[Rob Instigator]

singing in the rain is the only musical worth anything, and it rules.

[nicfit]

I like grease and rocky horror and that buffy episode.

The Jerry Springer Opera was much funnier than I thought that it would be. And it was cool to wear a badge that said 'crack whore' while watching it.

[jon boy]

Originally Posted by Savage Clone

To be fair, I more or less accused Pookie of being a cheeseball for his defense of musicals; I never implied he was either bitter or twisted.

well he is though, bitter and twisted. just ask him about harry potter.

[Tokolosh]

There are some musicals I do like. West Side Story and Dancer in the Dark are the first two that spring to mind.

[atari 2600]

Hey, how about that part in the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey when the actor in the Rick Baker gorilla suit gets actually jumped by a real live mountain lion?

In 2001: A Space Odyssey, people first saw flat screen monitors and card I.D. swipes among many other future real-world innovations. For instance, towards the end of the first act, when travelling to the moon, a space shuttle is seen. When NASA was being awarded federal money for a space program they were actually told they could pick one non-space station thing in the movie to work on as a project. They picked the shuttle from 2001 and now, of course, the United States has the Space Shuttle.

As for part of the premise of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Kubrick and Clarke are close, but no cigar. Most likely, space seed did contribute to single-celled life arising on our planet, but it happened differently and much earlier. Meteorites carrying amino acids (the basic building blocks of cellular life) led to the rise of single-celled organisms. Our study of meteorite and comet debris has universally shown that these rocks from outer space contain some traces of amino acids and protein substances. Eventually these weird lifeforms that originally arose (that fed on noxious gases like propane and methane if you can imagine) made it out of their thermal vents and dank holes and into the sunlight and became the more familiar microbial bacterium which caused a rapid (relatively) metamorphosis of the entire planet as they evolved to use chloropyll from the sun as energy via a revolutionary evolutionary adaptation that today we know as photosynthesis. Oxygen is a waste gas of these microbial life, and over billions of years, it eventually reatmosphered the entire planet. Life became increasingly more and more complex over the next hundreds of millions of years, the dinosaurs fell extinct, mammals arose, leading all the way up to early man and then humans. Thus, haha, no monolith is necessary. Our own self-awareness came about through primitive art, using tools and making fire.

If I had to single out a Kubrick film for being "overrated" it would have to be A Clockwork Orange (me also), but personally, I don't feel Clockwork is that highly rated to begin with by most people.

As to the looming Citizen Kane question that would only naturally have to arise in a thread like this, I have a few comments. The Bicycle Thief is better than Citzen Kane. And it's the only other film to ever rank number one on the acclaimed Sight and Sound poll. I do not even rank Citizen Kane in the top forty. Touch of Evil, also by Welles, is a better film than Citizen Kane, although there is no denying that Kane was groundbreaking, as has been alluded to already.

Also novel in its use of camera and editing, maybe even more so, is The Battleship Potemkin by Eisenstein, but I am not so pompous as to rate it even in my top one hundred.

Let me turn my attention to the Academy (AMPAS) for "overrated" fodder.
Ben-Hur won eleven awards. It's a good film, not in my top fifty, but it's very good. But, Titanic also won eleven. It's a good movie, but, in this aspect, also overrated. Add to the list The Return of the King, the final installment of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy by Peter Jackson, which also garnered eleven. This alone (being in a three-way tie for most Oscars) instantly singles out ROTK as being one of the most overrated films of all time considering all of the other worthy films that never won Academy Awards at all, let alone multiple ones.

Other particularly highly overrated motion pictures by the Academy and many lists include Gone With the Wind (it was my college film class professor's favorite) and All About Eve.

Turning my attention to the imdb list, I will also name The Shawshank Redemption as being "overrated" in this instance, because it's ranked number two. It's a good movie, fairly challenging for a crowd-pleaser, but number two all-time it certainly isn't.

imdb's top twenty is basically a mess in general with
The Good, Bad & The Ugly (#4), Casablanca (#8),
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (#11)
and The Fellowship of the Ring at number sixteen.
http://www.imdb.com/chart/top

_________________

Going to sleep to 2001: A Space Odyssey?
Think it's overrated?

