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| billyweeds |
 Posted: Sat May 12, 2012 4:50 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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| Tim Burton is one of the most unreliable filmmakers around. When he's on point he's wonderful. Ed Wood and Beetlejuice are great films. But most of the time his movies are absolutely dreadful. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Sat May 12, 2012 4:53 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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| Must stop for a moment and opine as to how Ed Wood and The Apartment seem to stand alone in their inspired use of black-and-white wide-screen. Are there any other "CinemaScope"-type b&w movies that use the frame so brilliantly? (This is not a rhetorical question; I'm truly interested in finding such movies.) |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Sat May 12, 2012 11:05 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6958
Location: Black Hills
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I hope Marc is right and the "it ain't Shakespeare, but at least they're reading" thing means another gen gets hooked on books. The good thing about books is you only need one good hit (like crack or meth) and you're hooked.
Yeah, Burton is unreliable. And my film copain wants to see Dark Shadows, apparently taken in by a fast-talking critic. I'm not sure what makes for inspired use of B/W widescreen, but there must be a western or two out there that does it. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Sat May 12, 2012 3:42 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 14498
Location: Houston
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| But Bart, the trouble isn't what they are reading (though of course it bothers me that incoming freshmen have never read On the Road and only a very few have read The Great Gatsby). It's that, by and large, they aren't reading at all. That's my basic point. People think because Twilight or Harry Potter or The Hunger Games sweeps the nation, this is inculcating a love for reading that lasts a lifetime. That's not what I'm seeing. Most of the kids who get swept up in these series don't seem to be going on to anything else. And more adults are reading Young Adults books than the teens they are written for (and what that says about adult literacy I don't even want to contemplate). |
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You've got a great brain. You should keep it in your head.
-Topher |
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| yambu |
| Posted: Sat May 12, 2012 4:23 pm |
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Joined: 23 May 2004
Posts: 6441
Location: SF Bay Area
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| One reading theory is that, in general, interest in books flag at around age eleven. That's the time to introduce them to graphic novels, as a bridge back. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Sat May 12, 2012 4:57 pm |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6958
Location: Black Hills
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Quote: That's not what I'm seeing. Most of the kids who get swept up in these series don't seem to be going on to anything else.
You seem to be in a position where you can observe this kind of trend, so yeah, you're alarming me. I would hate to see the Beats, or Vonnegut or Salinger, or others you mention, become unread classics. Every generation has some classics that vanish over some kind of horizon - e.g. I don't know if many baby boomers (like me) have read the Brontes, unless they were English majors. But you want some core of literature to endure, something that's not juvie fantasy that's cranked out by "name-brand" authors. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Sat May 12, 2012 5:12 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 14498
Location: Houston
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My students literally do not know what the phrase "the Beats" means. Nor have they heard the titles On the Road, Howl or Naked Lunch. Mind you, these kids are not brainless. They are quick witted, generally hard-working, and they apply themselves. But they've grown up in a culture where reading isn't encouraged or valued (though somehow, being published is), and most have gone to public schools devoted to George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind test-preparation form of education. I call it "All Children Left Behind."
And it isn't a sudden new shift. When I'm out at the bars, talking to men in their late twenties, or their thirties, and I ask what they like to read, the immediate answer 9 times out of 10 isn't "romance" or "detective stories" or "science fiction." It's "I don't read." And they mean it.
It's odd. My slightly older generation, Gen X, reversed the trend for a while. We read a lot. We even brought back authors the universities ignored but we sought out on our own (Hemingway, Steinbeck). And public school education was no great shakes in our day, either. I don't understand what happened. |
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You've got a great brain. You should keep it in your head.
-Topher |
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| Marc |
| Posted: Sat May 12, 2012 5:20 pm |
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Joined: 19 May 2004
Posts: 8424
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"I agree that Dark Shadows looks awful, but read most of the reviews and it looks like the critics have fallen for it. It was predicted to be huge at the box office. LOL."
Billy,
A 43% rating on Rotten Tomatoes means 57% of the critics did not fall for it. And it looks like it will gross approx. $28 million for the weekend. That's pretty much a bomb when you consider the Depp/Burton factor. I will still go see it. |
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| inlareviewer |
| Posted: Sat May 12, 2012 5:27 pm |
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Joined: 05 Jul 2004
Posts: 1949
Location: Lawrence, KS
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billyweeds wrote: I agree that Dark Shadows looks awful, but read most of the reviews and it looks like the critics have fallen for it. It was predicted to be huge at the box office. LOL.
Not quite all of the critics fell -- Uncle Kenneth, as ever the voice of cinematic discernment at the blog, er, paper of L.A. record, put it thus:
L.A. Times: Calendar: Review: 'Dark Shadows' is a lesson in Tim Burton's quirks
What a shame. I so loved that show in my childhood, though it hasn't exactly held up as a model of sophistication or technical prowess in reruns, but, still...Deep sigh. |
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"And take extra care with strangers/Even flowers have their dangers/And though scary is exciting/Nice is different than good." --Stephen Sondheim |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Sat May 12, 2012 6:22 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 14498
Location: Houston
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| I wish they'd had the guts to play it straight, rather than making it an in-joke yock-fest. Easy to point out what was silly or cheesy and try to blow the series away with a budget larger than the cost of the entire series over its five year run. Harder to try to equal it on its own terms. |
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You've got a great brain. You should keep it in your head.
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| bartist |
| Posted: Mon May 14, 2012 8:59 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6958
Location: Black Hills
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| We saw it last night. It had some funny beetlejuicy moments, great (as noted in LA's link) production design, and Depp was fine in his usual eccentric mode (bewildered by the changes in the world since 1780), but the plot was thin and then completely drowned in an SFX orgy for the last 20 minutes or so. There were no other compelling characters, really no other characters more substantial than cartoons, so you get a film that is little better than Addams Family Values. My copain and I enjoyed it because (a) we had no direct experience of the original series, and (b) we both enjoyed the period soundtrack, with everyone from T. Rex to Karen Carpenter, and an Alice Cooper cameo (it's funny how, if you've always looked wasted, you show your age less). |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| Ghulam |
| Posted: Tue May 15, 2012 11:36 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 4742
Location: Upstate NY
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| Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness (2011) is an uplifting biography of the Yiddish "Mark Twain". It is one of the best documentaries I have seen in recent years. You feel as if you are right there in the midst of the Fiddler, his daughters and a host of East European Jews. Interesting commentary by various biographers, scholars and his grand daughter Bel Kaufman whose novel 'Up the Down Staircase' became a very popular movie. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Fri May 18, 2012 9:40 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6958
Location: Black Hills
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Fri May 18, 2012 9:49 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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To me it sounds unwatchable, and what I've seen I wish I hadn't. I am so over SBC it's not even funny--in two ways. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Fri May 18, 2012 11:14 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6958
Location: Black Hills
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I saw Borat once and didn't feel that it was over. However, the opening of this, also today....
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1435513/
...might be a bit more earthshaking.
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