This. Very well said.
So.. Confused Matthew takes on No Country Old Men
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This. Very well said.
Er, good art IS supposed to make you think. That's why folks go to art museums. Also, I'm sure people who work with food, from caterers to chefs, would take issue with your view that food isn't art.
Presentation of food is important, and what is tweaking and experimentation with recipes if it's not like producing a poem or novel?
I don't disagree that 2001 can be very beautiful to look at. There are some stunning visuals there, no doubt about it.
But a film's first responsibility is to entertain, at least that's my view. It's supposed to make you think WHILE it entertains you, at least that's what the great films do.
If they're done in a skillful way that builds tension while reinforcing the movie's theme, then yes.
Or to the movie theater. Or watching TV. Thinking doesn't have to be absent from entertainment.
Personally, I find 2001 an entertaining film. It appeals to my intellect as well as my visual senses. If anything it's almost a pure movie, pure photography as it is almost devoid of dialogue. For me, it's more of a poem.
But entertainment is personal. I don't find Glee personally entertaining. But, I know millions do.
The problem with 2001 is a problem which is common to many works of fiction that are supposed to "make you think": even the people who were making it didn't know what it all meant. What did all the business with the moons being aligned before Bowman entered the Star Gate mean? And why did Bowman keep seeing and being replaced by his older self? Kubrick didn't know. Clarke didn't know. They just put it in the movie and let the viewer come up with an excuse.
I enjoy fiction, stories, art that makes me think. I like it that sometimes you have to connect the dots yourself. Long-running serialised stories like "Lost" or "Babylon 5" with mysteries that steadily get uncovered -- I'm crazy for them. Hell, even when the final resolution could conceivably be interpreted in several different ways, that's possibly even better (Blade Runner, Dark City, etc.) But I hate it when the filmmakers themselves don't have any idea what it means -- when they haven't thought up even a single rationalisation, let alone multiple possible reasons. What it amounts to is putting some pretty-looking mumbo-jumbo on the screen (or page: literary works are guilty of this too) and letting the audience do all the work for you -- and if any of them cry foul, smiling smugly and saying "It's supposed to make you think." That's not being clever, it's being pretentious.
I enjoy fiction, stories, art that makes me think. I like it that sometimes you have to connect the dots yourself. Long-running serialised stories like "Lost" or "Babylon 5" with mysteries that steadily get uncovered -- I'm crazy for them. Hell, even when the final resolution could conceivably be interpreted in several different ways, that's possibly even better (Blade Runner, Dark City, etc.) But I hate it when the filmmakers themselves don't have any idea what it means -- when they haven't thought up even a single rationalisation, let alone multiple possible reasons. What it amounts to is putting some pretty-looking mumbo-jumbo on the screen (or page: literary works are guilty of this too) and letting the audience do all the work for you -- and if any of them cry foul, smiling smugly and saying "It's supposed to make you think." That's not being clever, it's being pretentious.
I don't understand why people listen to his reviews. He's a whiny bitch who wouldn't know a good movie if one came along and sat on his head.
It's not "supposed to make you think". It is not. Art is its own reward, it's not an intellectual exercise, it's not a guessing game, it's not a private club for pretentious people, it's an attempt to express what makes us human and share it with other people.
What does this mean? Is it important if the artist knew what it all meant? Does it "make you think"? Or does it make you feel something?
I'm surprised to see 2001 being defended on the basis of feeling, given how utterly sterile it is. Treating it as a cerebral puzzle-box is, IMO, the only possible use for it. Its bland characters and passionless scenes certainly fail to make any emotional impression as far as I'm concerned.
I think they both suffer from the same problem, namely the inability to edit themselves. At what point in a half-hour to one-hour review of two-hour movies does it cross over from being about the films to being needlessly nitpicky fan-service and shameless self-promotion? Apparently Matthew is confused about the phrase "brevity is the soul of wit," as well.
I tuned out right at the beginning when he started screaming about not wanting to waste any more time on this shitty film while he was in the twelve-minute part-one of what is going to be a three-part review if it follows the format of the others on his site. He seems to be wasting an awful lot of time on something he doesn't want to waste any time on.
Somehow most professional reviewers seem capable of handling their generally informed and interesting reviews in the span of a brief article, soundbite, or TV appearance. If the movie is so genuinely lacking in quality as he contends (It doesn't even have characters, apparently) why does he need most likely fully a fourth of its runtime in order to articulate his point?
To each their own. For me, 2001 is like visiting a cathedral.
