Match Cut Madness 3: Best of the 00s

[quido8_5]

Watched Still Walking. Lovely, tender film with several heartbreaking moments. Unfortunately it's going against In the Mood for Love. Doubt it needs my help but all in for In the Mood for Love. Think it may have a good chance of a deep run.

[Skitch]

Some of the greatest artists who ever lived dedicated themselves to representing everyday people doing everyday things and everyday relationships (John Updike described his style as an attempt "to give the mundane its beautiful due"). Criticizing Yi Yi for being about ordinary people is about as useful a criticism as trashing The Incredibles for being about characters with super-powers. That is, it is a criticism based on subject matter rather than treatment. Moreover, I would quarrel with your characterization of the characters in Yang's film as "bored," as if their all problems could be solved by picking up a book or spending a day at the beach. Ultimately the film's real subject is the search for meaning in life: The Asian economic miracle of the 1970s and '80s has provided the characters with a standard of living comparable to that of the West but it hasn't given their lives meaning. (I don't believe it's ever mentioned in the dialogue, but it's clearly pertinent that the film was made in the immediate aftermath of the Asian Economic Crisis.) As for having "zero writing," that seems to me a rather astonishing claim given how Yang manages to juggle a huge cast of sharply defined characters without overwhelming the spectator; like Yang's earlier multi-protagonist films The Terrorizers and A Brighter Summer Day, the film has a novelistic density rare in cinema. And what's impressive about Yang's direction is how subtly he guides the spectator's attention through subtle changes in the blocking of his shots more than the editing, so that the spectator becomes sensitized just noticeable differences in the image. In other words, as Jonathan Rosenbaum once wrote of Kiarostami, Yang's style redefines what we think of as a filmic event and does so to show us more rather than less.

I'll restate, just because you're different doesn't mean you're good.

[baby doll]

I'll restate, just because you're different doesn't mean you're good.

It doesn't mean you're bad either. Incidentally, Yi Yi is probably the closest Yang ever came to making a "normal" movie: the plot, and Yang's mise en scène, are less dense than in A Brighter Summer Day, and there's more cutting within scenes.

[transmogrifier]

I have watched every frame of Yi Yi. Not only is my vote is for The Incredibles, Yi Yi doesn't even deserve to be in this competition imo. I fully expected to come back here voting for Yi Yi (I put Paprika in as a replacement and voted against it round one DAMMIT). What the hell do you see in this film? You have to admit its shot like ass.

Skitch is a brilliant man... with lots of well-thought-out, practical ideas....He's ensuring the artistic quality of the movie industry. Oh, yes, and his personal hygiene is above reproach.

[Skitch]

Skitch is a brilliant man... with lots of well-thought-out, practical ideas....He's ensuring the artistic quality of the movie industry. Oh, yes, and his personal hygiene is above reproach.

...what?

[Idioteque Stalker]

[...] And what's impressive about Yang's direction is how subtly he guides the spectator's attention through subtle changes in the blocking of his shots more than the editing, so that the spectator becomes sensitized just noticeable differences in the image. In other words, as Jonathan Rosenbaum once wrote of Kiarostami, Yang's style redefines what we think of as a filmic event and does so to show us more rather than less.

BD shredded this post. The Kiarostami comparison speaks to me, and brings to mind the beguiling final/credit shot in Haneke's Cache. (Now that the play-in round is over, I will admit it hurt to replace Cache with Jesse James, though neither had much of a chance against Memento in any case.)

And Skitch I couldn't disagree more about Yi Yi -- nevertheless I admire you as I do the man who stands on the beach at dusk and proclaims to the tide, "Not tonight."

[transmogrifier]

...what?

[Skitch]

It doesn't mean you're bad either.

Agreed.

[Skitch]

My bad. I thought what you were referencing was about the current run of media about celebrities and bathing habits. Yeah it's a thing at the moment

Quoting Simpsons to completely disagree with me is way more acceptable than what I presumed might me inferred.

[Skitch]

And Skitch I couldn't disagree more about Yi Yi -- nevertheless I admire you as I do the man who stands on the beach at dusk and proclaims to the tide, "Not tonight."

For fucks sake is everyone gonna reference shit I don't know because of this fuckin Yi Yi movie?

I GAVE THREE HOURS TO THIS

[transmogrifier]

For fucks sake is everyone gonna reference shit I don't know because of this fuckin Yi Yi movie?

I GAVE THREE HOURS TO THIS

You gave 6 hr+ to the various iterations of Justice League. You'll live.

[transmogrifier]

My bad. I thought what you were referencing was about the current run of media about celebrities and bathing habits. Yeah it's a thing at the moment

Quoting Simpsons to completely disagree with me is way more acceptable than what I presumed might me inferred.

I'm thinking there is enough material now that I could hold various conversations on various topics using only Simpsons quotes. Pity I stopped watching with Season 10, so I'm limited to low-hanging fruit.

