Unpopular Geek Media Opinions

[Zaukrie]

Unpopular opinion: Pendantic and boring are the heart of this website. We're been discussing an evolved tabletop wargame for over 20 years.

I agree that for some, this is true.

 

[Reynard]

If "Die Hard" isn't a holiday movie then I would posit that neither is "Home Alone."

I mean, it isn't. Both films have derivative sequels not centered on Christmas that are basically the same movie. The presence of tinsel doesn't make a movie a Christmas movie.

 

[payn]

I hope it's taken as it is meant. Generally love this place.... probably blocked less people here than any other site.

It was, I liked the comment. Also, Matty Matheson is the best Canadian ever (Sorry Ryujin)

​

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

This is a good one because I am a Bob fan. Though many of his albums were stinkers that sold well because of his good stuff. Generalities again.

Im not disagreeing, but a number of his films are rated higher than they ought to be; in my unpopular opinion.

I'm going to quote my favorite source ... MYSELF!

I'm pretty sure I've told this story before. I was eating at a Japanese restaurant on a date; at another table was a boisterous group of younger individuals. At one point, one of the individuals who was loudly trying to impress the rest of the table about his knowledge of Japanese cuisine (which seemed to go a little further than the California roll, but not as far as sashimi or udon) started talking about how much he loved sushi and Japanese food, and how much better it was than the terribly pretentious food at other places.

At that point, he said, "What have the French ever done for world cuisine, anyway?" Not with irony, either.

Two of the things I try to argue against here (with varying degrees of, um, lack of success) are-

1. A failure to properly contextualize history.
2. Reverse "snobbery" (aka, anti-intellectualism).

I think that both of these tend to make me a little grouchy. Taking them in reverse order...

Coming from a long line of geeks, I can remember a time when "geek culture" was marginalized. When the so-called "cool kids" hated anything that was considered intellectual, or smart, or what we would commonly associate with geek culture. Now, of course, geek culture is mainstream. And now that it is mainstream, we have seen the enemy, and he is us. So we have people saying how comic book movies are the greatest things EVAR, and that people who like other movies are all pretentious snobs. Which ... yeah, it's the same thing, different say. Except it's extra infuriating because it's our group that's now the "in group" and that's behind a lot of this. And for those reasons, I see a lot of dislike of Scorsese because he made the mistake of calling out (disliking) mainstream movies. Nothing to do with his talent, or his opinions- and it reminds me a lot of the old "NERDS!" put downs, except now it's the nerds doing it. There's something gravely wrong with the strain of anti-intellectualism that comes from "our side."

Second, we often lose context of how revolutionary or important things were at the time. Citizen Kane is a perfect example- quite simply, a lot of modern cinema vocabulary was invented (or, at a minimum, synthesized) in that film. It can be hard to see now because we are all living in a post-CK world. Or, to use Bob Dylan ... from the vantage point of today, most people don't truly understand how revolutionary he was for the time, or, for that matter, why anyone would even care about the 1965 Newport Folk Festival (big deal, he used an electric guitar ... guys at my high school do that all the time).

Take Scorsese- let's just forget about all the things he did in terms of the visual craft. Just think about the effect he had in terms of using music in movies; it's impossible to imagine a modern movie that doesn't pay homage to Scorsese's use of music, starting with Mean Streets. Arguably, the entire idea of the "needle drop" in the visual medium is because of him.

Now I'm not accusing you of either of those things, BTW. There are people that don't appreciate Kubrick. Or Tarantino. Or Renoir. Or Fellini. Or Kurosawa. Or Bresson. Or Bergman.

But I find it difficult to call a director who is certainly in the Top 20 all time, easily, to be overrated (and certainly top 5 American Directors). Now, if you wanted to say, "I don't understand why Hollywood keeps giving him these giant budgets for movies that don't make much money," well, that I could certainly get behind.

 

[trappedslider]

Unpopular opinion: Pendantic and boring are the heart of this website. We're been discussing an evolved tabletop wargame for over 20 years.

it's better than YET ANOTHER argument about star wars lol

 

[payn]

Now I'm not accusing you of either of those things,

Hard to believe.

 

[Bedrockgames]

If anything, the issue that Scorsese has is similar to Citizen Kane- his work is so profoundly good and influential, that it's hard to fully understand how amazing some of the early stuff is because it's been thoroughly copied by every single person that has ever gone to film school. It's a cliché, albeit a true one, to note that Joker is simply a bad mashup of early Scorsese.

This is a big issue with a lot of older movies (I don't think Payne has this particular issue as he does seem knowledgable about films when I have seen him comment on media). But with Scorsese he has been imitated so much people don't always understand the innovation. I was talking about the Michael Winner movie with someone on a podcast the other day. The character Bronson plays is an assassin who meticulously plans his murders, listening to classical music while doing so. One of my first thoughts was the old "oh the hitman with a classical soundtrack" but then it occurred to me, I couldn't think of a movie prior to this where that had appeared (not saying the Mechanic was the first to do it, just that I recognized an old trope, almost lightly critiqued the film for using it, but I had to check myself because for all I knew, it was the film that started it (and not saying it was, it just turned out in the podcast that me and the other people couldn't think of a film that did it before, unless you include something like A Clockwork Orange---which we agreed is doing something slightly different). And to be doubly clear, nothing wrong with a movie having a hitman who listens to classical music while planning (it was just more of a mental note than an actual critique).

