goodfellas

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casino is poop Scorcese has never topped Taxi Driver.

― CeCe Peniston (Anthony Miccio), Thursday, 19 August 2004 04:38 (nineteen years ago) link

though I'd like to thank you all for not bringing up Raging Bullshit.

― CeCe Peniston (Anthony Miccio), Thursday, 19 August 2004 04:39 (nineteen years ago) link

oh the boxing is just a little too close to dancing for you, Miccio!

― Gear! (Gear!), Thursday, 19 August 2004 04:42 (nineteen years ago) link

I just traded in my cheapo Raging Bull DVD because it's "out of print" and Amoeba gave me twenty for it. I admire it but it's not one I'd watch more than once every couple of years, and Luomo and Viktor Vaughn beckoned.

― Gear! (Gear!), Thursday, 19 August 2004 04:46 (nineteen years ago) link

I can't wait to see the documentary and hear the commentary for GoodFellas.

The scene where Henry's car stays parked out front of his girlfriend's apartment, and the night turns to morning.

The jump edits, like when Henry looks out the window and the edit gives him a double take while he's making the sauce.

Tommy's line of "I didn't mean to mess up your floor!" while they're wrapping up Billy Batts. Was that line adlibbed?

Oh, and the deleted scenes. I wonder how much is on there? Dammit, I guess I'll have to get this tomorrow.

― Pleasant Plains (Pleasant Plains), Thursday, 19 August 2004 05:02 (nineteen years ago) link

Get the fuck outta here what're you nuts?
I'm telling ya

― Uh-Huh Him (Enrique), Thursday, 19 August 2004 08:01 (nineteen years ago) link

My respect and affection for many people on ILX whom I previosuly respected and held in affection has just nose-dived. Goodfellas? The Breakfast Club? Fuck's sake.

― Jimmybommy JimmyK'KANG (Nick Southall), Thursday, 19 August 2004 08:09 (nineteen years ago) link

Scorsese can go and fuck a horse, man.

― Jimmybommy JimmyK'KANG (Nick Southall), Thursday, 19 August 2004 08:11 (nineteen years ago) link

how can you not like 'goodfellas'?! wtf?

― G-L-O-R-I-A (Enrique), Thursday, 19 August 2004 08:14 (nineteen years ago) link

scorsese should've directed the breakfast club!

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Thursday, 19 August 2004 08:15 (nineteen years ago) link

'The type of movies that become classics'

I can not like it because it's fucking horrible.

― Jimmybommy JimmyK'KANG (Nick Southall), Thursday, 19 August 2004 08:16 (nineteen years ago) link

http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Palladium/5269/diner.jpg

― G-L-O-R-I-A (Enrique), Thursday, 19 August 2004 08:17 (nineteen years ago) link

Nope, still hate it.

― Jimmybommy JimmyK'KANG (Nick Southall), Thursday, 19 August 2004 08:23 (nineteen years ago) link

WRONGITUDE. I know it's an 'Uncut/Hotdog/FilmFour' canon-stuffer n'all but the film rocks ANY house you care to name. It's an objective fact, Nick.

― ENRG (Enrique), Thursday, 19 August 2004 08:26 (nineteen years ago) link

It does not rock my house. I really dislike it. Not as much as Taxi Driver though.

― Jimmybommy JimmyK'KANG (Nick Southall), Thursday, 19 August 2004 08:29 (nineteen years ago) link

And I love you to bits and know yr half joking wiv the "It's an objective fact" line, but that kind of automatic, unquestionign assumption really pisses me off, whether it's about The Beatles or Scorsese or whoever. NOT everyone has to like these things which are ranked as classic.

― Jimmybommy JimmyK'KANG (Nick Southall), Thursday, 19 August 2004 08:31 (nineteen years ago) link

The tracking shot going into the club is a work of fucking genius. The soundtrack is superb - I defy anyone to do coke-addled paranoia better than the scenes leading up to the arrest of Henry. It covers the food culutre within the mafia lifestyle, the cheapness, the inanity, the casual violence underpinning it. The book is good, but the film takes a great story to another level. My all-time number one film evah.

― Dave B (daveb), Thursday, 19 August 2004 08:35 (nineteen years ago) link

http://www.scorsese.stopklatka.pl/good24.jpg

― Uh-Huh Him (Enrique), Thursday, 19 August 2004 08:37 (nineteen years ago) link

It's a film I've seen about a million times, and I don't even think about it as a 'favourite' because it's just *there*. 'Taxi Driver' I love also, but in a very different way. I don't care about Scorsese particularly, but these are two amazing films.

― Uh-Huh Him (Enrique), Thursday, 19 August 2004 08:49 (nineteen years ago) link

I think film to me is about something very different to other people who are 'into' films. I really dislike Taxi Driver, and was very disappointed when my brother bought me the DVD of it a few years ago, because a; it showed that we don't really communicate that much or he'd know my antipathy for it and Scorsese, and 2; it's a really dull, canonical choice, "I will buy you this because it is good" instead of "I will buy you this because I think you will enjoy/love it". I bought Emma Short Circuit the other week and she was thrilled.

