SERENITY great cinema? Compared to what?

POSTED BY: Howard
UPDATED: Friday, November 4, 2005 01:41
VIEWED: 28718
PAGE 9 of 13

Does Serenity deserve to be on that list? Sure it does. We have of course all seen a good number of those films. Some of them were truly excellent. But most aren't in Serenity's Genre.

Also, the fanbase was pushing to have Serenity up around #125, not #4, so it's competition would be return of the jedi, not run lola run.

Objectively, Serenity is great cinema, even outside of the context of firefly.

You think we think so because we're fans?

Don't be absurd.

We are fans because we think so.

If Jeunet made a film about space cowboys that was witty and fun, we'd probably nominate it as well. Actually, I recall Joss calling him a two bit hack at some point. I don't really agree, I like Jeunet, but I also understand Joss' point. The long thought provoking ideas of Joss are subtley more profound, which Jean Pierre failed to grasp, which was a point of contention when they worked on a film together.

Isn't it curious though, that many of the people who made those films that you put on that list consider Joss to be a cinematic genius. In fact some of them might actually be responsible for his high ratings on IMDb :)

Also, it's ironic how self appointed film critics always uphold Magnolia as a beacon of originality.

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Quote:

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Originally posted by Storymark:
I have to join up with the camp that thinks SERENITY is a great movie, a new sci-fi classic.

I also consider THE TERMINATOR to be a modern sci-fi classic.

As the saying goes, 90% of everything is crap. Including foreign films. Artsy pretentiouse crap is still crap.

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THANK YOU!!!!
*Applauds the voice of reason*
True Browncoats understand.

Chrisisall, right there with ya

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This really is a remarkably civilised site.

You'd think that, with it being about science fiction and populated with rabid geeky fanboys and girls (myself included) you'd get a much higher pillock count. Not so.

The message to Howard is, variously:

Go home and watch your films;

Leave me and the rest of the planet to watch ours;

Trust me, there are a lot of people* out there who would enjoy Freaky Friday much more than staring glumly at a Tarkovsky film. (Mind you, I can't fault his little glass ornaments and all the good stuff he did for Liberace.)

Please do not presume you have a monopoly on good taste. (Or, if you must, don't diss a classic like Terminator, of all the films in all the bars in all the world. You're not doing yourself any favours.)

G

*OK, maybe it's just me...




"The man who comes to take care of my piranhas told me that if I left West Ham he would kill all my fish."

Paolo Di Canio

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Originally posted by InsanityLater:
When the Delorean hit 88 MPH it traveled in time not space so it appeared in the field where the mall was eventually to be built.. wrong. It would have popped into deep space and it would have taken 30 years for the Earth to get to where the Delorean and its frozen occupant would be waiting. To arrive in the same spot as you left but in a different time you would need to plot the movement of the Earth and the movement of the Solar System, Galaxy and Universe to have a correct exit point.

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The Doc took that all into account, that part was child's play for him! Getting the uranium, now THAT was hard.

And I've already gone through the (valid) points you made about Terminator 1 & 2 on another, albeit old, thread in Other Science Fiction Series, it's sort of like 'fuzzy' timelines. Time streams tend to try to remain constant, and destroying the arm and chip only forced Skynet to develope itself in another way, preserving most of the events, just altering moments. The exact John we know would not be born, but 'a' John would take his place! And none of us would ever know the difference.
(Didja buy it? I think it does make a perverted kind of sense...)
See, the John Conner we saw in T2 was not actually the 'same' john we saw in the original. But close enough to complete the events that lead into the war with the machines...:)

Chrisisall, fanboy without end

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Hey, I liked Magnolia well enough!

But really, this thread, Trollism 101, or did the guy just want a little cinema talk but was too inept to broach the subject in a more elegant fashion?

The cynical trollish pushing of the buttons sure to rile up folks, or a lonely soul in need of cinematic fellowship?

A few movies I thought were enjoyable:

2001
A Lion in Winter
Funny Bones
Terminator I
A Knight's Tale (best overall goofy fun movie with a nod to Chaucer)
Much Ado About Nothing
Elizabeth

I enjoyed Serenity a great deal, enjoyed the story and the performances, and the Operative's Shakespearian-flavored tragedy shadings.

But I still think Jubal Early was my favorite villain.

Does that seem right to you?

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Originally posted by Bobster:
And, on occasion, works that are designed to be "just entertaining" achieve a kind of grace that turns them into something that is very much like a work of art.

Is it a "great" movie in the same way the "Citizen Kane" or "Weekend" or "The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp" or "Rear Window" or "The Gold Rush" is "great"? Maybe not. Maybe so. Maybe in 20 years people will think so, more likely not quite.

