cinema needs to be shaken, not stirred (squid vs truth)

[pete]

Now, if I ask a homeless man to make a movie about a rich man, and then see how he views wealth from the vantage point of a homeless man, I could learn a great deal more about the psychology of a homeless man.

but that only accounts for one type of filmmaker--the type with great imagination and works best when he is being most subjective.  Then you have other types of filmmakers, more objective ones, who get a lot of mileage because they understand what they're writing about.  Collateral was really fun because Michael Mann seemed to understand everything about a hitman, a cabbie, and a lawyer--way more than any generic conventions allow.  Shattered Glass was so good because it was such a small story pretty much all about journalism.  Initial D, a Hong Kong movie that just came out this year, incorporated petty details conerning modified cars and driving techniques (especially drifting) and made them into major plot points.  Those are films made by filmmakers that rely way more on facts than the imagination (obviously you need imagination to make these facts engaging to the audience) but I find the way you dismiss this madeup homeless guy's attempt to make a movie to be quite unfair.  Have you seen In America?  Or Dark Days?

[w/o horse]

I'm bored as fuck.  Personally.

how can that be true when not even a week ago you had  the best theatrical experience you have had in your lifetime?

Haha.

That was an interesting night overall.  

I need to see the movie sober.

[w/o horse]

There was another page.  Who knew.  

Now, if I ask a homeless man to make a movie about a rich man, and then see how he views wealth from the vantage point of a homeless man, I could learn a great deal more about the psychology of a homeless man.

but that only accounts for one type of filmmaker--the type with great imagination and works best when he is being most subjective.  Then you have other types of filmmakers, more objective ones, who get a lot of mileage because they understand what they're writing about.  Collateral was really fun because Michael Mann seemed to understand everything about a hitman, a cabbie, and a lawyer--way more than any generic conventions allow.  Shattered Glass was so good because it was such a small story pretty much all about journalism.  Initial D, a Hong Kong movie that just came out this year, incorporated petty details conerning modified cars and driving techniques (especially drifting) and made them into major plot points.  Those are films made by filmmakers that rely way more on facts than the imagination (obviously you need imagination to make these facts engaging to the audience) but I find the way you dismiss this madeup homeless guy's attempt to make a movie to be quite unfair.  Have you seen In America?  Or Dark Days?

In the beginning I think you're agreeing with me, as I know Mann isn't a hitman cabbie or lawyer, but by the end you're talking about In America.

As for the beginning, people incorporating facts into imaginative films I'm all for.  As for the end, I haven't seen Dark Days, but I've seen In America twice.  In the theater I was very bored, and later on HBO I was only a little bored.  But I don't want to argue against every real life story, there's room for them in cinema, my argument is that we've given them too much room.

[pete]

michael mann was a cabbie.

[w/o horse]

o.

[Pubrick]

I'm bored as fuck.  Personally.

how can that be true when not even a week ago you had  the best theatrical experience you have had in your lifetime?

Haha.

That was an interesting night overall.  

I need to see the movie sober.

now we're getting to the bottom of it, you need to lose the heroin.

seriously tho, i agree with your argument (kubrick was the greatest example of it), but also recognize Polkablues' points of confusion which are yet to be addressed..

nothings right, i'm TORN.

[Gamblour.]

nothings right, i'm TORN.

Haha how goofy.

[cron]

goofy

[Jeremy Blackman]

(This analogy will properly employ the homeless man, an American favorite):  If I ask a homeless man to make a movie about himself, I will probably get a melodramatic, overblown recount of what I can already gather, with perhaps the additional information he eats rats.  Or maybe he'll make it realistic and I could have just followed him around.

Now, if I ask a homeless man to make a movie about a rich man, and then see how he views wealth from the vantage point of a homeless man, I could learn a great deal more about the psychology of a homeless man.

So you think the primary function of film is to reveal something about how the filmmaker perceives the world? If that's what you want to do, alright, but I don't see what special quality genre has that promotes introspection. (It can be more convenient for the viewer, I'll give you that. It's easier to detect because you can just strip away the genre elements and see what remains.) But I don't see how it's more meaningful than non-genre film. You may be grabbing the easiest answer...

