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sawtooth
heh
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
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 Posted: Sat Sep 25, 2010 2:38 am |
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it's a watered down version of those old controversial united colors of benetton ads. i'm not sure what korine's intention is (it seems like everyone's been out 'subvert' things for decades) but the very presence of the brand or product means that in the end (like the benetton ads) you're supposed respond to it by buying something.
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sawtooth
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| Posted: Sat Sep 25, 2010 10:31 pm |
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scott pilgrim on blu-ray >_o;
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sawtooth
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| Posted: Mon Sep 27, 2010 9:00 pm |
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gloss re: GitS: Not to excuse it from being crude and sexist and unfunny, but i thought the 'period' joke was a worthy setup to the movie's main themes. It sets up the movie's concepts of mind and body in just two lines, and immediately points out where it all gets fuzzy. If it's not the content but the style of dialogue, that sort of expository-old-hands-on-the-job talk is everywhere in movies and tv. I don't mind it at all.
I agree with you on the other points, but I think my expectations were lower. My only other exposure to the franchise are those sexy pages from the manga that i saw when i was like 13.
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sawtooth
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| Posted: Thu Oct 07, 2010 11:47 pm |
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sawtooth
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| Posted: Tue Dec 07, 2010 11:42 pm |
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It's not that the characters lack continuity, it's a debate over the idea that the development of the characters is somehow more important than the rest of the film. Like whether we should single out poor character development in The Discreet Charm of The Bourgeoisie as a weak part of the film.
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sawtooth
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| Posted: Tue Dec 07, 2010 11:59 pm |
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Against "characters":
| Borges wrote: |
| The typical psychological novel is formless. The Russians and their disciples have demonstrated, tediously, that no one is impossible. A person may kill himself because he is so happy, for example, or commit murder as an act of benevolence. Lovers may separate forever as a consequence of their love. And one man can inform on another out of fervor of humility. In the end such complete freedom is tantamount to chaos. But the psychological novel would also be a "realistic" novel, and have us forget that it is a verbal artifice, for it uses each vain precision (or each languid obscurity) as a new proof of verisimilitude. There are pages, there are chapters in Marcel Proust that are unacceptable as inventions, and we unwittingly resign ourselves to the insipidity and the emptiness of each day. The adventure story, on the other hand, does not propose to be a transcription of reality: it is an artificial object, no part of which lacks justification. |
I've found an extension of this critique somewhere else that I can't find the link to now, but I'll paraphrase:
We can write entirely different stories about people using tidbits and anecdotes as the basis for a more "complete portrait" of someone. We know that Stalin was a gruesome mass-murderer; but what was his private life like? Miserable? Well, that's obviously not the real him. Now instead we turn to the man of letters, starting with a note to his sweetheart when he was 19, and so on.
Each set of details or characteristics that is portrayed comes at the expense of another, a complete description is not only bewildering and conflicted but reveals that each person is a slight variation of the next.
We discover that characterization is useless; we can empathize with both the murderer and his victim, and it becomes a distraction from the fact that one of them is lying dead on the floor. Or (in the case of Enter the Void) the fact that the dead guy is super cool and trippy and so is the floor
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Last edited by sawtooth on Wed Dec 08, 2010 4:16 am; edited 1 time in total |
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sawtooth
heh
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Wed Dec 08, 2010 11:38 pm |
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And I don't see how that Borges quote is in any way "against character." It seems to me to be more against realism as such, and the idea that we could ever, in fiction, get a *complete portrait* of a human being, which certain psychological novels from the 19th century would have us think, and of course we cannot. That's not the point. |
The argument that is the best defense of EtV is that the individual characters don't matter and etc., which I guess I can see. But in order for that to work you need to have a mythical structure or whatever that isn't completely puerile (ie 2001, or Borges' best stuff). I got the impression from watching this film that Gaspar Noe has the worldview of a 15 year old who took mushrooms for the first time in his girlfriend's mom's basement, and then never took them again. |
I wasn't really mounting a defense of Enter the Void. I've never seen it, and it may be a turd for all I know.
I was making the argument that character development is bogus no matter what the context. At best it's a poor device for moving a plot forward and at worst the reason for existence of a billion awful melodramas. I'm making the assertion that a "balance of character and non-character" is unnecessary.
Insight into a character's psychology is why I found Lost to be a boring slog from the minute the flashbacks started, why I got so frustrated with Urasawa's Monster.
Re: Borges, this is something he riffs on dozens of times; In Emma Zunz for example, the titular character subjects herself to a series of violent crimes to give herself the motivation to avenge a different crime, done to someone else. He rejects characters as the subject of his work; there is no "balance" whatsoever. I think his rejection of psychological realism is the reason for that. If he didn't dislike character development, he had a funny way of showing it.
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Last edited by sawtooth on Thu Dec 09, 2010 4:55 am; edited 2 times in total |
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sawtooth
heh
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| Posted: Sun Jan 02, 2011 9:22 am |
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I haven't yet seen true grit, but this review draws out a couple of convincing references to Night of the Hunter (which might explain 'hokey,' and also has me sold from the get-go)
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sawtooth
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| Posted: Mon Jan 03, 2011 4:22 am |
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I think that does both eileen jones and Pikachu a disservice.
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sawtooth
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| Posted: Sat May 28, 2011 5:33 am |
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| cinephile wrote: |
| I liked Woody's earlier, funny ones. |
Where have I heard this line before
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sawtooth
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| Posted: Mon Jun 06, 2011 5:22 pm |
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listen to "Patton vs. Alcohol vs. Zach vs. Patton"
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sawtooth
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| Posted: Sun Jul 10, 2011 8:37 am |
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i just saw errol morris's Tabloid. Not a super accurate title (apparently it started as a showtime series?), considering the strange entirely unrelated digression it makes in the last third of the movie. It is about this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormon_sex_in_chains_case
Joyce McKinney was in the audience and monopolized the Q&A session afterward, it was not an entirely comfortable scene but incredibly interesting
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sawtooth
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| Posted: Sun Jul 10, 2011 8:56 am |
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At one point a tabloid writer makes the assertion that they have 800-1000 nude/bdsm photos of joyce mckinney, an assertion which the movie does a great deal to discredit. The movie makes her a very sympathetic character.
However, in the Q&A Joyce became incredibly evasive on the subject, and even owned up to participating in a couple of fetish photo shoots so she could dismiss them as no big deal. She came to the showing dressed in a matching getup with one of her dogs. She is a little bit nuts.
Edited on screen she's magnetic, though
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sawtooth
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Joined: 04 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Mon Jul 18, 2011 12:25 am |
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| vision wrote: |
sounds like Diablo Cody is getting the keys to the Evil Dead rewrite(s)
Ash(ley?) in a Mekons shirt telling the 'nomicon to zip its soup cooler |
fucking fuck
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