Posts by Rich Lock
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Does it have unity of action, time and place? Aristotle is going to insist on this.
Yes, but I've never been able to take him seriously as a director since Godfather vs MechaGodzilla.
What a turkey that was.
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Expect Jonathan Livingston Seagull by around page 17.
But that's just a book about a bird with magic powers, though. Right...?
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The Little Mermaid would be more suitable than The Godfather. But it's not a better movie.
It's a better children's movie, though.
So separating subjective/objective good/bad is quite difficult.
It seems like what is wanted is a set of objective measuring tools that crosses all genres.
For example, off the top of my head:
Does it relate to one of the seven basic plot types?
Does it follow the 3-act structure?
Does the 'break into the second' occur on or around minute 13?
Is the narrative arc of the main character strong and focussed?Those would be examples of your top-level ones.
The you might have secondary ones, like:
Is it well-acted?
Is it well-lit?
Was the audio good?
Did it contain, where appropriate, good use of 'show, don't tell'?and so on.
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a film can be used to pass the time, impress a date, learn factual information from, etc., but "good"/"bad"/"better"/"worse" means judging a film as a film, ie it's aesthetic qualities.
Ah, but you'd probably choose a different type of film, based on whichever one of those scenarios was applicable, no?
If you wanted to impress a date, you probably wouldn't go to see L'Humanité - a film which (and not to beat about the bush, if you'll excuse the phrase) opens with an extreme close-up of a dead womans vagina.
Depending on the date, of course. On the first date with the lady who was subsequently foolish enough to marry me, I thought it was quite appropriate to choose 'Apocalypse Now'. Hmmmm, I love the smell of romance in the morning.
So whether a film is 'good', or 'bad' is going to be contextually dependent.
Rich, I must be Asian then, because I loved The Seven Samurai and was also bemused by Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon , and have still yet to see Citizen Kane despite a lifetime of assurances I can't live without it.
Ah, but we're not talking about you, Ben. We're talking about those others. Them. That amorphous mass out there somewhere. Lurking. Waiting. That blank canvas onto which we can project.
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a sharp saw is "better saw" than a blunt saw
Well, that does rather depend on the use you're going to put it to. If all you want to do is test your newly-invented saw sharpening machine, then you might think a blunt saw is better.
Depends on how you frame the question. Or, as Chris rather wittily put it
So is a sharp saw or a blunt saw better for playing Mozart on?
Dunno. but I'd be up the front, throwing the goat.
it suggests that we have a homogeneous view on the matter [Citizen Kane]
And that rather depends on how you define 'we'. Western cinema, sure. But do the Japanese think it's the best film EVAR? Or do they prefer 'Seven Samurai'?
'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon' was well recieved in 'the west', but I remember reading about how it was greeted with a fat yawn in SE Asia, and they had trouble working out why westerners were going gaga over it.
Which has led me back to thinking about Avatar. Is part of the problem some people have with the fuss caused because it doesn't, for want of a better phrase, 'know it's place'.
I doubt any food critics are going to get their knickers in a twist over the release of a new McChicken Supreme Burger, no matter how tangy the special sauce is. But if Maccas released a new 3-D burger, and gallons of ink and hundreds of kilobytes were expended in The Serious Press about it's cultural significance, you might get more than a few heads meeting desks aound the place.
So '2012' was big dumb fun. No more, no less. It knew it's place. But Avatar? Well, it's significant, innit? And that Matrix? Deep, man... Made me think about the nature of reality and all that.
So for whatever reasons, 'The Matrix', and 'Avatar' get treated seriously. Because their makers are po-faced egotists and demand that they are. Because the films were successful. Because success gets confused with significance by the critics. Because audiences are unsophisticated. Because there's no such thing as serious journalism any more, so big equals significant. Look! a dog with a fluffy tail! Because whatever.
But by attaching that significance to something, maybe it's perceived as demeaning or belittling values that others hold to be precious? Haven't got time to think this through fully, cos the babies crying, but possibly?
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He is losing you, Rich, because he is talking bollocks. Pirsig is claiming that aesthetic values are objective truths; more than that he wants these values to be accepted as elementary and natural. His aim is anti-intellectual, to prevent discussion. We must accept wisdom instead: that the wise (people like him) can detect this quality and we must accept their wisdom.
I'm starting to suspect you're right. But at least I'll be able to say I've read it. Next up in Essential Reading for the Modern Masochist: Finnegans Wake!
But at some point, you have to accept that some things actually *are* artistically 'better' than other things
So which is better artistically Hamlet or Lear? Tolstoy or Dumas?