I am quicker to trust material and be receptive to material in which I feel that the artist was caught not looking.  In which the artist was forced to imagine himself inside of a person not himself.  I think that is a great deal more telling than actually putting yourself on screen.

Are filmmakers necessarily repressed and locked-up human beings when they're making films? Is any glimmer of one's essence only revealed by accident, in opposition to the filmmaker's conscious intent? In genre, maybe. But I think a lot more can be done elsewhere. Many artists are a little more open than you're assuming, and I think the implications of non-genre filmmaking, when the filmmaker learns how to deal with them, are endlessly empowering. And you may be a victim of optical illusion here... when something like that comes out in a genre film, it's surprising, and I think the contrast inflates those moments out of proportion. I'm entirely unconvinced that genre qualitatively reveals more.

I disagree that the post-modern movement is an advance.  I'd say it's a couple of steps back.  I really want to see what the steps forward are going to be.

Maybe you can elaborate on that, because I don't think it makes sense. Post-modernism is two steps back from what? Modernism? Post-modernism opened the floodgates to virtually absolute artistic freedom. That's all it is though, really, an opening. But that's crucial. And hardly regressive.

Actually, I think I would be okay with the permanence of post-modernism. Maybe it just means the end of decades-long movements. Maybe we're past that stage of artistic sloth. Maybe things don't have to happen in movements. Why not in bursts, in trends that appear and expire only to be rediscovered and recontextualized later, in epiphanies spreading simultaneously in different directions, which combat old ideas and inspire new ones?

[Gold Trumpet]

Actually, I think I would be okay with the permanence of post-modernism. Maybe it just means the end of decades-long movements. Maybe we're past that stage of artistic sloth. Maybe things don't have to happen in movements. Why not in bursts, in trends that appear and expire only to be rediscovered and recontextualized later, in epiphanies spreading simultaneously in different directions, which combat old ideas and inspire new ones?

I've always been wondering about the idea of post-modernism in film. Other arts are much clearer about where classical/modern/post-modernism all begin and end, but what about my film? From my own reading, let me make a suggestion:

Modernism in film begins with the French New Wave. It was the first major movement to break classical structure and also search for stories that broke trend with genre restrictions. Since then, progressive films have aligned themselves with the same ideals as French New Wave. A film like Million Dollar Baby, while throwing a finger to a controversial topic, is really a classical work.
For Post-Modernism, I cite Going Places, made in 1974, as the introductary film. It not only mocked stylistic inventions of the French New Wave, but tested the extremes of morality. From having characters who are guiltless about theft and rape, the film is not made to apologize for their actions. It highlights their actions in a way that question our own morality. Examples of excellent current Post-Modernist films are Natural Born Killers and When Will I Be Loved. Both films strive to challenge the convention of morality commonplace in society.
Challenging 'morality' is, I believe, the largest task in current cinema today. Stylistically, for the established structure of films, I do not know what else we can do. Like Kubrick strived to do before he died, all we have yet to do is wholly change the structure of film.
This may be a premature and an underdeveloped argument, but I'll defend it.

But, still. It's hard to really label trends and movements in proper context. I enjoy the label of the Tarantino Generation, but I can see how that easily would dribble into labels for just about everything.

[Jeremy Blackman]

What, then, is a non-genre movie?  It can only be drama, presumably, and it can't be set in the old west, or in space, or in a historical era, or in a war... It can't have ghosts or monsters, or car chases or explosions... it can't have anyone coming-of-age... or solving a mystery.... really, the only movies that seem to apply are present-day-set dramas in which the characters do everyday things in a realistic setting.  So isn't that sort of movie then a genre itself?

Could it be, perhaps, that the term "genre movie" is meaningless?  Or, more accurately, the distinction between a "genre movie" and a "non-genre movie"?

Or is genre just a code word for "formula"?

I think it is. Or we could say that a genre movie takes on a given subject and in doing so observes certain rules and conventions that have been observed in the past when dealing with the same subject. It may even mimick, reference, or all but duplicate its ancestors. When genre films are imaginative or fantastical (as with westerns or popular science fiction), they do so within the constraints of a previously established universe, which itself is enough to call them "genre films."

I'd say that "comedy" and "drama," for example, are not real genres. There are funny movies and dramatic movies that follow a particular comedic formula or a particular dramatic formula.

