201

(4 replies, posted in Off Topic)

Well, how can I not chip in here  big_smile  Having said that though, I love absolutely everything about it so much that it's almost hard for me to talk coherently about it. 

It's an amazing piece of work that, first, could only be a film.  It's a sort of collage documentary/rumination on just about the biggest ideas you can image:  the nature of art, truth, storytelling, all kinds of stuff.  But at the same time it's a lot of fun.  The story of the art forger Elmyr de Hory and his biographer Clifford Irving is just a really interesting story in and of itself, and de Hory is a great character.  But then when Irving himself becomes the perpetrator of a famous biographical forgery, the whole narrative takes on a kind of hall of mirrors quality which Welles is then reflecting (pun somewhat intended) in the way he puts the film together. 

And as part of the whole theme of forgery, truth and whatnot, I just love the way that Welles is kind of mischievously messing with you during the film.  So at the beginning of the film he sets up the theme of movies being like magic tricks.  That's of course a total cliche and he knows it (though no less true for that).  But then parts of the way the film is put together make you think that you're getting a look "behind the curtain".  There are scenes that appear to take place in an editing suite, and in other scenes Welles speaks (and edits the film) as if he's in a particular location seeing something when he's manifestly not.  But then, that's nothing more than what he wants you to see, so the peek behind the curtain is just another instance of misdirection.  The whole thing works though because Welles possesses such a casual, off-hand mastery of the art of storytelling, and the storytelling aspects of film particularly. 

[For people who might know him, it's exactly like what Derren Brown, the British illusionist/mentalist/magician/whatever sometimes does in his shows.  (And for anybody who doesn't know about him, run as fast as you can to see anything he's ever done.)  He'll occasionally suggest, more obliquely or less obliquely, that he's achieving his effects in a certain way (never by psychic powers, just seemingly plausible-sounding psychological or statistical phenomena), but again it's just more misdirection.]

The editing is justifiably famous of course, and it's great on both a global and local level.  So the film itself is, as I say, kind of a collage of part of documentary film about Elmyr de Hory which had already been shot, plus new footage by Welles (with the documentary director as his cinematographer), with then some other setups involving Oja Kordar.  The fact that the whole thing isn't a complete train wreck is a minor miracle. And then on a local level, the editing of individual scenes is really well-done, both in terms of the way things are juxtaposed and the relation to the narration. 

And, man, the narration.  I could listen to Orson Welles reciting the proverbial phone book.  If you get the chance somehow, do see "The Orson Welles Sketchbook", a series of shorts that he did in the 50's for the BBC where he reminisces about various topics in his life and does sketches to illustrate them.  Just listening to him speak is amazing. 

Anyway, if you're willing to be drawn into this kind of always-joking-and-always-serious free-form world/essay that Welles is creating, I think F for Fake is just absolutely fabulous.  It's the work of a complete master and a complete genius just doing totally his own thing (not to, like, oversell it or anything).

202

(19 replies, posted in Episodes)

Fun episode about a completely great movie.  Just wanted to mention a brief thing about the music.  This movie was indeed so much the driving force behind a rediscovery of ragtime that people forget that the music is not at all contemporaneous with the period of the film.  As mentioned, Scott Joplin died in 1917, and his first big ragtime hits were around the turn of the century.  In other words, that music is actually 20-30 years out of date. 

So, to refine the analogy that Mike made at the beginning of the episode, it's as if somebody now, today, made a film about the early 1970's  - say a bunch of ex-hippies dealing with "the dream is over", the failure of the summer of love, etc.  - and the music was entirely doo-wop, and that was the catalyst for a big top-40 doo-wop revival.  I think my head would explode if that happened.

203

(469 replies, posted in Episodes)

So, just to completely fuck the math up, I'm in for 1/6.6667th.  So all we now need is three other kind people to kick in 1/5.7692th, and we don't even have to worry about rounding!

204

(991 replies, posted in Off Topic)

God I want that version of Doctor Who so badly.

205

(991 replies, posted in Off Topic)

Faldor wrote:
fireproof78 wrote:

Because he was already on the show and can't be the Doctor.

