Oh, lists are fine, so long as you don’t take your own too seriously.
When I see other people’s lists I don’t think “Wow, my opinion is all wrong!” I think “Other people seem to like these movies, maybe I should see them.”
The highest ranked movies on the “They Shoot Pictures Don’t They” site that I haven’t seen are L’atalante and The Magnificent Ambersons.
I now realize the reason I can’t find them for a reasonable price is that they have not been released on a region 1 viewable DVD.
Is there some place online I can see these movies (Like…this very site?) or should I just wait for Criterion to pick them up?
Then there’s a bunch of movies like The Mirror that have releases but reportedly have terrible translations. Again, are there superior translations out there that I’m not finding, or should I just wait for Criterion?
L’ Atalante ~ Dita Parlo, Jean Dasté, Michel Simon, and Gilles Margaritis (DVD – April 15, 2003)
3 new from $200.00
5 used from $50.79
This item has been discontinued by the manufacturer.
VHS is easy to get, but well, it’s VHS.
Top comment for The Mirror:
Having watched this movie since I was in my early teens, I have bought the DVD published by KINO ON VIDEO, and oh my, Andrei Tarkovsky must be rolling in his grave knowing what they did to his masterpiece.
For those of you who don’t speak Russian, I feel very very very bad for you, because of the terrible translation of the movie. Aside from the poems in the movie, that were previously translated by the professionals, the translation sounds as though it was done by fifth-graders. And not just because it is done in the high-school level English. HALF of the speech is not translated at all—a lot of important chatter is completely missing in the subtitles. Many things are oversimplified and revealed, instead of letting the viewer dig them out him/herself. Those of you who don’t understand Russian are doomed to be tortured by such translation and never to reveal the true beauty and meaning of the original script. Having read all of the subtitles, I understood a lot of things in a wrong way, different from the way they were intended in the first place, and had zero satisfaction from the movie. Thank [deity] I’m Russian.
Any crappy romantic comedy. Cause then, extremely attractive women would dump their macho boyfriends to be with a socially awkward but well meaning man, regardless of his employment situation.
Or maybe a Star Trek movie. Then I could have anything I wanted all the time without having to work, and of course, holodecks.
His more fun films like Oceans 11 and The Informant are at least successfully entertaining, but when he tries to be topical it gets kind of ridiculous. He keeps making these overlong dragging multi-threaded epics that portray themselves as realistic but are completely one sided and barely even seem researched.
I would give the title of director of the decade to one of the following: Wong Kar Wai, Pedro Almodovar, Alfonso Cuaron, Joel/Ethan Coen.
A movie that was begging for a dark ending. Instead it took the route of oversimplifying the film’s complex central ethical debate with kneejerk humanism.
Three Colors: White
Jules and Jim
There’s this one Monty Python’s Flying Circus sketch where there’s this spoof of an artsy film where this guy meets a woman at a garbage dump who is holding a cabbage. There are a lot of jump cuts and random cuts to scenes of violence. Then the cabbage explodes. The next scene is of a film critic explaining why this is all incredibly deep. That sketch sums up how I feel about a lot of French New Wave films. I sort of get the symbolical reason for the ending, but in terms of the actual plot it was just silly.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
They clearly wanted it to be an ironically bad ending. It turned out just being a bad ending.
Carl Dreyer films are 0/2 for me. I wanted to do a project this year of watching the TSPDT top 100 and writing about them in a blog, but if that means I have to watch two more Dreyer films, I don’t know. The characterization is so irritatingly simplistic, and everyone moves and talks so slowly.
Up In The Air 7/10
A very good script, but way too much of a message movie. It’s also not a good idea to leave it to George Clooney to carry a movie acting-wise. He needs an ensemble.
Dark Knight is overrated. It’s got too many plot holes, way too many strange plot contrivances, and it’s reflections on human nature are no more deep and interesting than any other comic book movie. I have nothing non-Heath Ledger related that is positive to say about that movie.
And Y Tu Mama Tambien and Children Of Men are two of my top ten of the decade, which is why I pitched Cuaron’s name in another thread. (Among four others.)
I don’t think I saw any new films I consider ‘bad’ this year.
The worst new movie I saw this year was Julie and Julia, and it’s like 6/10. Or maybe It Might Get Loud, which is more of a 5/10.
But I didn’t see Knowing or 2012 or stuff like that.
@David Ehrenstein
A Serious Man is my favorite movie released this year. You prefer endings that answer the film’s questions definitively then lecture you on them the way Up In The Air does?
