Why do some folk hate Magnolia so passionately?

Started by Marty McSuperfly, April 17, 2003, 05:59:15 AM

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Jeremy Blackman

Lester, I will not allow you to delete that post...

Rudie Obias

i can honest say when i first saw MAGNOLIA i absolutely hated it.  i rented it when it first came out on video and i just thought it was the most pretentious, boring film i have ever saw.  i thought i understood it which made me hate it even more.  i'd say things like "i liked it but then the rain of frogs ruined it for me."  but then i revisited it last summer, i borrowed it from the library on dvd.  and i was completely blown away by it.  i watched 4 times before i had to return it.  i think i've grown a lot in understanding film since 1999 to 2002.  i became obsessed with paul thomas anderson.  and now MAGNOLIA is my favorite film of all time.  a complete 180 from when i first saw it.  go figure!
\"a pair of eyes staring at you, projected on a large screen is what cinema is truly about.\" -volker schlöndorff

Rudie Obias

Quote from: missapple
Well,  I love PTA , he said bad things about fight club. Should I start hating it because his opinion?

what did PTA say about FIGHT CLUB?
\"a pair of eyes staring at you, projected on a large screen is what cinema is truly about.\" -volker schlöndorff

Jeremy Blackman

Quote from: rudieobwhat did PTA say about FIGHT CLUB?

he said cancer jokes =  :yabbse-angry:

Pedro

Quote from: Jeremy Blackman
Quote from: rudieobwhat did PTA say about FIGHT CLUB?

he said cancer jokes =  :yabbse-angry:
mogwai also said that... :(

MacGuffin

The first rule of Fight Club is: You don't talk about Fight Club.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

Newtron

Quote from: MacGuffinThe first rule of Fight Club is: You don't talk about Fight Club.
Dude, you are so talking about Fight Club right now.

AlguienEstolamiPantalones

Quote from: Jeremy Blackman
Quote from: rudieobwhat did PTA say about FIGHT CLUB?

he said cancer jokes =  :yabbse-angry:

uhh well he actually wished cancer on david fincher , but ya cant get mad at him for it.  i do that kinda stuff all the time, when people piss me off i curse them all to death

polkablues

I think PTA was just reacting to his personal experiences with cancer, and how he felt like "Fight Club" was making light of the subject.  But hey, he didn't like "Go" either, so whatever.

As for "Magnolia", I just think it's cool that anytime you meet someone else who loves the film, there's this instant connection, like you just found out you're both members of a secret club.  

Like... the masons... hmm...... apostropheS, where have you gone?
My house, my rules, my coffee

sickfins

remember how the creator despised 's

i am mostly confident his ideas were wrong but well thought out and perhaps less than concise

its gitting hird ti bi simiini bit it ill wirks iit; it diisn't mittir mich ti mi

polkablues

He didn't have to be right to be brilliant.


By the by, if anyone here with pieces of the old board happens to have the Masonic Manifesto thread, could you do me a massive favor and PM it to me?
My house, my rules, my coffee

AlguienEstolamiPantalones

Quote from: polkabluesI think PTA was just reacting to his personal experiences with cancer, and how he felt like "Fight Club" was making light of the subject.  But hey, he didn't like "Go" either, so whatever.

?

pta also wished that the guy who made go a have bad case of Diarrhea , He said it in his interview with joggers world daily. then he said while were at it give larry kasden a case of crabs. I think he was pissed that day .

SoNowThen

PTA said that? Sweet!! I hate those two filmmakers too! Isn't that supposed to be the point of interviewing a great director? He pisses on everyone he thinks is sub-par. David Gordon Green ragged on Kevin Smith & David Mamet. I laughed my ass off.

....

To clarify, though, I disagree with PTA about Fight Club. It's a kick ass movie, and the cancer stuff makes me howl every time. You gotta be able to laugh at that shit occasionally. And as to my Doug Liman hating, I exempt Swingers from this, because Favreau wrote it, and it's a wonderful little film. But Go did eat huge pieces of shit. I say.
Those who say that the totalitarian state of the Soviet Union was not "real" Marxism also cannot admit that one simple feature of Marxism makes totalitarianism necessary:  the rejection of civil society. Since civil society is the sphere of private activity, its abolition and replacement by political society means that nothing private remains. That is already the essence of totalitarianism; and the moralistic practice of the trendy Left, which regards everything as political and sometimes reveals its hostility to free speech, does nothing to contradict this implication.

