Crews, I wish I could say I was geniuely surprised that someone could be as ignorant to the racial climate in America as you are, but I can’t. They fact that you think the day after the Civil Rights movement ended there was complete racial equality and that race no longer matters is probably the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard.
1. There are no “all black scholarships”. There are scholarships based upon institutions that were made by black people. But there is no active scholarship in America that is [i]only[/i] available to black people.
2. There are no all black tv shows. Even if you mean that the cast only features black characters you would wrong. Hell even if you said that it meant that only the primary characters are black you’d be hard pressed to find more than a handful. “White tv shows” are far more prelevant. Hell Seinfeld and Friends in particular went seasons without having any substantial black character, or many minority characters in general, and they took place in what is essentially the multicultural capital of the US; New York City.
3. Do you know WHY minority business loans and affirmative action programs were created? Do you think blacks would get “equal” employment if these laws would vanish tomorrow?
Could you please stop posting on racial issues when it’s obvious that you’re so woefully ignorant of the racial climate in the United States?
It can be both the film and the viewer or it can be either. Some films are boring and some viewers need to be engaged on a certain level throughout to keep their mind occupied. Why something is boring can be a understand for a number of reasons. I don’t think it’s best to make a correlation between someone thinking a “slow” film is boring and them being stupid.
A documentary film by Coleman and B+, filmed in Sao Paulo, Brasil.
In September 2002 Coleman and B+ went to Sao Paulo for nine days. They had a week to link with (hip hop) Brasil, enlist three drummers and find enough breaks to make a break record to guarantee commitment from our oversubscribed DJs back home.
http://www.mochilla.com/brasilintime
Only reason I stumbled upon it was because my favorite artist (Madlib/Otis Jackson Jr.) was involved in it. Digging through the crates of beats. There’s some filler here and sometimes it feels more like a road trip being documented rather than a documentary about this road trip of crate digging for Brasilian sounds and roots and connections to hip hop.
Bamboozled is admirable because of the idea. But the idea that people would latch onto the idea of blackface in this day and age. There are far better options than going that far back. Though, I am happy he didn’t originally go with the hip hop being the modern day minstrel show, tiring enough defending hip hop as is, thank god I don’t have to go against that as a reference point.
@Bruce, see if you would have done 5 more seconds of actually rereading what I said and 30 seconds on reading the actual links that you presented, you would have noticed that nothing I said was false. They scholarships are opened to EVERYONE regardless of race. The United Negro College Fund is specifically for people who go to HBCU. Hint hint, people that aren’t black are allowed to go to HBCUs. I went to Howard and my 2nd floor representative in my dorm was Italian!
More on Spike’s filmography, I’m extremely happy and disappointed about School Daze. I think it gave a largely fair and balanced view (granted I’m bias because I largely share the position of Spike in this regard) about life at an HBCU and the conflicting idealouges of the students on campus. I wished he would have delved more into the various divides rather than just show people they are there (particularly for non-black audiences who aren’t aware of the various divides), specifically the issue of colorism between black women.
Bravo Bruce, your point is worthy of a full footnote worth of information. I’ll place it on par with a spelling error as evidence that there is no racial inequality in America or the point that there is list of insert whatever you care to here from a minority group that it is also evidence of lack of racial inequality. Always sadden by the fact that privileged must resort to some call of their o’ so terrible victimization, so therefore everyone else should sit down and shut up. I’d wished there would be a stance of apathy instead, it’s far more honest of a position.
I’m always sadden that Walt Disney’s name is never brought up in discussions of “importance” or even the more broad discussion of film history. I would be hard pressed to think of any singular member in film history that casts a net as wide as Disney in terms of influence, importance, and artistic credibility. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is obvious, as is Bambi. Fantasia is absolutely wonderful. And of course the Mickey Mouse shorts.
Osamu Tezuka also warrants mention if only to be called the Japanese Walt Disney, except he also revolutioned manga.