Ug. It’s just a movie! What’s racist is when people analyze movies by racial politics as if every single person is supposed to represent their entire ethnicity. What’s racist is mapping attributes and attitudes to races instead of to individuals. Jake Sully doesn’t become the leader because of a white fantasy to ‘lead from the inside’. He becomes the leader because he’s the main character of the movie and that’s what main characters in movies do. There is an escapist element and obvious allegories, but the enemy is corporate opportunism and cultural entitlement.
I wouldn’t call Michael Moore films ‘courageous’. There’s nothing courageous about releasing a film that piggybacks on political trends and panders to the like-minded. Michael Moore is courageous in only the same way Glenn Beck claims to be. He has the courage to say what he knows millions of people will pay to hear him say!
And Brokeback Mountain. What could be more courageous about releasing a movie about an issue that’s currently politically divisive? There’s an audience of millions who will feel obligated to see such a movie just because it exists!
Coen Brothers movies do tend to be pretty courageous in the artistic sense. Their movies lately tend to go in unpopular directions, avoiding the easy endings most of the audience expects. Talk To Her was pretty courageous in it’s willingness to run head first any direction it wanted to.
Lord of the Rings was courageous in a different sense of the word. It takes balls to even attempt to cover source material millions of its fans consider holy. Can you imagine how hard it is to make a movie that would please die hard Tolkien fans? The most nitpickingly critical audience in the world, who would call it a travesty if it got the slightest detail wrong?
I thought Broken Embraces was great. But I watched through thinking it was going in one direction and it ended up going in completely another, so I’ll have to watch it again with better primed expectations before I can say what I really think about it.
Yeah, it’s self indulgent, but not in a way that bothers me at all. As far as I’m concerned Almodovar gets the same exemption that Fellini does for self indulgence.
Both the people praising Avatar and the people bashing it are overreacting.
Why can’t people appreciate Avatar for what it is? A fun movie with great visuals and a cliche plot. It doesn’t deserve best picture by a longshot. But all the things the detractors are saying could be equally applied to most scifi/fantasy films. Avatar is a horrible movie because it’s cliche, but not the equally cliche Star Wars?
And then all these people saying it’s racist because it has vague parallels with native american stereotypes, yet they still love Lawrence of Arabia and Gone With The Wind.
It’s just a freaking scifi action movie, and they’re just freaking aliens! It doesn’t say anything about society that isn’t ripped from Miyazaki animes.
And no, White Ribbon doesn’t deserve best picture either. It’s an uninspired exercise in imitating the greats.
Criterion is only a big deal to me because I’m trying to see a lot of great films for the first time and there are a lot of great movies available in the US only through criterion.
It also tends to be reliable. Whereas the version of Bicycle Thieves I have doesn’t translate a lot of background dialog, and Kino’s translation of The Mirror is said to be terribly lacking.
Radiohead – Kid A
White Stripes – Elephant
The Knife – Silent Shout
Sufjan Stevens – Illinois
Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
LCD Soundsystem – Sound of Silver
White Stripes – White Blood Cells
Primal Scream – XTRMNTR
The Flaming Lips -Yoshime Battles The Pink Robots
Radiohead – In Rainbows
Is This It sounded great when it came out but didn’t last. It blends in with the stuff that copied it. I think the only reason it was so highly rated at first is it was a combination of it seeming more unique and the Britpop hype machine.
I don’t understand why when people talk about box office gross lists they use the raw list and not the inflation adjusted list. Making 390 million in 1939 is far more impressive than making 1.6 billion in 2009.
Leia “I’d sooner kiss a wookie.”
Han “I can arrange that!”
You know, art films are good. Entertainment films are also good. Star Wars is an entertainment film. Why can’t you like one kind and also appreciate the other?
You guys are judging Star Wars like it’s supposed to be an art film. You know what else is horrible? SESAME STREET! I tried watching it, the series has absolutely no depth! It’s just a bunch of kindergarden-level humor and quirky info-tainment! It’s almost like I wasn’t even the audience they had in mind. 1/10!
Citizen Kane 10/10 (But not the #1 film of all time!)
