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[Peet]

Oscar Wilde made the point that all art is useless. It's not there to educate or inform or preach but to entertain.

Tarantino's films do this marvellously well. It is abundantly clear the care the director puts into every tilt of the camera and every note of the soundtrack. To me, this makes it brilliantly entertaining and therefore brilliant art.

[chupones]

Most people, age 20-35, even older, think cinema is a clever camera angles, hip pop cultural allsuions, and achronilogical plots. Tarantino is a master in their eyes, to name one menace.

And when they try to appreciate a true master, say Bresson or Tarkovsky or Cassavetes, they still think cinema is about "tell a great story visually" and fail to analyze what truly makes such films special: human behavior.

Much western filmmaking, Hollywood in particular, abstracts experience by giving us meaning through metaphor--and that metaphor is acheived through those camera angles, mood music, and editing I mentioned above.

It's shorthand. It's time for more longhand films.

Make of this what you will.

To quote Jean-Luc Godard...

""I pity the French Cinema because it has no money. I pity the American Cinema because it has no ideas."

[mookers]

No argument to be won here. I said I enjoyed Tarantino in another thread; I'm just opposed to his postmodern/nostalgiac/clever pastiche approch to filmmaking, which I hate. But I also I kinda like him. I had a "hella" (to use the parlance of our times) good time at Kill Bill.

It's all fake though. It's not art. It tells me nothing about life.

That's where you're wrong. Kill Bill breathes its life from a pure love of certain genre films that it homages directly throughout the experience. You tell me that you came away with nothing from Kill Bill? You were sleeping then. I came away with an appreciation of samurai grindhouse films that has grown to an obsession since. If anything, Tarantino is excellent at making the audience feel what he wants them to feel. As a screenwriter myself, I believe the greatest artists can make an audience leave feeling overwhelmed with what they've seen. (Either with questions or with wonder and appreciation.) I came away from Kill Bill feeling like I had just been a part of a religious experience. That religion being film.

Kill Bill is a loveletter to pulp film, a style that has sadly gone missing in the last twenty years for the most part.

Now, does this say that Tarantino is as good with handling actors as Hitchcock or as skilled with capturing the absurd horror of life as Herzog? No, all it says is he knows how to make a film grab you and make you think. Refusing to call something that visceral art is like refusing to label ballet as art because you think it's a sport. Modern ballet may not teach you about the human condition, but it can make you think and appreciate the beauty of the human body in motion.

man you are my favorite guy here.

[Ribbon Fat]

Oscar Wilde made the point that all art is useless. It's not there to educate or inform or preach but to entertain.

Tarantino's films do this marvellously well. It is abundantly clear the care the director puts into every tilt of the camera and every note of the soundtrack. To me, this makes it brilliantly entertaining and therefore brilliant art.

You are lost.

Unless you're just trying to push my buttons, But I doubt that on this board.

[Johnny C]

How so?  I'm curious!

When you said you fell asleep and then agreed with it being described as "shit."

[happybirthdaygelatin]

Have you watched it yet?

To be honest, I like 1984 and fell asleep watching the movie version of it as well.

[Johnny C]

Yes but you didn't call it "shit."

I will wind up watching it anyways. I can bet you money via paypal on that.

[Kana]

While i'm not  attacking the op directly I will say that this thread's main idea/question leads to the great downfalls of all genres of art.  And that is over-analyzation.  Art whether it be movies, music, painted/digital media, etc etc. all carry meanings and reasons as to why they are good/bad, but the fact remains that every single one of those reasons is opinionated.

Hence why so many movements where people go 'That's not art' meet the elitism/avant-garde response that what defines art is what we make of it.  I think saying that certain things make movies and their directors bad is just the same as someone walking up to a Pollock Jackson painting and saying "That's not art, I could do that myself!"  Its all opinion and there's nothing else there behind it.

What we classify as good/bad art is also opinionated, no one person agrees exactly with the other and not everyone agrees all on one thing.  While the majority of people were outraged about the piece with Jesus/elephant feces in New York, not everyone said it wasn't art or disliked it.  I think its great that there in fact is a museum of bad art... to prove that 'bad art' to you or anyone else is still art and can be 'good art' to others.

You think Terrentino and crazy camera angles/hip culture makes for bad movies?  Thats your opinion, but others feel that those things are very well what makes a great movie and its art.  And you can argue all you want and post about the 'classics' or 'the great movies' but what arguably is considered the great/classics are also just opinions of people.  ie: The Renaissance was a great period with tons of great/classic pieces of art came out of it... truth is it was just another period of art maybe with more/less produced but the quality of the art is opinionated still.

