A place for friends to hangout online.
http://pittersplace.com/forum/
Actually, its going to be the greatest movie of all time, fuck A Brighter Summer Day, Detective Pikachu is where its at.maz89 wrote:That was horrible.
Now that I think about it, there's something of a bitter irony (But perhaps not an inappropriate irony) in using an American director and a Japanese director to describe ABSD lol.Eva Yojimbo wrote:I think your "Scorsese meets Ozu" comparison is pretty spot-on.
Absolutely. The play shooting scenes in particular really stood out to me in an "Oh fuck, the signs were here this whole time" kind of way on that second watch.I guess in that case, Yi Yi is more Ozu without the Scorsese (though Yang's formalism is different than Ozu's). Yeah, that final scene is as powerful as any I've ever seen in film, and even though on first watch it seems like it comes out of nowhere, upon rewatches it seems almost tragically inevitable, especially once you follow the development of the film's various motifs.
I heard about that laserdisc release in reading and listening to podcasts about ABSD, bootlegs made from it etc. I haven't looked at any clips from it for comparison's sake but I'm pretty happy with my blu-ray copy lol.I read that Bordwell article after I wrote my review, and I'm not sure if I was happy or sad that he'd already written about the stuff I noted... I guess I should be happy that I had noticed what probably the greatest cinema academic mind of our time noticed, lol. Glad you also watched it twice. I've now seen it three times, once with the commentary. First was on a laserdisc-to-DVD transfer long before the Criterion version was released. I could appreciate its greatness back then but it really took the Criterion version for me to fully absorb it.
That would be dope, as long as you could do so in a way that wouldn't get the cops on your trail. I do plan on finishing Yang's filmography at least too (Since its only like 9 films, and that's including the stage play and the anthology he contributed) but even then three of those movies I've been struggling to find. I'm pretty shocked and saddened that even in the age of piracy some things are genuinely difficult to find a copy of...I really do hope you explore the Taiwanese New Wave more. The sad part is that Hou's two best films aren't even available on DVD, and the versions floating around out there are piss-poor quality (the DVD release of Puppetmaster, now long OOP, cropped its wide-screen format to 4:3). All of those after that are/were on DVD, but many also long OOP. Luckily, three of his masterpeices are available on blu-ray (Time to Live and the Time to Die, Dust in the Wind, and The Assassin), but only the last one is easy to find. I have the former two on a limited Taiwanese release that's now also hard to find. If you want I could upload them to a torrent or something.
Hell yeah I'm still making that trip. As Barret says in FF7, there ain't no gettin' offa this train we're on...Still planning on making the trip through 70s Godard? That's a lot of crap to wade through! I'm at least interested to hear what you have to say about Numero Deux.
Haha, could be.Maybe that image explains why Godard loved Marx/communism so much; to him it was like sex!
Yeah that's still a mystery I'm trying to solve. It could also be that Anno is just lying.Godard's influence spread pretty quickly throughout cinema, so it's entirely possible Anno saw some films from directors influenced by Godard. Though TBH I can't think of any that did that "characters talking directly about themes on a dark sound stage" thing since Godard except for Anno. Would love to know where he got the inspiration from that. I will say though that the Japanese New Wave had plenty of Godard-isms themselves, sometimes even weirder. See Eros + Massacre for an example.
Yeah its great. Will be curious to see what you think of it.This really does sound excellent. I've never been quite the Welles fan that you are (I think he made three masterpieces, and everything after that is good-to-brilliant, but not masterpieces), but he's never not interesting at the least.
Madame De... is probably his most well-known, but I prefer most of his others from that period: La Ronde has that Lubitsch-like touch with how light and elegant it is; Lola Montes is just drop-dead gorgeous (makes me wish he shot more in color); and Le Plaisir is one of the few anthology films that really works. TBH, Ophuls is a director I admire more than I love, but his camera work is astounding and you can see its influence on directors like Kubrick, and his approach to melodrama was probably only second to Sirk in its influence.maz89 wrote:Should check out his late French films.
It's not as bad as the various bootleg Hou films out there I've seen, but it's certainly nowhere near Criterion quality!Raxivace wrote:I heard about that laserdisc release in reading and listening to podcasts about ABSD, bootlegs made from it etc. I haven't looked at any clips from it for comparison's sake but I'm pretty happy with my blu-ray copy lol.
I'd say it feels like a Taiwanese 90s film, but I can only say that being quite familiar with Taiwanese cinema from that period. But, yeah, it certainly feels nothing like 90s American cinema. Look/feel wise it is rather similar to Hou's late 80s/early 90s films.Raxivace wrote:One thing I want to add...I think I read this thought somewhere else first, but does ABSD really not feel like a 1991 film to you? Like when I compare to something with a lot of superficially similar elements like Forrest Gump (Nostalgic look at the past, Elvis references etc.), that movie really does feel like a 90's film to me despite being only made three years later. ABSD doesn't really date in the same way. Of course we could attribute this to just a general difference in the style and interests between Zemeckis and Yang, but maybe its an interesting comparison to consider.
I'll get to it ASAP. From what I've heard, the business aspect of Taiwanese cinema is pretty shady and mired in a lot of legal junk, which might explain why there's so few international DVD releases. It took Criterion forever to finally put out ABSD. I first heard about them attempting to get it nearly a decade ago!Raxivace wrote:That would be dope, as long as you could do so in a way that wouldn't get the cops on your trail. I do plan on finishing Yang's filmography at least too (Since its only like 9 films, and that's including the stage play and the anthology he contributed) but even then three of those movies I've been struggling to find. I'm pretty shocked and saddened that even in the age of piracy some things are genuinely difficult to find a copy of...
I doubt he's lying. As out-there as the Japanese New Wave could get it wouldn't surprise me if there were one or two films that did something similar.Raxivace wrote:Yeah that's still a mystery I'm trying to solve. It could also be that Anno is just lying.
I'll try and see Eros + Massacre at some point.
Raxivace wrote:BY THE WAY ITS FUCKIN' BULLSHIT THAT JJ FUCKIN' ABRAMS GETS A SHOUTOUT IN THE CREDITS AND I DON'T. The $50 I donated in college hurt me a lot more than whatever thousands he donated hurt him since he's got that fuckin' Star Wars money. I tried to spread the word about the campaign to restore the film too, he does like a dopey video and that gets him a spot in the credits? And my threads across IMDb didn't? The fuck is that noise?
"But Raxivace, there was a special campaign tier you could have technically donated to if you wanted to be in the credit-"
Fuck off hypothetical commentator, I don't care about your fuckin' facts. You don't even exist. As a hypothetical being you're not even real.
![[biggrin]](./images/smilies/biggrin.gif "biggrin"){kind=small}
You're right, of course. I shouldn't be complaining anyway, I always tear up at the end of It's A Wonderful Life.Raxivace wrote: About Mr. Smith- Capra's big thing is idealism and compassion triumphing over corruption. He wants to inspire people. It's not the most realistic of endings of course but Capra also isn't quite trying to be Rossellini or someone like that.
![[giveup]](./images/smilies/giveup.gif "giveup"){kind=small}
Well, at least, the title of the film is fitting. It's fun, but it's also silly.
I think history has shown him right that Chimes at Midnight has ended up being the more interesting film, though I'm entirely sure the comparison is completely warranted even with Welles attached to both films.Andrew Sarris wrote: A Man for All Seasons is the most edifying experience to hit the screen since The Life of Emile Zola. It seems that almost every year at this time some film or other inspires me to play Horatio at the Bridge. It was Lawrence of Arabia in 1962, Tom Jones in 1963, My Fair Lady and Dr. Strangelove in 1964, and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? for most of 1966. Does pure perverseness play a part in this reviewer's reactions? Not as much as most nonreviewers suppose. Even the most captious critics have a hankering to come in from the cold, and it is generally much easier and more 'Tiuman" not to resist the rape of the click film, the hit play, the runaway best seller, the bandwagon bonanza, the "of course" complacency of the success story. Even in moments of maximum hysteria, however, there is a place for the long view, and in this corner at least, there is grave doubt that A Man for All Seasons is a film for all time.
Actually the film version of A Man for All Seasons will probably follow the same cultural path as the play. The daily reviewers, surfeited with sensationalism, spoofery, and just plain silliness, are primed to endorse the slightest semblance of seriousness. Then along comes Robert Bolt, England's answer to Arthur Miller, both men monstrous mouthers of rhetorical redundancies. And what is Bolt's message? Simply that every individual must preserve his integrity. Fortunately, Sir Thomas More's martyrdom is remote enough and hence abstract enough to serve as allegory for covert nonconformists from Madison Avenue to MacDougal Street. Barry Goldwater will be edified. So will Norman Thomas. After all, Sir Thomas More doesn't go around burning draft cards or babbling about Black Power. Such contemporary confrontations of authority might offend much of the audience that now applauds More's steadfastness in a world of King-Pope intrigues to which the modern religions of nationalism are relatively indifferent. In fact, the film, even more than the play, tends to subordinate historical facts and ideological issues to abstract arguments about personal conscience. The Spanish ambassador disappears as a character, and with him the information that Spanish troops are terrorizing the Pope in Rome. More's theological arguments in the film actually smack of a rigid medievalism, against which Henry VII's capricious sensuality seems almost sympathetic. What validates More's position is his sufferable moral superiority. Like Jesus Christ and Joan of Arc, he is simply better than anyone else around at the time, but this situation is more the stuff of dogma than drama.
