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Thread: the LAST FILM YOU'VE SEEN thread

  1. #301
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    So, we are having a discussion about Sahara. NICE! I'm glad I reviewed it. ;)

    Yeah, who's Ron?

  2. #302
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    “Now we have something to much on.”

    Pardon, I don’t understand the expression.

    “Tab Uno: "Your response would suggest that this isn't the first time you have made such general comments before and made other people have to respond in the same manner. It would seem that there must be something to my original comment then to which you haven't or won't directly address. Either (1) you just want to make a point that avoids the work of having to explain your point thus making everybody else have to work harder, (2) you really think your point is so obvious and likely acceptable that nobody need apply, (3) you love the attention and being different, or (4) you like hearing stuff in stereo (coming at you multiple times through each year and like having these type of conversations."

    1. I was making a quick chirpy comment in reply to arsaib4 not you by the way.

    2. Obvious yes, acceptable, does it really matter.

    3. I don’t give a flying f*** for attention, and you are extremely arrogant to make such a presumptious remark. This petty stupid comment really annoyed me.

    4. The only person I’ve heard this from before was you!”

    Tab Uno: "It's not what is presented, but how it's presented. It's been said that everything that's ever been made in the mass media can be summed up in "The Illiad and the Odyssey" and "The Bible" and all storylines are derived therefrom. In thinking back on movies such as Lost in Translation, even Charlie (with Oscar winning Cliff Robertson, originally based on a short story), and Dogville - storylines can be simple (not nessarily weak) and be a fabulous movie. Even "Touching the Void" was simple but great. What was great about Sahara was the lack of gimmiky of effects? What effects are you talking about. What was refreshing about Sahara was that it was more real than most action-adventure films we've seen...Indiana Jones and the Mummy are gimmicky. Let me see you make your case about gimmicks regarding those two franchises and come back to Sahara then.

    Tabuno you’ve lost me there! What the hell are you talking about, your tripping over your own comments, what on earth does gimmiky of effects mean?

    Tab Uno: "What was different was that there wasn't any effort to add gimmicks or special, special effects just for the effects. Don't you find that refreshing? Finally a movie that doesn't depend on Jewel of the Nile with a jet fighter plane that crashes through a marketplace, loses its wings and blows up a wall...now how about that for gimmicky. You make an argument from a negative, complaining about what's not in the movie. What's refreshing is that Sahara devotes its energies on the acting, the behavior, and actual race, not some strange supernatural monster...perhaps its you that's caught up in the fancy world of exciting, impossibilities and you can't admit it?"

    I give up, your statements and arguments just don’t make any sense. Did you see either of these films, both were laden with CGI and special effects and yes a lot of them were gimmicky, the horrendous sail board thing built out of a crashed plane for example.

    Also, please stop making stupi presumptuous remarks of a personal nature, it doesn't help your case does it!

    Tab Uno: "Thanks for your extended comment here on Sahara. I enjoyed the richness of this movie, the experience...I wasn't interested in the convoluted complexities of strange going ones. The movie going audiences have become hypnotized by such large scale productions that offer up some much thrills that we've become zoned out automatons waiting for our next fix. Like Lost in Translation, the movies strength and beauty lie not so much in the bombs and explosions but in the effort, the singular human struggle against real odds. It's the focus on the long human pain and turmoil in the movie, of course its long, but this movie is a test of endurance and I was transported into that experience, not having to be distracted by gimmicks. The wind storm unlike The Mummy was a real natural phenomenon. I enjoyed the movie for its true joy of the adventure not action."

    Strange isn’t it, it doesn’t bother me that you liked the films! But I don’t believe that everyone should have the same opinion as me and I can tolerate and understand the thoughts, ideals and opinions of others.

    If you noticed the first phrase of my original comment was Wow! I was delighted to find that someone had a very different view to me.

    Trevor826: "Just one thing though, why Tabuno do you find it hard to accept anyone elses opinion if it differs with yours and whatever happened to your sense of humour and how's Ron doing?"

