I have noticed that threads about films tend to go apeshit nutzoid curayzee. I can be very opinionated and emotional/irrational about music, no problems there. But with films I tend to enjoy them no matter what. I just like the whole cinema experience. The only time I have left a film is when I was sitting as part of a big group who had gone to see Sex and the City – the first one. I was sat next to a friend of mine and after about an hour (it’s about 3 hours) we decided to go for a pint.
I am sure that in the pre-VCR days, we tended to enjoy films rather more than we do now. A knockabout comedy that had ’em rolling in the aisles in the Odeon in Swanage on that magical Friday night, when you finally touched Verity Grimthorpe’s knee, somehow loses all of its magic when viewed years later on a tablet on the bus on the way to work.
Aside from all that, I don’t think I have enough knowledge of the film making process to offer withering dismissals of Hitchcock’s directorial foibles or how Tarantino chooses locations and organises lighting. And if I hear about the “pacing” of a film again, I might just walk into the sea.
Music is different – for a start we are usually only talking about 4 minutes of material, or maybe about 45 if we are talking about a normal LP. The music can get to you anywhere – in a shop, car radio, at a party, or even a new support band at a gig.
What’s my point? I haven’t got one. Just visualise me on the front of a book looking a little bemused with palms up -wearing a linen shirt and posh jeans and carefully tousled hair – under the words “Is it Just Me?”
I can’t help you, I’m afraid! I’m massively opinionated about films. To my own detriment sometimes, as people have told me they find it a bit intimidating!
My year isn’t complete until I compile my top ten films of the year and share it with my friends. (Top film last year, since you asked: Everybody Wants Some).
(Top film of all time? The Third Man).
Nope, not just you at all. Music, I get. Films…take em or leave em.
Same here. In fact, mostly leave ’em.
I think there’s a lot of toss talked about film, and I also think that its status as THE filmed art form is now seriously imperilled by TV, which can do long form storytelling in a way film can’t really manage.
I suppose the good news is that it means that films need to be more concise now, because what’s the point in going for epic length when you could just do 8 hours on HBO without compromise? If Lord Of The Rings had been made today, it would’ve been TV, for sure, and though (even) longer would’ve probably been much more sharply written and less of an interminable personal wank fantasy for Peter Jackson.
Sorry. I digress. The long and the short is that I generally see film now as pure entertainment because of its limited length. You’ve got 2 hours tops. Use it well. Don’t arse about.
But yeah I do agree that the film branch of Pseuds’ Corner is even more densely populated than the pop music branch. People talk about films the way they talk about jazz, and they wear the same polo necks. 😉
Probably down to the “time taken” element you cite, but I will try new music to see if it is my thing. Films have to have a hook before I commit that much of my time to watching it.
Films demand attention, and I usually get distracted by shiny things.
Weirdly though, I can happily sit through long documentaries about subjects I know little about, and not be distracted.
Maybe I’ve just got one of those non-fiction minds, and can’t be doing with imagined reality.
Woah woah. Bit of negativity here.
Let me stake my claim for the film pseuds.
I think films are the dominant storytelling art form. Higher even than literature (I find the over-intellectualisation of books very annoying).
And I remain unconvinced that long form TV dramas are killing the art of two hour movies. The two hour format forces brevity and economy of story, and you’re also far more likely to get a well-rounded tale with an END, as opposed to “season” after “season” of a TV drama.
And there’s NOTHING as inviting as a dark cinema with a massive screen and a decent sound system. Two hours out of your life in which (if it’s a good film) you’re transported into an infinity of experience.
Books are the greatest achievement of the human race. Films are hilariously slight by comparison, IMO.
I love a good film but nah.
Disagree. If Shakespeare was alive today he’d be a film director
On what basis? That strikes me as a bit of a daft non-equivalence. What skills did Shakespeare have which translate to film directing?
He certainly thought the theatre stage was a bit limiting.
O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention,
A kingdom for a stage, princes to act
And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!
Then should the warlike Harry, like himself,
Assume the port of Mars; and at his heels,
Leash’d in like hounds, should famine, sword and fire
Crouch for employment. But pardon, and gentles all,
The flat unraised spirits that have dared
On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth
So great an object: can this cockpit hold
The vasty fields of France? or may we cram
Within this wooden O the very casques
That did affright the air at Agincourt?
And then said “let us on your imaginary forces work”.