Not that Bolt isn't entitled to write a play about Sir Thomas More, but there is something wrong when the noble hero gets all the best lines, with a veritable stuffing of staircase wit. The bad guys in good westerns get a better break than do the bad guys in A Man for All Seasons. To make matters worse, Leo McKern is cast as the arch villain. McKern is effective when he plays hysterical bullies in Losey's films because Losey has a flair for lyrical love-hate scenes in which characters flail at each other with their uncontrolled feelings. Under Fred Zinnemann's tight direction, with Bolt's tight script, opposite Paul Scofield's tight-lipped ironies, McKern is reduced to stock villainy. The one high note of the film is struck by that wondrous wailing banshee, Wendy Hiller, in the defiance scene in More's dungeon. This is the only scene in the film in which a character is able to shut up Thomas More, and it takes his wife to put her hand over his mouth to do it: "S-s-sh . . . As for understanding, I understand you're the best man that I ever met or am likely to; and if you go, well, God knows why, I suppose —though, as God's my witness, God's kept deadly quiet about it!" Wendy Hiller has only one more sentence to go in her one big scene, but anyone who has ever seen her in The Heiress or Moon for the Misbegotten knows that it takes her only an instant to bring the heavens crashing down on the stage. Lifting her arms, and looking upward in a slow, clumsy, aged, earth-laden movement, this gruff tradesman's daughter and cleric's wife discards the prudence of a lifetime to defy all the universal power arrayed against her poor husband: "And if anyone wants my opinion of the King and his Council they've only to ask for it." The line really isn't that good, but in Hiller's hands it becomes the stuff of sublime theater. "Why, it's a lion I married! A lion! A lion!" Scofield quips fatuously, and as he puts his stage arms around his wife, the mood is muffled by a return to rhetorical display. From frenzy we descend back to forensics, and Scofield takes us the rest of the way to the chopping block with one or two good one-liners, most notably: "For Wales? Why, Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world . . . but for Wales!" The foregoing line is so good that Zinnemann resists nudging the audience with a reaction shot of period extras chortling at More's wit in the courtroom. Would that Zinnemann had altogether resisted this vulgar method of telling audiences in Topeka that grammatical English prose can get laughs, but then A Man for All Seasons would not be the successful middlebrow enterprise that it is.
In all fairness to Zinnemann, his direction is about as effectively expert here as it was ineffectively expert in Behold a Pale Horse. Every frame is etched and chiseled in terms of the most precise placement of characters, colors, costumes, and period decor. As an academic exercise, A Man for all Seasons will probably be snapped up by the 16-millimeter catalogues unless there are purists who still object to filmed stage plays. The film will probably look better in 16-millimeter. Zinnemann avoids close-ups and sweeping camera movements like the plague, and some of his imagery with stone lions evokes Eisenstein's October. On the whole, Zinnemann's visual style is recessive in that everyone is always seen at a safe distance. I don't like this style particularly. It's safe, tactful, and tentative for a director who doesn't want to get too involved with his characters. Yet it is probably wise for this project. Scofield and Bolt don't really take close-ups. They lack feeling and empathy. Scofield is a virtuoso on the stage, where the dry inflections of his voice can ripple across the footlights with layers and layers of expressive irony and biting cynicism. When you look at his face on the screen, however, you get a guilty desire to look somewhere else. Actually, it's hard to remember what Scofield looks like from one performance to the next. I can't think of another actor of comparable skill with so little physical presence.
A Man for All Seasons is blessed with an extraordinary supporting cast—Wendy Hiller, Susannah York, Orson Welles, Robert Shaw, and Vanessa Redgrave in an unbilled appearance as Anne Boleyn. All I can say is wow! There was Orson Welles down in Spain shooting Chimes at Midnight which will have trouble finding a theater while A Man for All Seasons rolls on and on. Despite such coups as getting Gielgud and Richardson and Moreau, Welles had to make do with such eminently dubbed Shakespearean actresses as Marina Vlady, whose perfect English diction led one wag to dub the film Singin' in the Reign. Chimes at Midnight has all kinds of technical deficiencies, and Welles makes many more mistakes than Zinnemann ever could, and yet I wouldn't trade one shot from the Welles for the entire oeuvre of Zinnemann. With all the faults of the Welles, and all the virtues of the Zinnemann, I firmly believe that the massive passions of Chimes at Midnight will long outlive the miniature pageantry of A Man for All Seasons.
(Village Voice, December 22, 1966)
Yeah that's something I wonder about. I'm still glad that cable TV and the public domain seems to have saved it though.maz89 wrote:Surprising how IAWL was relatively poorly received at the time of its release.
![[sad]](./images/smilies/sad.gif "sad"){kind=small}
Nah, I've got to follow my gaming urge until it dies down. I'm sure I'll get back to movies/series (and music, books, etc.) eventually.Raxivace wrote:Jimbo, instead of playing Final Fantasy games go watch Nadia. That way you can finally learn what the Secret of Blue Water is.
Haven't seen this one, but I remember Godard admitting (I think in an interview for Hail Mary) that he did indeed just like shooting naked girls. There probably wasn't always any point to it beyond that... and, hell, does there really need to be? I would've loved to see what a Godard porn (or even just erotic film) would've looked like.Raxivace wrote:
213. British Sounds (AKA See You at Mao, 1970, Dir. Jean-Luc Godard & Jean-Henri Roger) ...it's more of an excuse for Godard to film another pretty girl.
That's quite the epic review! Of course being a Coen film it's immediately going to the top of my Watch list when I get back to films. So as to not stumble on any spoilers, is there anything in particular you want me to read or keep an eye/mind out for whenever I see it?Raxivace wrote:214. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018, Dir. Joel Coen & Ethan Coen)
I really enjoyed this one back when I watched it. It's not a deep/profound movie by any means, but it's a great example of a Classic Hollywood spectacle film, right near the twilight years of those kind of films until the Summer Blockbuster revived the trend (though in different genres).Raxivace wrote:215. Ben-Hur (1959, Dir. William Wyler) -
I also enjoyed this one, though not as much as Ben-Hur. This was a favorite of my mom's, so I might've been slightly biased when I saw it. I do think the acting stood out the most. It always reminds me of The Lion in Winter for some reason. Interesting review from Sarris.Raxivace wrote:216. A Man for All Seasons (1966, Dir. Fred Zinnemann)
Wasn't this one of the extras on the ABSD Criterion? I vaguely remember seeing it, but don't remember much about it.Raxivace wrote:217. Likely Consequence (1992, Dir. Edward Yang)
Don't remember much about this but, yeah, it was typically enjoyable classic Hollywood stuff.Raxivace wrote:219. A Star is Born (1937, Dir. William A. Wellman & Jack Conway) -
Actually one of my favorite Bonds. I agree with you about Dalton being a proto-Craig, and I think they struck the perfect balance here of having that edge but still making it feel like Bond. They pushed it too far over the edge in the next Dalton film. I also loved pretty much all the action sequences in TLD. For some reason the ski bit has stuck in my mind.Raxivace wrote:220. The Living Daylights (1987, Dir. John Glen) -
I never really understood what the point of that was supposed to be, but do it if you want.Raxivace wrote:Thread idea for next year: Should we rip off what Eva Geeks used to do and track the most watched movies of Pitter's?
These are the ones I've seen. Johnny Guitar and Philadelphia Story are the shit. Grant and Hepburn were so great together, I wish they'd made more than just 4 films, but luckily 3 of them are classics and the 4th is pretty darn good (though quite weird!). I thought The Gunfighter was OK. I've personally never cared much for Peck. He always seemed a bit wooden as an actor and his characters were rarely interesting/complex. A Star is Born is good, solid classic Hollywood but not particularly great/memorable. Mr Smith I really liked, but I can't disagree about your quibbles either and it's something that does tend to annoy me a bit about Capra films.maz89 wrote:Johnny Guitar -
The Gunfighter -
The Philadelphia Story -
A Star Is Born (1937) -
Mr Smith Goes To Washington -
I hadn't heard about this either. Very sad. Walkabout and Don't Look Now are both among my all-time favorites. Latter is especially a masterpiece, and former is one of those that's vividly stuck in my mind ever since my first viewing many years ago. I've never been quite as impressed with his other films I've seen, but they're usually quite interesting. He had a great visual eye and was one of the most creative, original editors I've ever seen. I wrote a pretty long review for Don't Look Now way back when:maz89 wrote:RIP Nicholas Roeg.
I'm a bit late, I know.
Don't Look Now [1973; Nicolas Roeg; 110 min; UK/Italy]
9.5/10
The best artists rarely work in genres, and yet many of the best are able to work through genres, often transforming them with their vision and touch. In the realm of the arts, horror and mysteries often reside alongside science fiction and romances as genres that garner huge, popular followings but rarely garner praise and merit from the medium elites. Yet there are exceptions. Great directors like Stanley Kubrick managed to produce masterpieces in both horror (The Shining) and sci-fi (2001). While their impact and influence is obvious and undeniable, perhaps slightly less obvious and less recognized is the influence of Nicolas Roeg's transcendent psychological horror/mystery thriller, Don't Look Now.
Like many of the best films, Don't Look Now's story is superficially simple and yet rich and complex in its execution, suggestiveness, and ambiguity. Early in the film, Laura (Julie Christie) and John (Donald Sutherland) Baxter are devastated after the loss of their young daughter Christine, who died accidentally by falling into a pool and drowning. The film doesn't linger on the tragedy, however, and instead shifts to the beautiful city of Venice where John and Laura are staying while John is at his work, repairing a rundown church.
While there, Laura meets a pair of aging sisters, Heather (Hilary Mason) and Wendy (Clelia Matania). Heather is blind but supposedly is a psychic with the gift of “second sight". She informs Laura that she can see her daughter around them, smiling and happy. Laura accepts this and is able to come to peace with her death, but John cannot. Heather tells Laura that John also has the gift, and warns her that he's unsafe while in Venice, but John won't listen to either, and begins seeing an image of a small person dressed in a red raincoat (the same kind his daughter was wearing when killed) running around the streets of Venice.
Don't Look Now was director Nicolas Roeg's second independently directed feature film. Much like its predecessor, Walkabout, it reveals a man who is as artistically audacious as he is self-assured and in control of his craft. Both reveal Roeg's origins and talents as a cinematographer as both make magnificent use of their locales. While Walkabout used the expressive landscapes of the Australian outback, sometimes stark, barren, and brutal, other times strikingly beautiful, serene, and inviting, Don't Look now makes similar use of the Venice streets. What begins as a city of full of breathtaking imagery and architecture disintegrates into a byzantine, moldering maze of death and confusion.
