The Curse of The Jade Scorpion (1 Viewer)

[silo]

lots of americans have seen it (and read stupid white men, even though it was nearly censored by the publishers and only came out after a protest by librarians...)

http://www.michaelmoore.com/

 

[potlatch]

motion graphics

Originally posted by Anne OMalley
I really like quite a few Woody Allen flicks, but "Morvern Callar" is way beyond anything Allen's ever done. Go see it, if you still can.

Apart from the deadly soundtrack, I still don't know what to make of Morvern Callar. It was kind of like two movies squashed together and not in a good way. Lynne Ramsay is a really visual filmmaker and captures the nearly unnoticable bits of everyday life really well but compared with Ratcatcher, it was a bit of a mess. It was stuck somewhere between Naked and Y Tu Mama Tambien (two amazing films) and it couldn't make out exactly what it was supposed to be doing.

That said, it's well worth watching - it's just not as together and forceful as Ratcatcher.

 

[egg_]

Originally posted by silo
- all american mainstream media is lowest common denominator mawkish crap. therefore, mike has got to do this too.

Seems to me Mike is a normal yank Joe Soap who probably grew up with that lowest common denominator mawkish crap, so that's just how he expresses himself.

I loved the film but thought some of his numbers sounded a little dodgy - like "can't blame gun deaths on poverty, cos Canada has higher unemployment than the US" ... but I'd guess that Canada's unemployed are a lot better off than unemployed yanks. Also, does gun deaths=murder rate? I wouldn't think so (though according to my 1990 world atlas the US does have by far the highest murder rate in the developed world)

Quibbles aside I intend to buy the film when it comes out on DVD as an illuminating historical document

 

[silo]

Originally posted by egg_
Seems to me Mike is a normal yank Joe Soap who probably grew up with that lowest common denominator mawkish crap, so that's just how he expresses himself.

i don't think so. i could be wrong, but my main impression is that michael-moore-the-persona and michael-moore-the-person are not as neatly in line as he'd like us to think, which means that at least some of what he does is contrived to fit with the aw-shucks act. he's not a normal joe soap.

 

[Goodbye]

Still though... Woody Allen's deadly isint he...

 

[Anne OMalley]

Now You Got Me Started

Whoa, whoa, hang on there. When you say Morvern Callar "couldn't make out exactly what it was supposed to be doing", are you sure you're not really saying that you couldn't make out what it was supposed to be doing?

And what's wrong with that?

There's an important difference between a documentary ("Bowling For Columbine") which is setting out to make points, and a fiction ("Morvern Callar") which may have no such ambition. What's the point of a Picasso? What's the point of "Ulysses"?

You can't just expect a piece of art to come forward and announce its intentions, or its aims, or whatever term you want to use. Art is not necessarily goal-oriented. That's what makes it such a special activity for us yoomings.

Maybe the fact that you don't know what to make of it should be embraced. Maybe that is precisely what makes it a strong piece of work - that we can't reduce it to the level of a sound-byte, or a pat message.

While "together"-ness might be a virtue of scientific or political discourse, it isn't necessarily a virtue of art. And when it is, the unity referred to is usually formal unity, not unity of content or message.

"Art" that has unity on the level of content is more like propaganda...

Originally posted by potlatch
Apart from the deadly soundtrack, I still don't know what to make of Morvern Callar. It was kind of like two movies squashed together and not in a good way. Lynne Ramsay is a really visual filmmaker and captures the nearly unnoticable bits of everyday life really well but compared with Ratcatcher, it was a bit of a mess. It was stuck somewhere between Naked and Y Tu Mama Tambien (two amazing films) and it couldn't make out exactly what it was supposed to be doing.

That said, it's well worth watching - it's just not as together and forceful as Ratcatcher.

 

[potlatch]

Re: Now You Got Me Started

Originally posted by Anne OMalley
Whoa, whoa, hang on there. When you say Morvern Callar "couldn't make out exactly what it was supposed to be doing", are you sure you're not really saying that you couldn't make out what it was supposed to be doing?

And what's wrong with that?

There's an important difference between a documentary ("Bowling For Columbine") which is setting out to make points, and a fiction ("Morvern Callar") which may have no such ambition. What's the point of a Picasso? What's the point of "Ulysses"?

You can't just expect a piece of art to come forward and announce its intentions, or its aims, or whatever term you want to use. Art is not necessarily goal-oriented. That's what makes it such a special activity for us yoomings.

Maybe the fact that you don't know what to make of it should be embraced. Maybe that is precisely what makes it a strong piece of work - that we can't reduce it to the level of a sound-byte, or a pat message.

While "together"-ness might be a virtue of scientific or political discourse, it isn't necessarily a virtue of art. And when it is, the unity referred to is usually formal unity, not unity of content or message.

"Art" that has unity on the level of content is more like propaganda...

Aye, I getcha. But disjointed works of art still have to have a reason to them. Don't get me wrong, it's still a really good film, I just thought that the ways Ramsay tries to get across the characters' internal lives didn't quite 'work' and since that's what the film rested on, I thought it was a bit of a problem. And this extends to the lack of direction in the film's visual style.

But since understanding people is usually guesswork anyway, the film illustrates that point, intentionally or not.