― Jimmybommy JimmyK'KANG (Nick Southall), Thursday, 19 August 2004 08:56 (nineteen years ago) link

you're a fanny.

― RJG (RJG), Thursday, 19 August 2004 08:57 (nineteen years ago) link

It is good *and* you might love it. 'TD' is sorta sexist and racist perhaps, but other than that it's only an accident that it seems 'obvious'. Lots of obvious films *are* bad (eg 'Easy Rider') but this one isn't.

― ENRG (Enrique), Thursday, 19 August 2004 08:59 (nineteen years ago) link

Yeah, cheers RJG, that's just the sort of constructive remark I was praying for.

― Jimmybommy JimmyK'KANG (Nick Southall), Thursday, 19 August 2004 09:00 (nineteen years ago) link

I defy anyone to do coke-addled paranoia better than the scenes leading up to the arrest of Henry

How about the mountain of blow scenes in Scarface? They should be up there too.

― o. nate (onate), Thursday, 19 August 2004 09:00 (nineteen years ago) link

I thought we were giving opinions.

― RJG (RJG), Thursday, 19 August 2004 09:01 (nineteen years ago) link

My opinion, then, is that, you're, a dick.

― Jimmybommy JimmyK'KANG (Nick Southall), Thursday, 19 August 2004 09:02 (nineteen years ago) link

you hate the obvious, don't you?

the obvious being that YOU'RE the dick!!!!

― RJG (RJG), Thursday, 19 August 2004 09:05 (nineteen years ago) link

I don't hate the obvious, I hate lazy cultural experiences. My favourite film is probably Jaws.

― Jimmybommy JimmyK'KANG (Nick Southall), Thursday, 19 August 2004 09:09 (nineteen years ago) link

The soundtrack is superb - I defy anyone to do coke-addled paranoia better than the scenes leading up to the arrest of Henry.

This is the key point I think, no-one, other than say Jonathan Demme or Tarantino can use popular music as a plot device as well as Scorsese. Take the music away it's a fine, well acted, above average mob movie. Put the soundtrack in, it's elevated to a work of genius. Whenever I hear the piano coda of 'Layla' I immediately think of the corpse swimming through the trash (and what a duffer the rest of Clapton's catalogue is).

― Billy Dods (Billy Dods), Thursday, 19 August 2004 09:12 (nineteen years ago) link

cool.

crosspost

― RJG (RJG), Thursday, 19 August 2004 09:13 (nineteen years ago) link

Point: has anyone changed their opinion of Goodfellas, for better or worse, since the advent of The Sopranos?

― Dom Passantino (Dom Passantino), Thursday, 19 August 2004 09:16 (nineteen years ago) link

I don't think so.

― RJG (RJG), Thursday, 19 August 2004 09:19 (nineteen years ago) link

Goodfellas is just such a thoughtless, hollow, unappealing film though. From the way the camera moves and shots are composed to the way the characters interract with each other, everything is about appearance and glamourisation, and glamourisation of really nasty, base, horrible things. And they're neither nasty, base and hollow in a compelling, rubbernecking way, or in a thrilling, exciting way, it's just deadening and unpleasant and empty.

And aside from my dislike of it on an aesthetic and emotional level, there's the whole rhetoric that surrounds it, which works on two levels. The first is the whole "oh but they're gangsters and cool and romantic and italian and just cool and it's such a cool film man I loe it when he shoves that thing in the back of the guy's neck" which is pretty easy to dismiss because it's utterly superficial. And then there's the level above that, which is what Henry's just wandered into, which is the use of film school technical talk to justify liking the film and take the film from being "a film I like" to "a great film", which then engenders a belief in the person delivering the rhetoric that it's absolutely impervious to criticism and that anybody who disagrees is just plain wrong and their opinion not worth considering. That whole "oh but the mis-en-scene is so great, and the lighting on the car outside the house and the way this shot cuts into the next and so on and the way blahblahblah", yes, technically it might be very well put together but that does NOT mean that everyone MUST necessarily like it. And that out-of-hand dismissal of someone else's opinion because you believe yours to be based in fact is total fucking rockism.

― Jimmybommy JimmyK'KANG (Nick Southall), Thursday, 19 August 2004 09:22 (nineteen years ago) link

I like 'GF' and 'The Sopranos' like family. Neither of them are lazy cultual experiences. And not hollow: they both conjure up reallly dense feelings of being-there-ness. They don't glamourize violence, but thye don't moralize either. An obvious gangster meme is how close gangster practice is to 'legit' practice. This is a film that practically got me into film. But I wasn't much aware of all the film school stuff then. It just felt like a film I could immerse myself in. Now unfortunately I know how it's put together. But FFS: 'Jaws' has the *same* film-school stuff: they *both* use the 'Vertigo' zoom in/track back!

― ENRG (Enrique), Thursday, 19 August 2004 09:27 (nineteen years ago) link

I know it does, but I just find Jaws much more compelling and enjoyable; saying I should like both because they both use the Vertigo zoom is like saying you should like M People and The Small faces cos they both did "Itchycoo Park", or should like The Stone Roses and The Seahorses because Squire played guitar in both and he's technically very good, or that I ought to like both Embrace and Coldplay because bits of their work sound a bit alike. If it was JUST about liking things because of their similarities to other things you like, what would be the point? Cultural existence would be so much more predictable and dull. I don't find GF immersive, I find it oppressive and unpleasant, and not worth the while of the unpleasantness.

