I have to disagree with you about X-Men 2... but that's mostly because I think the first X-Men movie is one of the ten worst films I've ever seen.

And I've seen Sheena and Manos: The Hands of Fate.

So, to me, the merely adequate X-2 seemed like an improvement over the crap that was the original.

And I was not satisfied with Alan Cumming as Nightcrawler at all, but hey... I'll still take him over Sir Ian "For an experienced Shakespearean actor, I sure make a lousy MacBeth and a boring Richard III" McKellan as a Magneto who looks his chronological age and isn't particularly charismatic.

I'm glad to see others fight ing the good fight! For a recent salvo check out the berlin thread in the graphic novels forum.

As far as movies, I'm trying to write a good one, people. It's hard with all the crap out there. It stifles me. Sorry.

On a side note someone called me a name dropper once and it was so dumb. On a sheet first day of class "Taken any other film classes? What did you learn(in a sentence?" I reply "History of Film. Griffin to the Coen Brothers." Is that name dropping? Because that is a short sence of what we learned about in that class. Of course, all he said was, in front of the whole class "Oh this class will give you more names to drop." without reading any of what I'd written allowed. That was my intro to the class first day. I didn't even know what he said, had to figure the dumbass out. I just gave him a big thumbs up and shit eating grin. I would have dropped that class anyway, the presidential films and the West Wing. Bleeeeg!

I ranted and raved and got it all out! I feel so much better! Not that that bugged me. I just would like an opinion on whether that makes me some kind of name dropping psuedo-intellectual asshole from someone that doesn't know me or like me, not because I need any sort of validation just because it is a curiosity that's been rattling aroung my noggin for the worst part of a year.

On Adaptation, I mostly enjoyed it the first time. I was stoned, it had good direction, high expectations that would not give way to reality, could forgive the self indulgence, and saddest of all relate to the protagonist. I'm still deathly scared that will be me at 40. Please, God, no!!!!! Saw most of it again the other day and had to admit to myself, I've been brutally honest with me lately, that it was what I'd pretty much concluded the first time, just too damn easy. Negative emotions are easy and come off as hard or smart when portrayed in the forced uplifting atmosphere of the mainstream. At least for me they're too easy. Kinda sad. Poor me. Waaaaaa! see what I mean. I could write that movie standing on my head yet the movie I'm trying to write is giving me a real case of the blocks (yes, Virginia, there really is a writer's block (for dummies)) I'm like a real life Kaufman, but I refuse to give in the way he did. There goes my narcissism again. Que ulcer. You could set a train to this stuff. Back to the matter at hand. The movie was like its message, romance is and magic are very alluring, but ultimately don't exist. I'm gonna work it into my movie because my life has taught me this lesson and it's the best theme I can think of, too (I guess I'm not so damn original now huh? It's just a theme. Move on!) Actually, what I enjoyed was the action at the end. Turned it off before that part the other day. It did help me to be open minded since shortly before viewing this film my professor, who unbeknownst to me has never penned a screenplay in his life) had taught me from Bob McKee's Story like it was the gospel. Like anything in life too much overcomplification just trashes your game. This evinced itself this week at the golf course when I realized(probably the 87895782345 time, but whatevah) that all the stupid advice I'd gotten about putting made an easy thing into some king of fateful voodoo hoohaa dance. Basically, I hate people that complicate simple stuff! Don't take their advice! No matter how smart experienced or skilled they are, they need to be shot! Howard Porter could have had the most dynamic run in the history of the sequential strip, but overcomplification from people he respected did not let that happen. But you know what does happen? $#!+

For those that find superiority by finding typos, Merry Christmas!

overcomplification

Looks like it's my bedtime. Nighty-night.

1. Something cool to keep in mind while watching HULK that has me pumped, Ang tried to make it a classic Universal monster movie. At least, that's what he said and I have no reason to doubt him. So, that's my ray of positivity in a cruel and negative couple'a'posts.

2. Hey, thought up a fun and actually interesting question. Ready? OK:

What movie of the past 5 years has the best mise-en-scene and why? GO!

Having been a salesman (not in my heart) for a summer and having heard the oh so intensely hilarious prank calls, this GG GR ranks as one of my favorite films of all time. I'm writing a Simpsons spec where Gil moves in. I should rent this and watch it again!

