JonasEB
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Posts posted by JonasEB
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> {quote:title=ClassicViewer wrote:}{quote}
> We can make judgments about works of art. We can decide to remove certain things from our lives. We don't need to feel bad about that. Besides, pepperoni may not be very healthy.
We have the personal right to do this but I don't think we have the authority to do the same for everyone else in the public sphere. Moral and ethical standards are a contentious issue so if some people can get a work of art or literature banned over a particular issue, it would easily be possible for another group to do the same.
> {quote:title=hamradio wrote:}{quote}
> The one thing that makes America great is that Mein Kampf and The Communist Manifesto can sit on the same self at a local library.
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> Start worrying when they can not!
America, like every country, hasn't always been perfect on issues of censorship so it's always important to stay active in that regard. We should never come to the point that they are pulled off the shelves.
> {quote:title=ClassicViewer wrote:}{quote}
> That does not make sense. Why should we celebrate the presence of literature that does not lead to the betterment of society and in fact helped cause some of the greatest problems known to man (and woman) in the previous century.
>
> It's like saying, we have some good sardines on the shelf in the pantry, and we also have some rancid sardines. Thank goodness we can keep the rancid ones, as that is our constitutional right. But who the heck can use rancid sardines...just rancid people.
History, for one, but also we shouldn't jump to paint those works in broad colors. Hitler was a famously bad writer and his ideas on race and eugenics are demonstrably wrong but it's necessary to have one of the textbooks of fascism around for people to study. I'm not a communist but I still think the social problems described by Marx and expanded on later are important issues culturally...I just disagree with the validity of Marx's suggestions on the ultimate ends of his theories. Does any committed communist still read Marx as the pure truth? I'd think they'd know that The Communist Manifesto and Capital are terribly dated in a number of ways.
Like the earlier pizza comparison, food and ideas aren't quite the same.
> {quote:title=ClassicViewer wrote:}{quote}
> But it sounds like you are trying to dictate who is in power and to make sure they define it the way you do. Where is there any freedom in that? You have to be tolerant and see that groups who want certain materials removed have the right to do that.
We're getting into the area of national censorship vs. a school deciding on what books will be read in a high school AP English lit class. On the national level I don't believe we should seek to keep the flow of information and art from the people. As rational, free adults we should have the right to go to a library or book store and read whatever we want to. A school on the other hand does have the right to make decisions on curriculum. I might disagree with their opinion that a writer like Burrows shouldn't be included in discussions on modern American literature based on his vulgarity...but it's their right to make that decision.
> {quote:title=ClassicViewer wrote:}{quote}
> Now you don't have to enjoy or even like Spanky and Alfalfa, but if you adhere to specific principles, then you should be advocating that all the OUR GANG movies are available to the public right alongside Mein Kampf. But I don't hear anyone doing that. Nobody is really applying the test to this specific example. Why not? Because they want to pontificate and philosophize about rights, but they don't want to put it into action when their so-called rights are in jeopardy. Hypocrisy.
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> For instance, you are not allowed to watch certain OUR GANG comedies because someone else has decided that you can't.
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> The NAACP doesn't want to make it a crime to show OUR GANG or Amos N Andy, but they do want to put pressure on broadcasters not to air them and to dilute their commercial value. They want to remove those titles and they are succeeding.
This is somewhat a false dilemma because Mein Kampf and Our Gang are often in the two different realms of censorship I and others have highlighted. I actually do see people address what I'll call the "Our Gang situation" frequently (among others, the TV show South Park has done a few episodes on the issue of TV censorship.) And I think the problem with Our Gang is a lack of visibility; most people aren't interested in any old film or media, let alone an old series of short films. I, for one, would love to see any and all Our Gang shorts on TV as they were meant to be seen. As mentioned, they are available on DVD, both the Roach and MGM eras, so we are completely free to see many of those uncut episodes.
Censorship happens all the time but as discussed there's a difference between our national public right to these things and what a private institution can do with their property. It doesn't mean we agree with it in the latter case, it just isn't up to us. It's up to the courage of the company that owns whatever property to release it. Warner released their Looney Tunes collections with many of the notorious racial bits and the controversy was non-existent. It's all about the courage of the company.
> {quote:title=ClassicViewer wrote:}{quote}
> I wonder if the MGM ones are less offensive than the ones produced in the 30s by Roach.
The MGM years are tamer but the Roach films are far superior. I don't find the MGM ones too bad but they just aren't on par with the earlier years.