Also as in Walkabout, Roeg opts for a dreamlike, hypnotic rhythm to his editing and narrative flow. Don't Look now is a film that ebbs and flows towards its conclusion rather than moving with a perpetual forward propulsion. This aids Roeg in the subtle development of his characters; this includes one infamous, extended sex scene between Sutherland and Christie. The scene was scandalous not just for its length but for its explicitness, eroticism, and sensuality. While Roeg almost crosses into soft-core, it may yet be the finest sex scene in the history of mainstream film. Roeg brilliantly crosscuts the lovemaking with scenes of John and Laura getting dressed. While it bears almost no superficial importance to the narrative, it is otherwise important on a deeper and subtler level in how it simultaneously suggests the sadness and impermanence of such intimate togetherness and the compression and juxtaposed concurrency of time. This element of past, present, and future co-existing will become one of the major motifs and themes of the film.
The same way Roeg rhythmic patience allows for nuanced character development, it offers the same opportunity for his elaborate motifs and themes. Besides the phenomenal sex scene, the importance of concurrent time is nowhere more portentous than when John sees Laura on a boat with the two ladies all dressed in funeral black, even though his wife had recently left to go home (the significance of this puzzling image will be revealed in the end. The film itself begins with John's daughter playing in the field which is crosscut with him looking over film slides. One slide shows a figure in a red hood sitting in a church pew. At the same time his daughter falls into the water, John knocks over a glass of water that falls on the slide. The water makes the red of the figures hood to bleed (literally and metaphorically) onto the rest of the frame, and that spurs John to jump up and rush out to save his daughter. This is the film's first use of many of its major themes; foreshadowing, foresight, the concurrency of time, and of death.
The scene also introduces another important theme: the illusory perspective. Laura tells John she's reading a book in an attempt to answer Christine's question of “if the Earth is round, why is a frozen lake flat?" The answer to her question is that it's not; one of the great lakes actually curves 3-degrees from its two widest points. It's only flat to our limited perspective. This concept of limiting perspective marks the ultimate downfall for John. While in Venice, Laura is able to accept the “round" perspective that the psychic, Heather, can actually see into the spirit realm where Christine is happy. This acceptance allows Laura a measure of peace that John can't find. Instead, the memory of his daughter and his guilt over her death festers in unconscious, and he begins to “see" her figure running through the Venice streets but, much like the flat lake that's curved, the truth is obscured by his limited vision.
Earlier I spoke of Don't Look Now's influence and I genuinely believe it's grossly underrated. Roeg's surrealist tone, mystery, use of demonized dwarfs and psychological manifestations clearly foretell the masterpieces of David Lynch. Meanwhile, his use of metaphysics and the intangible interconnectivity of individual lives, of life and death, and transcendent time have a profound Kieslowskian element to them. Even the story of a man chasing the ghostly image of his daughter around a nightmarish city seems a direct influence on the video game Silent Hill which, like its predecessor, reveals the daughter to be a metaphoric psychological demon for her father which may kill him if he doesn't find a measure of peace and forgiveness.
While viewing it at the time I felt the film began to drag during its second act after Laura left and John was left alone; perhaps the problem was that the film had built them up so strongly as a couple it wasn't as interesting with just John alone. But the more I think about the film, the more brilliant it all seems. Don't Look Now does everything a great psychological horror film should do; after watching the film it had my senses on edge, leery of what was lurking in the shadows of my own house as those final images had seared itself into my brain. But the remarkable thing is that it manages all of this without every slipping into the campiness or clichés of the horror film. Rather, Don't Look Now reveals one of the universal truths about horror, the truth that the evils and monsters born and residing in the recesses of our subconscious are infinitely more terrifying than anything that an artist can conjure explicitly.
Ultimately, Don't Look Now is a great film, period, above and beyond being a great horror or genre film, it's one that will dig into your mind and stay there. As much as it is affecting viscerally, it's effective psychologically, aesthetically, and artistically.
It's just weird to me when people feel the need to defend liking or doing this kind of thing with some kind of convoluted feminist pretext. Not that I'm even against convoluted feminist pretexts but sometimes the rationalizations people come up with to cover up their shame just get a bit silly.Eva Yojimbo wrote:]Haven't seen this one, but I remember Godard admitting (I think in an interview for Hail Mary) that he did indeed just like shooting naked girls. There probably wasn't always any point to it beyond that... and, hell, does there really need to be? I would've loved to see what a Godard porn (or even just erotic film) would've looked like.
Nah the review sucks, its just a bunch of pictures.That's quite the epic review!
Just whether you think the artifice of the framing device exists to undermine what appears to be the general themes of the stories or not.Of course being a Coen film it's immediately going to the top of my Watch list when I get back to films. So as to not stumble on any spoilers, is there anything in particular you want me to read or keep an eye/mind out for whenever I see it?
Yup there's definitely some of that going on in Buster Scruggs, particularly in the final short.FWIW, I've seen most of those late Coen films as being basically absurdist pieces about characters searching for meaning/purpose/order in a meaningless, purposeless, chaotic world. NCFOM and A Serious Man being their most potent 1-2 punch on that subject, IMO. That said, they like to HINT at possible meaning/purpose and leave it open to debate. Think of the tornado that closes ASM; if we're following the Job parallel then it could be God come to give the protagonist his lesson. In NCFOM, does Tommy Lee's dream some kind of spiritual warning or lesson, or is it just a dream?
You said your mother was super religious, right? Maybe that aspect of the movie just spoke to her more than it ever could for me.I also enjoyed this one, though not as much as Ben-Hur. This was a favorite of my mom's, so I might've been slightly biased when I saw it. I do think the acting stood out the most. It always reminds me of The Lion in Winter for some reason. Interesting review from Sarris.
Yeah its an extra on the ABSD disc.Wasn't this one of the extras on the ABSD Criterion? I vaguely remember seeing it, but don't remember much about it.
Lol yeah that ski bit was good. It was a little silly, perhaps more appropriate to the Moore era, but I enjoyed it.For some reason the ski bit has stuck in my mind.
Idk, I thought it would maybe be an interesting statistic to track.I never really understood what the point of that was supposed to be, but do it if you want.
That seems like good advice. I often force myself to do things..Eva Yojimbo wrote:Nah, I get that. I guess for me, if I get to the point where any of my hobbies feel like they're sucking my energy, I just quite doing them for a while and do something else.
I can see myself selling games I don't care too much about actually. That's really cool that you had such a high value card!I sold my consoles/games years ago because it really seemed like I was done with gaming. Like, I hadn't played in probably 5 years. I was also sitting on a lot of games that were worth a lot of money, especially because I took good care of my games. Biggest one I sold was Ninja Gaiden Trilogy (the SNES port) for $300.
He really is. Can't wait to see what he does this time.Thanks for the Death Stranding rec. Sounds interesting. Hideo Kojima seems to be quite the character!
It would obviously still be the same game on PS4, but if you are getting a PS3 eventually, I'd say wait for that. FFVII looks good on that and is actually cheaper than on PS3 (10$).I may get to it eventually, though it'll probably be the PS4 version since I hate the idea of stocking up on consoles. I may do that for PS3 just to play the MGS games...
Yeah, Spidey 1 and 2 were actually childhood defining for me. 3 I watched in the theater, and though I had fun, even as a 10 year old I could tell it wasn't so good. Raimi wasn't happy with it.First two Raimi films were great; third sucked ass. Apparently even Raimi hated it. Really sad they botched the Venom storyline, since he was always my favorite Spidey villain/anti-hero.
I also have memories playing with my mother. :)I remember being so frustrated when I couldn't get through the first level and I was so pissed when my mom actually beat it before me, lol!
Amazing.MechaGodardzilla...
At least with Contempt I get the argument that Godard is actually questioning the appeal of nudity to audiences, but that works with that film's whole metafictional context and how the studio would want Bardot naked. With most of the later Godards, though, there's often not much of a reason. I mean, Sauve qui peut involves prostitution (so it's natural) and Passion has him recreating certain paintings which contained nude images; but stuff like Hail Mary and Prenom:Carmen are just pretty gratuitous.Raxivace wrote:It's just weird to me when people feel the need to defend liking or doing this kind of thing with some kind of convoluted feminist pretext. Not that I'm even against convoluted feminist pretexts but sometimes the rationalizations people come up with to cover up their shame just get a bit silly.Eva Yojimbo wrote:]Haven't seen this one, but I remember Godard admitting (I think in an interview for Hail Mary) that he did indeed just like shooting naked girls. There probably wasn't always any point to it beyond that... and, hell, does there really need to be? I would've loved to see what a Godard porn (or even just erotic film) would've looked like.
Gotcha. I think the Coens seem a bit trickier than they are. I actually think Kieslowski does that whole "metaphysical suggestion" thing better, but he doesn't have the postmodernist edge like the Coen's so it's tonally quite different.Raxivace wrote:Just whether you think the artifice of the framing device exists to undermine what appears to be the general themes of the stories or not.Of course being a Coen film it's immediately going to the top of my Watch list when I get back to films. So as to not stumble on any spoilers, is there anything in particular you want me to read or keep an eye/mind out for whenever I see it?
Of course any other thoughts you come up with, of if you notice anything I missed, would be appreciated. Them Coen boys are tricky.
Very probably.Raxivace wrote:You said your mother was super religious, right? Maybe that aspect of the movie just spoke to her more than it ever could for me.I also enjoyed this one, though not as much as Ben-Hur. This was a favorite of my mom's, so I might've been slightly biased when I saw it. I do think the acting stood out the most. It always reminds me of The Lion in Winter for some reason. Interesting review from Sarris.