On the subject of defining the word, important can be anything depending on how narrow or wide you want the discussion to be. Thousands of first films can be deemed important if only because they ushered in a new director. For the purpose of being a productive discussion, and not just a round about of deconstructed the word, I like to go with the National Film Registry’s criteria. A film must be either culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant to be deemed important. Also, it’s important to note that important should not be used interchangeably with good. My feelings aside about Citizen Kane, it will always be an important film but I believe a significant portion of Orson W.‘s fans would argue that it isn’t his best picture.
Apparently all of NYC wants to follow one mold of thought because of one art school. Funny considering there are dozens of exhibits all across the city that represent a wide variety of taste. All of the modern art scene in NYC is not like the movie (Untitled).
I’m surprised at so many people who are willing to scoff at the very idea that someone doesn’t like this movie. People here have already decided how much they’re going to love it. That’s sad.
I have no idea how one could settle on 5 without any specific criteria. Completely dependent on what area of film your interested in (Director, Actor, Cinematographer, etc.), the vantage point of reader (Entertainment, Academia, Aspiring to be a director and etc.), which world view you’re looking for, which time period you’re looking for, something all encompassing, something/someone specific, and dozens upon dozens of other criteria.
Some of my favorite books are African Filmmaking North and South of the Sahara, Postcolonial African Cinema: Ten Directors, and Ex-Iles: Essays on Caribbean Cinema. Most books about African cinema will go to the postcolonial perspective eventually and will in all likey hood reference Frantz Fanon. I would suggest getting familar with his work as well if you’re going to delve into African films.
I also enjoyed the Contemporary Cinema of Latina America and Past Imperfect: History According to the Movies. The latter is up and down as far as quality goes because it was written be over a dozen different writers. Each film is given a different write up, though there are a tad too many films on WWI and WWII.
Robot Ghosts and Wired Dreams: Japanese Science Fiction from Origins to Anime
Starting Point: 1979-1996 (book about Hayao Miyazaki)
For the anime enthusiasts. I’d also recommend going through Midnighteye.com for someone who is interested in Japanese cinema left of the center. Plenty of wonderful book reviews there. And one of my favorite movies sites!
Dimitris, dubbing is perfectly fine in animation. Japan specifically in the last decade or so has been pretty stellar even from the most horrid of companies doing the translation. The difference between the Japanese and English versions of anime is so small that it is that it shouldn’t even be brought up.
Dubbing and translate both fall into the trappings of something being lost in transation. It happens, live with it or learn the language.
I couldn’t take this for a full 90min. One of my favorite music videos, wonderfully simple and fits with most of the lyrics before Kanye goes off track and starts talking about himself. First version is silly even though Rita G has more curves than a F1 track.
You’re going to be “pre-influenced” about every single film you see unless you randomly walk into theatres without knowing absolutely anything about the movie. Either is correct.
Dequinix, fair enough. I do think there is an interesting conversation to be had on the “difficulty” (for a lack of a better word) between something big budget and something that is an “art” movie. Too many people here are content with stroking one other about how terrible Michael Bay is. It’s self-evident and an easy to say, so why go on and on about for 4 pages?
He did say the best ones were the mainstream ones, he said they were the most important. It’s easy enough to make a sound argument that the most widely sceen films are the most important. The easiest example would be the correlation to films depicting historical events/time periods and how the frame our (the masses) perception of the period, people, culture, etc. of that era. One of the former Presidents of the United States (Woodrow Wilson) said The Birth of a Nation was “it is like writing history with lightning. And my only regret is that it is all so terribly true”. People completely unaware about what was going on during Reconstruction after the Civil War could and would take The Birth of a Nation as an accurate portrayl of black people.
Let’s not even get into documentaries like An Inconvient Truth and whatever trash Michael Moore unleashes upon the film going audience. The position could obviously be rebuked, but let’s not pretend it’s not without merit.
