N.P. Thompson says "Worse" to the first question, and "Yes" to the second. He reviewed Synecdoche last year and enjoyed it, but saw it again recently and liked it less. Plus he puts the boot into the bloggers involved in the "Roundtable" extra feature on the DVD. Because he can.
Last weekend, I finally got around to the Synecdoche DVD, and a second viewing (there need not be a third or a fourth) italicizes, underlines, and bolds everything that was wrong with it in the first place. It's a considerably weaker piece of work, once one has the hindsight to see how Kaufman's cumbersome foreshadowing will pan out. (For example, giving us an unimpeded view of Tom Noonan's Sammy Barnathan, as he watches Hoffman's Caden Cotard retrieve the morning mail, adds neither complexity nor mystery to Sammy's long-term stalking of Caden.) The movie's initial half-hour, save for Samantha Morton's magnificent turn as the love-struck box-office attendant, Hazel, and for the lugubriously witty German poet reading her grim verse on the radio in the movie's opening scene, amounts pretty much to a barrage of tasteless material—tasteless meaning insipid as well as offensive.
He thought the 2nd half was better. And:
Nowhere could such a denial be more apparent than in a little DVD extra called, “Infectious Diseases in Cattle,” wherein five bloggers (chosen by Kaufman?) nod in agreement with one another ad nauseam. They never argue; furthermore, none of them can find the slightest fault with the film. This 36-minute session of pseudo-intellectual pom-pom waving might be risibly enjoyable, if it weren't so boring.
Moving from left to right along the chairs and sofa, the panelists are: Glenn Kenny, formerly of Premiere; Andrew Grant, whose byline has never graced any legitimate publication that I know of, and who, rather preciously, refers to himself as “Filmbrain”; Karina Longworth of Spout (and of the interesting, silver-rimmed dark eyewear, a pair of spectacles that hint at a life of their own); the very young British Columbian Christopher Beaubien who writes for the website Screenhead and who shows more promise as an illustrator than as a thinker; and finally, Walter Chaw. (Source)
Meow.
I preferred the film the second time - partly because, the first time I watched it, I was worried that I might hate it. 2nd time, I could just relax and enjoy it.
