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some lunatic wrote:please listen to me I'm trying to save you from hating Adam sandler

That's just glorious.

MichaelB wrote:

some lunatic wrote:please listen to me I'm trying to save you from hating Adam sandler

That's just glorious.

That's seriously the best thing that's ever appeared in this thread.

This may sound negative but it is simply a statement of facts. If you like off the wall, noisy, frenetic, jerky, shallow (trying to look deep)movies... then you will enjoy this. If you are looking for Ghost World, and others of the Altman, Kubrik ilk, then you will get what you like.

I would definitely say that "frenetic" and "jerky" are touchstone elements of Altman's oeuvre (OC & Stiggs aside).

the Altman, Kubrik ilk

What the fuck does that mean? That's like talking about music of the Satie / Black Sabbath variety. And lumping Ghost World in with them only makes me more confused.

domino harvey wrote:Indie kids undershoot history by about 25 years

Plus, television did the most damage... and I would love a television version of that tee if they had one.

domino harvey wrote:Indie kids undershoot history by about 25 years

Haha, I saw that today and thought, "Wow, they're off by a long shot".

Good site for shirts, though.

Magic Hate Ball wrote:

domino harvey wrote:Indie kids undershoot history by about 25 years

Haha, I saw that today and thought, "Wow, they're off by a long shot".

Good site for shirts, though.

Between my ex-gf and I, we probably bought like 30 (mostly matching, natch) shirts from them back in my indie kid days.

They still comprise most of my wardrobe. That said, that's a hilarious mistake. Wonder if anyone will raise the issue in the product forums, or if it'll just sell out blindly per usual...

the first line to Gary Tooze's write-up on the Eroticist:

It's about an Italian politician who grabs women's buttocks.

Get a load of this Videovista review of MoC's Tabu, by one Paul Higson.

In addition to some of the most tortured prose I've come across in ages, he concludes with this doozy:

The fact that the story is told silent when exotic song, birds and the wash of waves could have enhanced the soundtrack, can be brought to bear on the film could have been improved. Less avoidable is the lack of colour that the film screams of, partly due to the absence of the occupying richnesses of sound. Smith's claims that scenes of great sensuality and tenderness between Matahi and Reri were unrivalled and unthinkable in other Hollywood films of the day don't help. It denies the existence of exotic, erotic jungle gothics like Congo and Tarzan And His Mate in the pre-Hays Code sound years. Tarzan And His Mate suffered cuts on its release removing nudity but the sexuality and sensuality are categorical and surrounded by great comic humour, sets that grab and amaze, flora and fauna, shock deaths, high adventure, and if some of the lion attacks and elephant ears are resoundingly fake then they are no more bogus than Tabu's shark and mise en scène. In Tarzan And His Mate, sound brings the tropics expressway to us. In Tabu, the silence distances us.

Right click delete internet

Some choice opening lines to his other reviews:

Hey, I remember this young pup, Neil Jordan. He used to thrill us with skip happy and hop-along exciting little films, the audiences and critics in concord appreciation.

Ingmar Bergman is here in dire jeopardy of bespoiling his position as cinema's principle miserabilist

It is 30 years since the gatefold image of the sabat from Benjamin Christensen's Häxan first obscenely exposed itself to me in frontispiece pages of a large book.

Following My Girlfriend's Boyfriend in the director's Comedy and Proverbs series of tales of emotional whimsy, The Green Ray (aka: Le Rayon Vert) is at times stultifying, and almost a challenge (though this is clearly a hetero male viewpoint) in Rohmer's attempt to make an attractive woman as infuriating as possible, but as she is the story and there for the entire screen-time we have no choice but to put up with her.

In the early 1990s, a friend told me of his dislike of the work of Almodóvar at a time when I had yet to see one of his films and the nation was in catch-up.

There have been as many filmed biographies of Dorothy Stratton than there were made that starred the Playboy playmate.

You cannot fault the content of this video, only the shortage of it on this DVD issue of the documented rehearsal sessions that in some way could be put forward as a readying for the American tour to coincide with the release of the 1998 Yield album.

Do they not have grammar in the UK?

I'm willing to bet a great deal that he seriously rates himself as a prose stylist.

It reads as if he wrote something, then replaced some words from a thesaurus, then arbitrarily rearranged them.

Actually, trying to read it is like reading transcriptions of George W. (with bigger words.) At first I want to, because I know there will be gems. But ultimately its just too painful.

I seriously can't get over the Dorothy Stratten opening line, where spelling her name wrong takes a backseat to using a sentence structure that tells us that she starred in as many biopics about herself as were later made about her.

Here's another Higson classic:

Someone must have launched a competition under the title 'how Hungarian are you?' and this was the result. The critics got a little excitable about Johanna on the festival circuit. I can only assume they had been forced to watch a series of documentaries about autopsies on children if this could bring a smile to their maws.

Now, a maw can refer to a mouth, but generally in the context of the open bit at the end of the entire throat-gullet-stomach arrangement - which I don't think was quite the impression he was aiming for.

But, to paraphrase The Guardian's Simon Hoggart yesterday, this isn't so much shooting fish in a barrel as harpooning a porpoise that's got into your bath, so I'll stop now.

Here's some more Higson - God, this is painful:

Is it a fish or a kettle? Oh why, oh why, can't a movie be content with being a clear-cut case of genre?

