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Post by En on Jun 10, 2004 11:07:25 GMT -5
Oh, too funny... Mum and Lumers had just been watching Heavenly Creatures, another PJ flick, evidently equally twisted
Can I have a wee rant? I'm uber-fed-up with critics at the moment, because I don't think they understand that when you critique a film, it's not just your opinion or you showing off your knowledge of film - you are creating part of the body of experience of the film, so if you diss it for the sake of showing off, you're just damaging other people's experience of it.
Plus, critics don't seem to be aware that not every film is a comment on their personal experience. Egocentrism does not make good criticism.
Meh. Okay, I'm shutting up now. I just had to get that off my chest someplace where smart critics hang out
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Post by d on Jun 11, 2004 12:30:00 GMT -5
I agree!
Critics I used to respect have been disappointing me quite a bit lately. Ebert says it best when he says his job is to compare movies to other movies of their kind and judge them as additions to that group. SOme critics just don't like certain types of movies, and nowadays, that also seems to be seeping into their "professional" reviews.
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Post by d on Jun 11, 2004 12:41:50 GMT -5
The Last Samurai has become one of my favourite movies. I think it was underappreciated because alot of people have tried to read the wrong things into it and are missing its real intent.
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Post by En on Jun 11, 2004 12:48:10 GMT -5
Yeah, you were mentioning that before... see, I have this funny bias because I have this thing about tree imagery (long story) but I tend to see art as like a forest. There are some trees that survive, and some that don't; some branch widely, and some don't; some trees host other forms of life - ivy, birds' nests, insects, squirrels' holes - in the way that art of one kind can play host to another, or can host philosophy, politics, even people (literary professionals and educators).
Ebert's project, then, is as a sort of forester - which branches or trees are strong and healthy? How can he help them to grow stronger - and where can he prune?
I can support that... but I can't support the project of criticism as the attempt to name what is cool faster than everyone else. That's like practicing medicine by prescribing the hottest new drug for everything - it's charlatanry.
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Post by d on Jun 11, 2004 13:00:44 GMT -5
I used to trust critics to a certain extent, but now I have to just ignore most of them.
I like your analogy. In fact, I like your use of trees as a whole. It makes sense.
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Post by En on Jun 12, 2004 11:05:13 GMT -5
Why thank you
I've been sorely tempted to set up a Reviewer Review site to guide people to the kinds of reviews they might like - whether that is the brainiacal ones, the like-kind-cluster ones, the inventive ones, the personal-opinion ones - but for myself, I'm a huge fan of Metaphilm.com. Hey, anyplace that features a review of Fight Club as a grownups' "Calvin and Hobbes" rocks my scarf ;D
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Post by KoNeko on Jun 13, 2004 15:18:55 GMT -5
Sorry to break into this conversation, but I watched Hedwig and the Angry Inch (finally!) and it totally blew me away. I've seen it twice in about 24 hours, and short of bursting into song myself, all I can say is that this is something that I really, really liked. I mean, the message it conveys, the whole East Berlin setting, the fact that there were references to "Rent" and the workings of the music industry/lack of managerial professionalism (see deleted scenes) and yeah. The adaptation from stage to screen was done really well also (which I couldn't say about other musicals, like "Chicago" ) and yeah. Really good stuff. Will probably buy the DVD at some point.
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Post by d on Jun 14, 2004 7:39:11 GMT -5
A website like that wold be awesome.
