I don't have much to say as far as this critical interpretation of pop-culture vs. "it's just meant ot be fun!!" argument goes. Madget basically summed up my feelings on the subject.
And Gene too. Yes, even Gene.

Also, never once have I quoted a philosopher like Camus. Everyone I've referred to is in the Cultural Studies/Critical Theory crowd, the main business of which is to critique popular culture.

Alexander Pope can kiss my ass. I statement that is "oft thought but ne'er so well expressed".

Not that it matters but I think Bruno was the guy who, when a peasant added a stick to the fire during his auto da fe, cried "Sancta Simplicitatus!" ("Holy Simplicity!"). But maybe it was a marshmellow.

FINNEGANS WAKE was meant to be read by one person--James Joyce. Don't bother.

I had to see A MIGHTY WIND, since it's a parody that's close to my heart. As a kid, in the late 80s/early 90s I went to a Communist summer camp--Camp Kinderland in Massachusetts. The bunks were all named after "heroes" like Lenin and Emma Goldman. We were fed a steady diet of hideous folk music and forced to sing along. Woody Guthrie, The Weavers, pretty much everybody. After that traumatic experience, I've never been able to listen to it. A MIGHTY WIND is occasionally funny but the satire is way too understated, and definately not SPINAL TAP good.

I wrote about X2--which I enjoyed--over at TCJ.com in the X-Men 2/ Hulk movie thread. I don't really like retyping posts. WARNING!: TCJ POST CONTAINS PSEUDO-INTELLECTUAL RHETORIC!!. I compare it to Matthew Barney's CREMASTER cycle, but only in regards to the surreal imagery.

Steel shouldn't worry about writer's block. Beckett went through his 20s and 30s as, in his words, "a young man with an itch to write but nothing to say." When he was 40 he finally found something to say. A good trick for writer's block is to type "All work and no play makes Steel a dull boy" several hundred thousand times. Try it.

I guees the only incentive to seeing IRRERVERSIBLE is to see Monica Belluci anally raped for a full 10 minutes. Not really my thing, but others are welcome to it. During the showing I went to there wasn't a single woman in the audience. Also, the crowd wasn't exactly the typical arthouse movie crowd--mostly guidos and businessmen. Plainly, they were only there to see the Belluci rape scene. In the bathroom afterward the guy in the stall next to me said to his friend "It doesn't get any better than that."

When I said,

this was an attempt to be at least mildly humorous on my part.

I was not accusing anybody of being a Camus fan and I certainly wasn't expecting serious discussion of Alexander Pope (who is mocked fairly well in the film adaptation of Woolf's Orlando... but anyway...).

Anyway, I recently saw Magnolia (it was free)... and I think I laughed in the wrong places. There was a lot of stuff that struck me as hilarious in a "so dumb, it's funny" way that I think I was supposed to take at least somewhat seriously.

Meanwhile, I thought some of the obviously humorous parts were dumb.

I have to say... Any movie where I actually enjoy a Tom Cruise performance either puts out subliminal messages or is genuinely a good film.

'Magnolia' is definitely a "so bad it's funny" kind of movie.

K

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks about it that way.

The part where Philip Seymour Hoffman orders the porn magazines may very well be the best scene in the whole movie.

Why should this comfort me?

I'll be damned.

I rented Punch-Drunk Love today, but it won't play in my DVD-player because it detects that it has been modified for all-region playback.

What do the distributors of this movie possibly stand to gain from prohibiting my viewing it on a modified DVD-ROM player? Other than pissing me off?

Fuck it. I'll pop in Sonatine instead.

K

I managed to get Punch-Drunk Love to play in my PS2 and I do have to say this is easily my favorite P. T. Anderson film so far. Boogie Nights and especially Magnolia tried too hard to do too much and did it all very pretentiously -- I think Anderson's talents work better for him when he confines himself to a smaller playing field, if you will. While imperfect, Punch-Drunk Love seemed more focused than his previous efforts, less clumsily grandiose. I enjoyed the way the cinematography and music complimented the protagonist's psychological world -- quite effectively, too. And even in the worst of films, I can never refrain from enjoying Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Sandler was rather good, too. All in all, I think this is a step in the right direction for Anderson.

K

I love the guy too, but Red Dragon really pushed me to my limits of endurance.

I loved PDL. MAGNOLIA, aside from the hilarious opening sequence with Tom Crusie and the 2001 theme, took itself way too seriously. It was also extremely didactic. If I need heavy-handed "life lessons" I'll watch DAWSON'S CREEK.
But BOOGIE NIGHTS will always have a special place in my heart.

PDL is a modest film, and this works better than MAGNOLIA, which founders on its overly-broad canvas. I love the POPEYE references--the "He needs me" song--, the "dumb white-guy" humor and Sandler's unexpectadly moving performance.

One movie I encourage everyone to rent is THE BELIEVER which I just saw the other night and have been thinking about ever since. I think Mathewwave mentioned this film a while ago. It's simply an incredible film. Based on a true story, it's stars the amazing Ryan Gosling as a Jewish--a Hasid, no less-- neo-Nazi, who, when he's "outed" as a Jew by the NY Times, commits suicide. The film is incredibly well-written, with a perfect understanding of the paradoxes of Judaic thought. The more anti-semitic he becomes, the more he talks about killing Jews, the more Jewish he becomes. Rent this movie at the first opportunity.

Maybe I'll rent that film, but it sounds incredibly bad, and all the reviews I read only seemed to reinforce my suspicion that it's an hyperbolical caricature of the stereotypical "self-hating Jew". And you don't seem to disagree, Adam, but I'll see whether I was wrong for ignoring it.

Loved MAGNOLLIA and PDL, enjoyed BOOGIE NIGHTS, and thought HARD EIGHT okay.

Just saw CHARLIE'S ANGELS 2, which wasn't as fun as the first one and some of the action sequences were extremely sloppy. But the 3 leads were enjoyable enough and the filmmakers managed to come up with better villains than all the Bond films since Connery's days.