No harm if you want to.Raxivace wrote:Idk, I thought it would maybe be an interesting statistic to track.I never really understood what the point of that was supposed to be, but do it if you want.
See The Conformist ASAP. It's a visually glorious film.Raxivace wrote:I haven't seen any Bertolucci though I'll see Last Emperor at some point for the Best Picture project.
I'm torn about whether I should watch Last Tango in Paris or not, considering the allegations about the production of that film. It is a historically significant one though.
Well, I did get the PS3. I'll probably try FFVII on both and see which one I prefer. I also picked up MGS3-5. I also managed to get a PS3 that can play PS2 (and PS1) games, so I'm pretty much set for Playstation! LOLKuribo4 wrote:It would obviously still be the same game on PS4, but if you are getting a PS3 eventually, I'd say wait for that. FFVII looks good on that and is actually cheaper than on PS3 (10$).I may get to it eventually, though it'll probably be the PS4 version since I hate the idea of stocking up on consoles. I may do that for PS3 just to play the MGS games...
And btw, I recently got MGS3 and 4 too. 3 to play it on my PS2 and the PS3 I luckily own. Got a second hand one as a present. It's a model that plays PS1 games too, really convenient.
I sometimes wish playing games weren't so complicated haha.
The first Spider-Man was probably the last film I saw in the theaters with my mom. I remember us going to the theater and there was a long line of kids, so we went to the mall and browsed the bookstore until the next showing so we wouldn't have to share the theater with a bunch of annoying kids!Kuribo4 wrote:[Yeah, Spidey 1 and 2 were actually childhood defining for me. 3 I watched in the theater, and though I had fun, even as a 10 year old I could tell it wasn't so good. Raimi wasn't happy with it.First two Raimi films were great; third sucked ass. Apparently even Raimi hated it. Really sad they botched the Venom storyline, since he was always my favorite Spidey villain/anti-hero.
That's really cool. My parents were much older when they had me and neither got into gaming. My dad only played the Top Gun game for the NES a bit when it was out, but that's as far as he ever went.Kuribo4 wrote:[I also have memories playing with my mother. :)I remember being so frustrated when I couldn't get through the first level and I was so pissed when my mom actually beat it before me, lol!
Apparently, she played Super Mario Bros. before she had me too. She is actually pretty young, had me when she was 23. So we talk a lot about videogames. She plays games like The Witcher, to mention one that was talked about here.
It's cool she was in that time frame where she also grew up with games, we share that hobby now.
First half of th show is more normal by design; it's meant to draw the viewer in with the sense of familiar before the second half shatters that illusion. I will say say about the first half that while it's more normal it's also much more subtle. There are so many little details and foreshadowings throughout it that really makes you appreciate exactly WHY the second half is so powerful because of how meticulously the first half set it up. Hell, there's stuff in the first half that doesn't pay off until the film!Kuribo4 wrote:[Btw, I'm rewatching Evangelion. It had been three years and a half since I watched it (which I mentioned back on imdb too).
The plan is watching the show now, watching the Rebuilds some time during 2019, and then I'll be ready for the last film in 2020.
What can I say, we have discussed this show to death lol. One thing interesting to me is how, as I grow older (and having watched more mecha stuff) the first half of the show seems more and more normal to me. And the second one, regardless of how I grow up, is still godly.
Both are masterpieces IMO. I've also seen 1900 which is a mess, though a frequently impressive one.maz89 wrote:Will get to the rest of this thread later, but dammit. Now Bertolucci passed away! Only seen The Conformist and Last Tango in Paris from him though, but I really liked both of them.
Yeah it's one thing for a movie like Contempt, but some of these other ones it doesn't really feel that way.Eva Yojimbo wrote:At least with Contempt I get the argument that Godard is actually questioning the appeal of nudity to audiences, but that works with that film's whole metafictional context and how the studio would want Bardot naked. With most of the later Godards, though, there's often not much of a reason. I mean, Sauve qui peut involves prostitution (so it's natural) and Passion has him recreating certain paintings which contained nude images; but stuff like Hail Mary and Prenom:Carmen are just pretty gratuitous.
I have to see some Kieslowski too.Gotcha. I think the Coens seem a bit trickier than they are. I actually think Kieslowski does that whole "metaphysical suggestion" thing better, but he doesn't have the postmodernist edge like the Coen's so it's tonally quite different.
Well the scene was Brando's idea, he was performing with her, and as the director part of Bertolucci's job is making sure potentially uncomfortable scenes go smoothly, right?I'm not sure why it's Brando/Bertolucci's fault that she was too young/naive to say "no" or even know that she had the right to refuse to do anything that wasn't in the script.
She seemed to have nothing but vitriol for Bertolucci until the end though based on the articles I remember reading. Now its entirely possible there was some other reason she hated Bertolucci that's unrelated to this entire affair.She also doesn't even suggest that they forced/pressured her, and she even said that her and Brando remained good friends throughout and after the shoot.
Entirely possible. I'm still not entirely sure myself though, or at least sure enough to a comfortable degree of certainty.To me, it just sounds like a classic case of regret rather than a case where we should blame Brando and Bertolucci for being scummy rapists.
Seeing that stuff on a second watch was what really confirmed to me that NGE was more than just a pretty good show. So much stuff comes off differently with a fuller context. Even the gag with Misato telling Ritsuko on the phone about how she won't be messing with Shinji gets payoff in the movie.Eva Yojimbo wrote:There are so many little details and foreshadowings throughout it that really makes you appreciate exactly WHY the second half is so powerful because of how meticulously the first half set it up. Hell, there's stuff in the first half that doesn't pay off until the film!
Kieslowski's hard to get into because his best works are a 10-part TV show (Dekalog) and a 3-part film Trilogy (Blue, White, Red). That said, he did make a few great standalone films, including Double Life of Veronique (probably the best starting place), Blind Chance, and No End. The latter two already has his thematic depth, but visually/cinematically they aren't as good as Veronique, Three Colors, and (to a lesser extent) Dekalog.Raxivace wrote:I have to see some Kieslowski too.Gotcha. I think the Coens seem a bit trickier than they are. I actually think Kieslowski does that whole "metaphysical suggestion" thing better, but he doesn't have the postmodernist edge like the Coen's so it's tonally quite different.
Part of the Coen "brand", I suppose, is seeming tricky like that. Maybe I'm buying into their own cultivated image a bit more than I should.
Yeah, I don't disagree with any of this. I just think these situations are tricky on both sides and that without knowing all the details it's very difficult to pass any kind of definitive judgment. I also think it's possible to feel sympathy for Romy because she was young/naive and didn't know she had the right to say no, but without condemning Brando for suggesting the scene (even if he insisted a bit) or for Bertolucci for going along with it and/or not stopping Brando. I also feel like it's probably really different for veterans like that who likely find it easy to say "it's just a film, anything goes" and for someone like Romy who was young/new and wasn't as comfortable with stuff like that.Raxivace wrote:Well the scene was Brando's idea, he was performing with her, and as the director part of Bertolucci's job is making sure potentially uncomfortable scenes go smoothly, right?I'm not sure why it's Brando/Bertolucci's fault that she was too young/naive to say "no" or even know that she had the right to refuse to do anything that wasn't in the script.
This also gets into the tricky area of consent, what it is or isn't. IF they knew she didn't want to do the scene AND they knew she didn't know she had the right to say no but went along with it anyways THEN that's kind of scummy and manipulative IMO. That's a big IF though, and I don't know how we could reliably determine that all these years later.
You could also make the argument that as a legal adult she had the responsibility to be inform herself on her rights in her profession but fuck man, we've both been 19 before. We're all dumb idiots at that age and I'm not sure its realistic to expect someone not even old enough to drink to make adult decisions like that. We all click "I agree to the terms and conditions" of EULA's without actually reading them or even understanding the legal jargon. Of course this all gets into an issue larger that the production of Last Tango.
Yeah, I'm with you on not being sure, but that's also why I hate to see people condemning Brando, Bertolucci, and the great film they made. All we know is that Romy regretted that it happened, but people do things they regret all the time that isn't necessarily the fault of someone else (even if it was someone else's idea).Raxivace wrote:She seemed to have nothing but vitriol for Bertolucci until the end though based on the articles I remember reading. Now its entirely possible there was some other reason she hated Bertolucci that's unrelated to this entire affair.She also doesn't even suggest that they forced/pressured her, and she even said that her and Brando remained good friends throughout and after the shoot.
Idk. I find a lot of reporting on issues of possible sexual misconduct to be kind of sensationalistic and difficult to determine the truth from them. It doesn't help when we're talking about something from several decades ago where all of the major parties have now died too.
Entirely possible. I'm still not entirely sure myself though, or at least sure enough to a comfortable degree of certainty.To me, it just sounds like a classic case of regret rather than a case where we should blame Brando and Bertolucci for being scummy rapists.
Yeah, and there's tons of examples like that you mention with Misato and Ritsuko. One I remember noticing in the first episode was how the letter Shinji got from Gendo had been taped back together, which means he must've ripped it apart when he got it, but had second thoughts and put it back together. Of course, there's also all the establishing of the series' various motifs: red/blue dichotomy, hands, water, etc. When you rewatch the first half looking for this stuff, it's surprising just how much is there. Even on a "filler" episode like 10 you have that cool little motif of Rei diving into the blue water, which becomes Shinji/Asuka diving into the molten red lava to really drive home the parallels they're making, which is symbolic of Shinji's whole decision between life/red/maturity/individuality/consciousness/Asuka and death/blue/mother/collectivity/unconsciousness/Rei-Yui.Raxivace wrote:Seeing that stuff on a second watch was what really confirmed to me that NGE was more than just a pretty good show. So much stuff comes off differently with a fuller context. Even the gag with Misato telling Ritsuko on the phone about how she won't be messing with Shinji gets payoff in the movie.Eva Yojimbo wrote:There are so many little details and foreshadowings throughout it that really makes you appreciate exactly WHY the second half is so powerful because of how meticulously the first half set it up. Hell, there's stuff in the first half that doesn't pay off until the film!
