It makes it gritty and realistic. The way having black characters with speaking parts did back in the '70s, having Asians with speaking parts did back in the '80s, and having Hispanics with speaking parts did back in the '90s. They just ran out of ethnics, so they had to start in on bodily functions.
Yeah, but how often do you encounter vomiting people? This town isn’t exactly rife with Asians but I do encounter a black person every once in awhile. Pukey McUpchuck, not so much.
Your explanation made me giggle, by the way:)
I work in a public library. You probably don’t want to know the answer to that question.
Happy to help.
Rather than being “glorified,” the adultery in it has some devastating consequences, and creates a huge emotional mess in the main characters even before anything really bad happens. Hardly what I’d call “glorifying.”
So my point about that being a dumb criticism of The English Patient is that the movie actually doesn’t glorify adultery.
I think when people say that Brokeback Mountain (and its glorious cousin, The English Patient*) glorify adultery, they mean that the adulterers are presented with too much sympathy as opposed to the persons being cheated on. The adulterers, because they are “in love,” are presented as, if not morally superior to the faithful spouses, then at least morally equivalent. This is an iffy position; some people find it downright offensive.
*Yes, glorious. It has Kristin Scott Thomas naked in a bathtub at the very height of her goddessitude. Few things are more glorious than that.
Sometimes what you describe is true. In fact, I think I hear the label “pretentious” coming out of the mouths of fools and dullards far more often than from anyone who has an ounce of good taste.
But that’s not what I meant. What I meant was with regard to people who clearly did in fact miss some important aspects of movie and call it pretentious because they didn’t get it. Even more hilarious is when they insist they got it, when ten seconds of discussion reveals that in fact many of the salient points of the movie flew over their heads completely.
Oh my, yes.
However I would assert that the English Patient does not portray the adulterers as superior, although they are mostly sympathetic, until Ralph Fiennes’s characters goes off the emotional deep end anyway. I’ll let someone else defend Brokeback Mountain, but I’d say describing it as “glorifying adultery” is also pretty stupid. Clearly the characters’ inability to remain loyal to their wives is treated sympathetically, yes, but hardly glorified.
Their sin is part of what makes them tragic.
Ah, I have encountered this. The sad part is, there’s no shame in not *getting *a movie. When I don’t understand something (Hello, David Lynch) I like to ask anyone who’ll put up with me to 'splain. Some folks are letting their pride get in the way of a great cinematic experience.
I wouldn’t agree that it is tragedy. In tragedy, a character’s flaws leads them to a terrible fall they did not deserve. Thus, it is not tragic. In Macbeth, for instance, both Lord and Lady Macbeth partly rue the choice they made and perhaps would do it over, but trapped themselves in a position they could not escape and therefore paid for it. In BM, they were not trapped except by their own wills, and proceded to make the situation increasingly worse.
I never said any such thing! Movies are 2-3 hours, and they are DONE - I have a plot resolution (most of the time), and I can put it away. And it still takes me 2-3 nights to watch most movies because I don’t want to watch it all at once.
TV shows drag on and on and on and on and rarely have any definite conclusion. I may enjoy three episodes in a row but then the fourth episode sucks. I may have to deal with a cliffhanger and then watch the next season. Basically it is just way more demanding than a movie, to me.
I don’t mean movies are necessarily inferior to TV…I just think movies fit better into my lifestyle. I just hate the arc of TV shows. Get on with it!
You’re right in the sense that movies are generally getting crappier and cable tv shows are generally getting better, so there is some overlap there. However, movies are still generally a hell of a lot better than tv, and were much more so only a few years ago. It’s still the very rare show, like Mad Men, that can even compete.
I think it’s an inferior way to spend all your time. If you exercize, socialize, do some reading, etc, and want to watch some tv in between, I don’t think there’s anything at all wrong with that. If you forego all that other stuff to watch reruns of The Hills and Daisy of Love then, well, you’re probably just not a very well-rounded person.
(Note that you’d be equally un-rounded if all you did was exercise, socialize, etc., even though those activities are generally considered to be superior to television watching.)
I absolutely hate it when people say they think less of others because of their movie tastes. I don’t know why it bothers me so much . . . no, actually I do. How much hypocrisy does it take to judge someone else based on the way they judge something? They don’t like subtitles, so what? Maybe they don’t like broccoli, either, does that make you think less of them?
I don’t like movies with subtitles because reading the subtitles takes away from my ability to watch the movie, see the action, see the actors’ faces and expressions, etc. Movies are, after all, a visual medium. If I want to read, I’ll read a book. Think less of me if you will.
You’re freedom to hate that validates my freedom to hate the thing you hate. Sorry, but “to each his own” cuts both ways.
Er…whut?
If Roadfood feels justified in having a lower opinion of me for, for example, having a lower opinion of HypotheticalPerson, who won’t watch movies with subtitles, that’s self-contradictory.
His justification for having a lower opinion of me is exactly as valid as my justification for having a lower opinion of HypotheticalPerson.
Yes, Ok, I see. Thanks. I truly couldn’t parse that.
Well, that’s reasonable. Bordering on the incomprehensible to me, but reasonable ;).
Some stories I feel just benefit from the extra length and complexity that serial television allows. For example the upcoming HBO series based on George R.R. Martin’s Song of Fire and Ice. It may well end up flopping badly, but it probably couldn’t even be seriously attempted for the big screen and still stay even halfway faithful to the books. The Lord of the Rings films probably represent the upper limit of such attempts and that took three movies, that even in theatrical release probably rivaled in length a single season of one cable series.
See, now I just don’t have the patience for that. Heck, I like my TV shows on DVD, a disc at a time.
I dunno. I agree that argument would have been a hell of a lot more persuasive to me several years ago. But while most TV is still crap, so are most movies, really. I think enough quality TV exists, particularly on DVD, that if you pick and choose you can fill your allotted TV time ( for a semi-normal, semi-socialized person ) with quality stuff.
Certainly the medium is not inherently inferior, even if historically it has been in fact. As above movies and TVs have different ( potential, perhaps ) strengths.
Can’t argue with that.
I have a movie genre I won’t watch and feel completely justified saying I would not like any movie in the genre even if I haven’t seen it.
I won’t watch horror movies. I don’t like being scared. I don’t like jumping at the screen. I have an active imagination and was jumping at corners for weeks after seeing Sixth Sense. (I regretted watching that one after caving to peer pressure.) I can’t imagine any movie in the Horror genre being good enough to justify putting myself through the torture of those ugly, ugly images living on in my brain long after seeing the movie.
I have some sympathy for people who blindly reject full genres. 
They were not trapped by their own wills. They were trapped by a homophobic society that ended up killing one of them. And to say they didn’t rue their choices… obviously both men were miserable. I think both of them tried to commit to their marriages but could not. Their wives, especially Ennis’, are portrayed as sympathetic and wronged parties in this. Once Jack realized he couldn’t make his marriage work, he tried to persuade Ennis to chuck it all and run away with him, but Ennis had witnessed a gay bashing incident in his childhood and was deeply terrified of being out, so he was unable to try and be happy. His fear was not baseless, and thus, it was not his will that stopped him, but his circumstances. Thus, I think this criticism of BM falls squarely into the category of “dumb reasons to dislike a movie.”
On the adultery theme, a friend of mine refuses to see Closer because it contains adultery. A skewering of adulterers is more like it, but he’ll never know because he won’t see it.