Serious Movie Discussion XLI

[King Bastar]

I just watched War Dogs with Jonah Hill and Miles Teller and enjoyed it. I don't know shit about the accuracy of it, but the movie is a good way to kill some time for anyone who was thinking about seeing it.

 

[europe1]

And anyway, I thought my Mad Max transgressions were forgiven because I liked The Witch as much as you

Shit I can't even keep up-to-date with my own feuds these days. Maybe the enemy list has to be revisited after all.

and though there is a kind of joke about how it was reading Kierkegaard that turned Johannes mad

Yeah I remember laughing at that.

Priest: What drove your son mad? Was it love?

Morten: No, Kierkegaard.

Though I did think that Inger was a kind of counterpoint to the mystic faith represented by Johannes,

Yes... Inger was a very saintly character. Do you remember what her dispossition was towards Johannes? Did she dismiss him like everyone else or did she believe in him?

I just finished Ordet

Thinking about it, what makes Ordet stand out (at least in comparison to what I've seen) is how "realistic" (for lack of a better term) it feels. It seems very this-wordly. Other directors with a penchance for theology like Bergman, Tarkovsky or Parajanov seems to make films that to various degrees feel more other-wordly. Or engage in some deep psychological exercise, which also removes the narrative from a more tangible real-life setting.

Christianity is inherently a metaphysical religion. There exists two planes. The spiritual realm and the wordly realm. Directors therefore tend to imbude their films with metaphysicals settings/characters/events in the real world, and therefore making them feel more "other-wordly".
I'm talking about stuff like: Death in Seventh Seal, the deep discussions in Persona, The Zone in Stalker, or how Pomegrantes is filmed like if you're watching a series of icons. And so on with the examples.

In a way, Ordet feels to me like a more purebreed film. It's the religious movie most squarely set in our world. It's squarely about faith. Johannes may be a living Christ, yet his character feels so "this-wordly".

All of this gives Inger's bodily resurrection a more direct impact. The fact that Stalker's child has telekinetic powers or that Kris meets his father in the ending of Solaris feels very diegetic because both films where thoroughly imbued with elements that feelt metaphysical. Yet in Ordet we never encounter anything that feels that metaphysical. Inger's resurection therefore feels more wordly, more set in our plane of existence rather then gifted from some abstracted metaphysical realm. The living Jesus exists squarely in our world.


Yeah I have no idea where I'm going with this.

 

[Rimbaud82]

Yes... Inger was a very saintly character. Do you remember what her dispossition was towards Johannes? Did she dismiss him like everyone else or did she believe in him?

Well, I'm not sure if she outright believed in him but at one point she says something like "perhaps he's closer to God than the rest of us". Plus generally she seems to be more concerned about him.

Thinking about it, what makes Ordet stand out (at least in comparison to what I've seen) is how "realistic" (for lack of a better term) it feels. It seems very this-wordly. Other directors with a penchance for theology like Bergman, Tarkovsky or Parajanov seems to make films that to various degrees feel more other-wordly. Or engage in some deep psychological exercise, which also removes the narrative from a more tangible real-life setting.

Christianity is inherently a metaphysical religion. There exists two planes. The spiritual realm and the wordly realm. Directors therefore tend to imbude their films with metaphysicals settings/characters/events in the real world, and therefore making them feel more "other-wordly".
I'm talking about stuff like: Death in Seventh Seal, the deep discussions in Persona, The Zone in Stalker, or how Pomegrantes is filmed like if you're watching a series of icons. And so on with the examples.

In a way, Ordet feels to me like a more purebreed film. It's the religious movie most squarely set in our world. It's squarely about faith. Johannes may be a living Christ, yet his character feels so "this-wordly".

All of this gives Inger's bodily resurrection a more direct impact. The fact that Stalker's child has telekinetic powers or that Kris meets his father in the ending of Solaris feels very diegetic because both films where thoroughly imbued with elements that feelt metaphysical. Yet in Ordet we never encounter anything that feels that metaphysical. Inger's resurection therefore feels more wordly, more set in our plane of existence rather then gifted from some abstracted metaphysical realm. The living Jesus exists squarely in our world.

