Return of the RECENT VIEWING

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The Modernist

Re: Return of the RECENT VIEWING

Postby The Modernist » 01 Sep 2011, 23:37

Owen wrote:
That said I love McCabe and Mrs Miller, but I think the cultural things he raises about the 70s in that and Five Easy Pieces are true and are pretty reprehensibe.


What's "reprehensible" about Five Easy Pieces?

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Re: Return of the RECENT VIEWING

Postby beenieman » 01 Sep 2011, 23:37

TopCat G wrote:
beenieman wrote:Next I watched Touch of Evil, another from the BCB Top 100.

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At least this was watchable. It's a well made movie and if I was doing my list in 1960 I would have included it. The opening shot ios superbly set. But this is not an intellectual exercise. In today's terms the movie is overacted. Name a movie of the last 20 years where the characters shout at each other for most of the movie? Keep it down people! And the plot's implausibilities are too much. Quinlan is a cop who is driven to ensure the guilty go to jail regardless of any lack of evidence to enable that to happen. Surprisingly though he lets Grandis and his family run rampant in the town. Can't he frame them? He's good investigator so he only puts the guilty away, we are never led to think anything else, but his turn against Vargas has no basis in his character. In no time at all he is committing murder himself and framing an innocent woman for the fcrime. After 30 years following his rigorous moral code?

It's well acted for the time & i enjoyed it but top 100? Nope.


It's no Con Air.


Too right!
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Re: Return of the RECENT VIEWING

Postby beenieman » 01 Sep 2011, 23:39

TopCat G wrote:
Owen wrote:
That said I love McCabe and Mrs Miller, but I think the cultural things he raises about the 70s in that and Five Easy Pieces are true and are pretty reprehensibe.


What's "reprehensible" about Five Easy Pieces?


Glorifying, or at least tolerating, a bully & misogynist?
One night, an evil spirit held me down
I could not make one single sound
Jah told me, 'Son, use the word'
And now I'm as free as a bird

The Modernist

Re: Return of the RECENT VIEWING

Postby The Modernist » 01 Sep 2011, 23:53

beenieman wrote:
TopCat G wrote:
Owen wrote:
That said I love McCabe and Mrs Miller, but I think the cultural things he raises about the 70s in that and Five Easy Pieces are true and are pretty reprehensibe.


What's "reprehensible" about Five Easy Pieces?


Glorifying, or at least tolerating, a bully & misogynist?


I don't think the film is advocating those things at all. It is the portrait of a man who is rootless and cannot fit in, he's a tragic figure not one that is celebrated. The film is more subtle than you give it credit for.

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Re: Return of the RECENT VIEWING

Postby Matt Wilson » 01 Sep 2011, 23:55

beenieman wrote:
Matt Wilson wrote:Geez, Beanie - all three of those movies are classics.
Maybe you need a film studies class to appreciate them.


So I can have the same opinions as you do? I don't think so.

I knew they were pathetic characters at the start whereas it seemingly took you 2 hours to find out.

It would have been better if you hadn't gone to film studies class. :D


So every character study is only worth your time if the characters aren't pathetic?
What do you think of Raging Bull or Citizen Kane (I don't know that Charles Foster Kane is "pathetic", but I don't really think of the character as great either). Or how about literature? I mentioned the Upkide novel earlier but what about Jay Gatsby or the main character in Ulysses? Oh, I can think of more finely drawn portraits of less-than-admirable characers than that but I've already been at the whiskey and my mind, while never the most sharp thing on the best of days, is incredibly muddy under the influence.

I'm rambling, forget about it...

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Re: Return of the RECENT VIEWING

Postby beenieman » 02 Sep 2011, 00:14

Matt Wilson wrote:
beenieman wrote:
Matt Wilson wrote:Geez, Beanie - all three of those movies are classics.
Maybe you need a film studies class to appreciate them.


So I can have the same opinions as you do? I don't think so.

I knew they were pathetic characters at the start whereas it seemingly took you 2 hours to find out.

