Slumdog was boring. Slumdog was predictable. However, in Hollywood there are several things that will get the critics salivating over your film as long as its not a complete pile of goo, a la “Babel”:
1) An ‘intellectual’ concept wrapped up in something populist and palatable to make it less ‘pretentious’. A perfect example of this is “Shakespeare in Love”, probably one of the stupidest “Best Pictures” ever. Was Shakespeare a character in it? Yes. Did it really have anything to do with what makes Shakespeare great? No. To me this film winning was way more ‘pretentious’ than the Academy choosing a film like, oh – “Elizabeth”, which was a much better period film – or even “The Thin Red Line” or, really, any of the other films nominated that year. Another example of this Emperor’s New Clothes style snobbery is “The English Patient”, which no one was brave enough to admit was bloody boring.
2) Anything with a political/populist message, especially if it glorifies “The Little Guy”. Slumdog falls into this category (as does “Milk”, for that matter – although it was a far superior movie to Slumdog and probably deserved to win Best Picture). Another good example is “Ordinary People” which triumped over RAGING BULL in 1980. Raging Bull!! I don’t think anyone now would say that it deserved to win. Political movies can be great – are often great – but they do not deserve to win by virtue of being political.
3) Anything that can be called either “the Underdog” or “the Little Movie That Could”, as long as it isn’t too fluffy and has one of the above two virtues (sorry “Juno” and “Little Miss Sunshine”). Nobody liked it when everybody said that “Brokeback Mountain” was a sure thing for Best Picture from the minute the first preview screening ended. By Oscar time, all of the Academy voters had “Brokeback fatigue” and needed to be a bit “different” and bit “edgy” and pick “Crash” (which also fits virtue #2), but which honestly nobody really remembers, nor will they.
In short, although sometimes the movie of the highest quality wins (“No Country For Old Men”, “Lord of the Rings: Return of the King”) – most of the time, the movie with the most critical cache will win. This year, it was Slumdog. A fine little movie, wonderfully entertaining, but – as someone on the board pointed out earlier – just a few grown-up scenes short of a 1980s Disney family classic and certainly not something they will study in film schools in years to come.
This thread makes my head hurt. Firstly, I agree with the assertion that people, rather than films, are usually the bearers of pretension. But Bergman? Fellini? Bresson? How can you say they don’t want to communicate with an audience? These directors have something to say, many of them have written about it. They may not be able to communicate with EVERYONE, but there are people out there who hear and understand and who feel something when they watch their films.
You could say that Ernest Hemingway was arrogant. Or JD Salinger for that matter. But it doesn’t make their artwork any less great.
If people are still thinking about it, talking about it, and/or watching it 10+ years after the fact – and after the film has been divorced from it’s cultural context – it’s probably not pretentious. You may not like it/understand it, but enough people do get something from these films to warrant them still being in print. I’m American. I was born in the post-modern age and I didn’t know anything about film when I saw “Au Hasard Balthasar” and “The Hour of the Wolf” and “Blood of the Poet” . But I still loved them. There are people who know nothing about art who weep when they see Guernica or The Sistine Chapel.
Now, I don’t like “Last Year at Marienbad”, but I can’t deny that it continues to make some people think and feel things that intrigue them, forty+ years on. On the other hand, if a filmmaker is flogging “high concepts or literariness” and it doesn’t stand the test of time (AHEM. “Shakespeare in Love”, I’m looking at you.), then it’s probably pretentious. There was a bunch of hype, people believed it, but as time trickled on it became apparent that without the hype there wasn’t much there.
And OK, it kind of makes me angry to see people call films that stirred up real emotions for me: “pretentious”! I think that’s a rather “pretentious” thing to do. :-)
I try to avoid films I don’t think I’ll like, but there’s always airplanes and looking at my LoveFilm list I’ve got the following:
The Stepford Wives remake, Miss Potter, My Blueberry Nights, Tideland, Coffee & Cigarettes, A Prairie Home Companion, The Brothers Grimm, Sin City, Me You & Everyone We Know, Shakespeare in Love (sorry I know I’ve posted three posts now about poor SiL but I really hate this film)
I’m sure these are not the worst of all time, but they are ones I thought I would like and really disappointed me.