I guess I'm reiterating your point another way Danielle. That is that only analysis and criticism can provide a satisfactory answer to this question.
But if some things are 'better' than others, that implies there is a way to 'measure' the 'betterness' of them.
So who sets the rules?
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it did suggest that the book [Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance] was a bit of a gyp in its grandiose title.
Well, to be fair to him, the 'author's note' on the very first page says:
[this book] should in no way be associated with that great body of factual information relating to orthodox Zen Buddhist practice. It's not very factual on motorcycles either.
It was also written in 1974, when field-stripping and repairing more or less the whole of a bike using just the tools you carry with you was quite possible. And knowing everything about computers, from code to hardware was probably possible, too.
Field repair of a modern fuel-injected bike? Not so easy. But they do tend to go wrong a whole lot less....
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But isn't that marketing? It's marketing that tells you that the correct response to an arthouse film is reflection
Well, depends on the film. In the case of L'Humanité, the film is very skillfully made and forces you to reflect on certain aspects and unanswered questions.
I've also sat through some gawdawful arthouse guff where the only thing I've been minded to reflect on is whether I can get my money back. It's failed both as entertainment and as an aid to reflection.
If you take 2012, for instance, that's what the film is overtly about, it stops just short of making the characters wear t-shirts that say "this film is stupid, don't bother analysing it". Avatar is different, though, it tries to be deep and meaningful; so does The Matrix. Both Cameron and the Wachowskis have made explicit claims in this regard. Cameron even spoke Na'vi at an award ceremony for heaven's sake.
A fair point, but possibly a case of 'Emperor's new clothes'?
After the release of 'Matrix:Revolutions', I suspect people weren't so much sniggering up their sleeves as guffawing openly in the faces of the Wachowski brothers.
The appropriate context for the Hollywood 'community' is success. It's all they care about. And since Avatar was successful, no-one is going to call Emperor Cameron on it. But despite the deluge of articles analysing Avatar from a thousand different perspectives, is anyone outside Hollywood and The Internet really taking it that seriously?
So on the one hand it's the films themselves that claim to be about big ideas and Truth and not just the spectacle. But then if you do try to examine those big ideas, you get shot down pretty much right away. People take actual offense. And that's really the extent of my objection to Avatar and the Matrix - not that they're bad films, but that they're bad films that narrowly define how you're allowed to feel about them. I think that from a cultural point of view this is not harmless but actually quite unhealthy.
A thought: Perhaps part of the problem is the reaction of the forum/community that you are attempting to discuss this within?
Cameron/The Wachowski brothers almost certainly don't give a monkey's whether the world outside Hollywood think the films are good or not. They were successful, and that's all their peers care about.
You/I/we don't head to 'Yourviews' for a detailed discussion on...well, anything, really.
But you did come here and raise some points about Avatar - to a community you perhaps anticipated would be more receptive to an in-depth anaysis? And you didn't get the reaction you expected. Is that perhaps part of the frustration? Hope that's not out of line.
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Anyone read 'zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance'?
One of those books that everyone knows but no-one has read. I'm halfway through a library copy.
The author delves quite deeply into what he calls the metaphysics of quality:
"Quality," or "value," as described by Pirsig, cannot be defined because it empirically precedes any intellectual construction of it. Quality is the "knife-edge" of experience, known to all. "What distinguishes good and bad writing? Do we need to ask this question of Lysias or anyone else who ever did write anything?" (Plato's Phaedrus, 258d). Pirsig postulates that Quality is the fundamental force in the universe stimulating everything from atoms to animals to evolve and incorporate ever greater levels of Quality. According to the MOQ, everything (including the mind, ideas, and matter) is a product and a result of Quality.
Make of that what you will. He's losing me a little because I tend to think that quality is entirely contextual, something he has only mentioned in passing so far.
If I want to switch my brain off and be childishly delighted by large explosions for a couple of hours, then I'll watch Avatar, or Terminator 2, or 300.
If I want to watch a film that really, y'know tell me something about the human condition (or to impress a chick), I'll go and watch a French film that includes a 15 minute sequence of a guy cycling up a hill, with nothing on the soundtrack except his tortured breathing.
Similarly, I'll read Camus, or Pablo Neruda if I want something 'heavy', or I'll read something with embossed gold writing on the cover if I just want to relax and turn my brain off for a few hours.
Whether something is 'good', or 'bad' seems to be entirely dependent on the context of how the question is asked, to me.
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The hostility to criticism in this thread is reaching truly heroic proportions.
I am a servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the Flame of Anor. The dark fire will not avail you, Flame of Udun! Go back to the shadow. YOU SHALL NOT CRITICISE!
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I'll get me cloak...