"Citizen Kane Syndrome"

I don't really think it makes one a "philistine" - it just takes a heavy lift to push all the garbage from the forefront and see the original for the innovator it was.

Take the Marx Brothers for example - watching them, I usually recognize stuff that truly HAS been done to death; but I sort of get a rush from knowing that "hey, THESE are the guys who came up with that stuff."

Or to put it another way, The Matrix and Pulp Fiction, whatever you think of their merits, were both HIGHLY influential in the moviemaking world, spawning numerous knock-offs. But to me, revisiting them sort of gives me a charge, remembering how superior the execution of "dodging in bullet-time" and "Royale w/Cheese" was to all the subsequent knockoffs.

Your mileage, as always, may vary, but that's how I deal with derivatives cheapening an original. Fortunately, I can say it has a small effect on me.

Strax's Easyvu Trailer For This Coming Thread Attraction:

OVER BLACK:

MUSIC: Randy Edelman's Come See the Paradise


V/O
"I have no interest in ever seeing The Fellowship of the Ring, The Shawshank Redemption, Groundhog's Day or Sideways ever again."


FADE UP:


"BLADE RUNNER: I'm a fan of the talent involved (Ford, Hauer, Scott) but it just never won me over."


CUT TO:


"Oh, I'm not denying that Citizen Kane was an amazing technical and artistic acheivement, I'm just saying it bores the hell out of me."


CUT TO:


"Threads like this are the absolute worst. 'I'm not racist but...' 'I love fillms and all but...'"


CUT TO:


"LlamaRama took the reading comprehension course and got an A."

MUSIC: Mark Mancina's Speed

CUT TO:


"define irony?

pushing the importance of quantified opinions, as one's own perfectly unquantifiable opinion that certain films are not, and can never be, boring comes back to bite one on the ass like a werewolf from Full Eclipse?"


CUT TO:


"Joe Dante once said, "there are people who love film and there are people that only love the films they love.". Which wouldn't matter, but this is a film specific message board, and this is a thread that seems to want to justify a dislike (or non appreciation) of classic cinema that by admission of the thread title, people believe should be loved. And the reasons given for this dislike (or non-appreciation) has rarely been argued as poor quality on any level, but that the film is "boring" to the viewer/poster. I think that is perfectly worthy of discussion. I would have hoped people here would love film as a medium, and even though they cannot appreciate a picture try to find out why. You however would rather make unteneble slugs at an imaginary target."


CUT TO:


"The problem with this thread is that some dope makes it every two weeks."


FADE TO:


"I agree that there must be reasons for liking or disliking any of the above, but I don't think people should be chastised for not being able to fully express them."


SMASH CUT TO:


"what's happened in this thread is not so much people being "chastised" for not being able to express their reasons for disliking a movie, but more that people are rolling their eyes at the fact that there's no attempt to express reasoning at all."


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"Indeed, any attempts to dig for reason or explanation are, as usual, met with defensive cries of 'Elitist! I just like the films I like!'"


FADE TO:


"Reading this thread is like the Alamo for intelligent film discourse."


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"you're an idiot"


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"CUNT"


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"Elitist!!!!!!!!!"


SWISH PAN TO:


"This Thread again huh ?"

"Looks like it"


CUT TO:


GRAPHIC: Angel opening the seventh seal


TITLE:

"Films You Know You Should Like but Just Can't Find the Appreciation For".

TAGLINE:

Is it that time of year already ?

Rated R

But it was so much more satisfying.

Some Chewers just know when to put in the extra effort.

And yet here you are, being something of a cunt.

Someone frame that.

Then that's my mistake - I think the Marx Brothers are insanely funny.
Right. I guess I tend to intellectualize things - instead of being weary of seeing "scene x" again, I get excited about discovering where they got it from.

