Eh-eh-entertainment?..
Well, I'm awake at an ungodly time. (Yeah, 10 AM became an ungodly time for me as of lately; but in fact I had to wake up at 7, anyway, so I feel my point is justified.) Our New Year/Xmas holidays are finally over and the classes at the postgraduate have started again, and I decided that just for the sake of pertaining the remains of some kind of righteousness in my image I need to appear there at least once in two weeks. So today's the day. *heavy sigh*
That explained, you really should excuse my being grumpy...
Happened upon this page today, I think it was the movie review page for the Las Vegas Review Journal or some such thing. There was that critic (acclaimed? at least she's definitely their regular employee), Carol Cling. And she reviewed the movies of the last month, I guess. She and some other guys; they graded movies A to F, like, school grades. Clear enough.
I was brought to this page through a search engine, searching Apocalypto (yep, my latest fad, what can a girl do?..), and it was the first one on the list. Reviewed by Carol; graded at C+. I thought, okay, not bad, really. I'm not as mad a fan as to fervently claim that what I love is the absolute best. So I thought, "Okay". However, before reading the rest of the little passage she had to say about the movie I went through the rest of the list, mainly to see how the grades go in comparison.
Well, they were rather mild. There was only one D-, that was for Black Christmas, horror movies never quite struck it with critics, and I've never seen the movie in question, maybe it IS that bad. No clean A's, either, because otherwise who'd put CRITIC in 'critical reviews', right?.. So, we're dealing with about 7 grades, in fact: A-, B+, B, B-, C+, C, C-.
And when I started reading the titles I pretty soon saw the very familiar pattern. Most movies graded at B and higher, at least by dear Carol, were either socially or politically charged... and very explicitly so. The Queen (obvious); The Pursuit Of Happiness with its exploration of homelessness; The Good Shepherd (which might be interesting, but Carol kind of stresses the CIA-paranoid side of the movie as its best asset); Freedom Writers (also obvious); Children Of Men (which I loved to bits, but it IS socially charged, by its nature); Borat (which is NOT Ali G having fun, but is a shot at American prejudices; knowing the man, it's probably both); and of course Babel, which also needs no comments.
Left overboard, to C and less, of the movies I've heard of: Rocky Balboa, Perfume: Story Of A Murderer - and yes, Apocalypto.
Now, okay, I'm VERY biased with Apocalypto, that's true. Even though I loved the movie for the plot, for the idea and for the way everyone acted - they made me forget it was a feature movie, I swear, and considering most of them are first-timers, it's totally amazing; Rudy and his Mexican-Indian good looks were almost an afterthought - scrap 'almost', because fangirlism only hit me two weeks after seeing the movie. *sigh*
Good ole Rocky enjoyed the opening weekend of 6 million - I don't know whether it is any good yet, but it received enough praise from movie-goers for me to believe it is okay on the entertainment level at least.
And Perfume: Story Of A Murderer is a BRILLIANT movie. I don't like it; I didn't like the book and I don't like the movie, it's not my cup of tea, but it's exquisitely done. The way the transcribe smells on screen with images and sounds so that you can actually SMELL them - it is inexplicable to me and yes, I think it's a great achievement.
But ah! They're not political charged, AND they're violent.
Returning to Apocalypto (you knew I would, didn't you?.. I swear I only use it for illustrating my point... believe me... hehe!), I read the blurb on it. That's what it said:
Director Mel Gibson's latest delivers an intriguing, if deliriously overwrought, portrait of pre-Columbian life, as a young hunter (Rudy Youngblood) runs for his life -- and struggles to save his family from capture (or worse) by brutal Mayan invaders. "Apocalypto" plunges into blood and gore with almost crazed fascination. It's striking, all right, but some of us don't care to be struck -- especially when we keep getting hit right between the eyes.
Why am I bringing it up? Because, among other movies, Carol gave a B to Blood Diamond with DiCaprio. Blood Diamond is in no way less violent than Apocalypto that has just been so sternly told off. More, probably, because in Apocalypto I never noticed the violence, it kind of went with the plot and was never the focus of it, so it didn't distract my attention; in BD, it did. BD is also an action movie; and while the actors' performance is very decent it's not better than in Apocalypto (which is not my opinion alone - about every other critic out there commends the cast on that; they don't play in this movie, they live it). So what's the difference?
I knew as soon as I got to the part of BD's blurb that contained the words "delivers yet another socially conscious movie" - alright, thanks for clearing it up, mate...
The thing is, Apocalypto IS socially and politically charged, too. It has a lot of messages, if you care to see them. It touches up not only upon psychological issues and human-human relationship, but also on the social inequality, on the way the governing and religious figures lead people astray because people are negligent, on the ecological issues, even. But those messages? Not explicit. Mel tried to keep the movie's entertaining value untouched, and my HUGE thanks goes out to him for that, even though it did earn him a few "it's nothing but a Hollywood chase flick in a different setting" comments in the press. The messages are there, but oh grief, you have to WORK to see them. You kind of have, and I know it's horrible, but you really have to THINK.
So what I'm trying to say is... does anyone even remember the name for that industry that cinema belongs to? Need a reminder? I'll say it aloud:
ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY.
Entertainment. As in, for people to have fun. Sure, smart and serious movies are great. But how did it come to the point, where to be considered good (and not just "okay"), a movie has to be not only "socially conscious" but explicitly, in-your-face so?
To each his own, but I've got an opinion on that, and that's a very uncomplicated opinion, because it goes like this: this is all bullshit, and at 10 in the morning, this bullshit pisses me off.
