Starke said:
Okay, let's work backwards on this. First, either you don't know when someone is being insulted or you selected those entries accidentally. The Ondine review briefly, near the end speculates that critics may have missed more emotional depth in the director's previous film, labling it as a knockoff of Deathwish, well, okay. People miss things. He isn't saying that other reviewers are retarded, or deficient in some way, simply that with a holistic approach to the director's work, the previous film implies some deeper content. And, you know what? That happens. Hell, I've missed that. Where a director keeps using thematic elements from film to film. Hell, on the topic of the next director, Christopher Nolan is infamous for this, going all the way back to Dark City (1997), for someone to attempt to review Inception without familiarity with Dark City and Memento is at a serious disadvantage.
Actually, I should have double-checked the
Ondine review, because I'm guessing the NY Press went back and edited it. An earlier version of that article had White referring to "Fincherheads, Cameron morons, and Chris Nolan know-it-alls" when talking fans of those filmmakers (the loose connection being that they made fantasy). I'm actually quite glad it got changed, since it's an excellent review without it, but White actually has quite the history of calling people who like movies and filmmakers that he doesn't morons, or other derogatory names, with the most recent example being his Machete [http://www.nypress.com/article-21588-machete.html] review:
If this kind of selfconscious cinema junk is to be enjoyed, it can only be enjoyed by morons.--Armond White
The Rolling Stone Inception review observes that "trusting the intelligence of the audience can cost Nolan at the box office." Now, in American cinema, in the last 30 years or so, intelligent films, really intelligent films have done incredibly poorly. Some of this is the stigma against intellectualism, which can be traced to the colonial era, and more precisely 1750s. But, whatever the cause, since the fall of the studio system in the 1960s, intelligent films have done poorly at the box office in comparison to more sensationalistic fare.
Yes, I know this part, but this still qualifies as an implied insult that audiences are 'too stupid' to get
Inception. Mind you, Peter Travers is also a critic I greatly admire, and really, I don't care if he, or any critic, really, throws a verbal jab. But if I'm being honest with myself, then I can't honestly look at that and go "That's not an insult," because if I were going to write something like that, then the intent would be as an insult.
Finally, we get to Ebert's review of Silent Hill. Now, I've seen reviews from Ebert where he does in fact insult the audience, and I even linked a few here. So, I'm left with dualistic theories. Either, you don't know what an insult is, or you linked the wrong review.
Now, put all of this in comparison to Bob calling everyone who saw a film "the worst kind of person", and I'm really inclined to say you don't know what you're talking about. Bob's review was not humor, it was not satire, it was just stupidity compounded by tantrum.
Again, I agree that Bob's was not humor (never said it was). But, from the Silent Hill review:
Dr. Shlain made the most interesting comment on the panel. He said they took some four and five year-olds and gave them video games and asked them to figure out how to play them without instructions. Then they watched their brain activity with real-time monitors. "At first, when they were figuring out the games," he said, "the whole brain lit up. But by the time they knew how to play the games, the brain went dark, except for one little point." Walking out after "Silent Hill," I thought of that lonely pilot light, and I understood why I failed to understand the movie. My damn brain lit up too much.
It's actually quite the logic fail, but Ebert is implying that gamers don't think, while he does (yet that's why they'd understand the movie more than he does? Again, logic fail). So, yes, that qualifies.
SamElliot said:
SamElliot said:
Which brings me to this comment:
I'm not flying into an angry rant because he labeled me a "douchebag jock"...
I never said
you specifically were.
No, you didn't. Bob did.
Bob said you're flying into a rant because he called you a jock? I just thought he called you a jock?
Because being equated with Ogre from
Revenge of the Nerds but not being called a "douchebag" directly is so much better. Honestly, I think he did, but my apathy precludes any research on this.
Perhaps I've been too literalist on this, but I'm going to try again: we're both in agreement on the fact that Bob referred to fans of
The Expendables as jocks/douchebags/Ogre. There's no argument there, the first comment you responded to was me saying that I knew you weren't amongst the many on this thread whining over the insult, and the second was clarifying that Bob only made the insults, and not the connection that people were mad at him because of the insults (that's what everyone else but him has been doing). I'm not sure how much clearer I can make this, because I'm still kind of baffled that this part expanded the way it did, and that you somehow entangled my opinions in with his.
Okay, seriously though:
SamElliot said:
The fact that you went from that to suddenly trying to 'convince' me that Bob insulted people and that's why you're mad is completely baffling (though, your other argument, that Bob is throwing a tantrum and therefore I'm wrong, was only slightly more convincing).
Okay, just to be clear. And I suspect this is a fault of text on the internet as a whole, but I'm not mad, I'm not angry. I am mildly annoyed that you keep trying to derail a discussion about insults with semantics. This is like Clinton going up in front of Congress and trying to debate the meaning of the word "the". It's not relevent, it's not at issue, and honestly, did he call everyone who posted in the previous thread "douchebag jocks", "jocks" or just "Keanu Reeves", I don't know, and I don't particularly care.
Neither do I, and in fact, the only place where I've even been making any such arguments is in your head. Where exactly was I questioning the fact that he insulted people? Or, for that matter, what insults he lobbed? Nowhere! Why? Precisely for the same reasons you're now ripping into me for doing something I have, in fact, not done. Don't believe me? Go back and reread those posts, and notice that I use the word jock twice. Why would I do that if I'm trying to confuse which insult he lobbed? Because I wasn't, the lines individually are "Bob said you were mad because he called you a jock?" and "I just thought he called you a jock?" The first sentence I wrote because you replied to a sentence acknowledging that you weren't mad about the insult ("I never said you were"), by saying "You didn't...Bob did," which is confusing in context because you were saying that Bob himselfclaimed you, personally, were ranting about being insulted (rather than me, the person you were conversing with).
