Very cool snippet! I pretty much agree completely, part of the reason Kubrick and Gilliam are in my top 10 directors, while Spielberg isn't even close to breaking the top 50.Originally Posted by pathoftheturtle
Very cool snippet! I pretty much agree completely, part of the reason Kubrick and Gilliam are in my top 10 directors, while Spielberg isn't even close to breaking the top 50.
Really? Focusing on a Nazi industrialist who changed from using Jews to make all his money to spending his entire fortune to save Jews makes it a bad/lesser film? It's terrifically made, poignant and very well acted. Is there something fundamentally wrong with wanting to make a film about a Nazi who sacrificed everything to save Jewish lives? You can exactly change a true story. I suppose in Gilliam's eyes The Pianist is also not a good movie since we get a warm-hearted moment between Brody and Kretchsmann, and because and Szpilman survives and continues playing the piano. I'm not left asking questions about The Pianist when I'm done, and it's an EXCELLENT film. I mean, for fuck sakes Gilliam, IT'S A HISTORICAL FILM. All the information is out there and we can get the story without the film, so what questions exactly are we supposed to still be asking. Comparing a fictional film like 2001 to Schindler's List is just asinine. On the subject of Kubrick, Paths of Glory is an excellent war film and didn't leave me asking questions, trying to figure out it's meaning...it's just a damn powerful film. Schindler's List isn't about success: it's about the contrast between the evil Nazi's, represented by Schutzstaffel, and the good Nazi's, represented by Schindler, and how there was still goodness and humanity inside of that cold, evil Nazi Germany is known for. Spielberg is easily the greatest commercial filmmaker of all time, and to say that makes him bad...what site are we on? A site that exists because of who is easily the greatest commercial author of all time. Is Stephen King bad because he doesn't make us think about stuff the way an Orwell or Dostoevsky does?
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I can't watch the video because my work PC sucks, but is that really what Gilliam said? That's idiotic.
Spielberg gets a lot of unwarranted hate.
He basically said Schindler's List isn't a good film because it's comforting in the sense things wrap up nicely and there is a happy ending where a few lives were saved, and quote kubrick who said Schindler's List is basically a failure because "the Holocaust was about failure; Schindler's List is about success", which is a very basic way of looking at the film. Then he compared the questions we're thinking to after watching 2001 to Schindler's List...Schindler's List isn't about having the audience ask questions because it's a historical depiction of a real man, who did these things for real. I mean, isn't the role of a biopic like this to explain to us what happened? If a biopic does it's job, we're not supposed to be left plagued with questions...or am I wrong?
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I'm always stupefied when directors - especially cherished directors like these two - make such callous statements. The only reason Schindler's List' ending contains any semblance of 'happy' is because it skips forward a few decades between the time the narrative ends, and the coda with the real survivors. I'm sure those same survivors must have experienced much, MUCH paranoia, fear, anguish and nightmares that could never be eradicated from their hearts and their souls in the years after the war. The film just did not show it because its intentions were not fixated on that corner of time in their lives. A little inference goes a long way here.
And no, you're not wrong. To compare a sweeping intergalactic epic like 2001, with its literally interstellar scope to something like SL is just... dumb. Apples and oranges.
For what it's worth he's not just comparing the two films, but rather both directors filmography, and chose to use the film's from each director that seem to get the most accolades. I do like Schindler' s List too, possibly my favourite Spielberg flick, but I also get his point as well. Gilliam, prefers films that are more challenging to the viewer. It's his opinion and like everyone else he entitled to it.
The implied undercurrent in making that comparison was that Gilliam was actually talking about his own work. When he says films should raise unsettling questions like 2001's ending does, it is an example with a different scope, but it's coming from a director with a body of socially conscious sci-fi that do approach the scope of the first. And if the two particular examples are random, contrasting their most noted films was probably warranted by Kubrick and Spielberg both having involvement in AI: Artificial Intelligence. See? All ties together.
I actually wasn't trying to demolish Spielberg right now; by sharing this, I just hoped to show something I like about Gilliam's perspective. Of course it would be foolish to assert that Spielberg whitewashes absolutely, to be so extreme in criticism that you can't admit any good. It's just a general trend to observe.
P.S. --Doesn't he? I'd say he's at least a Dickens. King may be a commercially great success, but that doesn't make his style comparable to Spielberg's.
