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miless wrote:oh EW... how could they forget David Lynch, Michael Haneke, Béla Tarr (although this one is understandable), Wong Kar-Wai, Terrence Malick(!), David Cronenberg, Carlos Reygadas, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Alain Resnais, Werner Herzog, Andrzej Wajda, Jim Jarmusch, etc... but wait, it's EW and they have no idea what art is.

It really ends up reading like a "top grossing living directors" list.

Actually, a few of those appear on the bottom 25 of the list (it extends to 50). Does this magazine only do pointless lists?

Moviefone's Oscar Cheat Sheet.

Most of these are pretty insulting but the ones that describe the films as _________ meets ____________ are rediculous. My favorite is The Visitor: "It's like Drumline meets Gran Torino".

Moviefone wrote:[Doubt is] much better than the director's last movie, "Joe vs. the Volcano."

Bullshit

Not a review, but the most 'rediculous' thing I've read in a while is the explanation given by a listal user on rating films ½ stars without having seen them.

SoyCuba wrote:Not a review, but the most 'rediculous' thing I've read in a while is the explanation given by a listal user on rating films ½ stars without having seen them.

"In my situation, there is a greater chance that I will not like the movie if I haven't seen it yet." ](*,)

If you haven't seen it, don't review it! If the last good movie you saw was Clerks 2, STOP REVIEWING THINGS!!

Entertainment Weekly in it's infinite wisdom gushes about The Hives and makes a plea for more James Franco.

We've all been wasting our time.

Apparently.

arsonfilms wrote:Entertainment Weekly in it's infinite wisdom gushes about The Hives and makes a plea for more James Franco.

What's wrong with The Hives or James Franco?

Can`t remember

A customer from England , 11/03/2005

I can`t remember watching this film, so thats how good it was. Propably my memory loss is to my advantage. Some films are just not worth remembering.

Probably the worst review ever ](*,)

MichaelB wrote:We've all been wasting our time.

Apparently.

Someone better tell Mel Gibson about this genius piece of writing. Cinema not being a fine art was the highlight of that blog entry.

Great quote from the comments:

'Sophocles' wrote:Now, to a certain degree, it does not matter whether one "believes" in magic but what may matter is that often the artist(whether it be the film maker, musician, etc.) does. By this I mean that the artist, oftentimes a hater of Christianity and an initiate in gnostic mysteries(of whatever kind-pick your choice), embeds their art with their magic through spells.

I like how, after exhaustively developing his theories and using them to pick apart Schindler's List, Passion of the Christ, etc., his criticism of The Decalogue is basically just "ah, it wasn't that great."

Ochlophobist wrote:Cinema does not, properly speaking, contain a certain mood in the way an instrumental musical work may. Instead it seeks to conjure and manipulate emotions within the viewer.

So would anyone like to tell me how Drama is allowed to be a fine art, then?

same idiot wrote: In this sense [cinema] is more emotional propaganda than art proper. When listening to instrumental music, the human soul is involved in something of a dialogue. The music seems to prod and convince, perhaps even coerce the listener

This is an important distinction, people: prodding and coercion = not propaganda.

This is my favorite blog post ever.

The Ochlophobist wrote:Furthermore, you have no contact with the persons involved in the making of the film, you are not in the same room with them, though you are in a certain sense made to feel as if you are.

Could the same not apply to the "fine arts" mentioned? When you read a book or admire a portrait you have no contact with the artist, does this "criticism" not apply to all art forms?

All these critiques of the film medium are so contradictory it's baffling.

I'm amazed that any of you had the patience to read the damn thing through to the end. I stopped after the first couple of sentences when I felt like I was walking into a late night freshman dorm conversation that I was not adequately stoned for.

Murdoch wrote:

The Ochlophobist wrote:Furthermore, you have no contact with the persons involved in the making of the film, you are not in the same room with them, though you are in a certain sense made to feel as if you are.

Could the same not apply to the "fine arts" mentioned? When you read a book or admire a portrait you have no contact with the artist, does this "criticism" not apply to all art forms?

How about listening to compact discs? It seems they're there in the room playing the music, but they're not there.

Snipped from the Watchmen thread:

kaujot wrote:"And in honor of Zack Snyder, I've made this review R-rated."

Mali Elfman wrote:It’s not easy to have a rape and murder scene, and still have women walking out of the theater wanting to bang you. Well done.

That sentence does come off as weird.

Does it refer to Snyder or the Comedian? And what evidence does he offer to back up his claim?