Oh, I’m so glad you pointed out the history of “Contempt”, Ray. I wrote a blog post about this last month because I was so angry that a female professor at a recent film conference was trying to making “Contempt” about “Godard’s contempt for Bardot and women in general”. What???? The Nouvelle Vague directors were pioneers for generally putting women as real thinking and feeling characters at the centre of their films. Plus, as you said, Godard was forced to put in that scene of Bardot naked by the Italian producer who wanted more “flesh”. And to his credit he did it in such a way that I think gave Bardot some dignity. My post about this stupid recent-rewriting of cinema history is here, if anyone cares:
http://newwavefilm.wordpress.com/2009/03/21/nouvelle-vague-50-years-on-conference-part-1-was-the-new-wave-just-plain-uppity/
[DISCLAIMER: I am a woman and I have read Judith Butler, Kristeva, and Cixous so please don’t call me a misogynist. Thanks.]
and here’s the one specifically about Le Mepris:
http://newwavefilm.wordpress.com/2009/03/25/nouvelle-vague-50-years-on-conference-part-2-jean-luc-godard-continuity-critique/ (oops! forgot to include the one the first time)
And La Belle Noiseusea is one of my favourite films for some of the exact reasons you listed in your post, Ray!
But anyway – I wanted to answer Edouard’s original question and I have about 2 1/2 more pages of this thread to read so I suppose I’d better do that before I chip in any further!
Oo! Batman & Robin! Eck! Moulin Rouge! Ug! The Phantom Menace!! I was such a huge Star Wars geek too before I saw JarJar Binks. It nearly destroyed my faith in movies altogether.
The Number 23 came on my LoveFilm this week. Maybe I’ll skip it…
Have to disagree: McCabe & Mrs Miller you had all of those scenes floating in and out of the town and the whorehouse. The subplots with each of the whores, Shelly Duvall and her “mail order” husband… although not as many “mains” as Nashville or Gosford Park, you’re right. I still think it’s handled better than Nashville or M*A*S*H – although I’m not sure what film would get the prize for the greatest-volume-of-mains-without-falling-apart…. hmm…. Short Cuts I haven’t seen but I heard it’s one of his best.
Sean – I’m completely with you that movies are emotional as well as “intellectual” experiences. One of my favourite films is Xanadu. :-) But I don’t think that I would ever try to argue that Xanadu is a better film than Jules & Jim, or Blade Runner, or The Big Lebowski.
Some people think that taste is completely subjective. There’s something to that. But then if you ask those same people which is a better film: Mortal Kombat 2 or Casablanca, I’m sure a large majority would turn their noses up at MK2. So there must be something to judgement - otherwise all of the film critics (and the Academy) would be out of a job. :)
What I mean is: the Academy was set up to judge films as being better than one another. They obviously have certain criteria they apply every year because, let’s face it - animation never wins, comic book movies never win, and when a comedy wins Best Picture, hell will probably have frozen over. The Academy, therefore, are pretending to be the judges of “quality” films. All I’m saying is that their pretense of “quality” usually seems to be more like what’s “fashionable”… and what’s fashionable often doesn’t stand the test of time. It remains to be seen if Slumdog will go the way of “Crash” or “Shakespeare In Love” and slide into film obscurity as time progresses, or whether it will still be watched ten to fifteen years from now with the same reverence. Like some of the other people who commented, however, I am guessing no. But I could be wrong. :)
Actually, the only ones I think are pretentious are the film critics because they aren’t actually making any art. And maybe the Academy. But then that’s something else altogether. :-)
I love this question. Personally, I agree with Drew and Andrew — some books were meant to be experienced as books (lots of inner dialogue, wordplay, language metaphors, long Dickensian plots, narration) and some are more visual and more naturally translate into film. Sometimes bad adaptations of very literary books are the best.
I have a theory that pulpy or mediocre books (perhaps they have a great story but are poorly written), obscure books, and older books sometimes make better films because the filmgoer is less likely to have an immediate and personal relationship with the story and therefore also less likely to care if it is faithful. I can’t think of any examples offhand, though. Er… “Rear Window”? “Dr. Strangelove”? “The Elephant Man”? Oh, I’ve got one! “Stalker”! The story “Roadside Picnic” is pretty awful and hardly resembles it at all.
I wonder if there’s a difference between watching in a cinema (can’t rewind, part of a theatre full of people with popcorn, whispers, etc.) and watching at home (complete control over the pause, play, and rewind buttons on the remote)….?
Well, we know he doesn’t like Michael Moore or Tarantino (or Cannes). See this interview here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2005/apr/29/2
‘Yet he continues to study film and experiment as energetically as ever. He is brutally dismissive of Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 and of the spate of other recent films attacking globalisation, warmongering and US cultural imperialism. “They say they are attacking Bush, but they are not doing it in movie terms, but in words.” He calls Moore (in his idiosyncratic English) “just a Hollywood reporter man”, and compares him unfavourably with the great cinéma vérité documentary-maker Frederick Wiseman. He even suggests that Moore’s work may actually have helped Bush. “It’s not enough to be against Adolf Hitler. If you make a disastrous movie, you’re not against Adolf Hitler.” (Whether he has actually seen Fahrenheit 9/11 is not in any way apparent.)
