'The Earth Stood Still' for Keanu Reeves

Zap2It Movie News ^ | 8-28-07 | Bender2

[Bender2]

Variety is reporting that Keanu Reeves will star in 20th Century Fox's remake of "The Day the Earth Stood Still."

[Borges]

I don’t have to agree with his point of view to find the world itself interesting. I don’t share Swift’s misanthropy but still love Gulliver’s Travels.

Its interest for me was in the style, tone and sheer audacity of the thing...not really narrative logic. Movies like that usually don't get financed certainly not with that big of a budget. You can poke holes in stuff like that all day long. For instance, why didn’t they just nuke the planet with the bugs on it and be done with it.

[Bender2]

Re: Satire has always appealed to one audience a certain way and to another a different way (Gulliver’s Travels...)

Well, when necessary... go to the source!

Was it not Jonathan Swift who offered, "Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own."

Me thinks, Borges... it would be better for you to look in a regular mirror before giving artsy-fartsy platitudes as cover for a very bad film.

Not to put too fine a point on it... it is your opinion and we must respect that...

But I do honestly believe you just have acute occulossis... that means your optic nerve has gotten crossed with your rectum and given you a crappy outlook. I think you might have caught it from Verhoeven.

But kick back... and have another beer. Kiss a babe. The cure for occulossis is free here at FR!

Then why... do you charge me $50 every time I come here?

Latex gloves, Frank... do not grow on trees.

[LexBaird]

Verhoeven has been praised by pictorial artists like Roy Lichtenstien for his precise eye for framing

Roy Lichtenstien? That no-talent hack? That one-joke wonder of pop art? At least the comic book artists he was ripping off did original work. Another over-rated "satirist".

Again, don't mistake technique for talent. Artistically framed crap is still crap.

[Borges]

A wise man once said that its fruitless to argue when your opponent has an arsenal of pictograms.

[allmendream]

In the book nukes were used, however the bugs ‘hives’ were ostensibly fallout shelters so they were of limited utility. Also in the book the bugs had technology and ships, not big flying rocks.

[Borges]

Thanks. I read the book when I was a kid.

[Bender2]

Re: A wise man once said that its fruitless to argue when your opponent has an arsenal of pictograms.

Guilty... as charged, sir!

[allmendream]

My favorite part of the book Starship Troopers was when his liberal dad decided that pacifism in the face of an enemy who non-negotiably desires your total destruction is ludicrous, joined the service and they fought together.

A bit of a ripoff/homage to Starship Troopers that I also really enjoyed was “Armor” by John Steakley. A line I will never forget from the book was when a proud father was having the off-world governor sign his daughters birth certificate so that legally she would be ‘a Texan’. The governors wife asked him “Where is Texas?” He said “It is a province of one of the nations on Earth.” Her response was “Oh. From the way he talked about it I thought it was it’s own planet.”

[LexBaird]

Robocop.

And every other film he has done. One trick pony, with one overblown worldview message. Oliver Stone writ small.

A film is judged by camera movement and framing, editing rhythm.

No it isn't. A film is judged by how it connects to the audience. The rest is just technique and tricks. Only jaded critics feel the need to dismiss the content and concentrate on the execution of details. It's what makes them able to praise a canvas painted red by emoting over the brush stroke technique. It's a hollow and empty method of judgment, because it has nothing to do with the essence of the film.

It's why Star Wars IV is great, and Starship Troopers is dreck. Lucas connected with his audience, Verhoeven talked down to them and insulted their intelligence. No amount of pretty framing or editing is going to make that fact lost to the SF fanbase.

[Borges]

Weren’t Heinlein’s politics pretty nebulous? ‘Stranger in a Strange Land’ was adopted by the hippies.

[Borges]

Verhoven has a sense of humor and irony. Stone assuredly does not. And they're stylistic polar opposites, Verhoeven is a descendant of classical Hollywood cinema of Vidor and Minnelli. Stone is a 'tripod-be-damned' slash and burn sensationalist. If you're claiming that popularity is the sole guage of artistic quality I obviously disagree. As every year has a raft of dreck that rakes in gazillions (more Shrek and Pirates of the Caribbean sequels than one can count).

P.S. Robocop was very popular.

[Guenevere]

I don't remember Billy Gray in Day the Earth Stood Still...

..but I sure remember Michael Rennie ...I sure do :))

[TrueKnightGalahad]

"Deadpan irony seems to be lost on you."

Yup, I'm toooooo stoooooopid, duuuude!

"Words can also be decosntructed as Verhoeven did in ST."

"A film is judged by camera movement and framing, editing rhythm. Not fidelity to the source material."

"Verhoeven is a brilliant natural filmmaker."

Enough examples of your quotes, though I could mine many more gems from this thread alone....

You either sat in one too many film classes, and wrote copious notes but never challenged your professors or thought about what they meant ("Oh, wow, man, these films are, like, deconstructed, ya know, so they mean ezzackly what I say they mean, depending on what the definition of "mean" is, or "is" is, or sumthin'...but the one rule is that authorial intent and reality has no meaning, man"), or (shudder) you teach film theory to uncomprehending sophomores; such "thinking" does not pass muster here. I might ordinarily suspect, as you have used virtually every cliche of so-called modern film crit in your posts, that you might be having us on -- you know, being ironic and sarcastic, portraying a satiric view of those chowderheads...but I suspect, sadly, that that's not the case.

But we can stop this conversation here...you're obviously waaaay too smart, and so much more educated than I, so more of your wisdom would be wasted on poor lil ol me.

[Borges]

Oh chill out, nothing personal. I’m not joking but I do however watch a lot of movies and have liked Verhoven’s work going back to 1977’s ‘Soldier of Orange’.

[LexBaird]

Weren’t Heinlein’s politics pretty nebulous?

No. He was libertarian, through and through. He was about as opinionated and non-nebulous as an author gets. Imagine Ayn Rand with talent at writing.

Which only makes the twisting of ST into a fascist state all the more appalling. The regimented, centrally controlled insects were the symbolic totalitarians that the individualists of Earth had to cooperate to defeat.

[LexBaird]

You miss the point. Verhoeven and Stone are thinly veiled, one-view propagandists. Stone's just a better one.

And popularity is not the gauge, either. It's the ability to connect with the intended audience. Whether it's the art house crowd watching Chocolat or Tolkein fans at LOTR, you cannot despise and talk down to the people you are making the film for. Verhoeven has contempt for his audience and his material, and so chooses to lecture his trite message to his "lessers". The audience can see that.

[Sloth]

I assume Bruce Campbell is in the running for Patricia Neal’s role?

[Borges]

Verhoeven’s films are frequently scorned by left wing critics for being ‘fascistic trash’. What exactly is the propaganda in a film like ‘Basic Instinct’ or ‘Flesh and Blood’? It’s just good trashy fun. Robocop spoke to its audience quite well and was immensely popular and entertaining not to mention prescient about where entertainment was going (I’ll buy that for a dollar!).

Subversion of audiences 'rooting interest'is something Verhoven specializes in, its more formal then political. See his recent WW2 Dutch Resistance film 'Black Book' which all but manipulates the audience into rooting for Nazis. It's also a hoot and ace filmmaking from start to finish.

[Borges]

An interesting point of reference is that Verhoeven spent his childhood in Nazi occupied Holland watching propanda films. He’s clearly been obsssed with fascism ever since.

[Borges]

That’s ‘propaganda’ not pro-panda!