there has been blood (and now QT's review of CMBB)

Started by pete, November 06, 2007, 01:06:10 AM

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godardian

Quote from: pete on January 24, 2008, 01:09:48 PM
john, you're in the Yay right?
not to sound like a superior east coaster, but the Bay Area has some of the worst theater audiences in the country.  They'd go to indie movies and they even look the part, but once they open their mouths...they sound just like Miss America.  I'll also venture out to say that for a region with like 12 indie theaters all next to each other, they have really bland selections.  they also have some of the most boring revival scenes, alternately playing "liberal" documentaries, and curatorial-masturbatorial old classics.  they might be shooting cool ads and cool music videos, even cool movies in this city, but cinema is as dead as hiphop over here.


Everything you say about S.F.&environs seems to apply to Seattle, too (or even the whole Northwest). I think there's this S.F./Seattle/Portland/Austin hipster axis. I can't stand it, that lazy, spoiled arrogance and insularity. I hate to gratify the tired (and still not entirely true) stereotype that people who seem to care too much about their clothes/hair/shoes etc. must be dumb, but I've found that the most intelligent and sensitive people when it comes to music, cinema, etc. rarely "look the part"--they're usually just as aware of more superficial fashion-type things as the hipsters, but they're evidently too busy actually putting some effort into their reading, viewing, and listening to bother too much with making a show of how cool they are. In other words, I think there are people who are there for the film, concert, or reading itself, and then there are those who are there just to be seen at and thereby somehow associated (in their heads) with whatever specific film, concert, or reading it is.

I have to say that the best people at the movies, at least around here, are those senior citizens (there do seem to be a fair number of them) that I see kind of regularly at There Will Be Blood, or The Savages, or other interesting films. With their decades of filmgoing experience and real passion for the medium, you can have a great conversation with some of them and there's no petty/competitive, pissing-contest aspect to it the way there can so often be with the "in the know" kids. Like politics, the cinema is only demeaned and ruined when you bring the horse-race mentality into it.
""Money doesn't come into it. It never has. I do what I do because it's all that I am." - Morrissey

"Lacan stressed more and more in his work the power and organizing principle of the symbolic, understood as the networks, social, cultural, and linguistic, into which a child is born. These precede the birth of a child, which is why Lacan can say that language is there from before the actual moment of birth. It is there in the social structures which are at play in the family and, of course, in the ideals, goals, and histories of the parents. This world of language can hardly be grasped by the newborn and yet it will act on the whole of the child's existence."

Stay informed on protecting your freedom of speech and civil rights.


pete

I dunno, I think the old people are the ones that can't help but to comment outloud about stuff.  and they're definitely the ones falling for all those cheap oscar contenders.  I distrust them too.  When I worked at the landmark in Boston, there were about a dozen or so real real cool old folks, with amazing knowledge about everything who never minded sharing their thoughts on top of everything else, but then 90% of the senior population were snobby rich people who couldn't stand fast cutting.  I'm still friends with the cool old folks, we still correspond regularly.
I think it's somewhat of a vicious cycle - awful programming draws in an awful crowd, who in turn prevent change and encourage the status quo.  Before anything takes place, the population needs to start taking non-studio films for granted; they cannot pat themselves on the shoulder just for showing up, and cannot go on to support things only because they're about them.  That is, middle-aged people watching all those suburban meltdown dramas and young kids watching movies with endless indie product placement.  Indie theaters also need to stop advertising movies with trailers that are trying to con the audience.  Foreign trailers need to put subtitles into their movies, non-comedies need to stop packing their trailers with all the punchlines from the films.  Psychological movies stop pretending to be action movies.  French trailer need to stop acting like they might be good.  Last one was stupid, sorry.  Documentaries need to stop claiming that they can be as entertaining as anything else.  I know some actually are, but you ain't gonna weed out the heckles with those trailers.
or maybe the problem with these audiences have nothing to do with the cinemas.  maybe these fun cities leave its inhabitants too comfortable.  they lose both their wit and courtesy because no population is forcing them to be on their toes constantly or always be polite.  then, as their aggressions remain unchecked, they become the hooligans; just as the Pilgrams, they become the very people they migrated from.
when lucid took me to see untraceable, we saw a physical altercation between two older ladies, sitting right next to me, when the movie was over!  I also got in on the action, but I'll save that story for the other thread. 
"Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot."
- Buster Keaton

polkablues

Is anybody else totally picturing Pete roundhouse kicking two old ladies in the head?
My house, my rules, my coffee

godardian

Quote from: pete on January 26, 2008, 04:15:15 AM
they cannot pat themselves on the shoulder just for showing up, and cannot go on to support things only because they're about them.  That is, middle-aged people watching all those suburban meltdown dramas and young kids watching movies with endless indie product placement.  Indie theaters also need to stop advertising movies with trailers that are trying to con the audience.