It is queer to note how readily acceptable is the usage of the phrase 'according to' as an appendage to belief. Accordance is highly suggestive of cautious acceptance and the potential for lies yet, there it is, the phrase to be found in international translation at the hearty core of the Bible.

Cinematic sadism may have been keeping the Japanese peace for four decades but was it ever offered in an overlong morally void package as this? And the live-action of the two in this Ichi The Killer boxset was longer by three minutes and 15 seconds originally, the BBFC demanding "Cuts... to scenes of mutilated, raped or savagely beaten women or of sexual pleasure from violence." As the film concerns the playing off of the ultimate sadist against the perfect masochist with no ordinary interloper to root for, how is it any of this film got either a theatrical or video release? Two hours is a still gruellingly vicious haul.

In my day job, I sometimes have to deal with people who write like this, and they're a nightmare to edit. Not because it's especially difficult beating their work into shape (though the temptation to rewrite the whole thing from scratch is sometimes overwhelming) but because they get unbelievably precious about every single word, no matter how misjudged, inappropriate and generally tin-eared the effect.

To make matters worse, they're usually the ones most likely to ignore our style manual - under the deeply mistaken assumption that their prose is so coruscating(*) that I won't notice or care.

(*) They love the word "coruscating" too, but rarely have much of a clue as to what it actually means.

God, that reads like my freshman students' writing. How hideous!

This guy must be the comedy highlight of this thread to date. I've had to deal with writing like this before, but seldom is the polarization between pretentious vocabulary and inept grammar quite so complete. Shouldn't you have to take some kind of elementary literacy test before you're allowed to buy a thesaurus?

I think 'Higsonian' should be an adjective.

Paul Higson wrote:Ingmar Bergman is here in dire jeopardy of bespoiling his position as cinema's principle miserabilist

Since so many people are already rubbing this guy's face in the mud, I'll play the sympathetic note and say that miserabilism is a real word. It means (according to the OED) "a tendency to take a pessimistic or negative view; pessimism, esp. of a self-indulgent kind; gloomy negativity" and has been around for 125 years.

Mr_sausage wrote:

Ingmar Bergman is here in dire jeopardy of bespoiling his position as cinema's principle miserabilist

Since so many people are already rubbing this guy's face in the mud, I'll play the sympathetic note and say that miserabilism is a real word. It means (according to the OED) "a tendency to take a pessimistic or negative view; pessimism, esp. of a self-indulgent kind; gloomy negativity" and has been around 125 years.

So when he's talking about Bergman being the cinema's principle miserablist, does this mean that he's taking a pessimistic or negative view of his principles?

Credit where it's due, that's an entirely legitimate argument.

MichaelB wrote:

Mr_sausage wrote:

Ingmar Bergman is here in dire jeopardy of bespoiling his position as cinema's principle miserabilist

Since so many people are already rubbing this guy's face in the mud, I'll play the sympathetic note and say that miserabilism is a real word. It means (according to the OED) "a tendency to take a pessimistic or negative view; pessimism, esp. of a self-indulgent kind; gloomy negativity" and has been around 125 years.

So when he's talking about Bergman being the cinema's principle miserablist, does this mean that he's taking a pessimistic or negative view of his principles?

Credit where it's due, that's an entirely legitimate argument.

Heh, yeah. He probably means "prime miserabilist." It's still the least confusing ambiguity he's perpetrated, tho'.

Mr_sausage wrote:Heh, yeah. He probably means "prime miserabilist." It's still the least confusing ambiguity he's perpetrated, tho'.

Oh, I think he did indeed mean "principal" - but his spelling checker can't distinguish between the two spellings. And neither can he.

Well "miseribilist" is still not a word, and if anyone has used up his alloted liberties with the English language, it's Higson.


More opening lines (and kudos to anyone who can actually get past the first line of these reviews):

Woodstock is Woodstock, but I grew up to a soundtrack of glam, Yes Sir, I Can Boogie, punk, new wave and mod, and diverse it was but the twang, strum, bang and guitar ruckus of the first great happening was a country and a time away from young me.

Ingmar Bergman was surprisingly prolific in the tenderfoot years of his career but this was the earliest film of international note, much of the attention brought to it by the young, comely and alluring Harriet Andersson, the Monika of the title, her barely restrained libido, her frequent ever-so-natural undressing and at one point the naked bathing, all of which had the Swedish film board and film executives roof-bound that year.

Who but a Frenchman could get away with a feature film about a man who almost has an affair?

The trick to attention grabbing in film today is to go the postmodern route.

Lost films benefit from a mystique and, even upon rediscovery, continue on the bonus system by having then the history and the curious route to its rescue.

Unfairly received by British critics, this film is more than an excised cum shot.

My supernatural fascinations lie with the borderline, scientifically plausible and irrefutable; dreams, telepathy and coincidence.

Risky territory is dipped into with comparative reserve in David Slade's Hard Candy as a paedophile and a girl respectively groom one other as potential victims.

I refuse to be held responsible for the passage of time.

Who is holding this man responsible for the passage of time?

Who but a Frenchman could get away with a feature film about a man who almost has an affair?

Well, Wong Kar-Wai, for starters. And I'm sure I can think of plenty of other nationalities if only I could be arsed.

domino harvey wrote:Well "miseribilist" is still not a word, and if anyone has used up his alloted liberties with the English language, it's Higson.

This is fun.

EDIT: Maybe he saw Michael Atkinson use it.