And anyway, why shouldn't fiction be able to say what it means anymore? Why shouldn't it be allowed to announce its intentions? There's something about all that death of the author crap that pisses me off.

 

[Anne OMalley]

Birth of the Reader

That's nothing compared to how it feels for the author...

But to answer your question briefly: in a world saturated by signs and signifying systems, it's easy to forget that not everything is available for our cognition, and therefore our mastery.

Don't you think we yoomins need reminding that we can't master everything?

That's one of the things art does - reminds us we're neither masters of our world nor of our selves.

Originally posted by potlatch
There's something about all that death of the author crap that pisses me off.

 

[Knacker]

Re: Re: Re: Now You Got Me Started

Originally posted by Anne OMalley
That's one of the things art does - reminds us we're neither masters of our world nor of our selves.

Would a tidal wave be considered a work of art?

 

[silo]

Re: Birth of the Reader

Originally posted by Anne OMalley
in a world saturated by signs and signifying systems...

i have a degree in this stuff too.

 

[Anne OMalley]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Now You Got Me Started

If you got swept away by it, yes.

(I was thinking of putting that "you" in italics, but didn't.)

Originally posted by Knacker
Would a tidal wave be considered a work of art?

 

[Speed Racer]

Re: Now You Got Me Started

Originally posted by Anne OMalley
You can't just expect a piece of art to come forward and announce its intentions, or its aims, or whatever term you want to use. Art is not necessarily goal-oriented. That's what makes it such a special activity for us yoomings.

Maybe the fact that you don't know what to make of it should be embraced. Maybe that is precisely what makes it a strong piece of work - that we can't reduce it to the level of a sound-byte, or a pat message.

Art is a visual language isn't it? What do you think of modern and post modern Art taking the piss out of Art? If Art is a form of communication, then surley alot of Art out there completely fails. I'd call alot of Artists frauds, pranksters. Is shock tactics the only thing left for them to explore?

Say for instance, you go to a Gallery. You stumble upon 6 paintings on a wall, each of them called 'untitled', each painting consisting of a couple of randomly placed black dots on a white background. No explanations. No notebooks nearby. Nothing. What is that Artist trying to say to the viewer? If its nothing then why bother having an exhibition at all? I think this kind of thing, which is sooo common in galleries now, is absolute shit. What do you think?

 

[Anne OMalley]

Re: Re: Now You Got Me Started

Music - instrumental music, that is - doesn't communicate things, it just does things.

And if you accept that, why do you expect paintings to communicate things?

Originally posted by Speed Racer
Art is a visual language isn't it? What do you think of modern and post modern Art taking the piss out of Art? If Art is a form of communication, then surley alot of Art out there completely fails. I'd call alot of Artists frauds, pranksters. Is shock tactics the only thing left for them to explore?

Say for instance, you go to a Gallery. You stumble upon 6 paintings on a wall, each of them called 'untitled', each painting consisting of a couple of randomly placed black dots on a white background. No explanations. No notebooks nearby. Nothing. What is that Artist trying to say to the viewer? If its nothing then why bother having an exhibition at all? I think this kind of thing, which is sooo common in galleries now, is absolute shit. What do you think?

 

[Pantone247]

Graphic design is about communication

but Art is about expression

Art is purely about expression in which ever way shape or form the artist feels works for them.

Its not meant to 'communicate' its more about the artisit putting a bit of themselves out there, and if it resonates with somebody out there, all the better.

 

[snakybus]

two "members" of Settler are piss artists

as in they do art with their piss on a wall on the way back from the battle cruiser

how's that for expression?

(better than the shite we do on stage says you wha wha)

 

[Knacker]

Originally posted by Pantone247
Graphic design is about communication

No it's not... it's about pricking about on Photoshop...

Ah no... art isn't about communication at all. It's about looking...

And sure enough... there may be a lot of shite in art galleries, but that's just like listening to an album and not liking it.

 

[Speed Racer]

Re: Re: Re: Now You Got Me Started

Originally posted by Anne OMalley
Music - instrumental music, that is - doesn't communicate things, it just does things.

And if you accept that, why do you expect paintings to communicate things?

Fair enough point, but some instrumental music works great as escapism, some falls completely flat (your imagination never takes the journey), its like you can actually feel them wanking with their instruments, like alot of Artists do with their brushes. I just think if the 'Art' be it music or otherwise doesn't give you an insight to the 'Artists World' , then its pointless.

I mean couldn't you just shit on canvases, arrange the shit into random shapes, hang it in a gallery and call it Art? Where do we draw the line and say thats fake, and this one here is real?

 

[Knacker]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Now You Got Me Started

Originally posted by Speed Racer
I mean couldn't you just shit on canvases, arrange the shit into random shapes, hang it in a gallery and call it Art? Where do we draw the line and say thats fake, and this one here is real?

You don't draw the line. That's the secret.

 

[Anne OMalley]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Now You Got Me Started

No way. You can't get away with that. They'd feck you out the door with your cax around your ankles.

Originally posted by Speed Racer
I mean couldn't you just shit on canvases, arrange the shit into random shapes, hang it in a gallery and call it Art?

 

[snakybus]

everybody draws the line

it's like being a vegetarian