Free verse has no limitation, but most of the great poems of all time fit into a known structure.

I think that's because free verse is extremely new in the context of literary history. (And commercial media has all but marginalized poetry.) But I'd disagree anyway. Gertrude Stein, anyone?

I find that poetic structure (in all but the most extreme cases) limits and suffocates more than it enables. It usually necessitates slant rhyme, which I hate, awkward syntax rearrangement (like "I stepped upon the stick / and the flowers I did pick"), and filler (which most often includes clichés and conventions). Poetic structure is great for satire, though, mostly because of the absurdity and cuteness of the structure.

[pete]

I don't think genres are so much formulas as they are habits.  a filmmaker growing up with certain types of influences will develop certain types of habits.  but genres, according to them snobby good-for-nothing academics emcompass a bigger scope, that cover both semantics and syntax or something.  ah my brain is hurting from trying to recall those useless classes (except for late night xixax posts I suppose.)
films are harder to define by their contemporary movements (modernism post modernism post structuralism...etc.) than other mediums because unlike literature and architecture and painting, films are mostly popular entertainment, like folk songs, directed towards the folks.  the ones that align themselves to their contemporaries, like the French in the 60's, tend to end up quite contrived and shallow (they weren't bad films; they just seemed like snobby young kids making phony splashes) with quite transparent intentions.

wow, I almost wanna leave this paragraph sitting here so I can take a look at it again in the morning to see if I made any sense or not.  But, instead, I'm gonna click on "submit" in 3, 2,

[Gold Trumpet]

films are harder to define by their contemporary movements (modernism post modernism post structuralism...etc.) than other mediums because unlike literature and architecture and painting, films are mostly popular entertainment, like folk songs, directed towards the folks.

That's true. Most movies don't even warrant critical comment, but are still given it. But, like I've said, I don't care too much for labels. Modernism and such is just an interesting idea for trying to apply to films.

You can warm up a little to some of this discussion. I'm sure if you got an academic in here, he'd say none of us really represented academics anyways. We're all just kinda trying.

[w/o horse]

(This analogy will properly employ the homeless man, an American favorite):  If I ask a homeless man to make a movie about himself, I will probably get a melodramatic, overblown recount of what I can already gather, with perhaps the additional information he eats rats.  Or maybe he'll make it realistic and I could have just followed him around.

Now, if I ask a homeless man to make a movie about a rich man, and then see how he views wealth from the vantage point of a homeless man, I could learn a great deal more about the psychology of a homeless man.

So you think the primary function of film is to reveal something about how the filmmaker perceives the world? If that's what you want to do, alright, but I don't see what special quality genre has that promotes introspection. (It can be more convenient for the viewer, I'll give you that. It's easier to detect because you can just strip away the genre elements and see what remains.) But I don't see how it's more meaningful than non-genre film. You may be grabbing the easiest answer...

Well.  We're talking about right now, and what I'm tired of are these slice-of-life films.  This all sprouted from one, right.  I see what Pete was saying about earlier back and the onslaught of genre films, but I wouldn't say that it was the kind of filmmakers who were adept at making introspective films making the genre films then.  My argument is that if filmmakers once again started entering lives that were not their own the films would be more meaningful, and hopefully we could go from there.

I am quicker to trust material and be receptive to material in which I feel that the artist was caught not looking.  In which the artist was forced to imagine himself inside of a person not himself.  I think that is a great deal more telling than actually putting yourself on screen.

Are filmmakers necessarily repressed and locked-up human beings when they're making films? Is any glimmer of one's essence only revealed by accident, in opposition to the filmmaker's conscious intent? In genre, maybe. But I think a lot more can be done elsewhere. Many artists are a little more open than you're assuming, and I think the implications of non-genre filmmaking, when the filmmaker learns how to deal with them, are endlessly empowering. And you may be a victim of optical illusion here... when something like that comes out in a genre film, it's surprising, and I think the contrast inflates those moments out of proportion. I'm entirely unconvinced that genre qualitatively reveals more.