> {quote:title=ClassicViewer wrote:}{quote}
> I really think you should leave the same-sex and abortion topics out of this discussion. You are saying in one breath that you are adamantly conservative but you are also speaking out of the other side of your mouth trying to score points with the liberals. Take a side, make a stand and stick to it. That's what I do. And I don't back down.
Some people are libertarians. At this time in this country, I think it would do us all some good to remember that the political spectrum of the United States is far more complex than it is always reduced to on TV and the radio.
Edited by: JonasEB on Aug 14, 2010 2:16 AM
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King Vidor was only given an honorary Academy Award in 1979 at the age of 85. A shame, he should have won at least one best director statue.
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ClassicViewer,
In Germany it's illegal for the average citizen to own a copy of Mein Kampf but it is considered fine to read it in certain contexts (history classes, library-only readings, etc.) Instead of destroying The Birth of a Nation or Triumph of the Will outright, why not show them in this manner instead? I don't endorse this at all but I think it makes far more sense than jumping to reduce them to stills and essays.
Specifically on Triumph of the Will: If we destroyed all traces of this film, what stops us from shredding the newsreels and other visual records of what happened during that time? Those could be used in much the same way as Triumph. It's an enormous privilege for us to see these events as they happened, something the people of the 19th century and prior didn't have. We actually get to see Hitler's famously magnetic oratory skills and we get to study it. If it were reduced to paper, we would lose a crucial dimension in understanding that part of history. I think it would be wrong enough to forbid us from experiencing that but to bar our descendants 300 years from now from getting the opportunity to see it?
On the other hand, trashy/"culturally worthless" artifacts: I think that stuff like pornography or the worst B films of the 70s and 80s do have potential cultural worth if it gives some information to later generations on how we thought about these things or consumed them.
I'm morally against banning or censorship because it really is a slippery slope. If we make it okay to scrub out parts of the past, we have less ground to prevent anyone from controlling what information we receive in the present which is the most important thing of all.
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> {quote:title=kingrat wrote:}{quote}
> Incidentally, I don't find anything remotely likable about George Costanza on Seinfeld, which is why I was never a big fan of the show. Why would anyone want to spend two minutes with this creep?
But that's why the show was so great: none of the characters were likable (at least in the ordinary sense) or admirable people, George first and foremost, and these are the kinds of people and situations we really encounter everyday...and we might have more in common with those people than we'd like to admit. It's a "sad but true so we better laugh at it" kind of thing.
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To keep this post as on topic as possible, other films that earned my contempt. My brother is a horror buff so he has an extensive DVD collection, all of which I've watched. I've seen a lot of crap but these belong in another category altogether.
Return of the Boogeyman - Straight to video sequel to minor cult slasher Boogeyman (1980.) This is the only movie I can think of that has no legitimate reason to exist. That's not an exaggeration, by the way.
The Hidden 2 - Another bad straight to video sequel, this one to the fun sci-fi buddy horror thriller The Hidden (1987) starring Kyle MacLachlan. The Hidden 2 features awful "I'm an alien, I don't understand how you do things on earth" humor and none of the quirks and relative refinement of the original.
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> {quote:title=misswonderly wrote:}{quote}
> Never heard of *Sour Grapes*. I take it this film is sour?
It's shocking that it's so bad considering it came between Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm. Sour Grapes is Larry's only directorial effort so far and it seems he doesn't like the film himself. Like Curb, it uses pieces of classical music for transitions and particular moments but in the case of Sour Grapes the pieces are all too obvious and gratuitous in context. It feels far too sitcom-y for a movie, in ways Seinfeld definitely wasn't. The two main characters over-do their gestures. It's an overall "grating on the senses" experience.
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> {quote:title=Kinokima wrote:}{quote}
> King Vidor's The Crowd in New York (it is amazing to see the city in the late 1920's).
For sure.
On the same token, I'll add Harold Lloyd's Speedy. Since it's about the retirement of the last streetcar in New York City, a swan song for an older time, it was absolutely vital to get the camera out there on the streets to show a city in change.
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> {quote:title=misswonderly wrote:}{quote}
> I agree about *September*, Woody Allen's weakest offering from that era. (Although, sorry to say, he's made quite a few that are worse since then!)
I think Woody is still capable of bringing out the goods every now and then but unfortunately the 2000s have disappointed in general. I like Match Point, Cassandra's Dream, and Vicky Cristina Barcelona. haven't seen Whatever Works yet despite being a major Larry David fan.
Speaking of Larry David, I think his film Sour Grapes qualifies for this thread.
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> {quote:title=JefCostello wrote:}{quote}
> Alphaville is a sci film film, so what exactly was the location shooting you speak of there?
