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colinr0380 wrote:"Are all art movies long and boring?"

I love blog posts that pose a ridiculous question and then, in the end, leave it up to the readers to duke it out in the comments section. "So, are all art movies long and boring? Tell me what you think!"

I'd hate to hear what she'd think of Sátántangó... or I guess she wouldn't reveal it, instead relying upon posters to do the work for her.

and that Caché review seems as if it was written by a retard.

that ridiculous Cache review wrote:None of the reviews I read make anything much of this, except to say that the director throws these questions back at the viewer. Thanks chaps, but I paid £6.50 for him to do the work.

Oh, if only the director would just tell us what he wants to say, and then I wouldn't have to see the film at all.

I love that the "French movie crisis" amounts to this:

critics...[over-promote] "the same old intellectual musings while snubbing popular hits like Amelie" (I'm afraid I liked Amelie).

Crisis = popular taste not matching up with the intelligentsia's, or vice versa. Or even simpler, I hate this movie and those people didn't.

colinr0380 wrote:(I'm sure that the Guardian blogs are attempting some sort of active provocation with titles like "Just say 'non' to pretentious French art films" or "Are all art movies long and boring?") - it makes them more 'down with the masses' I suppose.

Bloody hell, those are awful.

Some blithering idiot at the Guardian wrote:While there are some cracking put-downs throughout the film and some hearty laughs here and there, the individual scenes drag on. What Warhol takes 30 minutes to say could easily be fitted into 10.

I must have missed all those hearty laughs in The Chelsea Girls, although perhaps if it was shorter I would have been able to pay more attention. The last sentence displays an elemental misunderstanding of Warhol's art that's practically unreal, and the question 'Are all art movies long and boring?' is just weird - not all 'art movies' are over two hours, which seems to be the specific criterion that makes them 'long'.

Another wrote:None of the reviews I read make anything much of this, except to say that the director throws these questions back at the viewer. Thanks chaps, but I paid £6.50 for him to do the work.

Oh dear.

colinr0380 wrote:"Are all art movies long and boring?"

The Guardian film blogs truly are atrocious. I didn't care for Cache, but I found it ridiculous that part of Mr. White's argument is:

Mrs White and I hated it. So did most of our friends over 30.

...as if to imply that only artsy young people with their wacky tastes were able to enjoy the film.

guardian thingy wrote:can artistic ploys really hope to save an otherwise mediocre film?

Unsaid assumption: artristy is a ploy used by pretentious twits to mask their inability to make simple, down-to-earth stuff.

The whole tone reminds me of people who whine when a book sends them to the dictionary to look up a word. "Why did he have to use that word? Why couldn't he have picked an easier word that everyone would understand? There were too many descriptions, the first sentence didn't grab me, the ending didn't bring me back to the beginning..."

Too many people watch a film (or read a book, or whatever), only half paying attention to it, waiting for it to impress them. They don't think they should have to bring anything to the table themselves. Of course, this robs them of the experience of being impressed by something they didn't know could impress them before. It's always frustrating when someone says, "That film you recommended sucked," you say, "Oh, what didn't you like about it?" and they say, "Well, I don't know, I thought it would be more like [insert completely unrelated movie title], I couldn't even finish it."

Another blithering idiot at the Guardian wrote:None of the reviews I read make anything much of this, except to say that the director throws these questions back at the viewer. Thanks chaps, but I paid £6.50 for him to do the work.

Holy shit, this has got to be a joke right? This kind of blatant and proud anti-intellectualism is so completely bewildering to me. Ugh, that whole article just really pisses me off.

Not a review per se, simply an obscenity-filled tirade, from the DVD Talk thread on Dark Night's IMDB rating:

Most people, especially people under lets say 40 don't give a shit about movies made in the god damn 30's and 40's, hell even the 50's. That shit is TOO old. People aren't old enough to remember it (or born) when it was first released, and they sure as shit aren't going to rent something that old. Its the common stigma in life old=boring/uninteresting.

If it isn't called Wizard Of Oz, Gone With The Wind, It's A Wonderful Life, or Casablanca, nobody gives a shit. Its the modern time here, people want to see, vote, whatever, on more modern movies they grew up with. Do you think anybody that was alive to see The Rules of the Game hangs out on IMDB. No. Shit man my Grandma is 75 she never heard of The Rules of the Game and she sure as shit isn't on IMDB. She can barely handle her AOL email account.

Most people, especially people under lets say 40 don't give a shit about movies made in the god damn 30's and 40's, hell even the 50's. That shit is TOO old. People aren't old enough to remember it (or born) when it was first released, and they sure as shit aren't going to rent something that old. Its the common stigma in life old=boring/uninteresting.

If it isn't called Wizard Of Oz, Gone With The Wind, It's A Wonderful Life, or Casablanca, nobody gives a shit. Its the modern time here, people want to see, vote, whatever, on more modern movies they grew up with. Do you think anybody that was alive to see The Rules of the Game hangs out on IMDB. No. Shit man my Grandma is 75 she never heard of The Rules of the Game and she sure as shit isn't on IMDB. She can barely handle her AOL email account.

