Movies Serious Movie Discussion

Honestly I'm still surprised it didn't get more hype at the time, certainly better than Django I'd agree which whilst fun was pretty simplistic for Tarantino who normally brings a bit more moral complexity.

I felt that it was greatness throughout the vast majority of its running time. The only segment that I thought wasn’t worthy of the rest of it was where we jump back in time and see Tatum and co’s gang arrive. Rest of the movie felt so awesome and that part just doesn’t gel in my opinion.

Goggins was fucking awesome in that film.

Well the whole cast really delivered big time. But he and JJL stood out for me. That scene where JJL sings to Russell and then with a wry grin on her face finishes it off with, “and you’ll be dead behind me John when I get to Mexico,” phenomenal stuff.

Bichir had me laughing at certain points with his exaggerated accent and delivery of certain lines.

Plus the Morricone score was excellent.
 
Two of my favorite actresses but with Mcdormand having already won and with Ronan taking a character that was bit more out of her wheelhouse, I think that I’d pick her.
That's how I feel about Sally Hawkins lul
 
That's how I feel about Sally Hawkins lul

Hawkins was great. And, in reality, of the three roles, hers was the most difficult in that she had to convey as much as the other two without being able to vocalize anything.

Stacked category. Any one of those three could win and I’d be happy.
 
It does stand out as one of the first times I can remember when best actress is more of a talking point that best actor, ok maybe not Streep in The Post.
 
It’s certainly a good movie. I liked Shape of Water, Three Billboards and The Post better, but it was very well done and thematically, I think you really hit the nail on the head with some of those elements that the film really captured well.

If I’m being honest, I’d rather see Saoirse win the academy award even though it’s close to a foregone conclusion now that Mcdormand will.
Two of my favorite actresses but with Mcdormand having already won and with Ronan taking a character that was bit more out of her wheelhouse, I think that I’d pick her.

I've tuned the awards out.

Saoirse is always good, though my favorite from there was Laurie Metcalf. I think they all suffered a bit from the taut script. Of the ones you mentioned, I likely had the most fun at the The Post.

Personal favorite this year was probably A Ghost Story. Raw, Get Out, The Last Jedi, T2: Trainspotting, Baby Driver and Colossal were the others up there. I imagine Phantom Thread will bust in there when I see it.

Missed so many this year I wish I'd seen.
 
I felt that it was greatness throughout the vast majority of its running time. The only segment that I thought wasn’t worthy of the rest of it was where we jump back in time and see Tatum and co’s gang arrive. Rest of the movie felt so awesome and that part just doesn’t gel in my opinion.

Goggins was fucking awesome in that film.

Well the whole cast really delivered big time. But he and JJL stood out for me. That scene where JJL sings to Russell and then with a wry grin on her face finishes it off with, “and you’ll be dead behind me John when I get to Mexico,” phenomenal stuff.

Bichir had me laughing at certain points with his exaggerated accent and delivery of certain lines.

Plus the Morricone score was excellent.

Yeah its much more the film I was hoping for one Django, again not to rag on that as its very enjoyable by its own standard but I expect more from Taraninto. Hateful Eight doesn't fall back to a simple revenge fantasy, nobodies a straight forward villain/hero and the whole story is much more interested and unpredictable for it.
 
Finally got around to watching John Michael McDonagh first film The Guard, very enjoyable indeed and I suspect something a lot of Sherdoggers would love considering how high a reguard there is for his brothers In Bruges here. Its a bit slighter than that focused more on comedy but less so than War on Everyone and of course you have Brendan Gleeson in both.

 
So I've been in a weird dead zone the last week or so. I'm primed to write the last part of my PhD thesis but I also have to move to a new room in the place where I'm staying this weekend. I've opted not to start writing because I don't want to lose my momentum once I get going. That means I've been doing nothing but watching the clock waiting until I can move. Once I move, I'm going to go on a writing spree and probably not post in here for a week or two. I'll still be watching a movie or two a day, but I won't be logging them in here. Needless to say, I'll have a huge mega post once I'm done writing, but until then, here's a mini mega post to get my movie logging up to date.

@Caveat, Ricky, and ufcfan: I'm going to start with Nocturnal Animals because that's BY FAR the best movie I've seen of the current batch of movies I've watched. I'll admit, that opening credits sequence was fucked up and gross; I think anyone who utters the phrase "fat shaming" should be forced to watch that disgusting sequence on a loop Ludovico style.

