Movies and TV

[Doolio]

Anyway Doolio, I totally get your anti-hype stance. I will raise your anti-hype stance by one anti-mainstream stance. I am guilty of this and so am often dubious about recommendations like this made to me. In fact I begrdugingly watched the wire fully expecting it to be crap and over hyped, but besides one other show, it totally surprised me, which is why I now do what I never do with movies or tv, and that is recommend it to others. I won't go any further because I will leave the treat of discovering it to your own timeframe, but in terms of a non norm character, hardcore bad ass black gay projects stickup dude. It sounds almost like some ridiculous caricature but he was one of my favorite characters in the series. All the characters show real nuance and development and just feel real. It's not forced...it doesn't use "grittiness" as a tool, for example shitty hand held non steadycam camera work that we've all seen...it feels gritty because the characters and situations feel so real. The acting and dialogue is superb too. What happens when you have actually good script writers working for you. Hollywood assholes could learn a lot from this team. It's basically the way real tv shows should be...ie teach you something insightful about yourslef, something about the world as well as be plain entertaining. But yeah, enough said.
I love Kubrick, I totally gel with his stuff, so yeah funny how different we all see things. Tarkovsky absolutely blew me away. Valhalla rising I enjoyed, but i sensed an undercurrent of trying a bit too hard to be vague for the sake of it which I didn't really like so much.

Yeah, it's very satisfying when you actually get blown away by something you approached like "oh, okay, just shut up already, I'll watch that piece of crap":D
What you wrote is essentially what everybody told me about the wire, it does seem they succeeded in bringing in the authenticity, which is something almost nonexistant in high level movies and series these days (or on the other hand, ridiculously overplayed, so you get the same old fantasy characters but on the angsty and gritty end of the spectrum:) ).

About hollywood assholes:) well, they clearly don't WANT to learn, as it's going quite good for them doing what they do, due to extremely large target audience. I often get a bit skewed picture, being surrounded with, well, more "normal" people, so sometimes I get the impression that hollywood is facing some kind of inbred fail (when I talk with people and realize that ten out of ten sees movie x as a fail), and then I see which movies earned what amount of money and adjust my perception:)

Yes, that's exactly problem with valhalla rising. It clicked with me emotionally and I (thought?) I got it to some relatively high degree, but then again, who knows. And I absolutely can't pinpoint some kind of objective value of that movie.

Btw Doolio, as the anime buff what do you think of serial experiments Lain? I figure it would be right up your alley. I loved it.

It's in my "to do" list:)
Actually, I went into anime -relatively- short time ago (I mean, I always liked it when I run into it or something, but never to a, say, hobby degree) as an "expatriate viewer", mainly from hollywood:) And, while I quickly caught up with it (I watched like 100 titles or something), I've yet to watch bunch of cult shows - common "problem" when you enter something that's already established. And, as with everything, a lot of cult shows are cult for reasons other than quality, or they were the first to do something but aren't that good objectively etc. So basically, being old enough not to be mesmerized by "hipsterized approach" I tend to watch something that I deem as good, regardless of it being "classical literature" or not:) So, if I was going into the tv series now, I would watch The Wire because it's good and probably "comfortably modern" for my senses, instead of "friends" or something.
Long story short, I've yet to get to serial experiment lain, but I'll watch it in some near future (I have it). I've heard a lot of different opinions about it (then again, lol, look at evangelion and opinions:) ).

Generally, speaking of anime, to my joy, the industry as a whole (still) pays attention to characterization and also doesn't mind doing whatever it takes to bring out the intended message - for example, killing the characters or doing irreversible things to them or simply having a well rounded arc without cliffhangers in hope of prolonging the series based on nothing etc. Of course, not in all the cases, but still. And also, I've found even the most lighthearted anime shows, targeted at teens or kids, having subcontexts and developed characters, which I found almost disturbing in a way, when I compare it to their western counterparts:)
I am always fascinated by, for example, their coming of age shows, which always treat the subject as "let's learn what's life, good and bad and let's mature and handle stuff" as opposed to "blind girl sees at the end" type of thing we see in usa shows of the same nature:)

Also, they have some weird fascination with freud, jung and such, I guess it's new and interesting to them, so they tend to apply it vigorously:)

Oh damn also....if you haven't seen it yet... Twin Peaks!!
David Lynch is seriously messed and awesome. Also what about David Cronenberg stuff? Existenz, naked lunch, the fly, scanners, videodrome etc

I watched Twin Peaks, but I shouldn't count that, as I watched it when it aired, so yeah:)

With Cronenberg I have an "issue", basically, his directing doesn't seem to click with me, I always find his movies to be kinda blunt but they don't make an impact on me, I don't know how to describe it. I have a feeling that if me and Cronenberg were like an inch closer, we would be cool buddies, but that inch is firmly set between us:D

And I like Nolan, enjoyable brain-off food and an entertaining 3 hours or whatever, but if he is the best of the bunch well....for me personally, I'm just so over this lame superhero tripe/meme hollywood just won't leave alone until it's flogged and bleeding and they extract every last cent out of it. Its almost like the two hour or whatever long scene of jesus walking up to golgotha in the passion of the christ, with multiple and repeated slow motion collapsings and gettings up...just put him, me and everone else out of our misery already. What could have been done in 5 minutes was dragged and scraped over hours. I guess i just think most superheros are past their use by date in terms of relevance to current society, but I'm probably in the extremely small minority on that one.I mean for f@s sake, they already treat us like morons by forcing their regurgitated crap onto us, which we seem to keep going to and paying for. I have a brain. I like having it. I particularly enjoy when it is suitably stimulated, not dulled down by the other hordes of moronic zombies that seems to be the target audience of blockbusters these days.

