Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by RGA (A) on May 31, 2005 at 14:41:36

In Reply to: Re: Thanks for your response, RGA! posted by Gee LP on May 31, 2005 at 00:53:24:

This was made for TV film based off of one of the great American novels

Yes I should have said Play not novel because oviously Death of a salesman was a play -- if you read it again with play it will make more sense. To put it bluntly I have never read the Greates American novel and didn't even know there was one (mildly sarcastic here LOL).

I love movies but I find a lot of people are very narrow on what they call good. If you like Jaws and ET then you have a greater understanding of the film's intent than many.

I'm not an avid movie wather -- I had a big run in the early to mid 1990s seeing about 65 films a year in theaters from about 1993-1998 renting many as well. But I'm only around 1200 movies total many of which include schlock horror films.

My kind of film critic to put it bluntly is Roger Ebert. He is a formula writer but good at it. It is obvious he loves movies and all kinds of movies. My film viewing motto is "I don't care about the subject matter but entertain me in some way." Spielberg I always feel I'm defending from attacks. It's silly because I've read bizzarre attacks on him for years. He's overly sentimental, his movies have happy endings (presumably because life never has any??). I have no problem with sentiment in movies. He is "mostly" an escapist optimistic director, if I had to creat a category for him. And what he does he does better than any other director I've seen. So does George Romero -- and if what they do isn;t to one's liking so be it.

I ignore the director as much as possible because I don't like going in to see movies with any pre-conceived expectations. I want to be swept up in the story than expect some masterpiece because the director is tied to it. I made the mistke of watching Maid in Manhatten because Ralph Fiennes was in it. I made the assumption based on prior work that he would add substance to this thing.

Spielberg is not free of pathetic efforts. I still admire him for saying that he should not have made the film and that he should have given the project to another director -- he said that about the Colour Purple which had what 11 Academy Award nomination -- all I can say is that it was a pretty darn good movie for a mistake at least relative to what other stuff is out there.

I was not attempting to knock Shakespeare - he is one of the few writers I enjoyed in my literature classes. I don't find his plots terribly deep. His writing style was fantastic, and his plots probably revolution at the time.

If we go to sales of re-print dvd's then take JAWS -- a film that when it came out arguably was scary and had a huge special effects wonder as the centerpiece (Though Spielberg hated the shark). We don't have a break down on who buys what on dvd. But I'm willing to bet more people and I mean 100 times more people are buying Jaws or Raiders over Some Like it Hot or Citizen Kane.

Jaws apparently is lasting for more than the thriller aspects and for more than the now fake looking shark. it has a heart and soul in there which people respond to and will continue to respond to down the road because it was helmed by a director who know how do heart even with deceptively simplistic dialog.

I should not have knocked older films because a few of my favorites are La Grande Illusion, the Seven Samurai, The Third Man. But I also love the character seeking Redemtion films like Pulp Fiction in a sea of wickedly strange dialog.

I'm not saying that bigger box office take means better films. Not at all. It is funny to me to see a movie like Spider a Canadian film not even get a theatrical release in my Canadian city while some idiocy of a movie like Ace Ventura take up 2 screens everywhere. On the other hand Spider requires some thinking and after a long hard week of work sometimes people do not want to do that - so Jim Carrey is there to save you.

Plus attention spans are shorter these days. People blame video games - but you know I bought an X-BOX and a game called Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic just to see. And I can safely say that if games continue on this path some movies are in trouble. the dialog story and depth of this game trounces the Star Wars Movies. And your $30.00 gets you 50+ hours of entertainment value.

I see a new art form, or the potentional for it, coming with these games. Maybe in another ten years we'll be arguing over the direction of the latest game.