[Idioteque Stalker]

For fucks sake is everyone gonna reference shit I don't know because of this fuckin Yi Yi movie?

I GAVE THREE HOURS TO THIS

I think if Yi Yi makes it to the Sweet Sixteen, Skitch should be forced to make a Yi Yi banner. And it must be the most fantastic banner MC has ever seen... or else.

[Peng]

I think if Yi Yi makes it to the Sweet Sixteen, Skitch should be forced to make a Yi Yi banner. And it must be the most fantastic banner MC has ever seen... or else.

A compromise banner with an Akira bike crashing through a Yi Yi scene, like Last Action Hero poster?

[Idioteque Stalker]

A compromise banner with an Akira bike crashing through a Yi Yi scene, like Last Action Hero poster?

It could be the finest banner ever created. My fear is he enjoys the punishment.

[Idioteque Stalker]

As stated in the play-in round rules, I HAVE to vote for replacement movies in round 1. Yes, in some cases it really hurts. EDIT: This rule has been dropped, and some of my votes have changed. I left the names/replacements for anyone interested in seeing play-in round results.

No Country for Old Men vs. Moon
Brick vs. Requiem for a Dream
Pan’s Labyrinth vs. Dogtooth (Baby Doll replaced Grizzly Man)
Kill Bill Vol. 1 vs. Irreversible (Ezee E replaced Once)
The Royal Tenenbaums vs. 25th Hour
Almost Famous vs. Tropic Thunder (Yxklyx replaced Anchorman)
Spirited Away vs. The Descent (Peng replaced The Squid and the Whale)
Punch-Drunk Love vs. O Brother, Where Art Thou? (Yxklyx replaced Synecdoche, NY)

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind vs. Primer (Skitch replaced Elephant)
Brokeback Mountain vs. Finding Nemo
Lost In Translation vs. I’m Not There (Baby Doll replaced Beau Travail)
Shaun of the Dead vs. The Life Aquatic (Dukefrukem replaced The Hurt Locker)
Mulholland Drive vs. Donnie Darko
Spider-Man 2 vs. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Before Sunset vs. Adaptation
Fantastic Mr. Fox vs. Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring (Peng replaced 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days)

There Will Be Blood vs. A.I. Artificial Intelligence (Baby Doll replaced Atonement)
The New World vs. Amelie
In the Mood for Love vs. Still Walking (Peng replaced L'Enfant)
Memento vs. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Ezee E replaced Cache)
Zodiac vs. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Ezee E replaced Wendy and Lucy)
The Prestige vs. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (Yxklyx replaced Hot Fuzz)
Children of Men vs. Battle Royale (Skitch replaced Let the Right One In)
Ratatouille vs. In Bruges

The Dark Knight vs. Paprika (Skitch replaced Assassination of Jesse James)
A Serious Man vs. Unbreakable
Wall-E vs. Kung Fu Hustle (Dukefrukem replaced Talk to Her)
The Departed vs. Y Tu Mama Tambien
Inglourious Basterds vs. A History of Violence
Minority Report vs. Oldboy
LOTR: The Fellowship of the Ring vs. City of God
The Incredibles vs. Yi Yi

[Skitch]

A compromise banner with an Akira bike crashing through a Yi Yi scene, like Last Action Hero poster?

Hey I'm not talented enough to actually create. I just reshape. I mean, unless yall want some mspaint talent, it will be hideous.

[Skitch]

You gave 6 hr+ to the various iterations of Justice League. You'll live.

That's your hell, not mine. Comic book movies are a breeze.

[Skitch]

As stated in the play-in round rules, I HAVE to vote for replacement movies

I protest this rule. Vote for the one you want, man

[transmogrifier]

I protest this rule. Vote for the one you want, man

Yeah, it doesn't make sense at all. Especially because there is a high chance match-ups will be decided by a single vote.

[Idioteque Stalker]

I too have been questioning the rule, and Skitch's motion has been seconded, so I'll get rid of it and revote. FWIW, aside from a gesture of good faith, the original intent was to encourage participation in the play-in round and give replacement movies a fighting chance, but none of those things have proven necessary.

[StuSmallz]

Even if one finds the films' stance admirable politically (and I have little interest in getting into a feminist argument about whether admitting women to the military is genuinely feminist or whether it is an essentially cosmetic change that does not fundamentally dismantle existing power structures), from an artistic standpoint, rah rah female empowerment is pretty boring because it precludes any ideological tension. Hollywood melodramas from The Cheat to Basic Instinct are all about negotiating the absolute limit of what is socially acceptable, both sexually and racially, hence their emphasis on transgressive sexuality which is simultaneously a source of fascination and anxiety. The girl power feminism of Jackson's trilogy is both sexless and well within the bounds of what early 21st century audiences found acceptable.