I just remembered another tie-in. The Shining.
You might be on to something after all, Matt. Discomforting ambiguity was pretty much exactly what Kubrick and King clashed over, wasn't it?
cont...
(not really happy will the ranking of these except for the first one being Hitchcock, once I get through with these favorite lists I hope to get it clear in my head what I feel the proper ranking should be, like anyone cares lol This is a lot of fun for me going through and seeing what I've seen hand haven't and reliving memories)
11. Charles Chaplin
Favorites:Limelight, Monsieur Verdoux, The Great Dictator, Modern Times, City Lights, The Circus, The Gold Rush
Shorts - The Pilgrim, Pay Day, The Idle Class, The Kid, Sunnyside, A Day's Pleasure, Shoulder Arms, A Dog's Life, The Immigrant, Easy Street, One A.M. (admittedly, I need to see many more of his earlier shorts)
12. Ingmar Bergman
Favorites:Smiles of a Summer Night, The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, The Virgin Spring, Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, The Silence, Persona, Hour of the Wolf, Shame, The Passion of Anna, Cries and Whispers, Fanny and Alexander, After the Rehearsal, Saraband
(And yes to the Bergman-philes out there I still need to see many of his including The Magic Flute and Scenes From a Marriage)
13. Michael Haneke
Favorites:Amour, The White Ribbon, Caché (Hidden), The Piano Teacher, Benny's Video, The Seventh Continent
(Haneke is a strange one, Usually I would say any artist should have somewhere within them a love or sympathy for humanity but in Haneke's case, I cannot decide if this is so. He knows humanity almost better than any living director but that doesn't equal love and considering how well he does understand humanity, this is disturbing indeed. This might be the reason why I disliked Funny Games (original). For one, it was kind of boring IMHO and also, Haneke seems to be rubbing us horror fans noses' in our own morbid predilections. But considering he makes films in the first place, I would hope that there is a glimmer of love for his fellow man. Either way, I love his films and admire him greatly)
14. Robert Altman
Favorites: A Prairie Home Companion, The Company, Gosford Park, Cookie's Fortune, Kansas City, Shortcuts, The Player, Vincent and Theo, Streamers, A Wedding, 3 Women, Nashville, California Split, Thieves Like Us, Images, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Brewster McCloud, M*A*S*H*
My God! How I wish there were a new Altman film coming soon!
15. F.W. Murnau
Favorites: Sunrise, Faust, The Last Laugh, Nosferatu
more later...
Having be raised on The Shining, when I finally read the book, I was disappointed in the final act because there was so much explanation. Explanation is what killed Desperation and Under The Dome for me as well. Spielberg and King aren't the same style of storytelling, you're right about that, but King is looked down upon by quite a number of people for similar reasons.
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Now, he'd have been a great director for King. Imagine how their respective techniques in transcending the personal narrative could have meshed.
I liked Crash. People seem to enjoy knocking it, but I thought it was actually good. And speaking of landscape ensemble like Short Cuts and Nashville, have you ever seen Richard Linklater's old experiment Slacker?I didn't love Mash. That being said the Los Angeles landscape ensemble was created by Altman in short cuts. PTA knew he stole from that movie (but I love magnolia) and crash won an academy award stealing from both of its predecessors.
I think that's the problem I have with a lot of the endings to his books.Having be raised on The Shining, when I finally read the book, I was disappointed in the final act because there was so much explanation. Explanation is what killed Desperation and Under The Dome for me as well. Spielberg and King aren't the same style of storytelling, you're right about that, but King is looked down upon by quite a number of people for similar reasons.
People often complain that a lot of his other books have no ending at all. I personally hate the Pet Semetary movie the most, though.
Yeah, I get ya. I'm always up for opening new venues of discussion, even something as apparently acerbic as this. S'all good.
Actually, I like long explanations, provided it isn't all handled primarily by character exposition. That's sloppy.
Under the Dome was a little uneven for me but I distinctly remember liking the ending precisely because of how much information we are given.
I just love the old man in it, the rest is pretty bad. Trey Parker and Matt Stone feel the same way haha
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Sure, always loved Fred Gwynne. I thought it was clear we were talking endings. Now the book, that's an ending that's nothing like comforting or commercial answers.I just love the old man in it, the rest is pretty bad.