Nor is Godard especially flattering about the legions of admirers who make reference to him in their own movies or even name their companies after him. Quentin Tarantino, for example, calls his production company A Band Apart, in deference to Godard’s 1964 classic, Bande à Part. “He says he admires me, but that’s not true,” Godard muses, then makes a cryptic remark about the torture and humiliation of prisoners by US guards in Iraq. "What is never said about Tarantino is that those prisons we are shown pictures of, where the torture is taking place, are called “reservoir dogs”. I think the name is very appropriate." …….
He sounds equally disenchanted with film festivals. “In the beginning I believed in Cannes, but now it’s just for publicity. People come to Cannes just to advertise their films, not with a particular message. But the advantage is that if you go to the festival, you get so much press coverage in three days that it advertises the film for the rest of the year.” ’
A few weeks ago I recorded Truffaut’s “Two English Girls” (Les deux anglaises et le continent) off of Cinemoi via the magic of Sky+. (Cinemoi is my new reason for getting up in the morning, btw) and we watched it last night at last. I know this film wasn’t well received by the press or the public when it came out, but I really enjoyed it. Maybe this is because I am an American living in England (and dating an English man) so the agonies of dating outside one’s culture were particularly salient for me. And although the roundabout actions of the two women might seem especially puzzling to a Frenchman (or an American – and Truffaut believed the lack of audience sympathy is one of the main reasons this film flopped.), my partner was quick to point out that they make a lot of sense from an English perspective, especially in the early 1900s. I also liked getting a peek at Edwardian French bohemia, although I did find the portrayal of Anne just a wee bit frustrating. I can talk about that more and the film in general, if anyone wants to, but I really wanted to ask a more universal question of the board. What, in general, do people think about voiceover?
Two English Girls uses a lot of voiceover. The book is based on the interweaving diaries of the three characters, so we get quite a lot of Jean-Pierre Leaud (Claude), some from the two female leads, a quite a bit also from an omniscient narrator who moves the story along. I know there is an axiom that voicover is generally a bad thing. It’s a device, some say, best suited for literature and can undermine the “show don’t tell” strength of film as a medium (not to mention that it often sounds a bit like Mother Goose and thus, in this post-ironic age, can come off as a bit cheesy). But in the case of Two English Girls, I think it works. The narration puts us at a slight distance from the main characters — usually not a great thing — but in this case it seems to complement the nostalgic feel and might also be effective as a way of keeping us equally sympathetic with all three main characters, despite the fact that we spend the most time with Claude.
There are obviously a lot of cases where it doesn’t work (ie. Little Children, anyone? I don’t think this was a terrible film, but I found the VO pretty jarring). What I’m wondering is: under what circumstances, if any, do people feel that it’s a valuable filmic device? Is it only OK for older films to use it? Or are there any contemporary films that have used it in a way that really added something to the film?
that’s all! :-)
ps. I did a quick search of previous forum posts and didn’t see a topic similar to this, so apologies if I missed it!
Did you know that Ronald Howard is Leslie Howard’s soon? That reason alone is enough to love him!
I’m kind of partial to Basil Rathbone, but I think that’s only because I had a huge crush on him when I was about 13 (no jokes please). :-) His autobiography, “In And Out Of Character”, is up there with David Niven’s “Bring on the Empty Horses” as one of the best-written accounts ever of golden age/classic Hollywood. Brett is probably a grittier Holmes, but does he have the style?
oh, Peter Cushing is also great! Although I haven’t seen the BBC stuff or his 80s TV Holmes, just “Hound of the Baskervilles”. I just recently bought that HUGE 21+ DVD Hammer Box Set they’ve got HMV (the “credit crunch” discount meant it was only £17 – woo hoo!). This just reminded me to go check to see if that film is in it. Everytime I drive across Dartmoor I always think about that scene where Cecile sinks into the moor…
Kenji: I think the girls and their mother were English, even though they were living in Wales. :-) I also love the colours and pastoral gentleness of the mise en scène….
