Horribly overrated movies...

Visitor13 wrote: Cinema is overrated in general. I hardly ever bother to watch, much less re-watch, a movie nowadays, commercial, artistic, modern, classic, whatever. Unless there's some cute gal in it... But apart from that, music owns cinema in so many ways it's not even funny. So I listen to music, instead.

Pirates of the Carribean

"LOOK I"M A PIRATE! YOU LOVE ME!"

sircosick wrote: Visitor13 wrote: Cinema is overrated in general. I hardly ever bother to watch, much less re-watch, a movie nowadays, commercial, artistic, modern, classic, whatever. Unless there's some cute gal in it... But apart from that, music owns cinema in so many ways it's not even funny. So I listen to music, instead. Yep.

Shakespeare wrote: Pirates of the Carribean "LOOK I"M A PIRATE! YOU LOVE ME!"

I never quote myself either.

I thought Rocky Horror was really lame.

darqdean wrote: el böthy wrote: Atavachron wrote: Gone With the Wind YES!!! YES!!! YES!!!! When Harry Met Sally?

I want what darqdean´s having!

BaldFriede wrote: sircosick wrote: ^ How many times you can watch a movie before get bored? And how many times an album? The answer is the reason why.  There are movies I can watch again and again without ever getting bored in the least. "Don't Look Now!" by Nicholas Roeg or "Rashomon" by Akira Kirosawa are examples for that (though there are people who can't even watch them once without getting bored). I could list dozens of movies I could watch again and again (and actually did). The reason you can listen to an album again and again is that you don't really have to concentrate on the music to listen to it; it just becomes a background to you. If you try to really "listen" to an album, fully concentrating on it, you will find it as impossible to listen to again and again (at least in succession) as watching a movie more than once. Of course the Hollywood bullsh*t that is being dealt out nowadays is really not worth more than one look. Not worth a casual glance even.

Hyperborea wrote: Jesus christ...cinema paradiso overrated?   An almost perfect movie.....would be nice to know what the Norwegian liked?

I love Bergman, Monthy Python, Truffaut, Lynch, Nicholas Roeg, Roy Andersson, Herzog, Jarmusch, Tarkovsky, (selected) Kubrick, Allen, Polanski, old Disney... &  everything starring Peter Sellers mm.

I just don't like 'heartwarming' sentimental crap with overtly cute characters. Here's a short version from a reviewer that agrees with me (and writes better):

-I’m fully aware that Giuseppe Tornatore’s Italian tearjerker Cinema Paradiso is beloved by many, but I can’t drum up much goodwill for it. Telling the story of a young boy’s relationship to a projectionist and, more importantly, to popular film, it never is afraid to simplify itself further so that no one watching feels left out of its banality. When the young boy’s mentor tells him not to give into nostalgia, the sentiment feels laughable considering this film’s reverence to all things wistful. There are never-ending emotional climaxes here, but the film drags on despite the fact that things keep happening quickly.

...The movie is hopelessly manipulative. No emotion remains unnoted by Ennio Morricone’s ever-present score. There’s never any doubt about what we’re supposed to think during a scene, and that emotional simplicity seems a cheat.Jeremy Heilman

Cinema Paradiso is (along with all the others on my list) truly one of the most overrated movies in modern history!

I'm aware that cinema and music are apples and oranges, but in this case, I believe oranges are superior to apples, or at least, the best oranges are superior to the best apples.

Music (not all music, obviously) has just so much more room for ambiguity and tension, mainly because its ties to 'reality' seem just so much looser than cinema's.

Someone mentioned music as a resource cinema makes use of. Funnily enough, that Cinema Paradiso review Rocktopus quoted relies on an argument that I could somehow reuse here. While image and music can work together really well, there is a danger that the result will be 'hopelessly manipulative', that the ambiguous music will be tied to a less ambiguous image, and therefore will lose some of its depth and independence. To the observers, there will 'never be any doubt about what they're supposed to think' when they hear the soundtrack afterwards. While we're not talking film music here, the recent Tchaikovsky vs Stravinsky discussion is a good case in point. Some people said Tchaikovsky was cheesy. I think there's quite a lot of people who think that way. Would this be the case if Tchaikovsky's music wasn't hopelessly attached (in the popular mindset) to the scenes from his ballets? There you go, I guess in the long run music can only suffer from attachment to visuals, not necessarily cinematic ones.

Another thing - this is probably quite flimsy, but what the hell - it seems that the adjective 'musical' is considered to be the greatest compliment one can award the product of a non-musical art. A 'musical' painting or poem seems to be synonymous with a truly great or beautiful painting or poem. Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter are just some of the artists who wanted their work to be 'musical'. Whereas a piece of music does not have to be 'illustrative', it does not have to 'tell a story', it does not even have to be 'colourful' to be beautiful.

And finally, why should I spend money to watch people act? I might as well go out and take a stroll round the city, I'll see enough people act to last me a whole week :P     

Visitor13 wrote: I'm aware that cinema and music are apples and oranges, but in this case, I believe oranges are superior to apples, or at least, the best oranges are superior to the best apples. Music (not all music, obviously) has just so much more room for ambiguity and tension, mainly because its ties to 'reality' seem just so much looser than cinema's. Someone mentioned music as a resource cinema makes use of. Funnily enough, that Cinema Paradiso review Rocktopus quoted relies on an argument that I could somehow reuse here. While image and music can work together really well, there is a danger that the result will be 'hopelessly manipulative', that the ambiguous music will be tied to a less ambiguous image, and therefore will lose some of its depth and independence. To the observers, there will 'never be any doubt about what they're supposed to think' when they hear the soundtrack afterwards. While we're not talking film music here, the recent Tchaikovsky vs Stravinsky discussion is a good case in point. Some people said Tchaikovsky was cheesy. I think there's quite a lot of people who think that way. Would this be the case if Tchaikovsky's music wasn't hopelessly attached (in the popular mindset) to the scenes from his ballets? There you go, I guess in the long run music can only suffer from attachment to visuals, not necessarily cinematic ones. Another thing - this is probably quite flimsy, but what the hell - it seems that the adjective 'musical' is considered to be the greatest compliment one can award the product of a non-musical art. A 'musical' painting or poem seems to be synonymous with a truly great or beautiful painting or poem. Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter are just some of the artists who wanted their work to be 'musical'. Whereas a piece of music does not have to be 'illustrative', it does not have to 'tell a story', it does not even have to be 'colourful' to be beautiful. And finally, why should I spend money to watch people act? I might as well go out and take a stroll round the city, I'll see enough people act to last me a whole week :P

A somewhat strange argument, since some of the most famous works of Stravinsky ("Firebird", "Rites of Spring", "Petrushka", "Pulcinella")  are ballet music!!!


Edited by BaldFriede - August 11 2007 at 02:21