Support NeoGAF

[Jo Shishido's Cheeks]

Heh I'm a fan of Alphaville, it has some great passages of dialogue and is overflowing with ideas and beautiful lighting.
A 'boring' Godard for me is one where I don't connect with his politics. Films like 2 or 3 Things... and Le Chinoise are so relentlessly driven by his views and opinions that if you don't care for or agree with them they leave the whole film flat.

 

[Count Dookkake]

Rampage?

Yes, so the score is 1-0. Boll wins!

 

[swoon]

I've tried Swoon, I have tried. Alphaville was the last straw. I'll revisit Breathless and Pierrot Le Fou if I feel the need to watch any Godard.

really alphaville? it's so pulpy and fun and has that awesome orson welles dude and that pool scene and the weird cars for ships.

like i mean i really don't get why people expect him to be this proufound dude, he's making movies about movies and art and people want the characters to be from my dinner with andre or something. they are fun and silly and exciting and heartbreaking. like a good noir or something. i mean its fun, when was the last time film was fun?

if we ever do a film game, i'm going to make everyone watch his king lear with woody allen/peter sellers/molly ringwald/norman mailer. it's an exciting mess of a film.

 

[HiResDes]

Heh I'm a fan of Alphaville, it has some great passages of dialogue and is overflowing with ideas and beautiful lighting.
A 'boring' Godard for me is one where I don't connect with his politics. Films like 2 or 3 Things... and Le Chinoise are so relentlessly driven by his views and opinions that if you don't care for or agree with them they leave the whole film flat.

The dialogue didn't save the film for me, but I'd still say it's definitely better than average.

 

[Snowman Prophet of Doom]

Honestly, I don't find Godard fun at all. His films bore the shit out of me. It's not that the characters themselves are shallow, it's that I think they're pretty shallowly limned compared to, say, a shallow but deeply-limned character like Mastroianni in La Dolce Vita. Ya know?

 

[xbhaskarx]

Alphaville was the last straw. I'll revisit Breathless and Pierrot Le Fou if I feel the need to watch any Godard.

Three great films. Alphaville is my personal favorite but all are brilliant.

 

[sixteen-bit]

That Boll quote is hilarious to me

 

[HiResDes]

Honestly, I don't find Godard fun at all. His films bore the shit out of me. It's not that the characters themselves are shallow, it's that I think they're pretty shallowly limned compared to, say, a shallow but deeply-limned character like Mastroianni in La Dolce Vita. Ya know?

Naw

 

[Jo Shishido's Cheeks]

Honestly, I don't find Godard fun at all. His films bore the shit out of me. It's not that the characters themselves are shallow, it's that I think they're pretty shallowly limned compared to, say, a shallow but deeply-limned character like Mastroianni in La Dolce Vita. Ya know?

What's the difference with Tarantino and his characters?

 

[Snowman Prophet of Doom]

What's the difference with Tarantino and his characters?

Tarantino I think writes good dialogue and sets his films in a more common book-y sort of world where those thin sorts of characterizations make sense. And Jackie Brown proved that he maybe COULD limn characters to some depth, more than I think I've seen in any Godard film.

 

[Skeyser]

That Vincent Gallo speaks a lot of shit for someone who haven't accomplished anything notable.

 

[swoon]

Honestly, I don't find Godard fun at all. His films bore the shit out of me. It's not that the characters themselves are shallow, it's that I think they're pretty shallowly limned compared to, say, a shallow but deeply-limned character like Mastroianni in La Dolce Vita. Ya know?

what would more defined characters give any of his films? i mean you don't like the guiding principle behind the new wave which makes hard to start a conversation around godard because you don't care about self-reflexivity in film. having b.b. as a deeply limned character instead of being an object of godard's own issues with art and love doesn't help the film, because it's not designed that way.

and you don't care about any of the films he's critiquing so it makes it even harder. i mean if you go into the with all this baggage you'll never like them or any other film.

i'm more interested into why you liked breathless and now hate it.

 

[Cactus]

That Boll quote is hilarious to me

Boll has a goldmine of hilarious quotes.

"You get ‘oh, you have to be careful because he’s a muslim’ or ‘you have to be careful because he’s an ultra-Christian kinda guy’; no, I don’t want to be careful. For me these people are all stupid idiots. This is the thing: I don’t want to be ‘safe’ around these people, I want to kick them all in the balls." ~ Uwe Boll

 

[dr3upmushroom]

Again I have to disagree with you.
You see, I think that actually filmmakers do have an obligation to include as much truth and to be wholly accurate when making a film based on a factual occurrence or figure.

