Posts by driftingowl27

Guys, you’re seriously killing the vibe of this thread 😁

Look, I personally learned that if you somehow stumble upon some ancient, dusty Kung Fu scroll, you can master the legendary "lightning kick." Basically, when someone tries to jump you, you just tap into that deep wisdom and—boom—they’re on the floor in a heartbeat, looking like they actually got struck by lightning. 🙂

And here we go again. Joe and Joe have pumped up those ticket prices so high, which means some guy like unknown is just gonna show up and screw everyone over... goddammit... 🙂

Edward Robinson6 said:Honestly, driftingowl27, I have no idea what you're even getting at with this theory of yours.
Are you saying an automatic film can't be good if the center of all the drama is just some endlessly likable character? Or that they can only be good if the whole thing is driven by conflict (which, to you, apparently means "conflict")? Or whatever else you're trying to pull here??😕

First off, your little dig about "automaticity" has absolutely nothing to do with what I actually wrote. If anything, I was praising All or Nothing because you basically HAVE to actually like the characters to enjoy the movie, especially since there aren't any massive plot twists, "bad guys," or other cheap dramatic gimmicks used to keep the crowd entertained.

Maybe "conflict" is too heavy a word—let's call it tension. It can be internal (like a character fighting themselves to overcome issues like alcoholism or addiction...) or external (like liberating Scott from tyranny...) or a mix of both (young Luke Skywalker having to face the fact that his father is Darth Vader and taking him down to save the galaxy from the Dark Side).

I might have been exaggerating a bit, but hopefully that clears up my point. Obviously, there are a billion different ways to spin this, but it's pretty much the essence of what Aristotle laid out.🙂

Hmm, rabbit's, I’ve been chewing on this whole Coelho-Balasevic thing lately—that bloody poetic mess of yours—and I think I've finally landed on some conclusions. 😲

If we look at drama as a general concept rather than just some movie genre, it seems to me that since that essential book by Aristotle, Ars Poetica, which laid the groundwork for drama thousands of (😲 ) years ago, very little has actually changed in how we formulate drama as a narrative art form (which, let's be honest, still serves as the backbone for the vast majority of films today).

There have been some literary attempts to break away from that mold—both in literature (think Joyce, Beckett, Ionesco) and in film (like the Andalusian pass or those Eisenstein films...).
Meanwhile, cinema (with a few honorable exceptions) has largely stuck to Aristotelian principles—or what people call the "3 act structure" in English.

The reason I'm bringing all this up is that, according to Aristotle, the heart of any drama lies in CONFLICT (whether it's internal or external).
And that brings us right to Coelho and Amelia (let's leave Djokovic out of this one for now 🙂 ).

Unfortunately, Coelho is the absolute worst example of this newer trend in drama, where the conflict isn't actually the engine driving the story; instead, the driver is just... liking the main characters.

Now, there are brilliant examples of that kind of poetry in both literature (take John Irving's books, like The Cider House Rules, which made for a pretty solid film) and in movies (like "All or Nothing," or a Mike Leigh film where you might find there aren't even any negative characters!).

Amelia sits somewhere in the middle; she doesn't quite reach the heights of All or Nothing, but you can't exactly call her a disaster on the level of the Alchemist either.

Ugh, I really went on a rant there, didn't I? 🙂

When I’m Dead and Gone

Ladybird, Ladybird

Chinatown

Seven Samurai

Raiders of the Lost Ark

Alright, enough already. We were talking about Amelia... 🙂

I’m only showing up if he plays that one legendary track of his:

"Louder, even louder
That's the only way I know how
Louder, even louder..."

😁 🙂

TeenSpirit said:Oh, absolutely. This concert is a total must-see! 🙂 🙂

Yeah, "absolutely"... if you say so...🙂

redowl90 said:But here’s what’s actually tripping me up: did this guy have any specific FILM from the 80s that people were actually buzzing about after he released it?

Look, he definitely put out a lot of work during the 80s—just like he did back in the 50s and 60s—but most of it was just TV stuff. So, if you're talking about major Hollywood impact? He was pretty much a ghost.

...Painful is hands down one of the most absolute clusterfucks of an album ever made 😳 🙂

I totally agree—they’re in a league of their own. There’s definitely a mix of Velvet and Beach Boys vibes in there (that "Little Honda" track absolutely kills 🙂), but honestly, I haven't come across any other band that hits quite like them.

Jimmy, I have a feeling you’d actually really dig this soundtrack 😉

I honestly can't stand The Sounds of Science (it’s just all that fishy, aquarium-vibe nonsense... 😲 😢 ), but man, I Can Hear a Heart Beating as One is easily one of my absolute favorites. What’s your take on them?

Oh yeah, since you brought up the 90s, you absolutely have to check out The Player

bunny!

Interesting take, but honestly? I feel like that kind of "suspension of disbelief" only really works if you're reading the book (which I haven't actually read, for the record). In a movie, you could've probably just made it irrelevant—like, pivot the whole focus to something else entirely. As it stands, it just didn't click for me.

redowl90 said:We’re talking about movies here: Ready-to-Wear, Dr. T and the Women, Kansas City... Is there actually anything worth watching on that list, or am I just throwing my time down the drain?

Total waste of time. If you want something actually good, go find M. A. S. H., Nashville, or Short Cuts.

Honestly, I’ve got a bit of a bone to pick with Cronenberg. As he’s gotten older, it feels like he’s totally lost his sense of humor. Don't get me wrong—his movies were never meant to be comedies, far from it—but he used to have this subtle, razor-thin thread of black comedy running through everything.
For me, that was always the perfect counterweight to his clinical, almost surgical approach to the subject matter.

As for M. Butterfly, if you ask me, the movie has this massive plot hole. It’s not just that Cronenberg fails to explain how someone could go twenty years without realizing they're dealing with a man instead of a woman; it's much more important than that—he fails to pivot the story in a direction where that revelation actually matters.

Then there's eXistenZ, which I found a bit too full of itself in its attempt to peddle this ultra-depressing vision of the future. Again, the premise has such great potential for a light, dark comedic detachment (I mean, for God's sake, it's about a video game...), but Cronenberg leans so hard into the "weird/cool" factor that it starts to feel like unintentional parody.

I haven't read the Crash book yet—is it actually worth the time?

bender said:Besides, his rating on IMDb is a 7.4 out of 10.

Yeah, and "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" sits at a 7.7 on that same IMDb page. 🙂

Gerald Barrett25 said:I don't really see how Cronenberg made such a massive leap away from stuff like "Shivers" or "Dead Ringers."

Honestly, I think Elvis Presley summed up his whole situation perfectly with this line:

"You started taking yourself way too seriously
And trying to trap the audience with cheap melodrama..."

Here’s my breakdown of why I’ve officially lost faith in Cronenberg...
The guy used to be such a powerhouse. He was churning out these incredibly original, genuinely entertaining (in their own weird, charming way🙂 ) flicks like Shivers, Scanners—which is easily my favorite—Videodrome, and Dead Ringers. But then? He just started stumbling through absolute nonsense. Like, I mean, props to him for having the guts to even try making something as nonsensical as Gollum (I mean, seriously, what was he thinking with that script?) or that total disaster of an M. Butterfly. And don't even get me started on that "utopian" joke called eXistenZ.
Look, Crash and The Fly are fine, I guess, but they aren't anything special. 🙂