Classically Shitty

[DevRei17]

Our very own BrikHaus' series that slaughters the sacred cows of cinema.
WARNING: Not for Cinephiles of the faint of heart.

2001: A Space Odyszzzzzzzz
http://awesomelyshitty.wordpress.com/2008/10/09/2001-a-space-odyszzzzzzzz/

The Hustler
http://awesomelyshitty.wordpress.com/2011/09/09/classically-shitty-the-hustler/

Breakfast at Tiffany's
http://awesomelyshitty.wordpress.com/2012/01/28/classically-shitty-breakfast-at-tiffanys/

Citizen Kane - A Tale of Forbidden Love
http://awesomelyshitty.wordpress.com/2012/03/04/classically-shitty-citizen-kane-a-tale-of-forbidden-love/

Blazing Saddles
http://awesomelyshitty.wordpress.com/2012/06/30/classically-shitty-blazing-saddles/

Raging Bull
http://awesomelyshitty.wordpress.com/2012/09/02/classically-shitty-raging-bull/

Brik Hates the Academy Awards: 80's Edition
http://awesomelyshitty.wordpress.com/2013/02/22/brik-hates-the-academy-awards-80s-edition/

Serpico
http://awesomelyshitty.wordpress.com/2013/03/08/classically-shitty-serpico/

[InstrumentalityOne]

Okay.

[Defectron]

Damn, now I wish TDSA was still here, cuz he'd probably say something funny here. Well guess what I'll do the next best thing, I'll pretend to be TDSA!


2001 a space Odyssey was bad, the pacing was bad and the lighting could have been better. I think the monkey at the beginning of the movie could have used a lot more screentime, he was awesome.

Citizen Kane was Ok, but a lot of people try too hard to puit this movie on a pedastal. Transformers 2 was better!


And now I'm TK depressed...I will NEVER get over myself and therepy will NEVER be considered! Be thankful that your not an ugly old mule like me! I'm so ugly! But you, your not a mule your glorious!

[Rj123541]

............

[ran1]

When did Brikhaus ever have any taste?

[KnightmareX13]

I agree with the views on 2001, 2010 was much better. But to me it seems that Brik blamed everything on the director because my recollection of the book was that many things were left as vague and not a whole lot of dialog accrued in the book, so by comparison you get slightly more out of the book. Wonder how he would rate Dune or Repo man

[MugwumpHasNoLiver]

I agree with the views on 2001, 2010 was much better. But to me it seems that Brik blamed everything on the director because my recollection of the book was that many things were left as vague and not a whole lot of dialog accrued in the book, so by comparison you get slightly more out of the book.

Kubrick essentially manipulated Clarke into writing a literary narrative that didn't sync up with, and at several points contradicted, his film narrative, which may have in fact have been about an elaborate conspiracy that had nothing at all to do with extraterrestrial contact. Here's part one of a forty minute video that nobody here will watch that explains some juicy behind-the-scenes details and why 2001 may actually be a film-within-a-film. (The relevant information about Clarke and the book comes in at around the 6:30 mark.)

Point is that Kubrick had his hands stuffed in every pie, so if you don't like something in the film, you have nobody else to blame, because though film is a collaborative medium, Kubrick probably found a way to psychologically influence whoever was directly responsible to do things his way, all without them ever knowing it, because the man was essentially an evil wizard. Still, his only sin with 2001 was trying to get people to think outside their comfort zones, which some find instinctively abhorrent. Whatever, we all know 2001 is a polarizing film. Criticizing it for being long and boring displays about as much intellectual vigour as criticizing Eva for Shinji being whiner. Different strokes for different folks, gentlemen.

I like that Brik made a post mocking 2001; stuff like that's why we love him. I'm disappointed that he didn't bring his A-game, especially when dealing with such a revered film. His vitriol seems muted and there's an undercurrent of self-defensiveness. None of his jokes are particularly biting, there isn't any of his trademark colorful idiom and pointing out that HAL is the most lively character in the film unintentionally drives home the whole point about the evolution of intelligence, with humans becoming more machine-like and machines becoming more human.

Now, his Blazing Saddles review was spot on. The film plays out like a deliberate anti-comedy, where Brooks repeatedly sets up brilliant comic-set-pieces and then subverts them by either tossing out the punchline or having it just be some variation of "Get lost, nigger!" I really thought a film unafraid to deal with the issue of race would be wonderfully refreshing in our currently anal-retentive PC world, but any courage I could laud the filmmakers dissolved under the acidic force of the sheer lack of laughs.

[BrikHaus]

I approve of this thread.

[Alaska Slim]

Now, his Blazing Saddles review was spot on. The film plays out like a deliberate anti-comedy, where Brooks repeatedly sets up brilliant comic-set-pieces and then subverts them by either tossing out the punchline or having it just be some variation of "Get lost, nigger!"

Oh thank God! I wasn't the only one.

The film left me tickled in some moments, but the by the end I was just empty, still waiting for the gut-bursting humor I had heard it so lauded for.