Yeah I have no idea where I'm going with this.

I definitely agree, that's something that struck me about the film as well. It's very naturalistic, despite the fantastical/absurd elements like the visions that Johannes has, or the resurrection itself. They are just sort of there, as part of everything else despite being so different. Very much of this world as you say. I find 'faith on film' a very interesting subject, as well as religion in general.

 

[BeardotheWeirdo]

Just watched the trailer for Arrival, which comes out in November... It definitely made me want to watch the movie.

Here's a longer trailer for it.


The new Jackie Chan/Johnny Knoxville movie looks decent too.

 

[BeardotheWeirdo]

I like this a lot. Some nice posts from you in general meng. @Bullitt68 as well (and I promise to shut up about Inception).

A lot of anti-intellectual sentiment directed towards film arises from disregard of its ability to provide novel insight. That the sum total of our lives informs us better than the art we consume. I mean, sure, it's hard to argue against, but it misses an entire avenue of insight - audience reaction. I had a conversation with a friend about The Amazing Spiderman. I said the film placed the emotions of selfish romantic protagonists before the central ethos (in writing parlance, what the audience needs). The movie concludes with Peter's dismissal of Uncle Ben's sage advice so he can continue to get some. My buddy missed this, which, hey, it happens. But he additionally declared that I couldn't be thinking about every film this way.

Christ, Spidey is a hero to kids. Fuck that film. If I ever have a child, he/she can watch anything but we're going to be discussing after. You see it all the time, people expecting the milestones of their relationships to align with the tropes of some truly heinous romantic tripe. Stupid shit like the friend zone, the bro-code keep eroding understanding between sexes.

Observing how people respond to film and TV informs you of the way media goes about it in the first place. That in turn informs you of technique. That then helps you place the creators as belonging to a particular vocation and/or tradition. That in turn opens up who is doing it 'better' or 'worse' than others. People often get tripped up at this point, wondering (see Bullitt and Flem's back-and-forth) whether there really is a way to objectively judge these things. It doesn't matter: you're already at the point of discussing it, and likely gleaning insight from getting to that point. At each of the turns that got you there are an endless number of detours - new filmmakers, new techniques, varied audience reactions to study. Just stay open.

Thanks.

Well said... Noam Chomsky's tireless work exposing the media's bias opened my eyes to a whole new world... under the surface.

I just copied from wikipedia, since trying to describe Chomsky's work in my own words would take me ages. This is a man who the New York Times, described as "arguably, the most important intellectual alive" which is very telling when you consider that Chomsky criticises the NYT on a regular basis.

Avram Noam Chomsky (/ˈnoʊm ˈtʃɒmski/; born December 7, 1928) is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, logician, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes described as "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy, and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science. He has spent more than half a century at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he is Institute ProfessorEmeritus, and is the author of over 100 books on topics such as linguistics, war, politics, and mass media. Ideologically, he aligns with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism

Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988), by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, proposes that the mass communication media of the U.S. "are effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function, by reliance on market forces, internalized assumptions, and self-censorship, and without overt coercion", by means of the propaganda model of communication.

Five filters of editorial bias
The propaganda model for the manufacture of public consent describes five editorially distorting filters, which are applied to the reporting of news in mass communications media:

1. Size, Ownership, and Profit Orientation: The dominant mass-media outlets are large companies operated for profit, and therefore they must cater to the financial interests of the owners, who are usually corporations and controlling investors. The size of a media company is a consequence of the investment capital required for the mass-communications technology required to reach a mass audience of viewers, listeners, and readers.
2. The Advertising License to Do Business: Since the majority of the revenue of major media outlets derives from advertising (not from sales or subscriptions), advertisers have acquired a "de facto licensing authority". Media outlets are not commercially viable without the support of advertisers. News media must therefore cater to the political prejudices and economic desires of their advertisers. This has weakened the working class press, for example, and also helps explain the attrition in the number of newspapers.
3. Sourcing Mass Media News: Herman and Chomsky argue that “the large bureaucracies of the powerful subsidize the mass media, and gain special access [to the news], by their contribution to reducing the media’s costs of acquiring [...] and producing, news. The large entities that provide this subsidy become 'routine' news sources and have privileged access to the gates. Non-routine sources must struggle for access, and may be ignored by the arbitrary decision of the gatekeepers.”
4. Flak and the Enforcers: "Flak" refers to negative responses to a media statement or program (e.g. letters, complaints, lawsuits, or legislative actions). Flak can be expensive to the media, either due to loss of advertising revenue, or due to the costs of legal defense or defense of the media outlet's public image. Flak can be organized by powerful, private influence groups (e.g. think tanks). The prospect of eliciting flak can be a deterrent to the reporting of certain kinds of facts or opinions.
5. Anti-Communism: This was included as a filter in the original 1988 edition of the book, but Chomsky argues that since the end of the Cold War (1945–91), anticommunism was replaced by the "War on Terror", as the major social control mechanism.

