Classics I'm Not A Fan Of...

Started by ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ, December 02, 2003, 05:50:24 PM

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

SHAFTR

"Talking shit about a pretty sunset
Blanketing opinions that i'll probably regret soon"

MacGuffin

Quote from: The Gold TrumpetI can also say 'Vertigo'. I don't find it to be the classic it is said to be, either. The problem with it is that much of it feels like a drama in pace, but the film is still thriller in plot and so lacks the tightness, wit and energy in better Hitchcock thrillers. It isn't really dramatic because it is tied down by its neck in a plot that does not take the subject serious at all.

What The Fuck???!!! "Vertigo" is not a thriller, it's more of a mystery/character study. And what "subject" are you talking about?
"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

SHAFTR

Quote from: MacGuffin
Quote from: The Gold TrumpetI can also say 'Vertigo'. I don't find it to be the classic it is said to be, either. The problem with it is that much of it feels like a drama in pace, but the film is still thriller in plot and so lacks the tightness, wit and energy in better Hitchcock thrillers. It isn't really dramatic because it is tied down by its neck in a plot that does not take the subject serious at all.

What The Fuck???!!! "Vertigo" is not a thriller, it's more of a mystery/character study. And what "subject" are you talking about?

I really like Vertigo.  I just bought it a few days ago and after my 2nd viewing of it I am even more of a fan.  I think the reason it is considered Hitchcock's masterpiece is because it really rises above the thriller genre and becomes something much more.  His other films do this to a degree but not at the same peak that Vertigo does.  It's probably his darkest film and comments the best on humanity or lack there of.
"Talking shit about a pretty sunset
Blanketing opinions that i'll probably regret soon"

soixante

I've never cared much for Dr. Strangelove, even though I'm a big fan of Kubrick.

I've always felt Chinatown is overrated.  I liked it, but I wouldn't even put it on my top ten for 1974.

I'm underwhelmed by Eraserhead, Midnight Express, Alien, Stranger Than Paradise, Blade Runner, Brazil, Do The Right Thing, Silence of the Lambs and Thelma and Louise.
Music is your best entertainment value.

kotte

Quote from: Walrus, Kookookajoob
Quote from: MacGuffinDon't cry, this will only hurt a bit:
http://xixax.com/viewtopic.php?t=1334

I'm getting used to this mistreatment... I feel like a dirty, dirty whore.  Now we can relate, eh kotte?

I'm a clean sleep-around...that's different.


Don't know if The Cotton Club is a classic but I hate that one. Boring.

Gold Trumpet

Quote from: MacGuffin
Quote from: The Gold TrumpetI can also say 'Vertigo'. I don't find it to be the classic it is said to be, either. The problem with it is that much of it feels like a drama in pace, but the film is still thriller in plot and so lacks the tightness, wit and energy in better Hitchcock thrillers. It isn't really dramatic because it is tied down by its neck in a plot that does not take the subject serious at all.

What The Fuck???!!! "Vertigo" is not a thriller, it's more of a mystery/character study. And what "subject" are you talking about?

Well, you use mystery in place of thriller. That's not really saying it is anything that different, because both resolve the situation upon an action sequence. You note the pace of the film and give it a nicer term like "mystery", which is fine.

Well, the subject and idea that Hithcock was making a personal comment in this film in following Stewart's obcession to loving this woman that he would try to control another woman in recreating her. The subject is worthy of a serious situation, but I don't take Hitchcock that seriously at all to think he can come through on an exploration of the subject. Graham Green said it nicely when he gave his reasons for disliking Hitchcock because "his films consist of a serious of small 'amusing' melodramatic situations...Very perfunctorily he builds up to these tricky situations...and then drops them; they mean nothing; they lead to nothing." Hitchcock's exploration of the subject just leads to an extended chase scene that gives the great situation of the woman pretending to kill herself and thus sending the character, audience into a head spin. All of Hitchcock's films end in terms of putting his grip hold to the genre above the story. He's been doing the same genre his entire career and even as he made Vertigo later in his career and is said to carry the most drama, but it still resolves itself on the same platter as any of his other films.

SoNowThen

I agree with Ebs on these:

Quote from: ebeaman
-American Beauty
-Braveheart
-Forrest Gump (I honestly don't dislike Tom Hanks)
-Gladiator
-The Last of the Mohicans
-Saving Private Ryan
-Spartacus
-Stand By Me
-Titanic

I'll add my own:

Blue Velvet
Rashomon (didn't dislike, but didn't exactly like either...)
Naked Kiss
E.T.
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.

coffeebeetle

QuoteBlue Velvet

Agreed.  Although I'm not a huge Lynch fan anyway, so...

Oh, how could I forget? 2001: A Space Odyssey...blech
more than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. one path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. the other, to total extinction. let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
woody allen (side effects - 1980)

godardian

-Roman Polanski is hardly overrated. Chinatown is a really wonderful film. It's hard to imagine finding it boring...