Many of the lines in the film, I find, are hilarious when used as voice overs for something else, but in context of the film they always just came off as flat or aimless.

[Bagheera]

Many of the lines in the film, I find, are hilarious when used as voice overs for something else, but in context of the film they always just came off as flat or aimless.

So typical Mel Brooks, then.

[ran1]

Oh, for god's sake.

Are we seriously having a book vs. film discussion? Please, and this one's for me, shove it up your collective assholes, be content film directors might want to communicate something differently in both form and method from a novelist, and get the fuck out.

Go read Eisenstein's Dialectical Approach to Film Form

This argument has jerked over and successfully been resolved since the 1910s

[Bagheera]

Are we seriously having a book vs. film discussion?

No? I'm gonna go with "no". I mean, Mugwump talked about it a little bit, but more in a "this is why they were different" sense than in a "this one was better" sense. Everyone else is talking about overrated movies.

Please, and this one's for me, shove it up your collective assholes, be content film directors might want to communicate something differently in both form and method from a novelist, and get the fuck out.

Oh, calm down ya wanker. You're getting your shorts in a bunch over nothing.

[CorporalChaos]

Oh, calm down ya wanker. You're getting your shorts in a bunch over nothing.

Well, this is the internet.

[Justacrazyguy]

Well, this is EvaGeeks.

I corrected that for you.

...

But Internet also works.

[MugwumpHasNoLiver]

Please, and this one's for me, shove it up your collective assholes, be content film directors might want to communicate something differently in both form and method from a novelist, and get the fuck out.

You're contributing more or less the gist of the single sentence I wrote in reply to Knightmare's single sentence, only with far more vitriol? I'm not really sure where this is coming from. At the risk of the paltry two sentence "discussion" we had on the film vs. book turning into a meta-argument about your dislike of an argument that was never really there, I'm almost tempted to ask how much of my post you read. I mean, come on now. Kubrick never adapted a novel so much as he used its narrative outline as a basis to tell a series of his own double-narratives, but it's especially interesting in the case of 2001, as he used a then unwritten hard sci-fi novel as a smoke-screen to distract from his own film, which was surreal and highly ambiguous.

Clarke's 2001 is not a novelization of the film, but an original literary work that used a variation of the surface narrative from the film, which is exactly the way Kubrick wanted it. If I must spell it out: there are no answers for the film in the book, which is what Knightmare himself said. He only said that Brik shouldn't blame Kubrick for being a pretentious egomaniac as his source-material was already vague, so I pointed out that the source material was in part Kubrick's, though it doesn't hold up in a comparative sense to the film under close examination.

The "quality" of a book vs. a film is a wretched and stupid debate, but it's always interesting to see how and why a filmmaker changes the narrative structure of a book to work in his medium of choice, which was the only reason I brought up information pertaining to the book at all. It's about ten times as interesting when it's a Kubrick film as he constantly encoded hidden messages or even dramatically altered the events of the narrative, but you wouldn't notice that from a superficial viewing. (I saw a very good case made that the Ludovico Technique wouldn't work at all, and Kubrick knew that, so in the film of A Clockwork Orange, Alex fakes his symptoms for sympathy. His version of the story is less about the nature of free will than it is political factions trying to BS their way into power through propaganda.)

[Reichu]

I'm one of those (apparently) strange and of-poor-taste people who adore Blazing Saddles. Then, I was exposed to it at a younger age, knowing nothing of its reputation except that my mom liked it (and she likes barely anything aside from crime procedure dramas and British mysteries). I seem to recall being fairly bewildered by it initially, but, as an adult (or the next best thing), I rather appreciate it.

[DevRei17]

I'm not quite sure if this counts as 'Classically Shitty', but I feel it's of the same nature:
http://awesomelyshitty.wordpress.com/2013/02/22/brik-hates-the-academy-awards-80s-edition/

[Trajan]

I'm not quite sure if this counts as 'Classically Shitty', but I feel it's of the same nature:
http://awesomelyshitty.wordpress.com/2013/02/22/brik-hates-the-academy-awards-80s-edition/

The Academy has never been all that well respected outside of LA anyways. It's almost normal to hate on the Oscars nowadays.

[BrikHaus]

The Academy has never been all that well respected outside of LA anyways. It's almost normal to hate on the Oscars nowadays.

Yet people still use the Oscars as a means of determining which movies they should and shouldn't watch. Nobody had even heard of "Amour" before a couple of months ago, and now a bunch of people I know have clamored to see it because it was nominated.

[Trajan]

Yet people still use the Oscars as a means of determining which movies they should and shouldn't watch. Nobody had even heard of "Amour" before a couple of months ago, and now a bunch of people I know have clamored to see it because it was nominated.

Meh, I don't mind them so much as indicators of what's good to watch. By and large, the academy doesn't usually nominate shitty films so they work alright as guidelines. I just ignore the designations attached to said films ex. the nominations indicate Argo is a good picture but it's not the best picture of the year.