AI, Kubrick, Spielberg etc

Touchy are we, stevetseitz? You think my comments are about you? Hm...you know, I think you may have a point though. My experience from another chatroom regarding Red Dragon over at Yahoo has crept into how my previous message about personal venom became generalized to this forum, a forum which isn't as nearly as personally degrading or immature. Still, I do like how "docraven" handles criticism however and I feel such critical comments are very good even if I disagree and I stand by my positive regard about "docraven." I'm willing to retract my comment about personal venom, I haven't had my shots from the whiplashing I get elsewhere.

Certainly glad that we have such opinionated users who express themselves with gusto. A good barometer for a post is to ask yourself if what you are writing is something you would say to someone in person. If technological buffers (websites for example) serve as divisive tools and not as ones of communal benefit, then we fail the unique opportunity to express ourselves with people we otherwise would not know. That being said, dont hold back too much...ROCK ON!

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I don't think it was much of a stretch on my part to assume that up until docraven's comments the only person you have been debating with in this thread has been myself. You have been generally in agreement with jacobic216.

If you were not referring to my comments, I'll just have to assume you were just venting based on some other message board. In the future, since we can't keep tabs on everyone's message board antics on other websites maybe we should just keep the comments to the topic at hand.

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Talk about lack of clarity. What the hell does this mean?

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It's simple. I was referring to the digital mat that they used at ILM. It's called recycling. Cartoons do it all the time.

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4. The Coen Brothers made "The Hudsucker Proxy" and "The Man who wasn't there". Kubrick made "Barry Lyndon" and "The Shining". David Lynch made "Dune". None of these films are that great. I don't want to hear anything about a 6 hour director's cut of Dune floating around the net. The Sci-Fi channel series seriously outclassed Lynch's effort.

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I could care less what the sci-fi channel, critics or anyone else says about Lynch or any of my favorite film makers, films etc.

I thought all of the above movies were great for the most part. The only exception, Barry Lyndon is a masterpiece as a work of art but its entertainment value is extremely low. I'd never dispute someone claiming it's not great.

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jacobic216 thinks Kubrick, the Coen Brothers, and Lynch never made a poor film. That is his assessment, but it is not a universal truth. It is a judgement. stevetseitz thinks some of the Kubrick films are overrated, and he finds, for example, “Dr. Strangelove” to be very boring after the first viewing. That, too, is a judgement. I have different opinions, but they, too, are only opinions.

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I think that Dr. Strangelove is the greatest movie ever made. My sides split every time I watch it, Peter Sellers is brilliant and the concept has yet to be redone in such a satiracal light. I have met many people who don't like it but that is their right and I respect that even if I take an offensive. I have a need to know what they disliked about it. It tells me something about the person.

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jacobic216, What can you do? While I don't have a lot of connections, I have access to community resources and information here in the community. There is growing interest in the arts and movies in the State.

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This is my first forum and I have never put up my own website. My experience is hands on, mostly. I do a lot of writing and editing in my spare time. Sometimes I'll take out my camcorder and do some shooting but mostly I sit here and work on something else. If you ever do run into someone that can use me, let me know.

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what matters is whether or not it is good art (or whatever scale you wish to create). These judgements, of course, are individual, although some films are obviously admired by discerning viewers more than others.

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I couldn't have said it better myself.

stevetseitz, you seem to be a very serious person.

With the exception of Spartacus, all of Kubrick's films have one thing in common: they have one or more characters who find themselves in an intolerable situation and cannot seem to break out of it.

A.I. fits the bill. His interest must have been the moral angle- a robots' synthetic love & the importance of that. People always wonder how Kubrick picks his stories. He is on record as saying that criminals and soldiers fascinate him- as they do not take life for what is. Meaning, Kubrick doesn't/didn't take life as it is. He also said as much:
"Man is adrift in a rudderless boat on an uncharted sea. The sheer meaninglessness of life forces man to create his own meaning"

I like that.

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Originally posted by jacobic216
FYI: It seems to me that the AI at the end are the very same mat that Lucas used to create the cloners in Attack of the Clones. They are identical in design and both done by ILM.

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Originally posted by jacobic216
It's simple. I was referring to the digital mat that they used at ILM. It's called recycling. Cartoons do it all the time.

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I got the general idea with your first remark. I just couldn't connect it to the topic at hand. I did see the ATTACK OF THE CLONES, and since I was disappointed in the film, I must have missed these figures. Or, I simply don't remember them. Did you find this visualization effective in either A.I. or ATTACK OF THE CLONES? Did they work better in the STAR WARS prequil?

