That's a great interview but you're definitely right. I tend to go for quite simple, actor-oriented stuff, which clearly isn't Kubrick's forte. I don't mind extravagance, I love Fellini, but what separates him from Kubrick is his human/emotional side. As I like to say (ad nauseum) the most 'human' character in any of the Kubrick films I've seen was HAL. As a technician he's beyond criticism but my preference will always be with those movies more atuned to the human element, be it a Ford western or a Laurel and Hardy comedy. Give me Renoir over Godard all day long. It's the same with literature. As unfashionable as they now are, I'll still take a Dickens or a Steinbeck over pretty much anything else. And I much prefer dogs to cats.

Although I don't want to paint myself too much into a corner. I'm not just a sentimentalist. Some filmmakers I like a lot are a little on the 'cold' side (Antonioni, Hawks, etc) but they're definitely an exception to the rule.

Edit: I don't like Koyana-whatsitsface at all and Solaris isn't my favourite Tarkovsky movie, but I love Mirror, so it's never straightforward. It's about where you draw the line, for El Symbols it's Inland Empire, for me it's anything that might potentially remind me of a Peter Greenaway film - but then I like The Cook, the Thief so, again, it's never straightforward.

As an aside, a film critic who had an enormous affect on helping me define my taste was Manny Farber, in particular his essay 'White Elephant Art vs. Termite Art'. Not suggesting anyone read the whole thing (although it's short enough that you could). Either way, even if Farber himself later went on to distance himself from its message, it still pretty much nails a general position for me.

http://www.jambop.com/jambop/2004/11...elephant_.html

Yer mad?! There's been Dickens bumming overload the last few months, what with it being the 150th anniversary of his death or the like.

But yeah, I too have not seen Barry Lyndon. Admitting that automatically wipes all praise and "I LOVE KUBRICK ME!" comments I've made on here.

Try impressing a woman at a party by telling her you're in the middle of re-reading Barnaby Rudge.

"Hey babe, I have great expectations that my little dorrit will twist itself into your old curiosity shop. Hard times and a tale of two titties."
----
----

I've finally decided that it depends why you're watching a movie.

L'aventura is dull as fuck. Admit it. Not everyone who was chanting "Cut!" at the Cannes premiere was wrong. SUPERBAD is far more interesting.

And yet, __ ___ ____ {fill in the blanks}


---
At the end of a hard day, are you going to put on a slow, you-must-eat-your-vegetables-and-watch-this-movie-or-else-you-will-be-a-drooling-fool film?

Then again, when you're brain's on fire fire and hungry for sustenance, isn't anything less than excellent an affront?

---

Small quibble: These art films are more theater-oriented than most Hollywood fare. Usually a small cast, few locations. Dialogue is preferred over action. Etc. I think of Bergman very easily switching between theater and cinema.

And art films don't always equal visual grandeur. We can all think of examples of great art films that are on the crude side. And we can all think of visually stunning, beautiful films that otherwise fail to rise to the status of art.

Has anyone ever read John Simon? He's the biggest dick critic (but a great prose stylist) because he dislikes/hates damn near everything.

In an intro, he points out that when one loves something such as cinema, one becomes very discriminant. Nothing less than the best will do for the loved one. He'll never, for example, enjoy a John Waters movie.

Is he right?

i don't think so. i have a friend who loooooooooves movies, i mean really he's crazy about them, and he's the st. francis of assisi of films-- he loves any and all movies, practically without discrimination.

from what you say, sounds like john simon is only speaking for himself. but i don't think i've read him.

ps


haaa haaa, i love l'avventura but yes it put me to sleep the first time i watched it. the second time i tolerated it, the third time i loved it. didn't have that problem with la notte or l'eclisse though, i got into them right away.

but like you said, there are different movies for different days and situations.

my netflix queue is full of 5-start ratings that couldn't be more incompatible with each other.

i think that movies should be judged not by an absolute standard but by the promises they make to the audience. there are 5-star action movies and there are 1-star art films.

by the way i re-watched the star trek reboot recently and it was so much fun. 5-star for sure.

except for the pointless lens flares....

I think there are a lot of ways of judging a film, just like a book, or any other medium.

some films seek to purely entertain. Others seek to inform, or to portray history, or to create discussion, or just to scare the living shit out of you.

The films must be judged, as !@#$% says, on their own intent.

A movie like Ronin is a fantasy, purely meant to entertain. it cannot be compared on the same terms to something like Manchurian Candidate, which meant to enlighten as well as entertain.