For me that’s the part that cinema lacks. The work of the imagination is mostly all done for you. I mean, sure, some people prefer films to books and we’re probably never going to persuade each other, but for me that’s the magic of books. Like Stephen King says, it’s actual telepathy. He’s transmitted the picture in his head into yours. And the density and layering and complexity that’s achievable in writing can’t be done in the same way in film, IMO. Your mileage may vary. But whatever else, film has had 100 years against thousands of years of literature. To claim it’s equal in achievement already just strikes me as a wee bit unlikely. But that’s just me.
I’m not sure I disagree with you. I kinda think the two art forms are so different that comparison can’t really work. It does annoy me that the film industry relies so much on literature for its stories. But then again a lot of my favourite authors (like Ian McEwan, Kazuo Ishiguro, Evelyn Waugh, E.M. Forster) have been translated quite successfully to the screen. But it still bugs me. A film is being made at the moment of Julian Barnes’ brilliant The Sense Of An Ending and of McEwan’s On Chesil Beach and The Child In Time. I hope they don’t cock them up too much.
I do think Shakespeare’s a different kettle of fish though. He wrote to be seen, not read. I think there can be little doubt he would have considered the screen a more “worthy scaffold” than the stage.
Although this is kind of a weird conversation anyway really. Like when people are desperate to make claims of high art for pop music. I don’t really understand the motivation – why is it important to people that their popular interests get taken so seriously?
If Picasso was alive today, he’d be making mobile phone games in his bedroom. Byron would be churning out internet memes. Gaudi would be making experimental pornography. Wagner would be playing bass in Limp Bizkit.
That reminds me: I need to go post Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey on the films thread.
Plato would’ve killed to have written the Reaper Rap.
You may be a king
Or a simple road sweeper
But sooner or later
You dance with the reaper.
#poetry
You forgot “get down with your bad self”.
I set em up….
Just to warn you, I’ll veto it but let you have Excellent Adventure as that’s a nearly perfect joy (the false note being the princesses of course).
You know, I almost marginally prefer Bogus Journey. It’s got Death in it, and he’s worth the price of entry alone.
STATION!
STATION was a pretty duff puppet though, and I find the camp Death a bit cringy. There’s still a lot to enjoy in Bogus Adventure, but the first film is a flawed little gem.
He had a most excellent Martian butt, though.
It’s vanishingly rare for a good bovel to make a good film; there’s just too much there. A short story yes, but novels are too vast to be contained in a single interpretation. I love both books and films, but literature is greater than cinema.
Yeah this.
But a picture (or a still from a film) paints a thousand words!
Part of the emotion I think comes from devoting two hours of your life to something which in fact turns out to be not very good (most recently Trainspotting 2).
Imagine that albums could only be heard in the listening room of Richer Sounds (if they still have one) for 13 weeks after release. If you’d paid £8 to listen to Chinese Democracy – or conversely Physical Graffiti, you’d be perhaps more opinionated.
My god – I think you’re right. I remember that walking out of S&TC was very unlike me – but I will often give up on an album like Chinese Democracy after 2 or 3 songs. If I’d paid 8 quid to sit in a room and listen to it, avec popcorn and all the trimmings (Verity Grimthorpe) I might well have listened to it all.
Horse for courses (if that means anything). There are people who think opera is a superior art form to cinema, or novels come to that. Myself, I think a great novel knocks everything else into a cocked hat for the variety and depth of the experience – but it takes considerably more than 2 hours to read one.
Pseudery is pseudery wherever you find it. Including writing about rock music.
And, to end this brief episode of flailing about looking for a point, I had my own Verity Grimthorpe once. Took her to see Carry on Camping on our first date. Didn’t go well.
I remember the late Miles Kington giving opera a kicking in the Independent some years ago. One point he made was that the drama in opera is acted out at the level of an old silent movie (bulging eyes and outstretched arms to denote surprise, that sort of thing). It’s a criticism that’s stuck.
Verity told me that she didn’t like the way you went “phwooar, you don’t get many of those to the pound, eh?” during the nudist camp scene.
🙂
Not sure I get the distinction between pure entertainment and great art – they’re often one and the same thing in film, music or literature. League tables and hierarchies of art forms are pointless too – a good film is better than a dull novel; a great pop song better than a poor symphony. Most recent case in point – Manchester-by-the- Sea – moving, and beautifully made.
As long as you have the critical equipment to tell a poor symphony from a good one.
Just wanted to say; great tags.
Thank you.