Just about anything by Wes Anderson at this point. Simply because most of the people who adore him don’t realize how disrespectful he is towards those he’s "homage"ing (see: blatantly ripping off the most superficial aspects of the greatest filmmakers of all time).
Rich Uncle Skeleton: a true cinephile is capable of appreciating films of many different aesthetics. Certainly, one may have a favorite style, but to write off one of the most important pieces of cinema ever created because it does not fit said preference is very silly. I’d almost have more respect for you if you thought 2001 was a terrible film, and could argue why.
One can certainly have an aesthetic style, grammatically speaking. Purely semantics.
In any case, I suppose we come from different viewpoints entirely here. I believe the most interesting films are those that have “unfinished ideas”. The point of a film, to me, is to open a dialogue, invite speculation, and get people to think within a certain framework and universe that you create. One of the main criteria of the term “Auteur” is that the filmmaker in question generally has a few very big questions that he/she is attempting to work at and explore throughout their career. Godard and Kubrick both obviously fit this description.
2001 is an amazing film for that, and many other reasons. The film is a fascinating meditation (a key word here) on human nature and knowledge. It doesn’t provide any great answers, only interpretations and questions. If it did, it wouldn’t be half as excellent as it is. Although, it certainly serves as a peerless example of the more aesthetic and production focused aspects of filmmaking (the editing, cinematography, special effects, etc.)
I’m really not going to go into why 2001 is a fantastic film, because it’s been said a million times and far more eloquently than I could on a message board. It seems especially pointless as well if it would only be a one-sided conversation anyway.
@Orpheus: “10) (This space intentionally left blank as a stand-in for all the singlular great films ever made by a director whose career is otherwise inconsistent or unimpressive.)”
Great idea. I wanted so badly to mention Elem Klimov, for Come and See, since I think it’s one of the best films ever made. But I couldn’t, because that’s the only thing he’s done thats on such a par. Similarly, I think Sydney Lumet almost deserved a place in my top ten just for Network, but the rest of his career (while certainly great) isn’t top ten material for me. Also, Hal Hartley for Simple Men. Incredible film, mediocre career.
Odd, I definitely had the same feeling when I saw it for the first time. I waited years to see it (just one of those films I never got around to), eventually got to see it about a year ago in one of my film classes, great projector/theatre, great print. And I was kind of disappointed. I’ve watched it a few times since, and I can certainly appreciate why it’s a great film, but it definitely isn’t one of my favorites, or even one of my favorites of Fritz Lang. M is definitely my favorite of his.
I think a lot of that is fair to say. 2001 is certainly, in many ways, pretentious and that’s definitely part of why I think it’s great. The ending makes me laugh out loud; it’s completely absurd and preposterous, highly stylized, totally out of the blue, and altogether amazing for all of those reasons. It’s also incredibly intelligent and clever. I feel that way about the majority of the film.
In the same sense, you could easily call Godard or Fassbinder pretentious and you’d be partially right. But that doesn’t make them any less rad.
@Joe: Also: I’d suggest watching Week End, Pierrot Le Fout, Contempt, 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her, Masculine Feminine, or La Chinoise if you’d like to see what all the fuss about Godard is. (also, Le Gai Savior is very interesting as a companion to La Chinoise). I love all of the films you mentioned but, personally, I consider Godard a cinema god because of the above mentioned films. Also, I think Ici Et Allieurs and many of his documentary works are really excellent too.
10. Fitzcarraldo
9. The Holy Mountain
8. La Dolce Vita
7. Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
6. Faces
5. Scenes from a Marriage
4. 2001: A Space Odyssey
3. Week End
2. The Sacrifice
1. L’Avventura
My first reaction when I’ve just seen a fantastic film is to throw up. Then I hit myself in the face repeatedly. Once I’m done with that, I usually go find the nearest usher, where I proceed to throw up on him or her as well. Then I find some random people in the audience and just start screaming at them for no reason until I’m kicked out of the theater permanently, or arrested.
All of this translates into a mixture of the feeling between absolute peace and one-ness with the world, and the way I imagine it must feel to successfully bring down a woolly mammoth using only a pear knife and dental floss. In other words: absolutely bliss, elation and insanity in equal parts.
I’m really bad at remembering quotes, but a cuple come to mind immediately:
“Be good to her, and she’ll be good to you.”
“I can’t stand the quiet!”
“Why do women exist?”
