Referring to Star Wars as a "phenomenon" with the implication that everything in it from the prequels to the Holiday Special is inherently sacrosanct compared to these three sequels (to say nothing of the implication by omission that Rogue One and Solo were perfectly adequate in comparison) is in itself one very pretentious claim to make.
Pretentious/Overblown Movies You Have Seen?
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Eh, he has Buffalo '66 in his top 10, his idea of what's overblown can be taken with a grain of salt.
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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0
I really just want you all angry and confused the whole time.
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All movies are entertainment, intended to sell tickets and food and to put butts in theater seats, after which some other people will stream, rent or purchase it.
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Look, I'm not judging you - after all, I'm posting here myself, but maybe, just maybe, if you spent less time here and more time watching films, maybe, and I stress, maybe your taste would be of some value. Just a thought, ya know.
Look, I'm not judging you - after all, I'm posting here myself, but maybe, just maybe, if you spent less time here and more time watching films, maybe, and I stress, maybe your taste would be of some value. Just a thought, ya know.
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I love the word pretentious. It says it perfectly, if you're cynical enough, pretending to be something that's not true, claiming higher values. All movies are entertainment, intended to sell tickets and food and to put butts in theater seats, after which some other people will stream, rent or purchase it.
In that context, a movie is great if it makes lots of money or at least makes as much money as its backers expect. Money wise, they can shoot high or low, but fulfilling expectations is the key here. As a marketing strategy, pretense is one where you claim high culture or a higher moral purpose, even though it's hard to define either. "Art" (note the capital A) gets mixed in there when something about the movie defies entertainment conventions. Making a pretentious movie or Art becomes a matter of marketing and expectations, the target audience and investors' willingness to fund something that's not just another reliable Batman movie.
Pretense is about making the audience think THEY are high culture because they are watching it, making it a bit obscure or rewarding thinkers who see a message in the movie. None of this is about a suffering artist laboring away in his garret, inhaling paint fumes until madness ensues. It's a corporate strategy, funded by guys who invest millions, expect to get additional millions in profit and want to show up in their nice clothes at the Oscar ceremony. As a consumer and producer of art who is pretentious enough to think somebody might like my stuff, I love movies, but I have no illusions.
In that context, a movie is great if it makes lots of money or at least makes as much money as its backers expect. Money wise, they can shoot high or low, but fulfilling expectations is the key here. As a marketing strategy, pretense is one where you claim high culture or a higher moral purpose, even though it's hard to define either. "Art" (note the capital A) gets mixed in there when something about the movie defies entertainment conventions. Making a pretentious movie or Art becomes a matter of marketing and expectations, the target audience and investors' willingness to fund something that's not just another reliable Batman movie.
Pretense is about making the audience think THEY are high culture because they are watching it, making it a bit obscure or rewarding thinkers who see a message in the movie. None of this is about a suffering artist laboring away in his garret, inhaling paint fumes until madness ensues. It's a corporate strategy, funded by guys who invest millions, expect to get additional millions in profit and want to show up in their nice clothes at the Oscar ceremony. As a consumer and producer of art who is pretentious enough to think somebody might like my stuff, I love movies, but I have no illusions.
Ah, yes, the 'capital A' art theory where we tell ourselves that anyone who dares enjoy something with 'higher ambitions' is in thrall to a global corporate conspiracy to make them believe they've seen something they haven't really seen.
Exactly the kind of reasoning we should expect from anyone who can't possibly fathom the notion that people might respond differently to films then they do. That might look for things that don't just get 'butts in theatres'.
I don't see this kind of thinking as cynical as much as a kind of subdued terror that everything on earth doesn't cater to their particular tastes. A deeply insecure refusal to even accept the possibility there are different ways to appreciate things.
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Airplane
I'm notoriously known as MoFo's greatest hater of Airplane!
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I wouldn’t use the word ‘pretentious’ myself, as that is likely to trigger a few people, but For me, so far, it’s Lucio Fulci films. I don’t get the supposed artistry I’ve heard attached to him. He’s fine, as I do enjoy his films to a degree, but I’m mostly left rolling my eyes at some of his scenes.
I imagine I’ll get into more of his films this Halloween, and a few of his Giallo is possible.
I imagine I’ll get into more of his films this Halloween, and a few of his Giallo is possible.
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I approve of that post...
I'm notoriously known as MoFo's greatest hater of Airplane!
I'm notoriously known as MoFo's greatest hater of Airplane!