Godard shot Alphaville in normal, modern Paris like all of his films in that period and nothing was constructed or fabricated for the film. Of course Godard was working on a budget but he probably didn't want to embellish anything anyway. He shot at night and made creative use of modernist buildings to create his space. Alphaville is an enormous shift in how we perceive science fiction material on film. It's the first sci-fi film to depict a future society as not that much different from our own society (or rather, the modern society of the 1960s.) The film's a definite landmark of location shooting in film history.
Truffaut, on the other hand, did use studio sets for his Universal backed Fahrenheit 451 the next year.
Edited by: JonasEB on Aug 11, 2010 5:12 AM
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> {quote:title=Kinokima wrote:}{quote}
> As I said before I don't care that Emma Thompson doesn't like Audrey Hepburn. She has a right to her opinion but I also have a right to say her opinion is full of......
Didn't say you couldn't. I just find it funny that we're taking it so seriously.
> {quote:title=Kinokima wrote:}{quote}
> And since you are using examples of famous directors disliking other famous directors I can also disagree with their opinion or how they present their opinion.
Yes.
> {quote:title=Kinokima wrote:}{quote}
> Tolstoy hates Shakespeare. He wrote some long essays on the matter. I love Tolstoy's novels (well the two I have read) but when it comes to Shakespeare then I don't think he knows what he is talking about. Actually I think his opinions on Shakespeare are quite ridiculous.
But that's the point of my post. You don't have to agree with Tolstoy's analysis of Shakespeare. It did absolutely nothing to push Shakespeare out of his spot in world history. That essay though, and later George Orwell's response, could also be a valuable tool in evaluating how perceptions of drama and literature have changed since Elizabethan times and the late 1800s and into the 1900s...and how Tolstoy views his own art form and subsequently how another writer looks at Tolstoy through that lens (as an aside: I think it's kind of funny that Tolstoy uses a "mass hypnosis" argument; "You only like it because people tell you to." Ha! Even back then we had classic message board-style criticism!)
And I find a lot of the demeanor and responses here telling of how people view movies...and the suggestions don't bode well for the continuing vitality of the movies.
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Impossible to pick five, right now I'm thinking about...
The Searchers
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon
Judge Priest
Stagecoach
How Green Was My Valley
They Were Expendable
Young Mr. Lincoln
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
And there are still many I haven't seen, Pilgrimage and Wagon Master in particular I've heard great things about, and many I need to see again.
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This really is silly.
This kind of thing happens all the time. If you dig you'll find unsavory comments on others by many people you both love and hate.
A lot of the great directors had less than charitable things to say about each other and no one is hurt by it. Bergman hated Welles, Welles didn't like the French New Wave, Kurosawa wasn't a fan of Ozu, Rossellini disliked Antonioni (so did Welles and Bergman.) I have no problem with that, it does nothing to change how I feel about any one of them. In fact it gives us information on how each of those guys think about film.
Emma Thompson's comments won't denigrate Audrey Hepburn's status.
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Many Godard films, notably Alphaville and Two or Three Things I Know About Her.
Rossellini's neorealist period (The War Trilogy, Stromboli, etc.)
Michael Powell's The Edge of the World
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Not necessarily my least favorite films but these are some that prompted a very negative reaction...
September - Woody's lone misfire in the 1980s. His worst set of characters, indulging in an excessive amount of Woody-level anxiety and dysfunction, completely uninteresting, unappealing people all around. That they're all stuck in a chamber play makes it that much more unbearable. It's only eighty minutes long but it feels like three hours.
Out of Africa - Even though I like David Lean, I'm not a fan of the modern descendants of his epic films (see also: The English Patient, Atonement.) Out of Africa is the worst offender. Pollack's direction is sedate and the cinematography never lends much emotional weight to the setting these people find themselves in. Streep and Redford don't conjure up an involving romance. A better Isak Dinesen adaptation on film: The Immortal Story (1968) by Orson Welles.
The Spirit - Please, world, never let Frank Miller behind the camera ever again.
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Julee Cruise - Falling (The theme from Twin Peaks)
Julee Cruise - Rockin' Back Inside My Heart
Julee Cruise - Mysteries of Love (Excerpt from Blue Velvet)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBoXNket2pQ
Above selections from the album Floating Into the Night
Brian Eno - Golden Hours
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lh9VdRQO2i4
Brian Eno - The Big Ship
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcH3Q5YUMNA
Above selections from Another Green World
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First, I wouldn't call a natural difference of opinions a misunderstanding.