It would have been better if you hadn't gone to film studies class. :D


So every character study is only worth your time if the characters aren't pathetic?
What do you think of Raging Bull or Citizen Kane (I don't know that Charles Foster Kane is "pathetic", but I don't really think of the character as great either). Or how about literature? I mentioned the Upkide novel earlier but what about Jay Gatsby or the main character in Ulysses? Oh, I can think of more finely drawn portraits of less-than-admirable characers than that but I've already been at the whiskey and my mind, while never the most sharp thing on the best of days, is incredibly muddy under the influence.

I'm rambling, forget about it...


Forgotten.
One night, an evil spirit held me down
I could not make one single sound
Jah told me, 'Son, use the word'
And now I'm as free as a bird

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Re: Return of the RECENT VIEWING

Postby Bungo the Mungo » 02 Sep 2011, 00:25

Good to see someone not echoing the conclusions of the chin-rubbing herd with some of these so-called classics.

Altho' it would help if you watched them to the end, Beenieman!

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Re: Return of the RECENT VIEWING

Postby BARON CORNY DOG » 02 Sep 2011, 01:32

I don't see any of those movies particularly advocating or glorifying loose sexual morality or whatever. They are what they are. Were there bastards who beat up women in the early 70s? Of course. Where there prostitutes and entrepreneurs who got rich from prostitutes in the old west? Hell yes. Does all that shit still exist today? Obviously. I would get mad at someone if they said something like I just said -- it is what it is, they are what they are -- but it's true. Misogynistic assholes, whoring entrepreneurs. That's life. That's drama. What's the problem? The message of Five Easy Pieces certainly isn't, be a dickhead who slaps broads around and McCabe certainly has nothing to do with glorifying prostitution. If you don't want to see that stuff, fine, but it's ludicrous to criticize the pictures because they portray something that plausibly exists. You can't say that Jack Nicholson plays a sexist cretin in Robert Altman's movie, therefore Robert Altman is a sexist cretin and his movies must be suffused with that.
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Re: Return of the RECENT VIEWING

Postby BARON CORNY DOG » 02 Sep 2011, 01:35

beenieman wrote:In today's terms the movie is overacted. Name a movie of the last 20 years where the characters shout at each other for most of the movie? Keep it down people!


What make's today's terms automatically superior? This isn't a criticism.

beenieman wrote:And the plot's implausibilities are too much. Quinlan is a cop who is driven to ensure the guilty go to jail regardless of any lack of evidence to enable that to happen. Surprisingly though he lets Grandis and his family run rampant in the town. Can't he frame them? He's good investigator so he only puts the guilty away, we are never led to think anything else, but his turn against Vargas has no basis in his character. In no time at all he is committing murder himself and framing an innocent woman for the fcrime. After 30 years following his rigorous moral code?


Um, perhaps his rigorous moral code was bullshit? That character was absolutely plausible. I never disbelieved a second of that character.
take5_d_shorterer wrote:If John Bonham simply didn't listen to enough Tommy Johnson or Blind Willie Mctell, that's his doing.

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Re: Return of the RECENT VIEWING

Postby BARON CORNY DOG » 02 Sep 2011, 01:36

beenieman wrote:
TopCat G wrote:
Owen wrote:
That said I love McCabe and Mrs Miller, but I think the cultural things he raises about the 70s in that and Five Easy Pieces are true and are pretty reprehensibe.


What's "reprehensible" about Five Easy Pieces?


Glorifying, or at least tolerating, a bully & misogynist?


THE GUY IS A FUCKING LOSER!!!! I can't believe that's not obvious!
take5_d_shorterer wrote:If John Bonham simply didn't listen to enough Tommy Johnson or Blind Willie Mctell, that's his doing.

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Re: Return of the RECENT VIEWING

Postby Matt Wilson » 02 Sep 2011, 01:39

Nicholson didn't physically abuse Black and Beatty didn't hit any women either in the Altman picture.
Now ya see, this is how rumors start!

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Re: Return of the RECENT VIEWING

Postby beenieman » 02 Sep 2011, 01:44

beenieman wrote:
Matt Wilson wrote:

So every character study is only worth your time if the characters aren't pathetic?
What do you think of Raging Bull or Citizen Kane (I don't know that Charles Foster Kane is "pathetic", but I don't really think of the character as great either). Or how about literature? I mentioned the Upkide novel earlier but what about Jay Gatsby or the main character in Ulysses? Oh, I can think of more finely drawn portraits of less-than-admirable characers than that but I've already been at the whiskey and my mind, while never the most sharp thing on the best of days, is incredibly muddy under the influence.

