If you all want to continue your arugment about war movies, I started a thread onthe best war movie so that I can tell y’all where you went wrong…
How so? It occurs during a war, it’s set in a war zone, and it deals with the effect of that war on the characters in the movie. It contains no battle scenes, but if battle scenes are what define a war movie, then Ran and Throne of Blood should be considered war movies.
We obviously disagree here. I think Kane had a top-notch script, is technically brilliant, beautiful to look at, well-acted, and entertaining on top of all that. And if you want to back up your opinion with a reference to authority, I’ll do the same. How about both the critics and directors in the Sight and Sound poll for 2002? Oh, and every decinneal poll of the past 40 years.
Your assertion notwithstanding, I’d like to try. MASH* is a better war movie than Saving Private Ryan. What do you know, you can compare them!
You don’t specify what you mean by “it’s type”. Do you mean martial arts films in general? I’ve seen hundreds, and CTHD is one of my top three, along with Drunken Master 2 and Fist of Legend. If you’re referring to Wuxia, it would be first on my list of the top movies of that sub-genre of martial arts, ahead of A Chinese Ghost Story, Swordsman 2, The Bride with White Hair, Deadful Melody, and Zu: Warriors of the Magic Mountain.
I had never noticed this, despite having seen the movie over a dozen times, but in the interest of accuracy, I’ll go check. I’m assuming you’re referring to the fight between Jen and Shu Lein and their chase across the rooftops. [pops in Superbit dvd, and watches relevant fight scenes, pausing on the relevant frames]. I saw one instance in which a character appeared not to have touched a surface when she was supposed to be pushing off, and that was Shu Lien pushing off of a wall near the end of the fight. In most cases, the action is too fast to see for sure, and when I pause the frame, it isn’t clear enough to tell for sure. I suppose it’s possible that in the instances where the fighters don’t kick up dust that they don’t actually touch the rooftop, but most of the time, they appeared to me to be pushing off when the changed direction.
Unless you’re referring to them pumping their legs in a running motion while in mid-jump high in the air (not unlike a top-notch long jumper), which does happen a few times, and which is so obvious that I cannot see it as anything but intentional. In any case, there isn’t a single shot of either woman “churning [her] legs in an attempt to gain purchase on the ground.”
Which is probably why he had Yuen Wo Ping stage the action sequences.
**
I really hope you aren’t suggesting that the Holocaust was an act of war rather than an act of mass murder.
Where did I say they weren’t?
Schindler’s List isn’t a war movie. It’s set against the backdrop of a war because that’s when the real events happened, but the war isn’t really pivotal to the film.
**
Kane is a director’s film, not a viewer’s film. It’s beautiful and technically superb and I never said it wasn’t - but it’s about as entertaining as a month in hospital. As for the critics; if people in a position of authority didn’t wank themselves blind over bad movies, we wouldn’t be having this thread, would we?
Kane is liked solely by people who like to think they have taste in movies. Personally, I’ve met dozens - if not hundreds - of people who have seen it and not one of them liked it.
**
What do you know, it is possible to make ludicrous A vs B comparisons in a lame attempt to seem witty and clever!
When you’re providing a list of the best baseball teams in history, you don’t put the 1990 San Fransisco 49’ers on it no matter how good they were.
**
General martial arts, yes, and while your opinion is permitted to vary, I don’t think that Ang Lee is fit to sweep dead leaves off Bruce Lee’s grave. Wirework can look balletic without looking bad, but the one thing it must never do - and which Crappy Tiger Utter Bollocks did throughout - is look like people hanging from wires. When you have one of the most renowned fight co-ordinators in the world working for you and your wirework still looks inferior to that in an American-made spoof of this kind of movie, then you are in serious trouble and the blame must be laid at the door of the director.
I saw it in the cinema, where I had the advantage of a larger picture. Their feet almost never touched the ground, and it was quite obvious too.
