Capo
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Post by Capo on Aug 15, 2008 17:54:38 GMT
It is. But no moreso, I think, than my bygone navel-gazing eisegetics. And I abandoned that kind of 'criticism' ages ago. Between then and now writing about films has been tiresome, because it's amounted to little more than indexing a bunch of formal attributes and making value judgements on them; I love how he cuts here and I love the pace of this pan - as though these things can ever be understood in isolation from their application. Frankly, I just feel like if anything has happened recently, it's that I've become reinterested in cinema and am in a position in which I'm inclined to be more honest with myself. That makes a lot of sense. I was just interested in whether you'd been reading anything or anyone in particular (film or non-film stuff, university work, etc.) to catalyse this new appreciation. And if it's causing you to see faults in films you once thought were great, does it also mean you might be re-evaluating films you've hitherto disliked? At any rate, I'm glad you're posting in film threads again.
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Capo
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Post by Capo on Aug 19, 2008 18:08:18 GMT
Geoff Andrew (is he still film editor of Time Out?) writes an article on Clint Eastwood in the newest (September's) Sight & Sound, asking in its premise whether Clint's the "greatest living American director". I read the article late last night, but don't think he even probed the question further, much less answered it.
At any rate, I'd disagree completely with him.
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Post by svsg on Aug 19, 2008 18:14:31 GMT
Geoff Andrew (is he still film editor of Time Out?) writes an article on Clint Eastwood in the newest (September's) Sight & Sound, asking in its premise whether Clint's the "greatest living American director". I read the article late last night, but don't think he even probed the question further, much less answered it. At any rate, I'd disagree completely with him. I presume your candidate is Malick, am I wrong? I somehow feel that he is an obscure director (not commenting on the quality of his films). If I randomly pick 10 people on the street, it is highly likely that no one would have heard of him.
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Post by svsg on Aug 19, 2008 18:17:05 GMT
Geoff Andrew (is he still film editor of Time Out?) writes an article on Clint Eastwood in the newest (September's) Sight & Sound, asking in its premise whether Clint's the "greatest living American director". I read the article late last night, but don't think he even probed the question further, much less answered it. At any rate, I'd disagree completely with him. I presume your candidate is Malick, am I wrong? I somehow feel that he is an obscure director (not commenting on the quality of his films). If I randomly pick 10 people on the street, it is highly likely that no one would have heard of him. I am not intending to go anywhere with that fact. Just felt that not all greats are the same. Hitchcock was able to achieve quality and popularity. Others have not managed to engage a large section of the audience.
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Capo
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Post by Capo on Aug 20, 2008 16:57:40 GMT
Malick's highly regarded among cinephiles. The 'general public' won't know of him; but I think that could be said for most artists. Hitchcock, even ("which cock?").
Yeah, Malick and Lynch are my favourite American directors. Wetdog's mentioned how the latter seems overly interested in maintaining his own air of mystery, and questions the artistic seriousness behind that, but Malick's own 'reclusiveness' is well noted too. (I'm not sure if I agree with that notion, though: I don't know how you can direct a film and be reclusive at the same time. Telepathy aside.)
I like Sofia Coppola, too.
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Capo
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Post by Capo on Aug 20, 2008 17:06:24 GMT
I don't know if anyone here read the Fowles quotes in my Daniel Martin thread, but one is quite related to the vibes in this thread: The commercial cinema is like a hallucinogenic drug: it distorts the vision of all who work in it. What is at stake behind the public scenes is always personal power and prestige, which reduce the industry to a poker-table where every player must, if he is to survive, become some kind of professional cheat, or hustler. Success is always with the two-faced; and one can no more enter the game innocently (though Dan did his best) than a house with BORDELLO in neon lights across its front. That its madams, pimps, whores and bullies masquerade publicly as 'distinguished' directors and stars, famous producers and agents, simply shows how much there is to hide.