Congratulations! I prefer it over the the 2nd ending. I’m not going to watch Rebuild until all three DVDs are out and I can just veg out on them in a row. It’s a wonderful deconstruction of the Mecha “genre” in manga/anime.
Anno was depressed throughout most of the series so yeah. Neon Genesis Evangelion, as with your aforementioned FLCL, work better when you know about what it’s trying to decontruct/satirize. Granted FLCL is probably easier to shallow.
Is Spike Lee a Great Director? about 3 years ago
Crews, I wish I could say I was geniuely surprised that someone could be as ignorant to the racial climate in America as you are, but I can’t. They fact that you think the day after the Civil Rights movement ended there was complete racial equality and that race no longer matters is probably the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard.
1. There are no “all black scholarships”. There are scholarships based upon institutions that were made by black people. But there is no active scholarship in America that is [i]only[/i] available to black people.
2. There are no all black tv shows. Even if you mean that the cast only features black characters you would wrong. Hell even if you said that it meant that only the primary characters are black you’d be hard pressed to find more than a handful. “White tv shows” are far more prelevant. Hell Seinfeld and Friends in particular went seasons without having any substantial black character, or many minority characters in general, and they took place in what is essentially the multicultural capital of the US; New York City.
3. Do you know WHY minority business loans and affirmative action programs were created? Do you think blacks would get “equal” employment if these laws would vanish tomorrow?
Could you please stop posting on racial issues when it’s obvious that you’re so woefully ignorant of the racial climate in the United States?
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if someone thinks a film is boring is it a reflection on the film or on the viewer? about 3 years ago
It can be both the film and the viewer or it can be either. Some films are boring and some viewers need to be engaged on a certain level throughout to keep their mind occupied. Why something is boring can be a understand for a number of reasons. I don’t think it’s best to make a correlation between someone thinking a “slow” film is boring and them being stupid.
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What is your favorite animated film, excluding all of Disney? about 3 years ago
Ghost in the Shell
Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade
Sky Crawlers
The Animatrix
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Best Movies About Music Making about 3 years ago
BRASILINTIME
A documentary film by Coleman and B+, filmed in Sao Paulo, Brasil.
In September 2002 Coleman and B+ went to Sao Paulo for nine days. They had a week to link with (hip hop) Brasil, enlist three drummers and find enough breaks to make a break record to guarantee commitment from our oversubscribed DJs back home.
http://www.mochilla.com/brasilintime
Only reason I stumbled upon it was because my favorite artist (Madlib/Otis Jackson Jr.) was involved in it. Digging through the crates of beats. There’s some filler here and sometimes it feels more like a road trip being documented rather than a documentary about this road trip of crate digging for Brasilian sounds and roots and connections to hip hop.
Go to Comment
Is Spike Lee a Great Director? about 3 years ago
Bamboozled is admirable because of the idea. But the idea that people would latch onto the idea of blackface in this day and age. There are far better options than going that far back. Though, I am happy he didn’t originally go with the hip hop being the modern day minstrel show, tiring enough defending hip hop as is, thank god I don’t have to go against that as a reference point.
Go to Comment
Is Spike Lee a Great Director? about 3 years ago
@Bruce, see if you would have done 5 more seconds of actually rereading what I said and 30 seconds on reading the actual links that you presented, you would have noticed that nothing I said was false. They scholarships are opened to EVERYONE regardless of race. The United Negro College Fund is specifically for people who go to HBCU. Hint hint, people that aren’t black are allowed to go to HBCUs. I went to Howard and my 2nd floor representative in my dorm was Italian!
More on Spike’s filmography, I’m extremely happy and disappointed about School Daze. I think it gave a largely fair and balanced view (granted I’m bias because I largely share the position of Spike in this regard) about life at an HBCU and the conflicting idealouges of the students on campus. I wished he would have delved more into the various divides rather than just show people they are there (particularly for non-black audiences who aren’t aware of the various divides), specifically the issue of colorism between black women.