Kubrick knew exactly why he showed the moons line up and why he showed Bowman seeing himself aging. The goal of the movie was to communicate an alien intelligence that is beyond human comprehension. I would suggest that explaining to the audience everything that happens and why would reduce the impact of said alien intelligence.
This approach may not work for everyone, but the fact that the movie is still so highly respected, favorably reviewed and analyzed, and argued about after 40+ years suggests that Kubrick achieved something special with 2001.
But "feeling" is the only way you could convey something so alien that it is, by definition, unfathomable. And film, combining visuals, narrative and music, is probably the medium that can come closest to conveying something of that scale. Is there another movie that gives such a stark, gut-level "feeling" of human insignificance in the vastness of time and space? If there is I haven't seen it.
--Justin
You gotta be a bit more open, mehtinks.
Consider that back in the eighties and nineties, movie reviews by professionals were good at three minutes long.
Now consider that, in recent times, everything has become quick fast, at the speed of information. Posting stuff, uploading it, sending it.. even movies themselves serve the brief attention spans of youth. Then the Nostalgia Critic and Plinkett come along tailor-making reviews for "the internet crowd," which normally wants things quick, fast, and faster, but guess what: these guys have instead defied conventional wisdom by creating long, ironic, detailed, and funny analysis of films. Yes, everything seems to be quicker, but I'm glad that at least one thing...movie criticism... has actually expanded. I'm not a huge fan of the Nostalgia Critic or Matthew, but I like Plinkett, and I like that they all are trying to analyze films with a much longer format than was done in the past.
I've watched all of RLM's Trek and Star Wars reviews, and I've watched a couple of Confused Matthew's reviews. I've been plenty open to giving them a chance, and even found them occasionally amusing (RLM's at least).
Nor was I calling for lightning fast Twitterized reviews of films due to me youthful lack of an attention span. A normal review article or televised review in the style of Roger Ebert was what I was talking about. When your reviews start becoming the length of a significant portion of the film itself it's a little odd to argue that the movie is so terrible it's not worth wasting your time on it, or that it completely lacks characters or plot. Then what are you spending so much time commenting on?
It's not like MST3K where at least they're celebrating the awfulness of b-movies and having fun playing along with it.
Nor was I calling for lightning fast Twitterized reviews of films due to me youthful lack of an attention span. A normal review article or televised review in the style of Roger Ebert was what I was talking about. When your reviews start becoming the length of a significant portion of the film itself it's a little odd to argue that the movie is so terrible it's not worth wasting your time on it, or that it completely lacks characters or plot. Then what are you spending so much time commenting on?
It's not like MST3K where at least they're celebrating the awfulness of b-movies and having fun playing along with it.
RLM's reviews are long because they're meant to be funny rather than just analysis of the movies.(otherwise why include the plinkett stuff? that adds nothing to the review)
you can't really compare RLM to CM because RLM's are as much about entertainment as they are about making good points about the movie.
CM may occasionally try to be funny, but he's much more of a straight movie reviewer than an entertainer.
you can't really compare RLM to CM because RLM's are as much about entertainment as they are about making good points about the movie.
CM may occasionally try to be funny, but he's much more of a straight movie reviewer than an entertainer.
Perhaps, but based his prequel reviews and his overdose of attitude I do think he wants[/I][/I][/I][/I] to be funny
I used to enjoy CM but as time pressed on I think his voice got more grating and his views and opinions made less and less sense.
That's what I heard when I watched part one of the video, anyway. I felt no need to watch part two.
May I kindly suggest then that you NEVER read A Series of Unfortunate Events, because this is exactly what that author does.
Really? Well, what was the significance of the moons being aligned, then? Why did Bowman see himself rapidly aging like that, within the internal logic of the film itself? Did Kubrick ever say? Or did he say, "It's meant to make you think"?
I understand the goal was to show a vast alien intelligence, but that isn't a good enough answer to the questions. I could make a movie which at the very end features five minutes of a tapdancing penguin, and claim "The goal is to show the futility and absurdity of the characters' existence" -- and maybe it does, but the real question to be addressed is "You've just made a movie which for the first two hours conforms entirely to real-world logic and now suddenly you've got a fucking tapdancing penguin! WTF, dude?"
And I would suggest that I never, ever asked for the film to "explain to the audience everything that happens and why". In fact, if you'll care to read my post again I said the exact opposite. My gripe is that even the filmmakers themselves didn't know what happened and why -- or even what could have happened and why.
2001: A Space Odyssey is the film equivalent of the Beatles songs "I Am The Walrus" and "Glass Onion" -- except that Kubrick didn't do it as a joke and actually wanted his film to be regarded as a very serious and deep work of genius.
Thanks for the heads-up.