I’m a big Kubrick fan, but 2001 blew. Having seen both those films, I’d almost rather watch Oliver! again of the two of them…scratch that, I’m sure I’d rather watch Oliver! Anything’s better than that 15 minute psychadelic borefest at the end of 2001.
How about this…Schindler’s List totally sucked. It was poorly acted with the exception of Ben Kingsley. Liam Neeson was totally unconvincing. The cinematography was pretentious and contrived. It was a mediocre film that borrowed heavily from its subject matter to provide all the gravity.
It won that award for Best Picture only because it was the first popular film to focus on that particular subject.
And it got help from the fact that…
A) there was garbage for movies that year
B) the two best movies of that year didn’t even get nominated for Best Picture: Six Degrees of Separation, and Philadelphia
C) it was basically the Spielberg lifetime achievement award, if he hadn’t won it here you can almost guarantee that Saving Private Ryan would have won for the same reasons
And you can bring up Braveheart if you want to, but that was a pretty down year and maybe it was the best picture. Personally, I think only Usual Suspects was better, and of course that didn’t get nominated so they’d have room for a borefest Jane Austen story and the unremarkable Apollo 13.
I agree. A movie should not require outside reading to figure out what’s going on.
Hey, people. Yeah, you…you know who I’m talking to.
Tone down the invective a few notches or I’m gonna close it down and send you all to the Pit until you can behave.
– Uke, CS mod
I know people who have read the book and still can’t explain the ending to me.
What spoof are you referring to? And it is obvious you don’t watch much wire-fu movies, since all of them look like people on wires, in fact, many of them have wires in frame. All the effects in that movie weren’t clean (specifically, the scene with Chow Yun-Fat over the water sticks out, and probably more), but it is one of the best martial arts movies of all time.
i still think what you are talking about was addressed above, as it is intentional, since that is the martial arts they are doing.
And as for 2001, i got your space baby right here!
Big Trouble in Little China. Great little pic.
Egregious omissions off the top of my head:
Tom Hulce for “Amadeus” (supporting actor)
Jim Carrey for either “The Truman Show” or “Man on the Moon” (actor)
“The Truman Show” for picture
“Being John Malkovich” for picture
IIRC, Jim Carrey won a Golden Globe for Truman Show, then was not even nominated for an Oscar–the same situation Richard Gere is in.
I also recall that in Carrey’s acceptance he said “I want to thank the Academy…er…the Hollywood Foreign Press…” (big laugh). Struck down for his hubris.
“Tom Hulce for “Amadeus” (supporting actor)”
Hulce was nominated for B. Actor for that role (in case you didn’t know.)
Tom Hulce was nominated for Best Actor, but lost to his co-star, F. Murray Abraham.
As for Carrey, you’re right, he didn’t even get nominated for Best Actor in “The Truman Show.” He was a presenter at the Oscars that year. He broke up the house by putting on a mock-stoic face, and saying “I’m here tonight to present this award. And that’s the ONLY reason I’m here tonight. I’m very disappointed I won’t be winning an Oscar this year. But that’s all right. It’s an honor just to be nomin… OH MY GOD! (Burst into phony tears).”
Say what? Aside from calling astorian’s local paper the Jerkwater Gazette (which was a little over the top. astorian’s hometown never done me no wrong) where have I attacked anyone in this thread?
And it’s spelled “vitriol”.
Not at all. It was an act of war and an act of mass murder. Those two things aren’t mutually exclusive.
The events depicted in the movie occur solely as a result of the war. The antagonists are soldiers in the war. The protagonist owns two factories, one of which supplies pots for soldiers in the war, and the second of which produces deliberately defective artillery shells; deliberately defective so that they cannot cause harm to combatants in the war. Remove the war and you remove the main protagonist and the antagonists, and all you’d have are some Jewish businessmen going about their ordinary business in Krakov. I’d say that makes the war pivotal.
