RikWriter, pay attention. This is how to express disagreement on a matter of taste without saying that the other guy is just plain wrong, wrong, wrong.
I’m not flaming you, and I am not attacking you.
I am MOCKING you. Note the nick.
I was unaware you are now a moderator.
Plus you were clearly attacking RikWriter while ignoring Mockingbird, who is the agressor in this fight. and now you are attacking in later posts. “Do as i say not as i do” is now implemented.
Couching Tiger was one of the best choreographed films ever, it deserved the oscar, but the acadamy gave it best foreign film so they could feel guilt free for voting for the movie about the oiled up guy in leather with a big sword. Who would have known that would have won in Hollywood???
I’m not, and if anyone feels that I’ve presumed then I apologise. OTOH, I don’t particularly want this to reach the point where a moderator has to step in. Do you?
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Mockingbird is not the aggressor here. Or do you mean to say you find the guy saying how everyone is just plain wrong and he is right less offensive than the guy telling him to get over himself?
Telling someone they are wrong (not everyone btw…don’t arrogate yourself into thinking everyone agrees with you) is not agressive. Mocking and insulting someone because you disagree with them is agressive. YOU were agressive as well.
Spielburg could have had a great war film, but he ruined it with the coda. The rest of the film after the first twenty minutes was drawn out and boring enough, he had to make it preachy and saccharine. Removing the coda would have increased the film’s quality at least 50%.
Das Boot remains the best war film of all time, followed by Duck Soup.
As for SIL, I thoroughly enjoyed that movie. The characters were all much better realized (both by the writers and the actors), the script was much better, and whle SPR did more cinetographically, SIL had great art direction as well. No injustice there.
Which one will eb remembered in 20 years? Neither, really. Shakepeare geeks looking for something light will pick up SIL, and the first twenty minutes of SPR will be familar, but the rest, like the last half of Full Metal Jacket (“Me love you long time” aside) or the middle ninety minutes of 2001 will be forgotten by concensus of the filmwatching public.
No, it’s just arrogant, insulting, high-handed and patronising. I hope you enjoy being the first person on my ignore list.
Right. History has voted here, and Kramer & Annie are dead, the videos not being generally available (ie, yes, you can get them, easily enough if you want, but they are not always there on the video store rental shelves)- but both Star Wars & Apocalypse now being still rented, talked about and enjoyed.
Sometimes Oscar is WAY too trendy & PC.
Looks like Chicago- another entertaining but ultimately forgetable film, will win.
The trend towards films released in the Holiday film season being the only ones considered has gotten way out of control. Do all the nominators have such short term memories?
SPR wasn’t bad at all. But if you watch “the Longest Day”, you’ll get this terrible feeling of deja vue, as some scenes were lifted whole cloth.
Yikes! It’s like I’ve walked into the middle of the first half hour of SPR in this thread ;).
For what it’s worth, I think SPR was a better movie than SIL, and deserved the Oscar. I think in 20 years, SPR will be considered a classic and that Oscar vote will be called a mistake. If you don’t agree, then that’s fine. It’s just my opinion after all :D.
I thought A Beautiful Mind was a well done movie. I can understand people wanting more emphasis on math, but that would have turned off a lot of people. I do think it was better than LOTR (even though I own LOTR on DVD and don’t have BM), and much of push for LOTR were from Tolkien fans.
It may be arrogant, but high-handed and patronizing? To just tell someone they are wrong?? Man, you must have had a hard time in school. They have to tell you you’re wrong all the time. How high-handed of them. Damn teachers.
Not to “Spielberg bash” or anything, but am I the only person who found “Catch Me If You Can” an incredibly boring movie? Everyone else I talk with seems to love it but I couldn’t believe that a movie about a real-life con-artist could be so unengaging and suspense-free…
Oh well. By the way, I thought “Black Hawk Down” was a much better movie than “Saving Private Ryan.”
It wasn’t a bad film, but when you know from the start not only that he’s going to be caught but also when and where, it loses a lot.
Okay, if we can forget about Spielberg for a sec…
My feeling is, the average Academy voter is still an “Old Hollywood” insider. Such a person is, by nature:
- Extremely liberal, politically.
- Extremely conservative, artistically.
Both of these things show in the films they choose to honor. I think that, to oversimplify, what most Academy voters want is a hybrid film. If you could combine the visuals of David Lean (sweeping, panoramic landscapes, lush, exotic settings) and the earnest, preachy scripts of Stanley Kramer (preferably dealing with some trendy cause), you’d ahve the PERFECT formula for a Best Picture.
