[Film] Movies you dont like, but others love

[Guyver Spawn]

I thought Ran was good, but not great. I would have to watch it again though since I have not seen it since 07 or 08 though. I remember liking it, but was not amazed as most people where.

[Eva Yojimbo]

^ If you can I'd recommend seeing Ran on blu-ray and a really good theater system. It's one of those films that demands the biggest and best possible system.

I always saw logical choices as being driven and justified by illogical feelings.

I'd say the feelings themselves are logical or have a logical reason underlying them but we often aren't aware of that logic and because of that they cause us to make illogical decisions. Or something like that. Put another way: Emotions are logical, but cause us to (re)act illogically.

[ran1]

thought Ran was good, but not great. I would have to watch it again though since I have not seen it since 07 or 08 though. I remember liking it, but was not amazed as most people where.

Ran is a film that polarizes people it seems. The English/Lit teachers in my school all regard it as one of the best cinematic adaptation of Shakespeare they had seen, while the actual Japanese Literature teacher isn't really sold on the literary nature of the film.

I for one, loved it, obviously. But I can definitely see how it could bore some people. It may be because of the pacing, but its a masterpiece in a stylistic sense.

[Eva Yojimbo]

while the actual Japanese Literature teacher isn't really sold on the literary nature of the film.

Haha! Literary nature of film... Kurosawa's adaptations of Shakespeare are such great cinema because they are attempting to be great cinema and not great literature.

[ran1]

Haha! Literary nature of film... Kurosawa's adaptations of Shakespeare are such great cinema because they are attempting to be great cinema and not great literature.

Well you see, certain literature "scholars" like to place cinema under literature because they really haven't accepted as its own unique art form yet. I mean, they're way behind the times obviously (people were asserting films artistic values since the early 1920s I think) so obviously a high school literature department is really going to share the more intellectual opinion of cineastes like you or me.

[Eva Yojimbo]

Yes, yes, I've had more than my fair share of experience with this. I pretty much gave up arguing the merits of film as its own medium on a certain Literature forum I visit because the posters there, while highly intelligent about literature seem completely ignorant about film's unique merits as a medium. One poster loves to argue that since film is written first and since 'everyone' critiques it on a story/character level then the literary element is the most important in film. Of course this ignores the immense number of very average films from a literary perspective turned into masterpieces by the great auteurs as well as directors like Godard and Cassavetes who frequently made films without scripts at all.

[ran1]

I've honestly only had one success when it comes to convincing people that cinema was its own art form, and that was when I showed one of my lit teachers a couple of articles written by Sergei Eisenstein. English/Lit people are pretty often solid in their convictions about cinema, which is both good and bad, really. Their fervor for their art is always good, but their inability to really recognize what film really is can be a tad unnerving.

[Xard]

film vs literature fight has always been silly because everyone knows the true art is music

[Eva Yojimbo]

Yeah, more lit experts interested in film should really familiarize themselves with Eisenstein and Tarkovsky from a theoretical perspective.

film vs literature fight has always been silly because everyone knows the true art is music

As trollish as this is I might be inclined to actually agree. If art is all about form and content then the two have the most inextricable symbiosis in music.

[Xard]

film vs literature fight has always been silly because everyone knows the true art is music

As trollish as this is I might be inclined to actually agree. If art is all about form and content then the two have the most inextricable symbiosis in music.

plus you forget that music is completely zen experience

[Eva Yojimbo]

I can have a zen experience with all art. I've had it plenty of time in film and literature (well, plays and poetry more than novels).

[Xard]

I can have a zen experience with all art. I've had it plenty of time in film and literature (well, plays and poetry more than novels).

ermm, literature by its very nature should be definition of suck in inducing zen experience

film's more capable of it on theoretical grounds but I feel it's more than a bit too manipulative & artificial for grounding genuine zen experience.

Performance arts & music is the way it should go (well, music IS performance art)

[Eva Yojimbo]

Meh, we've had this discussion before and come to a stalemate. For those who can appreciate language like its own music literature (especially poetry) is plenty capable of producing a zen-like experience. Film is no more or no less manipulative in music. If you think there aren't formulas in music for provoking an emotional and zen-like feeling and that they aren't manipulative then more fool (or naive) you.