Justin/PolarisDIB: I was thinking about the real Robert McKee (Brian Cox) in Adaptation when I wrote this, weirdly. I suppose I was just wondering if that sort of thinking (the “rules” of good filmmaking) only really applies to amateurs. “Things that are easy to do badly but can be done well in the right hands”, rather than “things you should never do”. It kind of moves filmmaking out of the realm of the objective and into the subjective, or maybe splinters objectivity into a new set of smaller, more specific rules: “Voiceover only works when…”
The latter explanation is more appealing, because if filmmaking is completely subjective then it can’t really be “taught”. I have the feeling that any time someone like McKee might make an objective rule, and some brilliant writer/director successfully overcomes it, a McKee follower would be forced to splinter each rule into smaller rules until they’d be so specific as to become meaningless. I understand why someone might want to create a formalised set of filmmaking techniques. As an audience, if there are no rules I have to wonder what are the grounds for the kind of “collective subjectivity” that recognises that a technique has been used well. But I’m suspicious, nonetheless, of “rules” in general. Perhaps good directing is kind of like good painting in that it is useful to learn why there are certain rules before you can really transgress them – but that transgressing them is kind of the point.
Anyway – good thread! I’m always interested in how different filmmakers use the same techniques to varying effect. I mean, how many times have you seen an awful jump cut?
And a lot of good film ideas from everyone to pad out my LoveFilm list which was my secret reason for posting (heh heh heh)!
So we went to the BFI the night before last to catch the last showing of Chabrol’s Les Bonnes Femmes…and it was SOLD OUT! With a queue of over thirty people on stand by!! Yikes!! That’s never happened to me before at the BFI. The James Bond film showing at the same time in a separate cinema had no line at all (!!). When did this film get to be so popular? There were three showings as well, plus two others at the Cine Lumiere.
Now I have to buy the Region 1 DVD from the States because it doesn’t seem to be available in Region 2. Grrrr….
Sorry I just had to get that off of my chest! I suppose it’s a good thing that so many people are so enthusiastic about Chabrol…
1981 was not my favourite year for film, but anyways…
1) La femme de l’aviateur (Eric Rohmer) aka The Aviator’s Wife
2) Times Square (Allan Moyle) – OK, technically 1980 in the US, but released in 1981 overseas, I swear!
3) My Dinner With Andre (Louis Malle)
4) Unico (Osamu Tezuka) – so good; this was my favourite movie as a kid..
5) An American Werewolf in London (John Landis)
6) Blow Out (Brian DePalma)
7) Polyester (John Waters)
8) Scanners (Cronenberg)
9) Teheran 43 (Alov, Naumov)
10) Das Boot (Wolfgang Peterson)
Thanks Harry! “Clash of the Titans” was 1981??? For some reason I thought it was a 70s film. That’s so knocking Das Boot off at number 10, perhaps should even go in at number 8 or 9. Wasn’t that Harryhausen’s last flick? I was completely in love with that movie; I kind of still am. I even had the metal lunchbox and everything.
I thought about Dragonslayer earlier, because I also loved it as a kid, but I haven’t seen it since the mid 80s so I’m not sure what I’d think of it now. I really need to see the The French Lieutenant’s Woman – it’s been on my list for a while and I love Karel Reisz’s 50s and 60s stuff. I’ll go reserve it on LoveFilm sharpish.
Kenji: There’s something about The Aviator’s Wife that always makes me happy watching it. It’s kind of like Paul Auster crossed with the first hour of Celine & Julie Go Boating…
The Auteurs Film Club about 3 years ago
Oh, I want in too! Here’s my blog:
newwavefilm.wordpress.com
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Slumdog Millionaire Overrated Film of the Year about 3 years ago
Slumdog was boring. Slumdog was predictable. However, in Hollywood there are several things that will get the critics salivating over your film as long as its not a complete pile of goo, a la “Babel”:
1) An ‘intellectual’ concept wrapped up in something populist and palatable to make it less ‘pretentious’. A perfect example of this is “Shakespeare in Love”, probably one of the stupidest “Best Pictures” ever. Was Shakespeare a character in it? Yes. Did it really have anything to do with what makes Shakespeare great? No. To me this film winning was way more ‘pretentious’ than the Academy choosing a film like, oh – “Elizabeth”, which was a much better period film – or even “The Thin Red Line” or, really, any of the other films nominated that year. Another example of this Emperor’s New Clothes style snobbery is “The English Patient”, which no one was brave enough to admit was bloody boring.
2) Anything with a political/populist message, especially if it glorifies “The Little Guy”. Slumdog falls into this category (as does “Milk”, for that matter – although it was a far superior movie to Slumdog and probably deserved to win Best Picture). Another good example is “Ordinary People” which triumped over RAGING BULL in 1980. Raging Bull!! I don’t think anyone now would say that it deserved to win. Political movies can be great – are often great – but they do not deserve to win by virtue of being political.