I've been pretty successful at "pushing the garbage out of the way", as it were. When someone truly appreciates film, they make an effort to be aware of its history. It's easy to look at the Falcon vs TIE fighters sequence in Star Wars and see typical modern quick-cut action editing. But when one realizes how revolutionary that sequence was at the time, it ups the ante.

Incidentally, there's a similar phenomenon applying to sequels. A long string of bad sequels to a good movie can actually harm people's perceptions of the original. Jaws suffered from this for a while there, but once the sequels stopped, people remembered how brilliant the first movie was, and forgot about what came after. Now if we could get Stallone to stop, maybe Rocky could recover.

The Matrix is utterly derivative of movies which came before in both storyline and aesthetic. Its sole innovation was coming up with a way to spin cameras around people in slow motion.

It really doesn't belong in the same breath as true cinema pioneers like Citizen Kane and The Marx Brothers.

Ooooh, now Dan gone and done it!

Don't you know that the words "The Matrix" must never be entered in these forums for fear that the Matrix Defense Initiative will arrive? Why don't you just utter the name of Jehovah or say Candyman into a mirror, for god's sake?

It's just depressing that in a thread about movies that have been ripped off, The fucking Matrix is one of the first movies heralded as a pioneer that got sullied by poor quality rip offs.

Here, here.

It was said a whole lot better a dozen posts up but these sort of threads always come off as someones attempt to publicly dislike classic films and not ruffle any feathers.

I know Dan. Believe me, I know. But some wars, they ain't worth fighting anymore.

Back to Kane-
What you need to do is watch it again. But don't go looking for something new and innovative. Simply watch the movie unfold and enjoy the story. Don't mistake novelty for quality.

...but at least The Matrix was a HIGH quality ripoff of those previous films.

Yeah, I've seen Dark City and yadda yadda yadda, but the point is that for most people the track backwards stops at The Matrix, for good or ill.

Good info here.

The frame thing was funny.

The Matrix let a lot of western audiences like Asian stuff without the subtitles.

Just doing my part.

BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA did that decades before.

Do you think the thread has run its course now?

All those line-spewing, scene-quoting, Ni-saying nerds ruined Monty Python and the Holy Grail before I ever got a chance to see it. When I finally watched it, the only part I actually laughed at was John Cleese's rampage through the fancy party, because it was one of the few unquotable scenes.

Actually, I had a friend from school who would attack flower bouquets the way Cleese did in that rampage, so I suppose it doesn't need to be a quotable scenario to become tired thanks to dipshittery.

Not everyone who has watched Citizen Kane currently is 70 years old. I saw it for the first time when I was 19, after years of grandiose and technically astounding, critically acclaimed film had passed before my eyes.

I think the only difference -as has been said countless times before in the midst of the defensive hordes - is simply personal mindset. If a self-professed film "buff" sits defiantly in front of Kane for the first saying: "come you old film, knock my socks off with your 60 year celebrated legend" without once actually engaging with it as a piece of cinema, you're already off to an extremely false start as a lover of film.

You can't (literally can't) love cinema in any fashion and look at any picture with a history behind it in that way. It's simply untenable and in the end, symptomatic of some bizarre pop-culture-personality lie. It doesn't mean you're stupid, unsophisticated or anything detrimental. You don't even have to like Kane on any qualitative level. But to find it boring/unexciting/uninteresting as a piece of technical work simply means you're misinformed about your nature as a lover of film.

It's no different to finding Mozart 'old hat', Michaelangelo 'old hat', Charles Dickens 'old hat' or Monet 'old hat' because you're been exposed to John Adams, Henry Moore, Garrison Keiller or David Hockney respectively.

It's simply bizarre to not be able, as a grown adult that has more than a passing interest in cultue (as I think we all do), not to be able to seperate cinema and its antecedents.

Surely anyone genuinely interested in film would find it more exciting to see where all these tricks and ticks came from ?

Sorry, but no. There wasn't a sudden rise of interest in Asian movies in its wake, nor was there a slew of releases, theatrical or other, of years-old asian films boasting the name of the film on their posters so as to reel the audience in.

