Cracker: Wallywood
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I'm just feeling the vibe... sort of. Pixies anyone?
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If that's trivialising the language, then it's trivialising any western language because it's fairly generally accepted that you'll achieve conversational fluency in something like Spanish or German within two months if you're immersed.
You'll be able to get around anyway. I doubt that after the 6 years I studied German, 3 odd months of immersion, etc, that I'd be willing to deliver a speech to a potentially hostile crowd urging them emphatically to go to a hopeless war. It's not the time to call yourself a donut, best leave it to someone more able.
I liked Avatar, and have had to yawn my way through the desperate bitching at it that has now dominated about 10 threads here I can think of.
Wellywood sign? Whatever. It's a joke that only NZers will get, basically harmless. I think the conversation with the German was actually a German joke (as in the kind of jokes Germans make). The explanation of the joke is part of it, and even partially immersed foreigners will seldom get it, that the interplay after the joke is quite important to Germans, and they feel that English speakers ejaculate their humour prematurely. Which is part of the reason I disliked the latest Tarantino. It was incredibly unsubtle with it's bilingualism themes (not to mention being stupid and offensive).
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You'll be able to get around anyway. I doubt that after the 6 years I studied German, 3 odd months of immersion, etc, that I'd be willing to deliver a speech to a potentially hostile crowd urging them emphatically to go to a hopeless war. It's not the time to call yourself a donut, best leave it to someone more able.
Totally, and I get that. It's precisely the fact that he did use a translator that, to my mind, nixes the suggestion that Avatar trivialises native languages. If he'd stood up and delivered a flawless, untranslated peroration worthy of MLK or Winston Churchill, that would be a trivialisation.
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I should point out that I meant a fluent eight-year-old, not an eight-year-old who'd been given the same degree of immersion language exposure. That would be a bit much to ask.
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Dude, it's not 'desperate bitching'. It's because we really, honestly didn't like it. We didn't think it was any good.
(And if anyone starts going on about suspension of disbelief and 'just enjoying it' again, well, watch out. My favourite film ever is the pure Hollywood confection that is Singin' in the Rain. I am not exactly a Dogme 95 purist.)
If an outfit is distracting from, or even working against, a woman's beauty then it has failed. Utterly and completely.
I want to agree with this. And yet... sometimes I just want to see something totally crazy, no matter who's wearing it or how bad they look. Do I have a red-carpet-trainwreck addiction?
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Do I have a red-carpet-trainwreck addiction?
Luckily there's a website just for this predilection...
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It starts with Wellywood. Just don't be surprised if in a few years time it becomes Kerrywood. Just sayin'.
@Ben
I liked Avatar,
But...but...but you seem thoughtful and articulate and rational and altogether too sane to "like" that steaming pile of very expensive and shiny shit.
How could it not make you furious?
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@recordari - having just stepped back into this conversation after a late night OUT DRINKING WITH THE PIXIES </wank> I apologise for inadvertently crediting @philipmatthews with your broken link pickup...
@Islander - All due respect, but without the 3D... I dunno... hard to say whether I would've said anything positive about the film... it was only the totally immersive IMAX 3D that got to me - the ash falling in the entire cinema when the forest was on fire, those floaty pixie things right in your face... even the subtitles were cool in that they hung in mid air... without that... hmmm....
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But...but...but you seem thoughtful and articulate and rational and altogether too sane to "like" that steaming pile of very expensive and shiny shit.
How could it not make you furious?
Maybe the same way it doesn't make me furious: it's a work of fiction. I watched it to go "Ooooh, aah, pretty, shiny", not to go "This is a horrible, condescending depiction of the assumed intellectual inferiority of native peoples, perpetuated by an industry that glosses over some of history's true horrors in the name of 'entertainment'."
If I wanted to analyse movies, I'd go and study film and media at university. I watch fictional movies for the same reason I read fictional books: to be entertained. Sure I watched District 9 and thought "That was one seriously fucked-up system", but I didn't go looking for every last nuance that I could find. When I want to find outrageous things to be, well, outraged about, I come online and go surfing for news. I don't feel the need to be presented with accurate portrayals by every fictional means of entertainment with which I avail myself, sometimes I watch mindless shit for the sake of watching mindless shit.
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on topic:
I think the lush greenery looks pretty good as is, personally. -
having just stepped back into this conversation after a late night OUT DRINKING WITH THE PIXIES </wank>
OMG! This goes under Things I Would Not Have Been Able To Do Without Drooling Embarrassingly On Kim Deal...
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If I wanted to analyse movies, I'd go and study film and media at university. I watch fictional movies for the same reason I read fictional books: to be entertained.
Ditto. The problem is, when Russell Crowe shouted 'are we not entertained' in my ear, the answer was 'No, not so much'. The floaty fluffy things drifting in the imagined realm between screen and audience also got old quickly. District 9 was unpredictable, visceral, and pertinent (well, I certainly felt so after Haiti). Much of what I got out of Avatar I get most days while watching kids TV with the young ones. I wanted something more.
Oh, and no worries Damian. Should have included a </wank> tag for mentioning it. You lucky bastard. Drooling over Kim Deal? Ditto.
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Dude, it's not 'desperate bitching'. It's because we really, honestly didn't like it. We didn't think it was any good.
There's obviously something wrong with you. You have to learn to let go of your rational mind and enjoy things that are stupid, manipulative and offensive.