3) Anything that can be called either “the Underdog” or “the Little Movie That Could”, as long as it isn’t too fluffy and has one of the above two virtues (sorry “Juno” and “Little Miss Sunshine”). Nobody liked it when everybody said that “Brokeback Mountain” was a sure thing for Best Picture from the minute the first preview screening ended. By Oscar time, all of the Academy voters had “Brokeback fatigue” and needed to be a bit “different” and bit “edgy” and pick “Crash” (which also fits virtue #2), but which honestly nobody really remembers, nor will they.
In short, although sometimes the movie of the highest quality wins (“No Country For Old Men”, “Lord of the Rings: Return of the King”) – most of the time, the movie with the most critical cache will win. This year, it was Slumdog. A fine little movie, wonderfully entertaining, but – as someone on the board pointed out earlier – just a few grown-up scenes short of a 1980s Disney family classic and certainly not something they will study in film schools in years to come.
Just my 2cents/pence. —Amber
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J. G. BALLARD about 3 years ago
I had a good cry about this yesterday…. :-(
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PRETENTIOUS FILMMAKERS/FILMS about 3 years ago
This thread makes my head hurt. Firstly, I agree with the assertion that people, rather than films, are usually the bearers of pretension. But Bergman? Fellini? Bresson? How can you say they don’t want to communicate with an audience? These directors have something to say, many of them have written about it. They may not be able to communicate with EVERYONE, but there are people out there who hear and understand and who feel something when they watch their films.
You could say that Ernest Hemingway was arrogant. Or JD Salinger for that matter. But it doesn’t make their artwork any less great.
If people are still thinking about it, talking about it, and/or watching it 10+ years after the fact – and after the film has been divorced from it’s cultural context – it’s probably not pretentious. You may not like it/understand it, but enough people do get something from these films to warrant them still being in print. I’m American. I was born in the post-modern age and I didn’t know anything about film when I saw “Au Hasard Balthasar” and “The Hour of the Wolf” and “Blood of the Poet” . But I still loved them. There are people who know nothing about art who weep when they see Guernica or The Sistine Chapel.
Now, I don’t like “Last Year at Marienbad”, but I can’t deny that it continues to make some people think and feel things that intrigue them, forty+ years on. On the other hand, if a filmmaker is flogging “high concepts or literariness” and it doesn’t stand the test of time (AHEM. “Shakespeare in Love”, I’m looking at you.), then it’s probably pretentious. There was a bunch of hype, people believed it, but as time trickled on it became apparent that without the hype there wasn’t much there.
And OK, it kind of makes me angry to see people call films that stirred up real emotions for me: “pretentious”! I think that’s a rather “pretentious” thing to do. :-)
Just my 2pence/cents. -Amber (American in London)
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Ten Worst Movies You've Ever Seen? about 3 years ago
I try to avoid films I don’t think I’ll like, but there’s always airplanes and looking at my LoveFilm list I’ve got the following:
The Stepford Wives remake, Miss Potter, My Blueberry Nights, Tideland, Coffee & Cigarettes, A Prairie Home Companion, The Brothers Grimm, Sin City, Me You & Everyone We Know, Shakespeare in Love (sorry I know I’ve posted three posts now about poor SiL but I really hate this film)
I’m sure these are not the worst of all time, but they are ones I thought I would like and really disappointed me.
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The female form... about 3 years ago
Oh, I’m so glad you pointed out the history of “Contempt”, Ray. I wrote a blog post about this last month because I was so angry that a female professor at a recent film conference was trying to making “Contempt” about “Godard’s contempt for Bardot and women in general”. What???? The Nouvelle Vague directors were pioneers for generally putting women as real thinking and feeling characters at the centre of their films. Plus, as you said, Godard was forced to put in that scene of Bardot naked by the Italian producer who wanted more “flesh”. And to his credit he did it in such a way that I think gave Bardot some dignity. My post about this stupid recent-rewriting of cinema history is here, if anyone cares:
http://newwavefilm.wordpress.com/2009/03/21/nouvelle-vague-50-years-on-conference-part-1-was-the-new-wave-just-plain-uppity/
[DISCLAIMER: I am a woman and I have read Judith Butler, Kristeva, and Cixous so please don’t call me a misogynist. Thanks.]
and here’s the one specifically about Le Mepris:
http://newwavefilm.wordpress.com/2009/03/25/nouvelle-vague-50-years-on-conference-part-2-jean-luc-godard-continuity-critique/ (oops! forgot to include the one the first time)
And La Belle Noiseusea is one of my favourite films for some of the exact reasons you listed in your post, Ray!
But anyway – I wanted to answer Edouard’s original question and I have about 2 1/2 more pages of this thread to read so I suppose I’d better do that before I chip in any further!
