Vautrin
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Posts posted by Vautrin
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It set the standard for thick, gooey projectile vomit in mainstream Hollywood movies.
Bllllaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.
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3 hours ago, Gershwin fan said:
I prefer Moliere to either of them, especially for this beautiful piece of music composed for his play.
I haven't read Moliere in years, not for any particular reason, just one of those things. I
would certainly rate him highly. At a certain point people will have their own reasons for
liking one author more than others, though that is no knock on the others.
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3 hours ago, laffite said:
Is that a declaration of victory
Or whatever. Having reached an impasse in our little discussion here, I thought to seek out some happy common ground and desist. But perhaps that's all wrong and it's something else (it is a bit cryptic). But that's no lie about Chekhov (the one with an H of course), he is a big fave.
Maybe a declaration of whatever. No, I was thinking along the lines of the more writers who come up the more likely it is to find some common ground with another person. I don't dislike Shakespeare and agree he is one of the greatest writers in English. I just don't go as far as to put him in a category by himself.
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I would only buy a Fred Mertz "action figure" if the pants came to within six inches of his
armpit. That's on the human figure, don't know what it would be on the "action figure."
And it has to come with a money belt, at no extra charge of course.
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13 hours ago, SansFin said:
I preferred Sulu over Chekov because he seemed friendlier and more athletic.
And Sulu had a much better haircut than Chekov or whatever that thing on the top
of his head was.
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15 hours ago, laffite said:
I love Chekhov. We at least agree on that, yea!
There you go. It only took a little extra time.
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Yeah, I remember there was a lot of discussion when his book came out. He described a wild
night spent with a drunken Spencer Tracy. Well, the drunken part is believable, but the
rest seemed more fantasy than truth. I think he was mostly exaggerating to a great degree.
He might have been a bit player with some low level clients, but that's probably about all.
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14 hours ago, laffite said:
It's a mistake to think that anything need have a purpose, in the sense you seem to mean. Maybe the point was simply that he had a prodigious memory and this was his way of talking about it. And who is to deny the strength of a photographic memory? Maybe it's not ridiculous at all.
Voltaire had an extremely high opinion of Shakespeare and only became bitter about him later in life when he resented French writers being unfavorably compared to him (presumably Racine, for one). It was psychological. Anyone of any literary caliber who says they don't like Shakespeare is fine, but if they deny his genius they are being disingenuous IMO. Shakespeare is just too damn good. And at the risk of saying the obvious, Henry James is no William Shakespeare, not even close. But James is off the hook here, because I do believe in a double standard, one for Shakespeare and one for everybody else. James may be no Shakespeare, but nobody is. Bloom is right when he said that "Shakespeare is a God." (fig.speaking of course).
I was just wondering why someone who was able to recite quite a lot of poetry from memory would than go to the extreme of saying he could recite the whole of Shakespeare and Blake. It's at the point when someone will say to their friend C'mon buddy, quit it. I doubt he could even recite the whole of Blake's Jerusalem.
Whatever the reason, in his later years Voltaire had a very negative view of Shakespeare. James was a 19th century novelist, not a 16th century playwright, even if he tried his hand at writing plays and failed miserably. So I don't see much comparison between the two. I never thought of Shakespeare as a God in any sense of the word and don't think he belongs in a category all to himself. I like Chekhov as much as Shakespeare.
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15 hours ago, Gershwin fan said:
Bloom generally disliked 20th century and 21st century literature. I remember he said something along the lines of "Pynchon's Mason & Dixon is one of the last great novels." Then there's also his "no discernible talent" remarks about DFW.
That's the impression I get from the little I have read about him. He's entitled to his views on the
subject, but he's just one voice among many.
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True, Bloom was not a Jackie Collins, but advances are all about the hoped for popularity of the book. If it's brilliant and sells, so much the better. If it's not brilliants and sells, that's okay too. Just as long as it sells.
It just seems rather silly for an often very serious man like Bloom to make such claims when they serve no purpose. Reciting the whole of William Blake. Why even bother to make such a ridiculous claim, unless it was meant as a joke, which it doesn't seem to be. Oh well.
Well, most of the writers mentioned in the Western Cannon, at least in the short list, are pretty much the usual suspects that most literary folks would likely mention. No writer is universally liked or within some flaws, including James. IIRC, Voltaire did not have a very high opinion of Shakespeare. I don't see a "false note" in James, at least no more so than in other writers. I will say that his detailed and acute psychological examinations aren't everyone's cup of tea and besides literary judgments are mostly subjective anyway.
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6 hours ago, filmnoirguy said:
SPOILER: Who did Raft and boys find hanging in the apartment? Was that the loud mouth maid?
She was beaten up but I don't think she ended up hanging in the apartment. If she did,
she certainly deserved a better fate.
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2 hours ago, laffite said:
Merely pompous? Methinks he must be on a higher plane than that. No? If I knew anything about this I might think that Jordan Peterson is more like to be referred to in these terms. Bloom seems bona fide brilliant, at least after reading the NYT obit. Mere pomposity does not command a $1.2 million dollar book advance.
Since I wish to be nasty, I really latched on to John Updike's characterization of Harold Bloom's prose as "torturous." Oh God, that's the perfect word for Henry James. Oh, thank you, John ; I knew you were good for something.
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I guess lucratively pompous at least. Authors get large advances for the belief their book will be very
popular. I don't think being brilliant or not brilliant is much of a factor. Whatever one might think of
Bloom's literary theories and opinions, he was much smarter than Peterson, but then who isn't?