> {quote:title=fxreyman wrote:}{quote}
> Listen, I am NOT advocating that what AFI does is perfect science.
I don't believe anyone has said or implied this.
> {quote:title=fxreyman wrote:}{quote}
> Anytime you take people's opinions and try and distill them into a list of "best", or "greatest", or whatever you want to call it, you are not going to get perfect science. And the reason for this is simple:
>
> It is all subjective.
Of course but the issue is whether or not the AFI list accomplishes its goal of exposing people to older films. I don't think it does; the classics on display there are the ones most people already know about (It's a Wonderful Life, the Hitchcock films, John Wayne.) I'm sure there are people who watched many of the films on the list for the first time upon the airing of the first or 10th anniversary AFI list but from my experience they tend not to go beyond this point, very few actually do. Check out the more casual/mainstream favorites lists from people on IMDB, they're filled with AFI/IMDB top 250 stuff but never something like In a Lonely Place or The Steel Helmet. It's good that people watch many of those films for whatever reason but the AFI could easily help get many more films exposed to the mainstream (and that's what they're supposed to be doing.) Why stop at 100? I think it's ineffective at best, at worst it guides people who aren't going to look any further towards a very limited selection of old films. Most people aren't interested in art, literature, or culture. Like you said, many are just looking for some quick entertainment. They might be willing to take an opinion from a group with assumed authority like the AFI list but they're usually not going to dig anymore on their own.
> {quote:title=fxreyman wrote:}{quote}
> They don't in many ways because they aren't trying to advocate the preservation of films like the AFI does. In many ways the AFI specials have raised awareness of film neglect and have refocused many people's attentions to older films that are in decay and can still be saved.
People have good reason to be angry with the AFI. In truth the AFI has done very little with regards to film preservation and restoration. The films featured on the AFI lists by and large aren't in need of preservation or restoration. The films that they have restored are unavailable to the average person and they do next to nothing to get them out to the public. Sunrise, on the 2007 list, was salvaged five years earlier by the _British Film Institute_ and, of all people, the AMPAS film archive. If the George Eastman House and the Museum of Modern Art can do so much in the service of preserving film, what's keeping the AFI, specifically set up to preserve America's film legacy and a group that has tentacles in the film industry, from doing more than the paltry work it has done over the last 40 years? The management is notoriously poor.
After my issues with the actual function of the AFI list, my personal feeling about it is that it's just another example of the AFI's taste for fluff at the expense of doing anything substantial. I think a better idea than a mere list would have been to have one of the network TV stations air all of the films over the course of a year, maybe two a night on Sundays, as part of a sponsored series. I really think people would watch if they did it right.
Edited by: JonasEB on Aug 9, 2010 7:21 AM
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Probably around 600, I haven't counted in a while.
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> {quote:title=fxreyman wrote:}{quote}
> The only reason I mentioned the organization is because whether you agree or not, they are most responsible for getting the word out about classic films, that is to a mainstream audience in the past ten years.
>
> So as far as I am concerned, the only organization that has brought attention to long ago classics in a more comprehensive way to the masses has been AFI and their so-called *meaningless* lists which are broadcast over regular broadcast television.
I think ideally that would be the case but the AFI really just supports the kind of canonical classics that everyone already knows. You know, the kinds of films that get parodied on TV all the time because everyone will know what's being parodied. Of course, there are exceptions, but mostly it's a dry well. It's a populist list that confirms what the audience is expecting rather than trying to get the word out about how rich and deep America's film heritage is.
And as I am a silent film fan: Any list that includes The Jazz Singer while leaving out Sunrise, The Crowd, and countless other genuine masterpieces isn't doing its job by the standard you've given it. (note: That's the original AFI list, I know they added Sunrise to the 10th anniversary special.)
For anyone interested, here's Jonathan Rosenbaum's list in reaction to the original "AFI 100 Years 100 Movies" special. I think this accomplishes the aim of exposing the depths of American film to a wider audience better than the AFI list: http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/list-o-mania/Content?oid=896619
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http://www.flickeralley.com/fat_chaplin_01.html
Coming October 26th. I've never liked the Keystone era as much as I have the Essanay, Mutual, and First National films but this just might be the perfect time to revisit them. It's going to be a good Christmas season for Chaplin fans: we get this wonderful set and at least one, perhaps more than one, of the upcoming Criterion discs.
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Wow, this is far and away the best month of the year. Really excellent.
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1967 definitely was a good year, particularly for the French and Godard.