Two companions and One Doctor had been on the show before getting cast.  yikes

Really?  Colin Baker's going to be your argument?  yikes

And on the companion side, it's taking me a minute to think.  You mean Lalla Ward and Freema Agyeman?

206

(991 replies, posted in Off Topic)

Doctor Submarine wrote:

If it's another lanky white dude I'll be severely disappointed. It's been half a century. Let's mix things up a bit.

When I heard he was vaguely in the running (like one of 5 or 6 people they were speculating about initially), I desperately wanted Chiwetel Ejiofor.  He's been nothing less than amazing in everything I've seen him in.

207

(991 replies, posted in Off Topic)

Hmm....Apparently the Outlaw Line out of Vegas says that odds are dropping fast on Peter Capaldi.  He's the 11/8 favorite over at William Hill, for example, with Ben Daniels at 4/1 and Rory Kinnear at 6/1. 

I'd just been lamenting the fact that they probably wouldn't go for an interesting choice.  (My favorite NuWho doctor has been Christopher Eccelston, though, so I'm obviously not the target audience.  Though to be fair I've only seen a handful of Matt Smith's episodes.)  However, Peter Capaldi could actually be interesting.  I've just been watching some William Hartnell serials actually and thinking "yeah, they need to get back to a Doctor that's a bit crankier and less of a milquetoast."  Shame we probably won't get the swearing.

208

(2,068 replies, posted in Off Topic)

God, I love Buckaroo Banzai.  It hit me just at the right moment I guess.  It came out when I was like 14, and I went to see it at a 9.30 show, so I was already kinda tired, and I came out going "I have no idea what the fuck just happened, but that was the most awesome thing I've ever seen!" 

It does indeed have some slight tone issues, and the universe has a chaotic "everything but the kitchen sink" quality, but so much of it is so great.  John Lithgow is great.  Enough quotable lines for at least five cult movies.  I'm still mad that we didn't get Buckaroo Banzai Against The World Crime League like the closing credits promised.

209

(25 replies, posted in Episodes)

Finally did manage to see it and listen to just about all of the commentary.  I completely agree that it's really draggy in places, and in general was kinda underwhelmed.  And it's definitely got problems, although not all of the things that bugged William Goldman bugged me. 

In terms of pacing and whatnot, sure the battle sequence at the beginning is impressive, but I'm not sure what it really adds.  If the film starts around the 35 minute mark, with Tom Hanks getting the order to look for Private Ryan, I'm not sure what's different.  (Maybe that's how Raiders Spielberg would have done it  smile  ) It's not like there's any shortage of "war is hell and sucks, and battles are confusing" moments later on. 

And I think the fact that so much of the journey stuff feels so draggy is indicative of the fact that not much is happening.  That's an obvious-sounding thing to say, but what I mean is that I kinda didn't feel any sense of progression, like there was a reason why the episode with the French girl comes first, then the stuff about the crashed aircraft, and then whatever -- like the episodes built to anything or really went anywhere, other than just the increasing sense of futility, which comes to a head after the pillbox attack.  But if that's the only point you're going to make with all the time you spend with these characters, you might as well not bother. 

And then often the individual scenes don't do much.  We're in a church, so we know we're heading for the "Long, Dark Night of the Soul" cliche, but what do we actually learn in that scene about Tom Hanks' character for example that puts him in a new light or changes the way we think about him?  He cares.  Big deal.  It's Tom Hanks; of course he fucking cares.  If it was Steve Buscemi on the other hand, then it might mean something.  So by the end it kinda feels like Tom Hanks' character hasn't changed over the course of his journey.  He's pretty much in exactly the same place at the end of the film that he is at the beginning (other than being dead obviously). 

Actually, one of the things that didn't really bother me is the flashback.  I guess I just assumed that it was something like an "omniscient flashback", sort of like an omniscient narrator.  Given that the old guy is Ryan at the beginning, the film is of course flashing back to events that he wasn't present at.  However, it is flashing back to the beginning of the story and events which lead to him being there in the cemetery staring at that particular grave.  Come to think of it, maybe looking at it that way actually gives some reason for starting with the Normandy landing, since Tom Hanks' arrival with the invasion force could in some sense be taken as the beginning of the story of how Ryan ended up there. 

