To clarify, when I’m speaking about Neveldine and Taylor’s films I’m speaking mainly about Crank, Crank: High Voltage, and Gamer (their best work). When I speak about Tony Scott, I focus on his 2000s work, particularly Deja Vu, but I suppose his train films Unstoppable, and The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 are also well suited to this discussion because, like trains, the youth of today is on the go!
Harmony Korine (maybe)
James Felix McKenney
It’s not that they speak to everyone. It is that they would if everyone saw them.
ha! I think lots of those 20 something video game and internet nerds I was talking about will be seeing Korine’s Spring Breakers, but probably not because of Korine and more likely for bikini babes.
Without a doubt, Wong Kar-Wai. That whole term “MTV-style filmmaking” got ran into the ground back in the early 00’s and it’s pretty much irrelevant now that MTV doesn’t even show music videos. But Wong Kar-Wai’s Chunking Express and Fallen Angels in particular, both exemplify that fast-paced editing style and fusion of imagery of music.
You make short attention spans sound like an exciting development. I’m getting old. David Bordwell examines the whole speeding up of Hollywood films and what he calls intensified continuity in his books Figures Traced in Light, and The Way Hollywood Tells It.
Kenji’s right. THis isn’t an exciting development. But, Terrence Malick is a good example of the MTV generation editing, but storytelling that is still interesting….
Gaspar noe and Quentin Tarantino, hands down.
I don’t think it’s an exciting development either. I might be a little off with Tony Scott, and I think that’s probably just a result of a little mourning fanboyism.
In the case of Neveldine and Taylor, it’s less about their editing, and more about how their editing already compliments their less satire of American culture today. They remind me of a much less focused Paul Verhoeven.
Can you be a tad more narrow than “western youth”?
Youth living in first world countries? Not sure. I like Nev/Tay cause especially in Gamer they are kinda making fun of us.
I think we’re getting a little sidetracked by my blurb at the start of this thread. I like three directors for both their narratives and stylistic choices that I find are really reflective of society existing on the internet and post 9-11 North America, and obviously as a Canadian young person, this is almost all I know.
Yeah, I see what you’re saying about Neveldine/Taylor. Kenji & Uglyfact, I don’t think he’s glorifying short attention span. At least Nev/Tay aren’t. Well, it’s hard to quite articulate those two. Like Paul Verhoeven, they fully invest in and enjoy the depravity of their approach and subjects, allowing them (again like Verhoeven) to take far stronger punches at the subjects they’re satirizing. Indeed, Gamer is one of the few Hollywood films of the last decade or so to directly approach the Information Age, gaming and virtual reality, unlike, say, The Social Network, which is an excellent film but says very little about the internet.
I would disagree about T. Scott though. Although he used a very rushed aesthetic, what he makes films about is more often than not very classical and romantic.
Harmony Korine
Yeah, I’m officially backing off of Tony Scott. I do feel that his visual style is going to become synonymous with both 80s (like it already is), and 2000s cinema, but just because he was making movies that I found visually significant during my cinematic awakening doesn’t mean a ton for my generation.
Thanks for having my back on Nev/Tay Jack. You hit the nail on the head with what you said about Gamer.
It’s becoming apparent that I’ve got to watch more Harmony Korine!
How about TIM AND ERIC AWESOME SHOW GREAT JOB?
I agree completely about GAMER, that movie seems to operate under Ballardian logic to me, embodying an enormous set of contradictions through repulsion/embrace.
Intensified continuity is an odd thing because so much of it has to do, I think, with how much easier it is to shoot that way than it is to shoot in a more classical style, with carefully chosen shots and complicated blocking. But then a lot of classical Hollywood directors shot that way on purpose, as a backdoor way to get control of their final cuts. And then that feeds back into the viewing culture, becomes a new normal.
Harmony Korine is an odd, interesting case. He’s had a very uneven career; seems to me like he never hit the peak of GUMMO again, which seems very ’90s to me. Some of his advertising work since then has been interesting, I guess.
But then I’m not Canadian, and know nothing about Canadian youth. When I think about Canada I assume it’s just Trailer Park Boys all the time.
It’s Trailer Park Boys a couple months of the year, and then it snows.