It read like you were just saying you hate the movie in general lol.
King's endings aren't necessarily comforting but he's got two common endings: the open ending/no ending and the explanatory ending, some endings are a combination of the two. Explanations can ruin the magic of a story sometimes.
I just remember thinking, 'really? This is what the whole book was leading too? This lame metaphor?'. I'd have preferred if the dome had no explanation at all, and it just disappeared as suddenly as it appeared. I still consider the entire book one giant missed oppourtunity. That isn't to say it didn't have a lot of good qualities, but it's rife with chances King never took.
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^Love Murnau, Nosferatu is my all time favourite movie (probably not hard to guess considering my avatar).
Heck yeah! I watch it every year around Halloween whenever TCM decides to air it. I doubt it would scare anyone these days but I bet the audiences back in the day were thoroughly creeped out and Max Shreck's performance is still in the Creepy Hall of Fame
I must admit I never thought about what works Altman would have adapted of King's but looking at my bookcase, I think He would have done great adaptations of The Long Walk, Rage, Needful Things and maybe even 11/22/63, which works would you have wanted Altman to do?Now, he'd have been a great director for King. Imagine how their respective techniques in transcending the personal narrative could have meshed.
I spin it every October as well (but I also watch 30+ other random horror flicks too). I would argue that Nosferatu is still more terrifying than most new horror. The reliance of shock scares in most major horror films has diminished the actual terror in horror film. Some startling isn't scary, it has little to no lasting impact, it's safe, the opposite of what horror should be. Nosferatu however has some of the most haunting imagery in film. To emphasize this, many scenes from the film (Orlok rising from his coffin, or ascending from under the ships deck) are still used in pop culture. There is not one horror film these days that will have that impact on the human psyche at large.Heck yeah! I watch it every year around Halloween whenever TCM decides to air it. I doubt it would scare anyone these days but I bet the audiences back in the day were thoroughly creeped out and Max Shreck's performance is still in the Creepy Hall of Fame
However I do agree that most people of the current generation won't be affected the same way, in fact most won't even make it more than 15 minutes into the film once they realize it's black and white, never mind that it's silent. Explosions, shocks, gore and high paced action sells, cerebral art, nor so much. People are used to cut scenes that last less than 10 seconds, actors don't even tend to speak more than a sentence at a time before a cut these days.
I really like this bit from Ebert's review, he always puts things more succinctly than I ever could
"Is Murnau's “Nosferatu” scary in the modern sense? Not for me. I admire it more for its artistry and ideas, its atmosphere and images, than for its ability to manipulate my emotions like a skillful modern horror film. It knows none of the later tricks of the trade, like sudden threats that pop in from the side of the screen. But “Nosferatu” remains effective: It doesn’t scare us, but it haunts us. It shows not that vampires can jump out of shadows, but that evil can grow there, nourished on death.
In a sense, Murnau's film is about all of the things we worry about at 3 in the morning--cancer, war, disease, madness. It suggests these dark fears in the very style of its visuals. Much of the film is shot in shadow. The corners of the screen are used more than is ordinary; characters lurk or cower there, and it's a rule of composition that tension is created when the subject of a shot is removed from the center of the frame. Murnau's special effects add to the disquieting atmosphere: the fast motion of Orlok's servant, the disappearance of the phantom coach, the manifestation of the count out of thin air, the use of a photographic negative to give us white trees against a black sky."
It's interesting that you emphasized "haunting" and also interesting to think about whether there is a difference between "haunting" and "scary" Like Ebert says, in the modern sense, scary has more to do with the startling and adrenaline rush I think and haunting is really more of a dread situation, a slow burn. Both are effective at creeping people out but I would argue that haunting has a longer lasting taste to it. Once you've been scared by something once, subsequent views will not scare you as much but if something is truly haunting, I think it only builds over time.
Some quick definitions I found:
scary - uncannily alarming or to cause fright
haunting - remaining in the consciousness or not quickly forgotten
For me, Nosfertau is more haunting than scary but each person sees things their own way. As far as what horror is, I think it can be one or both. Thanks for giving me something to ponder!
I know, right? It's not something I think about often. I was just trying to steer this into the rest of the current discussion on this thread.
Needful Things. I was thinking how SK is so great at creating large casts of characters, and how Altman was so great at directing large casts of actors.
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