Alright /ramble off.

[bujiatang]

I'd say there are plenty of good reasons to not like Citizen Kane.  For one thing, the abandonment of the Coleridge.  In no way did the use of Kubla Kahn give the movie continuity.  It served as a distraction.  A good McGuffin should lead the audience, not make them go "shwa."

I've watched the movie three times through and like it less now than the first two times I tried to watch it and fell asleep.  Why not watch macbeth if want to see Wells bellowing in the dark.

If you think attention to detail makes good film then watching Ozu's Tokyo Story should be on you to do list.  Or CHung King Express. Or even Pirates of the Caribean.  Or any movie other than Scotland PA.  Becasue every cinematographer worth their salt pays attention to camera angles.  And sometimes they still botch the shots like in the Manchurian Canidate where Frank Sinatra is completely out of focus at the crucial moment of the reprogramming.  

I see nothing wrong with analyzing film or literature or any art for that matter.  What I am opposed to is the practice of imposing meaning on art.  the "this is what is happening here" rhetoric is disgusting and imperialistic.  I claim this art in the name of Freud.  might as well be an agent for a trading company--lets go rape the natives and make money on reproductions of what we discovered.  but I digress.

lets be resisting readers and look for hidden motifs or implications without creating hidden motifs or implications as we watch our movies and read our books and look at interesting things.

[Johnny C]

You think Terrentino and crazy camera angles/hip culture makes for bad movies?

Am I wrong in thinking that his point was Tarantino's work isn't art (which I disagree with but hey, whatev), and not that it's bad?

[Kana]

Am I wrong in thinking that his point was Tarantino's work isn't art (which I disagree with but hey, whatev), and not that it's bad?

I took the intent of his post as saying all movies are supposed to be an artform which I agree with, however he stated that such films are not art, which I took as meaning it was a bad movie then.

And to bujiatang, when I said over-analyzing that includes adding your own perogative or meaning/intent behind the art.  Out of 4-5 art history classes I took, only one of them didn't try to tell the students the meaning of each work unless stated by the artist and that was my modern/contemporary art class which was one of the most controversial classes I took at college.  Nothing like a bunch of Texans debating whether or not a stack of firebricks that some guy positioned is art, or just a stack of firebricks.  The british museum that spent a ton on accquring the piece seem to disagree with the consensus of my other texan friends.

[Ribbon Fat]

I'd say there are plenty of good reasons to not like Citizen Kane.  For one thing, the abandonment of the Coleridge.  In no way did the use of Kubla Kahn give the movie continuity.  It served as a distraction.  A good McGuffin should lead the audience, not make them go "shwa."

I've watched the movie three times through and like it less now than the first two times I tried to watch it and fell asleep.  Why not watch macbeth if want to see Wells bellowing in the dark.

If you think attention to detail makes good film then watching Ozu's Tokyo Story should be on you to do list.  Or CHung King Express. Or even Pirates of the Caribean.  Or any movie other than Scotland PA.  Becasue every cinematographer worth their salt pays attention to camera angles.  And sometimes they still botch the shots like in the Manchurian Canidate where Frank Sinatra is completely out of focus at the crucial moment of the reprogramming.  

I see nothing wrong with analyzing film or literature or any art for that matter.  What I am opposed to is the practice of imposing meaning on art.  the "this is what is happening here" rhetoric is disgusting and imperialistic.  I claim this art in the name of Freud.  might as well be an agent for a trading company--lets go rape the natives and make money on reproductions of what we discovered.  but I digress.

lets be resisting readers and look for hidden motifs or implications without creating hidden motifs or implications as we watch our movies and read our books and look at interesting things.

Holy fucking lol. I concede to you. Please go on trolling, please more posts like this.

[Johnny C]

lets be resisting readers and look for hidden motifs or implications without creating hidden motifs or implications as we watch our movies and read our books and look at interesting things.

I have an old textbook on short stories called Story & Structure, and when it gets to the section about finding motifs and symbols it has a little analogy. Finding motifs and symbols is like jumping for a boat. You don't want to overshoot it, and you don't want to jump at a boat that isn't there. You'll just end up cold.

[KharBevNor]

Holy fucking lol. I concede to you. Please go on trolling, please more posts like this.

Translation: I have no serious points with which to argue with you, but I still feel like ridiculing you because you have offended my doctrinarian sensibilities.