Sorry, I was being ironic there. Airplane is pure goofball comedy. I just tried to think of the most unpretentious film I could think of which is also a "sacred cow." Airplane was the first thing I thought of.
That stated, I can see how a never ending string of simple gags might become grating. Most films in this genre annoy me, so I get it.
How do you feel about Top Secret? Do any films in the "goofball" genre work for you?
Sorry, I was being ironic there. Airplane is pure goofball comedy. I just tried to think of the most unpretentious film I could think of which is also a "sacred cow." Airplane was the first thing I thought of.
That stated, I can see how a never ending string of simple gags might become grating. Most films in this genre annoy me, so I get it.
How do you feel about Top Secret? Do any films in the "goofball" genre work for you?
That stated, I can see how a never ending string of simple gags might become grating. Most films in this genre annoy me, so I get it.
How do you feel about Top Secret? Do any films in the "goofball" genre work for you?
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074205/
But I don't why it's so lowly rated on IMDB compared to Airplane! I gotta believe that nostalgia and familiarity plays a big part it it. I mean everyone has seen Airplane! but how many grew up watching The Big Bus?
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Referring to Star Wars as a "phenomenon" with the implication that everything in it from the prequels to the Holiday Special is inherently sacrosanct compared to these three sequels (to say nothing of the implication by omission that Rogue One and Solo were perfectly adequate in comparison) is in itself one very pretentious claim to make.
I didn't say everything else labelled "Star Wars" is phenomenal - I specifically mentioned Force Awakens and its sequels as falling far, far and long ago from the Star Wars tree. I do love Rogue One. I did not like Solo, nor the Holiday Special. I believe I am not alone in calling Star Wars (George Luca's Star Wars, that is) phenomenal. Force Awakens and its sequels not only did not live up to the original Star Wars (or even the prequels), it embarassed and excruciatingly dragged the Star Wars name through the mud.
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Boldly going.
Boldly going.
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Which is why you've got to be specific. Definitely funny to single out Rogue One as the good Disney-era film - that one's its own kind of sloppy (and the CGI Tarkin is definitely a huge strike against it).
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I actually didn’t mind the latest Star Wars films, with the lone exception of Rogue One. Even Solo has a certain charm to it.
Are they perfect? No, of course not. Don’t be silly. But I enjoyed them enough.
Are they perfect? No, of course not. Don’t be silly. But I enjoyed them enough.
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I actually didn’t mind the latest Star Wars films, with the lone exception of Rogue One. Even Solo has a certain charm to it.
Are they perfect? No, of course not. Don’t be silly. But I enjoyed them enough.
Are they perfect? No, of course not. Don’t be silly. But I enjoyed them enough.
Oh boy, here we go...
The first act does not hold up well. I generally love quiet openers (e.g., There Will Be Blood) that show rather than telling, but this was a long opener. The ape suits are laughable and you can see "ape shoes" in one shot. For a man with an eye for detail, Kubrick missed the Monkey Loafers. The whole sequence looks quite dated. I have an edit of the film where we start with Dr. Floyd's trip to the moon and I think it's a better film for it.
The snap cut between the bone and the space ship is OK, but we cut to a cheap looking plastic model without weathering, surface details, or livery. It's like they went to the model shop, just glued something together, and filmed it with no paint treatment at all. The model looks like is "in the white."
Infinite Screensavers in the 3rd act. To infinity and beyond. Might have looked cool at the time. Now it looks like an overlong reel of old Microsoft Windows screensavers. This scene needed to be trimmed or should have permuted into some other visual idea. When Spaceballs has ships that go "Plaid" the joke is a reference to this rather awkward sequence.
The film gets some of the science wrong. The centrifuge is was not big enough to produce artificial gravity. Bowman should not have inhaled, but exhaled before chancing the void of space. Jupiter is not half-a-billion miles away. Is 2001 the best HARD science fiction film ever made? I think so? Is it perfect? No. Thus it deserves criticism. It is slightly overblown in puffery about it's accuracy.
The film is racist, colonialist, and basks in patriarchal assumptions of American exceptionalism. I only say this, because we can assert stuff like this without evidence these days, so why not?
What if we never spent a lot of time on the Moon? The aliens were waiting for us to develop an advanced enough technological society to visit the moon. But what if we became an advanced non-space-faring civilization? Or what if we only sent a few probes, found it uninteresting and set our sights on Mars first?