If I list some of my fave movies, ones I would call perfectly awesome, they would include films that have no relevance to each other.

5th Element, Good The Bad & The Ugly, Waiting for Guffman, Die Hard...

4 different movies, all of which I consider perfect as is.

You are all so generous, and I often join you, but here's where I get stuck:

We are alone in the universe.

Without a God coming down and explaining every solitary mystery of existence, we're on our own. We have nothing to guide us except human wisdom.

The good news is human wisdom has been collected in art, philosophy and religion (three sides of the same die, in a way).

As such, an excellent but pointless bit of entertainment loses points next to the film that helps us negotiate our way through the universe.

AND/OR

What does it mean to be human?

Here, the sciences are welcome to lend a hand, and we appreciate it. But science can take us only so far. We require the humanities to help us fill out the picture if we are interested in fully answering the question.

Again, a film that delivers solid thrills and chuckles can't compete with a film that helps us work out the answer to our most fundamental question.

-----

So I like the idea that DIE HARD is a five-star movie (let's say) and so is Bergman's PERSONA.

But I hope you can see that it isn't just snobbery that makes me revere one and not the other.

---

(But we can't investigate the deeper questions constantly, so a few days ago I spent a fragment of my finite time on earth watching EXPENDABLES II and laughing my head off.)

for sure. the criteria by which something is judged is very important!

There is nothing more valuable though than making someone laugh who has not felt joy lately.

The same could be said about all the writers and directors who signed a letter straight after that screening, declaring it a masterpiece.


Not everyone watches L'avventura out of some masochistic desire to educate themselves. While I'd never call it an exciting film, I find it massively enjoyable. It's not something I can watch just like that, but when I'm in the mood I honestly can't think of many more pleasurable ways to kill a few hours. That obviously suggests I lead an impossibly boring life (largely true) but for my sins I do really enjoy watching L'avventura. The whole masochism thing is as bogus an idea as the one that says a half intelligent person can only enjoying something 'crap', ironically.

B est film I ever saw was Les Enfants du Paradis

It amde me laugh, it made me cry, it made me think, it made me awestruck, it made me want to watch it again and again

I was really high when I wrote all that. Sorry. Felt a little gasty.

There are two things going on.

The subjective judgement of the film, which is whatever. And yes, I believe you like L'avventure. (But admit it: lots of people fake it. You can tell.) In this case, I prefer SUPERBAD.


The objective, which we arrive at using the seriousness-of-intent/quality-of-execution metric Robin Williams made such fun of in Dead Poet's Society. In this case, there is no question that L'avventure is the superior film.

Don't worry. So was I when I replied.

maybe im high all the time but it all made perfect sense to me

and yes, it isn't "just snobbery"

"snobbery" is what people with no discriminatory taste assign to those who do

I am a music snob, and an art snob, and will readily tell you quantified, personal reasons for all my opinions.

6/10

The music saves it (it's boring most of the time).

no, snobbery is different from selectivity in taste.

snobbery is an affectation of superiority, and it started with the bourgeois emulating the aristocracy after the french revolution, buying titles, etc.

in matters of film taste then, a proper snob would be someone who pretends to like antonioni so he can then claim to be part of the intelligentsia.

someone who just likes antonioni or whatever thing is "better" isn't by definition a snob.

in other words, what evollove was saying is that liking antonioni isn't something he does because "it's the cool thing to do".

the perfect example of a snob would be the hotel owner in "the visitors", if you've ever seen that movie-- it's fucking hilarious. another snob would be basil fawlty, who kisses the culo of aristocrats and looks down on his customers as "riff raff," and pretends to be educated when he's not.

the snob is, at heart, a social imposter.

I love this. This is probably the best one-off discussion board post about snobbery I've ever read.

Seriously, this is actually... God. This is actually *good writing*

Metropolitan

A side of NY that doesn’t seem to feature in that many movies, besides the odd period drama, making this feel a little like something out of another time, without actually being so - which is the very point of the film, I suppose. Henry James meets the Breakfast Club-ish.

Wow--the James reference is even more spot on considering the next film (BARCELONA) is about Americans in Europe! Never thought of that.

