey and her dad and the editor just rewinding it and playing it over again ten or so times. I could go on but I think those are fairly logical reasons for calling this film the worst of the year (and I'd even say the last 5 years).

I mean hey, if you like film with no structure. Where people are just throwing things up onscreen to see what sticks. And you don't mind an annoying whiny protagonist, then you might like this movie.
 
So I was expecting something that it was not. The trailers are quite decieving. The concept was fantastic and the story was great, that is if you could keep track of what was going on. The split screen was the product of what could have been Mike Figgis on a bad acid trip. There was way too much going on which did nothing but distract you from the story being told. Cut the distracting split screen elements and the film would have been much better. It was just visually tiring, 2 out of the 3 people I was watching it with fell asleep.

In conclusion: Would I buy it... no.
Would I watch it again... probably not.
I do however recomend watching it for yourself. And if you are a huge fan of figgis and leaving las vegas or hotel (which I am a fan of only for its absurdity) then you may love the visual style of this film.

That is all,
Zerg
 
Just watched the Ebert and Roeper show for this week and they listed their Best/Worst for this year so far (not including "Once") I believe this movie got a mention for Worst.
 
I would certainly put them neck and neck. They're such different movies that it's hard to compare. But at least with The Happening I could marvel at the terrible choices Night was making. That was kind of fun. But with this, I couldn't even have fun hating it. I felt like I was being attacked with bad filmmaking.
 
Just saw this film last night. Looking at it from a teenagers perspective it was a pretty genius film. I didnt even know it was shot on the DVX until i looked into the making of footage on the DVD. It was a unique kind of storytelling which i liked allot, also i enjoyed a few tracks from the film and bought the soundtrack.

Every film has an audience......:thumbup:
 
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