“Nothing like a machine to make a man feel insignificant. "
- Simple Men
“I used to be a werewolf, but I’m all right no-OOWWWWWWWWWW! "
“You’re guarding space? That’s stupid, isn’t it? Because someone could break in there and steal all the fuckin’ space and you wouldn’t know it’s gone, would you?”
“Was I bored? No, I wasn’t fuckin’ bored. I’m never bored. That’s the trouble with everybody – you’re all so bored. You’ve had nature explained to you and you’re bored with it, you’ve had the living body explained to you and you’re bored with it, you’ve had the universe explained to you and you’re bored with it, so now you want cheap thrills and, like, plenty of them, and it doesn’t matter how tawdry or vacuous they are as long as it’s new as long as it’s new as long as it flashes and fuckin’ bleeps in forty fuckin’ different colors. So whatever else you can say about me, I’m not fuckin’ bored. "
- Naked
“…and when there was no meat, we ate fowl and when there was no fowl, we ate crawdad and when there was no crawdad to be found, we ate sand.”
- Raising Arizona
“In addition to our summer and winter estate, he owned a valuable piece of land. True, it was a small piece, but he carried it with him wherever he went. "
- Love and Death
I thought Wall-E was incredible. The social commentary may have not have been particularly deep, but it’s social commentary in a Disney film! THAT’s got to count for something as far as I’m concerned, and I respect Pixar for pulling that off.
I thought narratively speaking the film was brilliant. Any film that can go the first 40 minutes without any dialogue and still be highly engrossing (or even work on any level) is pretty incredible. Few films pull that off, and even fewer films have the balls to even try.
In my opinion, it was by far Pixar’s finest in every way.
I think fascism is something that is generally condemned by both Liberals and Conservatives. The only place it is openly accepted is by extremists. That’s probably why Griffith and Riefenstahl get more criticism than Godard or Eisenstein—-neither of whom were really Communists (especially Godard); they were Marxists.
That said, I think film critics are remarkably good at looking at Griffith as simply an excellent filmmaker, despite his morally reprehensible themes. Riefenstahl is a bit of a different story I suppose; it can be a little bit hard, even for me, to separate her talent as a filmmaker from her close association with Hitler.
I really disliked it. I thought the directing was terrible, and the entire film just had a very sloppy feeling to it. The editing was awful, and the choice of shooting digitally was just horrible (and I’m probably one of the biggest proponents of digital cinema you’re likely to find). You’re making a highly stylized noir film…why the fuck would you shoot on DV? (now that we have HD, you might be able to make a better argument, but even still I’d be resistant to the notion…but then? on SD? Come ON!)
As much as Quentin Tarantino makes me want to vomit most of the time, his scene was the only scene in the film that actually felt like it was well directed and edited, at least in comparison to Robert Rodriguez. But then again, Rodriguez is a tool of massive proportions and can’t direct a film to save his life.
And while I’m definitely the type referred to who will rush to see a new print of L’Avventura at my local arthouse theatre, I’ll also just as readily run to see the latest Die Hard film too. So it’s not that…
I saw Slow Motion for sale once at Amoeba Records in San Francisco. I didn’t buy it because it was really expensive, but I’ve been kicking myself ever since.
I can’t imagine it would be too hard to track down a copy of it though if you don’t mind paying a little bit for it.
Every filmmaker on the planet is creative in some sense. That doesn’t make them good. If that’s your soul criteria for why Rodriguez is a genius, then may I present to you Bratt Ratner? Or Michael Bay?
Robert Rodriguez is occasionally entertaining, and that’s about it (just like the aforementioned hack filmmakers). He cuts corners at the expense of his films, compromising the look and the rhythm to save money. There’s nothing really admirable about that at all.
Desperado was sort of fun, but only in a “oh my god this is SO bad it’s kind of good” sort of way.
@Justin. I agree as far as Tarantino is concerned. Dude’s got talent, he just doesn’t really do anything worthwhile with it. Same with Wes Anderson in my opinion.
Rodriguez is another story. I don’t think he has any talent at all from what I can tell. Probably would have made a kick-ass producer though.
2001 is about God, not religion.
Also, I remember reading the same article where Tarkovskey accused Kubrick’s film of being cold and lifeless (I happen to disagree with this viewpoint 100%, though I love Solaris as well).