Citizen Kane was okay, I thought. Nowhere near the best film I've ever seen, of course, but not bad by any means.

[Ribbon Fat]

Holy fucking lol. I concede to you. Please go on trolling, please more posts like this.

Translation: I have no serious points with which to argue with you, but I still feel like ridiculing you because you have offended my doctrinarian sensibilities.

Dude, his post made no sense. It was a riot. I seriously wasnt more like this. I'll offer to do them myself if you guys want.

I mean: "For one thing, the abandonment of the Coleridge. In no way did the use of Kubla Kahn give the movie continuity. It served as a distraction."

It's like he put his post through Babelfish.

[Garcin]

It's pretty straightforward really -- Kane/Hearst created a "pleasure dome" he called "Xanadu".  At one point in the movie, text from Coleridge's poem "Kubla Khan" is superimposed over a shot of Xanadu/Kane's residence.  Upon Kane's death he is referred to as "Kubla Khan".

bujiatang refers to this allusion, and suggests that it was a throwaway, that it was not really explored or integrated into the movie.  I would disagree with this sentiment.  It could have been more felicitously stated.  But I understand where he's coming from.

Ribbon Fat, you're new around here, so I'm going to clue you in.  There are some fairly bright people who post around here.  Occasionally they may post something that you don't understand -- perhaps because you're not bright enough, perhaps because you're not well-read enough, or perhaps because you're simply not trying very hard.  My suggestion to you is that rather than assuming that the post is nonsense -- because you don't understand it -- you educate yourself a bit.  Who knows.  You may learn something.

But do refrain from publicizing your ignorance.  It's tedious.

[Johnny C]

A good McGuffin should lead the audience, not make them go "shwa."

I remember an episode of Sam & Max where they had to retreive the missing McGuffin.

[Ribbon Fat]

It's pretty straightforward really -- Kane/Hearst created a "pleasure dome" he called "Xanadu".  At one point in the movie, text from Coleridge's poem "Kubla Khan" is superimposed over a shot of Xanadu/Kane's residence.  Upon Kane's death he is referred to as "Kubla Khan".

bujiatang refers to this allusion, and suggests that it was a throwaway, that it was not really explored or integrated into the movie.  I would disagree with this sentiment.  It could have been more felicitously stated.  But I understand where he's coming from.

Ribbon Fat, you're new around here, so I'm going to clue you in.  There are some fairly bright people who post around here.  Occasionally they may post something that you don't understand -- perhaps because you're not bright enough, perhaps because you're not well-read enough, or perhaps because you're simply not trying very hard.  My suggestion to you is that rather than assuming that the post is nonsense -- because you don't understand it -- you educate yourself a bit.  Who knows.  You may learn something.

But do refrain from publicizing your ignorance.  It's tedious.

Holy fucking shit.

[Garcin]

I remember an episode of Sam & Max where they had to retreive the missing McGuffin.

This is awesome.  I miss Sam & Max.  Wasn't a new computer game supposed to come out?

According to Wikipedia:

The Double McGuffin (1979) and The McGuffin (1985) are noteworthy for the contextual use of the term in their titles. The 1979 film does indeed involve two MacGuffins: a briefcase full of money and a dead body, both of which subsequently disappear.

I haven't seen either.

[Ribbon Fat]

I mean the Kubla Kahn quote is part of the NEWSREEL that opens the film. It's in no way a macguffin at fucking all.

But let me clue you in: This whole thread was also a half joke, and many of the things I said are really just abstractions of what I really do believe about cinema. But keep taking the bait. I'll be around, unless you pussily ban me because you can't stand a little controversy.

[Garcin]

Edit:  Well it's a McGuffin to the extent that it's on the one hand a prominent element of the movie, and on the other, irrelevant to the plot.  The Coleridge Kubla Khan and the historical Khan are quite different.  If you were to believe that the poetical Khan wasn't an apt allegorical match for Kane, than, indeed, the Coleridge link would be similar to a McGuffin.  The fact that it's presented at the beginning of the movie, and repeated in obvious ways throughout (Kane/Khan, Xanadu/Xanadu) doesn't relate to the discussion at all.

With respect to you starting a thread provocatively with ideas that are mere abstractions of your own, well, luckily, flowers can grow out of shit.

