Aw. You looked pretty today. Look at that jawline.

Wow.

That was a total waste of Fincher.

We weren't too bad. I listened back myself.

Very cool of him. I don't know if we were particularly fair to him in the conversation (I mean, I have strong opinions about what I've seen, but I have seen damn near nothing, so my sample isn't exactly wide) and it's super cool that he was able to enjoy the episode anyway. I'm glad he liked the conversation, too.

We cool, Confused Matthew. We cool. 

Of course, now I'm worried about what Armond White is gonna do to us.

You're god damn right.

I have a pass, I think Mike and Eddie have passes.

This is the first year since I've been going that I couldn't get a complimentary guest pass. Obama.

I wonder if Eddie has any wacky plans to do the beach house thing again. We could really get into some fun trouble if that were the case, it was a blast last year.

Ryan posted this on my wall last week.

My response:

Which Jim saw, and immediately IM'ed me about.

tl:dr - Teague and Jim have a philosophical conversation about what it means for a movie to be bad, wherein Jim is pragmatic and Teague is being all fanciful about things.

James: There is no reappraisal of Sucker Punch to be had. It sucks. End of.

me: nah.
me: it's in there.
me: zack snyder just isn't very good.

James: Dude, by that standard it's in every movie.

me: not really.

James: Yes, really

me: imagine this.
me: imagine if some shitty director had the idea for the fountain.
me: and tried his damnedest on it, but just isn't capable of doing it right.
 
...
 
that's sucker punch.

James: Yeah, but Sucker Punch sucks and theoretical Fountain sucks. 
James: The what ifs don't matter. It wasn't even a near miss. Which is different

me: but the theoretical fountain COULD have been real fountain.
me: and that's what I see in sucker punch.
me: that's why I can like it.
me: and that's why I can find it massively disappointing.

James: Which is fine, but make arguments for THAT movie. Not Sucker Punch.
James: Sucker Punch is bad. The idea it attempts (maybe) is good. Those are two vastly different things.
James: The road to hell is paved with good intentions and whatnot.

me: sure, but there's no instruction to be found in dismissing it uncritically.

James: There's no instruction to be found in trying to convince me that the parts for a toaster are hidden in my microwave.

me: ...
 
try again.

James: You're making a case that Sucker Punch is good because it had the potential to be good. Which you can say for anything that's bad. You're looking for instruction in everything, basically.

me: no no no.

James: Yes.

me: I'm not saying sucker punch is good.

James: That's what you're saying.

me: even on the commentary I said I can't defend it.

James: You're saying that it could have been.

me: I said I liked it.
me: but by studying the gap between an intention and a result, you learn more about jumping the gap.

James: "The problem is, there really is a strong case to be made for Sucker Punch"
James: What is the case?
James: Meaning the nature of the case. That it could have been good? Or that it is good?
 
me: the case is that it's bad at being good.
me: said bill clinton.
me: a well made movie wouldn't require explanation to work right.
me: sucker punch is thusly not well made.

James: So it's a bad movie. That could have been good.

me: it's an imperfect movie. 
me: the trouble is, its imperfection is the exact wrong time and place for imperfection.

James: How does that make it different from anything that you classify as bad?
James: Like, you think it makes a bad choice at the wrong time.

me: no.
me: I think he did the movie wrong.

James: Do you realize how you sound?

me: pft. when you're making something that would be easy to misunderstand anyway, and is already toe-ing the line of hot button issues and looking like a piece of modern dreck, you don't want to muddy the waters by not being sensible.
me: but to address your point, on one hand, yeah, if we're looking at it in black and white terms, sucker punch is not a good movie and raiders is.
me: but looking at movies more complexly, there's a case to be made.
me: if not that it is a good movie, that it actually was trying to be and fumbled the ball.

James: My problem with this isn't so much that I disagree with you. Sure. It could have been good. But my point is that most movies fall into that category. Sunshine just makes one very clear and obvious mistake. Sucker Punch makes dozens.

me: I think sucker punch made one. 
me: it's just that it's not so clear as sunshine.

James: ...
James: What is the one mistake?

me: sunshine's was a "nope, backspace out those last thirty pages and start over. anything else. go."
me: sucker punch's major artistic flaw was being written by zack snyder.
me: someone who has an idea isn't necessarily the best person to present it.
me: same story, different screenwriter, the prequels wouldn't have been shit.
me: the pitch meeting of sucker punch would have been very interesting and probably cogent.

James: I'm trying to identify the disconnect here. Between your point and mine. I'm sure once we're on level ground we'll agree.

me: I think I know what it is.

James: Because you're one of the sharpest movie dudes I know. But what you're saying sounds like gibberish to me. So there is a disconnect

me: I liked sucker punch for several reasons. sucker punch is also not a very good movie, as it stands. but there's validity in a piece of work beyond it's immediate adherence to a certain rubric.
me: by way of assigning grades, sucker punch does not pass.
me: and if you have to read into a movie to make sense of it, unless that was the explicit intention, that movie has failed on the rubric side of things.

