Catfish
We've been discussing the movie Catfish in the Movie Talk thread. For anybody that hasn't seen it - I highly recommend it.
It's a documentary about a guy who falls in love with a girl through facebook. It's a long distance relationship, so they never meet. Everything is perfect... And then the guy goes to Michigan to meet her.
I chose to start a topic for this because I really don't want to ruin the movie for anyone.
This is from an amazon review of the movie. I thought it was a pretty good representation:
(MILD SPOILERS)
The slipperiness of truth and lies on the Internet gets played out in unexpected ways in the documentary Catfish. When Nev Schulman receives a painting based on a photograph of his from an 8-year-old girl named Abby in Michigan, he doesn't realize this is going to lead to a long-distance romance with Abby's older sister Megan… and that this romance, conducted over the phone and the Internet, will lead to something far more troubling. It would be unfair to reveal more details of Catfish, as the process of discovery is one of its pleasures--but even if you do know the sequence of events, the movie's ultimate reward is not the revelation of secrets but the surprising and very human interactions of the movie's last third. While there is a thriller aspect to the movie--and the suspense at points is indeed nail biting--the revelation isn't the bang that Hollywood movies lead you to expect. Instead, Catfish turns sad, unsettling, and sure to inspire arguments about motivations and human nature.
Its a mocumentary, not a documentary.
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Melody - yes! That's why I decided to pull the conversation out of there. 
It's not a mocumentary... Where did you hear that?
I do think it mostly happened as it is portrayed, so it's not a mockumentary. But I do think the filmmakers kind of had an idea what they were getting into and played it up a little.
That isn't a bad thing, but I think it's why most people don't think it's real.
Also, the marketing for this was pretty bad. They made it look like a horror/thriller.
From the trailers for this movie, I thought they went to the house in Michigan and found everybody dead. That was the surprise twist. lol. The marketing wasn't very good.
I agree that they might have played it up. It was good movie-making. And it's still crazy to think what that lady went through to carry out such an elaborate lie.
It's not a mockumentary at all. There was definitely some clever editing done, and a handful of scenes were obviously shot after the fact to make up for not having cameras rolling earlier, but that doesn't mean it's "fake". An example: the entire opening scene with the director telling the camera how he doesn't want this documentary to about him definitely felt like it was a real conversation that really took place at some point in time but was re-created and shot during the editing process to help bring together the movie.
I've seen it twice, including once with the director doing a Q&A, and I chatted with him about it for a while afterward, and the sense I get from the movie (though he didn't specifically say so) is that the documentary about the painter daughter was never even a thought until they realized that there was something strange going on, and they used that bit of reality as a launching pad into the rest of the story. So, it's a documentary in retrospect, or a recreation of events, but not a mockumentary. It's also a damn entertaining movie, either way.
It would have been sweet if the family was in the audience for that Q and A Alex.
It was in London, probably too far for them to travel. But yeah, that'd be interesting for sure.
So... This isn't about 1974 Cy Young Award winner Jim "Catfish" Hunter?
Fuck it.
Take that, Nate!
This is why we can't have nice things.
I noticed Nev is no longer facebook friends with Angela.
"They sold you hippies grunge, hip hop, now liberty activism."
hahaha
Is he still friends with "Megan"?
I just watched this. It was good, I liked it, but I was expecting something totally different. I thought that when they got to the girl's house, it would turn into like Hostel or something. False advertising.
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Yeah - like Kirk said - the trailers sucked.
I hadn't seen the trailer before the movie, but I had the same expectations -- I thought, if they go into the house and suddenly it becomes a Blaire Witch type movie, this is brilliant. Turns out, it didn't, but it was still really, really good.
I watched this last night.
Yeah, I was expecting more of a sinister twist. I was also expecting a larger conflict at the end. Granted, I realize that they were trying to get information, but what a psycho bitch. Nothing made me feel bad for her...not the cancer thing or her shitty home life/reality.
As George Costanza says, "You don't let someone lie when you know they're lying. You call them a liar!"
Oh good. Does this mean its safe for me to read movie talk again?
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