[Ribbon Fat]

Edit:  Well it's a McGuffin to the extent that it's on the one hand a prominent element of the movie, and on the other, irrelevant to the plot.  The Coleridge Kubla Khan and the historical Khan are quite different.  If you were to believe that the poetical Khan wasn't an apt allegorical match for Kane, than, indeed, the Coleridge link would be similar to a McGuffin.  The fact that it's presented at the beginning of the movie, and repeated in obvious ways throughout (Kane/Khan, Xanadu/Xanadu) doesn't relate to the discussion at all.

With respect to you starting a thread provocatively with ideas that are mere abstractions of your own, well, luckily, flowers can grow out of shit.

Whatever, dude. You don't know the definition of a macguffin and you're more condescending than I ever sincerely am on the internet or otherwise.

[Ribbon Fat]

Hey guys, what are your top 5 favorite silent films?

[KharBevNor]

Nosferatu, Greed, Metropolis, The Big Parade, and I dunno, Birth of a Nation. Great comedy.

Dude, if you really cherish the idea of being banned you will have to try a lot harder. You're not even trolling, or if you are, its some sort of hipster abstraction of trolling. If trolling is Joy Division, you're Interpol.

[Ribbon Fat]

Nosferatu, Greed, Metropolis, The Big Parade, and I dunno, Birth of a Nation. Great comedy.

Dude, if you really cherish the idea of being banned you will have to try a lot harder. You're not even trolling, or if you are, its some sort of hipster abstraction of trolling. If trolling is Joy Division, you're Interpol.

You really missed an oppurtunity to have said "If trolling is My Bloody Valentine, you're Rollerskate Skinny."

It's just as bad of an analogy though.

[Ribbon Fat]

It's all fake though. It's not art. It tells me nothing about life.

you should not be looking to learn about life from movies anyway. live your life and learn from it.


unless you are one of those unfortunate souls trapped in a bubble or something.

Oh holy shit, I missed this quote. Art can damn well teach you about life. We use art to express things we have no other way to exrpess. It takes being incredibly receptive, and we've lost this receptivity over the last century or so. I'm not talking about didactic knowledge, either. It's much more complex than static ideas.

If you think art is all just a stylistic game, simply there to look pretty and be entertaining and move you every now and then, you're the one in the bubble.

[AJTaliesen]

People have been trying to write their own magic formula for good art since Aristotle.  You can claim the color green is a lesser color all day, and that all lovers of the color green are merely blind to the virtues of blue and yellow separated, but try as you might, it will never invalidate or lessen those who still like green.

[Bunnyman]

Agreed.  While there are degrees of talent behind art, what it eventually boils down to is what moves the viewer.

Some artists, with a better grasp of what moves the human spirit, create enduring works that resonate with large swaths of humanity.  Other artists tap a less prevalent frequency in the human condition that only moves a smaller demographic.  A further group (and, tragically, the majority of 'artists') fail to understand how 'art' works and create at best inept and at worst cynical works that serve no purpose.  This is merely playing a numbers game; which works resonate with the viewer is entirely a subjective matter; those works I see as inept may arouse interest in another viewer; after all, the museum dropped a couple grand on the damn thing, so someone must find it interesting, right?

That subjectivity, incidentally, is due to the fact that each individual has a unique take on reality (though the influences that skew that take, of course, apply to larger demographics); I see RoboCop as satire, the next man might see it as a bad 80's action flick, and another viewer might latch on to the heavy Christian allegory attached to the titular hero.  Which view is 'right?'  Paul Verhoeven, for instance, made Murphy's death as violent as possible expressly to depict a 'crucifixion.'  Is this to say that missing the Christ angle is somehow a bankrupt interpretation of the film?  Or, rather, do the multiple viewpoints reflect a dedication to the craft on the part of the auteur?

One (though, of course, not the only) characteristic of an enduring work is such a complexity; the ability for a wide variety of viewers to extract individual and valid viewpoints that withstand scrutiny.

Or conspire amongst contemporary critics to establish one's name in the history books, thus making it 'good' art in the textbooks of the future and making the associated works far more valuable than they should be.  There's no other explanation of the New York School.  And Andy Warhol.  What a fucking hack.

This is actually a fairly interesting conversation, in a goofy interpol-trollish sort of way.  Please continue.

[Johnny C]

If trolling is Joy Division, you're Interpol.

To quote tommydski, "hey fuck you man."

[Merkava]

So he's the lusher, more emotional form of trolling?







k.

[Ravenbomb]

Hey guys, what are your top 5 favorite silent films?

Do movies like Conspirators of Pleasure or Interstella 5555 count, or just movies from the silent era?