When those who hated capital and consumption (and Jews) in the 20th century murdered some hundred million people, and the poster children for the struggle against international capitalism and America are now fanatical Islamic terrorists, this puts recent enthusiasts in an awkward position. Most of them are too dense and shameless to appreciate it, and far too many are taken in by the moralistic and paternalistic rhetoric of the Left.

Gold Trumpet

David Gordon Green attacked Mamet? What did he say exactly about him? This seems interesting because even though I like Mamet, I have a lot of faults with the guy trying to be a film director and then trying to teach film off arguments from the 1930s. Fine for 1930s, but very unimaginative now.

~rougerum

thedog

Quote from: polkabluesI think PTA was just reacting to his personal experiences with cancer, and how he felt like "Fight Club" was making light of the subject.  But hey, he didn't like "Go" either, so whatever.

?

Hi, I'm kind of new here. I come here at least once every few days to catch up on PT Anderson, Wes Anderson, David Fincher, and whoever else you got listed. I've never actually felt the need to post any messages but after I saw this I just had to comment.

I have loads of respect for Paul Thomas Anderson. He's definitely my favorite "newish" director, and I love everything he's done.

I'm not absolutely sure if the fact that Fight Club makes light of cancer was PT Anderson's exact reason for not liking it. But if it was, I would like to say that that is the most hypocritical and BS thing I have ever heard.

From a guy who makes a movie with a scene in it that has an innocent employee of a donut shop get shot in the back of the head (along with two other people), and the only survivor decides to take the bag of money rather than call the police? From a guy who makes a movie based around the porn industry but cuts it off right before AIDS comes into view? From a guy who makes a character in his film who's job is to train other men to treat women as sex objects? Is David Fincher really more evil than PT Anderson just because Fincher made a few jokes about some guys who have cancer? Especially since Paul said he only saw the first 30 minutes of Fight Club, he missed the whole point of the movie.

I still love PT Anderson, and he's still one of my favorites, but the fact that he doesn't like Fight Club even know he only saw 30 minutes of it and he wished that Fincher would get testicular cancer "for all of his jokes about it", it definitely lowers my respect for him about a notch.

But anyway, now to defend PT Anderson a little bit...

I loved Magnolia. And I really think the reason a lot of people don't like it is...
1. It's too long.
2. Frogs.
3. Kevin Smith didn't like it.

I disagree with all of these reasons. With number 1, for me, some movies can't be long enough. I would be more than happy to have the Worm subplot in the film. I would even still love it if it were four or more hours long. Hitchcock said movies should only be as long as the human blatter can hold (or something like that), and although I could agree with him, as long as I'm sitting in the theater or at home, there's no stopping me. As long as the movie's actual scenes aren't too long and the film has a nice sense of pacing, you can give me it in six hours. For real, I really don't care about a movie's running time and it surprises me that a lot of people want movies to depart from Hollywood formulas but at the same time want movies to keep getting shorter. That just doesn't make much sense to me.

With number 2, I really don't have to explain why this is wrong to you fine folks. The main point of the movie is that shit happens so you just have to live with it. Sure the frog thing "was a little strange", but in 20 years time people are going to be praising it. That is, if full length movies aren't 30 minutes long by that point.

It is my opinion that some people are ALWAYS going to rag on films that have new ideas in them. I think most people will agree that NOTHING compares to the frog scene in Magnolia. So as long as they don't have falling frogs in movies like Godfather or Casablanca, people are always going to afraid of new ideas. A lot of people hated Citizen Kane when it first came out. A lot of people hated Vertigo when it first came out. This kind of shit always happens.

With number 3, the truth is I really like Kevin Smith. He's a great writer and he really knows how to direct his own material. As a director he REALLY isn't anything special. Kevin Smith as a writer is great but as a director he's not at all even in the same league as PT Anderson. Plus Kevin Smith is more a comedic writer anyway, so I won't even compare PTA's writing to KS's writing. But I remember Kevin Smith saying, after he got emails from hundreds of PTA fans who criticized his opinion on Magnolia, that "if these are hardcore fans then I don't want any." Well the fact that some people don't like Magnolia just because Kevin Smith didn't like it just shows that Kevin Smith's fans are far worse than PT Anderson's fans. But the biggest question is why do people have to take sides? Who cares what anyones says, I like them both.

But this is all my opinion by the way. Thanks for reading.

-Dog
p.s. sorry for some grammar problems in this message. I have only learned english about five or six years ago.
p.p.s. I've actually been speaking english all my life but I say I learned it recently so it looks like i can justify my grammar problems.