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But that wasn't going to dissuade me from watching. Funny enough, I mentioned how I'd been intrigued by that film, but that was just from the cast and the very basic plot of a woman reading a novel by her ex. If I would've known the movie spends a huge chunk of time in Straw Dogs land, I would've been even more pumped. I thought the conceit was brilliant and executed superbly. I did end up with a few complaints. First, I thought the main bad guy could've been creepier/more sinister instead of just being a jackass. Not saying he needed to be Hannibal Lecter or anything, but I think the film would've benefited from having its villain be more than a backwoods doofus who takes his shits on his porch. Second, I thought there could've been more of a relationship between Gyllenhaal and Shannon. Initially (probably because Straw Dogs was in my head), I thought Shannon was going to be a typical asshole cop not giving a shit about this loser who didn't fight to protect his family (in that first car ride, Shannon's basically emasculating him and conveying his complete lack of respect for Gyllenhaal) which was going to force Gyllenhaal to tap into some rage and go on a Dustin Hoffman-style revenge rampage. Instead, all of a sudden Shannon turns on a dime and becomes best friends with and avenging angel for a guy he was basically making fun of and it goes from Straw Dogs to Rolling Thunder. I get that Shannon got the cancer diagnosis, but even if you want to keep the movie's beats the same, then that initial car ride should've been written differently and they should've started off with something more like pity and sympathy from Shannon instead of disdain. The way it started made where it went implausible and contrived.

Still, those aren't so much complaints about what parts sucked. They're more complaints about what could've made the movie even better. I don't really have any true complaints. I was pissed when the movie ended with Gyllenhaal standing her up, but that was more about me wanting to see Gyllenhaal. I thought about it for a while and I ended up really liking that decision. It worked both for Gyllenhaal's character and for the story.

What'd you guys think? ufcfan, you mentioned the film having "some utterly shitty aspects to it" that "aggravated [you] at points throughout." Care to elaborate? And @moreorless87, I don't know if I'd go so far as to say that the film "denounces" Amy Adams' character. I think Gyllenhaal's character definitely denounces her - he'd already told her when they were together that they were perfect for each other but that she was just scared and was trying to push him away/run away to avoid having to work on herself (and fuck me did that hit home), and by the end of the movie, when he stands her up (assuming that's what happened), he basically confirms his strength (what she accurately characterized in conversation with her mother as "a different kind of strength") while at the same time demonstrating her weakness. That's still not what I'd call denouncing her character, though; it still leaves the open the possibility, after having acknowledged her weakness and her character flaws, of Adams finally committing to change and growth (of course, it also leaves open the possibility of her paying the bill, going home, waiting for her cheating husband to come home, and slipping right back into her miserable routine).

After Nocturnal Animals, I decided to have a little Gyllenhaal marathon. I next watched Enemy. The plot sounded awesome but unfortunately the movie wasn't very good. It definitely gets ambition points, but the relationship between plot and theme was rocky to say the least. It sort of felt like a cross between Persona and Eyes Wide Shut with Bergman's bizarre spider motif from Through a Glass Darkly thrown in for good measure. However, as a psychological thriller, I much preferred The Broken, which I thought did the unsettling doppelganger thing much better.

Then I watched Demolition and that was another awesome movie. I preferred Nocturnal Animals, but Demolition was a much better performance from Gyllenhaal. And it's just a fun movie. That sounds like a weird description given the plot of the film, but it's fun. Gyllenhaal's character has a great spirit that makes it fun watching him adapt to his new life. And his relationship with Naomi Watts' son was fucking great. The scene with them in the hardware store is hilarious.

Ending my Gyllenhaal marathon, I watched Life. I was disappointed by how unoriginal it was - they literally add zero new wrinkles to the formula - but they made the formula work very well.

Since Life had me in space, I decided for no other reason to shift from Life to Gravity. I avoided Gravity when it came out for two reasons: First, because I figured it'd have nothing beyond the space gimmick, and two, because the space gimmick wasn't attractive to me since I figured if I tried to see it in theaters (nevermind IMAX) I'd end up with motion sickness and have to leave or fight my way through an unenjoyable theater experience. Having finally watched it, I can say that I was right on both counts. Even on my computer, I was getting dizzy and nauseous at times. I will say that it was better than I'd expected, but once Clooney's gone, you've pretty much seen all the interesting stuff you're going to see.

