Movies that I just don't get

[pezagent]

Now THAT'S funny! Quentin Tarantino is empty but Tony Scott...well, now you're talking classic filmmaking! ;-)

lol, that made me laugh... what I meant was that it wasn't directed by QT... I'm not a big TS fan although I enjoy RS obviously...

I still like PA...

/johnny

 

[buzzard]

Once again, you're stepping over the boundaries that I've already set up with you. I told you that when people get abusive with me I'll confront them. I think you're an abusive jerk and I don't like you at all. I would say this to your face without hesitation. So please don't be offended if I don't speak to you anymore for the duration of my lifetime. I don't want people like you in my life.

Boy, I'm gonna cry myself to sleep now. Sniff, sniff.

buzzard

 

[takyris]

That's your interpretation. Perhaps if you asked for clarification before jumping to conclusions we wouldn't be having this next generation conversation. I'm not responsible for your interpretation of my opinions. That's why people ask questions.

Perhaps if you used some of that crisp, clean dialogue training you've gotten from reading all the great works, misinterpretation would not have been an issue.

Well that's fine, but I seriously don't understand what you're talking about. That's why I'm asking you what you're talking about. I don't know what a "messed up" situation is. I also don't understand the "wish fulfillment for geeks power fantasy" stuff. Could you be more specific by citing actual movies? This might help the conversation.

Hm. Lessee...

The hero who everybody hangs onto despite the fact that he's a brooding, rude, borderline antisocial person. I dislike it in American Badass Cinema as well, for the record, since yes, there are a fair number of rude, antisocial jerks among the "heroes" of American cinema.

The cliche of the clueless geek surrounded by hot magical chicks who love him, but they can't tell him, and he never figures it out. You're honestly telling me that you've never seen this in any anime? That's the power fantasy wish fulfillment garbage to which I am referring. Or, possibly, "gangly teenage kid gets a combat-suit and then blows up eight buildings and a bunch of enemy tanks".

You dislike dialogue that doesn't advance the plot. I dislike long periods of watching a hero brood on a cliff overlooking a valley, or on the edge of a cave, or at the edge of the fire. The female interest almost always goes out to check on him to find out why he's so driven and commited and what secret pain lurks i his heart and so on and so forth. Reverse the genders, and you've got the ice queen who is iron-willed and will never admit that she loves the ordiary joe, until the end of the movie, where she sacrifices herself for him (or, optionally, stands over his dying body and admits that she loves him just a little too late). This whole "Our relationship consists of denial of the relationship" cliche doesn't do it for me at all. I've enjoyed it once or twice -- Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon had beautiful acting that conveyed it well enough to make it seem plausible. But in general, boring and annoying.

(Please note: Not a value judgment on anime. Now that I've stated that explicitly, I realize that it ties into my personal likes and dislikes. As a writer, I always throw setting in at the end. Ergo, scenes that are designed to emphasize setting while not advancing anything else really don't do it for me on film. Similarly, pretty effects don't do it for me -- I wait for the DVD and watch stuff on my TV, because effects generally don't impress me -- and one of the attractions of anime, I have heard, is the beautiful art and effects, which, for me, are nothing more than vehicles for dialogue and plot and character.)

So you're going to stereotype people by assuming that all anime fans don't know the good stuff from the sex anime?

Not necessarily from sex anime, but from bad anime... yes. Yes, I am. At least, by my standards. People who self-describe as anime fans are likely to have entertainment values that are way out of whack with regards to mine. That's not to say that they're bad people, but yeah. If you describe yourself as an anime fan, chances are that you prioritize elements in your enetertainment experiences that are different enough from mine that it's unlikely you'll be able to really point me in the direction of stuff I like -- or that you'll agree with me as to which stuff is good and which stuff is bad.

This comes from somebody who liked "Spirited Away" and "Mononoke" and plans to watch the one by the same guy that has the dirigibles in it. I also liked the first few episodes of "Ranma", because I found it funny -- although the later stuff didn't impress me.

Note: Will check out "Lain".

Do they? I think you're generalizing. There's no proof to suggest fans of one genre are different than fans of another.

Well, yeah. I'm not writing my Master's Thesis. I'm writing a post on a messageboard in a thread dedicated to talking about stuff we don't like. Of course I'm generalizing. Welcome to the Internet.

But now that you bring it up, I'm not sure that I would trust someone who described himself as a fantasy-movie lover to tell me what was good and what was bad, if I weren't a fantasy-movie lover myself. There are movies that appeal to both fans and non-fans (ie, LotR, which has gained even non-fan appeal), and there are movies that are really only for fans of the genre (like the D&D movie).