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Post by Ritsu on Jun 27, 2004 10:19:44 GMT -5
Last night I re-watched one of my favourite movies, Bram Stoker's Dracula, the 1992 version with Gary Oldman, Winona Ryder, Anthony Hopkins, Keanu Reeves and Sadie Frost. I know it was pretty criticized when it first came out because it had nothing to do with the book itself, but isn't it such a nice way to tell the story? I think it is. Anyway, it's one of the best movies that expresses that literary time called Romantism: it has the mystery, the dark creatures, the passionate and yet impossible love, it's all mistifying. And I guess Coppola expressed it pretty well, he didn't focus much on image and set, he just used simple things which made the whole scenario much more mysterious than if he had used complete and elaborated sets. Sometimes the whole thing seems like a comic print, rather than the real thing [like the images from London with the Westenra house on top of the hill]. But the thing that makes me cling to the movie the most is the acting, and with this I'm, obviously referring to Gary Oldman. He got in the part so well, and I think the way Coppola portrayed Dracula in the movie is so much nicer than the way Bram Stoker did. He made him much more human, while Bram Stoker completely "killed" whatever bits of humanity Dracula still had in him, like, bits of the man he once was, four hundred centuries ago. While in the movie, Dracula still has a lot of human in him. He didn't become a monster by choice. He became a monster for love, because he wanted revenge on the one who took Elizabetha away from him. "It's God's way". He couldn't take it, so he chose a life of suffering and horror instead of killing himself and joining Elizabetha in heaven. But it's the suffering that makes him human. It's the long wait for a new love, for something to fill his emptyness, to warm his coldness, that kept him alive, I think. And in the scene with Mina's photo [one of the best scenes in the movie], well, it's practically cathartic. Elizabetha, the four hundred years alone, the pain, the suffering and a new hope.. it all comes down at the sight of one single picture. Do you believe in destiny? [something like a man's life being altered with the sight of such a simple object] The luckiest man who walks on this earth is the one who finds true love. But what if that "true love" is impossible? What if finding that true love implies the death and loss of people, including the death of Mina herself? But Dracula doesn't care, he had the chance of being happy with the woman he always loved [for Mina's Elizabetha's reincarnation] once again, and I know that so many people out there would kill for an oppurtinity like this one. So he becomes obsessed with the idea of finding Mina and make her his. He just didn't plan that Lucy was Mina's bestfriend, but that's a second plan story which I won't go to because Lucy's one of the worse characters ever. Along with Jonathan Harker. Moving on. Anyway, I tend to side with Dracula on his pursue for true and passionate love. I kind of know how it feels like to have really loved once and lost it all, and if I had the chance to make it all go back, to make the person in question feel the same things again, I would take it. And that's what Dracula did. Anyway, you can feel the whole emotion of the thing on his first attempts to reach her. You see that he doesn't see her as another meal [like Stoker wrote it], that he truly loves her, more and more fervently than Jonathan ever will. 1) when he first sees her in the apothecary [side note: no reflection, newspaper hanging by itself, love it], forcing Mina to see him; 2) when he says 'I am honored' when Mina introduces herself - there's something in the way he says it that touches me. In a single sentence you can feel the way he felt for years, and how important and how truly honored it is to see her, to touch her, to feel her after such a long time without a single purpose to live for. So things go on and lead to my favourite scenes:
* the dinner scene, when Mina starts having her deja-vus, and how Dracula starts crying without her seeing it, because he finally knows that it's true, that she's his dear Elizabetha, that she remembers it, she remembers her own death, her own country, his own voice. 'it's your voice perhaps, it's so familiar... it's like a voice in a dream I cannot place, it comforts me when I'm alone'
* the bed scene. Apart from everything it's a scene full of sin Mina's already married, she had to forget her 'sweet prince' in order to marry the jerk, but she couldn't. Because Dracula made her feel more alive and more safe than Jonathan ever did, what she lived and felt with Dracula was somehow immortal, out of time, out of this world. He comes back to her, they finally touch for the first time, but it's then that he reveals his true nature to her. He's nothing, there's no life in his body, he killed Lucy. And Mina surrenders. She even feels guilty for loving what others consider a monster, loving something that took her bestfriend away, but yet, loving something that offered her the best moments of her life, that made her dream with things she never even dared, that made her complete. She wants to give up her own life to join him and be part of his, no matter what. Dracula is astonished by this idea, he finally had what he wanted... he was so close to having it, just one single bite. And yet, he gives her up. And this is the most beautiful thing of the movie. She's the one true thing he ever wanted, and he gives her up, because he doesn't want her to have the kind of life he has, doomed, in darkness... 'I love you too much to condemn you'. I can't possibly describe and interpretate this, it beats me. 'take me away from all this death', says Mina. It's kind of ironic, really... Dracula doesn't want her to die, he loves her to be alive, while Mina considers her life to be death and thinks that being dead with him would be finally feeling alive. It's ironic, but pretty.
I think it was the whole love story that made me love the movie so much. I've always had a crush for impossible, intemporal and immortal love affairs, those things that just can't be no matter how much they love each other. Or how much one loves the other half [thinking about Love Actually, the guy with the posters outside her door telling her how much he loves her, knowing it's insane to keep on hoping and dreaming, but not being able to stop it - I identify myself with that situation]. And in Bram Stoker's Dracula you have the ultimante Romantic, impossible, intemporal, immortal and passionate love affair. A dead thing in love with a living woman who wishes to be dead. Four hundred years alone in grief for the loss of the one thing that mattered to him. A new hope arising. Not being able to have that hope. Being so close to happiness and denying it because it'll make her lead a life he wished for no one - revealing his human side.