The rest of my viewing was very random. I watched American Sniper. I've never really liked Bradley Cooper in anything, but I thought he did a fantastic job in that role. The movie, though, left A LOT to be desired. It felt like Clint wanted to do it less hagiography and more biography, but he never really struck a good balance between character information and character study. I think the drive for "realism" and the documentary-style chronicle of his tours of duty kept Clint from being able to really dive into the character's psychology and tell not the story of a guy in the war but this character's story. In short, he should've tried to make this film more in the mold of The Deer Hunter, making the war relatively incidental to the journey of his main character. I also thought the ending was retarded. Another instance of the movie just stopping.

Speaking of movies just stopping, Black Mass had a very similar problem. It was stuck between a documentary and a character study, only I thought Black Mass was a worse documentary and a worse character study compared to American Sniper. First and foremost, there was no clear sense of what the filmmakers thought about Depp's character, which left me wondering why I was watching (I'm sensing a pattern here as I watch these movies; I'm watching them close to random but I'm noticing the same problems, and they're often at the level of the script). Depp's performance was very strong, from the look and the voice to the subtler element of menace that he did a great job of conveying even in innocuous dialogue sequences. But the movie itself had no real forward propulsion. Compared to something like Goodfellas, where you're ramping up and find yourself wrapped up in that crazy coke-fueled world, or something like Casino, where you feel the weight of the impending fall, Black Mass just went along with what felt like no rhyme or reason. And unlike Scorsese's incredible ability to balance intense character studies and ensembles within single films (Casino being the best example), Black Mass had way too many characters floating around they clearly had no idea what to do with, chief among them Joel Edgerton's character, who it felt like they kept forgetting about and then had to scramble to shove back in at random points in the story. Until they decided they were done going along and randomly shoving shit in, at which point they just closed up shop and started putting text on the screen. The ending was basically a Wiki entry. Do filmmakers not know how to end movies anymore?

I also watched American Assassin. Back in my wannabe Tarantino screenwriter days, I'd actually considered doing a practice adaptation of a Mitch Rapp novel. I always liked the character and the book Act of Treason was particularly good. Much like Tom Cruise ending up as Jack Reacher, though, the problem with American Assassin is with the casting of the lead. Cruise simply isn't Jack Reacher; even so, he's still Tom Cruise, so the movies work as Tom Cruise action movies. American Assassin suffered from having an actor who wasn't the lead character but who also had nothing going for him in general. Very bland, no charisma, just...nothing. Michael Keaton, on the other hand, was fucking phenomenal. If you like him even a little bit, it's worth it to see him in this movie. The torture scene near the end is straight up "let's get nuts" awesomeness.

Then I watched It. No reason. I just saw it on the list and wanted to watch it. It was better than I was expecting but I still preferred the miniseries. I did get hit with one jump scare, but the movie wasn't genuinely creepy or unsettling. The miniseries, even with its low budget and huge helpings of cheese, actually manages to creep me out even now. The one thing the movie has over the miniseries, though, is the actual friendship between the kids. I thought the friendship dynamic was much better and more enjoyable in the movie. It'll be interesting to see how they handle the next chapter.

After It, to keep it in the horror family, I watched Dark Skies. I loved Felicity, so I've followed Keri Russell's career. I remember always thinking this movie looked like it could be cool but I never got around to it. I finally did and it actually was really cool. Kind of like Signs meets Paranormal Activity. And I was pleasantly surprised to see JK Simmons show up as the cynical, beaten-down CT'er.

Lastly, another random watch: I watched They Came Together. @Flemmy Stardust, if you haven't seen this, you need to watch it ASAP (BTW, you realize, Flemmy, that you've become the new aqua, always getting @'ed but never showing up :(). I fucking loved this movie. Better than Wet Hot American Summer, better than The Baxter, even better than Wanderlust IMO. The first half-hour fucking slays. The cast is insane and the script is riotous. My favorite part is that, while it spoofs romantic comedies, rather than making fun of the conventions, they're clearly having fun with the conventions. It's a subtle distinction but it makes for a tremendous difference in tone. It's a fun and funny movie, and unlike The Baxter, it never loses its steam and is strong right up to the end. The highlight for me, though, is obviously Christopher Meloni struggling at the Halloween party to get out of his Green Lantern costume to take a shit :D



The QT school is dangerous. Sort of like Bruce Lee and Jeet Kune Do: They make it look easy but it ain't for everybody.