And I'm not saying that GF or TD are in themselves "lazy cultural experiences", because I'm not sure anything of itself it, but the way the rhetoric that surrounds these films directs the discourse of them suggests a lazy cultural experience on the part of many people viewing them, because they've already been canonised as 'classic' people simply sit and watch them and accept that classic status and repeat it by rote, instead of trying to actually engage with the film themselves. It's second-hand reactiosn to things, received wisdom masquerading as insight.

― Jimmybommy JimmyK'KANG (Nick Southall), Thursday, 19 August 2004 09:35 (nineteen years ago) link

it's okay, that you don't like it.

― RJG (RJG), Thursday, 19 August 2004 09:37 (nineteen years ago) link

I know that - my problem is with people who insist that it's not OK to not like it - I'm not trying to convince anyone else to not like it, just justifying why I don't like it, because so often my opinion of GF and TD etcetera is met with such incredulity that I've had to explain exactly why countless bloomin' times.

― Jimmybommy JimmyK'KANG (Nick Southall), Thursday, 19 August 2004 09:40 (nineteen years ago) link

And, you know, it's always just as valid to not like something as it is to like it, as long as you've made an effort to engage and understand why other people do like it.

― Jimmybommy JimmyK'KANG (Nick Southall), Thursday, 19 August 2004 09:41 (nineteen years ago) link

I don't think those people really exist, though: I'm sure rockists really *do* like Paul Weller on a gut level, same as I like 'Goodfellas' that way. The problem is when you write off, say 'Jaws' for being popcorn bullshit or whatever: *that* would be rockism. It's okay not to like it, just, you know, totally, irreversibly wrong-headed ( I kid, I kid ).

― ENRG (Enrique), Thursday, 19 August 2004 09:42 (nineteen years ago) link

that isn't justification; it's dismissal.

― RJG (RJG), Thursday, 19 August 2004 09:46 (nineteen years ago) link

I'm putting forth reasons for my dismissal, RJG, ergo justification.

― Jimmybommy JimmyK'KANG (Nick Southall), Thursday, 19 August 2004 09:47 (nineteen years ago) link

Also, Henry, it's not about liking Weller on a gut level or dismissing Jaws as popcorn bullshit - it's about refusing to accept that some people don't like Weller.

― Jimmybommy JimmyK'KANG (Nick Southall), Thursday, 19 August 2004 09:48 (nineteen years ago) link

that's true. people just get very attached to their favourite things. it's like people who don't like red wine or sex or something, it's like 'wtf?'.

― ENRG (Enrique), Thursday, 19 August 2004 09:51 (nineteen years ago) link

your "reasons" don't seem to be about the movie.

― RJG (RJG), Thursday, 19 August 2004 09:53 (nineteen years ago) link

wtf is Goodfellas is just such a thoughtless, hollow, unappealing film though. From the way the camera moves and shots are composed to the way the characters interract with each other, everything is about appearance and glamourisation, and glamourisation of really nasty, base, horrible things. And they're neither nasty, base and hollow in a compelling, rubbernecking way, or in a thrilling, exciting way, it's just deadening and unpleasant and empty then?

― Jimmybommy JimmyK'KANG (Nick Southall), Thursday, 19 August 2004 09:53 (nineteen years ago) link

thoughtless, hollow, unappealing

― RJG (RJG), Thursday, 19 August 2004 09:54 (nineteen years ago) link

So "I don't like the film because of my reaction to the film, which is one of dislike because of X, Y and Z" is not sufficient then?

― Jimmybommy JimmyK'KANG (Nick Southall), Thursday, 19 August 2004 09:56 (nineteen years ago) link

it's not that you didn't give reasons, but it's like 'how so? it isn't any of those things!' i can't be rational about this, helas. also i am tired and emotional today.

― ENRG (Enrique), Thursday, 19 August 2004 09:57 (nineteen years ago) link

X, Y and Z?

― RJG (RJG), Thursday, 19 August 2004 09:58 (nineteen years ago) link

OK. I feel no empathy for any of the characters, I feel like an utterly disenfranchised observer at all times, neither sickened nor wowed by events. This goes for all Scorsese films I have seen - not one character in one of his films has appealed to me as a human. I also find the tone of them too serious and self-important - say TD is about the fall of man in urban environment, well so is Fightclub but FC is funny and has visuals which I find much more appealing, plus a degree of self-reference which I always welcome. I don't find the way Scorsese frames shots or moves a camera striking or dazzling (and I don't mean being literally dazzled by light or speed, I mean in a "wow, that was an amazing shot" way) at all, which seems to be something a lot of other people like about them. Plus impressions of Joe Pesci are always >>>>>> Joe Pesci himself.

― Jimmybommy JimmyK'KANG (Nick Southall), Thursday, 19 August 2004 10:03 (nineteen years ago) link

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