I know I've exceeded myself, but I saw it again last night and bought the soundtrack today so I just got carried away. Next thing will be Big Fish, for sure.
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Post by KoNeko on Aug 8, 2004 0:24:42 GMT -5
Hellboy. Has anyone actually seen this flick? If you haven't, don't bother. I think I'm going to start ranting about this one. We watched it last night on DVD and... oh my god. This is close to one of the worst movies I've ever seen in my life. The plot makes no sense and raises lots of questions that totally discredit any kind of scene setting or storyline that there could have been.
I mean, okay, if evil god is a giant piece of calamari, why is it that it can be blown up with crappy little grenades which are broken to start with? Why does the professor dude look like the Colonel from KFC? Why did Rasputin (yes, he's in this ) get the mental hospital set on fire? What benefit was that to him? What happened to the gimpy FBI boss after they left him in that mechanical obstacle course? Will HB's relationship realistically work? Given that HB is bright red and is seen by at least 500 passers-by in the film, isn't it kind of... lame for the FBI to deny his existence?
Basically the plot, like so many, involves the Nazis tampering with the supernatural in an attempt to win World War 2, but nooooo, typically, they botch the job and they open a portal to hell or something where HB pops through, as well as some other weird things which give the baddies some special powers. Oh, there was one good thing about the film- the sadistic mechanical dude with the gas mask. He's pretty cool. Keep an eye out for him.
Anyway, if you want mindless action (which there isn't really that much of anyway), with no further questions asked, or you want to look at the cool special effects (Come on, Mr Fish guy is pretty cool, but kind of gross - and how come he has all these really nifty powers but he still gets clobbered?) you might enjoy Hellboy. Otherwise, don't bother, because you'll seriously be killing brain cells with this one.
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Post by Zicdeh on Aug 9, 2004 6:10:41 GMT -5
Has anyone seen 'The Butterfly Effect' with Ashton Kutcher? I thought i'd hate it, but i really really enjoyed it. One of my top ten, prolly.
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Post by KoNeko on Aug 9, 2004 8:27:52 GMT -5
Oooh, I've seen that, Zicdeh! Actually, it was something that inspired me towards my thesis idea... although I don't think that the butterfly effect and the concept of time travel through an Everett-Wheeler world (which is the kind when you can go back in time and change an event to a completely different outcome, like in the film) has serious logical contradictions. But yeah, I actually liked the idea behind the film, even though I don't particularly like Ashton or anything. It was well done.
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Post by Zicdeh on Aug 9, 2004 19:34:14 GMT -5
That's what i thought. Cool ideas. Maybe i should do some reading on the chaos theory.... What's your thesis on?
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Post by KoNeko on Aug 9, 2004 23:31:57 GMT -5
I started by looking at the Grandfather paradox and then for problems with Lewis' (the guy who started the whole thing in like, the early 1970s) solution to it... and basically, I came up with a sort of "reverse butterfly effect" idea. So, in the Butterfly Effect, one person can drastically change the course of teh world through one action and a series of causes and effects which amplify, in the RBE it's not the case. While you can affect your surrounding environment (and the people in it), the "outward ripples" of your action as it were would be dampened by the actions of others, so ultimately no single person can drastically change the state of the world. That's pretty much it in a nutshell, because I don't want to drift off topic here or anything, but yeah. When I'm done with my thesis in October or so I'm going to stick it up in the F&B thread...
Anyway, there's a pretty interesting (if not horribly mathematical and complicated) book called "Does God Play Dice? The Mathematics of Chaos" by a guy by the name of Stewart, (Blackwell 2001) if you're interested in Chaos Theory and stuff... I think there is a discussion of the Butterfly effect and the whole amplification thing in there.
But yeah- time travel in the Butterfly Effect and time travel in Back to the Future (especially II) are... well, logically impossible in the actual world.
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Post by Zicdeh on Aug 10, 2004 21:35:36 GMT -5
I've already started reading on the chaos theory . Here's a question: what does everyone think is the world's funniest movie?
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