I think the thing the thing that most impressed me with multiple rewatches though in this aspect is how differently Gendo comes off. That first watch, its easy to buy into that stern evil genius persona he has going. Rewatches really makes it clear that despite the airs he puts on, he really is just like Shinji and that puts A LOT of the show into a different perspective than I had at first.
First time through: "Ah man, Shinji just needs some self-confidence."
Second time through: "Oh fuck, Shinji with self-confidence will just be Gendo and Gendo is a bad guy".
Yeah I've heard about the Colors Trilogy and the Dekalog before just through having general film knowledge but for whatever reason I just haven't made the jump to them yet. One of those standalones is probably where I'll start though.Eva Yojimbo wrote:Kieslowski's hard to get into because his best works are a 10-part TV show (Dekalog) and a 3-part film Trilogy (Blue, White, Red). That said, he did make a few great standalone films, including Double Life of Veronique (probably the best starting place), Blind Chance, and No End. The latter two already has his thematic depth, but visually/cinematically they aren't as good as Veronique, Three Colors, and (to a lesser extent) Dekalog.
Tbh I mostly just wanted to talk about "Them Coen boys" as if I were a stereotypical farmer or something for a moment there lol.I also don't want to make it seem like I'm denigrating the Coens at all. I do love them, but for me it's less their "trickiness" and more their mastery over tone, setting, and genres and how they're able to integrate these cool themes into them so it all works together. I mean, I think their early work was excellent in itself because even back then they had the tone/setting/genre thing down (especially with Blood Simple and Miller's Crossing), but with their newer films they've just added that extra layer of thematic substance so it's deepened their work significantly, even if I don't think they're all that tricky, per se.
It sounds like we're largely in agreement about the difficulties here. It just makes it hard for me to know if there's a moral problem or not with watching Last Tango even compared to someone like Polanski. At least its not the production of Chinatown itself, for example, that's in question with the controversies around him.Last Tango stuff
Interesting. I'm not sure I've ever consciously noticed that before.Eva Yojimbo wrote:Yeah, and there's tons of examples like that you mention with Misato and Ritsuko. One I remember noticing in the first episode was how the letter Shinji got from Gendo had been taped back together, which means he must've ripped it apart when he got it, but had second thoughts and put it back together.
Speaking of motifs, did you ever see this EGF thread? A lot of people seem to take some of Anno's quoted, uh, quotes, as confirmation of that one Tsurumaki quote about the religious symbolism that you just love.Of course, there's also all the establishing of the series' various motifs: red/blue dichotomy, hands, water, etc. When you rewatch the first half looking for this stuff, it's surprising just how much is there.
...In this bit I've bolded, at least, tends to give more credence to your interpretations of the use of Christian symbols in the series, but I don't see anyone in the thread really addressing that.- During the Eva Boom books such as "Reading the Dead Sea Scrolls" came out. Did you anticipate that?
Anno: I could somehow understand that. When I was in middle school, because I loved the anime "Space Battleship Yamato," being interested in the wave motion gun, warp drive, and so on, I would buy "blue backs" [Kodansha books on popular science]. (laughs) My knowledge of the theory of relativity and so on was due to the influence of Yamato. I feel it's fine by itself if people become interested in the Dead Sea Scrolls because of that [because of Eva]. If through that they get interested in psychology and move on to that direction, it will also be interesting. As for the elements relating to Christianity, I just researched them quickly using dictionary-like books. Because these sort of convenient things exist in the world, (laughs) around the time when we were students, the anime "Macross" was showing on TV, and there was a "catalog generation," a generation interested in nothing but "specs" and catalogs. They would only evaluate things on the basis of "catalog-like" elements. They didn't care about "interior" elements but were only caught up in what was on the surface. So, you can extend that [idea]. [In Eva] there are various "keyword-like" terms but, in truth, these are just symbols. They don't really have meanings taken individually. As they are mixed together, for the first time something like an interrelationship or a meaning emerges. If you investigate each one individually you will very quickly reach the bottom.
A big part of his character though is that traits that initially seems positive (Wanting to help the people you love, not giving up etc.) can be taken to terrible extremes that only hurts others. Even though Gendo starts from a sympathetic place, I think this ultimately makes him a bad guy.Gendo wrote:The reason I was drawn to Gendo as a character to use for internet handles was primarily because he was a romantic who didn't give up. He would do whatever it takes for his wife, and that is all that really matters to him.
Yeah agreed. At the time (high school), I didn't care about such things though; it was just like "man this guy is always in charge and in control of everything, he's awesome!"Raxivace wrote:A big part of his character though is that traits that initially seems positive (Wanting to help the people you love, not giving up etc.) can be taken to terrible extremes that only hurts others. Even though Gendo starts from a sympathetic place, I think this ultimately makes him a bad guy.Gendo wrote:The reason I was drawn to Gendo as a character to use for internet handles was primarily because he was a romantic who didn't give up. He would do whatever it takes for his wife, and that is all that really matters to him.
You see these traits in Shinji at time too, particularly in EoE and especially in the Rebuild films where its a large point of the shift in narrative of those movies.
At least with Kieslowski (unlike, say, Godard) you won't have as much material to watch. It's basically a one-season TV show and then 10 features (in terms of what's available, at least). There are a lot of early documentaries that I haven't seen.Raxivace wrote:Yeah I've heard about the Colors Trilogy and the Dekalog before just through having general film knowledge but for whatever reason I just haven't made the jump to them yet. One of those standalones is probably where I'll start though.Eva Yojimbo wrote:Kieslowski's hard to get into because his best works are a 10-part TV show (Dekalog) and a 3-part film Trilogy (Blue, White, Red). That said, he did make a few great standalone films, including Double Life of Veronique (probably the best starting place), Blind Chance, and No End. The latter two already has his thematic depth, but visually/cinematically they aren't as good as Veronique, Three Colors, and (to a lesser extent) Dekalog.
Maybe I'll even go as far as making the Big K here one of my long-term watching projects for next year, alongside finishing Godard, finishing Best Picture winners, exploring Taiwanese New Wave, watching more forgotten mecha anime of yester-year, and...finishing Miyazaki's films.
Sounds like it!Raxivace wrote:Yeah that's right, 2019 is going to be a hell of a year.
To me, there's more of a moral problem still to this day with something like Birth of a Nation, which is explicitly racist no matter how influential it was to the development of film as an art-form. Sometimes bad people make great art, and even if that's the case with Last Tango or Polanski's films, the content isn't a direct reflection of that unlike with BOAN. It helps that those involved are already dead, so it's not like you're supporting them financially either.Raxivace wrote:It sounds like we're largely in agreement about the difficulties here. It just makes it hard for me to know if there's a moral problem or not with watching Last Tango even compared to someone like Polanski. At least its not the production of Chinatown itself, for example, that's in question with the controversies around him.Last Tango stuff
Not that even if I determine that there is a moral issue that I'm trying to condemn audiences or fans of Last Tango or anything, or even to say it isn't technically a good film or whatever.
I kinda skimmed through the thread. I guess I'm most amused that I'm still on Xard's mind!Raxivace wrote:Speaking of motifs, did you ever see this EGF thread? A lot of people seem to take some of Anno's quoted, uh, quotes, as confirmation of that one Tsurumaki quote about the religious symbolism that you just love.Of course, there's also all the establishing of the series' various motifs: red/blue dichotomy, hands, water, etc. When you rewatch the first half looking for this stuff, it's surprising just how much is there.
I literally have no idea why he thinks I'd cry over this, or why Alaska Slim would think I'd think Anno was lying. It seems to me that after all these years these people are still, one, utterly clueless as to what my interpretation of the religious symbolism actually was, two, utterly clueless as to what I think that interpretation had to do with Anno's level of knowledge or intention, and three, utterly clueless as to how artists tend to use symbolism and references. When Anno said: "As for the elements relating to Christianity, I just researched them quickly using dictionary-like books," that's literally all that's needed to make significant and/or meaningful use of symbolism. I have no idea why these people think that an artists needs to have been some kind of scholar, or even to have actually read the works they've cited/used, to make their references and symbolism meaningful. Now, sure, sometimes it's completely meaningless; the clue that Anno didn't know much (perhaps anything) about some of his references was pretty obvious with stuff like The Oral Stage or The Sickness Unto Death that had literally nothing to do with anything in NGE or its themes. However, when Anno has Shinji crucified on a cross, it's pretty fucking clear that Anno knew at least how the cross was used in The Bible on a story level even if he didn't know (or care about) its specifically Christian significance. The fact that Misato wears a cross as a reminder of a sacrifice someone else made to save her life must either be pure coincidence, or evidence that Anno also knew that the cross, at the very least, had THAT kind of significance. The fact that Shinji just happens to be such an ironic contrast to Jesus was doubtfully something he consciously thought of either, but it adds that extra layer of significance whether intended or not.Xard wrote:Where is Jimbo when I need him?
I WANT THOSE DELICIOUS TEARS
Well, yeah, I would've told you that was a mistake.symbv wrote:to think that I tried so hard to seek deeper knowledge from Evangelion thinking he was hiding some deep insight about religion and occultism...
Absolutely, but if you'd look at the religious symbolism in light of this you'd see it fits just fine. The entire idea of the show is that Shinji is being sacrificed so that he and all humanity can return to "God" in the form of being in "mother's womb" (the mother of all mankind). This is symbolic of Otaku escapism, using anime to escape reality because it's comforting. None of this is Christian or occult, but the symbols can be appropriated to express these ideas if you abstract their basic non-religious meanings.symbv wrote:At the end I think his main contribution is more on the front of "depression psychology" and how much he wanted to "wake up" the otakus by brutally crushing their comfort zone (but at the end neither Anno nor the otakus left anime).