Amber (having so much fun on these boards today)
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What films have great examples of ensemble acting? about 3 years ago
I’ll agree with that Altman, Col Dax, but I nominate “McCabe & Mrs. Miller” instead. I think it’s his best.
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Ten Worst Movies You've Ever Seen? about 3 years ago
Oo! Batman & Robin! Eck! Moulin Rouge! Ug! The Phantom Menace!! I was such a huge Star Wars geek too before I saw JarJar Binks. It nearly destroyed my faith in movies altogether.
The Number 23 came on my LoveFilm this week. Maybe I’ll skip it…
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What films have great examples of ensemble acting? about 3 years ago
Have to disagree: McCabe & Mrs Miller you had all of those scenes floating in and out of the town and the whorehouse. The subplots with each of the whores, Shelly Duvall and her “mail order” husband… although not as many “mains” as Nashville or Gosford Park, you’re right. I still think it’s handled better than Nashville or M*A*S*H – although I’m not sure what film would get the prize for the greatest-volume-of-mains-without-falling-apart…. hmm…. Short Cuts I haven’t seen but I heard it’s one of his best.
I also like Smoke… love Paul Auster.
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The Auteurs Film Club about 3 years ago
Woo hoo! I just made it! Did you get my email address?
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Slumdog Millionaire Overrated Film of the Year about 3 years ago
Sean – I’m completely with you that movies are emotional as well as “intellectual” experiences. One of my favourite films is Xanadu. :-) But I don’t think that I would ever try to argue that Xanadu is a better film than Jules & Jim, or Blade Runner, or The Big Lebowski.
Some people think that taste is completely subjective. There’s something to that. But then if you ask those same people which is a better film: Mortal Kombat 2 or Casablanca, I’m sure a large majority would turn their noses up at MK2. So there must be something to judgement
- otherwise all of the film critics (and the Academy) would be out of a job. :)What I mean is: the Academy was set up to judge films as being better than one another. They obviously have certain criteria they apply every year because, let’s face it
- animation never wins, comic book movies never win, and when a comedy wins Best Picture, hell will probably have frozen over. The Academy, therefore, are pretending to be the judges of “quality” films. All I’m saying is that their pretense of “quality” usually seems to be more like what’s “fashionable”… and what’s fashionable often doesn’t stand the test of time. It remains to be seen if Slumdog will go the way of “Crash” or “Shakespeare In Love” and slide into film obscurity as time progresses, or whether it will still be watched ten to fifteen years from now with the same reverence. Like some of the other people who commented, however, I am guessing no. But I could be wrong. :)Go to Comment
PRETENTIOUS FILMMAKERS/FILMS about 3 years ago
here here, Bobby!
Actually, the only ones I think are pretentious are the film critics because they aren’t actually making any art. And maybe the Academy. But then that’s something else altogether. :-)
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The female form... about 3 years ago
thanks Loki. I have a loooong way to go though! :-) Totally agree with everything you just said, though.
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The Difficulty with Adaptations about 3 years ago
I love this question. Personally, I agree with Drew and Andrew — some books were meant to be experienced as books (lots of inner dialogue, wordplay, language metaphors, long Dickensian plots, narration) and some are more visual and more naturally translate into film. Sometimes bad adaptations of very literary books are the best.
I have a theory that pulpy or mediocre books (perhaps they have a great story but are poorly written), obscure books, and older books sometimes make better films because the filmgoer is less likely to have an immediate and personal relationship with the story and therefore also less likely to care if it is faithful. I can’t think of any examples offhand, though. Er… “Rear Window”? “Dr. Strangelove”? “The Elephant Man”? Oh, I’ve got one! “Stalker”! The story “Roadside Picnic” is pretty awful and hardly resembles it at all.
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Impression made by The Color of Pomegranates about 3 years ago
Wow, now I want to see this…
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What films have great examples of ensemble acting? about 3 years ago
I’m so glad there’s somebody else out there, Marq! I thought I was the only one! Harvey Keitel is particularly good.
Not too sure about “Blue in the Face”, though….
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Film & Performance about 3 years ago
I wonder if there’s a difference between watching in a cinema (can’t rewind, part of a theatre full of people with popcorn, whispers, etc.) and watching at home (complete control over the pause, play, and rewind buttons on the remote)….?
