108 replies to this topic

[Ice Baby1]

I'm never going to get over the fact that Japanese has a ton of words that are onomatopoeic not to sounds but moods. e.g. "Shi--------" = silence, "zawa----" = AN UNEASY ATMOSPHERE. Serious multiplication of emotional expressive potential. Why the FUCK doesn't English do that????

 

edit: Oops. I'm watching the David Attenborough thing that denzquix brought up

Edited by Ice Baby1, 18 July 2016 - 10:06 PM.

[crone_lover720]

thank you for the edit. we all must pay our penance due.

 

I'm watching Bojack Horseman, a netflix show that kind of looks like one of those Comedy Central or MTV cartoons where the art style is gritty and unusual and the dialogue has a bunch of adult-sounding things. unlike any of those shows that I'm aware of, in this show the adult-sounding things start to string together to form a coherent and likable narrative after a while. the third season comes out this week. and the deer lady is very pretty.

 

 

 

I think mushrooms have a number of valid horror elements in and of themselves. regarding horror manga, I tried re-reading Junji Ito's Gyo recently. I've been on a huge weird horror kick lately, and this compilation with Amigara and Prinicipal Post was the only work of Ito's they had at the book store. I do appreciate the relentless, enervating tension and horror the reader must trudge through (in order to ultimately prevail) as the manga pushes deeper and deeper into madness, but in the end I found it too bleak, depressing, and fatiguing. that's even when compared to other weird horror, which is known for its pessimistic and in some respects hopeless outlook. maybe I'd like the spiral one more.

[Ice Baby1]

Gyo starts off awesome and has fun with its batshit ideas, but at some point it just loses its mind and stops being interesting. Then the ending is pretty tacked-on. I thought Uzumaki was occasionally guilty of wasting time, but on the whole it builds in a magnificent/hopeless way that works a lot better. In fact it's better in every way. The intermittent goofiness also slowly lowers, rather than ramping up at the end like in Gyo. (But Ito leaves in extremely goofy between-volume joke pages, which are really nice for combating the extreme helplessness of the setting). Also, the spiral motif is so well played through, it's such a simple concept that ends up in just unbelievably distinctive setpieces and events! As a matter of fact, "mushrooms" figure largely into one specific lategame chapter.

 

Principal Post, of course, is fucking amazing.

 

Ito also did a short one called HELLSTAR REMINA and it was even worse about wasting time, but the denouement - which is chapters and chapters of ridiculous action set miles above the Earth which is being spun by a colossal alien tongue so that every human being is soaring in weightless orbit around the planet - just couldn't have come from anyone else.

[denzquix]

the central joke of Mr Robot, intended or not, is that its so damn proud of itself for portraying hackerprompts semi-realistic instead of Hollywoodland simplification

 
but then it also wants to wade into mental health issues. and honestly most of the time that shit might as well be
 

[jamie]

thank you for the edit. we all must pay our penance due.

 

I'm watching Bojack Horseman, a netflix show that kind of looks like one of those Comedy Central or MTV cartoons where the art style is gritty and unusual and the dialogue has a bunch of adult-sounding things. unlike any of those shows that I'm aware of, in this show the adult-sounding things start to string together to form a coherent and likable narrative after a while. the third season comes out this week. and the deer lady is very pretty.

 

Hm. weird. I really didn't like the Bojack Horsman. I watched S1 and some of S2, haven't seen three. I really can't imagine it being better unless it's just totally different. It doesn't really have any good jokes, to me, and the stories are boring.

 

 

I'm watching the night of. It's all right. That's exactly what it is. I think the way it is shot is kinda crappy, but riz ahmed and john turturro are doing a decent job bringing some pretty basic material to life. The supporting cast are non-entities except for Michael K Williams, and he feels kind of irrelevant and also, cliched. Every show with a prison in it has the guy who inexplicably has a TV in his room. Whoah, this guy has KFC? How'd he get this mysterious power? Wow, good thing the main character is in his good graces! But nah it's all right, decent story going on with Nasir, really curious what REALLY went on that night and also what will happen to him regardless.