Yeah, I seem to remember that too. I actually re-watched it a few days prior to posting it and seeing your name in the thread reminded me. It's a side of US/NY society that really fascinates me but which rarely gets much attention in its popular culture, at least now. Discussions around the topic here usually end with me urging you to write a book about it, simply so I can read it.

i loooove that movie for some strange reason, and i say it because i started as tom the socialist wanting to disapprove of and hate everyone in it, but couldn't help to find the characters a highly agreeable bunch of people. i particularly liked the nerdy friend with the glasses, the one who is constantly nerding up the conversation, and audrey of course, and nick (nick is the hardest to like because it's difficult to see his concealed goodness behind his cynical/shallow veneer).

in any case, if this is your first whit stillman movie, let me suggest you first watch the last days of disco and then continue with barcelona, because that's the correct chronological order of that universe, even though the movies were produced the other way around.

i posted a few days back i had watched and liked damsels in distress, which isn't up to par with his previous output but still is in spite of its involuntary campiness very enjoyable.

ps- ended up re-watching it just a little while ago, ha ha ha. so much fun.

Thanks for the recommendations. I've seen Last Days of Disco but wasn't aware it was by the same guy. I've never seen Barcelona although funnily enough I'll be in the actual city next week so I could watch it in preparation.

Anyway, another one I watched again the other day



Inglorious Basterds

2 1/2 hours of a filmmaker finally losing the plot completely. I'm generally quite a peaceful man but if Tarantino was ever in the room while I was watching either this, or Kill Bill I (I don't mind 2) or Death Proof, I honestly think I'd hit him. I haven't seen Django yet, but I will, because I think Tarantino was a great filmmaker and really want him to get back to being one and see no reason (other than his own infantile obsessions and ego, and those who indulge them) why he can't. He was never the saviour of cinema but with Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown he showed he had talent to burn. That the same guy who made those is now making stuff like Inglorious Basterds is a massive shame. That it seems like this is the kind of film he wanted to make from the beginning, is just depressing.

^ now that you know the characters from metropolitan, rewatch last days of disco and you'll notice cameos by audrey roget, sally fowler, fred, etc.,

dammit, now i want to re-watch that too.

barcelona might not be what you expect (i mean the movie, not the city) but i hope you enjoy it.

Di Caprio was great in it though.

Celebrity's one of the Woody Allen films I've not seen although I stopped really following what he was doing a while ago, probably after Deconstructing Harry, which I didn't hate but left me fairly indifferent. Everything I've read about his movies made after that seem to suggest he's been on a downward spiral ever since.

Really? Because many would say he's had a creative resurgence since "Match Point", and one of my favorites came after "Deconstructing Harry" which is "Sweet and Lowdown". I think maybe the movies he chooses not to act in these days are better, and he's been acting less and less and mostly just writing and directing. I guess he's hit or miss since he puts out so much.

I dare say you're right and I should give some of his more recent stuff a go. To be fair, though, there's only a few films from even his supposed golden era that I really like: Annie Hall, Manhattan, Hannah and Her Sisters, Purple Rose of Cairo. That's about it. Was never a big fan of stuff like Bananas or Sleeper.

Anyway, just watched.



W.

Some great acting but it feels more like a sketch of a film than the thing itself.

sleeper is hilarious but it's also pretty dated, bananas was goofy in a good way but also very dated, what's up tigerlilly is unwatchable, etc.

however--- bullets over broadway came after his late 70s/early 80s golden era but it's still great (i think it was right before deconstructing harry).

from his new stuff i've loved midnight in paris, match point, sweet and lowdown, and... what else was there... oh, yes, barcelona! i mean vicki cristina barcelona. gorgeous cinematography on this one, a lush yellow palette. great cast too. plus, your trip!

Midnight In Paris is brilliant and it's certainly up there with his best. It's one of them films you find yourself watching with a silly grin on your face.

http://www.sonicyouth.com/gossip/sho...ighlight=woody

PARIS- I hated it. It was way too eager to please. Owen Wilson sucks. It's point was obvious very early on. etc.

ROME- I liked it. A lot actually. The stories all unfolded in unexpected directions. Watching it, I did something I haven't done in an Allen film for years and years and years: laugh a lot and enjoy myself. It's slight, but not brainless.

rome is celebrity yes? i liked it but i thought its points about celebrity were a little too telegraphed. loved the shower opera though-- this is reminiscent of both broadway danny rose (the agent of doomed acts) and zelig-- zelig because of the absurdity of the situations. damn, the first time i watched zelig i laughed so hard i had bellyaches-- hasn't fared so well in rewatches for me, but still that first time was tremendously memorable.

re: paris yes it's a bit of a sentimental movie but eh! and ellen page was great in it.

Shush you with your OUTRAGEOUS opinions.

That can go to both of you.

lol wut?

Midnight In Paris is delight and with that there is no room for any other opinion.

Sure SPOUT AWAY about how rubbish this is or how "luscious" that is but step...the hell away from Midnight In Paris.