Honestly, my favorite breakdown of the writing process is courtesy of Edgar Allan Poe:

"Nothing is more clear than that every plot worth the name must be elaborated to its dénouement before anything be attempted with the pen. It is only with the dénouement constantly in view that we can give a plot its indispensable air of consequence, or causation, by making the incidents, and especially the tone at all points, tend to the development of the intention.”

However you want to go about it, however you want to connect the dots, that they connect - and to the end (fitting phrase) of conveying an explicit and discernible intent - is what's important. Maybe this is why I'm finding myself so disappointed with so much of what I'm watching. It rarely feels that plots are elaborated to their dénouement ahead of time, so that I rarely feel that air of consequence and rarely get a sense of a guiding intent.



With this in mind, I guess it's a means/ends issue. I don't have a problem with those ends - like I said, the ending of Take Shelter is a fucking home run as a sequence, as the driving home of that moment when the family clicks together - but I do have a problem with the means. His way of doing things isn't appealing to or satisfying for me.

I don't know if this comparison will resonate, but he reminds me a bit of Otto Preminger (@europe1, you out there? Does this comparison make sense to you?) in that, when he does what he came to do, he just stops caring. The difference is that, when Nichols stops caring, he stops the movie; when Preminger stops caring, he still goes through the motions and brings his films to a resolution. It doesn't always work (Fallen Angel and Angel Face come to mind) but when he forces himself to stick it out to the end (Laura and Advise & Consent come to mind) he demonstrates the MASSIVE difference it makes when you not only hit your theme but tie it in to a fully-functional story with no loose ends left dangling.



I was home in the States on a break, I had a packed DVR, I tried it, it wasn't doing anything for me, I moved on. Not an ideal viewing, so that's why I didn't just write it off, but for whatever it's worth, it didn't have me hooked from the jump.



Few things are more enjoyable for me than having movies throw my low expectations back in my face :D



Not budging on Star Wars. I'd sooner try Rango for Sigh.



This may seem like a distinction without a difference, but, for the record, I don't judge a movie's potential by who's starring but I do often decide whether or not to take the time to try a new movie based on who's in it.



The equivocation that I find problematic in Arrival is discernible here: If the aliens are "simply able" to "transcend" time with the faculties they possess, then no human being, Louise included, should be capable of their "level of sophistication" in the absence of those faculties. Sort of like those animal studies where scientists can get an ape to understand the concept of death, which is fucking insane...but that's still a far cry from being at our "level of sophistication." Louise being able to understand what they're trying to say, I can buy that, but her actually ascending to their level of sophistication and being able to perceive time just as they can in the evolutionary equivalent of the blink of an eye, that I'm not buying.



This would seem to be another problem: Doesn't she arrive already thinking she has an ex with whom she had a daughter who died? Wasn't she already seeing the future before the aliens even showed up? This would again seem to point up that equivocation: Is it because she possesses the same faculties as the aliens (if so, WTF?) or is it because she is able to grasp the language (if so, WTF with the flashbacks/flash forwards prior to her exposure to the language?)?



I never bothered with the sequel, but the first one didn't strike me as "God-tier choreography." A lot of it felt overchoreographed in the sense that, while I could appreciate the athleticism and the dance-like synchronization, I wasn't actually sold on it dramatically and therefore wasn't buying it as a fight scene.



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Fine. Off the top of my head, purely in terms of the (hand-to-hand and not weapons-based) choreography, and excluding the Sensei, I'd say that among the best one-against-many fight scenes would have to be Jackie Chan in the parking lot at the beginning of and in the mall at the end of Police Story (the latter has got to be the GOAT, no?), Donnie Yen in the dojo in Ip Man, and Tony Jaa in the bone breaking scene in The Protector, while among the best one-on-one fight scenes would have to be Jackie Chan versus Benny the Jet in Wheels on Meals (got to be the GOAT, no?), Bruce Lee versus Bob Wall and Chuck Norris in The Way of the Dragon (Bruce and Chuck is cinematically the GOAT but in terms of pure choreography I've always thought the short fight with Bob Wall was his best work), and Gina Carano versus Michael Fassbender in Haywire (best one-on-one fight scene in recent memory).



