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  1. #176
    Quote Quoting baby doll (view post)
    I've posted this quote elsewhere on this forum but it seems worth repeating:
    Yes, the quote that birthed thousands of pretentious film “lovers” all eager to subject themselves to the most punishing movies to prove their evolved understanding over us plebs. I mean... if you believe that quote, truly believe it, you should be just as keen to be watching Friedberg and Seltzer movies - all of them.
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  2. #177
    Quote Quoting PURPLE (view post)
    Is this the goal of all art for thousands of years? It's certainlly not the goal of the earliest art we have from roughly every culture on the planet - religious stories. Those are most often meant to be instructive. It's certainly not the goal of some of the earliest theater we have - Greek Tragedies. Those, too, are meant to be instructive, are meant to invoke pathos, are meant to evoke empathy, but "pleasure" is a strange way of putting the reenactment of an eagle feeding on a man's liver. Art has always had many intended purposes, and even more different actual results. I see no reason why "contemplation", or especially "inspired and productive contemplation" would not be equal to those. In fact, I personally find no reason why this would not be superior. This opinion need not be universally held by everyone, but neither is the opinion that "pleasure" is better than "contemplation".

    I don't mind that someone else finds His Girl Friday to be better in whatever way and for whatever reason than Mother and Son. That's not what I'm talking about at all - merely the idea that some person might enjoy contemplative cinema. As for why, I mean, I agree with the site that I linked to, so I don't feel the need to restate. If you feel it's a cop-out, that's fine. I tried to explain myself in good faith. If that's not sufficient for you, then perhaps conversations aren't for you.
    Regarding Greek Tragedy, here's what Aristotle writes in the Poetics:

    Quote Quoting Aristotle
    It can be seen that poetry was broadly engendered by a pair of causes, both natural. For it is an instinct of human beings, from childhood, to engage in mimesis (indeed, this distinguishes them from other animals: man is the most mimetic of all, and it is through mimesis that he develops his earliest understanding); and equally natural that everyone enjoys mimetic objects. A common occurrence indicates this: we enjoy contemplating the most precise images of things whose actual sight is painful to us, such as the forms of the vilest animals and of corpses. The explanation of this too is that understanding gives great pleasure not only to philosophers but likewise to others too, though the latter have a smaller share in it. This is why people enjoy looking at images, because through contemplating them it comes about that they understand and infer what each element means, for instance that "this person is so-and-so."
    In short, ancient Greek audiences derived pleasure from tragic plays (they were after all performed at festivals, not as punishments for naughty children), and for Aristotle, pleasure and instruction are inseparable.

    Of course, it's possible that abstract contemplation is equal or superior to pleasure, instruction, etc., but you've yet to provide any compelling evidence that this is so, or that certain films are better suited for this purpose than others, or indeed why films are necessary for this activity to take place at all. Your argument, if I understand you correctly, is that in your experience Mother and Son is particularly fertile in terms of contemplation because it contains Quality X. What this Quality X is that differentiates Sokurov's film from numerous others treating similar themes at a comparably slow pace has not been established, and if I follow your logic, can't be established by examining the film closely because the whole point of contemplative cinema is that we aren't supposed to contemplate it in the sense of looking closely at something for a extended duration of time (which I take to be the purpose of all cinema, fast or slow).
    Last edited by baby doll; 02-09-2019 at 08:13 PM.
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  3. #178
    Quote Quoting transmogrifier (view post)
    Yes, the quote that birthed thousands of pretentious film “lovers” all eager to subject themselves to the most punishing movies to prove their evolved understanding over us plebs. I mean... if you believe that quote, truly believe it, you should be just as keen to be watching Friedberg and Seltzer movies - all of them.
    Who exactly are those thousands of film "lovers"? In any case, the very next line in the article I quoted is, "But of course not every difficult film is worth the time; many directors have visions interesting only to themselves, and some films are just plain bad." The substance of my disagreement with Purple is the basis according to which it is possible to distinguish between a good "slow" film and a bad one, as opposed to praising or rejecting them indiscriminately, which is simple philistinism.
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  4. #179
    Quote Quoting baby doll (view post)
    Another good Ebert quote:
    I do believe I am objecting to the “how” of it all. To simplify, planting the camera and observing minute details of everyday life or planting the camera and have your characters engage in mundane conversation is easy and boring, no matter what the subtext or subject is. In my opinion. If Ebert thinks I’m an idiot, so be it. I’ll get over it.
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  5. #180
    Quote Quoting transmogrifier (view post)
    I do believe I am objecting to the “how” of it all. To simplify, planting the camera and observing minute details of everyday life or planting the camera and have your characters engage in mundane conversation is easy and boring, no matter what the subtext or subject is. In my opinion. If Ebert thinks I’m an idiot, so be it. I’ll get over it.
    There are different ways of filming details of everyday life and mundane conversations. In the case of Jeanne Dielman, there's a lot more to the film than Akerman simply filming Delphine Seyrig doing household chores for 200 minutes. Rather, the film reveals the heroine's mental disintegration through subtle differences in the way she performs the same chores over the course of the film's duration, and the creepy emptiness of the conversations she has with her son and a female neighbour.
    Just because...
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    The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh, 2022) mild

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  6. #181
    The Pan megladon8's Avatar
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    Steven Spielberg really isn’t all that great.

