Movies discussion

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Captain_Wrathbow
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Re: Movies discussion

Post by Captain_Wrathbow »

@Insinuator:
Spoiler:
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Dunno
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Re: Movies discussion

Post by Dunno »

Anyone else can't wait to see the new Tarantino? I'm excited :D
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Jetrel
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Re: Movies discussion

Post by Jetrel »

I saw the hobbit; I was pleasantly surprised.

As I feared, Peter Jackson gets up to his usual slapstick and goofy horseshit; what I didn't expect was that it ... worked. The whole movie was presented in a way that somehow just made that okay. There are things in the movie that peter jackson does that should make me want to strangle him, and somehow he was able to maneuver me, emotionally, into a place where I was able to lighten up and enjoy those things. It's really bizarre that this worked, because it seriously didn't in lord of the rings. There's something subtle going on that's hard to describe, and I haven't quite figured it out. I don't think that refuge in the cheap idea that this is merely a lighter-hearted tale is sufficient to explain it - there's something else going on. Anyways, most importantly, it's able to do this without detracting from the emotional gravitas of things happening in the story. Tragedy does not feel robbed of its meaning by comedy, which it did at times in LotR.

The other greatly encouraging thing was that the pace was way better than lord of the rings. The pace was "just right" - not enough to make anything feel dragged out, just enough that things weren't one-dimensional. Too much stuff in lord of the rings felt like a rushed museum tour - you'd encounter a new story-point, and a character would rattle through a forced exposition describing how "these are the such-and-such, which are important because of so on and so forth, and next, we have the so-and-so, which is ...". The hobbit confirms my suspicion that lotr would have been much better made into much, much slower-paced work (which logistically/financially just wasn't possible). Peter Jackson seemed to have graduated into knowing (or just having the screen-time to be able) to show, rather than tell, which made several things immensely better.

Lastly, even the inevitable "liberties with the source material" were pretty harmless - mostly because most of them were legit with the backstory. This isn't a translation of "the hobbit, the book" to the screen, instead, the movie covers the things that led up to what happened in the hobbit (i.e. thorin's history, which gets expounded on in LotR's appendices and makes him a way more well-rounded character). It also covers what the heck gandalf was up to during all those times when he "disappeared" during the hobbit.
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Dunno
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Re: Movies discussion

Post by Dunno »

Jetrel wrote:As I feared, Peter Jackson gets up to his usual slapstick and goofy horseshit; what I didn't expect was that it ... worked. The whole movie was presented in a way that somehow just made that okay. There are things in the movie that peter jackson does that should make me want to strangle him, and somehow he was able to maneuver me, emotionally, into a place where I was able to lighten up and enjoy those things. It's really bizarre that this worked, because it seriously didn't in lord of the rings. There's something subtle going on that's hard to describe, and I haven't quite figured it out. I don't think that refuge in the cheap idea that this is merely a lighter-hearted tale is sufficient to explain it - there's something else going on. Anyways, most importantly, it's able to do this without detracting from the emotional gravitas of things happening in the story. Tragedy does not feel robbed of its meaning by comedy, which it did at times in LotR.
We have a saying in Poland: if you don't know what's it all about, it's about money (perhaps there is an equivalent of it in English, but I don't know any). The perfect audience for a movie is probably 10-16 years old - young enough to go with their parents and old enough to go with their friends at the same time. So if a story turns out more tragic and scary, the movie is "lightened up" like in LotR. Hobbit, however, is more fairy-talish, imo, and it had to be tuned up in the other way.
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Re: Movies discussion

Post by TheScribe »

I just watched the movie "Here Comes the Boom". I quite enjoyed it. Surprisingly, all of the MMA moves in it were real, which is more than I can say for some movies...
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Re: Movies discussion

Post by Sleepwalker »

I have gotten twice as old since I read the book The Hobbit, my memory of it is quite small.

I saw the movie 3 weeks ago, and while it wasn't great, overall it was entertaining... I couldn't fully embrace all the sillyness.

I liked most dwarf-related things in it, and yeah the riddle part was probably the favorite part.