Titanic. It had a very pretty set. The main characters were all pretty. If that is your criteria, then yes it was the best “picture” of 1997.
If you’re like me, and I know I am, and like movies with such elements as “plot” and “acting” and “historical accuracy” than it was the worst movie of 1997.
This would be me pointing you in the direction of the rules regarding Ye Olde Ignore Liste.
Having said that, I will quickly scamper away from the whole war movie debate.
I too cast my vote for SIL. I own both films and love them both, but I’ve watched SIL repeatedly. SPR I’ve seen only a handful of times and I usually fast forward through much of it. SIL is brilliantly written, directed, cast, scored, and acted. The script is fast paced and witty, and I swear I discover something new about that film with every third viewing. SPR is good, and is an important film, but it does not hold one’s interest for the duration.
I think a films ability to be watched over and over again is a good measuring stick for how great a film is.
As for audience reactions after viewing the film, that’s no gauge of a films worth. SPR was sad, depressing, and emotionally draining to watch. What did you expect? Everyone to whistling Zip a dee doo da out their assholes? SIL was upbeat, funny, had repeatable lines that evoked laughs; of COURSE people are going to be more animated afterwards.
SIL deseverved that Oscar.
Oops! Please excuse my spelling errors…I forgot to proofread.
This is teh second time in this thread that someone has accused me of not liking a film because of some secret bias against the people who made the movie, and it’s starting to piss me off. You don’t have to agree with my opinion, you don’t have to like the reasons that form my opinion, but you could at least have enough respect for me not assume that I’m lying about why I did or did not like something. astorian, I don’t write for your local paper. Please do not ascribe the opinions of the movie reviewer of the Jerkwater Gazette to me simply because it’s easier to rebut his opinions than mine.
I never go into a movie wanting to hate it. If I had my druthers, every movie I see would be the best movie I’ve ever seen. I wanted to like Saving Private Ryan, because I’ve been a Spielberg fan since I could walk. And on the first viewing, watching on the giant screen and pumped up with the energy of a theater full of excited people, yeah, I enjoyed it. Especially because I didn’t try to engage it critically while I was watching it, as is my habit with new movies. I don’t regret the eight bucks I spent that night because I was entertained for the length of the movie. But a movie experience does not end at the theater door, and the more I thought about SPR, the more dissatisfied I became. The characters didn’t stay with me in any but the most superficial ways. The plot was unbelievable and unsupportable. And the more I thought about why I had enjoyed it at first, the clearer it became that the film had not earned that response from me, but had arrived at it by blatant manipulation. On the surface, it seems like a great movie, but the more you delve into it, the weaker it gets.
I was greatly surprised by the performances by both Walberg and Clooney. I’d already written both of them off as Hollywood pretty boys. Wahlberg in particular blew me away, as I hadn’t seen any of his work outside the music industry. I thought he did a superb job of managing the character arc from a rather narrow-minded, “just want to get home” character to somebody willing to give up everything, even his own life, to save a bunch of people he’d earlier dismissed as “towel-heads.” Clooney tends to have a smaller range, but this role was tailor-made for him. In many ways, it was Dr. Doug Ross with a rifle instead of a stethoscope. But Clooney deserves kudos for playing to his strengths and throwing his celebrity behind smaller films, like Three Kings, that would usually go unnoticed.
Name one. Cliff Curtis stole the entire movie in that one scene. How many other torture scenes have you seen that can stir as much empathy for the torturer as for the victim?
That was Spike Jonez, who directed the excellent Being John Malkovich. To dismiss him as “pure comic-relief stereotyping” is to do a grave disservice to the character, whose character arc I found to be the most moving. Characters who are “pure comic-relief” do not get dramatic death scenes. His dying request to be buried in the Muslim shrine highlights the growth all of the characters in this movie go through, from people who are in Iraq just to do a job into people who are involved in the immediate and vital life of the citizens they were ostensibly sent there to protect.
The fact that you interpreted this movie to even have any bad guys goes a long way towards showing how little you comprehended it.
I disagree with your criticism of the action, bt it’s hardly worth defending as this was a very rare creature: a war movie whose central motivation was not a bunch of action scenes, but rather a meditation on the nature of war and the responsibilties of those who wage it. Contrast with SPR, which was a bald-faced exercise in flag-waving and underhanded emotional manipulation. Three Kings was a truly great movie. SPR was, at best, effective propaganda.
Have you seen All Quiet on the Western Front? I’d suggest it might be better than The Longest Day. IMHO, of course.
Your pervading vitrol leads people to question the reason for that vitrol.