 

Also watched orange is the new black season 4 recently. big improvement on that show's previous seasons which had interesting moments but were way to network drama and just...mainstream bullshit for me. Jenji Kohan may be a horse's ass but this season was good and ended very strong, very interested in seeing next season of that.

 

i also continue to watch girls. last season was pretty good.

 

i might watch stranger things on netflix. haven't watched any of it yet, i'm curious.

[crone_lover720]

hey jamie!!!!

 

the third season of Bojack is a little worse actually. some episodes were stronger than others, but the new characters aren't great and they kinda jumped the shark with the "Bojack is a sad guy who ruins other people's lives" concept. I think a great show would have had him continue his struggles this season, but he'd have learned something and made some sort of progress. I do like the characters, though. I like princess caroline, the cat lady, and mr. peanutbutter, the dog man, a lot. I also identify a lot with Bojack's loneliness and disappointment in himself, despite not really having achieved recognizable success myself and having a drastically different personality. it's also kind of a good take on hollywood, even though that's a boring subject.

 

 

having had one good experience with an adult animated comedy, I decided to try my luck with Archer. big mistake. holy shitsnacks (pause for genuine laughter), it is awful. that's even despite its voice cast and the fact that I'm a bit of a sucker for the campy secret agent theme. it's really terrible, folks. it has the aforementioned *blurts out something adult-sounding* humor all right, mixed in with family guy style pseudo-offensiveness. but it's also really ugly, and as we've sort of established recently in this thread, that might be the worst thing about it.

[denzquix]

I really wanted to like Archer but I never get very far with it. For me it seems like its always trying to ramp up to that kind of rolling, painful laughter you get when things are really spinning out of control, everyone's yelling, a climactic chaos.... it's a good ambition to have, I love it when something aims for that and pulls it off. But in my experience Archer's always left me behind somewhere along the way, I fell out the back and I can't seem to get back on board...

 

On the other hand something like "China, IL" I will watch plenty of, and... I dunno, as far as Wacky Gory Fucked-Up Comedy for Adults things go, in my mind some things "Mean It" and some things don't, and that goes a long way for me. I can't expand on that that, I don't even know what I think it means to "Mean It". It's probably purely subjective with no coherency outside my own head

[jamie]

hey jamie!!!!

 

the third season of Bojack is a little worse actually. some episodes were stronger than others, but the new characters aren't great and they kinda jumped the shark with the "Bojack is a sad guy who ruins other people's lives" concept. I think a great show would have had him continue his struggles this season, but he'd have learned something and made some sort of progress. I do like the characters, though. I like princess caroline, the cat lady, and mr. peanutbutter, the dog man, a lot. I also identify a lot with Bojack's loneliness and disappointment in himself, despite not really having achieved recognizable success myself and having a drastically different personality. it's also kind of a good take on hollywood, even though that's a boring subject.

 

 

having had one good experience with an adult animated comedy, I decided to try my luck with Archer. big mistake. holy shitsnacks (pause for genuine laughter), it is awful. that's even despite its voice cast and the fact that I'm a bit of a sucker for the campy secret agent theme. it's really terrible, folks. it has the aforementioned *blurts out something adult-sounding* humor all right, mixed in with family guy style pseudo-offensiveness. but it's also really ugly, and as we've sort of established recently in this thread, that might be the worst thing about it.

 

archer's one big special joke idea is 'this sentence follows into the-' character b speaks 'next scene.'. so they do that over and over, and have catchphrases. there are a couple of good episodes. i enjoyed the little arc where archer gets cancer but overall yes, i kind of view it similarly to how i see bojack. man i guess i'd need to watch bojack again to explain why i just thought it was really lame.