This is very encouraging. I'll definitely be watching them both.



And I'm the opposite. Clearly, I have problems with the ending of Arrival, but it's automatically better than the ending of Midnight Special because at least they offered an explanation. I'd rather you try and fall a little short (or, hell, even a lot short) than not try and pass the buck to the audience.



Never saw Shotgun Stories, though I remember having it recommended to me in here along with Take Shelter way back when the latter came out.



Since it's Scorsese, it was one of the first movies to go on my list anyway.



Wow. Both you and Ricky think very highly of that movie.



Ok. FYI, I'm saving the superhero stuff until the end, so it'll be a while before I actually watch it, but I'll throw it in along with all the recent Spiderman movies and the post-Civil War Marvel stuff.
What did you study for undergrad and what are you studying now for post grad?
 
I've tuned the awards out.

Saoirse is always good, though my favorite from there was Laurie Metcalf. I think they all suffered a bit from the taut script. Of the ones you mentioned, I likely had the most fun at the The Post.

Personal favorite this year was probably A Ghost Story. Raw, Get Out, The Last Jedi, T2: Trainspotting, Baby Driver and Colossal were the others up there. I imagine Phantom Thread will bust in there when I see it.

Missed so many this year I wish I'd seen.
You should watch the On Cinema Oscar Special that runs concurrently with the awards
 
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You ain't slick, Black Panta! I'm on to you!

Nah but seriously did anyone else think that Cooper might have seen Cat People when they saw that scene?:D

Movie was pretty good, though. Usual Marvel fare but better excecuted than most. It had a good family drama dynamic going on. Michael B. Jordan was real good and got all the best lines. "Can you believe that? A kid from Oakland walking around believing in fairytales?" Really one of those little touches that electrify the moment.
 
It does stand out as one of the first times I can remember when best actress is more of a talking point that best actor, ok maybe not Streep in The Post.

Yeah I forgot about Robie. She was great. In any other year she might have a good shot.

You know it’s a stacked year in that category when Streep is the after thought.
 
Yeah I forgot about Robie. She was great. In any other year she might have a good shot.

You know it’s a stacked year in that category when Streep is the after thought.

Still haven't had a chance to see that but yeah she looks great from the trailers.

If Streep wins on the back of honestly rather obvious politics I'll be annoyed but then again I do tend to think best actress has an unfortunate tendency to be more "gimmicky" than best actor. Doesn't help either I'd say that you have a smaller field who tend to get consistently good roles, Blanchet should arguebly have won a second time for Carol, Portman a second time for Jackie and Marion Cotillard definitely for Two Days, One Night.

This year definitely benefits from best actress having much less "bait" choices.
 
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Raw.
I watched it once and i'll probably never watch it again.It's too weird and just not what i enjoy,kinda like Eraserhead or Naked Lunch.I think the Film lives more on shock value than anything.


Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri.
Really Good Film.McDormand & Rockwell deserve all the praise.
McDonagh keeps the Escalation of the story at a good pace and inserts his typical crass Humor and he's oneof the best at writing dialogue in today's film.
Though one of McDonaghs Problems is, his endings never really satisfy me.Three Billboards ends on the completely wrong scene for me.
In Bruges & Seven Psychopaths had similar shortcomings.


Ingrid goes West.
One of last year's most underrated Films.
Aubrey Plaza was born to play that role.O' Shea Jackson seems to be a really talented actor and not just a one hit wonder (Straight outta Compton).
It's just the right mix of good Comedy, good critique of social media culture and, while not necessarily accurate, a sympathetic portrayal of psychological disorder.
It's easily in my Top 10 of 2017
 
I did man. Didn't dig. I think even you'd be disappointed. Bit of a mess, really/

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Nolan and Sorkin are two of my top dogs, Dunkirk and Molly's Game are at the top of my "Movies I Missed That I've Got To See" list, and other than my friend who thinks Dunkirk is the greatest thing in the history of the world, all I'm getting from people on either is disappointment.