It cannot be an art, in this form. No art could so invariably prefer the crook to the honest man, the Tartuffe to the plainspeaker, the mediocrity to the genius, accountancy to all aesthetic and moral principle; could install a debased argument from populism, pandering to the lowest common denominator, at its heart. One day history will ask why so few truly adult films were ever made in the two countries with the most opportunities; what fatal reaction it was in the forced marriage between the Jewish and the Anglo-Saxon race-minds that generated so much corrupt shimmer, and so little real substance; and why such a hugely disproportionate amount of the lasting proof that the cinema can be an art, and a very great one, has come from countries outside the English-speaking world.He wrote that in the late '70s.
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RNL
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Post by RNL on Aug 20, 2008 17:46:11 GMT
Wetdog's mentioned how the latter seems overly interested in maintaining his own air of mystery, and questions the artistic seriousness behind that, but Malick's own 'reclusiveness' is well noted too. I'm not sure if you intended an equation there, but if so I'll say there's a huge difference between doing no press and doing lots of press that's contrived to cultivate an air of kooky eccentricity around yourself. I mean, there's a cult of personality surrounding Tarantino, but he lets everybody know exactly what he's about. Lynch perhaps wants to have his cake and eat it too; having separate factions of his fanbase believing on the one hand that his films are heavily encoded and decipherable, and on the other hand that they're downloaded into the camera straight from his unconscious. Lynch is almost without peer in his expressionistic command of sound and imagery (particularly sound), but he's apparently got nothing much to express. And if the film has arse-all intellectual content, and is intended to be appreciated entirely 'intuitively' or whatever, then what separates it qualitatively from Transformers? I mean, as visceral entertainment goes, I'll personally take David Lynch over Michael Bay, but if it's empty it's empty, and if it's status quo it's status quo, irrespective of its exclusivity and niche appeal.
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Post by svsg on Aug 20, 2008 18:15:57 GMT
I guess if we want to distinguish visceral entertainment qualitatively, we need to measure it in terms of its impact on us. Some non-intellectual films can be impacting and inspiring, others engage our attention for two hours.
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RNL
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Post by RNL on Aug 20, 2008 18:21:17 GMT
I meant more objectively. I mean, I lost myself in Inland Empire and was bored to death by Transformers. I know which one I prefer. But if both Michael Bay and David Lynch are reacting without much deliberation or awareness to whatever it is in their environments that's influencing them, what's the qualitative difference between them as artists?
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Post by svsg on Aug 20, 2008 18:43:24 GMT
I meant more objectively. I mean, I lost myself in Inland Empire and was bored to death by Transformers. I know which one I prefer. But if both Michael Bay and David Lynch are reacting without much deliberation or awareness to whatever it is in their environments that's influencing them, what's the qualitative difference between them as artists? My speculation is that only Lynch has this complex/muddled creative process (he talks about it in an interview, you tube it). Michael Bay, in all likelihood is making films with full awareness, but just not appealing to a certain audience.
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Capo
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Post by Capo on Aug 21, 2008 19:42:51 GMT
I meant more objectively. I mean, I lost myself in Inland Empire and was bored to death by Transformers. I know which one I prefer. But if both Michael Bay and David Lynch are reacting without much deliberation or awareness to whatever it is in their environments that's influencing them, what's the qualitative difference between them as artists? I'd expect Bay is much more aware of the commercial potential of his films; what's 'hip' or fashionable or trendy enough to put bums on seats. (And perhaps there's a lot more to it than that, of course, but my point stands.) Lynch seems to embrace the "everyone sees a different film" notion, seems to embrace the idea of multiple meanings/interpretations, and works intuitively from that, from what 'feels right'. It's well known at how much he's at a loss for words in interviews on his working technique, on how he knows what to do. Bay's approach is a lot more rigid than that, I'd assume; and as a result, there's little room for his audience to interpret, too. Am I right in thinking you're no longer putting (as much) value on the sensory experience of watching a film, when coming to 'grade' it? That something else is now involved (it seems to be authorial intent, how the filmmaker approaches the work when making it)? I'd put Lynch up there as one of the most significant directors currently working, whatever his nationality; and I'm measuring that on his films, on how they affect me emotionally and intellectually, during and after viewing them. Malick, too.
