Piranha 3D

Neither of those films try to depict the deaths of the characters on screen to be real.

Oh, and spoiler alert for Knowing.

__________________
"A laugh can be a very powerful thing. Why, sometimes in life, it's the only weapon we have."

Suspect's Reviews

Elaborate on this please. How are the deaths in those films not "real"?

__________________
"Loves them? They need them, like they need the air."

You do know the difference between a snuff film and our every day average blockbuster?

The type of camera and the distributor duh

I don't see how ANY depiction of death on screen comes CLOSER to being the real thing. I'm accusing your statement of being meaningless. It's all fakery. I don't see how a fake can become MORE real when it is forever encapsulated like that.

I mean, I think I know what you mean. Like it's in the "style" of one.

You think that an Orc being shot with an arrow from an Elf in a fantasy film is comparable to a woman being raped and stabbed to death numerous times in a film shot like a home movie at points?

Would you show your kids (assuming you have any) the latter because they've seen death in movies before and it's all the same?

Absolutely. Why not? I still don't think you get me here. There is no difference. Both are artificial. The woman probably had a good giggle about it afterwards on set. It's not any better or worse because its fake.

To say there is no difference is a giant leap in my opinion. People react differently to what is on screen, if it is more graphic, realistic and violent, then people will react differently than when James Bond shoots a guy and doesn't think twice.

Sure both are fake, but the two are saying totally different things. So there is a difference.

The phrase "death on film is death on film" is either really naive, or not something you yourself even believe. At best, your point is a semantic one demonstrating that, technically, no death on film is more or less "real" than any other. But you know quite well, I would hope, that "real" in this context means realistic, on-screen, or both. Or perhaps simply more brutal and graphic.

In other words, it's like correcting someone who calls American a democracy by pointing out it's actually a representative republic. Technically, it's true, but you know what they meant by it.

False dichotomy.

That's not what I mean at all, nor did I ever suggest it to mean so. This is your suggestion. I mean real in the only sense of the word real petit-r. Also, it's absolutely meant to be semantic, so the pejorative sense of the term fails here. Also, your arguments are wrong in either case. I used orcs and mass-extinction to draw specific attention to the careless but nevertheless absolutely realistic depiction of death on screen. Orcs are beheaded and orc-blood comes out? Is that realistic enough for you? Some of the action in LotR is actually quite lucid in the anatomically correct sense. James Bond is an even better, but less extreme example. When people are shot, they bleed. If we did not except either as real for the brief span of the film then it will have failed at suspending our disbelief.

No. I refuse to let "common sense" fill in the gaps, because that's where ideology works. You are the one who's naive, if you believe this is some kind of non-issue. Sorry to attack you personally, but you did first. I will call out anyone who throws around the word democracy carelessly. The truth is, no one really believes in it, and our government doesn't really function as one either. It is not even a representative democracy. Let's face it. No one believes in democracy because no one believes in communism. "Sure, it's the best system, but..." Sorry, but I still choose to believe. And it's yall Christians who accuse me of being faithless.

It's not even intended to be a dichomoty, it's what I judge as the two plausible explanations for saying such a thing.

I know; I'm saing that's what TUS meant by "real." Not that that's what you meant by it.

Yes, we suspend disbelief and accept things as "real" in order to enjoy a film and see what it has to show us. How does this make my arguments "wrong in either case"? How does it change the fact that you're simply arguing a completely different point than TUS by choosing to take his words literally?

I have no idea what those last couple of sentences mean, nor what they have to do with this topic. But the rest just seems like a drawn-out way of agreeing with what I said: that your argument is a technical, semantic one. You may think it's perfectly worthwhile to be this pedantic, but my description of the argument you were making was accurate. You're arguing with what was technically said, rather than what you undoubtedly knew was meant by the word "real."

Re: personal attacks. I don't think I personally attacked you, and I'm honestly sorry if you feel that way. My suggestion that what you said was either naive or not something you believed was meant to suggest the latter, because I don't think you're naive at all.

If you want to make the case that people should make less communicative assumptions and use words more precisely, there's a discussion to be had there. But I think it's lost in whatever else you're trying to say above, and I don't think this is the best way to take a "being literal is important" stand.

As you might recall, this discussion started because TUS likened A Serbian Film to a snuff film, and it's beyond argument that it comes a lot closer to this than The Lord of the Rings, because it depicts events which could theoretically happen in a snuff film, whereas LOTR does not. It depicts events which are realistic in the sense that they could actually happen. One could also say that a film is more realistic if it has less cinematic adornments than others; fewer special effects, fewer well-known actors, fewer musical cues, etc., can all contribute to the suspension of disbelief and the feeling that what one's watching is actually real. I'm not sure how or why anyone would dispute this.

You stressed an either-or. That limits it to two choices. However, neither of them really apply.

You began the sentence this rejects with the phrase "But you know quite well". Now you know, perhaps.

Your primary argument is that my statement, "death on film is death on film", is wrong since you accused me of not possibly being able to believe in it--in that it is too ludicrous to believe--and criticized the statement of being naive or over-simplified to the point of distorting the truth. Seeing as it is a tautology, I don't see how my meaning is lost between you and TUS. The secondary point is (not originally yours, but you seemed to have taken over for TUS's positions):I then tried to show the intentional realization of every death in cinema by pointing out the attention to realistic detail and physical/anatomical precision in LotR. This is how you are wrong on both fronts; that is, both the personal denunciation/reverse-flattery utter rejection of "death on film is death on film" and the idea that a film is somehow proportionally more or less in relation to reality petit-r when the subject matter is more or less conventional in nature.