  7. #182
    Scott of the Antarctic Milky Joe's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting megladon8 (view post)
    Steven Spielberg really isn’t all that great.
    Temple of Doom is one of the worst movies I've ever seen
    ‎The severed arm perfectly acquitted itself, because of the simplicity of its wishes and its total lack of doubt.

  8. #183
    Administrator Ezee E's Avatar
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    How I do my chores and how you do yours is no interest of mine.

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  9. #184
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    Quote Quoting megladon8 (view post)
    Steven Spielberg really isn’t all that great.
    Okay, now I feel baited, haha.

  10. #185
    collecting tapes Skitch's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Milky Joe (view post)
    Temple of Doom is one of the worst movies I've ever seen
    Quote Quoting Dead & Messed Up (view post)
    Okay, now I feel baited, haha.
    Yeah me too lol. How does Crystal Skull rate then? Hard to go down from that description of Temple.

  11. #186
    The Pan megladon8's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Dead & Messed Up (view post)
    Okay, now I feel baited, haha.
    He’s at his best doing sci fi and pulpy genre stuff.

    He’s grown intolerably boring with old age.

  12. #187
    Moderator Dead & Messed Up's Avatar
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    James Cameron was a fantastic storyteller for quite a while; it was just that his stories didn't call too much attention to their efficiencies and strong core dynamics. The first two Terminator films, Aliens, and The Abyss (original cuts in all cases) are traditional kinds of storytelling, but achieved with remarkable precision. It wasn't until Titanic that he started to slip into the George Lucas trap of valuing storytelling as a foundation for world-building (instead of the opposite).

    Also: I think Avatar is a decent film. It's basic as fuck, but it moves, features impressive production design, and at least one truly great performance in Stephen Lang's gruff emergent villain. There's a fantastic moment late in the film where he chases heroes out of a building, paying no attention to the toxic atmosphere until a grunt insists he put on a gas mask so he can resume breathing.

  13. #188
    collecting tapes Skitch's Avatar
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    Carried over from a derail in another thread...The Lion King sucks.

  14. #189
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    Quote Quoting megladon8 (view post)
    He’s at his best doing sci fi and pulpy genre stuff.

    He’s grown intolerably boring with old age.
    Honestly, I think he's better at his "dad movies" at this point than he is at pulp (excepting Tintin). Ready Player One, Crystal Skull, and War of the Worlds had great sequences but were inconsistent, while The Post and Bridge of Spies more consistently engaged me.

  15. #190
    The Pan megladon8's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Dead & Messed Up (view post)
    Honestly, I think he's better at his "dad movies" at this point than he is at pulp (excepting Tintin). Ready Player One, Crystal Skull, and War of the Worlds had great sequences but were inconsistent, while The Post and Bridge of Spies more consistently engaged me.
    Yeah, well, you’re wrong.

  16. #191
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    Spielberg seems desperately out of touch with audiences and just as desperate to deliver the kind of hits he had 40 years ago. Amblin just optioned a movie based on a series of Reddit threads, so that sorta tells you were his head is at.

    Cameron was best when he had a strong producing partner / collaborator. Just about everything he made that fans loved --- and still talk about endlessly --- he made with Gale Anne Hurd. (See also: The respective careers and popularity of John Carpenter (Debra Hill) and George Lucas (Marcia Lucas) and maaaaybe Quentin Tarantino (Roger Avery)).

    I feel like I should mention Christopher Nolan, for no other reason than to make the "over praised and over discussed director" hat trick.

    Meanwhile, I've been thinking about this thread lately:

    Anyone feel like r/movies only talks about the same ~50 movies in an endless cycle of quasi-hipster fandom?

    I don't think this is necessarily 100% true of Match Cut, but I do wonder sometimes why movie fandom seems stuck in a very particular rut, and even within the context of 80s movies and directors, and why nobody pops up to talk about James Brooks and "Broadcast News" or "Terms of Endearment, for example, or, really, any movie from the last 4 decades that doesn't have a massive amount of flash and celebrity.

    Instead it's "Aliens," "Terminator, "Goodfellas," "Star Wars," and the relative value of Indiana Jones and Batman, over and over again.
    Last edited by Irish; 02-10-2019 at 12:56 AM.