If someone who wasn't an action-movie fan asked me what was good and what was bad, I think my answers would be radically skewed. Actually, I KNOW they'd be skewed, however much I tried to account for it. As a fight-scene snob, I love some atrocious movies because they have good fight scenes, and loathe some not-bad action movies because their fight scenes were lame. (Blade 2... wretched, awful, laughably bad fight scenes)

Yes, we're talking about the same movie. That you found it stupid may reflect your own personality, not mine. Most people I know and enjoy spending time with find it to be one of the best Anime movies ever made.

That most people you know and enjoy spending time with feel that way may reflect your choice of friends, not mine.

In regards to the "hero anime cliché"--what other sorts of hero's do you know of?

Well, there's this wacky concept I call "Character Development". Campbell's discussion of archetypes is a good starting point for the traits by which a character's deepest goals can be established, and by which a good writer can frame out the general path that they're going to take -- but I don't recall Campbell saying anything about you needing nothing more than that archetype. If all you have is the archetype, you don't have an archetype -- you have a stereotype. And I found Ninja Scroll to be your stereotypical anime-fantasy-badass story.

And yes, familiar with Campbell, thanks. Please, tell me to read more stuff. I always love that. I don't generally give out reading assignments in my posts, because I find it somewhat high-handed, but hey, go pick up Joyce's "Ulysses" or "Henry IV, Part I" or "The Red Violin" -- not because they relate to the topic, but because I've read or watched them all and want to show the world how smart I am.

It's a real joy to watch. I think you are jaded for some reason. Maybe you had a bad experience, ate some bad Japanese food or something...???

It's a real joy to watch... for you. Have you read the title of this thread?

And my bad experiences were actually along the lines of anime fans telling me that I had to watch this, it was the best thing ever, and then, when I watched it and didn't like it, it was because I wasn't intelligent enough to understand it.

Which is, really, a bit like what you're doing.

The only reason the anime discussion is continuing is because it really seems to have you worked up. Up until now, most of the discussion was along the lines of "I hate this..", "Oh, you hate it, I like it, but yeah, not everybody does".

I never said that your opinion is the result of a lack of education, did I? Or was that your interpretation of what I posted?

Well, given that we all observe the world from behind our own eyeballs, it is, of course, my interpretation rather than an indisputable objective reality. But I'm not the only one. Didn't someone back there quote you and your greater education line?

 

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

Mmmmm.Yeah. Mmmm. We're going to have to move your desk again.

But they switched from the Swingline to the Boston stapler, but I kept my Swingline stapler because it didn't bind up as much. And I kept my staples for the Swingline stapler... No, it's not ok because if they make me... if they take my stapler...I'll have to set the building on fire.

 

[takyris]

Random side-note: Loved "Office Space", mostly because I started working at a dot-com that month and we went as a group as a Friday movie-day thing. The door with the static-charge... That WAS my office.

 

[barsoomcore]

Ninja Scroll sucks. This is by the same guy who gave us Vampire Hunter: D, which also sucks.

Sucks rocks. Crap writing, crap design, crap animation. Do NOT watch these movies because you will hate yourself in the morning.

Lain is interesting -- long and dull, but interesting. Er.

 

[takyris]

Is Vampire Hunter-D the one with the teenaged girl getting attacked by ribbons or tentacles or something in the pool and blowing them all up and coming out of the pool nekkid, and having some old woman tell her that she can't have any sex until after she's defeated the ultimate evil? With golf clubs being swung, too?

Or was that a demon hunter instead of a demon hunter?

 

[barsoomcore]

Yeah, you got it. It's that anime, you know, with the nekkid girl? You know, and the rape scene? THAT one?



Just to give you a hint of how lame Ninja Scroll, the very first scene in the movie -- our hero walks across a bridge, chewing on a rice ball. Bad guys attack, and he tosses the rice ball into the air.

Guess, I mean just GUESS what happens before the rice ball comes back down. No, go on, you'll never get it.

Gee, never seen THAT before.

 

[Corinth]

Is Vampire Hunter-D the one with the teenaged girl getting attacked by ribbons or tentacles or something in the pool and blowing them all up and coming out of the pool nekkid, and having some old woman tell her that she can't have any sex until after she's defeated the ultimate evil? With golf clubs being swung, too?

Or was that a demon hunter instead of a demon hunter?

Vampire Hunter D is a male half-vampire, properly called "dhampir" but often called "dunpeal" for some reason or another, and he specializes in the hunting and execution of true vampires.

There are two movies featuring this character. IMDB entries for each are found at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090248/ (for the 1985 feature, released in the U.S. in 1993) and at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0216651/ (for the far better 2000 release). They aren't connected; both are stand-alone stories.

 

[Dinkeldog]

Ninja Scroll sucks. This is by the same guy who gave us Vampire Hunter: D, which also sucks.

Oddly enough, I like both of those. Guess our tastes differ. Funny how people can like different things, isn't it?