I completely disagree that it's surprising, and if anyone here has ever attempted to write a genre film I think they would agree.  Not to mention the long list of filmmakers who have made genre films that have been revealing, personal films.  This list is back on page two.  Again, I'm not at all against realistic films, but I'm completely over the gush of them lately  Who makes the genre films these days?  Genre filmmakers.  Who makes the personal films?  Personal filmmakers.  Why the line, why the timidness to cross the line?  When I go to Best Buy, why do I have to perch myself in the drama section?  Why is the new director most inclined to do do drama, mostly from his own life.  Look at what fills the indie releases.  Horror directors come along here and there and stay in horror.  Action may come along and stay in action.  Thinking about it though, diretors are still crossing into genre, but how, with the same detached, ironic way in which they confront drama.  Maybe it's not even the drama I'm tired of just, just the goddamned detachment.  Let me keep replying and find out.

I disagree that the post-modern movement is an advance.  I'd say it's a couple of steps back.  I really want to see what the steps forward are going to be.

Maybe you can elaborate on that, because I don't think it makes sense. Post-modernism is two steps back from what? Modernism? Post-modernism opened the floodgates to virtually absolute artistic freedom. That's all it is though, really, an opening. But that's crucial. And hardly regressive.

Actually, I think I would be okay with the permanence of post-modernism. Maybe it just means the end of decades-long movements. Maybe we're past that stage of artistic sloth. Maybe things don't have to happen in movements. Why not in bursts, in trends that appear and expire only to be rediscovered and recontextualized later, in epiphanies spreading simultaneously in different directions, which combat old ideas and inspire new ones?

This would fit it right along modern society.  Which I would think to be sad.  Why do something then abandon it?  Why can't we build on something, keep pushing it forward?

Actually, I think I would be okay with the permanence of post-modernism. Maybe it just means the end of decades-long movements. Maybe we're past that stage of artistic sloth. Maybe things don't have to happen in movements. Why not in bursts, in trends that appear and expire only to be rediscovered and recontextualized later, in epiphanies spreading simultaneously in different directions, which combat old ideas and inspire new ones?

I've always been wondering about the idea of post-modernism in film. Other arts are much clearer about where classical/modern/post-modernism all begin and end, but what about my film? From my own reading, let me make a suggestion:

Modernism in film begins with the French New Wave. It was the first major movement to break classical structure and also search for stories that broke trend with genre restrictions. Since then, progressive films have aligned themselves with the same ideals as French New Wave. A film like Million Dollar Baby, while throwing a finger to a controversial topic, is really a classical work.
For Post-Modernism, I cite Going Places, made in 1974, as the introductary film. It not only mocked stylistic inventions of the French New Wave, but tested the extremes of morality. From having characters who are guiltless about theft and rape, the film is not made to apologize for their actions. It highlights their actions in a way that question our own morality. Examples of excellent current Post-Modernist films are Natural Born Killers and When Will I Be Loved. Both films strive to challenge the convention of morality commonplace in society.
Challenging 'morality' is, I believe, the largest task in current cinema today. Stylistically, for the established structure of films, I do not know what else we can do. Like Kubrick strived to do before he died, all we have yet to do is wholly change the structure of film.
This may be a premature and an underdeveloped argument, but I'll defend it.

But, still. It's hard to really label trends and movements in proper context. I enjoy the label of the Tarantino Generation, but I can see how that easily would dribble into labels for just about everything.

I like what you're saying.

What, then, is a non-genre movie?  It can only be drama, presumably, and it can't be set in the old west, or in space, or in a historical era, or in a war... It can't have ghosts or monsters, or car chases or explosions... it can't have anyone coming-of-age... or solving a mystery.... really, the only movies that seem to apply are present-day-set dramas in which the characters do everyday things in a realistic setting.  So isn't that sort of movie then a genre itself?

Could it be, perhaps, that the term "genre movie" is meaningless?  Or, more accurately, the distinction between a "genre movie" and a "non-genre movie"?

Or is genre just a code word for "formula"?

I think it is. Or we could say that a genre movie takes on a given subject and in doing so observes certain rules and conventions that have been observed in the past when dealing with the same subject. It may even mimick, reference, or all but duplicate its ancestors. When genre films are imaginative or fantastical (as with westerns or popular science fiction), they do so within the constraints of a previously established universe, which itself is enough to call them "genre films."

I'd say that "comedy" and "drama," for example, are not real genres. There are funny movies and dramatic movies that follow a particular comedic formula or a particular dramatic formula.

