The New World

[woops]

there is a short list of films i have watched over and over more than ten times each and i can talk along with them and it includes the following 8

i hired a contract killer
inglourious basterds
man without a past
Django unchained
bladerunner
Betty blue
wild style
gummo

 

[Benny Bunter]

I pretty much gave up watching films about 10 years ago, I get bored and fidgety and restless even when it's a good film, and I have always have the feeling there's something better I could be doing with my time.

 

[Corpsey]

I respect that feeling but otoh I think when a film's really good and when you're really absorbed in it it's a fantastic use of time. Hypnosis, emotional catharsis, sensory stimulation, like a drug.

Obviously I'm referring to Highlander here.

 

[Corpsey]

Something I experience with almost every film I watch (and book I read, actually) is an initial feeling of restlessness and detachment. If I'm watching at home I'm considering quitting quite quickly. But then I tend to start getting absorbed into it around 5-10 minutes in and I get hooked. Unless it's crap.

But there are films like Glengarry Glenn Ross (which perhaps significantly is very talky) which hook me in fast. I put it on kind of in the background the other night cos I was curious about it, but didn't fully intend to watch it and then quite quickly I'd dispensed with my laptop or phone or whatever and I watched the whole thing.

 

[Corpsey]

One of my persistent neuroses surrounds how quickly I forget most of what I read, to the point where I'm questioning why I'm bothering reading this (say) novel if I'm not going to be able to remember anything about it within days. I guess because books are something I've been taught to consider edifying and so on. Whereas I've not felt that anxiety with films, because they're 'just films', after all.

But of course the answer to why read books if you can't remember them must be because of the experience of reading them. This is something it's easy to grasp when reading Earthsea, because again I consider them extremely well written and occasionally profound escapism, so I can give myself over to the experience of it rather than taking notes.

And connectedly I've become less worried about the time wasting element of playing video games lately, cos I've embraced them more as imaginative and intense/fun experiences, rather than as anything edifying.

I'm just talking for myself here, but what you said about feeling like there's something better to be doing made me think about all this, which I've been thinking about lately thanks to my sheer luxurious sense of enjoyment I've felt reading Earthsea.

 

[craner]

But, I mean, do you get anything out of watching a film or reading a book other than the experience of 'I am watching a film now' or 'I am reading a very important book'?

 

[Corpsey]

Perhaps I've expressed myself badly. I'm not saying art isn't edifying and shouldn't be reflected on and thought about. But at the same time there's a dimension to imaginative literature and films and art that's about being swept up by something. Every experience effects you, I'd suppose. So the fact I can't remember 90% of what happens in Madame Bovary doesn't discount the importance of the experience of reading it.

 

[Benny Bunter]

Reading is a much less passive activity than watching a film surely?

I started reading Earthsea today too, 2 chapters in, and it's great so far. I don't think I'd be interested in watching a film version of it if ever they made one though, in fact I think it would probably spoil it. It's a cliche that ''the books always better than the film" but that's always been my experience.

 

[sus]

I pretty much gave up watching films about 10 years ago, I get bored and fidgety and restless even when it's a good film, and I have always have the feeling there's something better I could be doing with my time.

I've been getting that too lately, never happened to me before, don't like it. Not sure what it's about

 

[craner]

Reading is a much less passive activity than watching a film surely?

I started reading Earthsea today too, 2 chapters in, and it's great so far. I don't think I'd be interested in watching a film version of it if ever they made one though, in fact I think it would probably spoil it. It's a cliche that ''the books always better than the film" but that's always been my experience.

Try reading The Devil Wears Prada

 

[Corpsey]

I think that sense of passivity explains why some bookish people tend to prefer 'intellectual'/difficult films that require them to intellectually attack them like they do with books. If they're not intellectually grappling with something they think it's worthless.

Maybe this is what craner is on about viz. the french mistaking film for literature?

I'd be interested in knowing what craner gets out of watching a film.

 

[luka]

he likes leering at bronze, glistening italian tits

 

[craner]

Maybe this is what craner is on about viz. the french mistaking film for literature?

