Let’s all hand out a warm welcome to the Pit for Claire Beauchamp, who has recently discovered amazingly new lows of snobbery in this thread.
I’d like to thank her for telling me just how I;m culturally illiterate… because I didn’t know much about Alex Guinness. Well, curse me for not being able to go to English theater years before I was born! That Guiness, he’s so important to knowing anything about culture that not knowing much about him alone makes one culturally illiterate. That’s just common sense, right? It’s not like Guiness would now be an obscure actor who did very little outside of his native land if he hadn’t been in Star Wars, eh? He’s practically a legend for all those roles he did in… something.
And Bridge Over the River Kwai, yup, that’s not an obscure film at all. I mean, everyone watches that, right? I mean, everybody watches films which earned some award decades before they were born. Hard not to. Have to be a complete phillistine to aovid them!
Dumbass. :rolleyes:
Seriously, I know a bit about Guinness, and I’ve still never gotten around to watching any movies that had him in it other than Star Wars. They are simply not that important to me, and I can easily understand most people not knowing much about him. His glory days were in the 50’s and 60’s, and that’s a damn long time ago. My parents were just old enough to have caught some of his stuff.
More to the point, while his stuff was good, he was hardly a legend. His movies were mostly quiet dramas or comedies, but they hardly changed the nature of film. I’d like to take some bets, on how much Claire Beauchamp knows about moderately important actors who peaked some forty years before her birth.
The Bridge On the River Kwai as an obscure film? Come on. It is an extrememly famous movie, moreover a phenominal movie, and Guiness’ performance in it is stellar. The guy was a superlative actor throughout his career.
Not having watched movies such as The Bridge On the River Kwai doesn’t make someone a philistine. Avoiding them, on the other hand, comes much closer.
It’s not a hard-and-fast rule but in general, if you find yourself typing out “sigh”, make sure you reread your post a couple of times. Chances are you’re coming off like a rather large douche.
Not knowing about, not caring about, and being dismissive of, anything that was released before you were born is one of the characteristics of the culturally illiterate.
Ever see Lawrence of Arabia? Guinness played Prince Feisal in that quiet little flick. And played Doctor Zhivago’s half brother in another obscure arthouse film.
Ms Beauchamp (pronounced “Beechum”?) was a bit too snooty…
Let’s not forget Lawrence of Arabia. And Great Expectations. And Doctor Zhivago. The Ealing comedies, while fantastic, are somewhat more obscure, I’ll grant you that. Although The Ladykillers was recently remade by the Coen Brothers with Tom Hanks, if that’s any indication.
I mean, I don’t think you have to have seen any of those movies to be culturally literate, although frankly The Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia are film canon. But you should be aware of them, yes.
Dude, Trainspotting wasn’t even in American. Pinky-lifting snobasses like you are first against the wall when the revolution comes. Don’t forget your monocle!
I don’t even have one of those.