Lawrence of Arabia 8/10
The White Ribbon 5.5/10
It’s obvious the director of this film is a big fan of the likes of Bergman and Fellini, and really wanted to say “Me too!” But he forgot their films had original scripts, unique styles, and memorable performances. With the Christian punishment themes, the black and white, the ambiguous ending (Which isn’t really ambiguous at all, as I called who committed the crimes and why about half an hour in), and the ‘uninvolved witness’ as the narrator, White Ribbon comes off as ‘art film by numbers’, designed specifically to win critical praise. His attempts to be multi-threaded only bloat the plot and don’t give the characters or the setting room to breathe.
Avatar is entertaining. It’s fun to watch. Why not just leave it at that instead of bashing it just because a lot of people overrate it?
There’s so much aesthetic narcissism in this board. “I don’t like this, therefore here are a thousand and one reasons any intelligent person wouldn’t like it either.” It’s cliche, but so what? Are you telling me Shakespeare was brimming with original ideas? He’s remembered for high quality of presentation of other people’s ideas.
There’s a big difference between movies like Star Wars and Lord of the Rings which are really well presented cliches, and movies like Transformers which are really poorly presented cliches. If Star Wars is a 10 on that spectrum and Transformers is a 0, I’d put Avatar at around 7.
And anyone who wants to make an artistically beautiful film with subtle emotional themes sure isn’t going to be deterred because James Cameron was handed a small statue.
Spielberg, absolutely. He has a way of making things annoyingly melodramatic. He takes subject matter that is inherently emotional, makes it into a kneejerk humanism ridden soap opera, then everyone says how moved they were.
Renoir is another one. Grand Illusion is pretty good I guess, but Rules of the Game is just kind of stupid.
Altman, definitely. The only good thing that’s ever come from an Altman film is the last five minutes of The Player.
Misael: I would definitely say Godard and Antonioni are overrated, but all I’ve seen of them is Breathless and L’aventura respectively. You can tell those sorts of films by the way their fans talk about them. They make up their own criticism of modern society, then say that’s what the film is about in a tone of voice like they’re film theory professors.
The people who don’t see film as art are the same people who think the only relevant form of music is classical. While they’re busy polishing their monocles, there are plenty of art films around for the rest of us to enjoy.
There are plenty of mainstream trends to talk about. The increasing technology level of special effects in action and fantasy films, science fiction films starting to make humans into the bad guys, the increasing formulaicness of romantic comedies, comedy getting more crass and ironically macho, horror films turning into just finding creative ways to slaughter hordes of obnoxious teenagers.
The trend in American indie films though is to become more personal and realistic, deconstructing genre cliches and rosy worldviews. The main characters of these movies tend to be flawed and trying to cope with a lot of hard luck. Movies like Wendy and Lucy, The Messenger, The Wrestler, A Serious Man. It’s sort of an American neorealism that tries to strip away the Hollywood conceits and bum the hell out of everyone. (And Steve Buscemi wishes he could be in all of them.)
STOP THE LISTS! over 3 years ago
Oh, lists are fine, so long as you don’t take your own too seriously.
When I see other people’s lists I don’t think “Wow, my opinion is all wrong!” I think “Other people seem to like these movies, maybe I should see them.”
Plus they’re a fun thing to do when you’re bored.
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Last movie you saw and rate it over 3 years ago
The Messenger: 9/10
Up In The Air: 7.5/10
Belle de Jour: 8.5/10
Precious: 8/10
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The Works of David Lynch, Best to Worst over 3 years ago
1. Twin Peaks Laura Palmer arc
2. Blue Velvet
3. Eraserhead
4. Mullholland Drive
5. Twin Peaks Wyndam Earle arc
6. Fire Walk With Me
That’s all I’ve seen.
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How to see out of print movies? over 3 years ago
The highest ranked movies on the “They Shoot Pictures Don’t They” site that I haven’t seen are L’atalante and The Magnificent Ambersons.
I now realize the reason I can’t find them for a reasonable price is that they have not been released on a region 1 viewable DVD.
Is there some place online I can see these movies (Like…this very site?) or should I just wait for Criterion to pick them up?
Then there’s a bunch of movies like The Mirror that have releases but reportedly have terrible translations. Again, are there superior translations out there that I’m not finding, or should I just wait for Criterion?
Go to Comment
How to see out of print movies? over 3 years ago
L’ Atalante ~ Dita Parlo, Jean Dasté, Michel Simon, and Gilles Margaritis (DVD – April 15, 2003)
3 new from $200.00
5 used from $50.79
This item has been discontinued by the manufacturer.
VHS is easy to get, but well, it’s VHS.