Either way, this is just another example of why fanboys shouldn't be allowed to write reviews, although I guess this thread would be noticeably shorter without them.

The Comedian. And just a few paragraphs down the way...

There is one scene which I really needed clarification on, which is, how was her daughter created? We watch the Comedian beat and almost rape her early on in the film and then it is alluded to later that they “sealed the deal.” I needed clarification on how the hell that came about. It seemed like such an important part of the story, so one would have preferred a little explanation as to why Silk Spectre would go back and fucked him, instead of the cheesy line like “I never hated him because he gave me you.”

Why would she bang him despite rape? Didn't I answer that somewhere. There's a cog loose here.

Also, apparently Dr manhattan's penis is 'mesmerizing'.

The post quoted by MichaelB is magnificently ludicrous! If I'm reading it correctly is the writer complaining about Mel Gibson's Passion film because it tries to create the feeling of being crucified and therefore is almost impertinent in giving viewers a false sense of the experience Jesus went through, and then goes on to suggest that the only way this would work as an experience would be if a viewer was actually crucified - that nobody could properly understand or empathise with such an event if it wasn't actually occuring to them (and if they say they understand or empathise with how painful it must have been just by watching a film, they are both wrong and have a lack of humility in the way they think they can understand without experiencing).

It is quite something to read someone who not only thinks they are holier than thou but holier than that huge Christian fanbase that was mobilised for the Gibson film, who he seems to be suggesting have been tricked into worshipping a false idol by a showman! (He may have a point about the calculated 'travelling roadshow' quality of the Gibson film, but I think I'd come at the film from the opposite point of view than this guy!)

I would have thought cinema was a utilitarian art in that it provides shared cultural heritage and experiences, and shares stories from different cultures with others to aid understanding of different points of view on the same events or ideas. But I suppose to see cinema in those terms would be to come to it without a fixed idea of what cinema can and cannot do, instead a willingness to learn and enjoy the different experiences films can offer.

When watching a movie (or Television for that matter), one stills one's body while one's intellectual faculties are oriented towards the passive reception of images and sounds conveyed through the medium of light and digital audio.

I think it depends on the viewer whether they remain passive towards the images presented to them on the screen. The amount of debate films and television cause on the Internet seems to suggest many viewers have a lot to say about the material they supposedly 'passively' consume.

IF: But what _________ (insert homosexual octogenarian European director's name) is really trying to say here is that ______________ (insert some utterly obvious point regarding the human condition, or insert the phrase "all is meaningless").

Ochlophobist: [pulls handy French beret out of back pocket and then breaks beer bottle over IF's head]

IF: [after getting back up and cleaning himself off] What the hell did you do that for?

Ochlophobist: Some things are best not explained.

[-X

Having the parents I do, and the friends I do, and the wife I do, I have seen many (100?, 200? I am not sure) foreign films in my life.

](*,)

I would venture to say that I could, after one conversation of 20 minutes or more with a person I do not know, tell you if that person watches TV and/or movies with 97% accuracy, regardless of that person's intelligence or socio-economic background.

I agree with this point. I could do this too by asking somebody whether they watch films or television - so it would take about 30 seconds to figure out with 100% accuracy. What is this person doing with the other 19 minutes and 30 seconds?

We are a culture of persons who have (two generations ago) dropped the formation of text narratives, particularly the narratives of the Biblical texts, and embraced a formation by cinema's pseudo-narratives, which we think are genuine stories but are in fact nothing but a long series of suggestive poses, catchy phrases, emotive background music, and interesting moving photography. Cinema has no real story, at best it steals from literature and debases story into what I have just described. It is the anti-story nature of cinema which makes it ultimately inhuman in its essence.

Nice to know that the writer has also watched Slumdog Millionaire!

Zing!

The Ochlophobist wrote:Cinema is not a utilitarian art. One could argue that it serves the wants of the modern public, but it does not do so as a utility. A utility is "a useful article or device" (Amer. Her. Dict.). Prostitution serves the wants of a given public, but it is not useful in any material or moral sense. It is in fact quite destructive, therefore prostitution is not a utilitarian art. I will argue later that cinema is also destructive. Insofar as my argument is sound, I prove that cinema is not a utilitarian art.

His definition of "use" is somewhat baffling.

Most of you have to remember that 90% of cinematography is lighting. It's fine to mention films like Lawrence of Arabia and Barry Lyndon, but those films benefit from having sumptuous production design and amazing locations. The lighting elements, whilst good, cannot touch something like Road To Perdition or Se7en.

](*,)