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CAHIERS DU CINEMA - GODARD'S TOP TEN LISTS about 3 years ago
Well, we know he doesn’t like Michael Moore or Tarantino (or Cannes). See this interview here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2005/apr/29/2
‘Yet he continues to study film and experiment as energetically as ever. He is brutally dismissive of Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 and of the spate of other recent films attacking globalisation, warmongering and US cultural imperialism. “They say they are attacking Bush, but they are not doing it in movie terms, but in words.” He calls Moore (in his idiosyncratic English) “just a Hollywood reporter man”, and compares him unfavourably with the great cinéma vérité documentary-maker Frederick Wiseman. He even suggests that Moore’s work may actually have helped Bush. “It’s not enough to be against Adolf Hitler. If you make a disastrous movie, you’re not against Adolf Hitler.” (Whether he has actually seen Fahrenheit 9/11 is not in any way apparent.)
Nor is Godard especially flattering about the legions of admirers who make reference to him in their own movies or even name their companies after him. Quentin Tarantino, for example, calls his production company A Band Apart, in deference to Godard’s 1964 classic, Bande à Part. “He says he admires me, but that’s not true,” Godard muses, then makes a cryptic remark about the torture and humiliation of prisoners by US guards in Iraq. "What is never said about Tarantino is that those prisons we are shown pictures of, where the torture is taking place, are called “reservoir dogs”. I think the name is very appropriate." …….
He sounds equally disenchanted with film festivals. “In the beginning I believed in Cannes, but now it’s just for publicity. People come to Cannes just to advertise their films, not with a particular message. But the advantage is that if you go to the festival, you get so much press coverage in three days that it advertises the film for the rest of the year.” ’
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TOP 10 FILMS FROM YOUR "BIRTH YEAR" about 3 years ago
I have a copy of Cuba Si.
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Which film should I buy? about 3 years ago
Mouchette!
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Is Voiceover Ever Good? (& Truffaut's TWO ENGLISH GIRLS) about 3 years ago
A few weeks ago I recorded Truffaut’s “Two English Girls” (Les deux anglaises et le continent) off of Cinemoi via the magic of Sky+. (Cinemoi is my new reason for getting up in the morning, btw) and we watched it last night at last. I know this film wasn’t well received by the press or the public when it came out, but I really enjoyed it. Maybe this is because I am an American living in England (and dating an English man) so the agonies of dating outside one’s culture were particularly salient for me. And although the roundabout actions of the two women might seem especially puzzling to a Frenchman (or an American – and Truffaut believed the lack of audience sympathy is one of the main reasons this film flopped.), my partner was quick to point out that they make a lot of sense from an English perspective, especially in the early 1900s. I also liked getting a peek at Edwardian French bohemia, although I did find the portrayal of Anne just a wee bit frustrating. I can talk about that more and the film in general, if anyone wants to, but I really wanted to ask a more universal question of the board. What, in general, do people think about voiceover?
Two English Girls uses a lot of voiceover. The book is based on the interweaving diaries of the three characters, so we get quite a lot of Jean-Pierre Leaud (Claude), some from the two female leads, a quite a bit also from an omniscient narrator who moves the story along. I know there is an axiom that voicover is generally a bad thing. It’s a device, some say, best suited for literature and can undermine the “show don’t tell” strength of film as a medium (not to mention that it often sounds a bit like Mother Goose and thus, in this post-ironic age, can come off as a bit cheesy). But in the case of Two English Girls, I think it works. The narration puts us at a slight distance from the main characters — usually not a great thing — but in this case it seems to complement the nostalgic feel and might also be effective as a way of keeping us equally sympathetic with all three main characters, despite the fact that we spend the most time with Claude.
There are obviously a lot of cases where it doesn’t work (ie. Little Children, anyone? I don’t think this was a terrible film, but I found the VO pretty jarring). What I’m wondering is: under what circumstances, if any, do people feel that it’s a valuable filmic device? Is it only OK for older films to use it? Or are there any contemporary films that have used it in a way that really added something to the film?
that’s all! :-)
ps. I did a quick search of previous forum posts and didn’t see a topic similar to this, so apologies if I missed it!
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any good sherlock holmes? about 3 years ago
Did you know that Ronald Howard is Leslie Howard’s soon? That reason alone is enough to love him!
I’m kind of partial to Basil Rathbone, but I think that’s only because I had a huge crush on him when I was about 13 (no jokes please). :-) His autobiography, “In And Out Of Character”, is up there with David Niven’s “Bring on the Empty Horses” as one of the best-written accounts ever of golden age/classic Hollywood. Brett is probably a grittier Holmes, but does he have the style?
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any good sherlock holmes? about 3 years ago
oh, Peter Cushing is also great! Although I haven’t seen the BBC stuff or his 80s TV Holmes, just “Hound of the Baskervilles”. I just recently bought that HUGE 21+ DVD Hammer Box Set they’ve got HMV (the “credit crunch” discount meant it was only £17 – woo hoo!). This just reminded me to go check to see if that film is in it. Everytime I drive across Dartmoor I always think about that scene where Cecile sinks into the moor…
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CAHIERS DU CINEMA - GODARD'S TOP TEN LISTS about 3 years ago
Second that, Justin.