 

archer and bojack just seem to be both like comedy shows with no actual jokes. i think like denzquix says, archer tries to go for absurdity of the situation, like a sitcom, but its situations aren't funny inherently, they're cool inherently, and you're left with the characters to hilariously be out of context, except they all have 1 or 2 funny characteristics that get repeated over and over and no actual jokes are contained in the show.

 

you know why i think i don't like bojack, beside it not being funny (because i half-like archer, but it isn't funny), it's because it's just lazy hollywood creators writing about their own malaise. it isn't interesting at all. i've seen enough of this kind of material.

[crone_lover720]

that's what I mean when I say "adult-sounding things". they take the place of actual jokes as the intended source of comedy. they're cartoons, but they're doing all these explicitly, uncomfortably, sometimes over-the-top adult-sounding things. archer's secretary likes to be choked during sex? whoa lol how taboo kids don't talk about that stuff

 

I think bojack escapes from that, though. it takes about a half a season to set in. it does have a ton of background and animal-related jokes that are funny sometimes.

 

 

Gyo starts off awesome and has fun with its batshit ideas, but at some point it just loses its mind and stops being interesting. Then the ending is pretty tacked-on. I thought Uzumaki was occasionally guilty of wasting time, but on the whole it builds in a magnificent/hopeless way that works a lot better. In fact it's better in every way. The intermittent goofiness also slowly lowers, rather than ramping up at the end like in Gyo. (But Ito leaves in extremely goofy between-volume joke pages, which are really nice for combating the extreme helplessness of the setting). Also, the spiral motif is so well played through, it's such a simple concept that ends up in just unbelievably distinctive setpieces and events! As a matter of fact, "mushrooms" figure largely into one specific lategame chapter.

 

Principal Post, of course, is fucking amazing.

 

Ito also did a short one called HELLSTAR REMINA and it was even worse about wasting time, but the denouement - which is chapters and chapters of ridiculous action set miles above the Earth which is being spun by a colossal alien tongue so that every human being is soaring in weightless orbit around the planet - just couldn't have come from anyone else.

I did end up rereading uzumaki. it's definitely the stronger of the two, but does still, as you say, have issues with the 'filler' that plagues a lot of this type of material. it almost works with the sort of unending stress dream quality that ito's longer stories have, which is unique in horror afaik

[denzquix]

I'm watching the night of. It's all right. That's exactly what it is.

 

it's interesting you say that, i mentioned I was watching it right after i'd seen the first episode, but i had a very different idea in my mind of how it would play out from there. I dislike it a lot now. It's an unconvincing nasty mess

[crone_lover720]

there was a Stranger Things season 2 reveal today, so I might as well post about the series so far?

 

there definitely are some good things about it, but it really shouldn't be the smash hit of the summer. it looks and sounds nice, kind of like an hbo show. the dialogue gets pretty terrible at times, and some of the characters or their mini-arcs aren't interesting at all. way too many screaming kids. I'm also kind of sick of these Twin Peaks-skirting or referencing shows. if you've only seen the trailer, then yes, a major part of the show is indeed a whispery eccentric telepathic genius kid.

 

 

I also caught up on archer. it does get a little better, though it's not exactly good. there's something watchable about a core cast of characters blurting out vulgar things, insulting each other, making running jokes and allusions. I guess at its best, it superimposes irl things like office atmosphere and relationships on this kind of absurd secret spy backdrop. if there was more of that and less dumb humor, it probably would be a pretty good show.

[Hundley]

i was going to post in here a couple weeks ago but i forgot. now i'm going to do this because i actually watched the entirety of two television shows, which is not something i ever do.