**
I would think that the directors and critics who love this movie experienced it by viewing it. Are you saying that having an expert knowledge of film should disqualify a viewer’s opinion? How about the 32,000 people over at IMDB who gave Kane high scores, do they not count as “viewers”?
**So having an opinion different from yours makes one a pretentious snob? Is it possible for someone to enjoy Citizen Kane on it’s own merits?
Which proves that people tend to associate with other people of similar taste.
**
If the comparison is among baseball teams, it would indeed be ludicrous to compare them to a football team.
If the comparison is among war movies, it makes sense to compare them to a war movie.
**
** I assume you’re comparing their talent as directors here, as Ang Lee isn’t an actor. Bruce Lee directed one movie, Return of the Dragon, which is quite good, IMO his best, but it isn’t one I’d place among the best ever made. The dramatic sequences exist solely as an excuse to bridge the fight scenes, which is typical of such movies, and there isn’t anyting wrong with staging a martial arts movie that way. CTHD goes beyond that–the drama actually works on it’s own, as do the romances.
** To me, wire work always looks like wire work. In wuxia movies such as those I listed above, it’s designed to be obvious–it’s one of the conventions of the genre. In conventional martial arts movies they’ll try to disguise it–it’s all over the place in Fist of Legend–but it still looks like people attached to wires. If you don’t care for the “flying people” sub-genre, that’s certainly a legitimate reason for disliking CTHD. But the wire work itself, compared to other movies with “flying people” seems well-done to me.
I agree. In the battles in which they aren’t on the ground, it’s obvious that their feet don’t touch the ground.
I agree with you on Big Trouble in Little China. It’s a very good movie. It seems obvious to me that the characters are hanging from wires, but I don’t mind a bit, as that’s part of the movie.
The Holocaust was not in any way an act of war, no matter if it was perpetrated by soldiers. Genocide is never a part of war, only an accompaniment to it.
**
The acts in the movie occur solely as a result of the genocide. This movie could have been set in a future America where a loony right-winger gets into power and decides to wipe out all the blacks, and it would be the same movie.
**
Don’t overgeneralise.
Kane’s merits are entirely technical and can be appreciated on that level, but I think there’s something seriously wrong with anyone who watches it more than once for purposes other than analysis.
**
You assume wrong, I’m afraid. It was a judgement on Ang Lee as an action movie director, not a comparison at all.
My personal picks:
Worst Movies: “Cimarron”, “Marty” (A TV movie on the big screen-literally!), “Around the World in 80 Days”, “Rocky”, “Gandhi” (too long, and not very interestingly done), and “Titanic”
Worst Directors: Norman Taurog (who?), Vicotr Fleming (I don’t care for “Gone With the Wind”, John G. Avildsen, Michael Cimino (wretched excess), Warren Beatty, Woody Allen (he bores me), and Kevin Costner.
Worst Actors: Marie Dressler (not funny), Paul Muni (funny, but not intentionally), Julia Roberts (no talent), and all awards given to anyone playing a sick, disabled, or otherwise impared character (matter of principle- I don’t like melodrama).
Also, with the nominees this year, “Gangs of New York” was mediocre, and nowhere near as good as the book, “Lord of the Rings” isn’t exactly right for Best Picture (though I liked it), no one’s seen “The Pianist”, and "The Hours would be the Lean/Kramer film an above poster mentioned, but without either’s quality. Here’s hoping for “Chicago”.
A distinction without a difference. If the genocide could not have occurred but for the war, and is one of the motivating factors of the war, it is part an parcel to that war.
**
And the genocide occurs solely as a result of Germany’s invasion of Poland–an act of war. Remove the war, and the genocide cannot occur. In this case, they are inextricbly linked.
**
I wasn’t generalizing, I was paraphrasing your generalization that “Kane is liked solely by people who like to think they have taste in movies.”
**
**
Once again you belittle others merely because their taste in movies differs from yours. What exactly is “seriously wrong” with people who enjoy Citizen Kane?