One lost interesting opportunity I think was when having the meeting with Saruman and co. I was hoping to perhaps see some glimmer of wisdom and goodwill in him before his fall. But nope he was already arrogantly one-sided anti-everything... Azog had a son in the book? Well, I don't see why it would be better with a less sympathetic villain.

I liked Radagast, except for the silly race with the warg.

Some of the physics defying fights such as the escape at the goblin kings place and the stone giants one kind of bored me. I just lost any suspense of disbelief.

I hated the goblin king and the Trolls were a little too silly for me. In the fight I couldn't help thinking just make a low horizontal sweep with the arm/weapon and there- dwarves smashed you stupid troll. :roll:
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Jetrel
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On the subject of Canon

Post by Jetrel »

Sleepwalker wrote:I hated the goblin king and the Trolls were a little too silly for me. In the fight I couldn't help thinking just make a low horizontal sweep with the arm/weapon and there- dwarves smashed you stupid troll. :roll:
:| Having recently read the book, I have to say the trolls were spot-on. Which if anything points to a pretty serious disjoint in tolkien's original works; you go from the hobbit where trolls are sapient creatures able to think, able to even have ideas about civilization and things like cuisine, to LotR where it's like they've been fully retconned into being speechless brutes led by orcs as beasts of burden.

There's a lot of this all over the story, beyond just this one mismatch, and frankly I think what it points to is that the notion of "one true interpretation" falls apart even for tolkien himself. In fact I think this points to an essential, foundational flaw in the very idea of canon in any literature whatsoever. I think the central "mote" is that authors try to express mutually contradictory ideas - and rather than being a mistake that needs to be papered over, this is the very thing that makes them human and that gives their work soul and substance. It is that humans are ephemeral, changing creatures that are nearly impossible to wring absolutes out of - and that our most deep and meaningful thoughts and emotions are almost all self-contradictory in nature.

I think the fullest expression of this comes out of the profession of acting, where not only does one actor bring a new interpretation to a work by being a new actor lined up to perform it, but the actor themselves often has many different interpretations of a role which they pick and choose from. Sometimes Hamlet is grim and fatalistic. Sometimes Hamlet is paranoid and delusional. Sometimes Hamlet is indecisive and insecure. Sometimes Hamlet is foppish and unaware of the tragedies he's causing. Sometimes Hamlet isn't a tragedy at all, but instead a comedy of errors and a satire of the foibles of aristocracy. Sometimes Hamlet is gay, sometimes he's straight. All of these are quite contradictory; we've reached a point as a society where we can treat these all as mutually valid, but also mutually valuable to tell.


I suspect that "valuable to tell" aspect is the root of why we're concerned with canon as a society. I think we correctly feel that only a certain interpretation of a story carries a certain meaning. I think we lash out against other interpretations because of a fear that they'll choke out and kill off our preferred interpretation. I think especially (and perhaps correctly) people fear that some interpretations, especially the more 'sound and fury'-type interpretations, have much greater memetic fitness than the subtler and more rarified, more "noble" interpretations.

I'm not sure this is a well-founded fear, though. I think if an interpretation naturally arises from given material, it will always naturally keep springing up again, like a weed. I don't think a "quaint and fun" interpretation has the power to wipe out the "grim and noble" interpretation - any more than a movie has the power to wipe out a book it was based on. If anything, I expect it greatly increases the number of people who go for the latter interpretation, because it spreads the work to a great many people, and I suspect "interpretation" mostly depends on the audience. No matter how hard you stay "on message", it's not going to work unless you're reaching people predisposed to connect with it. But if you do reach people who are predisposed, they'll see the diamond for what it is, whether it's polished or in-the-rough, they will see its true value. If a canonical interpretation is, metaphorically, a virus we want to spread, then the people who never would buy into that canonical interpretation are still valuable as carriers.