I'd be interested in knowing what craner gets out of watching a film.

I respond to drama, even melodrama; I am not subtle. There is a range of extreme emotions that films exploit with ruthless precision or deceiving subtlety. The best do this with no qualms, or enjoy the tricks they play. I am a romantic and film is a romantic medium. I have a sadistic streak, and film is a theater of cruelty. My favorite films are Italian, and the Italians are the best at combining melodrama with violence.

I am visually inclined and the films I love tend to look rich, opulent, baroque (Bava, Argento, Powell & Pressburger, Josef von Sternberg, Vittorio Storaro, Shaw Brothers).

I like extreme portraits of the exceptional individual or the existential human condition, triumph or tragedy. A transcendent performance can live with you, define a condition or an era: Callas as Medea, Kaji as Scorpion, Marilyn in Misfits, Dietrich directed by Sternberg, Sophia by de Sica, Calamai & Girotti in Ossessione, Rogers & Astaire in full flow, Jack Hawkins cracking up in The Cruel Sea, Douglas as Gordon Gekko, Lopez in Hustlers. A performance like this can move the earth.

They create or recreate worlds that touch or border on reality and therefore enhance and heighten the world of everyday perception, like all art does. The combination of visual aesthetics, physical performance, ideas, themes: even something like Avengers: Infinity War, one of the biggest-grossing films of all time, was a meditation on the ethics of genocide. This is not a passive thing. I prefer the old films, but the new ones can still help to shape the grand human narrative.

They are the perfect vessel for the primary human concerns: love, hate, sex, violence, freedom, fear. They channel something primal in packages that attack all the senses. You normally have to go to genre films to see how this is done most effectively which is why the Americans, Italians, Japanese and Chinese are the masters.

These are some of the things that I get out of films, just quickly off the top of my head.

 

[Corpsey]

Didn't expect such a thorough answer, thank you

 

[craner]

Didn't expect such a thorough answer, thank you

These will also help to answer your question:

The Art of the Italian Peplum

In the forward to his revised edition of The Greek Myths, written in Deya, Majorca, in 1960, Robert Graves sketched a theory: I have had second thoughts about the drunken god Dionysus, about the C…

olivercraner.com

Slaughter Commissions: Crime Films and the Italian Crisis

Review of the Arrow Films box set Years of Lead: Five Classic Italian Crime Thrillers, 1973-1977 Mario Imperoli’s Like Rabid Dogs opens with a brutal armed robbery that takes place in the bowels of…

olivercraner.com

 

[Corpsey]

Also didn't expect you to (maybe) big up Avengers.

I started reading Earthsea today too, 2 chapters in, and it's great so far. I don't think I'd be interested in watching a film version of it if ever they made one though, in fact I think it would probably spoil it. It's a cliche that ''the books always better than the film" but that's always been my experience.

Studio Ghibli made one, directed by Miyazaki's son and apparently one of their rare misfires.

I can imagine Miyizaki Sr making an amazing version of it, albeit probably more of an interpretation via his aesthetic rather than a straight adaptation.

 

[craner]

Also didn't expect you to (maybe) big up Avengers.

I've watched Phases 1-3 in their entirety and in order this year, so I am now an MCU expert.

 

[Benny Bunter]

I've been getting that too lately, never happened to me before, don't like it. Not sure what it's about

I don't miss it so it's alright really. Pretty much stopped listening to music this year too which I thought would never ever happen but it has so fuck it. Maybe I'll get back into again in the future, maybe I won't. No point forcing it.

 

[IdleRich]

I respect that feeling but otoh I think when a film's really good and when you're really absorbed in it it's a fantastic use of time. Hypnosis, emotional catharsis, sensory stimulation, like a drug.

Obviously I'm referring to Highlander here.

Obviously, there can be only one... film that fits that description.

 

[mvuent]

@Clinamenic https://letterboxd.com/suspendedreason/films/rated/4.5-5/

based star wars episode ii: attack of the clones appreciator. you're absolutely right to put it on the same level as hitchcock.