-Blue Velvet is great.

-Happiness is great.

-Vertigo.... my god, who could fail to see the flat-out brilliance of Vertigo?!?! Certainly not a film to be picked at for petty details of "subject," etc... this movie has much bigger fish to fry!

Okay, I think those are the main things I really strongly disagreed with. Glad to see so many others see through Spielberg's b.s.
""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.

Fernando

Quote from: godardian

-Vertigo.... my god, who could fail to see the flat-out brilliance of Vertigo?!?! Certainly not a film to be picked at for petty details of "subject," etc... this movie has much bigger fish to fry!

Him  ----------------->  

Just kidding GT

Gold Trumpet

Quote from: godardian-Roman Polanski is hardly overrated. Chinatown is a really wonderful film. It's hard to imagine finding it boring...

Chinatown is hardly a Polanski film. It has none of his personality in the film. He was director-for-hire to Robert Evan's production. Chinatown is, in my eyes, in the same vein of nostalgia as The Godfather.

Quote-Vertigo.... my god, who could fail to see the flat-out brilliance of Vertigo?!?! Certainly not a film to be picked at for petty details of "subject," etc... this movie has much bigger fish to fry!.

Of course, with subject and Hitchcock, you're getting the same treatment in almost all his movies. Many enthusiasts of Hitchcock do consider Vertigo to be his dramatic achievement, his personal statement as a director. I simply find none of that but just the hallmarks of the Hitchcock plot and in comparing to his other works, this film is minor in quality.

SoNowThen

Chinatown is VERY MUCH a Polanski film. Without him the ending would be totally different, giving the rest of the film a resonance that would make all the meaning totally different.
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.

godardian

Quote from: The Gold Trumpet
Quote from: godardian-Roman Polanski is hardly overrated. Chinatown is a really wonderful film. It's hard to imagine finding it boring...

Chinatown is hardly a Polanski film. It has none of his personality in the film. He was director-for-hire to Robert Evan's production. Chinatown is, in my eyes, in the same vein of nostalgia as The Godfather.

Quote-Vertigo.... my god, who could fail to see the flat-out brilliance of Vertigo?!?! Certainly not a film to be picked at for petty details of "subject," etc... this movie has much bigger fish to fry!.

Of course, with subject and Hitchcock, you're getting the same treatment in almost all his movies. Many enthusiasts of Hitchcock do consider Vertigo to be his dramatic achievement, his personal statement as a director. I simply find none of that but just the hallmarks of the Hitchcock plot and in comparing to his other works, this film is minor in quality.

On Polanski, I can draw lines from the style in Knife on the Water to the style in Rosemary's Baby to the style in Chinatown. The latter is probably equally Robert Towne's baby, I'll admit. But the mis-en-scene is identifiably Polanski's.

As for The Godfather, Part II, well... in my opinion, fuck Nashville, that's the next Great American Movie after Citizen Kane. Both Evans and Coppolla will assure you that Coppolla was not a director for hire, though Evans may have been hoping for that.

If by "nostalgia" you mean that the films themselves are nostalgic, that's not the case. Their stories may be period, but the way they're told feels very fresh and immediate as you watch them. If you mean a preference for these films indicates a nostalgia for the seventies golden-age of filmmaking, where even a big-budget studio film could have the marks of style and aspiration to quality, well it would be foolish to apologize for that.

I still think you're missing what's great about Vertigo. To me, it belongs in the same psychosexual lineage as Persona and Mulholland Dr.. I just feel there are so many more dimensions to it than you're seeing or willing to discuss, GT. I enjoy your very careful analyses of films, but in cases like these, it can feel as though your way of analyzing films is like someone eating dry Rice-A-Roni out of the box and then complaining about how subpar it was, when what's actually going on is they're completely overlooking some key ingredients. I do appreciate your aspirations to intellectual rigor, but to not to see how Vertigo can be a huge cinematic achievement without necessarily being a "dramatic" achievement signifies to me that you're scrutinizing things about it that are fairly irrelevant to its greatness.
""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.

Pubrick

GT u should review books. u don't seem to notice colour at all.

actually this hypothesis would explain ur b&w Perfume adaptation idea.
under the paving stones.

SHAFTR

Adding more...

I came away thoroughly unimpressed with Chinatown.  I don't hate it, but I just didn't see what others must see.  Part of the problem might be I have seen very few Polanski films.  Interesting that there is so much hate for Michael Jackson right now.  Perhaps he'll come out with an album in 20 years and win a grammy for Best Album as he is exiled in France.

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who didn't like Dr Strangelove.

Spielberg is either overpraised or overly criticized.

Godfather and Godfather II are simply amazing.  I really cannot understand any criticism levied against those filsm.

I have to add Blue Velvet to the list as well.
"Talking shit about a pretty sunset
Blanketing opinions that i'll probably regret soon"