Top comment for The Mirror:
Having watched this movie since I was in my early teens, I have bought the DVD published by KINO ON VIDEO, and oh my, Andrei Tarkovsky must be rolling in his grave knowing what they did to his masterpiece.
For those of you who don’t speak Russian, I feel very very very bad for you, because of the terrible translation of the movie. Aside from the poems in the movie, that were previously translated by the professionals, the translation sounds as though it was done by fifth-graders. And not just because it is done in the high-school level English. HALF of the speech is not translated at all—a lot of important chatter is completely missing in the subtitles. Many things are oversimplified and revealed, instead of letting the viewer dig them out him/herself. Those of you who don’t understand Russian are doomed to be tortured by such translation and never to reveal the true beauty and meaning of the original script. Having read all of the subtitles, I understood a lot of things in a wrong way, different from the way they were intended in the first place, and had zero satisfaction from the movie. Thank [deity] I’m Russian.
Go to Comment
Which movie would you like to live in? over 3 years ago
Any crappy romantic comedy. Cause then, extremely attractive women would dump their macho boyfriends to be with a socially awkward but well meaning man, regardless of his employment situation.
Or maybe a Star Trek movie. Then I could have anything I wanted all the time without having to work, and of course, holodecks.
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Soderbergh's Decade over 3 years ago
I can’t stand Soderbergh.
His more fun films like Oceans 11 and The Informant are at least successfully entertaining, but when he tries to be topical it gets kind of ridiculous. He keeps making these overlong dragging multi-threaded epics that portray themselves as realistic but are completely one sided and barely even seem researched.
I would give the title of director of the decade to one of the following: Wong Kar Wai, Pedro Almodovar, Alfonso Cuaron, Joel/Ethan Coen.
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Films you expected to be great but were terrible over 3 years ago
The Dark Knight
Bonnie and Clyde
Nosferatu
Vampyr
Battleship Potemkin
I agree about North by Northwest, and also The 39 Steps.
Also Rules of the Game, Boogie Nights, Nashville. Any movie where the camera appears to hate or otherwise condescend the characters.
Some movies other people have mentioned I really liked:
Pan’s Labyrinth, Sunrise, Waltz With Bashir, Jules et Jim.
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Good movie, bad ending over 3 years ago
Minority Report
A movie that was begging for a dark ending. Instead it took the route of oversimplifying the film’s complex central ethical debate with kneejerk humanism.
Three Colors: White
Jules and Jim
There’s this one Monty Python’s Flying Circus sketch where there’s this spoof of an artsy film where this guy meets a woman at a garbage dump who is holding a cabbage. There are a lot of jump cuts and random cuts to scenes of violence. Then the cabbage explodes. The next scene is of a film critic explaining why this is all incredibly deep. That sketch sums up how I feel about a lot of French New Wave films. I sort of get the symbolical reason for the ending, but in terms of the actual plot it was just silly.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
They clearly wanted it to be an ironically bad ending. It turned out just being a bad ending.
Go to Comment
Vertigo! over 3 years ago
I like Vertigo for the psychological drama. It doesn’t have the best cinematography out of films that are considered ‘great’.
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Last movie you saw and rate it over 3 years ago
Day Of Wrath 5/10
Carl Dreyer films are 0/2 for me. I wanted to do a project this year of watching the TSPDT top 100 and writing about them in a blog, but if that means I have to watch two more Dreyer films, I don’t know. The characterization is so irritatingly simplistic, and everyone moves and talks so slowly.
Up In The Air 7/10
A very good script, but way too much of a message movie. It’s also not a good idea to leave it to George Clooney to carry a movie acting-wise. He needs an ensemble.
La Dolce Vita 10/10
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Director of the Decade Chris Nolan (Not a dark Knight thread) over 3 years ago
Dark Knight is overrated. It’s got too many plot holes, way too many strange plot contrivances, and it’s reflections on human nature are no more deep and interesting than any other comic book movie. I have nothing non-Heath Ledger related that is positive to say about that movie.
And Y Tu Mama Tambien and Children Of Men are two of my top ten of the decade, which is why I pitched Cuaron’s name in another thread. (Among four others.)
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You choose the book to make into a film. Then choose the director. Go! over 3 years ago
Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe – Benicio Del Toro
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WORST FILMS OF 2009 over 3 years ago
I don’t think I saw any new films I consider ‘bad’ this year.
The worst new movie I saw this year was Julie and Julia, and it’s like 6/10. Or maybe It Might Get Loud, which is more of a 5/10.
But I didn’t see Knowing or 2012 or stuff like that.