Stopped reading here because for some reason you keep bringing up this ridiculous belief.

Yes, we all know that there were black soldiers in the battle. The question is whether they were present during the events actually shown in the film.

I agree, if black soldiers were actually omitted from the scenes that are shown in the film, that's horrible. Eastwood definitely had an obligation to realistically portray the racial makeup of soldiers in scenes he decided he wanted to show in the film.

Where you lose me if when you insinuate that he has an obligation to go out of his way to find scenes with black soldiers just to be politically correct and appease black veterans. He's telling a story, and if it isn't theirs, I can understand how they would be upset, but fighting in a war doesn't guarantee you representation in every film made on the war.

Again, I halfway agree with you. If Eastwood omitted black soldiers from scenes in the movie, he deserves harsh criticism. However, your argument is that he could have shown these other events that aren't in the film that highlight the actions of black soldiers. But he didn't, and while he does have an obvious obligation to accurately portray scenes he chooses to depict, he has no obligation to go out of his way to portray token black soldiers to appease black vets.

To me your criticism is like if you read a book about US Presidents in the 19th century and were offended because there's no mention of Obama. "There's a black president! Why isn't the black president mentioned!?" Because that's not what the book was about, and while there is indeed a black President, there wasn't during the events depicted in the book set in the 19th century.

Similarly, if you can show me evidence that there were black soldiers fighting in scenes that are actually in the movie, I'll be totally in agreement with you that Eastwood dropped the ball. But my response to "Well, he could shown this scene and this scene and this guy who gave them the pole for the flag" is still "So what?" Yeah, he could have, but Eastwood's obligations to historical accuracy pertain only to the treatment of scenes he decided to shoot, not to ones he could have but didn't.

After going back and reading your post, although I feel I've already spelled this out clearly enough, I'd like to be clear that I'm not disregarding the words of black vets the way you've decided I have. I fully believe that there were black soldiers in the battle. In fact, as it's already been pointed out, there are actually black soldiers in the movie.

What I don't believe is that there were black soldiers in the specific scenes depicted in the movie.

 

[The Super Bob]

Burton's Batman is the best live-action Batman, outside of Adam West

And yet it's still shit.

 

[Snowman Prophet of Doom]

what would more defined characters give any of his films? i mean you don't like the guiding principle behind the new wave which makes hard to start a conversation around godard because you don't care about self-reflexivity in film. having b.b. as a deeply limned character instead of being an object of godard's own issues with art and love doesn't help the film, because it's not designed that way.

and you don't care about any of the films he's critiquing so it makes it even harder. i mean if you go into the with all this baggage you'll never like them or any other film.

i'm more interested into why you liked breathless and now hate it.

I liked it when I first saw it early in college because I'd never seen anything like it, but when I saw other films in the European art tradition and even 70's American films and Kurosawa and Ozu and blah blah blah, it ended up deflating my view of Godard and the New Wave, which I started seeing as rather shallow by comparison. Fairly simple, I think.

Edit: And it's not that I do or do not care about what he's critiquing, it's that I don't think he critiques all that well or deeply and that his films don't really work as self-contained pieces of art. Reflexivity is not, of its own merits, better or worse than any other idea/aesthetic, but from what I've seen, Godard is content merely to just mention things and let the audience do all the work for him; really, that's my problem with most contemporary art: it takes the work away from the artist and makes it so that the work is all on the audience, which I think ends up taking most of the skill and craft out of it.

 

[Jo Shishido's Cheeks]

Tarantino I think writes good dialogue and sets his films in a more common book-y sort of world where those thin sorts of characterizations make sense. And Jackie Brown proved that he maybe COULD limn characters to some depth, more than I think I've seen in any Godard film.

I'll doubtless sound redundant by referring to Godard's form>content yet again but surely the world he sets up for his characters, that being that they are self-reflective 'characters' within a film, gives more scope and therefore acceptance to be who and what they are?

 

[andymcc]

that's uh not ak...but someone that godard may or may not being having an affair with..wearing an ak whig ...

my bad.

 

[B!TCH]

24. Vincent Gallo on Sofia (and Francis Ford) Coppola:
“Sofia Coppola likes any guy who has what she wants. If she wants to be a photographer she’ll fuck a photographer. If she wants to be a filmmaker, she’ll fuck a filmmaker. She’s a parasite just like her fat, pig father was.”