I don't think it's possible to narrow down one particular year in the history of cinema that exceeds all others. I certainly don't think it's the much bandied about 1939. One year might have a large number of "great" films but another may have a smaller number of truly significant ones.
I think choosing a decade might be more plausible, in which case I might pick the 1950s.
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It is nice to see another Fox film getting a third party release on Blu because Fox definitely won't do it on their own. I hope Criterion and MOC continue to dig in, maybe Wild River will come up soon.
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> {quote:title=ValentineXavier wrote:}{quote}
> I thought he fed all his friends to a crocodile. That's what Tobe Hooper says, anyway...
Oh, I love Eaten Alive so much!
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In no particular order...
Vertigo
Shadow of a Doubt
Rebecca
Rope
North by Northwest
And I have a soft spot for The Trouble With Harry. It's been a while since I've seen a good number of Hitchcock's films (glad The Wrong Man is coming up again, it's due for a rewatch) so this is a pretty tentative list.
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Peer Raben's score for Berlin Alexanderplatz and Miklos Rozsa's score for King of Kings.
And the Carl Davis score for The Crowd...Carl Davis in general for that matter. Michel Legrand, Bernard Herrmann, and Toru Takemitsu have written many a fine score as well. I have a soft spot for Joe Hisaishi's work on Hayao Miyazaki's animated masterpieces.
Banning of Films
in General Discussions
Posted
> {quote:title=ClassicViewer wrote:}{quote}
> I don't think moral and ethical standards are contentious among like-minded individuals who belong to groups with the same societal objectives.
There may be certain things we all agree on as Americans but have you watched/read/listened to the news lately? Prop 8 is all over the place. We're debating whether Muslims should be able to build a mosque near ground zero (and they're getting flack in cities and towns across the country for attempting to build new mosques and Muslim community centers.) Stem Cell Research has receded but it's still an important issue. Abortion, of course. Immigration and our borders. Our spending. Our ongoing wars. These are the kinds of important moral and ethical issues we grapple with everyday. The fact that we're debating issues of censorship here is yet another moral/ethical divide. These marks are all over the country.
> {quote:title=ClassicViewer wrote:}{quote}
> That is an opinion. We are all entitled to opinions, but remember that others do not have to agree with you on that.
Of course it is, I never said you weren't entitled to your own opinion.
> {quote:title=ClassicViewer wrote:}{quote}
> Number three: "I'd think they'd know that The Communist Manifesto and Capital are terribly dated in a number of ways."
>
> How do you know that? I think you are making assumptions.
It is an assumption but one based on logic. The CM and Capital were written in the middle of the 19th century. This was halfway into the industrial period. Society has changed greatly over the course of 150 years. We've had a century and a half of people continuing to write about and expand on Marxist theories, any communist who still based their philosophy strictly on Marx's writings would be ignoring, among other vitally important developments, the rise of the information age.
> {quote:title=ClassicViewer wrote:}{quote}
> Moving on: "Mein Kampf and Our Gang are often in the two different realms of censorship..."
>
> How? Just because they are different works of 'art' does not mean that censorship would be applied differently. Censorship is censorship, whether we're talking about an opera or a dime store novel.
Because Mein Kampf is in the potential position of being banned outright from legal consumption, there is modern precedent for that. No one would think of doing that to Our Gang in this day and age. One is potentially subject to government intervention, which would be a clear violation of the constitution, the other is stuck in the machinery of corporations and public interest groups, nothing more.
> {quote:title=ClassicViewer wrote:}{quote}
> Next: "I think it would do us all some good to remember that the political spectrum of the United States is far more complex than it is always reduced to..."
>
> Again, that is an opinion.
Sure but what's the other side of the coin? I find it both depressing and humorous when I see the Tea Party stuffed neatly in the pocket of the Republican party. If these people were sincere about shaking things up politically, they wouldn't simply be replacing Republican senators, representatives, and governors with different Republicans. They're just doing what we always do: Not satisfied with the Democrats? Vote in Republicans. Not satisfied with Republicans? Vote in Democrats. We often complain about the consolidation of power in congress yet we never begin to do anything about it. The Tea Party isn't and I find this endemic of all American political life. We continue to insist that all of our ideas and aspirations rest with the system we already have, We're limiting the free market of ideas. I'd like to see communists, socialists, anarchists, libertarians, capitalists, theocrats, racists, fascists, everyone and anyone trying to get their piece of mind out there.
By the way, the only reason I wrote such a long post in the first place is because I don't post as often as other people do, usually only at one point in my day, so there were lots of things I thought I'd like to chime in about since this is a topic that people can really dig into.