Homages and Auteurs
 

Many directors - such as, Woody Allen, P.T. Anderson, Brian DePalma and, of course, Quentin Tarantino - have often been labelled as auteurs. But how do you feel about their homages, and does it make them any less of an auteur, since one must have their own unique style? I consider Tarantino to be an auteur, if only for his brilliant and influential dialogue, and Woody Allen seems to put his own twist on his borrowed ideas, but I'm unsure about DePalma and Anderson. As much as I love Anderson (Magnolia is probably one of my top ten films of all time), he seems to resemble too much of a Scorsese wannabe at times to be a "true" auteur...

P.T. is actually much more Bob Altman with a side of Scorsese, but yes, I find it annoying in his films thus far, most especially Magnolia.

For an entire thread (and a good one) on this topic, clicky HERE .

Since I've placed my thoughts Tarantino and homage in the other thread, for this thread, I'll just say that while I believe in the primacy of the director's vision in shaping a film, I'm not sure I buy into auteur theory.

Intertextuality is key for the true auteur- they have to rely in part on the audience's knowledge of the genre, which includes the defining films of that genre. It is for this reason, i believe, that the homages work so well. Nobody considers them to be 'rip-off's', because thay have been so eloquently restated with the auteur's own personal style.

QT is absolutley nothing without that reliance. In other words, his work brings nothing new to the table, and whatever homage or reference he chooses to make is nothing more than blatant theivery. I would never call him an auteur. :nope:

I have to do it. I hate to, but I have to do it. Tarantino is an auteur. He is an auteur because of the fact that is a homager. (I'm totally coining this word.)

For evidence, look to the music industry. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, a new type of music appeared. This music, now called rap, featured an unusual instrument--the sampling machine. Rap music would take beats/melody/lyrics/etc from previously recorded songs and integrate them with new beats/melodies/lyrics/etc. At the time, critics blasted rap music as a sub-genre of music. It was an uncreative fad which would disappear. Twenty five years later, rap has all but taken over the air waves.

I believe QT is a sampler. He takes previous images and constructs them in a new way. Take Kill Bill. Numerous scenes were taken directly from other movies. (Game of Death; Lady Snowblood;Gone in 60 Seconds; others) The meshing of these works with QT's flair for dialogue gives the film a unique "feel."

This is a commentary on the stupidity of the American public, not on the dubious 'quality' of rap music as art.

Yeah, because only Americans rap, or like Rap, for that matter...

Oh, wait....

I feel more "opinion as fact" commentary coming.....

About Tarantino:

I like him when he makes little homages, like obscure in-jokes for the big movie fans. Take, for example, From Dusk Till Dawn, a Rodriguez film he scriped - one of the bits that made me laugh the loudest was the name of the Salma Hayek character, Santanico Pandemonium. If, like me, you hang out on IMDb's gargantuan Cult Movies board, reading posts until two o'clock in the morning, you will know that she is actually named from a nunsploitation film. :D Then you've got the kid with the "PRECINCT 13" t-shirt, and cult stars like Tom Savini, Cheech & Chong and John Saxon making little appearances (if Bruce Campbell was in it, he certainly wouldn't be out of place). Or if you prefer a film he directed, in Pulp Fiction, there's the Kiss Me Deadly suitcase and apparently a line from Charley Varrick somewhere.

Kill Bill however, though I enjoyed it, is a film that probably went a bit too far with its homages. I loved it, but I couldn't help but think it was some sort of cinematic masturbation at times. I hope it'll be the only one of his that will be like that, one self-indulgent project, and then he can go back to making "proper" films whose jokes are like little winks at the audience...

Rap remains primarily an American form and certainly primarily an American market. Remove the US from the equation and rap is not an international phenomenon.

Homage? :p

No thanks.

HipHopJapan

"Hip hop was underground for a long time, but now it's definitely becoming more and more mainstream, and its popularity is continuing to grow,"

UK HipHop

"I was really impressed with the local music scene as mad UK headz are getting on wax and have some solid tunes out."

HipHop Brazil

"Hip-hop was born in New York but if you talk to most young people in São Paulo, Brazil, they’ll tell you that they feel like it belongs to them."

Plenty more where those came from. So no, it most certainly isn't just a US market, and certainly would be a phenomenon if the US was removed from the equation.

And where did rap originate? And where do most of the biggest selling acts in the world hail from? And which country remains by far the largest consumer of rap 'music'?

Thanks for playing.

Ok, you don't rate rap as an art form (and so you don't buy gohan's analogy with cinematic homage etc). That's your opinion, fine.

Yet you seem to think you've proved that 'rap is crap' by pointing out that it originated in the US, and remains popular there. Not a particuarly subtle or convincing argument in the first place.

Unfortunately, for your argument, hiphop is enjoyed by people around the world, and is generated by them as well. You may not like it, but they do. That's the death-knell for you bizarre justification. It's considered art by others outside the US. Market share means little in this case, origins even less so.

At the end of the day, all you've managed to prove is that you don't like hiphop. (And that you think the US is the home of idiocy).

If not for the stupidity of the American public, rap would long ago have faded into the background. It's international popularity is entirely due to the American cultural colonization of the planet (the world being just as full of idiots as the US, many of whom will accept anything that is popular in America for that reason and that reason alone).

The point here is that you cannot justify 'homage' as a legitimate artistic end in-and-of-itself simply by referencing rap (and that's ignoring the obvious problem in comparing film and music, totally different artforms with totally different objectives achieved by totally different means).

And yeah, jungle thump sucks. This has been scientifically proven, however, as the studies have not yet been published, I am afraid I cannot discuss their content beyond the conclusions.

Look for the full write up in the September edition of Nature.

Call me crazy- but for the life of me i cant see how this can be justified as anything but opinion. Is it such a crazy notion that some things are popular because they might actually be good?

If you dont like rap- Go listen to Simon and Garfunkel. Lets get back to bitching about movies... ;)

Because most people are morons, popularity is more often than not inversely proportional to quality. The box office figures prove the truth of that statement on an almost weekly basis.

Hey you have joined my list. You need to get laid or something.:yup:

Well, we can't all be as enlightened as you, I'm afraid. Regardless, look at the top-grossing films of all-time. Most of them are, you know, pretty good.


They really don't. For one, even a movie which makes a great deal of money represents a small portion of the population. Second, many intelligent people see movies that could be characterized as stupid or unimaginative; wanting to unwind with a mindless comedy, or a series of explosions, is indicative of a desire to relax, not a lack of intelligence.

Concerning rap: it is like most other genres in that some of it is good (to those who can seperate individual songs from the quality of the genre in general), and some of it is bad. Big deal.

Christ, do you children have NO original insults?

Oh wait, you're just 'sampling,' jungle thump style.