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Hey! Bingo!
I find Serenity a great movie in exactitively the same breath as "Rear Window". Huge touchdown points from me for coming up with that title, though you may not share the sentiment.

Howard! Dude!
"stealing from the poor to promote the rich back to the poor" was in the very news I heard today that WallMart is lobbying to raise the minimum wage, which will have the affect of making it harder for local businesses to make a go of it, but will hardly touch the WM(D). If you didn't make so loud with the finger pointing and namecalling, you might better convey your actual point.

Shiny Trees! Yavanna made Shiny Trees!

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Howard's original post was not about which movies to see, but rather which movies to own ("...that well deserve your purchase on DVD"). I have two very different lists for those two different purposes.

So I confess, my list of Must-Owns includes stuff like Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Young Frankenstein, Animal House, and Planet of the Apes.

Sometimes aerosol cheese'll satisfy you in ways that no wholesome and nutritious meal ever could.

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So who is this Howard guy and why am I seeing nothing but negativity from him?

Perhaps when something new and semi-shiny comes out (think pet rock only with a sound track) he'll move along to another obsession.

For me, I'm sticking with the same obsession. Joss Whedon is my Master now.

http://fireflytalk.libsyn.com/
mmmmm.... delicious firefly talk

http://tv.groups.yahoo.com/group/MN-Firefly/

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Originally posted by TheSomnambulist:
...I say this not coz I was shocked, I'm not the shockable kinda fellow, no just that for me 'shocking' cinema is a one trick pony. I also find that it is so easy to render a viewer shocked, that it falls into the catagory of 'easy' cinema and really ultimately little is achieved.

Hi there, ya sleepwalker

Well, it took me a bit to get back to you due to the work schedule. Lessee... Sir Henry (Rawlinson) would have said, "I've just spent the last 10 hours buried up the backsides of the filth hounds of Hades!" ...so, trying to get past my nitrogen narcosis & readjust to regular atmospheric pressure...

s'anyway... you make a bunch of excellent points about 'Salo.' And I agree with many of them and, also, I agree with you in that I'm also not that particularly 'shockable.' I think had I taken some Evangelical Christian aquaintance of mine, well...THEY might well have been shocked. However, I have to tell you, I can't remember what my shockability was back around, I'm thinking, 1972, when I first saw it. If you can imagine the zeitgeist back then, even I might have been quite appalled in '72... I don't think I was but... I WAS shocked.

Now, I don't believe Pasolini shot it specifically for the point of "shocking" people. I believe he was making a political satire that was aimed at various political figures/events in Italian politics around the late 1960's or so... trying to imply that, if you were a member of such-&-such political party (Pasolini was a Communist, himself) then you were just beginning to dip your toes into the pond wherein, after a couple of good dips, you'd be incapable of avoiding ...raping & killing your own children, for example... I believe he was trying to make allegorical finger-pointing statements at whoever he despised. ....and trying to translate those kinds of ideas (whatever he was trying to say) into our CURrent sensibilities is about as seamless as trying to get the humor in a Python gag from 1969 that is specific to local-town-council-politics in some village in England back THEN... doesn't translate so well to the general populace.

So I don't really think Pasolini shot it to be secifically 'shocking' as you've interpreted; I believe he was extremely angry about political points of view that he disagreed with & was saying, "See! See how you bastards are?! THIS... is how you are!" He was being accusatory. ...ummm... my opinion... could be wrong.

Now to conclude my "Salo-ivations", a few years ago, I had a lovely conversation with a fellow who's a film composer & it was about art we both respected &, I dunno how we both arrived at this but, the conversation was about Prokofiev & Pasolini. He had just about the same take on "Salo" that I did but, he had a very interesting additional point. He pointed out that what it succeeds in doing is to "resensitize" the viewer to screen violence. His point was (& this was around 8 years ago), that all us movie-lovers are now so innured to screen violence that it falls off us like water off a duck's back. And he thought that this was a sad state of affairs... take your own perspective, for example: you can't even be affected by the awful horror depicted within "Salo" as, I'm guessing, you've already seen a whole lotta screen violence (not a criticism, BTW).

He & I had both been so strongly affected by it that, well... it just plain made us think hard about people who might behave this way or, well... it can't be denied that, throughout history, various human beings (even whole nations) have, in fact, behaved that way... and worse, even MUCH worse so... whether or not it worked on you, it certainly worked on me: I believe there is some cultural value in "resentizing" the average filmgoer to the (often) horrible events they see depicted on screen FOR THEIR AMUSEMENT. I mean, for what it's worth...

QUOTE Secondly: I see you're a write and producer.....
hmmmm wanna collaborate on something? I'm a cartoonist.

And I second what you said about SERENITY. It is a

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