Posts by philipmatthews
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Ha! Call me formulaic now!
Quite liked that actually. Sort of reminded me of Yes' Tales from Topographic Oceans but without Jon Anderson singing -- in other words, a vast improvement.
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And just a note to our fine friends in Wellington - if you are referred to one Fred Phillips (AKA bigotted ACT blogger "Boomtownprat") for orthapaedic surgery make a point of asking to be referred to someone else...
Or take your kids in with you.
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Formulaic? Funny thing about normative rules, an annoying percentage of people tend to follow them.
Here's why ...
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But would the best runner be the best athlete full stop
Or do we have separate 'runners' out as a subset of 'athletes', and put the 'pole vaulters' over there, and the 'swimmers' over here, and the 'shotputters' in another separate area? And then try to come up with some sort of empirical set of measurable standards to objectively define 'best athlete' which applies to all of them??
But why stop at athlete? Why not the best human? Best athlete over there, best surgeon over there, best mechanic over there, best chef over there and so on.
Which proves nothing other than that the running/cinematography analogy wasn't much good to start with.
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BTW, anyone pick up on the delicious irony-gasm of the very media outlets sneering at this sign as being "cheesy and parochial" getting rather drippy knickered and awfully parochial about Temuera Morrison and Taika Waititi being cast in supporting roles in 'Green Lantern'.
I know. I haven't been this excited since Rawiri Paratene was cast in Brett Leonard's straight-to-video Man Thing.
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Now I'm sure that Citizen Kane in very many terribly important respects is a better movie than Young Frankenstein, but if I had to bring just one of them on a desert island, I'd reach for Young Frankenstein without batting an eyelid.
Sure, and there are people -- Denis Dutton, say -- who would argue that the Beethoven piano sonatas are the apex of western cultural achievement. I would rather listen to The Clean. But that doesn't mean I think The Clean are better art.
Citizen Kane wouldn't be my desert island movie either. If I had to pick one, maybe Solaris.
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I just don't think it's a conclusion that can be reached without, you know, arguing.
I thought we were arguing. But I'm not going to try to prove to you that Citizen Kane is a better movie than Howard the Duck because I know you already agree. Or do you disagree?
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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?When you get into whether or not a film needs to conform to these kinds of story points to satisfy an audience is where good and bad can get subjective. We were talking about Tarkovsky earlier. He didn't exactly tick these boxes. Nor does Bela Tarr or Carlos Reygadas or Apichatpong Weerasethakul or any number of more experimental film-makers who haven't exactly been starved of praise from critics and festivals.
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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.
But children's movie is a subset of movie. The Godfather Part III is a better gangster film than 2001: A Space Odyssey. But no one would say it is a better film. Howard the Duck is a better film about a duck than Citizen Kane.
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You know I'm going to have to dispute that, right?
Please do. I should have qualified that with: my kids are girls aged six, five and three. But if your kids are Italian ...