@David Ehrenstein
A Serious Man is my favorite movie released this year. You prefer endings that answer the film’s questions definitively then lecture you on them the way Up In The Air does?
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Good Bad Films over 3 years ago
Evil Dead Trilogy.
Gets more hilariously stupid as it goes along.
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Racism in Avatar over 3 years ago
Ug. It’s just a movie! What’s racist is when people analyze movies by racial politics as if every single person is supposed to represent their entire ethnicity. What’s racist is mapping attributes and attitudes to races instead of to individuals. Jake Sully doesn’t become the leader because of a white fantasy to ‘lead from the inside’. He becomes the leader because he’s the main character of the movie and that’s what main characters in movies do. There is an escapist element and obvious allegories, but the enemy is corporate opportunism and cultural entitlement.
Go to Comment
The Ballsiest, Most Courageous Films Of The '00s? over 3 years ago
I wouldn’t call Michael Moore films ‘courageous’. There’s nothing courageous about releasing a film that piggybacks on political trends and panders to the like-minded. Michael Moore is courageous in only the same way Glenn Beck claims to be. He has the courage to say what he knows millions of people will pay to hear him say!
And Brokeback Mountain. What could be more courageous about releasing a movie about an issue that’s currently politically divisive? There’s an audience of millions who will feel obligated to see such a movie just because it exists!
Coen Brothers movies do tend to be pretty courageous in the artistic sense. Their movies lately tend to go in unpopular directions, avoiding the easy endings most of the audience expects. Talk To Her was pretty courageous in it’s willingness to run head first any direction it wanted to.
Lord of the Rings was courageous in a different sense of the word. It takes balls to even attempt to cover source material millions of its fans consider holy. Can you imagine how hard it is to make a movie that would please die hard Tolkien fans? The most nitpickingly critical audience in the world, who would call it a travesty if it got the slightest detail wrong?
Go to Comment
Reaction to Broken Embraces over 3 years ago
I thought Broken Embraces was great. But I watched through thinking it was going in one direction and it ended up going in completely another, so I’ll have to watch it again with better primed expectations before I can say what I really think about it.
Yeah, it’s self indulgent, but not in a way that bothers me at all. As far as I’m concerned Almodovar gets the same exemption that Fellini does for self indulgence.
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blu-ray is kinda bullshit over 3 years ago
The only time blu-ray really helps is either in an action or scifi movie, or when the scenery is extraordinarily beautiful.
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AVATAR WON BEST PICTURE... over 3 years ago
Both the people praising Avatar and the people bashing it are overreacting.
Why can’t people appreciate Avatar for what it is? A fun movie with great visuals and a cliche plot. It doesn’t deserve best picture by a longshot. But all the things the detractors are saying could be equally applied to most scifi/fantasy films. Avatar is a horrible movie because it’s cliche, but not the equally cliche Star Wars?
And then all these people saying it’s racist because it has vague parallels with native american stereotypes, yet they still love Lawrence of Arabia and Gone With The Wind.
It’s just a freaking scifi action movie, and they’re just freaking aliens! It doesn’t say anything about society that isn’t ripped from Miyazaki animes.
And no, White Ribbon doesn’t deserve best picture either. It’s an uninspired exercise in imitating the greats.
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What is this obsession with Criterion? over 3 years ago
Criterion is only a big deal to me because I’m trying to see a lot of great films for the first time and there are a lot of great movies available in the US only through criterion.
It also tends to be reliable. Whereas the version of Bicycle Thieves I have doesn’t translate a lot of background dialog, and Kino’s translation of The Mirror is said to be terribly lacking.
It just has annoyingly high price points.
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I guess it's not really relevant, but... best albums of the decade? over 3 years ago
Radiohead – Kid A
White Stripes – Elephant
The Knife – Silent Shout
Sufjan Stevens – Illinois
Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
LCD Soundsystem – Sound of Silver
White Stripes – White Blood Cells
Primal Scream – XTRMNTR
The Flaming Lips -Yoshime Battles The Pink Robots
Radiohead – In Rainbows
Is This It sounded great when it came out but didn’t last. It blends in with the stuff that copied it. I think the only reason it was so highly rated at first is it was a combination of it seeming more unique and the Britpop hype machine.
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Will AVATAR Outgross TITANIC? over 3 years ago
But will it outgross Gone With The Wind?
I don’t understand why when people talk about box office gross lists they use the raw list and not the inflation adjusted list. Making 390 million in 1939 is far more impressive than making 1.6 billion in 2009.