I read the NYT obit, very informative. The writer hints that Bloom only named one book of Updike's,
The Witches of Eastwick, on his expanded canonical list, as possible payback for Updike's torturous
comment. Who knows. There were a few things in the NYT's obituary that might come under the
heading of exaggeration if not actual pomposity. Bloom claimed he could read and understand a 400 page
book in one hour. Okayyy. He also had a photographic memory and said he could recite the whole of
Shakespeare and Blake. That would make a great bar bet. I have no doubt that Henry James, torturous
or not, is firmly ensconced in the literary canon.
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3 hours ago, Gershwin fan said:
Come on, V. He just died yesterday. I thought this interview of his is pretty good.
He defended literature from the School of Resentment and people who interjected politics from both sides. Who will defend the Western Canon now? I don't think there is a literary scholar like him around today.
He defended his view of literature from people with different views of literature. It's not like Bloom
owns Western literature. I don't think the Western Canon is in any need of defense. People will
still be reading it on their own or as part of an educational curriculum no matter what. I think
the idea of a canon is somewhat unusual because it consists of literature that is far apart in
geography, time, and content. There's nothing wrong in bundling these works altogether as
the Western canon, but I read books primarily as individual works not as one part of a canon.
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6 hours ago, Sepiatone said:
I suppose not, if severe cases of superiority complex strikes you as likable.
Sepiatone
From what I recall there were a couple of wiseguys, but I didn't think of them as having
much of a superiority complex.
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Harold Bloom, the sad-eye professor of pomposity has died. Oh no, how will we ever be
able to understand texts without the near divine guidance of the Martha Stewart of literature.
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7 hours ago, Sepiatone said:
Secaucus was supposedly the source idea for THE BIG CHILL as you notice that many of the characters and their separate interactions are similar although the reasons for their gathering differs. But I found the gang in Secaucus made the movie a "dull, slow moving self indulgent talkathon". And definitely not the kind of self centered condescending scumwads I'd care to hang out with.
Sepiatone
Yes there are certainly a lot of similarities between the two movies. The Big Chill is mostly a larger
budget with more prosperous characters version of The Secaucus Seven. I would also say the
latter is more realistic than the former. I haven't seen either one in a while, but I don't recall the
folks in TSS being that bad, at least for movie characters.
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9 hours ago, Sepiatone said:
Wasn't that RETURN OF THE SECAUCUS SEVEN?
Now, I've never seen the "Petra" movie in question here, So I'll hold back on any comment. I've heard good and bad, which just makes me more curious.
Sepiatone
I liked that one too. I'd say that Secaucus Seven is more releatable, at least to Americans, than
Petra Von Kant.
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3 hours ago, LawrenceA said:
Isn't that generally regarded as a cinema masterpiece?
Now, personally I didn't care for it, but I think we've firmly established that I'm an idiot, so my appraisal doesn't mean much.
Don't beat yourself up Lawrence, that's what other posters are here for.
I think Petra Von Kant has more negative feedback than positive, along the lines of
being a dull, slow moving, self-indulgent talkathon. Like other movies, I can see
where those criticisms come from, but I like it anyway.
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I doubt there are truly any movies that one person alone likes, but just to play along
I'll thrown in The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant.
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Wouldn't you know it. A colorized 3-D version of Hot Spell is on the November schedule.
Damn.
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1 hour ago, Hibi said:
LOL. Just can't get rid of her. Her show ran 9 months the last time. Like 3x the normal shows on there. She's been on 5 years or so. Get the hook.
Maybe she has something on the upper management of ID.
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Trapped was an enjoyable, quickly done flick that doesn't waste any time on non-essentials.
I wonder if people who saw the movie when it first came out took the cornball narration at
the start seriously. I always laugh when these super serious things are read in these types
of crime films. Also funny was John Hoyt thinking he had a chance with Barbara Payton though
that was only a part of his undercover job. Not only was Sylvester an unprepossessing villain, but a
stupid one, managing to electrocute himself.
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4 hours ago, Hibi said:
PAULA (The Victims!) ZAHN ALERT! Her show is coming back staring in Nov. (promos every commercial break last night). Show has only been off the air 3 mos.
Wish she'd follow Joe Kenda's example...
She's Back!!! In a network that seems to have new shows every month, Zahn has been on for
a long time. I think Kenda quit because his ratings were probably down, not because he had
some grand epiphany that it was time to end things. I haven't seen the promos yet but I'm
sure I will soon. So the fingerprint was a key to identifying the killer? Yes, the fingerprint was
key in identifying the killer.
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I watched most of the Country Music show, though I missed the first episode.
Interesting, though the short biographies of one country star after the other got a little
boring. Jimmy Joe Clampett was born in Wompachochee, Arknasas in 1935 to a very
poor family headed by his dad, who was a mean drunk and his mother who went to
church every day. They were so poor they ate the cotton they picked for supper every
night. At age eight his mom gave him a geetar made out of an old kerosene can and
leftover kite strings. I don't remember seeing Don Williams mentioned, though I might
have missed it. I got a kick out of Roger Miller's line Our town was so small we didn't
have a town drunk, everybody took turns.
When it first started out, Homicide Hunter was interesting, but after a while its appeal
wore off for me. If Kenda smoked as often as he is shown to have in the dramatic
reenactments I'm surprised he's still alive. And then there was the apparently severely
undermanned Colorado Springs homicide bureau, since he seemed to be called in every
day of the year.
Or whatever. Having reached an impasse in our little discussion here, I thought to seek out some happy common ground and desist. But perhaps that's all wrong and it's something else (it is a bit cryptic). But that's no lie about Chekhov (the one with an H of course), he is a big fave.
Wish she'd follow Joe Kenda's example...
Noir Alley
in General Discussions
Posted
Walter's flirting with Phyllis was just a feint. He was really
interested in a three-way with Lola and Nino Zachetti. When
Nino took an instant dislike to Neff, he knew his life was over
and he didn't care what he did anymore.