That's a bingo.Bagheera wrote:Except that's not really true either, since one doesn't have to be a student of a particular philosophy (or even familiar with it) to produce works that fit its precepts. Just because NGE isn't existentialist in intent doesn't mean it isn't a good fit for it in practice.
Oh that...sounds fairly manageable actually.Eva Yojimbo wrote:At least with Kieslowski (unlike, say, Godard) you won't have as much material to watch. It's basically a one-season TV show and then 10 features (in terms of what's available, at least). There are a lot of early documentaries that I haven't seen.
This is fair. Even with BOAN I've always argued in favor of people learning that film for historical significance at the very least (If they're film students or whatever at least), and there's no real argument that I can think of off of the top of my head that makes watching BOAN okay but not Last Tango or Polanski's films. BOAN, after all, is something we know did directly lead to others getting significantly harmed, killed etc.To me, there's more of a moral problem still to this day with something like Birth of a Nation, which is explicitly racist no matter how influential it was to the development of film as an art-form. Sometimes bad people make great art, and even if that's the case with Last Tango or Polanski's films, the content isn't a direct reflection of that unlike with BOAN. It helps that those involved are already dead, so it's not like you're supporting them financially either.
I'm addressing this first, but tbh reading this whole post and then this last bit I feel kind of shitty for linking it in the first place now and perhaps that I crossed a line I shouldn't have. Sorry, I didn't mean to get you like really worked up or anything. I just thought some of the quotes were interesting, especially the one that seemed to actually go against the one Tsurumaki quote to at least an extent.OK, I'm done. That thread as raised my hackles enough for one day and is a good reminder of why I ultimately left that place.
To be fair that thread started back in 2011, I just came upon it again when I was looking something up there the other day, though even in my time at EGF Xard continued to mention you from time to time (I think it was in more neutral terms than DELICIOUS TEARS though. A couple of times he seemed to even downright miss you) until he eventually got banned. I think the ban is up now, but from what I can tell he never returned.I kinda skimmed through the thread. I guess I'm most amused that I'm still on Xard's mind!
I could understand the Anno argument if Slim meant lying in a John Ford "I'm just a humble guy who makes westerns, now go away Bogdanovich you strange ascot-wearing man" downplaying kind of way, but that's not quite the impression I got.I literally have no idea why he thinks I'd cry over this, or why Alaska Slim would think I'd think Anno was lying.
Right. I don't think the argument from "our camp", so to speak, has ever been Anno himself is some kind of theologian making a comment on the nature of Christian theology or whatever, but some of the responses not only in that thread but to NGE as a whole still seem to treat it like that.It seems to me that after all these years these people are still, one, utterly clueless as to what my interpretation of the religious symbolism actually was, two, utterly clueless as to what I think that interpretation had to do with Anno's level of knowledge or intention, and three, utterly clueless as to how artists tend to use symbolism and references. When Anno said: "As for the elements relating to Christianity, I just researched them quickly using dictionary-like books," that's literally all that's needed to make significant and/or meaningful use of symbolism. I have no idea why these people think that an artists needs to have been some kind of scholar, or even to have actually read the works they've cited/used, to make their references and symbolism meaningful.
Oral Stage in particular is a weird one because considering the amount of other psychosexual things in NGE (And coming from the studio who named a friggin' character as "Jeung Freud" in GunBuster), the fact that the flashback episode with Gendo and Yui actually has Shinji as a baby etc., it wouldn't have been that hard to actually incorporate in some meaningful fashion.Now, sure, sometimes it's completely meaningless; the clue that Anno didn't know much (perhaps anything) about some of his references was pretty obvious with stuff like The Oral Stage or The Sickness Unto Death that had literally nothing to do with anything in NGE or its themes.
100% agreed.However, when Anno has Shinji crucified on a cross, it's pretty fucking clear that Anno knew at least how the cross was used in The Bible on a story level even if he didn't know (or care about) its specifically Christian significance. The fact that Misato wears a cross as a reminder of a sacrifice someone else made to save her life must either be pure coincidence, or evidence that Anno also knew that the cross, at the very least, had THAT kind of significance. The fact that Shinji just happens to be such an ironic contrast to Jesus was doubtfully something he consciously thought of either, but it adds that extra layer of significance whether intended or not.
Another paragraph I agree with.Really, the substance of my interpretation was about the Jungian archetypal significance of these symbols.
Yeah that's why I wanted your thoughts on the quotes from this thread specifically.So, far from thinking he's lying, I actually think his comments pretty much confirm what I've been saying all along. I'm just baffled by the fact that as much I wrote about that stuff back in the day, so many on EGF still don't get it... like, at all. Of course, that bit you quoted/bolded helps as well.
Well I'm sure they understand art...uh...doesn't fall out of a void fully formed at least?That the people on EGF don't get this is just more proof that they don't seem to understand how creative minds work at all.
Perhaps. From my more hardcore atheism days I'm used to arguing against Biblical claims as completely literal myself and not really used to thinking of them as more poetic, so I'm probably too biased to really have a meaningful opinion here.Also, and this is completely tangential, I tend to think the misunderstanding of creative minds, or of even the capabilities of naturally creative minds, is one thing that leads to things like religious fundamentalism. Like, people can't grasp metaphor and allegory and symbolism so everything gets taken literally, and because they can't even imagine how creative minds work, they think it must've literally happened because nobody would've been capable of just making this stuff up.
Again even though I could laugh at the Earl of Oxford nonsense, I myself was pretty vehemently on a single side in the recent Double Falsehood controversy just because how "obviously fake" Lewis Theobald's story about finding Cardenio sounded to me (Perhaps similar to the guy who who claimed to find a "new" Beatles album called Everyday Chemistry when he visited an alternate universe where the band never broke up, though IIRC that came out as just a fun bit of promotion anyways), but scientific evidence in favor of Double Falsehood actually likely being derived from Shakespearean text is against me.I even see something similar in the conspiracy theories that Shakespeare didn't write Shakespeare, most of which revolves around incredulity that some lower-middle-class guy who couldn't have had much schooling could've made up everything he did (never mind all of the blatant factual errors; those don't count, for some reason). You can see it in that EGF thread where there's this false dichotomy that either Anno had to know a lot about all of these symbols and references he used, or it's completely meaningless. It's just reflective of people who just, on a fundamental level, don't understand art or artists or artistry at all.
Yeah I thought maybe symbv was joking with that first line looking at it again, I dunno what they're going on about.Just reading through the thread a bit more:Well, yeah, I would've told you that was a mistake.symbv wrote:to think that I tried so hard to seek deeper knowledge from Evangelion thinking he was hiding some deep insight about religion and occultism...Absolutely, but if you'd look at the religious symbolism in light of this you'd see it fits just fine. The entire idea of the show is that Shinji is being sacrificed so that he and all humanity can return to "God" in the form of being in "mother's womb" (the mother of all mankind). This is symbolic of Otaku escapism, using anime to escape reality because it's comforting. None of this is Christian or occult, but the symbols can be appropriated to express these ideas if you abstract their basic non-religious meanings.symbv wrote:At the end I think his main contribution is more on the front of "depression psychology" and how much he wanted to "wake up" the otakus by brutally crushing their comfort zone (but at the end neither Anno nor the otakus left anime).
I don't think the famous "episode 24 plothole" will ever be filled lol.TBH, if I was ever able to interview Anno, the first thing I'd ask him wouldn't be anything about meaning or significance or symbolism or psychology or philosophy or any of that "loldeep" shit: it would be "what the hell is going on in ep. 24?!"
It also kinda sucks that all of these happen to be great films too. Like, if they were mediocre films it wouldn't matter and be easy enough to avoid. You ever read Ebert's review of BOAN? It's pretty much the definitive take on the matter, IMO.Raxivace wrote:This is fair. Even with BOAN I've always argued in favor of people learning that film for historical significance at the very least (If they're film students or whatever at least), and there's no real argument that I can think of off of the top of my head that makes watching BOAN okay but not Last Tango or Polanski's films. BOAN, after all, is something we know did directly lead to others getting significantly harmed, killed etc.To me, there's more of a moral problem still to this day with something like Birth of a Nation, which is explicitly racist no matter how influential it was to the development of film as an art-form. Sometimes bad people make great art, and even if that's the case with Last Tango or Polanski's films, the content isn't a direct reflection of that unlike with BOAN. It helps that those involved are already dead, so it's not like you're supporting them financially either.
Nah, don't worry about it man, no reason to feel shitty and you didn't cross a line. It just brought up some sour memories from that place. Still, it was nice to write that in a context where at least I feel like it could be understood/appreciated. Playing Witcher 3 worked me up more than that. :) (I'm actually serious about that; during the month that I played Witcher 3 my resting heart rate was about 10 beats higher than normal!)Raxivace wrote:I'm addressing this first, but tbh reading this whole post and then this last bit I feel kind of shitty for linking it in the first place now and perhaps that I crossed a line I shouldn't have. Sorry, I didn't mean to get you like really worked up or anything. I just thought some of the quotes were interesting, especially the one that seemed to actually go against the one Tsurumaki quote to at least an extent.OK, I'm done. That thread as raised my hackles enough for one day and is a good reminder of why I ultimately left that place.
Not surprised he eventually got banned. He always did like playing things on the edge with his quasi-trolling.Raxivace wrote:To be fair that thread started back in 2011, I just came upon it again when I was looking something up there the other day, though even in my time at EGF Xard continued to mention you from time to time (I think it was in more neutral terms than DELICIOUS TEARS though. A couple of times he seemed to even downright miss you) until he eventually got banned. I think the ban is up now, but from what I can tell he never returned.I kinda skimmed through the thread. I guess I'm most amused that I'm still on Xard's mind!