 

 

2001: The Making of a Myth (BBC Channel 4, 59 min.) hosted by James Cameron
http://youtube.com/watch?v=BCxn5z7YKPM

There's another good documentary that aired on AMC or something (not sure where I saw it) with their "movies that changed the world" series.

 

 

[Tokolosh]

2001 is one of my all time favorites. Way ahead of it's time and so to see, very underrated on this board. Well put atari.
Haven't seen The Bicycle Thief, but A touch of Evil and The Third Man (starring Orson Welles) are great.

[jon boy]

yeh toko, dancer in the dark is a good one.

[atari 2600]

Originally Posted by Tokolosh

There are some musicals I do like. West Side Story...

http://www.sonicyouth.com/gossip/sho...%22maria%3A%22

[LifeDistortion]

I'm not saying this to be controversial, but if any series of films were overratted its, "Star Wars" all six films, and "Star Trek", all films.

[pao-lino]

I think In the "Mood for love" is very overrated...
the photography is great and so are the costumes, but the story is not that original, the erotic tension is not tense at all and interpretation is mm,ok, not more.

[demonrail666]

I'd admit that when I referred to Kubrick's films as being 'overrated', I probably should've said 'I don't tend to like them'. He was a technically gifted filmmaker, but one that consistently lacked a human dimension to his work - his characters being usually little more than cartoon-like ciphers. The problem with this approach really came to the fore with Eyes Wide Shut, the nature of which required a much more subtle approach to the main character's relationship than Kubrick could possibly muster. He reminds me of Herzog in that sense. Another filmmaker that I'm not keen on. This doesn't make either of them 'bad', just 'not my cup of tea'.

Anyway, I agree with Atari that Bicycle Thieves is a better film than Citizen Kane (Welles' highly technique-bound style and attitude provided a sort of blue-print for Kubrick) but fully understand why some people (most of whom probably love Michael Mann films, too) would see it the other way around.

[pao-lino]

Originally Posted by LifeDistortion

I'm not saying this to be controversial, but if any series of films were overratted its, "Star Wars" all six films, and "Star Trek", all films.

I guess those are movies you have to be a fan to enjoy... I'm not that star-thing'enthusiast either.

[SpectralJulianIsNotDead]

Originally Posted by LifeDistortion

I'm not saying this to be controversial, but if any series of films were overratted its, "Star Wars" all six films, and "Star Trek", all films.

Whoever said all the Star Trek films are good?

And nobody says the Star Wars saga is great unless they are morons. People nly say that the classic theatrical star wars trilogy is.

[LifeDistortion]

Originally Posted by SpectralJulianIsNotDead

Whoever said all the Star Trek films are good?

And nobody says the Star Wars saga is great unless they are morons. People nly say that the classic theatrical star wars trilogy is.

I think that as far as present day SCi-fi is concerned that "Star Trek" and "Star Wars" are considered the standard that all other modern day sci-fi is measured up to. I consider myself to be a fan of the genre as a whole, love it when its done well, despise it when its done horribly. And having said that "Star Trek" is a series both television and film that I've never gotten into, many of you know that I love the original "Twilight Zone" as well as "The X-files", so when people talk about classic, brilliant examples of sci-fi film/televison, these come to mind, much more then "Star Trek" or "Star Wars".

[Rob Instigator]

I love Trek and all things Trek. just the nerd in me. I dug the original show as a kid and TNG and deep space nine as a young adult.

trek is all morality plays, and therfore they do not delve truly into hard sci-fi/speculative fiction.

the old twilight zone did kick much ass.

[Pookie]

Originally Posted by Savage Clone

To be fair, I more or less accused Pookie of being a cheeseball for his defense of musicals.

No argument from me.

Originally Posted by jon boy

well he is though, bitter and twisted.

So let me get this straight. You're accusing me of being a bit of a jon boy?

[Toilet & Bowels]

Originally Posted by demonrail666

but fully understand why some people (most of whom probably love Michael Mann films, too) would see it the other way around.

michael mann is dreadful