Go to Comment
TARANTINO HEADS VENICE JURY about 3 years ago
So the winner is going to be decided by which has the best foot shot?
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Is Spike Lee a Great Director? about 3 years ago
Bravo Bruce, your point is worthy of a full footnote worth of information. I’ll place it on par with a spelling error as evidence that there is no racial inequality in America or the point that there is list of insert whatever you care to here from a minority group that it is also evidence of lack of racial inequality. Always sadden by the fact that privileged must resort to some call of their o’ so terrible victimization, so therefore everyone else should sit down and shut up. I’d wished there would be a stance of apathy instead, it’s far more honest of a position.
Go to Comment
Define an "Important" Film about 3 years ago
I’m always sadden that Walt Disney’s name is never brought up in discussions of “importance” or even the more broad discussion of film history. I would be hard pressed to think of any singular member in film history that casts a net as wide as Disney in terms of influence, importance, and artistic credibility. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is obvious, as is Bambi. Fantasia is absolutely wonderful. And of course the Mickey Mouse shorts.
Osamu Tezuka also warrants mention if only to be called the Japanese Walt Disney, except he also revolutioned manga.
On the subject of defining the word, important can be anything depending on how narrow or wide you want the discussion to be. Thousands of first films can be deemed important if only because they ushered in a new director. For the purpose of being a productive discussion, and not just a round about of deconstructed the word, I like to go with the National Film Registry’s criteria. A film must be either culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant to be deemed important. Also, it’s important to note that important should not be used interchangeably with good. My feelings aside about Citizen Kane, it will always be an important film but I believe a significant portion of Orson W.‘s fans would argue that it isn’t his best picture.
Go to Comment
What the hell happened to the US film industry? about 3 years ago
Apparently all of NYC wants to follow one mold of thought because of one art school. Funny considering there are dozens of exhibits all across the city that represent a wide variety of taste. All of the modern art scene in NYC is not like the movie (Untitled).
Go to Comment
Dude, Where are all the Chicks? about 3 years ago
I was under the impression that the vast majority of female directors were filming television episodes.
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Godard Missed Cannes about 3 years ago
I’m surprised at so many people who are willing to scoff at the very idea that someone doesn’t like this movie. People here have already decided how much they’re going to love it. That’s sad.
Go to Comment
BFI Sight & Sound’s top five film books about 3 years ago
I have no idea how one could settle on 5 without any specific criteria. Completely dependent on what area of film your interested in (Director, Actor, Cinematographer, etc.), the vantage point of reader (Entertainment, Academia, Aspiring to be a director and etc.), which world view you’re looking for, which time period you’re looking for, something all encompassing, something/someone specific, and dozens upon dozens of other criteria.
Some of my favorite books are African Filmmaking North and South of the Sahara, Postcolonial African Cinema: Ten Directors, and Ex-Iles: Essays on Caribbean Cinema. Most books about African cinema will go to the postcolonial perspective eventually and will in all likey hood reference Frantz Fanon. I would suggest getting familar with his work as well if you’re going to delve into African films.
I also enjoyed the Contemporary Cinema of Latina America and Past Imperfect: History According to the Movies. The latter is up and down as far as quality goes because it was written be over a dozen different writers. Each film is given a different write up, though there are a tad too many films on WWI and WWII.
Go to Comment
BFI Sight & Sound’s top five film books about 3 years ago
Sorry for my misreading. :o :)
Robot Ghosts and Wired Dreams: Japanese Science Fiction from Origins to Anime
Starting Point: 1979-1996 (book about Hayao Miyazaki)
For the anime enthusiasts. I’d also recommend going through Midnighteye.com for someone who is interested in Japanese cinema left of the center. Plenty of wonderful book reviews there. And one of my favorite movies sites!
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Best DVD Distributors about 3 years ago
Sony Pictures Classics has always been wonderful.