Ether'd.

 

[Cactus]

Woah woah woah, Rampage is a good film?!

Supposedly.

I actually think In the Name of the King would have actually been well received too if it was marketed as a comedy. I remember laughing my ass off in the theater.

 

[Snowman Prophet of Doom]

Woah woah woah, Rampage is a good film?!

It actually is good. It has bad/silly parts, but it's alright.

Jo Shishido: the thing is, I don't think that Godard has a filmic universe where his characters' shallow limning really ends up working all that well. I think that that was his intent, but the product that he made is often filled with long stretches of a rather banal reality/realism that ends up undermining the idea that they are some deep reflection of art and film. As I once saw it put (I'm paraphrasing here), his films have all of the detriments of a very apparent artifice without the insight and depth into life and art and blah blah blah that other European/Asian/American masters were able to achieve.

 

[Tedesco!]

Gallo made Buffalo '66 and Spike Lee made Do the Right Thing. Both incredible masterful films. Calling either talentless is shallow and petty. Their egos have no weight on their talent.

George Lucas made American Graffiti and Star Wars.

 

[SilentProtagonist]

HAHAHAHA, this dude conned a fairly attractive actress into sucking his dick ON FILM in a TERRIBLE movie for all of the world to see.
This is one of biggest trolls moves I have ever seen off of the internet.

 

[Jo Shishido's Cheeks]

Without meaning to cut you short as again you're making valid points, but:

What I don't believe is that there were black soldiers in the specific scenes depicted in the movie.

This is the basis of this debate. The soldiers themselves say that they were.
Now, we can go back-and-forth all day on what we believe, assume or suspect but ultimately it comes down to those who were there, which includes nobody from the films crew, viewing the scenes presented on screen and saying, "that's not how those scenes happened."
Since when did we get such an elevated sense of belief that what we believe invalidates the words of those who were there and offer an alternate view?

Indeed, scenes shouldn't have been included just to appease people who wanted to see some black faces on the screen and my knowledge and reading on the battle doesn't extend to being comprehensive enough to know for sure the exact roles the black soldiers played throughout the entirety of the battle, so I'm essentially going on faith and believing their words. What agenda would a 90-year-old veteran have for saying the film isn't accurate?
How would the film crew have obtained more accurate knowledge than this man?
By referring to the book and newsreels that the black soldiers say were biased?

I think we're grinding this down into the ground now. Agree to disagree?

 

[See You Next Wednesday]

And Klaus Klinski on Herzog:

"Herzog is a miserable, hateful, malevolent, avaricious, money-hungry, nasty, sadistic, treacherous, cowardly creep...he should be thrown alive to the crocodiles! An anaconda should strangle him slowly! A poisonous spider should sting him and paralyze his lungs! The most venomous serpent should bite him and make his brain explode! No — panther claws should rip open his throat — that would be much too good for him! Huge red ants should piss into his lying eyes and gobble up his balls and his guts! He should catch the plague! Syphilis! Yellow fever! Leprosy! It's no use; the more I wish him the most gruesome deaths, the more he haunts me."

To be fair, if you know anything about Klinski, then you know he say's that about everyone.

 

[Loxley]

13. Clint Eastwood on Spike Lee:
“A guy like him should shut his face.”

Wasn't this a response to Spike Lee whining (shocker) about the lack of any black main characters in Flags of Our Fathers?

*Edit

Didn't realize there was a whole debate going here about this, ejecting now.

 

[AlternativeUlster]

Wow, there is a lot to read but hey, here are some random opinions from me:
A) The Brown Bunny is a great film that acts like drone with certain shades building up to a breakdown to a character. I do wonder if the Gallo comment came before or after working on Tetro which is one of Coppola's finest films.
B) Million Dollar Baby while having many cliches features a trio of glorious performances that you heavily invest in and feels like it belongs in the latter period of the the Golden Age of Hollywood if for whatever reason, the Golden Age took a break for the 70s to pass by and then it would return.
C) Do the Right Thing is a terrible piece of cinema but important at least as a time piece of race relations in the late 80s. It is racially charged, angry, preachy and tries to answer the problem with another problem and I feel frustrated that is how Spike feels is the solution.
D) This argument about Flags of Our Fathers/Iwo Jima is drawn out and unnecessary. Spike made that comment to build hype for his piece of shit Miracle at St. Anna and there were scenes with black soldiers in the film.