I'm not really sure what his point is. People don't watch old movies because they are old? I think his point is valid in some respects in that the majority of film viewers aren't familiar with anything beyond the most well-known classics. But what's he so angry about? Is he taking issue with Rules of the Game being readily available on DVD?

The Guardian has a long history of winding up art-movie fans, most notoriously when they made Toby Young their chief film critic in the early 1990s.

It's no exaggeration to say that his thankfully brief reign did incalculable damage to an independent sector that was already struggling (several independent distributors and cinemas went under during this period), and who were more than usually reliant on sympathetic coverage from the likes of Time Out and the Guardian, as they simply didn't have the marketing muscle to make a splash otherwise.

There's never a good time to appoint a calculatedly philistine idiot as the chief film critic of the national newspaper that has the reputation (deserved or not) for giving the arthouse sector the highest profile, but the timing of Young's appointment was particularly bad. Loads of people complained (including me - the only time I've ever had a letter published in the paper), and he was thankfully fired not long afterwards, but the damage had already been done.

What really got my goat about his pieces was that they were so poorly researched, thus proving his utter cynicism - he was only interested in the polemic, not the art. And what was particularly surprising was that the paper's then editor, Peter Preston, is something of a film buff, which may well have been why Young was dropped so quickly once it was clear that people in the business not only didn't find Young funny but thought he was a genuine threat.

Sadly, certain journalists wield a great deal of power - Peter Bradshaw, who currently occupies Young's former seat, can kill a film's prospects in the UK with a single bad review, regardless of whether his opinion is a minority one. That said, the converse is also true, which is why a good review in the Guardian is worth thousands in advertising!

I'm way, waaaay late on this great thread, but has it really not been pointed out yet that a certain Mr. Feng wrote the following on July 19:

"The Dark Knight is the Salo of comic book adaptations."

If it's been covered, my apologies. If it hasn't, you're welcome.

sonofkinski wrote:I'm way, waaaay late on this great thread, but has it really not been pointed out yet that a certain Mr. Feng wrote the following on July 19:

"The Dark Knight is the Salo of comic book adaptations."

Is that good or bad?

It's da shiiit!

myrnaloyisdope wrote:

sonofkinski wrote:I'm way, waaaay late on this great thread, but has it really not been pointed out yet that a certain Mr. Feng wrote the following on July 19:

"The Dark Knight is the Salo of comic book adaptations."

Is that good or bad?

It means that watching it is like having your eyes gouged out with the sharp-edged pages of your favorite comic books. Which is a good thing, unless you value your eyes.

Feel the burn...

For future reference, we try not to type out his name because he vanity searches the board and will periodically show up to dole out witticisms re: our burns.

This looks like a really good for-pay essay on Do the Right Thing

Opening paragraph:

Spike Lee is one of the many directors who in my opinion always want to keep people alert. He is without a doubt an intelligent man that believes he has a responsibility to depict the world of black folks and other minorities in their most genuine form. In fact, the only thing about Spike Lee that I have a problem with is when he sits courtside at those damn New York Knicks games screaming for those bums. However, when it comes down making films, he always fulfils his responsibility to the behind the scenes black personnel who are underrepresented in an industry dominated by white folks.

Totally worth the $$$

domino harvey wrote:This looks like a really good for-pay essay on Do the Right Thing

Opening paragraph:

Spike Lee is one of the many directors who in my opinion always want to keep people alert. He is without a doubt an intelligent man that believes he has a responsibility to depict the world of black folks and other minorities in their most genuine form. In fact, the only thing about Spike Lee that I have a problem with is when he sits courtside at those damn New York Knicks games screaming for those bums. However, when it comes down making films, he always fulfils his responsibility to the behind the scenes black personnel who are underrepresented in an industry dominated by white folks.

Totally worth the $$$

Well, it looks as though it was written by an indolent teen, so they've clearly got their target market worked out.

The use of "black folks" and "white folks" is hilarious, but top honors must go to that entirely unwarranted mid-graf rant about the Knicks. Sad thing is, I know many high school papers that read just like this (or worse).

domino harvey wrote:This looks like a really good for-pay essay on Do the Right Thing

I believe that essay may have been written by this author.

Dune, by David Lynch, is the book I've chosen to read for my book assignment.

Genius!

miless wrote:

Dune, by David Lynch, is the book I've chosen to read for my book assignment.

Genius!

Honestly, I preferred Truffaut's Fahrenheit 451, as the writing was much tighter. Kubrick's 2001 is good too (wait...).

Magic Hate Ball wrote:Honestly, I preferred Truffaut's Fahrenheit 451, as the writing was much tighter. Kubrick's 2001 is good too (wait...).

Honestly, I've revisited Robert Longo's Johnny Mnemonic a whole lot more over the years. But I like cyberpunk.

This was my favorite part:

Animal Farm, by George Orwell, is a Signet Classic in which animals take over the farm.