[ran1]

film's more capable of it on theoretical grounds but I feel it's more than a bit too manipulative & artificial for grounding genuine zen experience.

Film is truth at twenty-four frames per second.

I'm inclined to agree with the Frenchman on that topic.

[Xard]

Meh, we've had this discussion before and come to a stalemate. For those who can appreciate language like its own music literature (especially poetry) is plenty capable of producing a zen-like experience. Film is no more or no less manipulative in music. If you think there aren't formulas in music for provoking an emotional and zen-like feeling and that they aren't manipulative then more fool (or naive) you.

I think we've been speaking past each other. I did not talk about "zen" in the mundane "man I feel totally sucked in and hypnotized and meditative" or whatever feel that nowadays so often is called zen experience for some reason.

and of course I know a lot of music is manipulative!

film's more capable of it on theoretical grounds but I feel it's more than a bit too manipulative & artificial for grounding genuine zen experience.

Film is truth at twenty-four frames per second.

I'm inclined to agree with the Frenchman on that topic.

Film - barring animation - is most artificial of all mediums. There's no "truth" in cinema.

[Eva Yojimbo]

I think you're going to have a hard time defining your particular definition of a "zen" experience and how you can only have it in music and not in film or literature.

Film - barring animation - is most artificial of all mediums. There's no "truth" in cinema.

Bold statements made as fact sans any semblance of argument = UBERFAIL 2: THE LEGEND OF CURLY'S FAIL

Also, if you really want to discuss this you should probably bump our art wars thread from so many years back (if you can find it).

Film is truth at twenty-four frames per second.

I'm inclined to agree with the Frenchman on that topic.

This is always attributed to Godard even though it's 'merely' a quote from one of his films. I've often been skeptical of just how how much (if at all) Godard thought this was true given how much he sought out to deconstruct film and point out its artificialities.

[ran1]

Film - barring animation - is most artificial of all mediums. There's no "truth" in cinema.

I think that we readily accept all film as fiction. The fact that there is an image on a piece of film is a truth, is it not?

And in a broader sense, I would say that the Italian Neo Realists would have a claim to being the first people to attempt to bring "truth" and/or "Reality" to cinema.

[Xard]

I think you're going to have a hard time defining your particular definition of a "zen" experience and how you can only have it in music and not in film or literature.

Of course - in fact one could and should view very act of defining zen against spirit of zen

With film I'm admittedly on more shakier grounds but it does lack the genuinety and "living it" (no no identification with characters etc. does not count as living it) of more "pure"/zen arts such as dance. It lacks by its very nature the aliveness, purity of e.g theatre or music performed live.

but literature is by its very nature against Zen because language more than anything else expresses the structures of consciousness of which zen tries to break free

Film - barring animation - is most artificial of all mediums. There's no "truth" in cinema.

I think that we readily accept all film as fiction. The fact that there is an image on a piece of film is a truth, is it not?

Now this conversation is heading into dangerously meta levels. I'm really not sure at all what you're trying to say here

And in a broader sense, I would say that the Italian Neo Realists would have a claim to being the first people to attempt to bring "truth" and/or "Reality" to cinema.

and they - too - failed miserably. One can't bring reality into film.

it's not like literature is better off at all

[ran1]

Well, I'm not going to claim to be an expert on zen, so I'll go ahead and cede Music as the true art form.

But- that still leaves room for 2nd place. Which film obviously gets.

[Xard]

Film - barring animation - is most artificial of all mediums. There's no "truth" in cinema.

Bold statements made as fact sans any semblance of argument = UBERFAIL 2: THE LEGEND OF CURLY'S FAIL

I hope my small elaboration above helped somewhat.

Film is truth at twenty-four frames per second.

I'm inclined to agree with the Frenchman on that topic.

This is always attributed to Godard even though it's 'merely' a quote from one of his films. I've often been skeptical of just how how much (if at all) Godard thought this was true given how much he sought out to deconstruct film and point out its artificialities.

Ahh, I suspected as much. It really isn't at all fitting to "Godard's philosophy".