I think that is 100% on the ball. Those deceptive trailers! Like, the poster for the U.S. Funny Games captures what the film is about, but the trailer makes it seem a lot more ha-ha satirical (instead of lacerate-the-audience satirical) than it's sure to be.

If people only said to themselves, "There are so many other kinds of people in the world besides me and the kind of person I am, and maybe I need to go to a movie expecting that some of those people might appear as characters, and be prepared to understand them in some way." Of course there's nothing more off-pissing than when someone boasts about how they went to a "different" movie about "weird" people. I'm sure we all experienced more than our share of that when we went to see Magnolia a dozen times (or more--I only speak for myself) when it came out. And who can say they really identify directly with either of our anti-heroes in There Will Be Blood, yet who cannot fail to recognize their humanity (however negative a connotation that has in this context)? Speaking of that film (which is supposed to be the topic here, sorry for veering), here's my take on it: I don't think it's capital-W Wrong to interpret it politically (this can legitimately be done with any film if the one doing the interpreting is sage enough and doesn't just ignore what's there to brand it with their own ideology), but I see it as a really vivid, pessimistic, nightmarish depiction of how these very normal, understandable, and possibly even sometimes admirable human impulses (material success, spiritual belief) are like all our normal cells that can turn cancerous, metastasizing, starting to grow too fast and take over everything. It's a thin line between passion that's fruitful and fulfilling and passion that turns insatiably destructive.
""Money doesn't come into it. It never has. I do what I do because it's all that I am." - Morrissey

"Lacan stressed more and more in his work the power and organizing principle of the symbolic, understood as the networks, social, cultural, and linguistic, into which a child is born. These precede the birth of a child, which is why Lacan can say that language is there from before the actual moment of birth. It is there in the social structures which are at play in the family and, of course, in the ideals, goals, and histories of the parents. This world of language can hardly be grasped by the newborn and yet it will act on the whole of the child's existence."

Stay informed on protecting your freedom of speech and civil rights.

pete

yeah, the cheap political interpretation is bullshit.  there are these kids raised by the public and private american education system who have come to "solve" metaphors like they're algebra.  like if plainview was x and if you plugged in george w. bush, then the film would just explain itself.  I'm gonna go a bit further and actually reject all sorts of readings in this thread about drinking oil or walking on water or whatever.  it's not that these readings are not creative or intelligent or deep (actually, maybe they're not so deep), but I just never think PT Anderson would be so kitschy. 
"Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot."
- Buster Keaton

Jeremy Blackman

Speaking as someone who saw Spider-Man as a political movie, I don't see much politics in TWBB.

As much as I wanted to see TWBB as a mediation on the corrupting power of oil in society (or something like that), it turned out to be a small piece of the film, and the viewing experience mostly pulled me away from that.

You could say PDL says a lot about capitalism with the plungers and the frequent flyer miles and the phone sex and even (or especially) MM. You could say Magnolia says a lot about patriarchal society, misogyny, etc. But we don't see them as political movies, because they're totally introspective.

Sure, PTA is politically aware, as any friend of Altman must be, but I think he'd rather reflect those things in inner experiences, i.e. the suicide providing the introduction to the 80s in Boogie Nights, not Reagan or the Carter democrats or anything like that. Even when he discusses the decades in interviews, he talks about film instead of politics, i.e. blaming Jaws and Star Wars for the 80s.


edison


polkablues

Quote from: edison on January 27, 2008, 03:09:03 PM
Wonder what happened to this shot.

The publicity still might just be of them hanging out on set, it might not have had anything to do with an actual scene in the film.
My house, my rules, my coffee

idk


Jeremy Blackman

I like how people keep calling PTA "Paul Anderson." Even Paul Dano in his Fresh Air interview.

SiliasRuby

Quote from: idk on January 28, 2008, 05:22:14 PM
I thought this to be an interesting review


I love this part:
Talking about boogie nights:
"He (Paul) makes you Love these people and likes the fact that they are all together"
"That's one View of it, yes."
"Well that's the one way that made it successful"
"No, it was all gorgeous Naked girls"
The Beatles know Jesus Christ has returned to Earth and is in Los Angeles.

When you are getting fucked by the big corporations remember to use a condom.

There was a FISH in the perkalater!!!

My Collection

Pozer

Quote from: Jeremy Blackman on January 28, 2008, 06:48:07 PM
I like how people keep calling PTA "Paul Anderson." Even Paul Dano in his Fresh Air interview.

at least theyre not calling him PTA.