Posted on 06/10/2011 6:27:00 AM PDT by Neoavatara
J.J. Abrams, which is becoming this generations Steven Spielberg, has taken inspiration from Spielberg in a movie that is more family entertainment than Science Fiction. This has the feel of a late 70s – early 80s flick from Spielberg, and I could very comfortably have believed that he made this in the interim between Jaws and E.T.. The movie had me virtually giggling inside, making me remember what it was like to see those movies as a young child. It brings us back to an era that I guess is now long forgotten, of blissful summers and imaginations gone wild.
The story begins with a group of middle schoolers who, like many of us in that era, decided to make their own science fiction film, in this case a horror flick. It probably echoes the childhoods of both Abrams and Spielberg, who admit to doing the same thing as kids. While filming their own story, they happen to be witnesses to a horrible train accident. Of course, the creature being carried by the train is not your normal circus animal.
(Excerpt) Read more at neoavatara.com ...
See that’s the problem with you canon worshippers. you rudely insult everybody that likes their Trek fun. And you studiously ignore the fact that there’s actually quite a bit of not action sequence in JJ’s movie.
I’m not “mistaking” you for anything. By your own words you’re a canon guy. You’ve said it outright. I don’t care which version of Trek is your favorite, as soon as you start complaining about canon, as soon as you start declaring something “not Trek” just because it doesn’t follow some exact and silly formula you declare yourself a canon guy who frankly was part of the problem on what ruined Trek.
Every time you say it’s not Trek you tell us tons of unflattering things about yourself. It WAS Trek and it complimented REAL Trek fans. The only people it gave a finger to was the same crowd Shatner gave the finger to in the infamous SNL sketch. And Shatner was right. And JJ was right. And you are wrong. It was Trek, it was REAL Trek that exists as a SHOW not a religion.
I have a love hate relationship with Spielberg. A couple of my all time favorite bring them on a desert island movies are by him, specifically Jaws but also Duel and for unknown reasons 1941 (which is a movie that wrong in so many ways but I love it so). On the other side he’s so addicted to happy endings and so many of hims movies are the equivalent to pre-fabricated pop music. And I really really hate his attempts to make “important” movies like Schindler and Color Purple, they’re so pretentious and wrapped up in themselves. But no matter I have to admit that as far as the technical aspect of directing goes he’s one of the best, and when he gets it right man does he get it right. Which makes the times he doesn’t get it right more annoying, they’re like lost opportunities, they could have been Jaws instead they’re just Jurassic Park.
Sorry, Stu, it sucked. It was like South Park’s Stan Marsh watching the previews for comedy movies... total $hit. And you’re the one getting hot under the collar over this stuff because I disagree with your take. Again, just because you think canon is something for Abrams to take a dump on to make it “fun” doesn’t mean the rest of us do.
I’m not hot under the collar, I look at canon worshippers with pity. you’re the one talking about canon being raped, and dumped on and declaring things aren’t Trek like you’re Gene freaking Roddenberry. you’re the one hot under the collar. I’m the one calmly agreeing with the 94% rating the movie has on Rotten Tomatoes. My side represents more of the “rest of us” than yours. We can tell because the last movie that appealed to the canon crowd grossed 67 million, and Abram’s Trek (REAL) hauled in 385 million. The canon people are the odd men out, and that God for that. You guys had your shot, you killed the franchise, now it’s back to being REAL canonless Trek.
The Color Purple was pretty poor but Schindler’s List was a remarkable achievement. It’s actually not nearly as sentimental as it could have been and brought out aspects of the subject matter that had not been previously seen in dramatic films about that. It’s also just plain great filmmaking and storytelling.
I’m not raging in caps, I RESPONDING to YOUR use of caps. It was a fun movie with a solid and very understandable plot. Of course you don’t care about the ratings and the grosses, because they prove that your wrong.
And there you go with the insults again. And then you post that gif. Thus proving, again, that all the rage is yours. That’s a self portrait gif, that’s you whining about the “rape” of a canon that never existed.
I never liked Schindler’s List. To me it’s a movie that’s trying way to hard to be IMPORTANT and for the most part important movies are plodding exercises is self aggrandizement and Schindler’s is no exception. Technically I suppose it’s all there, Spielberg never really fails at the technical, but as a movie it just fails for me, too much statement, not enough movie.
It doesn’t really have the hallmarks of “Important” from a technical standpoint. No crane shots, very little melodrama. It could have been made by Ingmar Bergman. It’s also gripping as storytelling at three hours plus.
“Important” films start with a plodding script, and plod on through the editing that loves those pregnant pauses where you can almost hear the director telling you to think about this. It didn’t grip me for 3 hours, it bored me to tears for 3 hours.
A plodding script? Steven Zaillian’s adaptation is a model of how to get a large amount of incident and narrative into a fairly tight three act structure. And the characters played by Neeson, Kingsley and Feinnes are indelible. You’re the first person I’ve ever heard call it boring. When it came out it was hard to find anyone who disliked it. Also, I wonder if that subject matter can ever seem non-’important’ in a cinematic treatment? Did you like Sophie’s Choice?
I think part of it’s problem is the subject matter, we’ve developed as a culture in this country where you’re almost not allowed to say anything about the Holocaust stinks. But the reality is not many of the movies that relate to the Holocaust are actually very good. There’s a lot of “oh the horror” and not actually much in the way of plot. And yeah I think the script plods, a lot of incident and narrative but it’s most repetitive, oh look more horrors, oh gosh another group, terrible things happen, wash rinse repeat. I just want to grab the people that make those movies with those scenes and say “look anybody watching your movie already knows the Holocaust was horrible and evil and wrong, can we move the hell on and get to the story part, we don’t need to be convinced genocide is wrong, we figured that out already”.
I’ve never seen Sophie’s Choice, not for the Holocaust part but for the forbidden love part, anything that revolves heavily on who a character is going to sleep with I don’t want to have anything to do with. Mostly because I don’t like people that think that way. Anybody I’ve know over the age of 18 that got themselves into the “woh woh should I or shouldn’t I” situation is an idiot, I don’t want to know them as people and I way don’t want to watch movies about them.
SL was structured like a descent through Inferno. Every Ring of Hell, so to speak, gets worse and worse despite the fact that the characters think it can't get any worse at every next step. And it brought out the financial undergirdings of the camps in a way that I have not seen in dramatic treatments of the subject matter - No inexcliplably Evil Nazis for the most part, just bored, amoral cogs in a vast super structure.
I never felt the need to go through the Rings of Holocaust Hell. Had to put up with the mini-series in the 70s that was plenty.
I agree with almost every reason anyone ever lists as to why that movie is terrible, and I love every single minute of it. It’s just so joyous and crazy.
The 1970s miniseries was terrible. SL was great filmmaking. Sequences one can watch again and again on their own terms. And a fairly intelligent take on subject matter which is very easy to milk for programmed in responses.
Maybe sequences YOU can watch again and again. Once was 3 times to many for me. To me SL was just plain boring preachy crap, and I think it was entirely milked for programmed in responses.
Where did it moralize? The Liquidation of the Ghetto scene was completely great filmmaking. As was the infamous shower scene (which Spielberg questionably milked for suspense). It had very little preaching or editorializing. Everything was shown but rarely told.
It was a 3 hour trudge through collective guilt. Every scene in the ghetto was moralizing, every body, every victim, every single frame. It was nothing but preaching editorializing, that’s the only reason anybody makes a holocaust movie. Showing it is still moralizing and preaching, you don’t have to have characters talking to be pushing the collective guilt, that’s the handy part of a visual medium.
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