I know you were just offering it as a bit of information.

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Originally posted by Johann
With the exception of Spartacus, all of Kubrick's films have one thing in common: they have one or more characters who find themselves in an intolerable situation and cannot seem to break out of it.

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I know SPARTACUS is an exception to the rest of Kubrick's films because he had less control over the final product, and he was unhappy about it. Nonetheless, the film is about people who find themselves in an intolerable situation, and try as they might, they cannot break out.

In many ways Spartacus was free. He was almost a symbol of freedom.

Yes, he was crucified at the end, (sad scene with his wife & child) but he was able to break out of his prison as a gladiator, start a real rebellion, and basically have SOME redemption in his life. In Kubrick's other films the main "oppressed character" who cannot break out of their situation never actually sees worthwhile results from their oppression.

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Originally Posted by stevetseitz

He can try and seperate himself from it all he wants but it wasn't Kubrick who made that horrible film! The blame lies fully at the feet of the ego-maniacal Spielberg.

Spielberg is a genius and when challenged, as he was in "Schindler's List" and "Saving Private Ryan" can produce fantastic films, but he needs to learn to quit meddling with the stories of others. He admits that he would have "shown the shark" in Jaws had it been functioning, but the limitation of NOT having everything forced him to be more creative! He turned "Jaws" from a potential B-movie into a classic. His extended ending of "Close Encounters" was awful. The studio was right to release the tighter version.

Spielberg had become this big icon of Hollywood and people don't have the stones to say "No! that's over the top." to him anymore.

Similarly, George Lucas has gone of the digital deep-end and become enamored with what he CAN do instead of what he should do.

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You made some good points here, Steve. If you're still around, please post again. I've reconsidered A.I. since this thread began, and I still love it, but Terry Gilliam has a point with it being "a frustrating film"- what are we to make of that ending? If someone had stopped the movie halfway through and asked me what I thought would happen to David, I would've said something like: "re-uniting with his mother". I've since learned Kubrick's ending would've been DEVASTATING. Spielberg kind of leaves us feeling like the movie's over, and yeah, so what? It's possible to have a mechanical, lifelike, programmed kid in the future that you can buy off the shelf. That's possible, right? We have plenty of artificial love on this planet already, right? Robots who "love" may be the new wave. The world already has lifesize lifelike human rubber dolls you can buy.

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Originally Posted by jacobic216

I did not find it to be amateurish. Rather, I thought AI represented Spielberg attempting to direct in the style Kubrick shot it. I think he pulled it off marvelously. Kubrick's films are more often than not slammed by the critics. Kubrick's films are always very dark with an ending of immence contraversy. Spielberg kept Kubrick's legacy of art rather than money alive. It shows that even for a man like Spielberg, it's not entirely dollars and cents.

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Bravo. This was a labour of love. It is cinema history just being a tribute/homage/thank you to his friend Master Stanley Kubrick.
I said the film was a masterpiece when I left the theatre then, and I still feel it is, but it's one of those "flawed" masterpieces. It has three acts, all different in light and tone, and the third act in the future is astonishing cinema, some of the most wondrous images I've seen, something REQUIRED if you're saying this is a co-Kubrick production...

The second disc of the DVD has excellent context and "making-ofs". Spielberg was under a lot of pressure to make this, he did it, A.I. exists, and I am so glad it does. Spielberg's heart is huge.

A.I.?

Due to the age of this thread and its vague title I couldn't tell what film you were referring to. I loved A.I., but have not watched it for a while. Sometimes endings are satisfying, sometimes not. It doesn't always matter, in my view. A.I. is about profound sorrow, alienation.

I was surprised to see the former contributor's reference to Barry Lyndon and The Shining as Kubrick failures. I admire both; Barry Lyndon's reputation seems to have improved lately. On the other hand The Hudsucker Proxy and The Man Who Wasn't There are not the Coen brothers' only flops. Romance and Cigarettes and The Ladykillers could also be mentioned.

A.I. was a hard but compelling movie to watch. It was both joyous and sad and thrilling and sad and happy. The movie, in other words, reflects authentic life in a different perspective, what any classic film accomplishes.

Well put, and it's nice to see you return to the thread 12 years later as if nothing had happened!

As Chris and I apparently disagree about Interstellar, I find it eerie that his comment about my post has echoes of the time flux in the movie Interstellar. Ooooo. Past, present, and future all exist at the same time.