  17. #192
    collecting tapes Skitch's Avatar
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    This is why I still hunt VHS, Irish. It has opened me up to hundreds of movies I've never even heard of. Its easy to take a chance on an unknown film when they cost 10 cents.

  18. #193
    Kung Fu Hippie Watashi's Avatar
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    Broadcast News is a Top 10 film of mine.

    I would love to talk about it, but is there really anything to say about that will ruffle any feathers or uncover anything worth covering?

    Blank Check did a really great series about James Brooks career including even reviewing the long lost musical version of I'll Do Anything.
    Last edited by Watashi; 02-10-2019 at 01:02 AM.
    Sure why not?

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  19. #194
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    FWIW, I get bored easily and I found Jeanne Dielman kind of mesmerizing.
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  20. #195
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    Quote Quoting Skitch (view post)
    Carried over from a derail in another thread...The Lion King sucks.
    Suck might be a stronger word than I'd use, but I basically agree.
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  21. #196
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    Quote Quoting Irish (view post)
    I don't think this is necessarily 100% true of Match Cut, but I do wonder sometimes why movie fandom seems stuck in a very particular rut, and even within the context of 80s movies and directors, and why nobody pops up to talk about James Brooks and "Broadcast News" or "Terms of Endearment, for example, or, really, any movie from the last 4 decades that doesn't have a massive amount of flash and celebrity.
    I watch all sorts of movies, well-known and relatively obscure, from all decades; however, I find that I usually have nothing worth saying about them beyond "I liked this" or "I didn't like this." Another issue is that mentioning a lesser known movie is less likely to generate discussion because fewer posters will have seen them, so some people probably just don't bother.

  22. #197
    Moderator Dead & Messed Up's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Irish (view post)
    Cameron was best when he had a strong producing partner / collaborator. Just about everything he made that fans loved --- and still talk about endlessly --- he made with Gale Anne Hurd. (See also: The respective careers and popularity of John Carpenter (Debra Hill) and George Lucas (Marcia Lucas) and maaaaybe Quentin Tarantino (Roger Avery))...

    Meanwhile, I've been thinking about this thread lately:

    Anyone feel like r/movies only talks about the same ~50 movies in an endless cycle of quasi-hipster fandom?

    I don't think this is necessarily 100% true of Match Cut, but I do wonder sometimes why movie fandom seems stuck in a very particular rut, and even within the context of 80s movies and directors, and why nobody pops up to talk about James Brooks and "Broadcast News" or "Terms of Endearment, for example, or, really, any movie from the last 4 decades that doesn't have a massive amount of flash and celebrity.

    Instead it's "Aliens," "Terminator, "Goodfellas," "Star Wars," and the relative value of Indiana Jones and Batman, over and over again.
    Good call on the value of collaborators (Gary Kurtz was supposed to be another Lucas voice of reason).

    I saw that thread too, and I agree that there is a depressing rut. I see it a lot with horror films too. The sort of narrowing vision of xenial/millennial internet users for whom filmmaking more or less stops prior to their birth. They know to genuflect at people like Akira Kurosawa and Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock, but I suspect a lot of them know to only because those filmmakers are undeniably influential on the filmmakers they do know and respect (Kurosawa = Lucas influencer, Hitchcock = Spielberg and Shyamalan influencer, etc.).

    I got really cheesed off recently because the horror subreddit had a long-gestating vote on the best horror films of all time, and the lack of history was *chasmic*. It was a Top 100 Horror Films that didn't have a single film that involved Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, James Whale, Robert Wiene, Fritz Lang, Jack Pierce, Jack Arnold, Jacques Tourneur, Lon Chaney, Terrence Fisher, Vincent Price, Mario Bava, Christopher Lee, and so on. Tried to be charitable and recognize that a lot of the people who voted are probably drive-by redditors who aren't cinephiles or movie fans but know, "Ooh, I like 'It Follows.'" But even then, like you say, there's this very clear sense of the limited (self-selected) perspective of the average internet movie discusser person. White, male, 20s-30s, and broadly ignorant of films that are not directly targeted to their demo.

  23. #198
    Moderator Dead & Messed Up's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting megladon8 (view post)
    Yeah, well, you’re wrong.
    In my mind I'm right, and really, isn't that what matters most? Self-delusion?

  24. #199
    The Pan megladon8's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Dead & Messed Up (view post)
    In my mind I'm right, and really, isn't that what matters most? Self-delusion?
    I imagined this being said in Morgan Freeman’s voice.

    In a movie directed by Steven Spielberg.

  25. #200
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    Maybe an unpopular opinion, but Disney's 2010's renaissance > Disney's 90's renaissance.
    Sure why not?

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