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If I wanted to analyse movies, I'd go and study film and media at university.
It ain't absolutely necessary but it can help. Can you not conceive of watching film in a number of guises, which can overlap each other ie to be immersed in the beauty of images but also disappointed by the unfolding story and silly dialogue? Personally, I find it a much richer experience when I go to the film with a mix of expectations--as a fan, as someone whose business it is to understand and teach about film, to be moved emotionally (and maybe even cry in the dark occasionally)--a whole bunch of intellectual and emotional responses, which amount to more than being 'entertained'?
Some of my favourite films, which do all these things, include Some Like It Hot, Dersu Uzala, Illustrious Energy, Leningrad Cowboys Go America...and Tremors!
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Dude, it's not 'desperate bitching'. It's because we really, honestly didn't like it. We didn't think it was any good.
You don't say. Really? Tell me again why not...you know you want to.
And if anyone starts going on about suspension of disbelief and 'just enjoying it' again, well, watch out.
Yes, that is indeed a lost cause. A personal choice.
How could it not make you furious?
I save my fury up for useful things. I've only got a limited supply, and, actually, it's all too easy to squander, and I've already squandered enough of it on such things. I leave Homer Simpson to get bitter on "Who rigs every Oscar night?".
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I don't know what you're all on about. Avatar was the best movie I have ever seen...
The other movie I've seen was... -
and Tremors!
Tremors is one of the best movies ever made. I've always respected The Dad Out Of Family Ties' work, throw in guns, worms and Kevin Bacon and you got a heck of a motion picture.
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Yes, that is indeed a lost cause. A personal choice.
Gah. You miss my point, which is that I am in fact usually such a suspender of disbelief and an enjoyer of things that I am practically a zero-gravity trapeze artist on ecstasy. For goodness' sake, I think it's perfectly acceptable in film for people to break into a choreographed tap dance in the middle of installing a kitchen sink, as long as it gives me a thrill. So when people tell me to 'stop analysing' and 'just enjoy it' it really gets on my tits. MEH.
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The problem is, when Russell Crowe shouted 'are we not entertained' in my ear, the answer was 'No, not so much'.
IIRC, that was his point - that the Romans should not have been entertained. If you were not entertained, then he was appealing to you to say so. Did you then walk out? If not, why not? Why would you even go to see a film called Gladiator, if you didn't want to see gladiatorial combat? And at that point, the crowd was not cheering, because what he had just finished doing was actually not entertaining - he had killed everyone the way a soldier would, fast and efficiently, and with some measure of empathy, no torturing the last helpless victim, asking the crowd if they should be spared, etc.
You had, at that point, been primed to feel sorry for the gladiators, seeing them pissing their pants before the fight, the endless mistreatment beforehand, the big speech by the Lanista that they might think they wouldn't fight, but they would. etc.
Personally, I did actually feel entertained, because I was immersed in the feeling of horror and disgust, and the elation of survival I was supposed to feel. Something about seeing it went a lot further than all the descriptions I read when studying the history of ancient Rome. Always then, the thought had come to my mind "If I were there, then, would I have gone to watch gladiatorial combat?". In going to watch that movie, I think the answer is pretty clear. So it was a very appropriate question.
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I enjoy analysing - why make em mutually exclusive, I say
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I enjoy analysing - why make em mutually exclusive, I say.
Well, yes, exactly. Can't I be a *pointy-headed* zero-gravity trapeze artist on ecstasy? :)
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Gah. You miss my point
I'm pretty sure I was supposed to miss it. I have never seen Singin' in the Rain, because I know I would hate it from start to end. But I'm not going to spend hours telling you about why, other than the simple fact that I don't like the genre. I can't get into romantic comedies, and especially not musical ones. None of which is to say it's a bad film, just not to my taste.
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I enjoy analysing - why make em mutually exclusive, I say
It's also an illusion to say that you can in fact stop yourself from analysing. We do it all the time. And - Geoff will perhaps confirm this - we come to formal education as already very sophisticated readers of films and the such; that was certainly my experience tutoring first year film students.
People who liked Avatar did analyse it, not matter how implicitly, and came to the conclusion that what was good about it more than made up for its flaws. Those who didn't, felt the opposite way. As a person who didn't like it, I'm tired of being told that it's because I think too much. That's puerile crap.
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You know one film that I loved? Torque, with our own Martin Henderson. By any objective measure, it's an awful, awful film - 2D characters, a plot driven largely by the inexplicably stupid actions of said characters, and some of the worst dialogue committed to film - and yet I still came out of it with a big fixed grin on my face, and that's all that matters to me. No such reaction to Avatar. For me.
I'm not sure why this seems to be a contentionous point here, but your reactions to movies are SUBJECTIVE, which means the people who didn't like Avatar are RIGHT and the people who did like Avatar are ALSO RIGHT. Obvious? Then why do people keep trying to tell other people that they are somehow wrong in enjoying/not enjoying a film?
Also: Tremors - \m/
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So Ben, now we're talking about how you wouldn't discuss something you've never seen and have no intention of seeing? Well, I should hope not.
Then why do people keep trying to tell other people that they are somehow wrong in enjoying/not enjoying a film?
You're right, of course. I just object to the phrase 'desperate bitching', as if there's some sort of 'trying too hard' aspect to not liking the damn thing. I *wanted* to like it. I went in with happy expectations, dammit.
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3410,
your reactions to movies are SUBJECTIVE
Well, that's your opinion...
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