You see much less of it in movies, but it's often there.

I watched a great movie (Slap the Monster on Page One (1972)) last month on the subject of media bias and spinning stories to fit your own political narrative, but it was about the newspaper business.

My favourite actor "Gian Maria Volonte" plays the editor of a right-wing newspaper in Italy, during the lead-up to an election. Through conversations between the editor and a young-idealistic journalist, the film exposes the little tricks and edits used by the editor to spin the story in a way that supports his masters corrupt views.

It's a great movie.

@Bullitt68 : Your link is dead now, it must've got lost in the transfer, just thought I'd let you know... www.sherdog.net/forums/f48/classic-film-index-894553/
Also your blog is locked, and none of the links inside your martial arts studies' go anywhere... I was going to read your piece on Steven Seagal.

 

[Bullitt68]

Noam Chomsky's tireless work exposing the media's bias opened my eyes to a whole new world... under the surface.

I prefer Chomsky the linguist to Chomsky the social theorist. The latter just regurgitates the same old shit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectic_of_Enlightenment

@Bullitt68 : Your link is dead now, it must've got lost in the transfer, just thought I'd let you know... www.sherdog.net/forums/f48/classic-film-index-894553/

I know. I didn't realize it was still in my sig, though. It sucks. I put a hell of a lot of work into those, especially in finding just the right screengrabs to include, and now they're all gone.

Also your blog is locked, and none of the links inside your martial arts studies' go anywhere... I was going to read your piece on Steven Seagal.

I don't have a blog. The first link is my academic archive with all of the criticism and scholarship I've published and the second link is the martial arts journal I help edit. The first link is public so everything there either has a PDF you can view directly or download or else a link to the online journal where the piece is hosted. The second link did need to get updated, though, as the journal has a new home page.

As for my shit on Seagal:

http://offscreen.com/view/blockbuster_ideology_part_1

http://offscreen.com/view/action-aesthetics-pt1

A word of warning/advice: Both essays are very long and very theoretical (the second one especially, as it was originally written as my Master's thesis). However, they're both broken up into two parts, so you can skip some of the theory stuff if you want. For both essays, Part I is mostly theory while Part II is mostly criticism.

 

[BeardotheWeirdo]

I prefer Chomsky the linguist to Chomsky the social theorist. The latter just regurgitates the same old shit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectic_of_Enlightenment

Interesting, I have to agree that I've learned more from his ideas on Linguistics than his social theory. His knowledge of political history is unsurpassed though, imo... It was his social theories that lead to his breakthroughs in Linguistics, it's kind of a package deal.

I wasn't aware of this Frankfurt school until you mentioned it the other day. I find their ideas intriguing and I wish to subscribe to their newsletter... I watched a documentary called Free Voice of Labor: The Jewish Anarchists and there were (IIRC) about 50 Jewish Anarchist Newspapers in print in the 1950's... The movement had to start over in the 90's after the Cold War ended, then 9/11 killed it again... Chomsky has to keep repeating the same shit because we're still stuck in the same shit. Sometimes the most important thing to do is to repeat the obvious...

Chomsky rarely ever mentions his influences. Walter Lippmann is the only one I can think of, he published his book "Public Opinion" a year before the Frankfurt school was founded. Chomsky says he formed his own opinions, and was always conscious of the influence literature has on him.