I'm rambling, forget about it...


Forgotten.


Less flippantly what I don't like is movies/stories which don't recognise the characters failings. In the case of say the Godfather, Scarface etc the characters dooms are foreshadowed from the start. In McCabe while apparently it ends poorly there is no such foreshadowing. They're just doing what regular folk gotta do (pimp & prostitute), and you suspect Beatty didn't understand any subtleties, that providing hookers is not necessarily a positive thing to do. It's all just jolly japes and in terms of leading to soom sad outcome poorly done.
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And now I'm as free as a bird

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Re: Return of the RECENT VIEWING

Postby beenieman » 02 Sep 2011, 01:47

Matt Wilson wrote:Nicholson didn't physically abuse Black and Beatty didn't hit any women either in the Altman picture.
Now ya see, this is how rumors start!

He abused Black from the get go. You know abuse doesn't have to be physical right? And who said Beatty hit women in McCabe? Not me. He bought & sold them.
One night, an evil spirit held me down
I could not make one single sound
Jah told me, 'Son, use the word'
And now I'm as free as a bird

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Re: Return of the RECENT VIEWING

Postby beenieman » 02 Sep 2011, 01:49

the science eel wrote:Good to see someone not echoing the conclusions of the chin-rubbing herd with some of these so-called classics.

Altho' it would help if you watched them to the end, Beenieman!


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Re: Return of the RECENT VIEWING

Postby Matt Wilson » 02 Sep 2011, 02:05

beenieman wrote:
Matt Wilson wrote:Nicholson didn't physically abuse Black and Beatty didn't hit any women either in the Altman picture.
Now ya see, this is how rumors start!

He abused Black from the get go. You know abuse doesn't have to be physical right? And who said Beatty hit women in McCabe? Not me. He bought & sold them.


Why, because he didn't love her? One could say if she had any intelligence whatsoever she would've left him long ago. I doubt a man like that ever told her he would one day marry her and that she was the woman for him. There are no heroes in a story like that. You're supposed to pity him, Beenie.

Answer my question about Raging Bull. What do you think of Jake LaMotta? And I noticed you making excuses for The Godfather earlier. Are you saying Michael Corleone is less reprehensible than Bobby DuPrea (or whatever Nicholson's name was in Five Easy Pieces)?
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Re: Return of the RECENT VIEWING

Postby Davey the Fat Boy » 02 Sep 2011, 06:13

What doom foreshadows Michael Corleone in The Godfather? He's introduced as the lone moral oasis in the family.
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Return of the RECENT VIEWING

Postby Owen » 02 Sep 2011, 07:44

Matt Wilson wrote:Yeah, but you can say that about virtually anything. Read Huck Finn lately? The world 'Nigger' is used throughout the novel and almost always casually. Does that mean it's not a masterpiece? If you're going to judge art by current politically correct standards then you'll be dissapointed far more than pleased. Most of the current world is sexist in its regard to women. Japan, Italy, Mexico, China, the Middle Eastern countries... I could go on and on.



yeah but we look at those places as being deficient whereas we look at a lot of 70s counter culture things as liberated and progressive. which they are are compared to what came before. but if beenieman is going to judge the characters by today's standards they are just as of their time as huck Finn is.

personally I wouldn't judge a film on how it's characters act, But I do find something indulgent about the period. I like McCabe, don't much like 5 easy pieces

I think beenieman is overreacting but I think he is overreacting to something that is there, and to something that is there in a lot of 70s art that gets praised by men of a certain age. but it's really just the flip side of that pink floyd pistols debate, as someone who's ideas were formed in the period of the 80s that still had a year zero approach to the indulgences of the early 70s these things probably stand out more.