And I suppose I just brought my own concrete about why Tom Hanks doesn't immediately drag Ryan back forcibly.  The "we're in a surreal situation here" conversation is totally stupid, but they do talk about how that bridge is one of only two ways for the Germans to get across that river and the whole invasion force will be screwed if they can't hold it.  And given that there's like 4 guys there, waiting for reinforcements that are God knows where, I guess I can imagine Tom Hanks having some kind of latitude or something to say "Potentially holding this bridge is actually more important than my current orders, so I'll put them on hold until this gets sorted out."  And then of course if he's wrong then he has to answer for that decision to his superiors.

Yeah, so, in a word:  meh.

210

(25 replies, posted in Episodes)

"amazing and broken", you say?  Sounds like a trip to my local public library is in order (and it's one of the last Nathan Fillion film appearances I still haven't seen).

211

(431 replies, posted in Off Topic)

You're too kind, sir, too kind.

212

(431 replies, posted in Off Topic)

Zarban wrote:

I think the remarkable thing about Toy Story is that it successfully gets the audience to identify with a minor supporting character (Andy) instead of the heroes. This is even reinforced by, of all things, the merchandising campaign, which allows you to own duplicates of the heroes just like Andy.

So the message becomes "you never really stop loving your toys, even when you stop playing with them" rather than "sometimes our parents/god stop loving us".

Yeah, I guess that has to be the way that people in general take it.  That would be really interesting to find out actually.  My oldest is only just 7, so it's hard to know how to get at how she's interpreting things (though I assume that there are experts out there who know -- shame it's nothing at all to do with my academic field).   

However, for precisely the reasons you allude to, I don't think the movies themselves can 'be about that', if you see what I mean.  Which then raises interesting questions which I'm profoundly ill-equipped to answer about what exactly is going on in terms of structure, narrative, etc.

Yeah, after my PhD defense, my supervisor very kindly got me as a present this sort of handbook to language and culture in the UK, and I swear it was like "language and culture in suburban London circa 1965".  Interesting, but of absolutely no relevance to Northern England in 1996 as it turned out. 

Actually, drifting off topic, that was actually one of the things that bugged me about First Class.  For a film supposedly set in the early 60's, it seemed remarkably devoid of any actual sense of time.  During that training scene where there's all those animated wipes, I actually went "WTF?  Is this supposed to be Ocean's 11 or something?" and then realized, oh yeah, it is supposed to be. 

(That, and the fact that James McAvoy bears a vague resemblance to our current prime minister, which meant I spent the whole move desperately wanting to pummel him.)

214

(48 replies, posted in Episodes)

I loved Ken White's characterization of these PUA manuals over on Popehat:

http://www.popehat.com/2013/06/21/publi … te-speech/

Remember the guys who wrote guides about how to win at Mortal Kombat? Imagine they wrote a guide to interacting with women. "If she smiles, then UP UP B B RIGHT RIGHT UP B," where 'B' is 'be a total douche.'" Look, there's nothing wrong with wandering around wanting to get laid; it's the human condition. But there are ways to make it even less dignified than usual, and one way is to approach the prospect of sex like it's the secret cow level on Diablo, where the person you are facing has defenses you need to overcome before you can nail them.

I haven't really been following the twittersphere and the interweb to know whether his concern about potential cries of "censorship!" against Kickstarter has been realized (the main issue he's talking about in the article), but my impression is not.

215

(431 replies, posted in Off Topic)

Dave wrote:

Welcome, and that's an opinion which deserves some expansion and discussion!  big_smile

Yeah, didn't figure that I'd get away with just leaving it there.   big_smile

Basically, though I'm sure the makers of the films didn't actually do this, it's as if the people at Pixar got together and said "You know what the world needs?  Let's remake Ingmar Bergman's Winter Light, but, you know, for kids."  That is to say, although I don't go in for the whole postmodern "anything can mean anything" horseshit, I don't think it's a stretch to see the Toy Story films as basically being about the question "What should you do when the person that is the entire center of your world suddenly stops loving you for no reason?" 