I watched Star Trek:TMP a long time ago, and I don’t remember it that well. I certainly didn’t get the feeling that it was on the same intellectual level as Kubrick and Tarkovskey, but I might have missed something I suppose.
A friend of mine put it very well when he said, “Kubrick is like the Beatles. Anybody from any walk of life can enjoy his films; from a truck driver in Louisiana to a Harvard Professor”. I think this is one reason I have so much respect for him: his films work on so many different levels, from pure entertainment to food for thought. Anybody can get something out of them, from your average joe to a snooty cinephile. As a narrative filmmaker, that’s something that appeals to me and impresses me.
Other reasons I find him incredible: he has a way of constructing the mise-en-scene perfectly to mirror and accommodate the drama in the scene, he’s excellent at working with his actor’s strengths and weaknesses (and his casting is impeccable), oh and even if you’re not in love with him; it’s pretty impressive that he’s made a film in nearly every genre that has been incredibly well done (I would argue, brilliantly done without exception…okay, maybe Sparticus, that film was pretty lame).
For me, Kubrick is like an old friend. His films always reveal something new, and entertain the hell out of me. And the fact that I still can’t quite figure out what makes his films as amazing as they are is very attractive to me. As much as I adore and respect Bergman or Antonioni, their films are far more deconstructable than a Kubrick film is (not that that makes them any more or less brilliant). There are only a few people; Kubrick, Jodorowsky, Herzog that have that “je ne sais qua” that’s so intriguing.
I realize that might sound like a cop-out, but that’s how I feel about it.
I don’t think there’s any difference between QT and Girl Talk really. Except that Girl Talk is really fun to listen to. QT “creates stuff” only in the sense that he HAS to, because he makes films. He couldn’t get away with just literally sampling or ripping off the exact content of films. I guess if there’s a difference between the two, it’s that Girl Talk calls attention to itself and manages to make something that critiques the original product and calls attention to it in a funny or interesting way. QT generally does no such thing. He just lazily plops it in his movie because he really likes it and can’t be bothered to come up with something cool of his own.
And I’ll just say this: I’m a filmmaker, and I rip other filmmakers off constantly. It’s almost impossible not to. But I always try to do it in a way that is organic to the film, that makes sense to it, and that adds something to it. For instance, I might say “the way that dinner scene in Passion of Anna was shot would work really well to convey the mood in this scene I’ve written”, rather than “I’m going to shoot something exactly like that dinner scene in Passion of Anna and just fit it into my film somewhere”.
I think that’s what annoy me about him. He doesn’t bring anything new to the table with his “homages”. Woody Allen, as much as some of his films were major homages, always managed to create something starkly original no matter what, or managed to use the subject matter he was homaging in a way that critiqued or commented on the the subject matter itself.
you cringe when someone tells you they love this film... about 3 years ago
Just about anything by Wes Anderson at this point. Simply because most of the people who adore him don’t realize how disrespectful he is towards those he’s "homage"ing (see: blatantly ripping off the most superficial aspects of the greatest filmmakers of all time).
Rich Uncle Skeleton: a true cinephile is capable of appreciating films of many different aesthetics. Certainly, one may have a favorite style, but to write off one of the most important pieces of cinema ever created because it does not fit said preference is very silly. I’d almost have more respect for you if you thought 2001 was a terrible film, and could argue why.
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you cringe when someone tells you they love this film... about 3 years ago
@Rich
One can certainly have an aesthetic style, grammatically speaking. Purely semantics.
In any case, I suppose we come from different viewpoints entirely here. I believe the most interesting films are those that have “unfinished ideas”. The point of a film, to me, is to open a dialogue, invite speculation, and get people to think within a certain framework and universe that you create. One of the main criteria of the term “Auteur” is that the filmmaker in question generally has a few very big questions that he/she is attempting to work at and explore throughout their career. Godard and Kubrick both obviously fit this description.
2001 is an amazing film for that, and many other reasons. The film is a fascinating meditation (a key word here) on human nature and knowledge. It doesn’t provide any great answers, only interpretations and questions. If it did, it wouldn’t be half as excellent as it is. Although, it certainly serves as a peerless example of the more aesthetic and production focused aspects of filmmaking (the editing, cinematography, special effects, etc.)
I’m really not going to go into why 2001 is a fantastic film, because it’s been said a million times and far more eloquently than I could on a message board. It seems especially pointless as well if it would only be a one-sided conversation anyway.