I also don't quite get the attitude of,"if you switch your brain off it will be fun" ala pacific rim and its ilk. And i was so let down considering it was a del toro movie....i mean wtf happened???..pan's labyrinth, pacific rim, pan's labyrinth, pacific rim. What the absolute f@ck del toro? Talk about totally losing your mojo. I actually watched the original Gojira for the first time back to back before watching PRim and I can honestly say Gojira was the better movie in almost every way, including the effects! A dude in a gojira suit is beyond entertainment value :) I mean are we really at that stage with an art form, where turning off your thinking functioning bits is considered a need to have to enjoy something. I may as well just draw hentai or furry porn, tell people to switch off their brains and it will be good, and not worry about a damn thing from then on.Jesus. Don't get me started,

Ah, with that, I developed some kind of proactive compromised approach, as I think it works both in my favor and in favor of those "shitty" movies when I watch them:)

For example, let's say we have an "art tier list". In tier1, we could put, for example, Dostoyevsky, Bach, Michelangelo etc. In tier2 there could be mendelsohn, nabokov etc, tier4 could have the godfather, tier7 Rocky, some one hit wonder pop bands, tier10 could be sharknado etc. (I semi-randomly put these, blah). Well, I have no problem with any of those tiers:) In my case, there's time and place for everything and I can enjoy bunch of stuff. And, if some of those stuff have some kind of "requirement", such as that the viewer helps a bit with willingly maintaining his suspension of disbelief, so be it. If the end result is positive for that viewer. Kind of that arrogant friend you have but who's good at basketball, so you "emotionally calculated" that, even though you hate his arrogance, you like playing basketball with him, so you decided to keep in touch after all.
And, of course, you reap the best rewards when enjoying tier1 stuff, but you also pay in time and energy to be able to enjoy that stuff (if you don't read, you won't be able to comprehend tier1 books) and people have limited capacity, so for example, I can enjoy tier1 literature, but not tier1 music - and I'm not talking about taste, I am literally too low a level for it:)

BUT, but, but, Pacific Rim isn't something that's on this list, for me. It's in a special tier - fail tier:D Fail tier is reserved for stuff that's, well, bad:) My policy is that you can have a badly executed sharknado and a good executed sharknado. Even the good one is trash and a shitty movie (regardless of whether it's intentional or not), but you get what you bargained for. The problem is when a movie (or book or whatever) behaves and aims for a higher tier than that movie actually is (we could call it pretentiousness perhaps). And I think that's the problem with Pacific Rim. Now, I must say, when I say "higher tier", it doesn't have to be shitty movie that goes for andrei rublov tier:) It could be like a one or two tier difference:)
So, for me, if Pacific Rim was a bit more stupid, it would be fine. I would watch it as an overly-over the top action parody. Or if it was a bit less stupid:) But as it is, it's simply in some limbo when it tries to be a "normal" expensive action movie, but instead it's sharknado, but doesn't take itself for a sharknado:) For example, actors do parody their respective archetypes, but not enough - so you get that kind of undefined bad acting instead of either "normal acting" or full over the top acting.

And you mentioned godzila. The same thing I think I experienced when I was watching that new Clash of the titans, more specifically the medusa fight. In original, the medusa scene was genuinely eery and uncomfortable to the point. In the new movie, it was just mediocre and stupid. And I'm the LAST guy to blabber about "good old times" and carry the analogue camera and type on the typewriter:D It's not about that, it's just better craft-wise.

So, while I understand the "turn of the brain and enjoy the ride" approach (that doesn't mean I approve of neglecting the other stuff!), for me, Pacific Rim is just a bad movie and it's badness is due to the movie being bad, not because it's brainless per se:) A good brainless movie I can enjoy.

As for superhero trend, well, on the one hand, I like deconstruction/reconstruction stuff, and the new superhero movies try to go a wee lil bit in that direction. On the other hand, 90% of them are crap:)

Then again, I value authenticity, characterization and psychoanalysis the most (when in "normal mode" or perhaps "cultural enlightenment mode", not the "let's ride the brainless train" mode:) ). So, in that serious business mode, I tend to disregard plot and genre completely. So, a movie about a man going to buy bread and getting embarrassed because he didn't bring the wallet could very well top my list if it's executed with authenticity and insight. That's why I like Evangelion for example, as it wouldn't gain or lose anything if it was set in a family bakery or, say, in a form of discussion. I like Dostoyevsky for the same reason. Then again, you need something to work with - a forgotten wallet or an axed granny:D And superhero concept offers a beautiful field for doing all kinds of stuff. Unfortunatelly, I NEVER saw it happen.

is considered the "Evangelion" of Seinen

ahaha, now I have to see it:)
Sometimes they get really odd with classifications because they tend to mix genres, settings and demographics:) I mean, evangelion is, for example, shounen mecha, because you know, there are kids and there are robots, voila:) I mean, ok, I guess Lord of the flies is shounen also:)
Then again, there isn't that much genre stuff that can't be described simply by being in that genre. Again, I think it's due to the capacity of the author. You can't write Brothers Karamasov in Middle Earth because you simply can't accomplish it. Though I've heard that the Witcher series are in fact "brothers karamasov in middle earth" and I've heard the same (but sci fi wise) about Hyperion. Well, not that it has anything to do with cinematography, so I'll stop here:)