 

[CriterionDog]

article on Flavorwire
30. Uwe Boll on Michael Bay:
“I’m not a fucking retard like Michael Bay.”

No offense, but this one really made me LOL in real life.

 

[brianjones]

i love do the right thing even if the ending is stupid and frustrating

it has such a great neighborhood community vibe that i dig

 

[Ezduo]

Vincent Gallo sounds like one angry motherfucker.

 

[AlternativeUlster]

i love do the right thing even if the ending is stupid and frustrating

it has such a great neighborhood community vibe that i dig

It did a decent job of that so maybe I shouldn't call it "terrible" but the ending is so god damned frustrating that it destroys anything else to me.

 

[Leucrota]

I liked Buffalo 66 (Gallo). I liked Being John Malkovich(Jonze).

I think film hipster-GAF just gets upset when someone they hold in high regard is trashed by someone else.

I don't really care.

 

[MattKeil]

But is that really a diss? Batman pretty much set the tone for the animated series to follow.

Not really. Batman: TAS owes more to the Fleischer Superman shorts than anything else. It could be argued that they never would have gotten that series off the ground without Burton's Batman paving the way with its huge box office success, but TAS doesn't take much from it aesthetically beyond the music and the Penguin's flipper hands.

 

[dmshaposv]

Tarantino I think writes good dialogue and sets his films in a more common book-y sort of world where those thin sorts of characterizations make sense. And Jackie Brown proved that he maybe COULD limn characters to some depth, more than I think I've seen in any Godard film.

I'd like to add that Tarantino, unlike Godard, can write interesting characters. Top three Tarantino characters for me are:

1) Max Cherry from Jackie Brown
2) Hans Landa from IB
3) Jules Winnfield from Pulp Fiction

 

[TheKaeptain]

I liked Buffalo 66 (Gallo). I liked Being John Malkovich(Jonze).

I think film hipster-GAF just gets upset when someone they hold in high regard is trashed by someone else.

I don't really care.

WTF is Film Hipster?

 

[Lazy vs Crazy]

That Vincent Gallo speaks a lot of shit for someone who haven't accomplished anything notable.

Anyone who rags on Spike Jonze is ok by me.

 

[AlternativeUlster]

WTF is Film Hipster?

I suppose the people who worship Jonze and Gallo I suppose. I don't know who they are though. I think it is funny that while I love Brown Bunny, I hated Buffalo '66 but truthfully haven't seen it since high school.

 

[bengraven]

Not really. Batman: TAS owes more to the Fleischer Superman shorts than anything else. It could be argued that they never would have gotten that series off the ground without Burton's Batman paving the way with its huge box office success, but TAS doesn't take much from it aesthetically beyond the music and the Penguin's flipper hands.

The theme song?

 

[BY2K]

Kevin Smith to Tim Burton.

BUUUUUUUUUUUUURN.

 

[dr3upmushroom]

Without meaning to cut you short as again you're making valid points, but:
This is the basis of this debate. The soldiers themselves say that they were.
Now, we can go back-and-forth all day on what we believe, assume or suspect but ultimately it comes down to those who were there, which includes nobody from the films crew, viewing the scenes presented on screen and saying, "that's not how those scenes happened."
Since when did we get such an elevated sense of belief that what we believe invalidates the words of those who were there and offer an alternate view?

Indeed, scenes shouldn't have been included just to appease people who wanted to see some black faces on the screen and my knowledge and reading on the battle doesn't extend to being comprehensive enough to know for sure the exact roles the black soldiers played throughout the entirety of the battle, so I'm essentially going on faith and believing their words. What agenda would a 90-year-old veteran have for saying the film isn't accurate?
How would the film crew have obtained more accurate knowledge than this man?
By referring to the book and newsreels that the black soldiers say were biased?

I think we're grinding this down into the ground now. Agree to disagree?

One last observation: humans in general have extremely faulty memory and are extremely capable of convincing themselves of things. For example, eye witnesses are notoriously horrible at correctly identifying criminal cases, and people often grossly overestimate the accuracy of their memory of even especially memorable dates (say 9/11). See the behavioral science section of your local library for information on this interesting topic!

