Boring, over-political, tech fuzed mess

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

I really enjoyed the first half of this movie, I enjoyed the characters; Justin Kirk as Sammy felt as the right move, Salmha Hayek wasn't exactly depicting the picture I head of Camilla in my head after reading the novel, but overall, it is a good cast. Colin Farrell does a great job being witty and submerges with excellence to the abyss of desperation and frustration a writer faces when not able to give into the suffering of his vision. Every now and then his acting would get kind of cheezy and close to overacting (see the exaggerated use of his limber eyebrows), but he does catch the character of Arturo Bandini.Now the second half of the movie elopes into a endless turning of the script. Shoot the scene and move on to the next one, as long as we get everything that's needed. It was very much an anti-climax. I also didn't like that the movie wasn't true to the book. It was to much of stir-up and in the end, it messes with the books entire soul and entity.

This film is an intriguing modern-day film noir that catches your interest and holds it from beginning to the end. It takes place in Depression era Los Angeles - the perfect place for lost souls. Arturo and Camilla - beautifully played by Colin Farrell and Salma Hayek - are young and intelligent but victims of clearly outspoken prejudice against their family heritages; his being Italian and hers being Mexican. One of the incredible ironies of the open prejudice of the times is that Arturo and Camilla, even though very much attracted to each other, act in prejudicial ways against each other. It becomes clear early on that these expressions of dislike hide the passion simmering beneath the surface. That passion forms the crux of the story.In the classic noir style, Arturo is a budding writer who has traveled to California to seek his fortune and there are many scenes showing him beating away at his typewriter in an effort to forge a great American tale. Farrell does an excellent job at showing both the innocent and not-so-innocent, shy and bravado sides of Arturo's personality.The ever so beautiful Hayek is perfect as the Mexican girl who wants to become "respectable" by marrying an Anglo. Unfortunately, she falls for Arturo - an Italian and definitely not "respectable" in the United States of that time.Ask the Dust is more than just a delicious love story of two beautiful, passionate people. It is also a well-produced, atmospheric look at an era in which the world was all too quick to condemn because of genetic heritage.

i prefer to write my comment about this movie as a poetry:"give me one more chance,to tell you that i don't wont anyone else but you. give me one more chance to tell you,that every thought of mine is about you.give me one more chance to touch your gentle soul.stay .or leave.but ask the dust for the unsaid words.ask the dust for the dissipated days.ask the dust for lost loves,and ask the dust for the missed days."about the story:he is an Italian,she is a Mexican.both they are foreigners in weird country,where to be "other"is not an appropriate thing. why we people are so cold?may we didn't know,that only dust remains after all of us!we are all made from dust &all go back there.sooner or later.

It must have been excruciating to attend the dailies as the shooting continued on this failure of a film. Probably Cruise, the Exec. Prod., saw what was happening and had Towne use much, much more of the nude footage in the final cut then Towne wanted to, to make up for the disaster he saw looming.(Maybe Cruise even thought of "Titanic".)A few items: Colin Farrell can't act his way out of a paper bag. But he's one of the flavors-of-the-decade, a producer's darling and one is forced to avoid the embarrassment of watching him by not attending his films. He has so many moments of not believing in what he's doing and you can see it in his eyes. I think he would have been at his best as a film actor, albeit not as rich or famous as he is now, playing second banana to dynamic leads who can act. The trap of spending a lot of money for period sets, costumes, cars, et al and photographing them as if they just came from the dry cleaner or car wash/wax. No one seems to want anything to look, well, worn. Or dirty. Is this because the production designer was told by the line producer to make sure they didn't ruin the stuff because then the company wouldhave to pay for the ruined items?This was a story about the depression-thirties folks, not a Disney Broadway musical about that era. How about doing it in black and white or better yet, given Caleb Deschanel as your D.P., have him desaturate the colors during the mix to suggest some of the actual grime and poorness of the times. It should have been, after all, a bit depressing to live so desperately as these folks did, in the Depression. More on Farrell. Did anyone for a moment believe this guy was a writer? H.L. Mencken on the wall; did I see his eyes roll at one point? Hayek and Farrell as a sexually dynamic duo? Sending a boy to do a man's work? Perhaps in the book, which I haven't read, the story was about an older woman and a youth. I cannot delve too deeply into the middle to latter parts of the film because I bailed out early on. But the memory of the scenes I did see made me think that someone was doing a not-too-amusing parody of a noir movie. Sort of what Saturday Night Live has been like for the past decade: not funny. (In my mind I kept thinking of a Guy Noir sketch, music and all.)