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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   2204 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for January 5, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Yes. A good film is like a good song. Part of the experience is the tempo - how it flows and how it carries a feeling throughout. If you drop it and come back later, the continuity is lost the same way your favourite song is ruined if you keep pausing it every 30 seconds.

Example: Uncut Gems is a tense movie! It's stressful! It doesn't let up for two hours straight, and then when you finally get to the end, the last scene very much cashes in on it having taken you for that exhausting ride.

Uncut Gems is a miracle of writing, directing, and acting.

Even in films that are well written, it's pretty common for me to sort of detach and think, "Oh, this is the redemptive scene. This is the contemplation scene. This is the remorse scene." And I'm not a very talented cinephile. I think it's just incredibly difficult for a director to utterly absorb the audience for 2+ hrs straight.

But Uncut Gems! I can't imagine how much attention had to be paid to every line of the script both in writing it and then acting it out on screen. It's like a swiss watch in terms of complex integration yet almost no extraneous material.

People look at me funny when I claim that Adam Sandler is one of the most talented actors/filmmakers of our generation, but his "dumb comedies" are pretty much the platonic ideal of "dumb comedy" and that one time he does do a "serious" movie we get movies like Punch Drunk Love and Uncut Gems.

Adam Sandler is the Steven King of movies. Follow me here...

Sure, there's the obvious "high brow" vs "low brow" argument for each. For Sandler, Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore dick jokes aren't en vogue for the thinking man. He laughs at the laconic wit of Fargo and thinks everything by Wes Anderson is what the children (der kinder!) ought to be watching. Same thing with King - paperback horror? Oh, goodness! Why not spend your time reading the claaaaaaasics Stoker, Shelley, perhaps some Lovecraft?

Pure cultural classism, to be sure. But there's a deeper element - doing the basic things right.

Sandler makes you laugh with a good joke that's straightforward with an easy, but well delivered, punchline. Steve King writes a good story. Plot. Characters. Scenes crafted with a mood that's spooky.

I think that so many of their detractors are envious that they can't do the damn basics right, but think they have the "higher level" stuff mastered. This should be expected from a society (the PMCs) that values a sort of personal branding and individuation highly, and often is involved in careers where objective measurements of common factors of performance are rare or impossible. Sandler and King are basic and non-esoteric, so they have to deliver on the meat and potatoes level. Sandler; you laughed. King; you got spooked. There is no avenue for them to appeal to some sort of abstract rubric of "inventive, thoughtful insight." They're playing an old game with defined rules that's been done a lot before. They're not standing on the shoulders of giants, they're being compared to them.

Sandler is good (and King) because they've been in the arena on purpose for a long time. Anybody who's putting a straightforward product out like that again and again over decades has my respect.

I think you might be legitimately on to something here and would encourage you to expand upon it.

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