And with you're followup, I can only reasonably assume two things: either you've been misreading the words I've written, or you're simply using me as some sort of proxy in a war of words with Bob himself. I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and say that it's the former, because you don't seem like the type that would take out anger or annoyance with one person out on another.
SamElliot said:
First of all, I made no such remark about whether or not what he was doing consitutes a review, simply that insulting people is something critics do from time-to-time (no matter how much you or anyone tries to dress it up).
snip
Again, a film review follows a kind of structure, just like any other kind of writing you will ever engage in in your life. Without that structure, it isn't a film review. Bob began his reviews with that structure, and sometime around Iron Man 2 or so, he ejected that in favor of random tantrums.
Now, you can try to tear that down all you want, but when you have a writing structure you can see in reviews going back to the 70s and earlier (in some places) claiming that they aren't doing something particular is like claiming you can make a car however you want. Go on, go do it. I'll wait.
SamElliot said:
Second of all, now I am going to say it: while Bob's review was horribly done, it's still a review, because art criticism, though an indispensable tool for academic study of the arts and helping consumers decide which piece of entertainment to fork over hard-earned dollars for, is largely a bullshit occupation.
No. Okay. Seriously. This is where I can flat out tell you, you don't know what the hell you're talking about. Bob's review has all the academic value of a shit stain in Glasgow.
Now, I can apreciate you haven't got the education or training in writing reviews to understand what you need to look for. But, as someone who has gone to college and taken courses in this shit, I can tell you flat out, there is no academic value to the mess he's labeling as a "review"
*sigh* The comment about academic value was about film criticism as a whole. Hence the caveat that Bob's was horribly done, because I
agree (a word that seems to slip past you on this) that his reviews of late are terrible, and the only worth I've found in them is occassional amusement. And I've also taken writing courses in college, mostly based around research papers, and every instructor I've come across says there are different standards for different types of writing, but I'll get to that later.
SamElliot said:
Now, now, before you fly into a rage over that last statement, there's a reason I'm saying this: the only real quantitative work that goes into a review is opinion.
Also false. Though, I can understand how, to the untrained eye, this would not be apparent. This isn't a snub at you, it's simply you haven't been taught how to measure films objectively.
SamElliot said:
We can argue day and night over what constitutes a good review (except I don't want to), but at the end of the day, a review is simply an opinion about something.
An opinion is subjective, not objective. And, as any reviewer (Bob excluded) will tell you, a good review must be objective.
SamElliot said:
The Ebert review of Caligula you linked to? I found it incredibly dull and formulaic, because he never elaborates his thoughts about the movie beyond fortune-cookie sentences about "unprofessional shots" and the occassional titillating description of scenes he found "disgusting" (kinda like Bob's reviews of late).
At least, after reading it, you know what was wrong with the acting, the writing, and so on. It's not Ebert's finest hour, but, it is an attempt at writing an objective review of something which created a subjective effect.
Now that we're both back on track (hopefully), this is the meat-and-potatoes of our conversation! And of course, I have to vehemently disagree with you on this, unfortunately, because art is as a whole a subjective experience. And while critics try to appear noble and objective, it's just a mask, either for themselves or for other people. Simply put, you can not have an objective review of a subjective experience. There's a reason for that: because the two concepts are at complete and total odds with each other. Anyone reviewing a film brings their own experiences, values, and even agendas to the mix, whether they realize it or not, and that stuff tends to skew perspectives, so you can get incredibly intelligent people who think that, oh say,
2001 is a profound masterpiece of cinema, or equally intelligent people who find it to be pretentious garbage, and both can back up their views by citing the film itself, other films, how it fits in history, and so on. In the end, a positive or negative review is going to come down to a critic's opinion of a movie, and only their opinion. Any statement about film critics being 'objective' about films (a statement that Bob himself has made in the past. Twice.) is a pretense, designed to make what they have to say appear to somehow be 'better' than what the average film-goer thinks. It's disingenous and arrogant (hence my earlier comment about criticism being a bullshit occupation).
Instructors that I've learned from have said criticism generally falls into the same category as editorials, with the best of either using facts and analysis to back up their observations. Strong and vital reviews (or editorials) will utilize a full range of writing tools (references, prose, good structure, etc.), but it's all in the service of supporting an opinion the writer has. Because of that, facts and analysis are not exactly required to write a review (a fact that most Netflix users like to abuse), but a
good review makes use of those tools. (just to clarify again: Bob's review=/=good review, precisely because he makes no use of those tools, and simply throws a tantrum)
Truly objective writing (research papers and journalism) doesn't offer the writer's opinions at all (hard to do, especially in the age of blogging, tabloids, and cable news), but merely reports things that have happened. If film critics were being objective, their reviews would be mostly plot summaries (which we can both agree would not be a good review in the traditional sense, correct?).
SamElliot said:
Still counts as a review, because it is just his opinion (surely, you're not the kind of guy who writes up Entertainment Weekly telling them you're going to sue for falsely advertising their review section as such?).
No, I'm not writing reviews for news rags now, I'm back in school working on an additional degree because the economy is still shit and student loans are a poor, but easily available way to pay the bills in the short term. (That and I never finished my bachelors before I started working the last time, a decision I cannot recommend to
anyone.)
[?] Hmm, either my joke sailed past you, and I'm now being one of those dolts who has to explain said joke, or you are rather brilliantly fucking with me. I'll go with the latter, until proven otherwise.[/?]
P.S.: This is a minor quibble, but Nolan didn't have anything to do with
Dark City, that was Alex Proyas. The film you might be looking for is
Following, perhaps?