Agreed.  As I was talking about genre being a box earlier back.  It's constraints on the filmmaker.  'Present-day-set dramas in which the characters do everyday things in a realistic setting' sure, let's call it a genre, but it's entirely too open ended and from what I can see causing the filmmakers to become way too self-indulgent.

Free verse has no limitation, but most of the great poems of all time fit into a known structure.

I think that's because free verse is extremely new in the context of literary history. (And commercial media has all but marginalized poetry.) But I'd disagree anyway. Gertrude Stein, anyone?

I find that poetic structure (in all but the most extreme cases) limits and suffocates more than it enables. It usually necessitates slant rhyme, which I hate, awkward syntax rearrangement (like "I stepped upon the stick / and the flowers I did pick"), and filler (which most often includes clichés and conventions). Poetic structure is great for satire, though, mostly because of the absurdity and cuteness of the structure.

I like what you're saying.

I don't think genres are so much formulas as they are habits.  a filmmaker growing up with certain types of influences will develop certain types of habits.  but genres, according to them snobby good-for-nothing academics emcompass a bigger scope, that cover both semantics and syntax or something.  ah my brain is hurting from trying to recall those useless classes (except for late night xixax posts I suppose.)
films are harder to define by their contemporary movements (modernism post modernism post structuralism...etc.) than other mediums because unlike literature and architecture and painting, films are mostly popular entertainment, like folk songs, directed towards the folks.  the ones that align themselves to their contemporaries, like the French in the 60's, tend to end up quite contrived and shallow (they weren't bad films; they just seemed like snobby young kids making phony splashes) with quite transparent intentions.

wow, I almost wanna leave this paragraph sitting here so I can take a look at it again in the morning to see if I made any sense or not.  But, instead, I'm gonna click on "submit" in 3, 2,

It makes sense.  And what you are hitting on is, again, back from my reply to Jeremy, sitting on something, it becoming a habit, and then finding out how to break out of that habit.  I think I'm going to concentrate my argument here on the selfishness of the filmmaker to tell his own story without any intention of breaking out of his own box.  So, instead of a defined box, a genre, a place for filmmakers to meet, it becomes a story from 1984 and the neighborhood I came from, a story of how my father passed away, a story of how my grandma was silly and her brother rude.  There is no reference point for films anymore, therefore progression is not linear, which has created some great films, but it has spread to a new group of filmmakers who only know that method.  

It is the indie movement post-94 that has the bulk of these self-indulgent films, and now filmmakers know only that.  How many of you are in film school?  How many of you know the kid whose hero is Wes Anderson and he hates old films?  How many of you know the kid whose favorite movie is from Kevin Smith?  These are their reference points to filmmaking.  It is this group that especially worries me.  The Squid and the Whale is not a part of that group I suppose, but the rammifications of the film being praised are what worries me.

Woody Allen (who I keep talking about for some reason) says he goes on campus tours now and people say, "I love your movies, who is Bergman," and that worries him.  It worries me too.

films are harder to define by their contemporary movements (modernism post modernism post structuralism...etc.) than other mediums because unlike literature and architecture and painting, films are mostly popular entertainment, like folk songs, directed towards the folks.

That's true. Most movies don't even warrant critical comment, but are still given it. But, like I've said, I don't care too much for labels. Modernism and such is just an interesting idea for trying to apply to films.

You can warm up a little to some of this discussion. I'm sure if you got an academic in here, he'd say none of us really represented academics anyways. We're all just kinda trying.

Yeah.

[JG]

It is the indie movement post-94 that has the bulk of these self-indulgent films, and now filmmakers know only that.  How many of you are in film school?  How many of you know the kid whose hero is Wes Anderson and he hates old films?  How many of you know the kid whose favorite movie is from Kevin Smith?  These are their reference points to filmmaking.  It is this group that especially worries me.  The Squid and the Whale is not a part of that group I suppose, but the rammifications of the film being praised are what worries me.

I couldn't agree more.  These ironic films are becoming all the too common and we need to move away from that.   They're almost becoming a genre in itself.  This is what scares me about the future of cinema, more than anything.

The discussion of movements really interests me, but I got school.  More later.  

Good thread, so far.