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Re: Return of the RECENT VIEWING

Postby The Modernist » 02 Sep 2011, 08:07

I do see what you are saying Owen. I'm not blind to the fact that the films of the 70's sometimes have attitudes within them that may be seen as glorifying behavior which can be seen as macho or sexist, Les Valseuses is a good example of that. But the problem with this debate so far is the assumption that any film that features these things is advocating them. It leads one to the kind of deeply conservative position that someone like Leslie Halliwell took where he just rejected the films of this era because they contained things he just didn't want to see.
I still don't see why Five Easy Pieces was morally reprehensible. Duprea behaves poorly towards others, but the film makes it pretty clear he does because of his own inadequacies and complexes.

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Re: Return of the RECENT VIEWING

Postby Davey the Fat Boy » 02 Sep 2011, 08:52

Yeah - I think there are two different ideas here being lumped together. On one hand you have beenie essentially arguing that he doesn't much like ambiguity in movies. He wants to know from the beginning that the bad guys are bad and the good guys are good and that the moral universe he is visiting is one that he feels comfortable in. He has that right of course, I don't judge him for it. it simply doesn't work for me. it is telling that he liked Touch of Evil most of the three films he viewed. That film hews closest to unambiguity. It is my least favorite of the three for the very same reasons.

But as G rightly argues, a film can portray complex or flawed moral ecosystems without actually "celebrating" them. The Godfather isn't celebrating mob culture. It is exploring organized, and using the story of its rise to tell a larger story about America. McCabe and Mrs. Miller covers similar ground, revising the myth that success in America (especially young America) was the province of the hard-working and the worthy. Five Easy Pieces isn't glorifying Dupea's womanizing or his inability to function in a world where anybody makes demands of him, it is exploring his methods of evasion and asking us to see ourselves in them.

All of these films challenge history and challenge the viewer to examine their own lives and foibles. Not that everybody ought to love them, or be in the mood to be challenged. these films aren't for everybody. But if they don't work for you, the problem isn't that they are somehow morally inferior films. It is simply that you have no appreciation for the moral ambiguity they do offer.
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Re: Return of the RECENT VIEWING

Postby The Write Profile » 02 Sep 2011, 09:36

Davey Avon FatBoy wrote:Yeah - I think there are two different ideas here being lumped together. On one hand you have beenie essentially arguing that he doesn't much like ambiguity in movies. He wants to know from the beginning that the bad guys are bad and the good guys are good and that the moral universe he is visiting is one that he feels comfortable in. He has that right of course, I don't judge him for it. it simply doesn't work for me. it is telling that he liked Touch of Evil most of the three films he viewed. That film hews closest to unambiguity. It is my least favorite of the three for the very same reasons.

But as G rightly argues, a film can portray complex or flawed moral ecosystems without actually "celebrating" them. The Godfather isn't celebrating mob culture. It is exploring organized, and using the story of its rise to tell a larger story about America. McCabe and Mrs. Miller covers similar ground, revising the myth that success in America (especially young America) was the province of the hard-working and the worthy. Five Easy Pieces isn't glorifying Dupea's womanizing or his inability to function in a world where anybody makes demands of him, it is exploring his methods of evasion and asking us to see ourselves in them.

All of these films challenge history and challenge the viewer to examine their own lives and foibles. Not that everybody ought to love them, or be in the mood to be challenged. these films aren't for everybody. But if they don't work for you, the problem isn't that they are somehow morally inferior films. It is simply that you have no appreciation for the moral ambiguity they do offer.



More to the point, I think McCabe as shown as a weak, or at least misguided character right from the start. Sure, he's full of brio ("I've got poetry in me!"), but look at how isolated he is in the community, even in the tavern scene no one actually listens to his "jokes", which are garbled and incoherent, while even once the actual building of the whore-house gets underway, it's pretty clear how farcical and doomed the operation is- he has little to no understanding of women, or indeed, how business works. If you want foreshadowing it's there right from the opening, mournful frames.

I like Touch of Evil more than Five Easy Pieces, but the reasons for that are almost entirely cinematic. It's a frenzied, overwrought, often ludicrous and unhinged film where pretty much everyone gets what they deserve, and you just surrender to the mania and the style and the sense that Orson Welles knew he would never get away with something like this again, and also knew how gone to seed his career is. Its poisnousness is intoxicating.
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