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Capo
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Post by Capo on Aug 21, 2008 19:46:29 GMT
Oh, I've just re-read this: Lynch perhaps wants to have his cake and eat it too; having separate factions of his fanbase believing on the one hand that his films are heavily encoded and decipherable, and on the other hand that they're downloaded into the camera straight from his unconscious. I know what you mean. The 10 (non-)helpful clues that come with the Mulholland Dr. DVD; the promotional campaign for Inland Empire ("without this cow, there'd be no milk in Inland Empire"). But I'm interested in how you respond to my previous post. Interested, too, in your updated scores in Lynch's thread. I guess another way of putting my question is thus: Do you think Lynch is simply encouraging your "(bygone navel-gazing) eisegetics" with his films, is conscious of the inevitably multiple interpretations of his films? And is your problem with how he contradicts that with stuff like the Mulholland clues? (Would you think higher of him, as a filmmaker or artist, if he embraced the former without the contradictory 'clues'?)
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Post by svsg on Aug 21, 2008 20:07:27 GMT
and I'm measuring that on his films, on how they affect me emotionally and intellectually, during and after viewing them. Malick, too. My point too. Personal impact is probably the only way to measure the merit of a movie. As all appreciation of art is subjective, I am not very big on objective measures. Not even authorial intent. If someone makes a formulaic film with no thought and a person X likes it, it is okay for person X to rate the film higher than all the artistic innovations and intentions. Michael Bay can certainly be rated higher than Tarkovsky or Malick in somebody's book. I don't think one can bring in any objective measures here. This is bringing back the "best vs favorite" debate in some other form.
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RNL
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Post by RNL on Aug 28, 2008 2:57:51 GMT
I meant more objectively. I mean, I lost myself in Inland Empire and was bored to death by Transformers. I know which one I prefer. But if both Michael Bay and David Lynch are reacting without much deliberation or awareness to whatever it is in their environments that's influencing them, what's the qualitative difference between them as artists? My speculation is that only Lynch has this complex/muddled creative process (he talks about it in an interview, you tube it). Michael Bay, in all likelihood is making films with full awareness, but just not appealing to a certain audience. Yeah, he talks about it all the time, and quite disingenuously I think; evasively and mystifyingly. But I'm not saying their working methodologies are the same. I'm saying they're both "reacting without much deliberation or awareness to whatever it is in their environments that's influencing them". The commonality is the lack of intellectual integrity. The commonality is the absence of a crucial artistic ethic. What is "full awareness", and in what sense do you imagine Lynch's "awareness" to be less "full" than Bay's? I would imagine they direct their films in similar states of consciousness. Lynch's intuitive predilection toward dark, pregnant spaces and ominous non-sequiturs is, it seems, the recipient of no more intellectual examination by the artist than Bay's intuitive predilection for explosions and demolitions and macho one-liners is. Neither Lynch nor Bay are mindfully engaging with real life, and such being the case they're subject to its tides and currents.
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Post by svsg on Aug 28, 2008 3:15:56 GMT
I don't know about Lynch, that is why I used the word "speculate". I don't quite understand (whatever that should mean) his films. So, when I look towards his interviews to get some clarity, he makes it even more mysterious.
As far as Bay is concerned, I don't know if it is correct to say that he lacks artistic integrity because his movies are not intellectual or that his work has very little to do with real life. Some people make exclusively escapist cinema, where the intention is to get away from (escape, to be precise) the real life and its limitations and frustrations. Personally I don't like escapist cinema. Even if it is fantasy, I want it to be based on real human thought process and experience, not some ridiculous explosion stuff or hacking Pentagon computers etc. But I can't doubt his integrity because he makes films I don't like. I am not categorical about Lynch. He could be a fraud.