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The best use of an animals in a film ? about 3 years ago
In order:
1. MVP: Most Valuable Primate
2. MVP2: Most Vertical Primate
3. MXP: Most Extreme Primate
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Top 10 Directors. about 3 years ago
In order:
1. Atonioni
2. Tarkovsky
3. Bergman
4. Godard
5. Kubrick
6. Cassavetes
7. Bunuel
8. Woody Allen
9. J.P. Melville
10. Jodarowski
@Orpheus: “10) (This space intentionally left blank as a stand-in for all the singlular great films ever made by a director whose career is otherwise inconsistent or unimpressive.)”
Great idea. I wanted so badly to mention Elem Klimov, for Come and See, since I think it’s one of the best films ever made. But I couldn’t, because that’s the only thing he’s done thats on such a par. Similarly, I think Sydney Lumet almost deserved a place in my top ten just for Network, but the rest of his career (while certainly great) isn’t top ten material for me. Also, Hal Hartley for Simple Men. Incredible film, mediocre career.
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Metropolis - Great or Average? about 3 years ago
Odd, I definitely had the same feeling when I saw it for the first time. I waited years to see it (just one of those films I never got around to), eventually got to see it about a year ago in one of my film classes, great projector/theatre, great print. And I was kind of disappointed. I’ve watched it a few times since, and I can certainly appreciate why it’s a great film, but it definitely isn’t one of my favorites, or even one of my favorites of Fritz Lang. M is definitely my favorite of his.
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Your birthday director(s) about 3 years ago
According to Wikipedia: Philip Kaufman, Ang Lee, Sam Raimi. Kind of lame.
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you cringe when someone tells you they love this film... about 3 years ago
Ben: I think Rich is attempting to be ironic and/or sarcastic.
Rich: I can see that being snooty and immature appears to be your biggest goal here. I suppose there’s no point in arguing with somebody like that.
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you cringe when someone tells you they love this film... about 3 years ago
@Wildfire: Wait…who is who?
I’d also like to add Linklater to the list: okay, Slacker was pretty good, but that’s about it.
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you cringe when someone tells you they love this film... about 3 years ago
I think a lot of that is fair to say. 2001 is certainly, in many ways, pretentious and that’s definitely part of why I think it’s great. The ending makes me laugh out loud; it’s completely absurd and preposterous, highly stylized, totally out of the blue, and altogether amazing for all of those reasons. It’s also incredibly intelligent and clever. I feel that way about the majority of the film.
In the same sense, you could easily call Godard or Fassbinder pretentious and you’d be partially right. But that doesn’t make them any less rad.
@Joe: Also: I’d suggest watching Week End, Pierrot Le Fout, Contempt, 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her, Masculine Feminine, or La Chinoise if you’d like to see what all the fuss about Godard is. (also, Le Gai Savior is very interesting as a companion to La Chinoise). I love all of the films you mentioned but, personally, I consider Godard a cinema god because of the above mentioned films. Also, I think Ici Et Allieurs and many of his documentary works are really excellent too.
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What's your Top 10? about 3 years ago
In order (I guess…):
10. Fitzcarraldo
9. The Holy Mountain
8. La Dolce Vita
7. Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
6. Faces
5. Scenes from a Marriage
4. 2001: A Space Odyssey
3. Week End
2. The Sacrifice
1. L’Avventura
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What do you feel when you watch a great film? about 3 years ago
My first reaction when I’ve just seen a fantastic film is to throw up. Then I hit myself in the face repeatedly. Once I’m done with that, I usually go find the nearest usher, where I proceed to throw up on him or her as well. Then I find some random people in the audience and just start screaming at them for no reason until I’m kicked out of the theater permanently, or arrested.
All of this translates into a mixture of the feeling between absolute peace and one-ness with the world, and the way I imagine it must feel to successfully bring down a woolly mammoth using only a pear knife and dental floss. In other words: absolutely bliss, elation and insanity in equal parts.
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Film quotes you love about 3 years ago
I’m really bad at remembering quotes, but a cuple come to mind immediately:
“Be good to her, and she’ll be good to you.”
“I can’t stand the quiet!”
“Why do women exist?”
“Nothing like a machine to make a man feel insignificant. "
- Simple Men
“I used to be a werewolf, but I’m all right no-OOWWWWWWWWWW! "
“You’re guarding space? That’s stupid, isn’t it? Because someone could break in there and steal all the fuckin’ space and you wouldn’t know it’s gone, would you?”