Congrats on finishing the thesis. What I'd give to be in your shoes right now....

Depending on where you are in the process right now, you might not be able to appreciate this, but hear me when I say this: Cherish the research and writing process. Once you're done and you have to enter the bureaucracy arena and wade into academic politics, you'll be wishing you could be back alone with your work.

Then again, maybe I'm just saying that because I spend all my time now battling with my supervisors via e-mail over the facts that (a) Ayn Rand isn't the Devil and (b) poststructuralism is retarded garbage that no self-respecting intelligent person should consider to be anything more than retarded garbage.

I miss just reading stuff and watching stuff and writing stuff...

What did you study for undergrad and what are you studying now for post grad?

Film and film.

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How did I forget that Ted Danson and Paul Giamatti were in Saving Private Ryan?
 
So Gary Oldman finally got his Oscar, huh?



I guess I've got another film to add to my must-see list along with Dunkirk and Molly's Game. I'm not trying to knock Oldman in the least, but his win was legit, right? It wasn't just a belated "career achievement" award, I hope.

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Ah, theory!!

That ain't theory, man. That's the type of nonsense that gives theory (and academia) a bad name. It's pseudo-intellectual garbage full of contradictions and equivocations to the point of being ludicrously self-refuting and ultimately self-defeating.

Nice man, what was your dissertation on?

It's called "Screen of Vision: Ayn Rand and the Possibilities of an Objectivist Aesthetics of Cinema." To make a long, 200-plus-page story short, it's got four parts: (1) Introducing Objectivism with a focus on Rand's aesthetic philosophy for my own purposes in developing a new (Objectivist) philosophy of film criticism, (2) Critiquing poststructuralism in order to dig up the old philosophical foundation on which the discipline of film studies was originally built, (3) Laying a new foundation in the form of an Objectivist aesthetics of cinema, (4) Analyzing a film (I picked Bruce Lee's The Way of the Dragon because Bruce's philosophy is very easy to line up with Rand's and because, very simply, I knew it'd be useful to combine the "homework" of doing my PhD with the fun of dealing with Bruce Lee) as a way to build a critical structure atop the newly-laid Objectivist foundation to prove that, since it doesn't collapse, the new foundation is solid and more shit should be built on it.

Needless to say, since academia (and especially the humanities, and especially the branches of media studies and cultural studies, which is technically the department I'm in over here) is like 50-1 hardcore Marxist leftists who think that Ayn Rand is Satan, that "capitalism" is a four-letter word, and that the concept of "objectivity" is an illusion, my work isn't exactly winning me a lot of fans. But it's getting published, much to people's chagrin around here.

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That ain't theory, man. That's the type of nonsense that gives theory (and academia) a bad name. It's pseudo-intellectual garbage full of contradictions and equivocations to the point of being ludicrously self-refuting and ultimately self-defeating.

Yeah I am not generally a fan, I have been subjected to a lot of that sort of shit this semester (from a different angle than film studies though). Particularly Derrida, in some cases there's a few interesting points made, but to me a lot of it just seems completely detached from reality. Some passages just makes me stop reading and walk away for a while:

Jacques Derrida said:
"But, the point must be stressed, this archiviolithic force leaves nothing of its own behind. As the death drive is also, according to the most striking words of Freud himself, an aggression and a destruction (Destruktion) drive, it not only incites forgetfulness, amnesia, the annihilation of memory, as mneme or anamnesis, but also commands the radical effacement, in truth the eradication, of that which can never be reduced to mneme or to anamnesis, that is, the archive, consignation, the documentary or monumental apparatus as hypomnema, mnemotechnical supplement or representative, auxiliary or memorandum. Because the archive, if this word or this figure can be stabilized so as to take on a signification, will never be either memory or anamnesis as spontaneous, alive and internal experience. On the contrary: the archive takes place at the place of originary and structural breakdown of the said memory"
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It's called "Screen of Vision: Ayn Rand and the Possibilities of an Objectivist Aesthetics of Cinema." To make a long, 200-plus-page story short, it's got four parts: (1) Introducing Objectivism with a focus on Rand's aesthetic philosophy for my own purposes in developing a new (Objectivist) philosophy of film criticism, (2) Critiquing poststructuralism in order to dig up the old philosophical foundation on which the discipline of film studies was originally built, (3) Laying a new foundation in the form of an Objectivist aesthetics of cinema, (4) Analyzing a film (I picked Bruce Lee's The Way of the Dragon because Bruce's philosophy is very easy to line up with Rand's and because, very simply, I knew it'd be useful to combine the "homework" of doing my PhD with the fun of dealing with Bruce Lee) as a way to build a critical structure atop the newly-laid Objectivist foundation to prove that, since it doesn't collapse, the new foundation is solid and more shit should be built on it.

