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In Reply to: Re: try some genuine old school martial arts movies posted by caa on September 05, 2002 at 08:17:04:
***Go for some foreign films not intended for American audiences.
***It's fashionable and somewhat politically correct -- ironically -- to be self-demeaning/critical,You are dead wrong, of course. It is politically correct to be completely oblivious of one's deficiencies. Being critical is the sign of maturity.
***but some of the foreign films I have seen this year are quite excellent. Amelia comes to mind.Well, I think you missed his point. It is the fact that the American "taste" plays important role today. Just like the BMW can't overlook its largest market, so can't the folks from the European studios, if they want to make any money.
American influence has damaged their movie industries to great extent, as they are unable to be profitable without the US distribution. Put the blame for that on both parties.
Amelie... cute, not bad, warm. But excellent? Hardly. Not a major effort. Its sucess not surprising - the Americans are big naive children, they love fairy tales, it is the truth and realism that they can't take. Amelie was just another Shrek.
What does a particular film have to do with this discussion?
Follow Ups:
hi, I wasn't very clear. I thought that Adriel meant that this film was made with American ingredients, styles and values so that it's easy for the audience to identify with. I couldn't detect that. In fact, I think that most people who don't like this film is because of its strange taste.With respect to truth, realism vs fairy tales. Each has their own place in literature. Art is an expression of imagination, not necessarily a reproduction of reality. Nobody complains about the imagination of Kubrick. People complain about Star Wars mostly because of its lack of depth not because the impossibile existence and control of "the force".
Smart foreigners don't make "American films"; they make films for Americans. The difference is in degree not substance admitedly. But it's a big difference. The weakness lies in the customers "enjoyment of foreign pieces", not necessarily the true quality of the pieces themselves. Also, when I say "self-critical", I mean "self" in a national sense as I think it's fashionable for people to complain what they have, to degrade the quality of American products.
Nothing is wrong with fairy tales per se. My general beef with the American taste is that it replaced the subject of human beings and their sufferings, emotions and pain with machines, social deviants and excitement.I don't see degrading the American qualty as the prevailing attitude, though. Unfortunately the predominant one is that of undeserved satisfaction and self-congratulation. And in art the tension is everything, the perpetual unhappiness of the artist with the results of his labor.
But I think we are straying. The ongoing Hollywoodization of the world cinema is unfortunately something that is happening, whether we admit it or not. And as I said - those other guys share in that responsibility at least equally. No one is forcing them to prostitute themselves.
I don't have any patience for this stuff.When it becomes "popular", I immediately become suspect that it's not the Real Thing, but some kind of culturally diluted concoction, that panders to be "popular". If I want the Real Thing, I know where to go, and I don't need something to become stylish, to "tell" me it's "good".
Just looking at a few minutes of this film, and you can tell it's highly stylized, to the absurd point of trivializing the genre.
Who really finds it genuinely entertaining ? I would rather see a good Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan film, than this stuff, any day.
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