CROUCHING TIGER was far more responsible for that type of Asian Invasion than THE MATRIX was.

I'd say that was largely down to Kill Bill and QT's championing of Hero, as well as Crouching Tiger.

The Matrix wouldn't have gotten peoples interest in asian cinema as it tried to make out that it was full of 'original' ideas when in fact it had stolen most of its ideas and action set pieces from other films.

One of CROUCHING TIGER's main marketing point was that it had the action director of the Matrix on board. And it was helped considerably by the fact that The Matrix had cemented gravity defiying fights into a more mainstream culture. Wu Xia used to be a laughing matter for most audiences, lest it be forgotten. But CT was certainly another big push forward as well, there's no deniying that?

edit: Kill Bill and QT's championing of Hero ? That was in 2003. The new influx of Asian movies into western cinemas and homes started well before that. When Fist of Legend or Tai-Chi Master were released theatrically in 2001, both were sold on "from the action director of the Matrix and Crouching Tiger". Likewise for a slew of dvd releases, most notably HK Legends stuff.

None of these films would have been successful were it not for CROUCHING TIGER proving that sitting through subtitles or putting up with dubbed dialogue needn't be a chore. That was a bigger hurdle to overcome than THE MATRIX making their action directors cool.

All those damn movies with sound coming out after The Jazz Singer. Buncha hacks, the lot of 'em.

But Crouching Tiger was also released in a dubbed version was it not ?

There's a difference between "making it cool" and "turning it into a major selling point the kind of which gets on the poster and gets the crowd in". Else you'd have seen the same thing happen to Corey Yuen.

And again the biggest hurdle in terms of pushing asian action into the mainstream conscience was getting people to see the over-the-top action in HK films as something perfectly acceptable and not a laughing matter. I went to see Tsui Hark's The Chinese Feast when it had a small theatrical release over here back in 98. By the time the movie ended I was alone in the theater, everyone else having left shaking their heads and sneering mockingly. Same thing for John Woo movies. And it would have kept happening if seeing the same kind of stuff in an occidental movie (and in a context where it "made sense") didn't help make this particular brand of action palatable (as evidenced by the fact that it immediately started appearing in more western movies following the Matrix, not Crouching Tiger, cf Romeo Must Die, Charlie's Angels etc, all of which entered production before CT's release).

The first film doesn't need a sequel. Neo's journey is over, the story is finished. That was my biggest issue with the sequels, the fact that they had to regress Neo ("Hmm. Upgrades." Whatever.) to have any semblence of a story.

And Star Wars' story is finished at the end of A New Hope all because Luke blew up the Death Star. Never mind the fact that the villain is at large or the Empire still stands, nope, everything's over and done with just cause our hero got two torpedoes through a tunnel.

I didn't say it did it especially successfully.

This works even better when you sync up its last 10 seconds with Peter Gabriel's "Salisbury Hill." It's like Oz and Dark Side of the Moon.

Star Wars didn't end with the creation of a giant cannon that could blow any and all Empire ships out of the sky and essentially win the war single-handedly for the rebels. That was what Neo's rise to greatness was painted as in the first MATRIX, and then they did a U-turn in order to accomodate the sequels.

There's an answer to that, but you won't be satisfied with it and, as many have said, it's not a battle worth fighting anymore.

The difference between the two-
Neo's story arc ended when it was revealed he was the The One at the end of Matrix. Reloaded and Revolutions were just epilogue.
Luke's arc ended when he refused to kill his father and he became a Jedi.
The end of New Hope was just the start of Luke's journey where as the end of Matrix was the conclusion of Neo's.

As a recovering line-spewing, scene-quoting, Ni-saying nerd, I humbly apologize. We were young. We didn't know then the ramifications of our actions.

At least you're penitent, Bob.

Watch your mouth.

Because fabfunk might jab his cock in it ?