Bow down to Robert Altman...

though honestly why am i arguing with you? i forget who i'm arguing with sometimes.

It's not my favorite Altman; I fast forward through sequences.

xxpost

although it's still accurate

Nashville is politically quite prescient, re the imminent Jimmy Carter/Ronald Reagan/Ross Perot 'populist outsider' bullshit.

uh Morbs remember Andrew Jackson and William Jennings Bryan?

xpost what am said

though honestly why am i arguing with you? i forget who i'm arguing with sometimes.

Yourself, mostly.

fast-fwding is accurate; some of it is really great, and i get a lump in my throat... then it cuts to something pretty dumb. but my biggest problem w/ it is the ending and how that retroactively kind of pollutes the whole thing

The big statement about America is there if you want it, or need it; the film is so great in a million other ways, I don't think you do.

think he meant Morbs, Eric

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-intellectualism_in_American_Life

..published 1963, deals with populist strain of american sociopolitical discourse

if anything nashville's observations are cliched and tired (and were recognized as such at the time by many) rather than prescient

if you can watch the film and forget about the ending/overarching themes then that's good, you will enjoy it more than i do!

i don't mean to beat up on it, i guess it's ok, there are worse films for sure.

that's a strain of american politics since forever.

yeah, no fucking kidding. it was being re-bottled.

altman lowers the target so far as to make the satire too easy i think

that's my biggest problem with him in general, maybe

i'll take a stab at the sublime overarching themes of Die Hard

the sublime overaching strawmanning

I fast forward through sequences

at last an insight into "rescreenings"

i'll take a stab at the sublime overarching themes of Die Hard

― son of a lewd monk (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, August 20, 2014 3:20 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

morbs, i know you think you're the smartest man in the universe, but you're a dolt. you'll never believe this because anosognosia etc.

what you just wrote actually makes my point for me.

it'll do wonders for your temper!

xpost

i mean, if Big Themes and grand gestures were what made great art, it'd be the easiest thing in the world to make

and stanley kramer would be the greatest director ever

or maybe volker schlondorff

you'll never believe this because anosognosia etc

anosametoyou

well, sure

but you're the one you can't even imagine someone preferring an action film to a Canonical New Hollywood Classic

whose superiority seems self-evident to you because...

actually, who gives a shit.

"action film" is a marketing tem. I prefer Wages of Fear to Sorcerer.

DISPROVEN, IPSO FACTOID

i agree about wages of fear!

think he meant Morbs, Eric

Oh probably, and I bow to the master when it comes to goading.

suggesting that a cinema of big ideas and grand gestures automatically leads to stanley kramer is pretty facile, amateurist

that's not what i said

i was saying that if that was _all_ it took to make a good movie, stanley kramer would be the best director ever

fortunately there are other things in movies worth getting excited about

this is in response to morbs, who trolled with the idea that die hard didn't have "sublime" themes therefore was patently worthless

he brings out the worst in me, though, so i apologize for being catty on this thread

i assume it's a "he"

i was saying that if that was _all_ it took to make a good movie, stanley kramer would be the best director ever

fortunately there are other things in movies worth getting excited about

I think that's the exact point I'm making about Nashville--whether or not you believe it has anything to say, there's 150 minutes of other stuff worth getting excited about.

maybe 75 minutes :)

srsly though
i recognize that you're arguing that, and i agree w/ you to a point.

i wasn't saying that nashville was worthless, i was just responding to morbius's comment which suggested that if a film didn't have explicit (or implicit!) grand themes that it was self-evidently worthless

i'm not even sure he would argue that as a general point but that's what his snarky comment suggested

which just means i should ignore morbs, a good lesson for us all

If that's how much good stuff you get, then sure, you're not going to care for it. Don't agree, but that's fine. But I wouldn't place too much emphasis on the ending in trying to explain why you don't think much of the film.

One of the reasons I respond to Nashville is because its grand themes are also woven into the fabric of something raucus, irreverent and lively. The exact opposite of Kramer.

"Your miserable life is not worth the reversal of an amateurist decision." xxp

altman is several leagues beyond kramer as a director, but there's a didactic streak in altman that isn't completely un-kramer-esque, even if it comes out as sarcasm rather than high-mindedness

i mean ultimately nashville strikes me as pretty moralistic

moralistic, moralizing, i forget which word is more appropriate

something raucus, irreverent and lively

That's it exactly. And why I always have a hard time defending the film when people focus on the music or the alleged self-importance--I love most of the music, do think it has stuff to say (or at the very least reflects its moment in fascinating ways), but it's what Eric says that explains why I've watched it a zillion times, and you're either in sync with that or not. And if you're not, I can relate in terms of other films. I was as out of sync with Playtime as humanly possible.

morbsidizing

I was as out of sync with Playtime as humanly possible

:(

that said, i can totally understand tati as an acquired taste.

the weird thing about altman's "liveliness," and i don't mean this as a putdown, is that it feels held under glass. like he's set in motion something quasi-spontaneous but filmed it at a remove, in an almost anthropological way (at times). this is less true of mccabe & mrs miller which feels much more subjective to me.

xpost

i apologise for misrepresenting yr argument, amateurist, but i do find that yr often expressed hostility to the 'serious' (or the aspirationally serious) sometimes leads you to a very cramped, formally conservative ideal of what cinema can and should be. and really, you don't like bergman?

sometimes "self-important" is used as a synonym for "ambitious," it seems to me

you could say the same of tati, in fact, though i think his mise en scene is much more obviously and painstakingly "orchestrated"

xpost

ward, i wonder if that's just b/c of the positions i take in opposition to morbs and other folks here. certainly there are a lot of very intellectual forbidding films i admire, from eisenstein to straub/huillet. i just don't think seriousness in itself is necessarily a value.

i guess as a personal preference i like films that wear their ambitions lightly, but that's not always the case, viz. ivan the terrible / thin red line / etc.

I subscribe to the Raymond Durgnant theory. Movies that aim extremely high or movies that aim even more extremely low.

(Nashville probably doesn't exactly qualify on either count, tho it's trying for both.)

Durgnat