First, I think it's monstrous to even suggest to children that this could happen and to pitch the issue deliberately in a way they could understand (on the assumption that toys = children and Andy = parents).  I certainly have to be in the right mood to want to see a film with that theme (where toys = people and Andy = spouse/partner/God/what have you).  Yes of course there is a tradition of dealing with more adult themes in children's literature, say about loss (the sudden death of one's parents is a children's literature trope) or feeling like your parents don't understand you (ditto), but this is really very different.  This is about how somebody loved and cared for you, and then overnight, for no reason that you are capable of understanding, they just stopped.  Nothing happened to them; they just stopped loving you.  Now, at least as far as we know, we don't have a generation of traumatized children/young adults because of the Toy Story films, so maybe it just goes over their heads or they don't see it that way or something, but that really made me angry when I saw the films.

What then made me even angrier is the (range of) answers to that question that the films, particularly in the third one, seem to suggest or propose.  With one brief (and deeply ironic) exception, I don't think that any of the characters react to the issue in a way that is healthy or appropriate or a way that I would want my kids to emulate. 

You've got Rex the dinosaur, whose reaction is just to become suicidally depressed, "let's all just throw ourselves into the trash, there's nothing left to live for now, etc."  It is sort of not treated seriously iirc, but that is not in any way to the film's credit.  Then, in Toy Story 3, you've got the Lots-o-Huggin' Bear, whose reaction is to become psychopathically violent and anti-social, though again the film doesn't particularly approve of this reaction. 

But most irksome is Woody's reaction, particularly as it seems like the reaction that we're asked most clearly to empathize or agree with.  It's basically "Jesus will save us".  I apologize if that shorthand offends anyone, but what I mean is the persistence of an utterly blind and literally irrational faith in some higher power, irrational in the sense that there is overwhelming manifest, palpable, perceivable, 'theory-internal' evidence utterly to the contrary.  And again, to emphasize, I don't think most religious people are actually like Woody, in the sense that the evidence for their belief system is not so overwhelmingly 'internally' falsified, if that makes any sense.  The fact that Woody's faith is ultimately shown to be justified in the third movie (when Andy takes the toys over to a new child to play with) just makes the whole thing even more reprehensible (it's a version of Noomi Rapace in Prometheus) and, of course, it doesn't in any way solve the actual metaphysical problem. 

As I say, it's all profoundly ironic on a personal level, but the only reaction I find remotely praiseworthy is from the army men, in Toy Story 3 I think.  They say "listen, it's been fun, but it's come to an end and we're off to make new lives for ourselves, standing on our own psychological two feet and without worrying about whether there's somebody there to look after us".  If my children ever find themselves in a similar position (which they probably will at some point in their lives about something), that's ideally how I'd hope they would react.  But again, that scene is like two seconds.

Anyway, that's the gist of it.  At least as far as I can tell, my kids haven't been scarred, and there hasn't been any kind of generalized outrage that the films are too adult (unlike, say, the controversy about the prologue in Up), but I really don't think the Toy Story movies are thematically appropriate for children.  A series of well-made (and they are in general well-made, in the sense of being emotionally powerful) kids movies about existential/spiritual crisis doesn't strike me as a good idea.  And I in general despise the various ways we're invited to react to that crisis.

As promised in my introduction post, I just wanted to briefly set the record straight for nobody in particular about how you refer to academics and academic life in the UK.  Films/books/TV shows, etc always get this wrong, and it always kinda bugs me.  However, I think X-Men First Class, which I watched over the weekend, finally pushed me over the edge.  In a desperate attempt to relate it to something to do with DIF, it's also not quite right in the first chapter of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, which I started reading after Brian and Mike plugged it in a couple of episodes.  (And I really like it, btw.  A really interesting alternative take on the material, so thanks guys!)

Here's the main thing to remember:  in the UK, 'professor' is not the generic word for a member of academic staff at a college or university.  'Professor' is a rank, and indeed the highest general rank in the system.  So only very senior members of a department will have the title of "Professor" and be referred to as, e.g., "Professor Smith". 

