Speaking strictly personally, that wouldn’t bug me so much. On the other hand, people coming in and going, “John Woo sucks! You’re a bunch of pretentious assholes for even discussing him!” would likely get a reaction from me.
Pretty much de rigeur in Verhoeven threads.
Here’s my list
Magnolia-I enjoyed most of it, but the rain of frogs with the little peeing boy saying “this is what happens” knocked me right out of the story. I spent the rest of the movie angry.
Orlando-Hey, lets cram another example of symbolism into this movie.
Number one on my ‘movies which always send me to sleep’ list
STAR WARS [any episode] … everyone tells me how great they are, but I can’t stay awake more than 10 minutes … I’ve tried seeing them again, but the same thing always happens. Maybe theres some sort of lighting effect in them which trips my ‘Go straight to sleep’ button.
Next would be PEARL HARBOUR - even with all that gunfire, I slept through most of it. Musta been snoring, too, as everyone except the kid I took to see it had moved away from our seat when she woke me at the start of the credits :o
THE TRUMAN SHOW too, and I agree about FORREST GUMP and MAGNOLIA.
Well, it wouldn’t bug you, but would you interact withthe person at all? Or passively let him say his piece and vanish?
And as for your counter example… yeah, a direct, unprovoked personal attack should cause a reaction…
Am I obliged to engage? people pop into these discussions all the time; some of them have something substantial to add, some of them less so. My engagement would vary accordingly. Not sure where you’re going with this . . .
If I were participating in a very specific discussion about a very specific aspect of a very specific John Woo movie, and someone drove by shouting, “Woo ROCKS!”, it probably wouldn’t register; I’d assume they weren’t expecting a specific response. Does that answer your question?
AGain, with varying degrees of directness, that’s usually what I feel like I’m reacting against, when I exhibit a negative reaction.
This almost precisely describes my own thoughts about your posts in this thread.
Which is absolutely fucking absurd, but at least goes some distance towards explaining your attitude in this thread. Look, if I describe a movie as pretentious, it is in no way a comment on people who like the movie. I thought Saving Private Ryan was pretentious. It was supposed to be the WWII movie to end all WWII movies, but all it was, was just a lump of sentimental glurge and poorly-executed war movie cliches. I’d call that movie pretentious. A lot of people disagree with me on that, because they looked at the same elements I did, and found them to be more worthy. They didn’t find the emotional content to be cloying, they didn’t think the action was unoriginal, etc. For them, the movie was not pretentious: it fulfilled the promised expectations.
Now, maybe you can explain why all the other negative stuff I said about that movie isn’t a reflection on people who liked it, but somehow, “pretentious” is. For fuck’s sake, what movie ever made didn’t claim to have some sort of value? If you say a movie is good, and I say a movie is bad, am I accusing you of dishonesty? Then in what possible way am I accusing you of anything if I say a movie was pretentious, and you say it wasn’t?
Boy, talk about not listening to other people. Once again, why are you assuming you’re the only person here who is interested in digging into these movies? How do you know that everyone else hasn’t invested exactly as much effort as you have, and found nothing of merit? The fact that you looked at a movie and found a valuable or interesting subtext doesn’t mean that every other person who looks at it will find the same subtext, or will find it equally meritorious.
Sometimes?
No one here has called you pretentious for liking Showgirls, or old Japanese films, or anything else. No one has called you pretentious because of what movies you like. No one. For the umpty-umpteenth time, it’s not which movies you like, it’s how you treat people who don’t like the movies you like.
Yes, I know. That is precisely the meaning I am reacting against. You really don’t see why that attitude is offensive, arrogant, and massively condescending? Remarkable.
Do you understand that that is precisely what you did in this thread?
The Matrix trilogy was shit.
The English Patient was deadly, poisonous shit.
The Last Supper I actually liked. Thought it was rather clever.
I nominate, The Godfather (all of 'em). Remind me never to learn anything more about Italian gangsters. A complete waste of nine and a half hours of Francis Ford Coppola’s, “Don’t you wanna know more about this mystic horseshit? That’s right… pay me more money!!!”
Am I sure though that they were not Sicilians? Oh who cares, it was still nine and a half hours of pure unadulterated horseshit.
No, I don’t. You keep saying this, but you won’t quote where I’ve done so.
There was mysticism in the Godfather Trilogy?
Nice how you replaced 90% of my last post with an ellipsis. Who’s ignoring who, here? I’ve responded to everything you’ve directed to me in this thread in its entirety, and have posted specific examples of what I objected to in your posts, and why I objected to them. I can’t imagine how you can claim to have not seen them, since you’ve quoted portions of those posts back at me.
I ellipsed the rest of your post because I had no argument with it.
And you have yet to post a specific example.
Go back and re-read post #103 in this thread. Nuthin’ but specific examples.
Addressed.
Not my words; your words.
Talking about a decision not take part in something that I wish I could share with them; not sure where that’s pitworthy. I have a friend who wishes I could go rockclimbing with him, but I choose not to go rockclimbing.
