Films/DVD Asylum

It is hard to define "cool"

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In Reply to: "Blade Runner" posted by njjohn on December 7, 2004 at 14:05:35:

I love most of the films here. Blade Runner was beautiful, profound, dreamlike and cool at the same time.
But I'm with Rico. McQueen was cool (and, Lord knows, he was tough and not a poseur)
Bullit may have been his "coolest" movie but in rewatching it several times over the years, this is so much more complex and different from the typical film about "cops and robbers" today (even Heat, which I love) that I think it really belongs where Rico put it.

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Re: Not my list - rico 07:40:02 12/08/04 (0)
Thanks for your poat. The list is not mine, it was taken from a poll by TV Times. I only agree with some of the choices but definitely would put "Bullitt" way on top. McQueen had a screen presense, a synergistic way of blending with the camera, like Brando, Monroe, Gabel, and Bogart before him. The way he uses props and the way he just handles himself is way cool.
Re: It is hard to define "cool" - njjohn 20:17:19 12/07/04 (0)
Yea, I think "cool" in music is a specific term. Like in jazz it refers in my mind to a certain type of understatement.
But in film, it may have a broader definition. In my mind, it may refer to various things. Perhaps I'm wrong about that.
It can cover a certain nonplussed type of film style or acting and in that way it would be similar to the way the term is used in music.
I was thinking of the movie "Body Heat" also in terms of cool. The
heat kind of slows everything down in the film. A certain low keyness, even though murder and betrayal are involved.
Perhaps in the interesting film "Jackie Brown", Robert De
Niro also acts kind of cool (low-key. nonplussed by some excitable people and things happening around him particularly Samuel Jackson's character).
Is that why they refer to "Pulp Fiction" as being cool. Samuel Jackson and John Tavolta have normal conversations while they are in the process of killing people. And another actor acts kind of cool even though he is a bit crazed and he has a electric saw to get others with.
And then the guy they go to to "clean up the mess" acts particularly "cool" after being established as a very dangerous person.
Cool is when very dangerous people don't do something (understatement) or do something very bad in a nonchalant way (like in Natural Born Killers perhaps).
Then you would certainly have to say that there is a real coolness in the movie "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer". One of my favorite films because it had such a great impact on me. They kill people like it's nothing.
But cool also refers I guess to being hip or right in a certain way, or just being real, real, good.
For being hip or right, the young kind of goofy kid in 'House Party" is kind of cool and gets really cool when the music and party starts.
Something real, real good might be cool as the Fellini scene I mentioned. A "spectacular" type of scene that just establishes film as art.
Alot of films seem to have a certain coolness about them. I guess especially Tarantino films. Perhaps it is really an important style.

"Kill Bill" is cool too. The woman is cool in being very straighforward in what she feels she has to do regardless. She gets her revenge in a matter of fact cool way.

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