I know. I didn't realize it was still in my sig, though. It sucks. I put a hell of a lot of work into those, especially in finding just the right screengrabs to include, and now they're all gone.

The internet is a harsh mistress. That sucks. You can't rescue it from the archive with your mod skills?

I don't have a blog. The first link is my academic archive with all of the criticism and scholarship I've published and the second link is the martial arts journal I help edit. The first link is public so everything there either has a PDF you can view directly or download or else a link to the online journal where the piece is hosted. The second link did need to get updated, though, as the journal has a new home page.

As for my shit on Seagal:

http://offscreen.com/view/blockbuster_ideology_part_1

http://offscreen.com/view/action-aesthetics-pt1

A word of warning/advice: Both essays are very long and very theoretical (the second one especially, as it was originally written as my Master's thesis). However, they're both broken up into two parts, so you can skip some of the theory stuff if you want. For both essays, Part I is mostly theory while Part II is mostly criticism.

Thanks for the links. I don't have time to read them now, but I'll get to them.

When I click on the links in the academic archive it says I have to request them...

 

[Bullitt68]

It was his social theories that lead to his breakthroughs in Linguistics

I'm no Chomsky expert, but from what I know of him, he spent the 1940s and 1950s studying philosophy and linguistics, wrote essays and books developing his ideas of transformational grammar and the innate language faculty and all that, and then in the 1960s started to become politically active.

The main reason I don't like his Frankfurt crap is because it strikes me as a very different Chomsky than the one from his famous debate with Michel Foucault (which, if you haven't seen it, you'll surely find interesting):

I wasn't aware of this Frankfurt school until you mentioned it the other day.

Theodor Adorno is the major figure. You'd like Dialectic of Enlightenment and you'd probably also like Minima Moralia.

I've got PDFs of them if you're interested:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/fw6x3v777bq1dhj/1944 - Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer - Dialectic of Enlightenment.pdf?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/il264r8on3z90t2/1951 - Theodor Adorno - Minima Moralia.pdf?dl=0

However, in the interest of balance, you should also read Andrew Britton's trenchant critique of Adorno in his essay "Consuming Culture," which is included in the following anthology:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/6iyk69zv0uv9w6j/2009 - Andrew Britton - Britton on Film.pdf?dl=0

I go after Britton in that first Seagal essay for his views on 1980s Hollywood, but in literally every other respect, he is fucking brilliant. And he had no patience for whiny pseudo-Marxists like Adorno.

You can't rescue it from the archive with your mod skills?

There's nowhere to rescue them from. All of my threads - plus a shit ton of other threads, including a bunch of @Dragonlordxxxxx's movie threads - were deleted from the servers.

When I click on the links in the academic archive it says I have to request them...

That's because that site is designed in a very stupid way. This is literally the same message that I have copy-and-pasted a billion times to the people who have messaged me on there asking for one of the things I've written:

"Unfortunately, Academia is designed pretty much exclusively for PDFs as opposed to content published directly online, which makes it confusing for people looking for writings of mine published in online journals or websites as it looks like I simply haven't uploaded them. For all of my writings that are not in PDF form, you have to go from my profile page to the specific writing, and then underneath the title and to the right of my name, there is a spot that says "URL" and a website with an arrow icon next to it. If you click that URL, it'll take you away from Academia to the external site where the writing is hosted."

 

[Dragonlordxxxxx]

There's nowhere to rescue them from. All of my threads - plus a shit ton of other threads, including a bunch of @Dragonlordxxxxx's movie threads - were deleted from the servers.

 

[Sigh GunRanger]

Put me in the Diaz was robbed camped

 

[ufcfan4]

Sick main card tonight. Cerrone is a beast. I don't recall Story ever being stopped with strikes. Two durable guys (Cote markedly less so than he was but still) in two consecutive fights and Cerrone put them away in violent fashion. Great to see him look so good at 170. Quite interesting he's talking 155 fight against Alvarez though. How the hell can you blame him? He's the last guy to beat the current lightweight champion- big money potential fight at MSG.