Again, your words, not mine. (The “paranoid”was a reference to reactions like yours, Miller; when you read elitism where there is none.)
Not sure of your reaction: some people choose to dig, some don’t; some find one thing, some another. Where’s the elitism in that?
Your words, not mine. I didn’t define “anti-intellectual” as anyone who doesn’t agree with me. I was talking about a very specific response, which I described as “knee-jerk anti-intellectual.” Surely you’ll agree that there are such people out in the world? Those are the people I was very explicitly talking about; not all who disagree with me. Your projection.
And yet you don’t.
[speak for yourself; this is cheap]
Your words, not mine.
Your words, not mine; never suggested any such thing–let alone insisted.
Agreed. I’ve only ever reacted (your cites to the contrary; will apologize if you can find one; I’m not aware of one, because I always try to say what I mean, and that’s not what I mean)j—I’ve only ever reacted to people who say “The layers you claim to find aren’t there,” not “I agree that those layers are there, but I still dislike the movie for the following reasons.”
I tend to define a “pretentious” movie as one that “pretends” to profundity and depth while actually being transparently shallow. The kind of movie that tries to have layers of meaning but where every meaning is transparently hackneyed, or where you analyze the subtext and find it’s even more cliche’d than the text. I’d put a lot of Woody Allen movies (Interiors, Crimes and Misdemeanors, September, large sections of Hannah and Her Sisters) in this category; they’re out to deal with Big Themes but the Big Themes are little more than fortune-cookie bromides.
For movies that are incomprehensible, it’s a bit different… some movies are incomprehensible because they’re badly made, some are incomprehensible until you catch on to what they’re trying to do. Sometimes it’s a combination of both. The most “pretentious” movies, though, are the ones that have a surface layer of hard-to-understand artiness but turn out, underneath that surface, to be simple tracts on dull old themes (mostly how much better a person the director is than the bourgeoisie/the government/the post office/his parents). I do think that calling a movie pretentious is, in fact, to say that it pretends to be a serious work when in fact it isn’t, or pretends to have something interesting to say when in fact it doesn’t. Some films really are serious works, but suck. That’s a different category altogether.
Sometimes, really, the amount of “work” you have to do to understand an arty film is less than the amount of work you have to do to decipher a seemingly simple, easy-to-understand film… the self-consciously “difficult” film practically begs you to try to decipher it, whereas a great “straightforward” film might be so simple on the surface that you can overlook what’s going on underneath. (Example, because I just saw it again: I’ve always felt that one of the great political movies is Billy Wilder’s One, Two, Three, which has as much to say about politics and the moral ambiguity thereof and the world being a dangerous place as any “highbrow” political film – and the fact that it’s presented as a light comedy just makes it more interesting, because the audience has to work to get the serious content, instead of being told in advance that this movie will have Something To Say.)
Thank you.
I find Woody Allen extremely pretentious, and I DO mean that as an insult.
yes, and an excellent example. I recently bought the DVD of One, Two, Three. That may be why some of my favorite films are dark comedies: with a successful dark comedy, you’re starting out with a minimum of two layers. And the tension between the darkness and the comedy can hold a lot of subtext: Showgirls; The Birds; Written on the Wind; Dancer in the Dark–all of these movies have a subtext that’s almost completely at odds with its surface, which is something I get a kick out of in movies.
Well, I’ll just cut out all the “Did nots!” and cut to the chase:
If that’s the case, then you are extremely bad at it. I stand by my interpretation of what you’ve written, but I’ll accept that it wasn’t what you meant to write.
Seriously Miller, this is cheap and unfair. You want to respond to the points I made about where you conflated your impressions with my words? Or not. I’m OK either way. Your examples of my wrongdoing have made it extremely clear to me that, in your case at least, the offense is in the eye of the beholder. I apologize for including enough “tone” to set you off, but seriously and honestly, you haven’t pointed out one thing that I said that meant what you twisted it to mean.
I have never set myself above people who get something different out of a movie than I do; I have only reacted when called names. Your hunt and cite reinforces that for me.
You want to make your impression of take the place of objective reality. Again, I’m sorry for pissing you off, but that doesn’t change what I have or haven’t said. As far as impressions go, I will honestly tell you that, in these threads, my impression of you is that there is something bugging you WAY beyond anything I’ve said, that you’ve irrationally hung my words on and run with: there’s such a vast disconnect between what you say and what is “real” that I honestly question your sanity on this particular subject.
Honestly not meant to be insulting: it’s just a meditation on impressions and the likelihood that they’re not necessarily accurate: from reading you on other subjects, I know that you’re not insane. But if this were my only exposure to you, I’d be so flabbergasted at your frothing irrationality that I would, indeed, question that. AGain; impressions are impressions, and each of us should be open to communication on our respective impressions.
Unfortunately, I can’ see that you’ve read anything I’ve written, ever, with any kind of an open mind. So I’ll agree to avoid you in movie threads, K?