william_kent

Well-known member
herzog is someone i used to be a superfan of, i still love some of the films, especially strosek and even dwarves... but something happened and i can't deal with him now.

Aguirre is still my number one film, but maybe that's because it is Klaus Kinski + Herzog, but as for now... what happened?

Grizzly Man

It's an entertaining documentary, he shows sensitivity when he could have played the tape of the bear eating poor deluded Timothy, I confess I enjoyed it...but that's when it all changed - lots and lots of people enjoyed it, he becomes a household name, and transforms into a parody of himself palatable to mass media, the man who would eat his own shoe or embark on some arduous trek across some mountains is gone, replaced by a caricature of himself... my loss of faith occurred when visiting my mother, who like a massive number of other woman of a certain age loves the novels of Lee Childe, featuring the OAP heartthrob "Jack Reacher", a one man A-team who, only equipped with a toothbrush, rids the small town of all evil..so when she put on the Jack Reacher film ( starring Tom Cruise as the 6 foot seven hero - "height is only a metaphor" according to the author of the bestselling series after he accepted the Hollywood dollars ) and the evil mastermind villain was revealed to be... Werner Herzog.. mixed emotions...
 

DLaurent

Well-known member
I'm the same when it comes to being an ex Herzog superfan. I had to watch the whole lot when I got into him. And I did. There's a lot of quite common themes in his work, for example, playing on tropes that would have drove Hitler insane, but I think when you get over that and the humour involved it becomes a bit silly.
 

catalog

Well-known member
Grizzly man was the last one for me as well. I did like the one about the cave, but it's like a BBC doc or something.
 

DLaurent

Well-known member
Grizzly Man is as simple as Aryan man goes and hangs out with some 'Bears' he should be afraid of and gets killed. Pretty weird film when I think about it. I liked his last few fiction films more than his last documentaries, the best of which for me are ones like Woodcarver Steiner and La Soufriere, Land of Silence and Darkness, even Lessons of Darkness.
 

william_kent

Well-known member
I'd even say that Where The Green Ants Dream was the end of his career, a worthy film, but if you're watching chronologically, sort of destroys the momentum completely
 

version

Well-known member
I spent a long time wanting to like him more than I did. He has his moments, but I think I've been bored by pretty much everything I've ever seen of his. There's something sloppy and amateurish about him, and not in an endearing way.
 

entertainment

Well-known member
I spent a long time wanting to like him more than I did. He has his moments, but I think I've been bored by pretty much everything I've ever seen of his. There's something sloppy and amateurish about him, and not in an endearing way.

The thing I like about him is his unselfconscious romantic curiosity, which I only find tolerable in the documentaries when it's applied to something actual, tethered to some real world thing. Couldn't get past 15 minutes of Fitzcarraldo.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Aguirre is still my number one film, but maybe that's because it is Klaus Kinski + Herzog, but as for now... what happened?

Grizzly Man

It's an entertaining documentary, he shows sensitivity when he could have played the tape of the bear eating poor deluded Timothy, I confess I enjoyed it...but that's when it all changed - lots and lots of people enjoyed it, he becomes a household name, and transforms into a parody of himself palatable to mass media, the man who would eat his own shoe or embark on some arduous trek across some mountains is gone, replaced by a caricature of himself... my loss of faith occurred when visiting my mother, who like a massive number of other woman of a certain age loves the novels of Lee Childe, featuring the OAP heartthrob "Jack Reacher", a one man A-team who, only equipped with a toothbrush, rids the small town of all evil..so when she put on the Jack Reacher film ( starring Tom Cruise as the 6 foot seven hero - "height is only a metaphor" according to the author of the bestselling series after he accepted the Hollywood dollars ) and the evil mastermind villain was revealed to be... Werner Herzog.. mixed emotions...
That was on telly a couple of days ago. I watched it, too hungover to move.
 

luka

Well-known member
glad the world has come round to my point of view Herzog is boring and amateurish yes exactly. grizzly man is funny though i have to admit
 

polystyle

Well-known member
Elias Canetti, Crowds and Power
Saul Bellow, The Adventures of Augie March
Frank O Hara, Complete Poems
The Oxford Complete Works of William Shakespeare (a cheat, I guess, as, like all scholars, I really read the Ardens...)
Yevgeny Zamyatin, We
Nikolai Gogol, Dead Souls
Henry Miller, The Rosy Crucifixion
J K Huysmans, En Route
Jane Austen, Persuasion
Joseph Heller, Good as Gold

That was hard. Also, I'm surprised by the number of novels I love!
Canetti !
 

other_life

bioconfused
[not counting any books of Bible or Hermetica because that would be too easy]

YVES CONGAR, O.P. - THE MEANING OF TRADITION
FERNANDO ARRABAL - THE GARDEN OF DELIGHTS
FERNANDO ARRABAL - THE ARCHITECT AND EMPEROR OF ASSYRIA
MANDRAGORA
(ED. RUBY SARAH, PUB. SCARLET IMPRINT PRESS) (ANTHOLOGY)
GERSHOM SCHOLEM - THE ORIGINS OF THE KABBALAH
ANITA DIAMANT - THE RED TENT
MARCEL MAUSS - A GENERAL THEORY OF MAGIC
V.I. LENIN - THE STATE AND REVOLUTION
DANIEL BOYARIN - PAUL: A RADICAL JEW
KARL BARTH - THE DOGMATICS IN OUTLINE
 
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other_life

bioconfused
reading the bible 'properly' is (provisionally) neither possible nor desirable (see thread, "Exegesis and Linguistic Infinity")
 
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