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fleshing out chefelf's "wind" nitpick a harsh critique

#1 User is offline   dougte Icon

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Posted 28 June 2005 - 09:06 PM

link to full review

For those complaining about chefelf's "wind" nitpick, I think this review does a better job fleshing it out. I don't think it's so much a lack of wind that causes the nitpick, but the "digital clean" feeling throughout all three movies....


...After all, the Lucasian universe is drained of all reference to bodily functions. Nobody ingests or excretes. Language remains unblue. Smoking and cursing are out of bounds, as is drunkenness, although personally I wouldn’t go near the place without a hip flask. Did Lucas learn nothing from “Alien” and “Blade Runner”—from the suggestion that other times and places might be no less rusted and septic than ours, and that the creation of a disinfected galaxy, where even the storm troopers wear bright-white outfits, looks not so much fantastical as dated? What Lucas has devised, over six movies, is a terrible puritan dream: a morality tale in which both sides are bent on moral cleansing, and where their differences can be assuaged only by a triumphant circus of violence. Judging from the whoops and crowings that greeted the opening credits, this is the only dream we are good for. We get the films we deserve...



...All of the interiors in Lucasworld are anthems to clean living, with molded furniture, the tranquillity of a morgue, and none of the clutter and quirkiness that signify the process known as existence. Illumination is provided not by daylight but by a dispiriting plastic sheen, as if Lucas were coating all private affairs—those tricky little threats to his near-fascistic rage for order—in a protective glaze. Only outside does he relax, and what he relaxes into is apocalypse. “Revenge of the Sith” is a zoo of rampant storyboards. Why show a pond when C.G.I. can deliver a lake that gleams to the far horizon? Why set a paltry house on fire when you can stage your final showdown on an entire planet that streams with ruddy, gulping lava? Whether the director is aware of John Martin, the Victorian painter who specialized in the cataclysmic, I cannot say, but he has certainly inherited that grand perversity, mobilized it in every frame of the film, and thus produced what I take to be unique: an art of flawless and irredeemable vulgarity. All movies bear a tint of it, in varying degrees, but it takes a vulgarian genius such as Lucas to create a landscape in which actions can carry vast importance but no discernible meaning, in which style is strangled at birth by design, and in which the intimate and the ironic, not the Sith, are the principal foes to be suppressed. It is a vision at once gargantuan and murderously limited, and the profits that await it are unfit for contemplation.




The review was too harsh for my liking, but at least with the section I've provided the author has a point.

This post has been edited by dougte: 28 June 2005 - 09:10 PM

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#2 User is offline   barend Icon

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Posted 28 June 2005 - 09:26 PM

"an art of flawless and irredeemable vulgarity"

but he has a beautiful way with words...


i don't think he's being to harsh at all... i think he's making a very valid point, in a much less abrassive manner than i usually try to present it...
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#3 User is offline   Grosnob Icon

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Posted 28 June 2005 - 09:26 PM

QUOTE (dougte @ Jun 28 2005, 09:06 PM)
link to full review

For those complaining about chefelf's "wind" nitpick, I think this review does a better job fleshing it out. I don't think it's so much a lack of wind that causes the nitpick, but the "digital clean" feeling throughout all three movies....
...After all, the Lucasian universe is drained of all reference to bodily functions. Nobody ingests or excretes. Language remains unblue. Smoking and cursing are out of bounds, as is drunkenness, although personally I wouldn’t go near the place without a hip flask. Did Lucas learn nothing from “Alien” and “Blade Runner”—from the suggestion that other times and places might be no less rusted and septic than ours, and that the creation of a disinfected galaxy, where even the storm troopers wear bright-white outfits, looks not so much fantastical as dated? What Lucas has devised, over six movies, is a terrible puritan dream: a morality tale in which both sides are bent on moral cleansing, and where their differences can be assuaged only by a triumphant circus of violence. Judging from the whoops and crowings that greeted the opening credits, this is the only dream we are good for. We get the films we deserve...
...All of the interiors in Lucasworld are anthems to clean living, with molded furniture, the tranquillity of a morgue, and none of the clutter and quirkiness that signify the process known as existence. Illumination is provided not by daylight but by a dispiriting plastic sheen, as if Lucas were coating all private affairs—those tricky little threats to his near-fascistic rage for order—in a protective glaze. Only outside does he relax, and what he relaxes into is apocalypse. “Revenge of the Sith” is a zoo of rampant storyboards. Why show a pond when C.G.I. can deliver a lake that gleams to the far horizon? Why set a paltry house on fire when you can stage your final showdown on an entire planet that streams with ruddy, gulping lava? Whether the director is aware of John Martin, the Victorian painter who specialized in the cataclysmic, I cannot say, but he has certainly inherited that grand perversity, mobilized it in every frame of the film, and thus produced what I take to be unique: an art of flawless and irredeemable vulgarity. All movies bear a tint of it, in varying degrees, but it takes a vulgarian genius such as Lucas to create a landscape in which actions can carry vast importance but no discernible meaning, in which style is strangled at birth by design, and in which the intimate and the ironic, not the Sith, are the principal foes to be suppressed. It is a vision at once gargantuan and murderously limited, and the profits that await it are unfit for contemplation.