Biggest problem though is that you screw over guys like Ferg and Khabib who have been doing work in that weight class to give Cerrone another title opportunity when RDA smashed him last time around. Still, Ferg is occupied with RDA and I don't know what's going on with Khabib next...

AJ is one of the scariest fucking guys in MMA that's for certain. Brutal. Definitely deserves the title shot. Cormier has a monster chin and a lot of heart given that he ate an uppercut from AJ and survived.

Fun man even for sure. Competitive fight. I thought both guys were really game. Decision came down to that second round. Conor's two knockdowns vs. Nate being all over him at the end of the round. Obvious rubber match is obvious for money reasons in the absence of other logical reasons. That said, Conor is the 145 champ but shows no signs of going back to the division- and most likely cannot go back to the division. Even in the post fight interview he challenged Nate to fight him on his terms at 155 as though that's Conor's established weight class. Make Aldo full on champ again to fight Holloway and let's see different fights for Nate and Conor at 55 before the inevitable third fight.

 

[ufcfan4]

Put me in the Diaz was robbed camped

Felt like a 48-47 win for either would have been appropriate. Round 2 was troubling to me right after it happened cause I knew it would be confounding if the rest of the fight was close. Nate did late damage for sure but two knockdowns in the early going of a round is a tough hill to climb even if you come back strong.

 

[Dragonlordxxxxx]

Amazing fight. Had it 48-47 for Conor but could also see it a draw. Not a robbery but a very close and exciting fight.

UFC 202 >>> UFC 200.

 

[Flemmy Stardust]

Fuckin Larkin tho....jeez.

 

[Flemmy Stardust]

let's see different fights for Nate and Conor at 55 before the inevitable third fight.

Risks the draw if the rubber match if either loses, but I'd like to see them get a different fight in beforehand too.

Ideally Conor/Aldo 2...still feeling robbed from the first one.

Nate...i dunno what makes the most sense, but I'd love to see him fight Ferguson or rematch with Cerrone.

 

[Flemmy Stardust]

Put me in the Diaz was robbed camped

Holding my opinion until i rewatch it, but i gave the 2nd to Nate. By the end of the fight i had a feeling the judges were going to disagree with me.

 

[Sigh GunRanger]

Holding my opinion until i rewatch it, but i gave the 2nd to Nate. By the end of the fight i had a feeling the judges were going to disagree with me.

The older i get, the more I subscribe to Max Kellerman's philosophy on scoring rounds - it boils down to "who would I rather have been." And by the end of it, Conor was getting his ass kicked for 2minutes. Should I weigh two knockdowns more heabvily than that when they didnt even come close to finishing the fight? no.


The judge that had the draw, gave a 10-8 to diaz for rd 3. It really looked like Big John could have stopped it; Conor wasnt defending at all. It was worse than kampmann-daley, and that got stopped on the feet

 

[europe1]

The older i get, the more I subscribe to Max Kellerman's philosophy on scoring rounds - it boils down to "who would I rather have been." And by the end of it, Conor was getting his ass kicked for 2minutes. Should I weigh two knockdowns more heabvily than that when they didnt even come close to finishing the fight? no.

Judges are obliged to follow the Unified scoring system though. And the score book does say that big, ostentasious strikes that has an visible impact on the opponent is to be favoured over a quantity of blows. So under the Unified rules I can definitively see Connor getting that round.

 

[Rimbaud82]

I had it for Conor 3 rounds to 2....I could see it going to Diaz but can't believe some people are saying robbery. Conor looked brilliant in the first round, much more technical and patient. The biggest problem I had been noticing, which lots of people had, is that he had increasingly fallen in love with his power at the expense of his counter-punching but he went back to that in this fight. If he had kept going like that first round it would have been great, I am not sure what made him gas like that though because it didn't look like he was working that hard. Maybe a combination of carrying the extra weight, adrenaline dump, Diaz's pressure etc. Anyway it was a good fight but I am glad McGregor won of course. I wanna see a few different match-ups before we see a rubber match though.

 

[ufcfan4]

Fuckin Larkin tho....jeez.

dude is going to go into contract negotiations with a smile on his face. That's quite the win. He did what Lombard and Gastelum couldn't do and put away a tough, quality guy like Magny.