“Was I bored? No, I wasn’t fuckin’ bored. I’m never bored. That’s the trouble with everybody – you’re all so bored. You’ve had nature explained to you and you’re bored with it, you’ve had the living body explained to you and you’re bored with it, you’ve had the universe explained to you and you’re bored with it, so now you want cheap thrills and, like, plenty of them, and it doesn’t matter how tawdry or vacuous they are as long as it’s new as long as it’s new as long as it flashes and fuckin’ bleeps in forty fuckin’ different colors. So whatever else you can say about me, I’m not fuckin’ bored. "
- Naked
“…and when there was no meat, we ate fowl and when there was no fowl, we ate crawdad and when there was no crawdad to be found, we ate sand.”
- Raising Arizona
“In addition to our summer and winter estate, he owned a valuable piece of land. True, it was a small piece, but he carried it with him wherever he went. "
- Love and Death
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Which guy comes in your mind if you hear the word "director"? about 3 years ago
First person that came to mind was Kubric. Or Hitchcock. They both kind of popped in there at the same time.
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Fav Ashby? about 3 years ago
Harold and Maude, followed by Shampoo.
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Best Film About Film? about 3 years ago
The Stunt Man.
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WALL-E about 3 years ago
I thought Wall-E was incredible. The social commentary may have not have been particularly deep, but it’s social commentary in a Disney film! THAT’s got to count for something as far as I’m concerned, and I respect Pixar for pulling that off.
I thought narratively speaking the film was brilliant. Any film that can go the first 40 minutes without any dialogue and still be highly engrossing (or even work on any level) is pretty incredible. Few films pull that off, and even fewer films have the balls to even try.
In my opinion, it was by far Pixar’s finest in every way.
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Is there a liberal bias in the film community? about 3 years ago
I think fascism is something that is generally condemned by both Liberals and Conservatives. The only place it is openly accepted is by extremists. That’s probably why Griffith and Riefenstahl get more criticism than Godard or Eisenstein—-neither of whom were really Communists (especially Godard); they were Marxists.
That said, I think film critics are remarkably good at looking at Griffith as simply an excellent filmmaker, despite his morally reprehensible themes. Riefenstahl is a bit of a different story I suppose; it can be a little bit hard, even for me, to separate her talent as a filmmaker from her close association with Hitler.
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Is there a liberal bias in the film community? about 3 years ago
@Rich. You’re right. I should have made a distinction.
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Late Godard? about 3 years ago
La Chinoise, Le Gai Savior, Ici Et Allieurs, Helas Pour Mois (if for nothing else than the boat shot…)
I reeeeally want to see Slow Motion.
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Sin City (2005) about 3 years ago
I really disliked it. I thought the directing was terrible, and the entire film just had a very sloppy feeling to it. The editing was awful, and the choice of shooting digitally was just horrible (and I’m probably one of the biggest proponents of digital cinema you’re likely to find). You’re making a highly stylized noir film…why the fuck would you shoot on DV? (now that we have HD, you might be able to make a better argument, but even still I’d be resistant to the notion…but then? on SD? Come ON!)
As much as Quentin Tarantino makes me want to vomit most of the time, his scene was the only scene in the film that actually felt like it was well directed and edited, at least in comparison to Robert Rodriguez. But then again, Rodriguez is a tool of massive proportions and can’t direct a film to save his life.
And while I’m definitely the type referred to who will rush to see a new print of L’Avventura at my local arthouse theatre, I’ll also just as readily run to see the latest Die Hard film too. So it’s not that…
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Undercut - a great action comedy you can watch online for free about 3 years ago
Honestly, there is no way I’m sitting through a feature in a tiny Quicktime video format. And I doubt anybody else will either.
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Late Godard? about 3 years ago
I saw Slow Motion for sale once at Amoeba Records in San Francisco. I didn’t buy it because it was really expensive, but I’ve been kicking myself ever since.
I can’t imagine it would be too hard to track down a copy of it though if you don’t mind paying a little bit for it.
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Sin City (2005) about 3 years ago
@ Justin:
Every filmmaker on the planet is creative in some sense. That doesn’t make them good. If that’s your soul criteria for why Rodriguez is a genius, then may I present to you Bratt Ratner? Or Michael Bay?
Robert Rodriguez is occasionally entertaining, and that’s about it (just like the aforementioned hack filmmakers). He cuts corners at the expense of his films, compromising the look and the rhythm to save money. There’s nothing really admirable about that at all.