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RNL
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Post by RNL on Aug 28, 2008 3:59:27 GMT
I meant more objectively. I mean, I lost myself in Inland Empire and was bored to death by Transformers. I know which one I prefer. But if both Michael Bay and David Lynch are reacting without much deliberation or awareness to whatever it is in their environments that's influencing them, what's the qualitative difference between them as artists? I'd expect Bay is much more aware of the commercial potential of his films; what's 'hip' or fashionable or trendy enough to put bums on seats. (And perhaps there's a lot more to it than that, of course, but my point stands.) Lynch seems to embrace the "everyone sees a different film" notion, seems to embrace the idea of multiple meanings/interpretations, and works intuitively from that, from what 'feels right'. It's well known at how much he's at a loss for words in interviews on his working technique, on how he knows what to do. Bay's approach is a lot more rigid than that, I'd assume; and as a result, there's little room for his audience to interpret, too. Both of these points might be valid, but I clarified myself above. Lynch and Bay lack for the same artistic attribute. The same crucial attribute. Authorial intent, sure. That's a big deal. Authorial assumption too. But they're just one (dual, in a sense) aspect of the conditions under which the film was created, which primarily determine what the film is. A film is what it is, to put it tautologically. We either want to understand that, and try to, or we don't. I explained my position better here.
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RNL
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Post by RNL on Aug 28, 2008 4:02:30 GMT
Do you think Lynch is simply encouraging your "(bygone navel-gazing) eisegetics" with his films, is conscious of the inevitably multiple interpretations of his films? And is your problem with how he contradicts that with stuff like the Mulholland clues? (Would you think higher of him, as a filmmaker or artist, if he embraced the former without the contradictory 'clues'?) I wouldn't think higher of his films. Of him personally, though, I suppose so.
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Post by svsg on Aug 28, 2008 4:09:55 GMT
On authorial intentions and conditions under which a film is made:
Maybe we have not experienced something that the author feels very passionately about and hence we are not able to appreciate it. Authorial intentions are not very obvious.
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RNL
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Post by RNL on Aug 28, 2008 4:27:48 GMT
and I'm measuring that on his films, on how they affect me emotionally and intellectually, during and after viewing them. Malick, too. My point too. Personal impact is probably the only way to measure the merit of a movie. As all appreciation of art is subjective, I am not very big on objective measures. Not even authorial intent. If someone makes a formulaic film with no thought and a person X likes it, it is okay for person X to rate the film higher than all the artistic innovations and intentions. Michael Bay can certainly be rated higher than Tarkovsky or Malick in somebody's book. I don't think one can bring in any objective measures here. This is bringing back the "best vs favorite" debate in some other form. How can the evaluation of an object be only subjective? Sorry, but that's such a banality. Surely, intrinsically, any evaluation of an object requires both an object to be evaluated and a subject to assign it a value. And surely the factors that determine the qualities of that assigned value are only the subject's understanding of the identity of the object, however comprehensive that understanding may be. So, what an object is is what determines our evaluation of it. That's true. Truism actually. But what's your point? The fact is that the author had intentions. Ascertaining what those intentions were does improve our understanding of what the film is, which is the sole criterion by which we determine its value. So, difficult to clearly and fully identify as it may indeed be, authorial intention is of paramount importance in evaluating a film (if you want to understand the film to the best of your ability before you do so, that is).
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RNL
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Post by RNL on Aug 28, 2008 4:40:01 GMT
As far as Bay is concerned, I don't know if it is correct to say that he lacks artistic integrity because his movies are not intellectual or that his work has very little to do with real life. Some people make exclusively escapist cinema, where the intention is to get away from (escape, to be precise) the real life and its limitations and frustrations. Personally I don't like escapist cinema. Even if it is fantasy, I want it to be based on real human thought process and experience, not some ridiculous explosion stuff or hacking Pentagon computers etc. But I can't doubt his integrity because he makes films I don't like. If 'escapist' art is art that does not engage directly with real life (which seems to be how you're defining it, in acknowledging that fantasy can be non-escapist), then people who make exclusively 'escapist' art are not serious artists and are therefore lacking artistic integrity. I've more commonly understood 'escapist' to be roughly synonymous with 'fantastical', and so to carry no intrinsic implications of a lack of seriousness. Though, yeah, connotations of it. But you can treat life seriously in the most fantastical and light-hearted of scenarios. Bay doesn't. And nor, I think, does Lynch.
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