 

so i power-watched stranger things in one sitting a while ago because i was told that it was THOROUGHLY LIKABLE MEDIA EXPERIENCE or something. some kind of CULTURAL PHENOMENON is taking place and i don't want to be left out in the cold!! wow!!! i guess it was kinda reasonably fun, and is so powerfully inoffensive that you never really have a reason to give up on it, but there's something pretty dirty about how the show has absolutely no aspirations to tell its own story or move beyond serving as some expansive series of references of other more accomplished works. some tour-de-force of what movies the writers of the series liked in the 80s, like a several hour long tour of all the star wars action figures and steven spielberg movie posters lying around their messy adolescent bedroom. wikipedia calls the show "AESTHETICALLY INFORMED" by all kinds of more noteworthy creative talents, which is a pretty cunning euphemism for PRETTY CLOSE TO PLAGIARISM.

 

the composition usually works enough to keep your attention, and it at least has the good sense to tie all these otherwise somewhat disparate works together fairly intelligibly, but there's rarely a point where you'll find yourself watching something you haven't seen before. and you generally wish it hadn't bothered when it does try to move into more strictly original territory, as some of the subplots are fantastically uninteresting and do nothing more than contribute saggy arcs that don't make a positive contribution to the story as a whole. in truth, in the weeks that have passed since i watched it i found it unusually forgettable to the point where i don't really have a whole lot more than some broadstrokes opinion about how AESTHETICALLY INFORMED it was by films that i was better off watching instead of the program. it does that annoying thing with constant cliffhangers to keep you tuning in to the next episode, only to show that the conflict in question wasn't particularly interesting to begin with. you wait for it to get better, just interesting enough to keep watching it, and rarely do you get anything resembling a payoff.

 

i guess there are worse things to do with a dull afternoon, and if you're reading this you're probably an idiot like me and aren't going to go solve the cancer question or something, but you're fundamentally better off putting 8 hours aside to watch poltergeist, e.t., close encounters of the third kind, and a two hour marathon of silent hill. you'll literally see everything there is to see in stranger things this way.

 

 

but that's not the only thing i watched recently. i watched peep show. all nine years of it. oftentimes out of order.

 

i didn't particularly want to like this show. it's shot exclusively first person, a visual technique that never caught on outside of videogames because it's horrendous and unnecessary, and over-relies on a running interior narration, which is the most banal, overused cop out for people who don't know how the mise-en-scene works. also it's a sitcom that deals exclusively with idiotic young people and the failures of their love life, which is a recipe for complete disaster and i went into the thing expecting VINCE VAUGHN to show up with his smug shtick and proceed in making the world a demonstrably poorer place to exist. though i do think mitchell and webb are excellent creative talents, and genuinely appreciate that there are these throwback comedians in the mold of cook and moore, or the goons, out there keeping the idea of a comedy act alive, which is genuinely the only reason i gave this show a chance at all.

 

glad i gave it a chance, i absolutely loved the show. i acknowledge that i'm somewhat biased by the fact that i could probably stomach virtually anything that just lets mitchell or webb loose to do their thing, but i really think this show just works. the writing of it all is really surprisingly good, where the writers really clearly tried to come up with these somewhat extravagantly absurd scenarios, while making the sequence of events that lead to them all organic and completely believable. the characters and their performances are extremely good almost all the time, and they shuffle the cast around enough where you very rarely get too overexposed to any one character to get bored by them. a couple in particular are just wonderful characters, super hans and johnson are absolutely fantastic characters, easily two of the best i've ever seen in a television show. in general, i think the comedy of the show is pretty consistently impressive, where you get two pretty distinctly different styles of comedy coming from mitchell's hyper-anxious, unbearably british mark, and webb's ultra-slacker, wannabe-musician jez. probably the comedy works a little bit better than it should because the show doesn't just play one note constantly, but shifts between two distinct types of humor. bouncing between their two dramatically different worlds keeps it all from getting particularly boring, which is what does start to happen for episodes that don't balance the narrative strongly enough between the two characters.