The generic word in the UK is 'lecturer'.  So when I'm going through immigration in the UK, and they ask me what I do, I say "I'm a lecturer."  In formal situations, anyone below the rank of professor is addressed as "Doctor", assuming that they have a PhD (which almost everybody in the UK does now, though that wasn't always the case). 

So, yes, of course in First Class they want to get a call back? call forward? to "Professor X", but really, since it sounds like he's just passed his oral examination on his PhD, they should announce him as "Doctor Charles Francis Xavier" and the conversation with Raven should be "So, you're a lecturer now", to which he should reply "you don't actually get to be called a lecturer until you have a teaching position". 

The other thing is that there's no such thing as tenure in the UK.  (Thatcher did away with it.)  Labor laws are a little different, and unionization is a bit more common than in the States.  (There's one that represents me as a lecturer, for example.)  But if they want to get rid of people, it's exactly the same procedure as if we worked in a widget factory (which, increasingly, it feels like we do, but that really is well off-topic). 

Anyway, if I can save one person writing a script or a story from talking about a 30 year-old as "a tenured professor of History at Liverpool University", I'll have done my job.   smile

217

(39 replies, posted in Episodes)

As a new recruit, just wanted to bring this thread back from the dead to say that this is my favorite episode so far (out of the maybe the 25 or so that I've listened to).  First, it's got two of my all time favorite moments.  The first is when Teague intrduces Mike as "Michael 'Drunken' Scott" and he replies "Pow!".  Dunno what it is about that, but it just cracks me up.  The other is of course Mike's brilliant in vino veritas moment, which I think should be inscribed in letters of fire ten feet high on every government building in the United States.  You know the one I mean:

"As a grown American man, if I can't approve of getting wrecked by Captain America, what are we even fighting for?"

A wonderful, almost poetic summation of everything the US should be about:  e pluribus unum, the marketplace of ideas, all that kind of stuff. 

And, by the way, remind me not to get into a drinking contest with Mike.  I'm not sure I would have guessed that he was lit up like prohibition was coming back until literally the last couple of minutes, where it sounds like his speech starts to slur just a tiny bit.  (Though I don't know him personally, to be fair.)  Perfectly cogent points and interesting observations for 120+ minutes. 

But the thing I really love about the episode is the analysis.  I hope the guys won't mind, but I'm actually thinking of using it in one of my classes next year.  It could have just been one of those crazy associations of ideas, because I was marking essays around the time I first heard it, but I want to see if it'll help my students with their writing if they watch Thor and then listen to the commentary. 

The main point in the commentary (aside from Dutch angles) is the problem of not having a "through line", and it struck me that that's exactly one of the big problems my students have with writing an academic essay.  We tell them stuff like "Ok, you need to start with a research question", but they kind of don't see how that needs to then be the through line and how that's supposed to structure what they're doing.  It's exactly what Trey (or was it Teague?) says -- "This film [essay] thinks it's about how an arrogant man finds humility and then saves the day, but then doesn't actually ever do that." 

Since they don't have a lot of experience with academic writing, it's hard for them to 'stand outside' what they've written and see what's wrong with their own work, so I'm always looking for ways to do consciousness raising.  Plus they'll think I'm crazy if I say "Ok, next week, we're going to talk about essay writing.  For Monday, watch this three-year old superhero movie and then listen to this podcast about it."  And that's no bad thing really.  Keeps them on their toes.

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(431 replies, posted in Off Topic)

Hey, all!  Been listening and doing a bit of lurking since Christmas or so (after Whedonesque linked to the Firefly-Serenity commentary), so I thought I'd finally make an effort and join in properly. 

I'm American by birth and training (though not especially by temperament), but I've lived in North East England now for almost 17 years, miraculously still in the same job that I got right out of grad school.  (I'll rant briefly in another post about how films/books/etc never get the terms/titles for British academia right.)  Fave movies off the top of my head: Jackie Brown, Head (the Monkees film), Spartacus, Yellow Submarine and one you can guess from my username/avatar.  Most controversial/unpopular but genuinely felt opinion:  the Toy Story films (especially Toy Story 3) are evil and most definitely not appropriate for children.  If I'd ever seen any of them before I watched them with my kids, I'd have never let them in the house. 

And on that note....  wink