James: OK. So we agree so far.

me: the way you feel about sucker punch, and probably mulholland drive, I ALSO feel about mulholland drive.
me: but this isn't a david lynch movie.
me: he was trying to do something that made a (fairly complex) point in an accessible way.
me: david lynch, I'm like ninety percent sure, is fucking batshit insane and his fans are worse.

James: Yeah.

me: david lynch movies are basically the macro implentation of the kuleschov effect.
me: you just start inventing contexts in your head wherein there's a resonance.
 
...I guess is how it works. it doesn't work on me.
me: that's not what snyder was trying to do.
me: I mean, it's what he fucking DID, but that was him sucking.

James: Lynch is not insane, he's a modern artist. There is a mechanic at play that he and some people get. I don't.
James: Is it unfair of me to take the artist into account or does the work have to stand alone?

me: now, there is a distinction in my mind between sucker punch and the matrix reloaded/revolutions.
me: I think the matrix re's were fundamentally wrongheaded.
me: (I like them, but they're also kind of a bummer.)
me: like "nope, stop there, this is a bad idea. how about this?"

James: Well, here's the thing.
James: The sequels work
James: But not as sequels to Matrix

me: they're just the wrong sequels.
me: they're the sequels to a worse movie.

James: Which is what I'm saying, I think.
James: You can make gold out of hay.
James:It's not hard with the right slant.
James: Sucker Punch plays with good ideas and was something that could have rocked. Right on the tip of the tongue.
James: And it's fine to recognize that. But the film still sucks.
James: I'm going to project on you.
James: Because this is how I feel about Sunshine.
James: I LAMENT and mourn the movie that wasn't.
James: And I have several movies like that.
James: And I think you're just really stimulated by what SP almost was
James: I think you bring more to it than it brought to you in the first place.

me: hold on.

James: But that's a different conversation.

me: I can see why you'd think that, but it's not quite the case.
me: we have a tendency to judge all movies on a percent-o-meter of perfectness. (not in the DIF terms, specifically.) like, raiders is a 97% perfect movie. speed is an 89% perfect movie. etc..
me: we give them the benefit of the doubt.
me: oh, this could have been better, but whatever, the rest is fun.
me: sucker punch, I think, falls a hair below the benefit of the doubt line. and with that tiny little difference in sensibility, the baby doll gets thrown out with the bathwater.
me: if, say, it's a 50% perfect movie, or hell, a 30% perfect movie. it signed its name correctly is all.
me: if someone's threshold is 31%, it fails.
me: and it doesn't fail by one percent.
me: it loses ALL benefit of the doubt.
me: it just drops to zero.

James: AH HAH!
James: You've hit it. This is where we disagree.
James: You call it a hair. I call it a cliff.
James: And once it misses, everything bad is amplified.

me: yep.

James: It's porn. Meaningless porn that gave it's "hidden message" 20 seconds of consideration.
James: Because if Snyder spent half the time crafting that fucking script as he did art directing the girls he'd have have something much better

me: not necessarily.

James: It's clear what his priorities were.

me: I think he thinks he nailed it.
me: I think he can't distinguish between his smart movie and any other.
me: that's my point.
me: he's Not The Guy to write that movie.

James: Then say that.
James: Don't say a case can be made for it. Because it sounds like Snyder apology. Which is nails on a chalkboard.
James: FUCK SNYDER is my general point.

me: duly noted.

James: I dunno. I think if Frank Darabont wrote The Master it would have hit the mark it was aiming for.
James: But what does that matter?
James: He didn't and it sucked.

me: because you learn by knowing why what-is-wrong is wrong.

James: Yeah. But none of the problems were news.
James: I already know those things.
James: So it's a "that sucked, moving on."

me: the master and sucker punch are very different beasts.

James: I was just making up a combo.
James: The point is, if your creative criticism is "it needed another writer" you can say that as a fix for anything. It's not particularly helpful.

me: fair point.

Oh dude.

If we could have a whole Tim Minchin thread, even that would not be enough for me.

Let's dive into the obscure, in the spirit of the thread:

Shooting the season finale of Californication, there was a scene that took place at a concert. Tim was playing "guy onstage at concert." (Not as himself, funnily enough.)

In between takes, he sort of... carefully... starts... singing... "Hallelujah," and the onstage extras start playing along with him as the crew sets up a new angle. By the time he knows he's not gonna get in trouble, he really gets into it, and it makes me happy.

For the lazy, 3:15 is where it becomes truly awesome.

*shrug* Can do whatevs.

Lamer, I'm not sure how to export a multitrack. Just individual stem tracks set to time? Or is there like an OMF-y sort of solution for that? (Audition.)

I kinda got carried away. I anticipate most of this won't be used in the final because all the other instruments will be able to fill the areas I'm currently filling with different synth parts.

110 bpm, in A minor. This file has four measures of click track before the song starts.

Also, I have found that it sounds pretty bad on anything other than good speakers or headphones. I think I'm a bad engineer.

Clicky.

I liked A Bug's Life a lot, myself. I was just going for movies most folks seem to dislike.

And Cars 2 is an outlier, because its trailer sucks too.