 

rather than simply use the voice over monologues to explain things that the filmmakers don't feel like showing visually, they use it to really specifically further the characterization and use it as an extra dimension of the narrative, which is the RIGHT WAY to do it. they really embraced the actual visual point of view beyond just using it as a gimmick, you get to really exist as these characters in their miserable, pathetic, fucked-up lives, and the show manages to reach a level of depth in the characterization that you just don't get to see in other shows like this. it's strange but i found the show engaging in the way that i can sometimes find videogames engaging, where you get this extra level of investment in the characters and the scenarios because you're seeing it all from a more personal perspective rather than just being a fly on the wall. it's probably all just a cheap psychological trick, but experiencing these characters always saying these things TO YOU rather than just being a passive observer watching these characters say it to each other, for me, added considerably to the experience. it's one thing just watching a sitcom where the main character gets told off by some prospective lover that they've totally struck out with(*yawn*), but it has a lot more value seeing this through their eyes and hearing their completely crushed thoughts as they tear themselves apart over it. this takes what shouldn't be particularly valuable drama and makes it a whole lot more meaningful and engaging, as you get to really feel so much more of it. the characters are still all shallow and often rather repulsive, so there's a logistical limit to how engaged you can get in it all and how much you can get out of it, but the show does absolutely as much with the central style and its characters as possible. it's simple subject matter, but i think it took a pretty impressive amount of planning to coordinate the show's relationship between the visual style, the narrations, and what's physically happening in the world. that this stayed fresh, interesting, and consistent after nine seasons is something pretty creatively impressive. this was a really daunting task and i can't believe it actually worked.

 

though it's a shame that i feel like this show probably has a niche audience. i like to think it's sufficiently well-acted, well-written, and well-shot to suggest it to anybody, but i feel like the content of the show would probably be a stumbling point for people, as it often isn't intrinsically interesting stuff, or that the comedy would be uninteresting to people, or that the visual style would just deter people rather than bring them in. but i liked it, even though a large part of that is the fact that i identify a little too strongly with both the main characters and can relate to both of their spectacular failures. this is probably why i had an easier time sinking into the show's point of view, and why i was ultimately their target audience. can't say with authority that this is going to be the case for everybody, so don't come whining to me if you take my advice and watch this show and have a terrible time with it all and leave with little but a diminished amount of faith in humanity.

 

so yeah, i live in a sewer and just found out about this show in the last couple months, even though this has been a thing out there for well over a decade. i presume that this is a thing that people know about, but i guess not THAT much as i only just heard of it, and only did so accidentally after stumbling onto some of mitchell and webb's other work. i always feel like coming late to the party like this is kinda like saying WOW I FOUND OUT ABOUT THIS MOVIE CITIZEN KANE WOW WHAT A MOVIE THIS ORSON WELLES GUY IS NEAT BUT WHAT'S THE DEAL WITH HIS NOSE AM I RIGHT.

 

but whatever. the big beat manifesto is timeless.

[crone_lover720]

yeah, stranger things really is mostly a big unoffensive pile of references. that kind of makes me want to hate it, because most people prolly never heard of silent hill etc and they're seeing a deliberate derivative as an original.

 

I dunno how well-known mitchell and webb are, though I am a little surprised they weren't known to Hundley long ago! I liked peep show, but I should rewatch it/watch the new seasons now that I'm slightly less awful of a person.

[denzquix]

i thoroughly enjoyed stranger things and everything i liked about it i felt it earned on its own terms, the whole "references" thing is way way overstated

[crone_lover720]

"I don't really like lots of stuff" ~ E. C.

 

I may have started to assume some things were references that actually weren't, but there were definitely a lot of things patched together from other sources. I dunno if other people outside saltw have been noting them or not except I guess second-hand thru hundley. I do honestly wonder if it's alright or in any way beneficial to see this sort of thing, turn up your nose and think "well this is like X that already exists but not as good" or if it's just a form of dementia

[Hundley]

i thoroughly enjoyed stranger things and everything i liked about it i felt it earned on its own terms, the whole "references" thing is way way overstated

It's important to note that this label was not just applied by film critics, but quite literally confirmed by the creators themselves. This article more or less confirms that they were basically just riffing on other people's work. The interviewer frames the show as essentially an 8-hour homage and they completely embrace the classification.
 
