Cracker: Wallywood
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The mods are messing with us. We're stranded on page 16, and there's no sign of the page bell.
Why does it feel like a Friday? It's only hump day, for goodness sake.
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Where art the bellwether...
The mods are messing with us. We're stranded on page 16, and there's no sign of the page bell.
we could get the law firm of Bellicose, Belligerent and Belladonna on their (the Mod Squad's) case...
(rather than the contextually obvious Bell Gully!) -
Tempted as I am to write an epic post, saving my point up for the 17th minute and my less-than-100-posts-n00b character assassination for 2/3 in, just to span the entire 17th page and hog the glory, work calls.
Instead, some nicer news. While we were all pondering the imponderables, Zane, my second-born followed a little narrative arc of his own. A balloon that had been taunting him just out of reach inspired him to take to his knees and with mighty surges of sheer will he commando crawled after it, pinning it finally against the window. His look of joy at the praise of his mother was caught digitally, and would take preference over any movie made outside of my house, in the space capsule. Citizen Zane, I shall call it.
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Citizen Zane, I shall call it.
Bloody reality TV, FTW!
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Citizen Zane, I shall call it.
you could say to the occasion he rose, bud...
:- ) -
A balloon that had been taunting him just out of reach
Was it a red balloon (another smart-arse film reference here!)? Enjoying this discussion, which I would like to contribute to but I have had hordes of students scrambling at my door all day.
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Enjoying this discussion, which I would like to contribute to but I have had hordes of students scrambling at my door all day.
Well for Christ's sake man. Let them out!
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Formulaic? Funny thing about normative rules, an annoying percentage of people tend to follow them. Can't they think for themselves?
Well, to be fair, I'm sure Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh got something out of Bob McKee's Story seminar -- and it's actually a useful blueprint that could be laid over any number of perfectly satisfactory films and teleplays. But it is not the only way to tell a story. 8 1/2 is, in my view, a perfectly wonderful film despite the dearth of a properly placed "inciting incident" in a linear narrative with a sympathetic protagonist following a rigid three act structure.
In the end, if a rulebook and some half-digested Joseph Campbell works for you in producing good work then I couldn't be happier. When you inflate an aesthetic preference into immutable natural law, then I've got a problem.
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Jonathan Livingston Seagull I presume...
Interesting that this book broke the hardcover sales record of Gone with the Wind ... how apt!Just imagine if JLS had been written by Richard Bachman rather than Richard Bach...
Carrie on regardless maybe?...or for that matter if Douglas Adams had written Watership Down instead of Richard Adams
- Bright Ties anyone?aaah, the worlds we could live in...
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I have had hordes of students scrambling at my door all day.
A divine intervention? Which archangel are you? I'm mostly Seraphim, according to this definitive test of angelic qualities...
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Also, it better have the subtitles if it's a foreign film.
them American accents, gets me every time.
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Was it a red balloon
It was. A most benign one.
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That's a cracker of a film. Almost wordless, as I recall it-
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That book was my life for a while around the age of 3, just photos, I didn't realise it was film until much later. Classic.
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Watership Down
But we're only at page 17 - isn't it a bit soon for that plateau of profundity?
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Hoi, hoi u embleer Hrair, M'salon ule hraka vair.
And you asked for this:
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Citizen Kane wouldn't be my desert island movie either. If I had to pick one, maybe Solaris .
Interesting choice. Without spending too much time dwelling on it, mine would be Red
So whether a film is 'good', or 'bad' is going to be contextually dependent.
Of course, but there often is a context (excepting if someone was expressing nothing more than a personal preference).
I guess 3410’s analogy of a saw was a little, err... blunt. But the example I think someone used in the morality thread is perhaps a bit clearer. Someone may be a car enthusiast, and have a favourite car. They may not have a specific reason, or they may have a set of reasons that ultimately add up to: it just is – it has that X-factor. That’s a preference; it’s the “best car” for him, but has no particular objective value.