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in a galaxy far, far away... - Star Wars Quotations over 3 years ago
Leia “I’d sooner kiss a wookie.”
Han “I can arrange that!”
You know, art films are good. Entertainment films are also good. Star Wars is an entertainment film. Why can’t you like one kind and also appreciate the other?
You guys are judging Star Wars like it’s supposed to be an art film. You know what else is horrible? SESAME STREET! I tried watching it, the series has absolutely no depth! It’s just a bunch of kindergarden-level humor and quirky info-tainment! It’s almost like I wasn’t even the audience they had in mind. 1/10!
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Last movie you saw and rate it over 3 years ago
Citizen Kane 10/10 (But not the #1 film of all time!)
Lawrence of Arabia 8/10
The White Ribbon 5.5/10
It’s obvious the director of this film is a big fan of the likes of Bergman and Fellini, and really wanted to say “Me too!” But he forgot their films had original scripts, unique styles, and memorable performances. With the Christian punishment themes, the black and white, the ambiguous ending (Which isn’t really ambiguous at all, as I called who committed the crimes and why about half an hour in), and the ‘uninvolved witness’ as the narrator, White Ribbon comes off as ‘art film by numbers’, designed specifically to win critical praise. His attempts to be multi-threaded only bloat the plot and don’t give the characters or the setting room to breathe.
Crazy Heart 6.5/10
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AVATAR WON BEST PICTURE... over 3 years ago
Avatar is entertaining. It’s fun to watch. Why not just leave it at that instead of bashing it just because a lot of people overrate it?
There’s so much aesthetic narcissism in this board. “I don’t like this, therefore here are a thousand and one reasons any intelligent person wouldn’t like it either.” It’s cliche, but so what? Are you telling me Shakespeare was brimming with original ideas? He’s remembered for high quality of presentation of other people’s ideas.
There’s a big difference between movies like Star Wars and Lord of the Rings which are really well presented cliches, and movies like Transformers which are really poorly presented cliches. If Star Wars is a 10 on that spectrum and Transformers is a 0, I’d put Avatar at around 7.
And anyone who wants to make an artistically beautiful film with subtle emotional themes sure isn’t going to be deterred because James Cameron was handed a small statue.
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Who do you think the most overrated director is? over 3 years ago
Spielberg, absolutely. He has a way of making things annoyingly melodramatic. He takes subject matter that is inherently emotional, makes it into a kneejerk humanism ridden soap opera, then everyone says how moved they were.
Renoir is another one. Grand Illusion is pretty good I guess, but Rules of the Game is just kind of stupid.
Altman, definitely. The only good thing that’s ever come from an Altman film is the last five minutes of The Player.
Misael: I would definitely say Godard and Antonioni are overrated, but all I’ve seen of them is Breathless and L’aventura respectively. You can tell those sorts of films by the way their fans talk about them. They make up their own criticism of modern society, then say that’s what the film is about in a tone of voice like they’re film theory professors.
Love Bergman though.
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Who do you think the most overrated director is? over 3 years ago
Traffic was a bitch!
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The Theory of Dichotomy over 3 years ago
Rules of the Game vs Gosford Park (Wait. Which one is the smart one?)
Fanny and Alexander vs The White Ribbon
Nosferatu vs Vampyr
Battlestar Galactica vs Battlestar Galactica
The first 90 minutes of Minority Report vs the ending
The first 16 episodes of The Prisoner vs the last one
Woody Allen vs Larry David
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Where are we in film history? over 3 years ago
The people who don’t see film as art are the same people who think the only relevant form of music is classical. While they’re busy polishing their monocles, there are plenty of art films around for the rest of us to enjoy.
There are plenty of mainstream trends to talk about. The increasing technology level of special effects in action and fantasy films, science fiction films starting to make humans into the bad guys, the increasing formulaicness of romantic comedies, comedy getting more crass and ironically macho, horror films turning into just finding creative ways to slaughter hordes of obnoxious teenagers.
The trend in American indie films though is to become more personal and realistic, deconstructing genre cliches and rosy worldviews. The main characters of these movies tend to be flawed and trying to cope with a lot of hard luck. Movies like Wendy and Lucy, The Messenger, The Wrestler, A Serious Man. It’s sort of an American neorealism that tries to strip away the Hollywood conceits and bum the hell out of everyone. (And Steve Buscemi wishes he could be in all of them.)
Go to Comment