Also stumbled onto this video that's probably worth watching:
Granted, some of those "references" are likely just coincidence and general visual cliche, but I think it's somewhat impossible at this point to call the amount of their references overstated unless you're unfamiliar with the source material. So little of what made Stranger Things work felt intrinsically theirs, it was all just vaguely re-contextualized stuff ripped out of other movies. I wouldn't have been surprised to see Richard Dreyfuss pop out of the wall, place his crack-addled head three inches from the camera, and begin talking incredibly loud and incredibly fast.
 
Though for what it's worth, I think they gain points for being so utterly honest about it. They weren't trying to make something creatively relevant, and they seem to be pretty open about that. They mainly just wanted to share their excitement of 80s science fiction movies. Mission accomplished.
 
PS I almost stopped writing after the first little mini-paragraph but I mainly wanted to post the video because I do actually really love the main theme for the show. I forgot to mention this in my big rant above, so I'm saying it here.

I do honestly wonder if it's alright or in any way beneficial to see this sort of thing, turn up your nose and think "well this is like X that already exists but not as good" or if it's just a form of dementia

I am going to go and put on my snobby hat and say that if we just roll our eyes back in our head and blindly cheer and wank on to all the remakes then you and I will both live to see the 78th Spider-Man reboot. I would categorize this as an apocalyptic event.

It might just be me but I genuinely don't see the value in watching a lesser version of something. I honestly wasn't exaggerating when I said that you could spend the 8 hours of Stranger Things instead watching Poltergeist, E.T., Close Encounters, and a bit of Silent Hill. Stranger Things admittedly doesn't have the ambition to step far enough beyond those works to really establish its own thing, and those source materials are all actually fairly strong, watchable, creative things that they're drawing from! If you can choose between going to the Louvre and seeing the Mona Lisa and taking a quick glance at a black and white postcard reproduction of the Mona Lisa with the background truncated, a sensible person should hopefully want to see the real thing. I mean, the background is the best fucking part!

But it is probably clear by now that I am a disgusting purist and I honestly only watched these things because I ran out of Werner Herzog movies to watch, so it's for others to decide how much the opinion of such a person should count for anything. My hero is a guy who spent three years pulling a 300 ton ship over a mountain because it was the right thing to do, and I'm here with the audacity to talk about futility.

[Hundley]

tho ironically Poltergeist is also a pretty noteworthy act of plagiarism. it pretty shamelessly ripped off an episode of the twilight zone. pretty obvious, bush league move by spielberg too, since he had already adapted a story by that episode's writer, richard matheson, when he made duel. NOT A GREAT WAY TO TREAT YOUR COLLABORATORS IMO

but nobody cared much because little girl lost is actually pretty boring and unstimulating, even as far as twilight zone episodes go, and got by due to a neat central concept, while poltergeist is a generally more engaging, well-told story. and word on the street is that spielberg gave matheson the twilight zone movie screenwriting gig to keep matheson from going to his house and choking the shit out of him.

 

in other news, if you're a television show watcher and haven't sat down and power-watched twilight zone for long stretches of time, you have lived an incomplete life

[bonzi_buddy]

I do honestly wonder if it's alright or in any way beneficial to see this sort of thing, turn up your nose and think "well this is like X that already exists but not as good" or if it's just a form of dementia

I am going to go and put on my snobby hat and say that if we just roll our eyes back in our head and blindly cheer and wank on to all the remakes then you and I will both live to see the 78th Spider-Man reboot. I would categorize this as an apocalyptic event.

