[QuickTidal]

I'll see it as Eastwood makes good films normally, and I can weigh in properly after.

[worry]

On the same page, amph. Eastwood is a capable filmmaker no doubt about it, but It frankly reeks of hagiography with pretend 3-dimensionalizing of a pretty simple, murder-loving good ol boy. Oh he liked to kill foreigners AND he neglected his wife and kids to do it? Complicated guy, really interesting.

[worry]

I'm sure it's intense and effective along those lines and as a film (and I might eventually watch it on TV or something). But I'd compare it more to The Blind Side than anything else in terms of just how distasteful I find it.

[worry]

But it's also not like I'm gonna rush out and watch The Wedding Ringer instead of this. I'm not a monster.

[amphibian]

Briar King, on 20 January 2015 - 12:29 AM, said:

It's just like any of the other war movies since movies began. Ryan made Germans look bad, Platoon made Vietnam look bad, this is just fresher and still is happening today. Is it uncomfortable in some scenes???fuck yes it is but I almost promise it ll be up close to those 2 movies in yrs to come. It's a good movie yall should try it.

Saving Private Ryan didn't dehumanize or slant the Germans. They were either faceless shooters or the prisoners that were spared and then got back into the fighting.

Platoon did more to show how fucked up both sides were.

There's a crucial difference between these two movies and what Hurt Locker did or Zero Dark Thirty did.

Remember The Deer Hunter? That didn't inspire people to go out and hurt/hate the Viet people.

Even Black Hawk Down with its faceless masses rushing to shoot the white soldiers gave more respect to Aidid and the militia than Zero Dark Thirty did. Same with Three Kings which got into some hairy shit for a Clooney movie.

That's not even going back to stuff like All Quiet on the Western Front, Potemkin or many of the older war movies.

Heck, we can even go back to Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima to show respect for all involved in the twisted fucked up thing that is war in Eastwood's career.

I think this is strongly influenced by the sniper at the center of the story mostly being a racist lethal asshole.

[amphibian]

The Blind Side lady was shown to be kinda racist in the white man's burden sort of manner even if she did adopt Oher.

[QuickTidal]

amphibian, on 20 January 2015 - 03:07 AM, said:

There's a crucial difference between these two movies and what Hurt Locker did or Zero Dark Thirty did.

With ZERO DARK THIRTY...did we watch different films? The film I saw showed how fucked up both sides were. I mean it starts with ABOUT 25 minutes of brutal torture at the hands of the Americans. Just like PLATOON and SPR it was a cautionary tale about what war does to both sides. It was unflinching in its portrayal of the American side not being great...hell, they even talk about it in the script when Jason Clarke tells Chastain he's taking a break and going home and that she should too so she's not the last one holding the torture reigns.

[amphibian]

The twist is in how the torture successfully got the information.

In real life, the torture didn't get anything useful. Osama was turned in by people unarrested and untortured.

The movie presents a false choice between going down the path of evil to save many others or letting Osama get away.

[Illuyankas]

24 (mentioned favourably by Scalia in a pro-torture 5-4 Supreme Court decision) has a lot to answer for.

[QuickTidal]

amphibian, on 20 January 2015 - 12:57 PM, said:

The twist is in how the torture successfully got the information.

In real life, the torture didn't get anything useful. Osama was turned in by people unarrested and untortured.

The movie presents a false choice between going down the path of evil to save many others or letting Osama get away.

That's not really what I gleaned from it myself. But Kathryn Bigelow explains it better than I.

http://articles.lati...thirty-20130116

[amphibian]

That's an explanation of the artistic work she created - not the facts or what the audience will derive from that artistic work. Bigelow isn't interested in making the world a better place, not doing harm or creating the best movie possible. She's interested in making movies that make a lot of money and fit her artistic vision.

It's a similar difference to the one between Steven Erikson and Terry Goodkind. The Yearded One doesn't want to improve his actual writing skills or realize that what he's putting out in the world is not what he's intending to do or having its intended effects.

I say this as someone whose second favorite movie of all time is Point Break. Bigelow hasn't/won't accept that what ludicrousness goes in Point Break shouldn't go in Hurt Locker or Zero Dark Thirty if they're proper serious artistic works dealing with the wars in/on Iraq/Afghanistan/Terrorism. She did similar things in K-19 The Widowmaker too.

I adore Point Break, but the rest of her career isn't even remotely in line with the award nominations she's garnering. It's manipulative BS and the award-givers are falling for it akin to what happened with Crash.

http://www.slate.com...yle_s_lies.html

Chris Kyle (the sniper) wrote a bunch of lies about knocking out Jesse Ventura in a SEAL bar, about shooting two carjackers dead, then being let go by the police after, shooting looters in post-Katrina New Orleans and many other things. The man had many, many problems and he was basically allowed to kill a lot of people in a screwed up war in a manner may not have been all on the up and up - then he went home and started lying his ass off about a ton of different things in a way that revealed a racist, severely screwed up killer rather than a war hero.

And the movie likely doesn't go into those issues in depth. So... what's Eastwood doing vs. what he thinks he's doing?

This post has been edited by amphibian: 20 January 2015 - 04:11 PM

[QuickTidal]

amphibian, on 20 January 2015 - 03:35 PM, said:

That's an explanation of the artistic work she created - not the facts or what the audience will derive from that artistic work. Bigelow isn't interested in making the world a better place, not doing harm or creating the best movie possible. She's interested in making movies that make a lot of money and fit her artistic vision.

What the audience derives is wholly upon them, not the creator. The creator has his/her intent and that's it. Is it up to a painter to NOT paint something because it could be construed incorrectly and perhaps even harmfully by some people who view it? This is the mentality that caused the Vatican to remove pagan statues from St. Peter's Square and destroy them, and then all the junk from male statues.