But if he were given two cars to choose from, an economical and fairly roomy sedan and a drag racer, he could tell you which was one the best car for a drag race. And the best car would actually be the best car – it wouldn’t just be best in his opinion. Quality judgements are often subjective if you have no context, just preference. But things quickly become less subjective once a context is introduced, which I think is what Philip and 3410 might be getting at.In the case of movies, if someone says their favourite film is Avatar, that’s just a preference, and is totally subjective. However, if they were to say Avatar was the best film ever, because it is full of original science fictional ideas, they would be wrong - actually, objectively wrong. Heck, Avatar isn’t even that original by the criteria of “films James Cameron has made”, let alone by comparison with all other science fiction movies, or all other science fiction.
Children's books are a subset of books. Alice in Wonderland is a better children's book than The Da Vinci Code. But it's also arguably a better Book than The Da Vinci Code. I just don't think it's a conclusion that can be reached without, you know, arguing.
But what’s the point if it’s all subjective? Argument is for those who consider that you can use facts, evidence, logic and rationality to some purpose.
...any other candidates for finest century? I'm tempted to balance the odd bout of industrialised mass homicide with antibiotics, civil rights, reproductive freedom and plummetting infant mortality.
B Jones,
You might find this of interest, if you haven’t seen it already. -
Big Trouble in the Forest...
Hoi, hoi u embleer Hrair, M'salon ule hraka vair.
Hraka happens....i don't need no thousand steenkin' droppings...
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And you asked for this:
Blearggh!!!
By way of an antidote - and not to forget that in its day that shonkily-animated item featured more hand-rendered blood than anything outside of Japan: -
That Steven Pinker vid is interesting: there is good archaeological evidence that, on average
a)we live longer than any homonim before us, and
b)we are much less likely to die violently(the figures from mediaeval Europe are grotesquely interesting - and that's only because we have some figures on individuals. The figures from China are worse- because individuals - unless elite- really arnt noted. It's just 'plague here'/'battle there'/mass executions because a pyschopath was in power over there & other people wiped out -somewhere-
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You might find this of interest, if you haven’t seen it already.
Thanks, that was interesting. I like historical fiction and fantasy set in medieval worlds etc - I'm not silly enough to think they'd be good places to live.
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But what’s the point if it’s all subjective? Argument is for those who consider that you can use facts, evidence, logic and rationality to some purpose.
Argument and conversation are what allow us to assign value to things, I dare say intersubjectively (I hope Danyl was sitting down just then), which is not the same as objectively. And the social activity of assigning value to things is not just useful to decide whether and in what way Citizen Kane is better than Robot Monster but also to prioritise public spending, make laws and establish whether putting up a Wellywood sign in Miramar is or not a good idea.
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Heck, Avatar isn’t even that original by the criteria of “films James Cameron has made”, let alone by comparison with all other science fiction movies, or all other science fiction.
Or westerns.
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I think the real issue has been elided here. In the discussion between Movie A and Movie B, is Movie B in fact... a B-movie?
The Back to Mine series of DJ mixes- basically a series of mixes of the sort of music you were likely to hear if *Famous Name DJ* took you back to their place for a drunken after party - threw up a few interesting entries. This was notable on Underworld's disk: they chose to kick off a 70-minute DJ mix of music they loved with the full 12-minute majesty of this epic. On the simple basis that it had showed them that music doesn't need to be a 3-minute pop song; that you could take your time, could develop a theme, could say something important. Everyone has one song that they'd hold people down and make them listen to: this is mine.
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Argument and conversation are what allow us to assign value to things, I dare say intersubjectively (I hope Danyl was sitting down just then), which is not the same as objectively. And the social activity of assigning value to things is not just useful to decide whether and in what way Citizen Kane is better than Robot Monster but also to prioritise public spending, make laws and establish whether putting up a Wellywood sign in Miramar is or not a good idea.
Man, why don't cricketers have that kind of thing tattooed on their biceps, rather than cliched designs involving the initials of their ex-girlfriends? The world would be a better place.
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