    Tab Uno: "Because we are so...so...so...so...far apart on this movie it's so...so...so...hard to believe without further explanation how someone could find this movie so bad when I found this movie to be so good. My logical/emotional mind just can't conceive of what kind of person such opposite pole could be like and what would constitute a good movie...it's like I'm talking to a Martian. You're not by any chance a Martian are you? I haven't tapped into some strange Twilight Zone Episode and receiving previews of "War of the Worlds" messages am I? Just what would you consider a great action-adventure film? I'm am lost in your discussion without a map. Who's Ron?
    -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    ...it's like I'm talking to a Martian. You're not by any chance a Martian are you? I haven't tapped into some strange Twilight Zone Episode and receiving previews of "War of the Worlds" messages am I?


    Who's Ron?

    Tabuno and arsaib4, does that answer your question?
    The more I learn the less I know.

  3. #303
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    I think Sahara's an easier film to argue for as a bad movie than Napolean Dynamite, which I just viewed. I found it made me uncomfortable and depressed. To me, it was very poorly made. Me against the world on this one, methinks.
    "So I'm a heel, so what of it?"
    --Renaldo the Heel, from Crimewave

  4. #304
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    Have to agree with you HorseradishTree, Napolean Dynamite did OK in the cinemas in the UK but did incredibly well on DVD rental, there must be something I missed because I had it listed as top of the worst films of last year.

    Cheers Trev.
    The more I learn the less I know.

  5. #305
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    I think there were much better candidates for the worst film of 2004 than Napolean Dynamite, but, overall, I didn't like it either. It felt incoherent and exploitative. It seems like American indies have lately been focused on these types of characters and their inferiority complexes.

  6. #306
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    I've little doubt there were worse films, luckily I avoided them plus of course it was only my own opinion, I know many think it was a great film.

    Cheers Trev.
    The more I learn the less I know.

  7. #307
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    Count me in. I love Napolean Dynamite. It's very droll, and it invents a whole little world. Mostly, it's a young people's movie, and a teenager I know was surprised I listed in in my ten best US. But older friends didn't get it.

  8. #308
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    Napolean Dynamite Was Good!

    Napolean Dynamite was shot just north of where I live and in fact I've passed by the drive-in several times during the past year that's used in the movie. This movie really has been a quiet hit around my community and even have had some of the actors come out to various events in the State (I happened not to have gone to any of them).

    At least I'm consistent in my taste for movies! Sahara, Napolean Dynamite.

    Getting back to Sahara. I really feel a little worried about those people who didn't like Sahara and beginning to wonder what kind of action adventure movie they do like. I haven't come across any mention of any, so I'm beginning to think there's something off about the whole action-adventure genre and not this particular movie that people are complaining about since I've been researching regarding the progressively improving mass, popular movie phenomenon.

    As for tevor826, his responses about something being so obvious so why even post it really is justified in that if something is so obvious than it's a waste to post it because it doesn't add anything to the discussion of film. As for becoming offended by my remarks, particularly the one about attention, you've missed by inclusive logical modifers in my either, or statement I made. Because you are so brief in your statements, you leave much up to interpretation and leave yourself open for criticism and open to many assumptions such as the four possibilities I listed, none of which I knew for sure if what you meant. Thus, apparently you have a way of generalizing statements into global ones thus finding condemnatory comments where there were none intended.

    Trevor826 you are the one who brought up the term gimmicks in the first place, I assume you know what you mean since you used those word. Again it would be helpful if you would expand on your meaning of words so that I don't fall in a trap attempting to assume what you mean. I'm afraid if you can't understand the difference between the word "what" and "how" something is presented, I can't very much help you. I could say something more, but I better not.

    "The horrendous sail board thing built out of a crashed plane for example." A nice example trevor826. I have to say I was torn in two directions on this one. I can understand and feel something of what you mean regarding this obvious contraption, yet on the otherhand, I have to say that there is something much more basic and simple in what the final contraption became...sometimes the ingenuity and simplicity of something is quite delightful to me - to use wind power. When I think of all the other action adventure movies, this contraption seems to pale in comparison to gimmicky and horrendous - it almost seems feasible, not impossible and that's what action adventure movies are all about.