Normally, this sort of pedantry (your accusation is accurate) would be uncalled for, but, in this case, I consider it to be entirely appropriate. This is because TUS was using the idea of this film being "closer" to a snuff film as a critique on the obscenity of A Serbian Film. In other words, TUS explicitly linked a work of cinema A Serbian Film to a morally disgusting method of documenting murder. While the plot of A Serbian Film deals directly with the creation of a snuff film (or series of snuff films), relating the film itself is an unfair criticism. This is what was said:Note the use of the word "They", i.e. refering to Srđan Spasojević and his fellow filmmakers, and the phrase "would be played theatrically", as if the film is somehow almost as reprehensible as an actual snuff film. Here TUS draws attention to the fact that A Serbian Film was indeed played in theaters and likens it to a hypothetical situation where a real petit-r snuff film is actually played in theaters. My argument is that the likelihood and moral/ethical character of A Serbian Film is absolutely no different than that of LotR, because both contain the on-screen depiction of death.

Here, I will attempt a valid dichotomy: It is either you have an absolute ethics of film where anything is allowed due to film's inherent artifice and asymptotic separation from reality, or you begin to treat the more upsetting aspects of cinema with the same ethics as that of reality itself.

Yoda, you have just personally insulted me in every conceivable way. Shame on you.

Whenever "common sense" is used to fill in the gaps between definition (id est, etymologically free from historically accepted meanings; the current, standard, common vernacular [democracy does not have a separate common vernacular definition, only a relatively carefree use], if need be even the regional "slang" meaning) and casual, everyday usage, ideology and mystification flourishes.

It is no argument to claim "beyond argument".

This is true for almost every narrative film, including fantasy films. We are, as an audience, transported to the world of the characters. We still sympathize with their death and wince when they get hurt.

Cinematic adornments like special effects and established actors are only so the film can achieve the most realistic depiction of what is imagined. Realism is still intended and perhaps even more so fought for in these sorts of films. Films without these "adornments" merely exist naturally as believable, so they don't have to exert as much effort to reach the same plane of believability. Musical cues are used to manipulate the audience's emotions so the emotional tone of the situation (the subjective reality of the film's characters) is imparted to the audience. Again, this is an attempt to achieve a more convincing simulacrum of reality petit-r.

So now you know how it's done.

You still care about this?

As long as he's willing to omnislash, I'm also willing. Take it as a gesture of respect.

For a brief moment I forgot about the real topic of this thread I'm going to see Piranha 3D.. Might be a great entertainment or not but I always like some bloody and sexy movies!

Then this is your movie.

Not going to see this at all. Good to see the review said it was not for kids. I include myself in that catagory because I hate bloody type movies.

this... but I also plan on being let down.. you know that empty feeling when you watch a movie that you quickly forget?

Way overdue on this, so I'll keep it fairly simple and skip to what I think is the core of the discussion.

If either of us were to see a snuff film, we'd have know way to know whether it was real aside from whether or not it depicted only plausible things. A Serbian Film is "closer" to a snuff film because it depicts things that could conceivably happen. Piranha 3D does not.

Whether or not TUS linking A Serbian Film to an actual snuff film depends on what he means by it, I think. If he means that it's no better, than yeah, that's wrong -- but there's no way that's what he meant. I'm sure he simply meant that it resembles one, and I would add that it probably gratifies the same kinds of impulses that would cause someone to want to see a snuff film to begin with.


But they do it for very different reasons, and in very different ways. I know, from other discussions, that you clearly regard the way in which a film depicts something to be every bit as important as the fact of what it's depicting, so I know you already appreciate the difference.

Yup; it's just meant to convey that no argument should be necessary. But if it is, I'll spell it out. See next response below.

All films will ultimately be projected in front of us and are clearly not actually happening in front of us. But a film can have more things that make this clear, or fewer. If we watch a documentary (provided it's an honest one), we know that these events took place and have been recorded; we need only displace ourselves in time to appreciate its truth. For The Lord of the Rings, we need to posit an entire world, and one that we know has never been real. It contains abstract truths demonstrated through implausible things. It is not more or less valuable, but it is less realistic.

Put in the simplest terms: we have reality, and depictions can therefore be either more or less like reality. Films that are more like reality in general are more realistic. A Serbian Film depicts things that could happen in reailty, and could be taped, and it appears to have a pretty modest amount of "adornment." The Lord of the Rings and Piranha 3D depict outrageous things that could never happen in reality, and contain a great deal of adornment. That's why one is more "realistic" than the other; because realism is not binary.

We all understand this on an instrinsic level, if not always a conscious one. Disturbing scenes that are stripped down of music and camera movement somehow seem "harder" and more "brutal." Slasher films, on the other hand, depict their deaths with plenty of sound effects and copious amounts of blood. They draw attention to how implausible their spectacles are. You may think this is an illusion, but you certainly must recognize that this "works" for most people, and the logic of "the more cinematic techniques used, the more obvious it will be that it's a movie" is pretty straightforward.

I saw this as part of a double-feature day at the cineplex: Piranha 3D and Scott Pilgrim. What a wonderful day! I can honestly say I never expected that I would - at some point in my life - be witness to a severed, bloody, floating, half-eaten CGI penis on the big screen, never mind in shimmering digital 3D.

__________________