Needless to say, since academia (and especially the humanities, and especially the branches of media studies and cultural studies, which is technically the department I'm in over here) is like 50-1 hardcore Marxist leftists who think that Ayn Rand is Satan, that "capitalism" is a four-letter word, and that the concept of "objectivity" is an illusion, my work isn't exactly winning me a lot of fans. But it's getting published, much to people's chagrin around here.

That sounds interesting mo chara. I checked out your article 'Philosophical Problems in Contemporary Art Criticism' on academia, I like that you don't pull any punches haha.
 
Yeah I am not generally a fan, I have been subjected to a lot of that sort of shit this semester (from a different angle than film studies though).

What angle? Cultural studies or something?

Particularly Derrida, in some cases there's a few interesting points made, but to me a lot of it just seems completely detached from reality.

Oh, it's absolutely detached from reality. The invalidation of the very concept of "reality" is the name of the game.

Of course, that doesn't stop them from crying when you make fun of their "theory" for being detached from reality or from making ridiculous self-refuting claims about how other theories are detached from reality with not the slightest self-awareness regarding the performative contradiction with what the fuck the concept of "reality" could possibly mean from within their dumb ass philosophical framework according to which the concept of "reality" is allegedly nothing more than a white/Western/patriarchal/misogynistic/heteronormative/Eurocentric/phallogocentric/insert other stupid made-up jargony type of "construct" wielded as an oppressive instrument of power.

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I always describe poststructuralists as schizophrenics and I always get shit for it (and only of the "Why do you have to be so mean?"/"That hurts my feelings" variety, never of the "That's not true and here's my counterargument refuting your claims" variety, which is quite telling) but I read this great quote the other day from a guy named Richard Harland (in his book Superstructuralism, which was a very early and groundbreaking attempt to make sense of this crap) who explicitly and convincingly argued that "meaning on the schizophrenic’s level is in precisely that state to which all poststructuralists aspire."

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Needless to say, I don't aspire to schizophrenia, nor do I think that any sane, self-respecting, intelligent person would/should, hence my contempt for the nonsense that is poststructuralism.

Some passages just makes me stop reading and walk away for a while

At this point, I've probably read more Derrida than the hardest of the hardcore Derrideans. And yeah, it can do that to you. I always end a Derrida reading session feeling like Butters:



I also always think of the exchange between Ray and Robert at 9:27 in the video below:



That's always what I say in my head when I stop reading some poststructuralist garbage: "It's nonsense talk; you have to close this book."

That sounds interesting mo chara. I checked out your article 'Philosophical Problems in Contemporary Art Criticism' on academia, I like that you don't pull any punches haha.

Haha, yeah, that's been my most popular publication by far. I think I've only had one publication crack 100 views on that site and that essay cracked 100 in no time at all and now after only two months I'm north of 500 views. I'd like to think it's people who have been starved for common sense in academia and who have long known themselves that the emperor has no clothes, but the cynic in me thinks it's people who clicked on it, noticed that it was published in an Ayn Rand journal (or, at best, read the abstract and noticed that it's rooted in the concept of objectivity), and instantly stopped reading :rolleyes:

If you think it's interesting, though, then yeah, I imagine you'd enjoy seeing Barthes and Derrida get a long overdue shellacking. If you have to write any papers dealing with poststructuralism, feel free to cite my essay. I'm sure it'll guarantee you the lowest grade that you can get :D

Also, if you ever want to shoot the shit about poststructuralism or any other of the many ills of academia, feel free to post something in the Jordan Peterson thread in The War Room. I've posted a ton of shit in there about poststructuralism and plenty of other academic craziness (I've also gone after Foucault in there, the final member who along with Barthes and Derrida makes up academia's Unholy Trinity) if you're interested.
 
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