I even remember once saying that had Anno picked some ancient religion nobody would be having this problem, but because he picked the world's biggest religion people seem to naturally assume he must be saying something about that religion. It's a little weird how people wouldn't assume if he used, say, Norse mythology that he was endorsing or commenting on it as a religion, but because he used Christianity he must've been commenting on the religion in some way.Raxivace wrote:Right. I don't think the argument from "our camp", so to speak, has ever been Anno himself is some kind of theologian making a comment on the nature of Christian theology or whatever, but some of the responses not only in that thread but to NGE as a whole still seem to treat it like that.It seems to me that after all these years these people are still, one, utterly clueless as to what my interpretation of the religious symbolism actually was, two, utterly clueless as to what I think that interpretation had to do with Anno's level of knowledge or intention, and three, utterly clueless as to how artists tend to use symbolism and references. When Anno said: "As for the elements relating to Christianity, I just researched them quickly using dictionary-like books," that's literally all that's needed to make significant and/or meaningful use of symbolism. I have no idea why these people think that an artists needs to have been some kind of scholar, or even to have actually read the works they've cited/used, to make their references and symbolism meaningful.
What I specifically liked about your interpretations when I first read them there years ago was that that was the kind of argument you precisely weren't making about NGE's use of religious symbols.
I don't know either. It also reminds me of the whole "crossplosions were foreshadowing" thing that I once proposed that turned into a whole controversy. My basic thing was "Anno used stuff like crossplosions to set up a symbol/device that he probably knew he was going to use later," and people weirdly didn't think this was foreshadowing. That thread's a bit of a clusterfuck to wade through, though.Raxivace wrote:Another paragraph I agree with.Really, the substance of my interpretation was about the Jungian archetypal significance of these symbols.
Maybe people assumed you were making a much more convoluted and different argument than you actually were? Idk.
I actually think that bolded bit is pretty spot-on. Every symbol/reference in NGE is pretty shallow taken individually, but when you add them up and consider them together it does go much deeper, and I almost feel like what Anno's saying is that, in order to get people looking past the superficial he used these symbols as a way of provoking that kind of reflection and view. It's basically what I've been saying for ages about NGE presenting this superficial, traditional, mecha-anime like veneer early on, but then using all of its various devices to rip through it later on to get to what it was all really about, to the point that surface is completely gone by EOTV, and in EOE it's re-established only to be completely fucked up by all of the allegorical stuff.Raxivace wrote:Yeah that's why I wanted your thoughts on the quotes from this thread specifically.So, far from thinking he's lying, I actually think his comments pretty much confirm what I've been saying all along. I'm just baffled by the fact that as much I wrote about that stuff back in the day, so many on EGF still don't get it... like, at all. Of course, that bit you quoted/bolded helps as well.
It's hard to tell sometimes! I mean, I don't want to cast everyone there in one single, broad stroke, but I often did get the distinct impression in many discussions on there that I was talking to people who really hadn't spent much time thinking about this stuff. That said, I'm sure my philosophical ramblings probably came across similarly to Xard who had (or was at the time) studying philosophy in-depth and, I think, was even a philosophy major in college.Raxivace wrote:Well I'm sure they understand art...uh...doesn't fall out of a void fully formed at least?That the people on EGF don't get this is just more proof that they don't seem to understand how creative minds work at all.
I completely get that as it's something I've done too, in large part because it seems fundamentalism is the dominant mode of religion in America so it's inevitably and largely what atheists like us end up confronting. The things that broke me away from that was reading Blake, Jung, and Stevens. All of them dealt with religions on a symbolic level. Blake, much like Anno, even took a lot of Christian symbols and created his own allegory/mythology that was incredibly dense (so much so his contemporaries thought him mad). Of course, Jung had all of these "collective unconscious" allegorical readings for religions, and Stevens thought of religion as "The Supreme Fiction," or fiction that spoke so profoundly to our experience as humans that we took it as "true" on a level deeper than most ordinary truths (For perhaps the most succinct version of his thoughts in poetry, I always liked the first four sections of The Man With the Blue Guitar). This is also kinda something that someone like Jordan Peterson has taken up today, though I dislike most of his politics and idiosyncratic use of common terms without clarification.Raxivace wrote:Perhaps. From my more hardcore atheism days I'm used to arguing against Biblical claims as completely literal myself and not really used to thinking of them as more poetic, so I'm probably too biased to really have a meaningful opinion here.Also, and this is completely tangential, I tend to think the misunderstanding of creative minds, or of even the capabilities of naturally creative minds, is one thing that leads to things like religious fundamentalism. Like, people can't grasp metaphor and allegory and symbolism so everything gets taken literally, and because they can't even imagine how creative minds work, they think it must've literally happened because nobody would've been capable of just making this stuff up.
Speaking of which I still haven't checked out Double Falsehood or any of the stuff revolving around it. Really should get to it if only for completion's sake. Still, a lot of the plays he co-wrote aren't very good themselves. It's amazing reading the Henry VI trilogy to see just how far he came by the time of writing Richard III, not to mention Henry IV/V.Raxivace wrote:Again even though I could laugh at the Earl of Oxford nonsense, I myself was pretty vehemently on a single side in the recent Double Falsehood controversy just because how "obviously fake" Lewis Theobald's story about finding Cardenio sounded to me (Perhaps similar to the guy who who claimed to find a "new" Beatles album called Everyday Chemistry when he visited an alternate universe where the band never broke up, though IIRC that came out as just a fun bit of promotion anyways), but scientific evidence in favor of Double Falsehood actually likely being derived from Shakespearean text is against me.I even see something similar in the conspiracy theories that Shakespeare didn't write Shakespeare, most of which revolves around incredulity that some lower-middle-class guy who couldn't have had much schooling could've made up everything he did (never mind all of the blatant factual errors; those don't count, for some reason). You can see it in that EGF thread where there's this false dichotomy that either Anno had to know a lot about all of these symbols and references he used, or it's completely meaningless. It's just reflective of people who just, on a fundamental level, don't understand art or artists or artistry at all.
Anyways I of course agree with what you're saying about the false dichotomy. That's pretty close to my impression of people who post on internet forums, Reddit, etc. in general, that the background in the arts just isn't there to any meaningful degree in terms of their collective user base.
Not that I claim to be an expert or anything myself but sometimes it gets frustrating that the level of discourse on much of the internet seems so...low, even on places that occasionally do try to have more indepth discussion.
I don't think he's joking, I really think a lot of people think like this. Part of it maybe that if NGE has the kind of impact on you as it did on myself, then perhaps it's natural to look for some kind of religious significance in it, because it seems almost too powerful to just be about "human" things. Not that I think that's actually true, but I think perhaps that's where some people's intuitions go to, especially if they have a naturally religious/spiritual bent.Raxivace wrote:Yeah I thought maybe symbv was joking with that first line looking at it again, I dunno what they're going on about.Just reading through the thread a bit more:Well, yeah, I would've told you that was a mistake.symbv wrote:to think that I tried so hard to seek deeper knowledge from Evangelion thinking he was hiding some deep insight about religion and occultism...Absolutely, but if you'd look at the religious symbolism in light of this you'd see it fits just fine. The entire idea of the show is that Shinji is being sacrificed so that he and all humanity can return to "God" in the form of being in "mother's womb" (the mother of all mankind). This is symbolic of Otaku escapism, using anime to escape reality because it's comforting. None of this is Christian or occult, but the symbols can be appropriated to express these ideas if you abstract their basic non-religious meanings.symbv wrote:At the end I think his main contribution is more on the front of "depression psychology" and how much he wanted to "wake up" the otakus by brutally crushing their comfort zone (but at the end neither Anno nor the otakus left anime).
I still think that it might just be something wonky in the English translation. Surely they couldn't have just inserted this huge plothole out of nowhere, right?Raxivace wrote:I don't think the famous "episode 24 plothole" will ever be filled lol.TBH, if I was ever able to interview Anno, the first thing I'd ask him wouldn't be anything about meaning or significance or symbolism or psychology or philosophy or any of that "loldeep" shit: it would be "what the hell is going on in ep. 24?!"
It's been a while but yeah. I seem to recall him being the one who called BOAN "cinema's original sin", and that always stuck with me.Eva Yojimbo wrote:It also kinda sucks that all of these happen to be great films too. Like, if they were mediocre films it wouldn't matter and be easy enough to avoid. You ever read Ebert's review of BOAN? It's pretty much the definitive take on the matter, IMO.
Ah that makes me feel better.Nah, don't worry about it man, no reason to feel shitty and you didn't cross a line. It just brought up some sour memories from that place. Still, it was nice to write that in a context where at least I feel like it could be understood/appreciated. Playing Witcher 3 worked me up more than that. :) (I'm actually serious about that; during the month that I played Witcher 3 my resting heart rate was about 10 beats higher than normal!)
Yeah I'll never get where that disconnect is coming from. It's not like even these don't have the problem of watching, say, the MCU movies and thinking those endorse any particular religion just because Thor is running around.I even remember once saying that had Anno picked some ancient religion nobody would be having this problem, but because he picked the world's biggest religion people seem to naturally assume he must be saying something about that religion. It's a little weird how people wouldn't assume if he used, say, Norse mythology that he was endorsing or commenting on it as a religion, but because he used Christianity he must've been commenting on the religion in some way.
Lol, of course the first line here when I open the link is about Asuka's boobs.I don't know either. It also reminds me of the whole "crossplosions were foreshadowing" thing that I once proposed that turned into a whole controversy. My basic thing was "Anno used stuff like crossplosions to set up a symbol/device that he probably knew he was going to use later," and people weirdly didn't think this was foreshadowing. That thread's a bit of a clusterfuck to wade through, though.
Yeah we're in agreement here.I actually think that bolded bit is pretty spot-on. Every symbol/reference in NGE is pretty shallow taken individually, but when you add them up and consider them together it does go much deeper, and I almost feel like what Anno's saying is that, in order to get people looking past the superficial he used these symbols as a way of provoking that kind of reflection and view. It's basically what I've been saying for ages about NGE presenting this superficial, traditional, mecha-anime like veneer early on, but then using all of its various devices to rip through it later on to get to what it was all really about, to the point that surface is completely gone by EOTV, and in EOE it's re-established only to be completely fucked up by all of the allegorical stuff.