It might just be me but I genuinely don't see the value in watching a lesser version of something. I honestly wasn't exaggerating when I said that you could spend the 8 hours of Stranger Things instead watching Poltergeist, E.T., Close Encounters, and a bit of Silent Hill. Stranger Things admittedly doesn't have the ambition to step far enough beyond those works to really establish its own thing, and those source materials are all actually fairly strong, watchable, creative things that they're drawing from! If you can choose between going to the Louvre and seeing the Mona Lisa and taking a quick glance at a black and white postcard reproduction of the Mona Lisa with the background truncated, a sensible person should hopefully want to see the real thing. I mean, the background is the best fucking part!

But it is probably clear by now that I am a disgusting purist and I honestly only watched these things because I ran out of Werner Herzog movies to watch, so it's for others to decide how much the opinion of such a person should count for anything. My hero is a guy who spent three years pulling a 300 ton ship over a mountain because it was the right thing to do, and I'm here with the audacity to talk about futility.

+100000

 

It's bit like hamburger vs game meat thing. It's bit like saying: this hamburger has meat in it, SOME kind of meat, so I guess now I know how game tastes and feels like. With this, I guess I can form an opinion on the original thing too.

You can't make distilled and great from simple and crude components - It's complex-to-distilled.

 

Let's think of an example. Recently, I watched the original Star Wars trilogy in their original versions, sans Lucas modifications. I didn't want any talk and abstractionizing on what it is: i wanted to use my own senses, see what is different than what I sensed from them as a child. No more Star Wars Battlefront or Abrahams versions of what it really IS for me. Hot question: are those movies really any good as I remember them as a child, or was it all just the power of novelty and inexperience?

 

Conclusion: yup, they are fucking good. I saw things different as adult, but I did still see how the things I paid attention as child really WERE effective still, which was cool. Lot of this stuff actually becomes even more clear now in 2016, since you got these comparison points between old movies/traditions/ways and the new shit like 2016 "lifelike" CGI and styles etc.

 

So what surprised me is how little the original has to do with any of the sequels. Originals are literally Indiana Jones - movies in all structure, the way the script and compositioning and flow is made. Jedi battles are tense samurai battles with one-hit-KO's, no wuxia-level boring fight ballets with bigger and badder blades and forced dumb colour symbolism.

 

Then next example. On third and last movie, my female friend joined to watch it. She never had seen any of the Star Wars, so she was tripping pretty hard lol ("this is so messed up, why would anybody make a movie like this?? why would anybody watch this shit??).

 

But a very, very interesting example of the "hamburger vs game meat" thing... or the watching a small phone piccie of Mona Lisa - thing with poor resolution... happened.

She and my other friend commented and laughed on the muppet-techniques used on the aliens in the movies, "look at how old and dated they look, look at that, how childish".

To this, I was thinking "Yeah, keep talking... I think I know what will happen next."

... So next moment, she is screaming and jumping in place ("AAA YUCK!! DISGUSTING!! HOLY SHIT!!") during the first action sequence of the third part lol. And both going bawwww at the bar band scene and going LOL at the kitchy 80's music in background

*smug, knowing smirk* *grinds down the eiffel tower*

 

...Because the good thing about muppets, is that you can make them a bit more alien or unpredictable in movement (un-humanlike) for one thing. At best, you can make them really FLESHY and disgusting... because it's lifelike and "analog". I mean, you can use actually real blood and flesh for it if you wish to construct it as such.

If the ears recognize even the slightest details of robot's imitation of talk - now, I wonder: what happens when human eyes and brains sees 3D imitations of the real thing?

So after watching the movies, me and brother mused that scene - would ANYONE batted an eye, if it was modern 2016 CGI? You know the deal: the way 3d works and moves. The subtle trends of how movement and "acting" looks like in 2016. The way you are forced to compose shots, to hide any mechanicality and lack of real-life dynamics. The subtle but ever-pervasing use of dull/matt finish lightning, supposedly 80's look of light lol. All the smallest details that make the actual thing.