Desperado was sort of fun, but only in a “oh my god this is SO bad it’s kind of good” sort of way.
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Sin City (2005) about 3 years ago
@Justin. I agree as far as Tarantino is concerned. Dude’s got talent, he just doesn’t really do anything worthwhile with it. Same with Wes Anderson in my opinion.
Rodriguez is another story. I don’t think he has any talent at all from what I can tell. Probably would have made a kick-ass producer though.
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Movies That Should Be In the Criterion Collection about 3 years ago
Tarkovsky. Please. I would really like to see a print of The Sacrifice that isn’t awful before I die. And The Mirror.
Also, Come and See.
I don’t know what Criterion seems to have against amazing depressing E. European epics.
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Sin City (2005) about 3 years ago
I could really give a shit if QT tried something “serious”. I’d just like it if he tried something original. And good.
I didn’t know Inglorious Bastards was a tribute to New Wave. I’m cringing already.
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Tarkovsky, Kubrick, and Wise about 3 years ago
2001 is about God, not religion.
Also, I remember reading the same article where Tarkovskey accused Kubrick’s film of being cold and lifeless (I happen to disagree with this viewpoint 100%, though I love Solaris as well).
I watched Star Trek:TMP a long time ago, and I don’t remember it that well. I certainly didn’t get the feeling that it was on the same intellectual level as Kubrick and Tarkovskey, but I might have missed something I suppose.
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IS "BENJAMIN BUTTON" WORTHY OF BEING IN THE COLLECTION? about 3 years ago
Who cares? Criterion is a DVD company. Not an elite social club.
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LET'S TALK FRANKLY ABOUT KUBRICK about 3 years ago
A friend of mine put it very well when he said, “Kubrick is like the Beatles. Anybody from any walk of life can enjoy his films; from a truck driver in Louisiana to a Harvard Professor”. I think this is one reason I have so much respect for him: his films work on so many different levels, from pure entertainment to food for thought. Anybody can get something out of them, from your average joe to a snooty cinephile. As a narrative filmmaker, that’s something that appeals to me and impresses me.
Other reasons I find him incredible: he has a way of constructing the mise-en-scene perfectly to mirror and accommodate the drama in the scene, he’s excellent at working with his actor’s strengths and weaknesses (and his casting is impeccable), oh and even if you’re not in love with him; it’s pretty impressive that he’s made a film in nearly every genre that has been incredibly well done (I would argue, brilliantly done without exception…okay, maybe Sparticus, that film was pretty lame).
For me, Kubrick is like an old friend. His films always reveal something new, and entertain the hell out of me. And the fact that I still can’t quite figure out what makes his films as amazing as they are is very attractive to me. As much as I adore and respect Bergman or Antonioni, their films are far more deconstructable than a Kubrick film is (not that that makes them any more or less brilliant). There are only a few people; Kubrick, Jodorowsky, Herzog that have that “je ne sais qua” that’s so intriguing.
I realize that might sound like a cop-out, but that’s how I feel about it.
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Sin City (2005) about 3 years ago
@Ariel:
I don’t think there’s any difference between QT and Girl Talk really. Except that Girl Talk is really fun to listen to. QT “creates stuff” only in the sense that he HAS to, because he makes films. He couldn’t get away with just literally sampling or ripping off the exact content of films. I guess if there’s a difference between the two, it’s that Girl Talk calls attention to itself and manages to make something that critiques the original product and calls attention to it in a funny or interesting way. QT generally does no such thing. He just lazily plops it in his movie because he really likes it and can’t be bothered to come up with something cool of his own.
And I’ll just say this: I’m a filmmaker, and I rip other filmmakers off constantly. It’s almost impossible not to. But I always try to do it in a way that is organic to the film, that makes sense to it, and that adds something to it. For instance, I might say “the way that dinner scene in Passion of Anna was shot would work really well to convey the mood in this scene I’ve written”, rather than “I’m going to shoot something exactly like that dinner scene in Passion of Anna and just fit it into my film somewhere”.
I think that’s what annoy me about him. He doesn’t bring anything new to the table with his “homages”. Woody Allen, as much as some of his films were major homages, always managed to create something starkly original no matter what, or managed to use the subject matter he was homaging in a way that critiqued or commented on the the subject matter itself.
I don’t see any of that in QT’s films.
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