comment #1

Mgmax says ...

The movie critic is dead, long live critiquing movies.

I think that's the thing. People love to talk about this stuff. What they don't love is the institutional voice of the standard newspaper/magazine movie reviewer, who has to provide a synopsis without spoiling anything, write for a general audience, and sum up whether you should spend $10 or not. Even the ones who are really really good at it, like Ebert, well, they're truly interesting to read maybe a third of the time, because only a third of the time is the movie so good or so bad that the job of filling in all the blanks results in something genuinely interesting. (This is where, too, the meatiness of the best TV these days puts 75% of the movies to shame-- a person may not like Lost, Battlestar Galactica or 24, but you'd be hard pressed to say there isn't more to them than there is to most of the movies in theaters at this moment.)

So the reviewer dies with newspapers and magazines, and the discussion of movies goes elsewhere and takes other forms-- indeed, it already has. I come here to talk new movies, I talk really old movies at a site I run (nitrateville.com), tell me where in that Newsweek is supposed to fit in-- and why?

comment #2

MAGGA says ...

I agree with you MGMax, except the TV-series you mentioned. Much of the best filmed art this decade has been on TV, but Lost is an empty show in mmy view. I guess 24 had interesting formal qualities when it first came out, but it's a lot like candy. You eat until it's all empty, but you definitely feel the need for some nutrition afterwards

comment #3

Mgmax says ...

I was using them as examples of television that aims higher than most movies, not necessarily achieves it. As it happens, I've never actually seen Lost, only recently started Galactica, and though I'm hooked on 24, objectively I know that only the first and the fourth season were any good. Still, all of those shows and many others are engaged with concepts and characters and complex in a way that movies rarely are any more; try to imagine the movie version of each of them and you'd have flashier action but less to think about.

comment #4

JacksOrBetter says ...

You've got to take anything Godard says after the year 1980 with a grain of salt.

That said, the man's right.

comment #5

Rich S. says ...

Still, Jeffrey, the two longest threads in the history of this site were just a bunch of movie lovers shooting the shit about 80s movies they loved. There were disagreements aplenty, but it never once got rancorous in either case. And this was with posters who are constantly at each other's throats on the political posts.

So while cinema undoubtedly creates arguments, it also provides a terrific common ground among disparate personalities.

comment #6

frankbooth says ...

There is no fucking rancor. Fuck you!

comment #7

The Winchester says ...

I was upset when Luke killed the Rancor.

comment #8

Mr. Muckle says ...

I think that stories are at the core of individuality. We are no distinct persons at all except for the stories we tell ourselves and others. The story in its essence gathers together all the other equipment -- body, feeling, sight, mind.

So, Hollywood being the profession of telling stories, it necessarily affects us at the root. Some of those stories reinforce our own central conceits and some contradict them.

Until we recognize that none of this is actual Reality, that individuality itself is ephemeral and dreamlike, and that the stories we cling to as being who we are will always be essentially random and uncontrollable, then we are bound to be passionately involved, as if it matters in the slightest.

comment #9

Breedlove says ...

I think if Jeff went on prozac tomorrow he'd probably feel a lot better, and the site would get a lot more boring.