End of rant.
Thank you. :)
Ah, found the original adress for the page I was talking about: NEON - Movies. And again, I'm biased, but I will stand my ground: Casino Royale and Happy Feet ended up among Carol's B's purely by accident...
That explained, you really should excuse my being grumpy...
Happened upon this page today, I think it was the movie review page for the Las Vegas Review Journal or some such thing. There was that critic (acclaimed? at least she's definitely their regular employee), Carol Cling. And she reviewed the movies of the last month, I guess. She and some other guys; they graded movies A to F, like, school grades. Clear enough.
I was brought to this page through a search engine, searching Apocalypto (yep, my latest fad, what can a girl do?..), and it was the first one on the list. Reviewed by Carol; graded at C+. I thought, okay, not bad, really. I'm not as mad a fan as to fervently claim that what I love is the absolute best. So I thought, "Okay". However, before reading the rest of the little passage she had to say about the movie I went through the rest of the list, mainly to see how the grades go in comparison.
Well, they were rather mild. There was only one D-, that was for Black Christmas, horror movies never quite struck it with critics, and I've never seen the movie in question, maybe it IS that bad. No clean A's, either, because otherwise who'd put CRITIC in 'critical reviews', right?.. So, we're dealing with about 7 grades, in fact: A-, B+, B, B-, C+, C, C-.
And when I started reading the titles I pretty soon saw the very familiar pattern. Most movies graded at B and higher, at least by dear Carol, were either socially or politically charged... and very explicitly so. The Queen (obvious); The Pursuit Of Happiness with its exploration of homelessness; The Good Shepherd (which might be interesting, but Carol kind of stresses the CIA-paranoid side of the movie as its best asset); Freedom Writers (also obvious); Children Of Men (which I loved to bits, but it IS socially charged, by its nature); Borat (which is NOT Ali G having fun, but is a shot at American prejudices; knowing the man, it's probably both); and of course Babel, which also needs no comments.
Left overboard, to C and less, of the movies I've heard of: Rocky Balboa, Perfume: Story Of A Murderer - and yes, Apocalypto.
Now, okay, I'm VERY biased with Apocalypto, that's true. Even though I loved the movie for the plot, for the idea and for the way everyone acted - they made me forget it was a feature movie, I swear, and considering most of them are first-timers, it's totally amazing; Rudy and his Mexican-Indian good looks were almost an afterthought - scrap 'almost', because fangirlism only hit me two weeks after seeing the movie. *sigh*
Good ole Rocky enjoyed the opening weekend of 6 million - I don't know whether it is any good yet, but it received enough praise from movie-goers for me to believe it is okay on the entertainment level at least.
And Perfume: Story Of A Murderer is a BRILLIANT movie. I don't like it; I didn't like the book and I don't like the movie, it's not my cup of tea, but it's exquisitely done. The way the transcribe smells on screen with images and sounds so that you can actually SMELL them - it is inexplicable to me and yes, I think it's a great achievement.
But ah! They're not political charged, AND they're violent.
Returning to Apocalypto (you knew I would, didn't you?.. I swear I only use it for illustrating my point... believe me... hehe!), I read the blurb on it. That's what it said:
Director Mel Gibson's latest delivers an intriguing, if deliriously overwrought, portrait of pre-Columbian life, as a young hunter (Rudy Youngblood) runs for his life -- and struggles to save his family from capture (or worse) by brutal Mayan invaders. "Apocalypto" plunges into blood and gore with almost crazed fascination. It's striking, all right, but some of us don't care to be struck -- especially when we keep getting hit right between the eyes.
Why am I bringing it up? Because, among other movies, Carol gave a B to Blood Diamond with DiCaprio. Blood Diamond is in no way less violent than Apocalypto that has just been so sternly told off. More, probably, because in Apocalypto I never noticed the violence, it kind of went with the plot and was never the focus of it, so it didn't distract my attention; in BD, it did. BD is also an action movie; and while the actors' performance is very decent it's not better than in Apocalypto (which is not my opinion alone - about every other critic out there commends the cast on that; they don't play in this movie, they live it). So what's the difference?
I knew as soon as I got to the part of BD's blurb that contained the words "delivers yet another socially conscious movie" - alright, thanks for clearing it up, mate...
The thing is, Apocalypto IS socially and politically charged, too. It has a lot of messages, if you care to see them. It touches up not only upon psychological issues and human-human relationship, but also on the social inequality, on the way the governing and religious figures lead people astray because people are negligent, on the ecological issues, even. But those messages? Not explicit. Mel tried to keep the movie's entertaining value untouched, and my HUGE thanks goes out to him for that, even though it did earn him a few "it's nothing but a Hollywood chase flick in a different setting" comments in the press. The messages are there, but oh grief, you have to WORK to see them. You kind of have, and I know it's horrible, but you really have to THINK.
So what I'm trying to say is... does anyone even remember the name for that industry that cinema belongs to? Need a reminder? I'll say it aloud:
ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY.
Entertainment. As in, for people to have fun. Sure, smart and serious movies are great. But how did it come to the point, where to be considered good (and not just "okay"), a movie has to be not only "socially conscious" but explicitly, in-your-face so?
To each his own, but I've got an opinion on that, and that's a very uncomplicated opinion, because it goes like this: this is all bullshit, and at 10 in the morning, this bullshit pisses me off.
End of rant.
Thank you. :)
Ah, found the original adress for the page I was talking about: NEON - Movies. And again, I'm biased, but I will stand my ground: Casino Royale and Happy Feet ended up among Carol's B's purely by accident...