I realize that it's a douchey thing to say and realize that it may appear as though I'm trying to discredit these black veterans, but they're word is not sufficient evidence to me. I think it would be very easy to see the film and think "I remember those trees, I remember that beach, I fought there," even if they perhaps fought at an extremely similar looking site a mile away. I'm sure this is far from the first time black vets have not been properly included in a depiction of the war, and the growing feeling of injustice over time could facilitate the remembering of being a part of the scenes shown in the film.

I'm not insinuating that they're lying, but there's substantial research showing the fallibility of human memory, and for me, a person's word regardless of their race is horrible evidence when researching the past, whether it be for a war film, a criminal investigation, or anything else. Maybe there were black soldiers in the scenes depicted in the film, and maybe their weren't, but I would need harder evidence (pictures, government reports of which troops were where during the battle, etc.) to convince me one way or the other.

Also, in the absence of such evidence, people who defend Eastwood are just as likely doing so because Lee and people who agree with him are accusing Eastwood of the omission without anything substantial to back up their claims than just because he's an artist. I can sympathize with Lee's complaint to an extent, and it's horrible that black vets get far less than the level of recognition they earned, but complaints of representation should be made only in cases where's it's evident that there has been neglectful behavior, and I don't see any evidence that this is one of those cases.

Anyway, it seems like we've reached a mutual understanding, and I agree to agree to disagree.

 

[nomis]

22. Vincent Gallo on Spike Jonze:
“He’s the biggest fraud out there. If you bring him to a party he’s the least interesting person at the party, he’s the person who doesn’t know anything. He’s the person who doesn’t say anything funny, interesting, intelligent… He’s a pig piece of shit.”

Sounds like all you have to do to be labelled a "piece of shit" by Gallo is to not get one of his jokes at a party.

Also funny that "pig" and "piece of shit" are exactly what I would call a guy who directs, scores, and writes a movie with himself in the lead role, and decides to write in unsimulated fellatio, to be performed on himself. Then he puts the actress(es) he tries to court under the impression that he's some kind of auteur and not a complete hack with a superiority complex.

 

[ComputerMKII]

Here's the video where Uwe Boll calls Michael Bay a retard. I think it's worth a watch:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HHfF67lgE8


Also, I have never seen a film by Jean-Luc Godard, but I have a hard time understanding why he gets so much praise when I see this trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FN27Hhfkf6k

 

[TheKaeptain]

That trailer is horrible. JLG needs to hang it up.

 

[Zeliard]

Fun to see people so taken aback by Vincent Gallo. He's been doing and saying this sort of thing for ages. Probably very few bridges in Hollywood he hasn't burned at this point.

 

[Danne-Danger]

Nice. I sat through all of Bloodrayne, Alone in the Dark, and In the Name of the King and about half of Postal (don't ask, I don't know why either) and gave up any hopes of finding gems in his ouvre a while ago.

Although I can't pretend I didn't enjoy parts of those first three >_>

Far Cry is probably his second best movie, and that's counting Rampage as his best, which I haven't seen yet. Take that as you will.

 

[Expendable.]

they posted some more:

The 30 Harshest Artist-on-Artist Insults In History

The 30 Harshest Author-on-Author Insults In History

The 30 Harshest Musician-on-Musician Insults in History

 

[See You Next Wednesday]

they posted some more:

The 30 Harshest Artist-on-Artist Insults In History

The 30 Harshest Author-on-Author Insults In History

The 30 Harshest Musician-on-Musician Insults in History

29. Christina Aguilera on Lady Gaga
“I’m not quite sure who this person is, to be honest. I don’t know if it is a man or a woman.”

So true.

 

[VistraNorrez]

Fun to see people so taken aback by Vincent Gallo. He's been doing and saying this sort of thing for ages. Probably very few bridges in Hollywood he hasn't burned at this point.

I believe he has insulted every single person he has ever met. It's amazing people still love to get upset over what he says. I just laugh at everything he says now.

 

[Discotheque]

i love do the right thing even if the ending is stupid and frustrating

it has such a great neighborhood community vibe that i dig

for sure, I said this before too. Ending is very frustrating though. Like damn.

I just saw My Beautiful Laundrette.

uh lolwtf, it's like a wannabe Do the Right Thing with indians in Britain...and Daniel Day Lewis. Pretty lame film but it's worth watching for the laugh.

 

[Ratrat]

they posted some more:

The 30 Harshest Artist-on-Artist Insults In History

The 30 Harshest Author-on-Author Insults In History

The 30 Harshest Musician-on-Musician Insults in History

the author one needs its own thread!