Most of this topic goes into the visual imagery that we nowadays get confronted with and how that translates into film, but I really like how some films focus on the way Internet for instance has an influence on our lives and becomes a major distractions. Like for instance Miranda July’s “The Future”, although I didn’t like all parts of the film, I loved how the main-characters were distracted from living their lives through useless surfing online and watching videos or advertisements. I get the same feeling when reading books by Tao Lin.
I can’t really name any other movies that approach the effect of the internet in this kind of way. In for instance most of the mumblecore films you have the general boredom, but that is a theme that has been in films a long time already. Maybe somebody else has some good references?
Joe Swanberg
Harmony Korine
Tim Sutton
I love Tao Lin btw
His books aren’t for everyone however lol
Millenium Mambo: Not western, the whole world.
Korine is a freak like Kevin Smith, please, he represents nothing.
I just watched Joseph Kahn’s “Detention” last night. The movie is more in love with the early 90’s alternative culture than it is anything else, but I have to say Kahn took the whole fast cuts/jarring editing/concurring conversations-style as far as it could possibly go. I definitely felt like I was witnessing the next wave in teen cinema.
Most of the stuff I’ve seen that talks about the impact of the internet approaches it in a sensationalist manner without really addressing the neurological side of the changes. It’s more than just short attention spans and being distracted, it’s an expectation of constant stimulation and instant gratification. People don’t go sit and surf on the internet in lieu of living their real lives, they outsource their community identity to the internet and detach themselves from the physical space they occupy.
I saw a study that said people are developing weaker memories because they expect any information they need to be available through the internet. That’s the sort of real impact the internet is having, it’s eroding all the skills we were forced to develop to manage every day information needs such as phone numbers and biographical data.
Can we please avoid using ‘Western’ as a catch-all term for ‘Privileged people’?
But that’s 2 words instead of 1.
Quick note: I think it’s very strange that people tend to talk about the influence of video games as leading to very quick cuts and shorter ASLs; video games, at least the ones I’ve played, are all about seamless emersion.
The only films I’ve ever seen that actually feel like video games are Mamoru Oshii’s very troubling (on a lot of levels) ASSAULT GIRLS and Sokurov’s RUSSIAN ARK, a film I don’t care for in the least.
I’m not sure anyone directly made mention of quick cuts being related to video games. There has been lots of discussion about the movie Gamer, and that satires Gamers and internet culture a bit. Plus, the movies is kinda based around a video game being played with convicts. It embraces the bombast of a lot of video game narratives, and takes on first person views like shooters do often.
Alexis Dos Santos is another good choice. “Unmade Beds” was a mini-masterpiece
@Jirin
I saw a study that said people are developing weaker memories because they expect any information they need to be available through the internet. That’s the sort of real impact the internet is having, it’s eroding all the skills we were forced to develop to manage every day information needs such as phone numbers and biographical data.
It’s not like before the internet people were memorizing the phone numbers of all their friends and relatives, let’s not exaggerate here. The internet does change our brains and how our memory functions but for every skill that it erodes, it helps us develop new ones. The part of the brain that was involved for a specific task doesn’t become inactive once that task is no longer needed, the brain simply allocates it to other tasks.
It’s one thing to be concerned about the negative repercussions of a new technology but if you only paint that new technology in a negative light then you’re just anti-progress.
You didn’t have your friends phone numbers memorized when you were a kid? ;)
I agree with you, I didn’t mean to imply that the outsourcing of memory to the internet is an inherently bad thing. One thing kids today are incredible at is multitasking, and you can attribute that to the internet too.
When I was a kid… I still am. Before cellphones, I had all my buddies’ numbers memorized. Now, I can’t remember a number to save my life, and I still have a lot of the same buddies. It’s sad, I’m very dependant on my cell phones contact list.
I like that this forum topic didn’t really fly but there was still a conversation born in here.
Nathan
I think that Tony Scott along with Neveldine and Taylor really capture my generations short attention span. Their works also really relate to my interpretation of what the internet in movies would look like, and the internet is a huge part of today’s youth culture. Neveldine and Taylor especially seem to capture excess in their pieces, and I often like to think of my generation as the entitlement generation, and that and excess play well together.
Both Scott, and Neveldine and Taylor use colourful images, fast and original edits, and narratives that are often outrages and change quickly. With this barrage of in your face techniques, I can rarely take my eyes of the screen, I’m hypnotized by their work, and I really do think it has something to do with me being a 21 year old, male, video game playing, internet nerd (and there are a lot of us).
Whose movies do you think speak to today’s western youth?