 

You can get easy example of this kind of small things, if you watch the newest Death Star DLC of Star Wars Battlefront the current gen game. The scenario is 3-part map. The first part you are supposedly attacking a Star Destroyer, then at the third part you are flying on Death Star.

Pay attention to first part, which really fucks up lot of small things, but let's take the most obvious one: the matt finish actual star that is the backdrop of the Star Destroyer. 2016 as fuck.

Then, watch Death Star part - no more of that fucking matt finish, but for most part actual starry space and endless rows of mechanic walls below you. Now THAT is the SHIT, gets much more closer to effect.

 

And besides these small details, the great thing about enjoying the original real thing is that you often get lot of unintentional details.

The small, odd little things that you may remember as a kid but forget when you fill the details with symbolic shit ("why are they repeatedly filming that idiot just staring them?!" she shouts frustrated at third movies end, which yeah was a little bit odd but in a good way. But then I also realized that it's hard to describe the thing they wanted to convey with that setup... they used the same thing in Saturday Night Fever, and it really struck me how LITTLE i've seen that pictured in movies. I recommend that movie too.). 

The way the actor's "acting work" in original trilogy, which has lot of 80's things in there. or harrison ford really killing it in the second movie. leia being a huge badass in first one. luke hamilton doing really great shit at the third one's end.

Me going WHOOAAA FUCKING HELL when the first movie's dive into death star finally happens, and I can't stop thinking that "that was really gripping good effect still, and they did that in the 80's!!! how the fuck!!!!"

the way of the pacing and dynamics... how all of trilogy always have at least some VERY quiet, observant scenes - you know, those 70's thing of filming somebody walking in distance for MINUTES, movie in no hurry to move on from the scene... and it really works in these movies, as the scenes are often really pretty and alien.

Somebody commented how Luke is really a huge tool for somebody whose supposed to be a bad ass, and hint: that's how it's supposed to be. if he wasn't a tool or a Humane Idiot, we'd be watching a lot of shitty shitty 2016 motifs of somebody standing MASCULINE AND ALPHA WITH A BEARD, filmed shortly from feet to upwards with CGI behind, and sternly shouting "You Can't Do This, Whoever. I Will Stop Your Dildo" or wtv.

I could really just go on and on. This shit rules. I bet in future we watch CGI re-imaginings of old movies and hologram robot imitations of real things, so that we don't have to experience the real things and real art, so that we are "safe" from that "contamination" of exposure lol. Oh you want to see me perform at my peak?? Naw just pay 30$ dollars licensing fee for a hologram of me and pay it to big corpos lol.

[A1A1inE8]

Well, here's Jean Renoir in 1975 explaining why the older star wars movies are better, why stranger things doesn't give you that 80's movies feel but something artificial (actually I haven't seen that show yet, so I dunno if that's true), why instagram filters are so popular, etc.

 

 

Maybe technique doesn't explain everthing, but I feel this can be one basic reason why these attempts to make art replicating the feel of something older can have this plastic artificial feel to it. This summer I saw some old home movies made by my relatives around 1950-1970 or so, and boy these are beautiful. Not really because some old uncle was some great cinematographer (probably not), but somehow it's "easier" to make something beautiful/artistic with primitive technique than with a full HD 1080p 3D camera. I'm not sure how to explain what I am getting at here but one way to put it is that less precision is needed. Limitations can be liberating, something like painting needs a frame. I like this quote by John Cage: "Structure without life is dead; life without structure is unseen". However, artificially limiting yourself probably you might just become a boring hipster with a shitty old camera

 

Anyways,I wanted to say this because this comparison between old movie vs. remake movie always makes me think of this. In the end I find most remakes/homages/etc creatively useless (even if they are fun and entertaining, eg. new star wars), especially if the content and goal of the movie is just "same as the old one, but you know filmed with modern technique or dark/gritty or something"

 

 

[A1A1inE8]

Actually, maybe someone could translate bonzi_buddy posts into french and then some old french guy could read them out loud.. ben oui...