I think that boiling the trilogy's portrayal of female characters down to nothing more than "rah rah women" is an over-simplification, and I also can't agree with the idea that there's no ideological tension or anxiety in the trilogy's depictions of women; it's just that it's not super up front about it (although even that is ignoring Aragorn's concern about the road to Rivendell being too dangerous for Arwen, or his potentially chauvinistic surprise at Eowyn for being a woman that has some "skill with a blade"). After all, the movies didn't come out in some sort of social vacuum, and similar to the way that Gone With The Wind reflected Great Depression-era anxieties about women in a Civil War-set narrative, the Lord Of The Rings movies reflected a number of conflicting historical and artistic contexts, as they were obviously produced as early 2000's adaptations of mid-20th century novels, and co-written by two New Zealand women, but adapted from the writing of a British/South African man born in 1892, a writer whose depiction of female characters has often been criticized as reflecting regressive personal views on his part.

So, there's a ton to study there as a result, whether it's the debate we're having on whether the films' portrayal of women was a mindless appeal to modern "gurl power!" sentiments, or an intriguing subversion of our expectations for how women would behave a presumably more patriarchal, medieval-style society (I obviously fall in the latter category), whether the deletion of certain supporting female characters from the books in favor of brevity was justified, in light of the overall reduction in female presence they resulted in, and whether they did more to reinforce regressive depictions of women as mere love interests by bringing the romance between Aragorn & Arwen more to the forefront, or did enough to offset that by portraying her as more of a warrior on the whole. So, as far as I'm concerned, there's just as much intellectual juice to be wrung out of the more implicit gender tensions of the trilogy as when that theme is more overt, and certainly more than actual examples of empty, contrived "gurl power!" in film:



Anyway, as for the complaint about the portrayal of women being "sex-less", that strikes me as being an oddly narrow criticism, and ultimately an irrelevant one as well, because, just like I can't imagine something like The Handmaiden being as good as it was without its relatively graphic sex scenes (because they're essential to the overall effect of that film), I also can't imagine LOTR being better with more sexual female characters, because that all depends on the particular movie in question, and whether or not it needs sexual content in general. I mean, the sexual content of Game Of Thrones worked because that series was designed from the ground up to be a grittier, more realistic deconstruction of the High Fantasy style that Tolkien popularized (although even then the show went too far with it at times), but something like that would be a terrible change to include in an adaptation of Rings, and none of the female characters in the trilogy would be improved at all if they were more sexual, IMO (because the scene in Fellowship where Arwen tells Aragorn that "I would rather share one lifetime with you than face all the ages of this world alone" is already as romantic as it gets, and nothing about the depiction of their relationship would be improved if she were a sexier character, or if she and Aragorn were shown to be doing it at any one point).

[StuSmallz]

This Stu/BD discussion is good reading. Rep all around.My two cents, apropos of nothing: Eowyn taking down the witch king is a big enough movie moment that I choose to surrender and not think about it too much, but lets be honest -- in LOTR "man" refers to a race, not a gender. If the writers were being 100% consistent with Tolkien's world-building, the scene would've played out like this:Witch King: No man can kill me.Eowyn, dramatically removing helmet: I am no man!Witch King: Well, you know what I mean...And then he turns her into a puddle of red goo.

Yeah, but it's also not as though they have no concept of gender in the movies' version of Middle Earth:

[Peng]

This Stu/BD discussion is good reading. Rep all around.

My two cents, apropos of nothing: Eowyn taking down the witch king is a big enough movie moment that I choose to surrender and not think about it too much, but lets be honest -- in LOTR "man" refers to a race, not a gender. If the writers were being 100% consistent with Tolkien's world-building, the scene would've played out like this:

Witch King: No man can kill me.
Eowyn, dramatically removing helmet: I am no man!
Witch King: Well, you know what I mean...

And then he turns her into a puddle of red goo.

I read the books a few months ago, and this sequence is just a very simplified version of the book's more formal, mythic-leaning language (I was surprised too that this scene is not wholly a film-made moment upon reading to that part), but in the book Tolkien essentially uses 'man' the same way:

"Hinder me? Thou fool. No living man may hinder me!"

[......] "But no living man am I! You look upon a woman. Eowyn I am, Eomund’s daughter. You stand between me and my lord and kin. Begone, if you be not deathless! For living or dark undead, I will smite you, if you touch him."

[StuSmallz]

I read the books a few months ago, and this sequence is just a very simplified version of the book's more formal, mythic-leaning language (I was surprised too that this scene is not wholly a film-made moment upon reading to that part), but in the book Tolkien essentially uses 'man' the same way:

"Hinder me? Thou fool. No living man may hinder me!"

[......] "But no living man am I! You look upon a woman. Eowyn I am, Eomund’s daughter. You stand between me and my lord and kin. Begone, if you be not deathless! For living or dark undead, I will smite you, if you touch him."

The movie definitely did that moment better then, IMO; sorry, any Tolkien-ites here!