  The review was too harsh for my liking, but at least with the section I've provided the author has a point.


Not that I don't agree to a point, but the guy that wrote that sounds like a major jackass. You can be too educated for your own maturity, and the guy probably needs to wedge his head out of his own butt.
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#4 User is offline   dougte Icon

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Posted 28 June 2005 - 09:28 PM

QUOTE (Grosnob @ Jun 28 2005, 09:26 PM)
Not that I don't agree to a point, but the guy that wrote that sounds like a major jackass. You can be too educated for your own maturity, and the guy probably needs to wedge his head out of his own butt.



Yeah, if you read the review he sounds like an elitist prick.
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#5 User is offline   dougte Icon

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Posted 28 June 2005 - 09:30 PM

QUOTE (barend @ Jun 28 2005, 09:26 PM)
"an art of flawless and irredeemable vulgarity"

but he has a beautiful way with words...
i don't think he's being to harsh at all... i think he's making a very valid point, in a much less abrassive manner than i usually try to present it...



That was my favorite line from the review too. When I originally read it I thought, "that's all he needed to say."
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#6 User is offline   barend Icon

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Posted 28 June 2005 - 09:42 PM

that and: "Yoda, whose reptilian smugness we have been encouraged to mistake for wisdom,"

i want that review framed...

i don't care what you say about elitist ivory tower bastards, there was some wonderful phrases in that review.

he combines the sharp wit of oscar wilde with the brooding cynasism of chuck palanuik.

and that's what i want in a film review...

besides which, i'm a condescending elitist ivory toewer jerk too...
i just have the street smart charisma that allows me to go drinking with rednecks wink.gif
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#7 User is offline   dougte Icon

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Posted 28 June 2005 - 10:02 PM

QUOTE (barend @ Jun 28 2005, 09:42 PM)
besides which, i'm a condescending elitist ivory toewer jerk too...
i just have the street smart charisma that allows me to go drinking with rednecks wink.gif


That makes two of us. I used my GI Bill to learn from said ivory tower educators, but I'll never be able to rid myself of my midwestern roots (not that I want to).

Oh Lucas...what could have been! sad.gif

This post has been edited by dougte: 28 June 2005 - 10:03 PM

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#8 User is offline   JW Wells Icon

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Posted 29 June 2005 - 01:43 PM

Again, the irony is that the first few movies had sets that looked "lived in", seedy dive bars, backwater planets, etc. Sci-fi too often has a clean, spotless version of "the future".

Episode III alienated me so thoroughly that I watched some of the original films again to see whether my memories of them were unduly influenced by nostalgia, and I was struck by the comparison between the CGI spotlessness of the prequels and the occasional grubbiness of the original articles.
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#9 User is offline   Hari Seldon Icon

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Posted 29 June 2005 - 02:50 PM

QUOTE (dougte @ Jun 29 2005, 02:06 AM)
link to full review
  The review was too harsh for my liking, but at least with the section I've provided the author has a point.


Not harsh at all... everything is true. And very skilfully written.
"I prefer rationalism to atheism. The question of God and other objects-of-faith are outside reason and play no part in rationalism, thus you don't have to waste your time in either attacking or defending."

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#10 User is offline   Despondent Icon

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Posted 29 June 2005 - 03:17 PM

Yeah, that was harsh. Like lemonade on a hot summer day.

Thanks for the thread!
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#11 User is offline   DarthTherion Icon

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Posted 29 June 2005 - 03:34 PM

QUOTE (JW Wells @ Jun 29 2005, 02:43 PM)
Again, the irony is that the first few movies had sets that looked "lived in", seedy dive bars, backwater planets, etc.  Sci-fi too often has a clean, spotless version of "the future".


I always thought that part of the point of the prequels was to show the world of the Old Republic in its dying days, a pre-Empire world that was *not* run down and dirty, a world whose pristine surface concealed the filthy, interior corruption that would eventually overwhelm the system.

This reviewer sounds like one of those people who thinks using big words and semi-clever phrases is a substitute for actual intelligence and well-crafted arguments. Was it written by William F. Buckley by any chance? tongue.gif
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#12 User is offline   Chefelf Icon

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Posted 29 June 2005 - 04:14 PM

QUOTE (dougte @ Jun 28 2005, 09:06 PM)
For those complaining about chefelf's "wind" nitpick, I think this review does a better job fleshing it out. I don't think it's so much a lack of wind that causes the nitpick, but the "digital clean" feeling throughout all three movies....