BTB, Baton Fink, which was purchased by one fellow initialized SEA the other afternoon on Digital Video Disc, is like all Coen flicks, a true classic. I can relate to the writer so much. I want to write something, and know I'm meant to, so life changing, revolutionary and downright incredible that I can't write a damn action movie. Sadly, Goodman's character is getting ever more relatable as well.

You are dead-on. I hate the X-Men movie. Xombies that liked it, now those are some gratification wanting psuedo-ints!

I thought the Willy Wonka mise-en-scene an odd choice.

I'm going to sound kind of pretentious for a minute while I should be getting ready for work. I'm a reporter for a weekly newspaper. Before I started my first "real" job, I was an English major and I was on the editorial staff of my college newspaper.

Maybe I just worked all of that out of my own system while writing self-indulgent music and movie reviews... but it annoys me when people can only describe things in terms of semi-obscure stuff that not everybody will understand.

I mean, why waste your time saying things like "he was trying to filter the robust prose of Rabelais through the sensibilities of Chuck Jones on mescaline with a dash of the philosophy of Camus while pretending to tell a simple story about a disenfranchised member of the proletariat, but in the end he just came across like Kevin Smith doing a bad job of mimicking William Burroughs"... when there must be a simpler and more elegant way to say "it sucked" that would actually mean more to most people?

After a while of getting away with being an obnoxious critic who kept getting grabbed to review stuff mostly because a couple of my co-workers thought my negative reviews were funny, writing reviews began seeming like nothing more than masturbating in prose.

I mean... Who really gives a fuck about what I think of the Goo Goo Dolls? Just because I've been published more than some people, that doesn't give me any street cred.

Any way, after writing reviews for a while, I started trying harder to avoid comparing everything to other stuff because it's too easy to sound like a pretentious wanker and it takes too long to explain all the references to readers later.

I can come up with a lot of reasons why I hate the Eagles without having to throw in gratuitous allusions to Alexander Pope and the films of Frederico Fellini.

I don't read the New Yorker and I'm unfamiliar with a lot of the stuff that some of the more avid film buffs around here are into, so there are posts by some fellas in this forum where I don't understand what they're alluding to well enough to get the joke (and I'm too lazy to do research just to understand a flippant remark about Nightcrawler).

And I'm a big geek who knows a lot of useless pop culture stuff. It's not like I never read anything and I've been living under a rock since 1983.

So... I've been told that, basically, if I was smarter I wouldn't have any trouble following their brilliant posts... when my own sensibilities tell me everybody might be better served if certain people wouldn't try so hard to show off and sound more culturally literate than the philistines around here who actually enjoy talking about the Daredevil movie.

You should be true to yourself and not feel pressured to dumb down your posts, but it's helpful to not come across like a pretentious creep.

Right.

Dumas,
Your post on intellectual pretension made me feel as indignant as Giordano Bruno must've felt when he was being taken to be burned at the stake and some kid asked if Bruno would mind if the kid used the same fire to toast marshmallows.

It's difficult for anyone to appreciate a joke they don't get or a reference that's over their head, but if we can't make use of the knowledge we acquire in our communication with one another how can we expect to advance socially? I agree that it can be gratuitous and discourteous, but at the same time, I think it's a mistake to get too defensive about it. I don't blame James Joyce for the fact that I can't make any sense of Finnegan's Wake. But, I'll grant that I'm not going to join any choruses proclaiming it a work of unfettered genius until I can accumulate a sufficient enough understanding of what it's all about to formulate an opinion with a little meat on its bones. In general, I'd say our instinct to dismiss or condemn that which we don't understand is more problematic than our tendency to show off what we've learned in our spare time.

In the end it becomes a matter of inherent knowledge, and etiquette. You think of a reference or allusion that you find amusing or that you feel adds color to a particular point you want to make, you kind of have to decide for yourself whether to take a chance on it and/or whether your current audience will be able to appreciate it. If you're extremely well-read, like Charles or AdamF or even Gene, I imagine it becomes a little tiresome to hold back and dumb yourself down (especially to the level of the average comicbook fanboy) just to protect the less educated from their own inferiority complexes. All three regularly make references to philosophers, books, and films I have no knowledge of, but often you can get the jist of what they're saying by way of context; if you can't, either shrug and skip over it, ask for clarification, or plug an unfamiliar term/name into a search engine and voila, learn something new.

K

Blue Car was really, really good.

David Strathairn rocks, dude!

And Agnes Bruckner -- who looks just a bit like the goddess Clea Duvall -- is definitely a find.

Matthew