    The problem I have with somebody with a polar opposite opinion than mine is that somebody just say so without anything more. I can't believe that film is so subjective that there are not some asethetic prinicples around which one can talk. For all I know, films could be discussed as if they were colors or flavors and we could say I enjoy red and you like black, or I like strawberry and you like pineapple. Brevity is sometimes interesting but for something like film criticism, it's too easy to get away with just stating a position and from my perspective be lazy about it and offer nothing to the discussion except one's feelings about a movie without expanding knowledge or wisdom and for me that's a waste of everybody's time and that's what makes me mad, not that somebody has a different opinion. It's someone with an opinion that appears to have no foundation or support.

    I hope we're not talking about Ron Hubbard and scientology and Tom Cruise and The War of the Worlds.

  9. #309
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    Strange bedfellows

    I don't want to link Napoleon Dynamite with Sahara, about which the buzz is bad, and which I haven't seen. Let me quote a couple of reviews. The hard-to-please Michael Atkinson of the Voice on Napoleon Dynamite:
    Hess has the low-budget-comedy wastrel deadpan—the one Jarmusch stole from Warhol, and Wes Anderson has made semi-mainstream—down to a science, and his dry pause-and-cut idiosyncrasies are Swiss-timed. But more than anything, the film is an epic, magisterially observed pastiche on all-American geekhood, flooring the competition with a petulant shove.
    The easy-to-please Roger Ebert on Sahara:
    It's like a fire sale at the action movie discount outlet.
    Apart from the apparent contrast in quality,why should these two movies be linked? What could they possibly have in common? What is "consistent" about liking both of them? What good can it do either one to link them -- a high school geek comedy pastiche and a grab-bag action adventure sequence with "an amused, cocky smirk" (Stephen Holden in the NYTimes)? As far as I can see, liking Sahara as well does nothing to recommend Napoleon Dynamite and doesn't show consistent taste.

  10. #310
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    On the other hand. . . .

    Maybe it should be obvious, but I do want to make clear that I agree with tabuno on one thing, though, and that's the general point that these forums shouldn't just be a place to emote about our personal likes and dislikes but for discussion and argument and sometimes even hopefully mutual agreement, after a discussion, despite disagreement to start out with, about the merits of films on aesthetic and various other grounds. I want to go into any film with an open mind and I want to see its merits and at the same time cooly assess its faults. So if you, tabuno, like Sahara and Napoleon Dynamite and that doesn't make any particular sense to me, that's fine and may argue for an openness of mind on your part. But there still isn't any logic behind linking those two here, that I can see.

  11. #311
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    Chris, one of my problems with Sahara, at least expanding on my dislike of it is very simple; I saw it quite a while ago, on the opening day in fact (mainly because I wanted to catch 2 Penelope Cruz films that weekend) and I will not suffer watching it again just to remind myself why I thought it was so bad in the first place.

    Trev.
    The more I learn the less I know.

  12. #312
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    trevor, I wasn't saying that you have to convince me of anything, since I haven't even seen it but I suspect I would be more with you than tabuno on its merits or the lack of them, but if you want to defend your position on a film, you need to remember it somehow or other beyond the first week of seeing it. Train your eyes and brain man, take notes, whatever. "It's no good but I don't remember why" doesn't hold up in a discussion.

  13. #313
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    Guess I'd better stick to films I actually enjoy then, it's always easier to argue the plus points and I'm always more than happy to view them again to justify a point of discussion.

    Cheers Trev.
    The more I learn the less I know.

  14. #314
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    If you don't want to dwell on a film you don't like, that's the best policy, you can stick to defending your faves.

  15. #315
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    Sahara and Napoleon Dynamite

    The link between between Sahara and Napoleon Dynamite is that I enjoyed both movies. The reason that I like both these movies is different for each of them since they are different genres and there is really not linking them other than the ability for someone to be able to see both movies and rate them favorably. I think it was trevor826 who disliked both movies thus I would believe that it would be possible to like both movies also.

    Sahara I liked as I mentioned because of its simplicity and it's more straight forward storytelling without trying to be fancy and complicated.

    Napoleon I liked because it was focused less on the popular people than on those individuals usually left out of crowd and ignored. I was able to see a rare glimpse of the side of life that rarely gets much attention.

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