Right. That's exactly my point. I don't give a rat's ass about air and wind, it's just clear in every scene that it's some actors against a green screen. This is why ROTS, and the other prequels, just feel so lifeless.
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#13 User is offline   yourUsername Icon

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Posted 29 June 2005 - 06:11 PM

Such pretty words... who the hell is this guy? rolleyes.gif

That's the problem with people today: as long as you deliver some kind of effect, with substance or not, people are bound to like it. Take, for example, this critique and the replies. This guy sounds like C-3P0 and comes off as spouting a lot of "pretty phrases" that I would bet he doesn't really understand what he's saying when he's saying them. But you know what?!? Who cares!?! Because it sure sounds cool! And to be an elitist prick is cool these days! Yeah, we're all bad-asses! rolleyes.gif Just admit most people are scared of amounting to nothing that we've learned to puff ourselves up and pretend to possess some form of advantage. Why must we always cover our own insecurities with such transparent bullshit? Put down the pretty phrases and eat a piece of f'n humble pie, FFS.

Not to mention that Lucas can buy and sell this guy's ass in one second flat. No, no, two seconds, because this guy would have to at least pretend that he has principles before he's proven to be full of shit.

You know, this reminds me of Fight Club. "We were raised by television to believe that someday we'll all be millionaires and movie stars and rock stars -- but we won't. And we'relearning that fact. And we're very, *very* pissed-off."
And the Space Monkeys are all a bunch of losers that think they are this great thing because they're following this guy that makes them believe they are demigods, without understanding the hypocrisy and BS of their own behavior, destroying things that are just like themselves while pretending to rebel against it.

This post has been edited by yourUsername: 29 June 2005 - 06:24 PM

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#14 User is offline   dougte Icon

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Posted 29 June 2005 - 07:07 PM

QUOTE (yourUsername @ Jun 29 2005, 06:11 PM)
Such pretty words... who the hell is this guy?  rolleyes.gif 

That's the problem with people today: as long as you deliver some kind of effect, with substance or not, people are bound to like it.  Take, for example, this critique and the replies.  This guy sounds like C-3P0 and comes off as spouting a lot of "pretty phrases" that I would bet he doesn't really understand what he's saying when he's saying them.  But you know what?!?  Who cares!?!  Because it sure sounds cool!... Why must we always cover our own insecurities with such transparent bullshit?  Put down the pretty phrases and eat a piece of f'n humble pie, FFS.

Not to mention that Lucas can buy and sell this guy's ass in one second flat.  No, no, two seconds, because this guy would have to at least pretend that he has principles before he's proven to be full of shit.

You know, this reminds me of Fight Club.  "We were raised by television to believe that someday we'll all be millionaires and movie stars and rock stars -- but we won't.  And we'relearning that fact.  And we're very, *very* pissed-off."


I agree with you that the guy sounds a bit smug, but if you can't acknowledge that he had some good points you're drinking some "Greivous Grape" flavored Kool-Aid...

And what does Lucas being able to "buy and sell [his] ass in a second" have to do with the substance of the argument?
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#15 User is offline   barend Icon

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Posted 29 June 2005 - 09:05 PM

QUOTE (yourUsername @ Jun 29 2005, 06:11 PM)
Such pretty words... who the hell is this guy?   rolleyes.gif 

That's the problem with people today: as long as you deliver some kind of effect, with substance or not, people are bound to like it.  Take, for example, this critique and the replies.  This guy sounds like C-3P0 and comes off as spouting a lot of "pretty phrases" that I would bet he doesn't really understand what he's saying when he's saying them.  But you know what?!?  Who cares!?!  Because it sure sounds cool!  And to be an elitist prick is cool these days!  Yeah, we're all bad-asses!   rolleyes.gif   Just admit most people are scared of amounting to nothing that we've learned to puff ourselves up and pretend to possess some form of advantage.  Why must we always cover our own insecurities with such transparent bullshit?  Put down the pretty phrases and eat a piece of f'n humble pie, FFS.


the important thing is that I understood what he was saying. It made sense, so unless it was a strange and unlikley coicidence, I dare say he did too...
rolleyes.gif

"Why must we always cover our own insecurities with such transparent bullshit?"

that sounds like a question better directed at Lucas. the man who keeps adding alterations and amendments to an already successful and appreciated franchise.

QUOTE (yourUsername @ Jun 29 2005, 06:11 PM)
Not to mention that Lucas can buy and sell this guy's ass in one second flat.  No, no, two seconds, because this guy would have to at least pretend that he has principles before he's proven to be full of shit.

You know, this reminds me of Fight Club.  "We were raised by television to believe that someday we'll all be millionaires and movie stars and rock stars -- but we won't.  And we'relearning that fact.  And we're very, *very* pissed-off."
And the Space Monkeys are all a bunch of losers that think they are this great thing because they're following this guy that makes them believe they are demigods, without understanding the hypocrisy and BS of their own behavior, destroying things that are just like themselves while pretending to rebel against it.


What reminds you of fight club?

you just used: "Not to mention that Lucas can buy and sell this guy's ass in one second flat." as an argument...

such an argument, falls far outside of anything fight club was ever trying to say...
(and again that particular quote is better suited to the people who think their special because lucas keeps updating their favorite films).

This post has been edited by barend: 29 June 2005 - 09:08 PM

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