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if dubbing foreign films is so horrid, then why is it perfectly acceptable to translate novels about 3 years ago
Dimitris, dubbing is perfectly fine in animation. Japan specifically in the last decade or so has been pretty stellar even from the most horrid of companies doing the translation. The difference between the Japanese and English versions of anime is so small that it is that it shouldn’t even be brought up.
Dubbing and translate both fall into the trappings of something being lost in transation. It happens, live with it or learn the language.
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Alejandro González Iñárritu's Nike World Cup Commercial about 3 years ago
If there were more shots on goal, I would love soccer or “futbol” as the rest of the world calls it.
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Music videos: more cinematic than your average film? about 3 years ago
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDNFoFQH9eI
Kanye West-Flashing Lights (second version)
I couldn’t take this for a full 90min. One of my favorite music videos, wonderfully simple and fits with most of the lyrics before Kanye goes off track and starts talking about himself. First version is silly even though Rita G has more curves than a F1 track.
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Who is the greatest musical artist of all time? about 3 years ago
Duke Elllington or the collection of black experience that invented the BLUES
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Quentin Tarantino's next Few films until he retires almost 3 years ago
A satire on himself.
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The Quest for Being Real or Why I Almost Never Read Critics almost 3 years ago
You’re going to be “pre-influenced” about every single film you see unless you randomly walk into theatres without knowing absolutely anything about the movie. Either is correct.
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Quentin Tarantino's next Few films until he retires almost 3 years ago
Don’t watch his movies if you don’t like him?
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Michael Bay says creating an "Art" movie is easy almost 3 years ago
I’m sure there’s some semblance of a point here and a worthy discussion to be had. But it will not be had unfortunately.
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Michael Bay says creating an "Art" movie is easy almost 3 years ago
Dequinix, fair enough. I do think there is an interesting conversation to be had on the “difficulty” (for a lack of a better word) between something big budget and something that is an “art” movie. Too many people here are content with stroking one other about how terrible Michael Bay is. It’s self-evident and an easy to say, so why go on and on about for 4 pages?
Go to Comment
Define an "Important" Film almost 3 years ago
JJE he’s referring to other “arts” in the sense that cinema has been referred to as the seventh art.
1st art: architecture
2nd art: sculpture
3rd art: painting
4th art: dance
5th art: music
6th art: poetry
7th art: cinema
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Define an "Important" Film almost 3 years ago
He did say the best ones were the mainstream ones, he said they were the most important. It’s easy enough to make a sound argument that the most widely sceen films are the most important. The easiest example would be the correlation to films depicting historical events/time periods and how the frame our (the masses) perception of the period, people, culture, etc. of that era. One of the former Presidents of the United States (Woodrow Wilson) said The Birth of a Nation was “it is like writing history with lightning. And my only regret is that it is all so terribly true”. People completely unaware about what was going on during Reconstruction after the Civil War could and would take The Birth of a Nation as an accurate portrayl of black people.
Let’s not even get into documentaries like An Inconvient Truth and whatever trash Michael Moore unleashes upon the film going audience. The position could obviously be rebuked, but let’s not pretend it’s not without merit.
Go to Comment
Neon Genesis Evangelion almost 3 years ago
Congratulations! I prefer it over the the 2nd ending. I’m not going to watch Rebuild until all three DVDs are out and I can just veg out on them in a row. It’s a wonderful deconstruction of the Mecha “genre” in manga/anime.
Go to Comment
Neon Genesis Evangelion almost 3 years ago
How familiar are you with Mecha series Chikenbaby?
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Neon Genesis Evangelion almost 3 years ago
Anno was depressed throughout most of the series so yeah. Neon Genesis Evangelion, as with your aforementioned FLCL, work better when you know about what it’s trying to decontruct/satirize. Granted FLCL is probably easier to shallow.
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Does Anyone See A similarity between Splice and Eraserhead? almost 3 years ago
I guess. But the two designs don’t exactly scream of uniqueness. Splice looks like a hybrid of Aliens and Frankenstein to me.
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