If you were talking about say Michal Bay, I could align with the notion that "make a lot of money" was the intent...but Bigelow is one of the most integrity-based and picky film directors on the planet. Look at her filmography and see that she makes movies very sporadically. She's made only 9 feature films since 1982. She had long wanted to make a Joan of Arc film and toiled away at coming up with the best script she could before both Luc Besson's THE MESSENGER and its tv counterpart JOAN OF ARC came out and pretty much scuttled all her artistic plans. If she had been out for the cash she'd have mad the thing anyways and released it. I don't know that any artist is "interested in making the world a better place". Their goal is creation. Good or bad.

amphibian, on 20 January 2015 - 03:35 PM, said:

It's a similar difference to the one between Steven Erikson and Terry Goodkind. The Yearded One doesn't want to improve his actual writing skills or realize that what he's putting out in the world is not what he's intending to do or having its intended effects.

While I'm no supporter of Goodkind, that's kind of subjective in thought though isn't it? I'm sure there are fans of his who would rather disagree with that.

amphibian, on 20 January 2015 - 03:35 PM, said:

I say this as someone whose second favorite movie of all time is Point Break. Bigelow hasn't/won't accept that what ludicrousness goes in Point Break shouldn't go in Hurt Locker or Zero Dark Thirty if they're proper serious artistic works dealing with the wars in/on Iraq/Afghanistan/Terrorism. She did similar things in K-19 The Widowmaker too.

I adore Point Break, but the rest of her career isn't even remotely in line with the award nominations she's garnering. It's manipulative BS and the award-givers are falling for it akin to what happened with Crash.

Disagree, but I don't think we are going to agree here to be honest. I think I just see the films differently than you.

[amphibian]

QuickTidal, on 20 January 2015 - 04:21 PM, said:

What the audience derives is wholly upon them, not the creator. The creator has his/her intent and that's it. Is it up to a painter to NOT paint something because it could be construed incorrectly and perhaps even harmfully by some people who view it?

A painter could paint detailed schematics for a nuke or the home address and work/school/after-school care schedules of a family with three child beauty pageant daughters. It'd take a while and need exposure to the masses, but one could do it and see some awful consequences.

But they shouldn't.

There are indeed lines of thought and art that shouldn't be pursued or pursued as heavily as they are.

The creator bears some - not all - of the responsibility for what the audience experiences. They're the ones most in charge of setting up the context and situation.

[Jakovasaurus]

[worry]

amphibian, on 20 January 2015 - 04:50 PM, said:

The creator bears some - not all - of the responsibility for what the audience experiences. They're the ones most in charge of setting up the context and situation.

Particularly when they lie. I'm not saying there's no grey area for artistic liberty...we've all watched and enjoyed based-on-a-true-story films with plenty of variance from the truth I'm sure. Fact is though, some lies don't matter, some matter a little, some lies are cancerous rot...even in the context of art. As I've mentioned to Amph a long while back, I couldn't care less if Travels with Charley (Steinbeck) is largely fiction. On the other hand, I probably won't ever read A Million Little Pieces (James Frey) because the guy kinda gave me the creeps, but a lot of people seemed to get something out of it and it might outweigh the harm. This particular lie Eastwood is telling, for the sake of a good film, is unpalatable to me. He might as well be making The Lance Armstrong Story based on Armstrong's own books. That's the level of skin-crawly dishonesty here, except about a guy who shoots people to death.

[McLovin]

Yeah, there is a much more interesting film about exploring the tension between Chris Kyle the American hero and Chris Kyle the real guy. Too bad Eastwood went for the safe bet. But let's not forget he's the guy who gave us lecturing to an empty chair.

[QuickTidal]

Watched GONE GIRL tonight,

Spoiler

and while my wife and I both liked it for about 90% of it, the ending is a total fucking copout. But that's more on the book author and screenwriter Flynn than on the filmmakers. Fincher is on his game, as are all the actors, especially Rosamund Pike who is stunningly good as the unrelentingly psychopathic Amy. But yeah, I'm disappointed that the whole thing was that good, only to be ruined by an ending I could not really buy. EDIT: I'm kind of afraid to try watching Pike in anything innocous now as I'm only going to see the psycho she played here...like the 2005 PRIDE AND PREJUDICE...whch I love...is going to be truly hard to watch now.

Otherwise an award winning piece of filmmaking.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 21 January 2015 - 12:07 PM

[polishgenius]

QuickTidal, on 21 January 2015 - 03:28 AM, said:

But that's more on the book author and screenwriter Flynn than on the filmmakers.

To an extent, but don't forget that Fincher changed the ending of Fight Club (and improved it drastically), so he's clearly capable of doing that when he feels like it.


But yeah, my thoughts are pretty similar to yours.

[QuickTidal]

polishgenius, on 21 January 2015 - 06:11 PM, said:

QuickTidal, on 21 January 2015 - 03:28 AM, said:

But that's more on the book author and screenwriter Flynn than on the filmmakers.

To an extent, but don't forget that Fincher changed the ending of Fight Club (and improved it drastically), so he's clearly capable of doing that when he feels like it.


But yeah, my thoughts are pretty similar to yours.

Oh yeah. That's very true (about FIGHT CLUB). I think the author being the screenwriter as well in this case negates what control he might have had to change the ending. Were it me, I'd have told Flynn her ending just would not happen to her face.

[amphibian]

Flynn's sold a ton of books with that ending. I think it works for what the story is - the torturing of a flawed husband by a woman raised to be psychotically perfect.

I wouldn't change the ending. Plus Flynn has the sequel in the works (I think).

Different context than the Pahlaniuk/Fincher one.