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Is Voiceover Ever Good? (& Truffaut's TWO ENGLISH GIRLS) about 3 years ago
Kenji: I think the girls and their mother were English, even though they were living in Wales. :-) I also love the colours and pastoral gentleness of the mise en scène….
Justin/PolarisDIB: I was thinking about the real Robert McKee (Brian Cox) in Adaptation when I wrote this, weirdly. I suppose I was just wondering if that sort of thinking (the “rules” of good filmmaking) only really applies to amateurs. “Things that are easy to do badly but can be done well in the right hands”, rather than “things you should never do”. It kind of moves filmmaking out of the realm of the objective and into the subjective, or maybe splinters objectivity into a new set of smaller, more specific rules: “Voiceover only works when…”
The latter explanation is more appealing, because if filmmaking is completely subjective then it can’t really be “taught”. I have the feeling that any time someone like McKee might make an objective rule, and some brilliant writer/director successfully overcomes it, a McKee follower would be forced to splinter each rule into smaller rules until they’d be so specific as to become meaningless. I understand why someone might want to create a formalised set of filmmaking techniques. As an audience, if there are no rules I have to wonder what are the grounds for the kind of “collective subjectivity” that recognises that a technique has been used well. But I’m suspicious, nonetheless, of “rules” in general. Perhaps good directing is kind of like good painting in that it is useful to learn why there are certain rules before you can really transgress them – but that transgressing them is kind of the point.
Anyway – good thread! I’m always interested in how different filmmakers use the same techniques to varying effect. I mean, how many times have you seen an awful jump cut?
And a lot of good film ideas from everyone to pad out my LoveFilm list which was my secret reason for posting (heh heh heh)!
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New Homepage about 3 years ago
Like Crap Monster, I’m finding that more than half of the films from the film list are missing…
I like the new design, though!
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BFI Frustration about 3 years ago
So we went to the BFI the night before last to catch the last showing of Chabrol’s Les Bonnes Femmes…and it was SOLD OUT! With a queue of over thirty people on stand by!! Yikes!! That’s never happened to me before at the BFI. The James Bond film showing at the same time in a separate cinema had no line at all (!!). When did this film get to be so popular? There were three showings as well, plus two others at the Cine Lumiere.
Now I have to buy the Region 1 DVD from the States because it doesn’t seem to be available in Region 2. Grrrr….
Sorry I just had to get that off of my chest! I suppose it’s a good thing that so many people are so enthusiastic about Chabrol…
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Women & Violence in film about 3 years ago
Since I’ve got Chabrol on the brain, “Les noces rouges” is wonderful – the plot is similar to The Postman Always Rings Twice.
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TOP 10 FILMS FROM YOUR "BIRTH YEAR" about 3 years ago
1981 was not my favourite year for film, but anyways…
1) La femme de l’aviateur (Eric Rohmer) aka The Aviator’s Wife
2) Times Square (Allan Moyle) – OK, technically 1980 in the US, but released in 1981 overseas, I swear!
3) My Dinner With Andre (Louis Malle)
4) Unico (Osamu Tezuka) – so good; this was my favourite movie as a kid..
5) An American Werewolf in London (John Landis)
6) Blow Out (Brian DePalma)
7) Polyester (John Waters)
8) Scanners (Cronenberg)
9) Teheran 43 (Alov, Naumov)
10) Das Boot (Wolfgang Peterson)
hmm… I’m sure there’s more…
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TOP 10 FILMS FROM YOUR "BIRTH YEAR" about 3 years ago
Thanks Harry! “Clash of the Titans” was 1981??? For some reason I thought it was a 70s film. That’s so knocking Das Boot off at number 10, perhaps should even go in at number 8 or 9. Wasn’t that Harryhausen’s last flick? I was completely in love with that movie; I kind of still am. I even had the metal lunchbox and everything.
I thought about Dragonslayer earlier, because I also loved it as a kid, but I haven’t seen it since the mid 80s so I’m not sure what I’d think of it now. I really need to see the The French Lieutenant’s Woman – it’s been on my list for a while and I love Karel Reisz’s 50s and 60s stuff. I’ll go reserve it on LoveFilm sharpish.
Kenji: There’s something about The Aviator’s Wife that always makes me happy watching it. It’s kind of like Paul Auster crossed with the first hour of Celine & Julie Go Boating…
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