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Hard to believe.

 

[Willie the Duck]

Re: Christmas movies -- I feel the question of "Is _________ a Christmas movie?" is right up there with "Is a hot dog a sandwich?" (or the more evocative question: 'is cereal soup?' ). There is so little consensus on the matter* that the term is useless. Hearing someone else describe something as a Christmas movie tells you nothing about the film unless they've given you a step-by-step rundown of their qualification criteria -- in which case they probably could have simply told you what the movie was about.
*other than that the concept of Christmas must appear in some form within the film.

Re: Scorsese -- he's definitely a case of having the good fortune of living past the point of peak output. His early work speaks for itself. What perhaps frustrates many is that he failed to get Oscars for his seminal works*, but instead much later for rather inferior works*. That one has to chalk up to an entire industry not built around those awards actually going to the best product. An interesting point of comparison to Scorsese and Dylan might be Dave Arneson. There's a continual low-intensity discussion churn over how important Gary and Dave were to the hobby, whether their major contributions were really all that important, etc. Eventually the discussion almost inevitably comes down to after the initial 1970-74 pre-game/proto-game era (once the original D&D product was published and out the door), Gary went on to make and run TSR for many years**, while Dave pretty solidly crashed and burned in short order. I've always found it interesting the wonder whether that later period really ought count on the scale of whether the earlier contributions be deemed important. I know I don't hold musicians and directors to the standard of forever producing masterpieces (and it not tainting their early work in my eyes), and suspect the Janis Joplins and Curt Cobains of the world would follow the same trajectory as Dylan, had they survived past their peaks).
*sometimes because the work wasn't recognized at the time for being as transformative as it was; other times because some other directors was getting effectively a lifetime achievement award/'sorry your best work didn't get this' consolation
**which in turn pushed out of the way some of the best works of other producers, in a continual cascade of industry machinations.
***with various caveats about how impressive that is and how much any success was his doing

I am not sure whether I am more curious about the bad edit or the fact that someone out there knows enough about the movie to notice and comment on it

It was a movie we (boys of a certain age in 1984, or who rented VHS tapes with parents who didn't realize the problem some years later, or who had TBS some years later for the edited version) all saw. When you describe the actual action

Spoiler: spoiler

(obtaining sex from a woman through deception, and her having a positive response to the eventual discovery thereof)

, it's mind-boggling. However, it didn't stand out as an outlier nearly as much as it should given the juvenile male-audience comedies of the late 70s/early 80s.

The actual edit is very straightforward: just omit the offending scene, and to heck with the continuity issues. I saw the movie as a rental* first, so when I saw it again on TV I noted the absent scene but didn't think through the ramifications. A friend was watching as well, and asked why the female character was now working with the protagonist side. In explaining it, only then did I realize how messed up it was.
*someone's 12th or 13th birthday sleepover, along with Porky's and Animal House.
A similar situation worked better for an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. They started watching a prospective bad movie (The Sidehackers), decided 'yep, this is terrible, let's go with it' and started production before finishing the movie. Eventually they did and realized that the third act was instigated by the antagonist fridging the protagonist's girlfriend in a violent murder-rape that they could not edit to be viewable on basic cable in their timeslot. So they just cut the scene. We return from break to the movie (+silhouettes of MST cast) to the next scene, Crow turns his head to the audience and says, "For those of you playing along at home, Rita is dead." It worked okay-ish given the already pretty fractured experience of watching an MST3K show for the actual movie.

Now, if you wanted to say, "I don't understand why Hollywood keeps giving him these giant budgets for movies that don't make much money," well, that I could certainly get behind.

I've heard that there's some really weird financial incentives in moviemaking, but have not followed up on it enough to speak authoritatively. I get the impression that having to write off a poorly performing new Scorsese movie is low enough of a financial hit that the mere possibility of just one more runaway success is worth the risk. Also that, even if it's the same production company, the actual risk expenditure might be a bundled debt and owned by who-knows-who, so each of these poor-performers-in-search-of-a-hit are independent risks taken. If I had more free time, it'd be an interesting* thing to follow up on.
*I was an economics minor BitD, so I do enjoy untangling these financial stories.

 

[payn]

This is a big issue with a lot of older movies (I don't think Payne has this particular issue as he does seem knowledgable about films when I have seen him comment on media). But with Scorsese he has been imitated so much people don't always understand the innovation. I was talking about the Michael Winner movie with someone on a podcast the other day. The character Bronson plays is an assassin who meticulously plans his murders, listening to classical music while doing so. One of my first thoughts was the old "oh the hitman with a classical soundtrack" but then it occurred to me, I couldn't think of a movie prior to this where that had appeared (not saying the Mechanic was the first to do it, just that I recognized an old trope, almost lightly critiqued the film for using it, but I had to check myself because for all I knew, it was the film that started it (and not saying it was, it just turned out in the podcast that me and the other people couldn't think of a film that did it before, unless you include something like A Clockwork Orange---which we agreed is doing something slightly different). And to be doubly clear, nothing wrong with a movie having a hitman who listens to classical music while planning (it was just more of a mental note than an actual critique).

Yes. I think you can both find an appreciation for ingenuity, creativity, and historical significance in artist's work. I think a certain legacy gets attributed to some folks that makes criticism often difficult. Like everything they do gets an automatic C because they did Citizen Kane, Blood on the Tracks, etc...