I believe Xard did major in that, yeah.It's hard to tell sometimes! I mean, I don't want to cast everyone there in one single, broad stroke, but I often did get the distinct impression in many discussions on there that I was talking to people who really hadn't spent much time thinking about this stuff. That said, I'm sure my philosophical ramblings probably came across similarly to Xard who had (or was at the time) studying philosophy in-depth and, I think, was even a philosophy major in college.
Wait what's the deal with Peterson? I know people dislike him but I've never really looked into him before.This is also kinda something that someone like Jordan Peterson has taken up today, though I dislike most of his politics and idiosyncratic use of common terms without clarification.
I didn't care much at all for Double Falsehood itself when I read it back in college. I think its very much a case where everything else surrounding it- the debate around the play's authorship, Lewis Theobald and his goofy ass life, Arden Shakespeare and if they should have even sold the play under their label or not etc. are much much more interesting than the play itself.Speaking of which I still haven't checked out Double Falsehood or any of the stuff revolving around it. Really should get to it if only for completion's sake. Still, a lot of the plays he co-wrote aren't very good themselves. It's amazing reading the Henry VI trilogy to see just how far he came by the time of writing Richard III, not to mention Henry IV/V.
I guess. That kind of thinking is just so foreign to my own that I can't even put myself in the position of truly thinking that way. Even when I consider the many number of times my brother has almost died it's never been "Oh thank you Jesus thou art in heaven" that goes through my head when he luckily ends up okay, it's been "Oh thank god we have competent medical professionals again" (The latter here of which has not always been the case).Not that I think that's actually true, but I think perhaps that's where some people's intuitions go to, especially if they have a naturally religious/spiritual bent.
![[laugh]](./images/smilies/imdb_laugh.gif "laugh"){kind=small}
When I rewatch Eva I'll try and pay attention to this again.I still think that it might just be something wonky in the English translation. Surely they couldn't have just inserted this huge plothole out of nowhere, right?
![[gonemad]](./images/smilies/gonemad.gif "gonemad"){kind=small}
.What stuck with me with his review is the quotation about BOAN being like witnessing the birth of melody, and that great quote that that it's not a bad film because it argues for evil, but a great film that argues for evil, and to understand how it does so it is to understand a great deal about film and evil.Raxivace wrote:It's been a while but yeah. I seem to recall him being the one who called BOAN "cinema's original sin", and that always stuck with me.Eva Yojimbo wrote:It also kinda sucks that all of these happen to be great films too. Like, if they were mediocre films it wouldn't matter and be easy enough to avoid. You ever read Ebert's review of BOAN? It's pretty much the definitive take on the matter, IMO.
Did you ever see Rebirth of a Nation? A guy named DJ Spooky tried to take a hiphop approach to the movie by remixing the movie in a way to undermine it. It had a pretty cool score too, though I kind of wish he went further with the whole project. At times it just feels like listening to a DVD commentary.
The intro to the film was put on YouTube as a trailer of sorts if you're curious.
Yeah, that thread was about stuff people didn't like in NGE. J_Faulkner was pretty rabidly against anything he considered remotely fan-service, and he (stupidly) included the EOE hospital scene, hence the discussion of Asuka's boobs. I don't know if that thread started the omnislashing thing, but it was definitely my general interactions with JF that provoked it.Raxivace wrote:Lol, of course the first line here when I open the link is about Asuka's boobs.I don't know either. It also reminds me of the whole "crossplosions were foreshadowing" thing that I once proposed that turned into a whole controversy. My basic thing was "Anno used stuff like crossplosions to set up a symbol/device that he probably knew he was going to use later," and people weirdly didn't think this was foreshadowing. That thread's a bit of a clusterfuck to wade through, though.
I remember reading the "Omnislashing" (A reference you will soon get once you finish FF7!!!) thread before, but I don't think I knew it sprung from a discussion about foreshadowing of all things.
I'll admit to finding it a little unusual to discuss the crosssplosions as foreshadowing at first (For reasons I'm not entirely sure why)...though thinking about it, people discuss stuff like the oranges in The Godfather the same way without batting an eye, and talking about the crossplosions that way really isn't any different at all. Its certainly easier to see the connection between Shinji seeing visions of crosses after killing angels before he himself eventually gets crucified and faces ego death than it is to see the connection between a delicious citrus fruit and getting murdered.
Maybe if the Godfather example had been brought up, that weird discussion about defining foreshadowing could have gone more smoothly. Perhaps history itself would have changed.
Also the talk of Anno retroactively making something from early in the series to match something at the end reminds me of how I'm like 99.99% certain that Lost did exactly that. If you ever get around watching all 60000 hours of Lost you'll have to remind me to bring it up.
Lots of geeks on there, I'm sure some got the reference.Raxivace wrote:I believe Xard did major in that, yeah.It's hard to tell sometimes! I mean, I don't want to cast everyone there in one single, broad stroke, but I often did get the distinct impression in many discussions on there that I was talking to people who really hadn't spent much time thinking about this stuff. That said, I'm sure my philosophical ramblings probably came across similarly to Xard who had (or was at the time) studying philosophy in-depth and, I think, was even a philosophy major in college.
I wouldn't cast that broad stroke either because, well, I myself was a member there lol. I think I'm even the last post in the Bible thread. I'm not sure if I ever told you this before but my user name on there was "The Killer of Heroes", a reference to a goofy video game villain that I think the members didn't get and thought was actually just edgelordy or something lol. :(
Man, how much time do you have? Peterson's a really hard guy to pin down, you almost have to take his ideas/opinions/beliefs piecemeal. I think he's fine when he's doing his Jungian analysis of fictional texts and The Bible. Most of this stuff isn't new/revelatory to me, but I understand how it can be for people who've never read Jung/Campbell and others who've written on these kinds of archetypes and recurring symbols, and he is often quite interesting in terms of what links he finds. He's also a clinical psychiatrist who's perhaps most famous for his "12 Rules for Life" book, which seems to me (I haven't read it, but I've read reviews and people talking about it) a kind of self-help book mostly aimed at young men (or perhaps young men are mostly just those reading it) who are kinda lost and anxious and stuff. It's kind of a "get your shit together" approach that has advice like "make your bed" (the idea being to start taking responsibility for getting your life in order and whatnot). I think that's all fine and well, but it's strange to me how many young men seem to act like he's some kind of guru, but some of that maybe a kind of cult of personality thing--he does seem to have that kind of magnetism that a lot of great/influential leaders have, more so than most "public intellectual" types I see.Raxivace wrote:Wait what's the deal with Peterson? I know people dislike him but I've never really looked into him before.This is also kinda something that someone like Jordan Peterson has taken up today, though I dislike most of his politics and idiosyncratic use of common terms without clarification.
I'd probably find all that stuff surrounding it interesting too. The whole mystery of Shakespeare's life and the plays is part of the allure, after all.Raxivace wrote:I didn't care much at all for Double Falsehood itself when I read it back in college. I think its very much a case where everything else surrounding it- the debate around the play's authorship, Lewis Theobald and his goofy ass life, Arden Shakespeare and if they should have even sold the play under their label or not etc. are much much more interesting than the play itself.Speaking of which I still haven't checked out Double Falsehood or any of the stuff revolving around it. Really should get to it if only for completion's sake. Still, a lot of the plays he co-wrote aren't very good themselves. It's amazing reading the Henry VI trilogy to see just how far he came by the time of writing Richard III, not to mention Henry IV/V.
I haven't read Henry VI though that reminds me that I still have the second season of The Hollow Crown to watch and they adapt all three parts of that across two films (As well as a third film covering Richard III but I've seen several versions of that already too). I really liked the first season, I should get on that next year.
Hah, I remember some comedian making a joke about this in that we should replace all the "thank you, God/Jesus" with "thank you medical science!" Also reminds me of a porn I once saw where the woman was saying "Oh, Jesus!" and the guy said "My name's Manuel, not Jesus." She laughed, and later he was saying "Oh God" and she said "My name's (whatever it was, I forgot!), not God!"Raxivace wrote:I guess. That kind of thinking is just so foreign to my own that I can't even put myself in the position of truly thinking that way. Even when I consider the many number of times my brother has almost died it's never been "Oh thank you Jesus thou art in heaven" that goes through my head when he luckily ends up okay, it's been "Oh thank god we have competent medical professionals again" (The latter here of which has not always been the case).Not that I think that's actually true, but I think perhaps that's where some people's intuitions go to, especially if they have a naturally religious/spiritual bent.
Okay maybe I use "Oh thank god" as an expression without even thinking about it, but that's more a quirk of the atheist experience in America at this point.
It's just that, the entire finale of 24 is Kaworu going to the basement and seemingly being surprised to find Lilith and not Adam, so how in the world could they insert a scene where SEELE tells him where Adam is? Thing is, that entire scene just really made confusing what in the world Kaworu's plans were, what SEELE's plans were, and what the hell they were planning together. Just none of it makes any sense, and it's all because of one damn scene they inserted afterwards. It's just utterly bizarre.Raxivace wrote:When I rewatch Eva I'll try and pay attention to this again.I still think that it might just be something wonky in the English translation. Surely they couldn't have just inserted this huge plothole out of nowhere, right?
Before I think I settled on it just being a goof (Especially with Rebuild 1.11 immediately telling us and Shinji upfront that its Lilith down there, avoiding that whole weird narrative strand entirely. It of course doesn't even come up in 3.33 either and that's largely a remake of Ep. 24 (Of course this all assumes that trying to determine Anno and co.'s thinking on NGE from something he/they made years and years later after the fact is even possible, anyways.)). The whole "Is it Adam or Lilith in the basement" mixup thing is such a bizarre plotline to begin with that even without the 24' plothole I might honestly consider it something of a mark against the series.
A translation issue is possible, not that I could help identifying or fixing a possible one.