There's a certain "thought police" aspect to canon that really bugs me. It's partly because of the intrusive way it goes around and says to people "you're only allowed to think about this work a certain way". But it's also the futility of it - forcing them to think about it a certain way just doesn't work. If a certain interpretation doesn't resonate with them, we can't force it to by making it the only official interpretation. The only thing we accomplish by doing that it driving them away from the work, period - which loses them as a carrier to others. Furthermore, I think we lose our own exposure to other interpretations which we aren't predisposed to like, but which are nevertheless fundamentally valuable and important to experience. We enter an echo chamber where we only hear what we want to hear.
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Sleepwalker
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Re: Movies discussion

Post by Sleepwalker »

That's an interesting read.

It wouldn't have mattered if this was set in Middle earth or not. If the movie was unrelated to Tolkien I would have still thought the same way about it, except for the Saruman bit I mentioned I suppose. I'm not one to fanatically stick to some particular interpretation of a story. If I am attached to a particular way then I will say that I like that more, but still appreciate what another interpretation tries to present.

I can't recall details but I remember the trolls being eloquent and silly/stupid in the book. That was fine. The movie added some fancy action (I think?) and turned up the sillyness of the trolls voices etc. which together was kind of too much for me. It would have worked better if it was more low-key and less action. While not quite the same the movie version of "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" springs to my mind which I read more slow paced and in a more deadpan tone (in a lack of a better explanation) as a counterweight to all the absurdity. That made it a funny and enjoyable read. On the other hand I couldn't stand the movie for long, the joke deliveries were all wrong and made unfunny. :hmm: In a context of a movie it just didn't work for me.

The goblin king could have been more interesting/less inane. But turned into something pulled out of "Pirates of the Caribbean". I shouldn't have said hated maybe, I was just bored by him.

Anyway on a whole I did enjoy the movie. Just seem to be focusing on the dislikes I had of it.
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Re: Movies discussion

Post by thespaceinvader »

Suffice it to say, the Hobbit disappointed me hugely. I found it very hard not to focus on just how little the original tale of Bilbo discovering the big wide world remained, and how much the book had been changed.

Some bits of it were really good, but most of it just didn't engage me. It was really telling that I spent probably 20 minutes in the middle of the film trying to work out why the colours changed when I rotated my 3d glasses through 90 degrees...
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Re: Movies discussion

Post by Dunno »

I've finally got to see Django Unchained. Absolutely marvelous! In a unique tarantino-way, of course :)
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Re: Movies discussion

Post by DMB »

Ah, I'm not sure if this counts as thread necromancy just yet, but it seems like the place to post.

I'm rather excited for Iron Man 3. I loved the first one and the second was was... alright, I suppose. Not a bad movie, but it certainly wasn't as good as the first in my humble opinion.

And, is it just me, or are the end of credit scenes in Marvel movies pretty much the only reason you go see the films in theaters? They're always masterfully done, perfectly executed jokes or perfectly executed spoilers for the next movie in the sequence.
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Re: Movies discussion

Post by cookie »

Okay I just watched Iron Man 3
My thoughts:
Spoiler:
For those still to watch it: Stay after the credits, theres a small clip (which I found amusing, at least).

Otherwise I'm anticipating the new upcoming Superman movie, directed by Christoper Nolan. Refresh: Christoper Nolan: BATMAN! INCEPTION! <Insert a starry-eyed emoticon> <HINT HINT, 'shadowm'>
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Re: Movies discussion

Post by wolkenwand »

iron man 3 is a good movie, too bad i didnt watch the final clip, did i have to watch all the credit? i waiting at the comic part until credit scroll but the clip didnt show up! and i was the last man in the theathre and the light is litten up, so i take my leave.
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Re: Movies discussion

Post by cookie »

Well; I waited until the end; and there was definitely a clip. Perhaps its a regional thing.
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Re: Movies discussion

Post by Hulavuta »

cookie wrote:Otherwise I'm anticipating the new upcoming Superman movie, directed by Christoper Nolan. Refresh: Christoper Nolan: BATMAN! INCEPTION! <Insert a starry-eyed emoticon> <HINT HINT, 'shadowm'>
Me too. Christopher Nolan is not directing though, he's just a writer and producer. The director is Zack Snyder (300, Watchmen, Sucker Punch).
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