Dreadful, twee horseshit marketed to "indie" types that fratboys watch to look smart and housewives watch to look hip

This is like the movie equivalent of a Sigur Ros album

kindly remove sideways from that list, sir

Could Ten Things I Hate About You be the genesis?

sideways, the movie about two middle aged losers?

i like little miss sunshine too (a movie about middle aged people & old people & little kids) but whatever

two for the road

breakfast at tiffany's

chet baker records

what a great thread that address some immediate concerns of mine

im glad someone's out there to tell the truth about these movies

I sure do hate those frat boys

These films are simply a sub-species of the larger genre of horseshit movies. There is nothing special about them except where they fish for an audience.

Challopey C. Challoparten

fuckin housewives. fuck those housewives, is what i'm saying to you right now.

max this might not be the most incisive of threads, nay, it may be kinda obvious, but yr ubiquitous smug snark'n'ride is rly beginning to piss a lot of ppl off

;_;

hey jagger stfu

want to see this list of a lot of ppl

i'm pretty pissed about max's mugabe act in those HS elections, myself

B'fast at Tiffany's = CLASSIC. the rest = Horseshit

what the hell fratboys you know watch breakfast at tiffany's

Congrats on the worst ILX thread that wasn't started by Tuomas this week.

Max is on the money though.

some of my best friends are fratboys

housewives, tho, god. motherFUCK housewives.

This seems like a good thread in which to say that either I don't grok Breakfast at Tiffany's or I just plain don't like it. Is that defensible?

i can't say personally, but i[ve heard the book is the way to go with BAT

http://www.roguevalleyrn.com/img/weingarten_rights.gif

i don't know about what else but the venn overlap between housewife and fratboy viewership definitely includes WEEDS

whiney i hope you remember this, i got butthurt on yr behalf for no apparently good reason

all i'm saying is that even if a thread is rly crass and obvious, don't be a superior dick

superior dick vs telling people how to post

http://www.indiehousewives.com/ is available

asking for someone not to be a dick vs deliberately misconstruing that request in order to set up a loaded question

I liked Little Miss Sunshine. It didn't have that self-conscious "I'm so cute and hip and clever" vibe that made Garden State and Juno so irritating. It was basically just a family movie, but with more interesting characters. Also, I liked that the little girl in was just an ordinary little girl, not this sort smart-assed semi-adult prodigy that kids in these sort of movies tend to be.

"the little girl in it"

whiney i hope you remember this, i got butthurt on yr behalf for no apparently good reason

Is this thread about The Shings?

dealing with a personal greivance personally vs. inventing a "lot of people" who share your greivance

I enjoyed LMS and Juno. There is such a dearth of well-made, entertaining (albeit slight) movies in this world, and I am just interested in being entertained for a couple of hours on a Friday night. I could give two shits who else might be watching the movie and who some cynical studio huckster sees as the target audience.

I'm tired of dismissing things because of what I think they represent, rather than just enjoying them for what they are.

is this cause i wanted you banned from noize again louis

well the whole "board lawyer" ruckus wasn't just me was it

no max ah sheesh it's coz yr all over ilx making snarky judgements, it ain't cool, just leave ppl be, i know hatin' deeznuts is fashionable (for instance) and often merited but your latest thread-bump of "what is up with deeznuts" just wasn't necessary, or pleasant

anyway look we get enough antipathy on ILX anyway, i'm taking an extended break from this argument, everyone chill out and stop acting like they own the fkn place

pretty please

garden state left me with a feeling of bile rising in my throat

aw louis i bump that thread every time deeznuts is annoying, not just when its fashionable to do so

and its always with advice not snark

I'm tired of dismissing things because of what I think they represent, rather than just enjoying them for what they are.

OTM. But Sideways still sucks shit.

"i don't know about what else but the venn overlap between housewife and fratboy viewership definitely includes WEEDS"

-- elmo argonaut

OTM elmo, weird, ain't it?

I'm tired of dismissing things because of what I think they represent, rather than just enjoying them for what they are.

this is what i always hear from people who defend DFW's Infitie Jest but that doesn't mean it is a good or enjoyable book

If I felt something was enjoyable for what it was, I wouldn't have the impulse to dismiss it for what it represented.

hmm, ok. definitely not worth a fight over! i need to not drink and post, sometimes

The Graduate.

i really dont have a problem with dismissing something for what it represents, i have a problem when the things it is claimed to represent are unimaginative and unexamined cliches

i heart huckabees
lars and the real girl

both seem to fit into this somewhere

Can I get butt-annoyed about the whole amateur-demographer habit of making sneery generalizations about who consumes things and why as if we're really super-clever and see through everything?

I mean, I know we all do this and I do it too and it's super-fun and all but eh

the problem i had with garden state (et al) is that the thing it clearly claimed to represent was me, and it was so totally shitty.

Was it ever determined whether the writer PURPOSEFULLY ripped off Rick Moody?

tumoas is otm about LMS - i dont really get the offensiveness of it, same w/ sideways. juno otoh took the grating hipper-than-thou thing to its final level & i foresee a backlash of some kind (the second half of the movie argubly being a backlash itself but sill that first half jesus)

"i don't know about what else but the venn overlap between housewife shitty and fratboy stupid definitely includes WEEDS"

-- elmo argonaut

eww I <3 huckabees

Thing is, Max, I thought this thread would be ABOUT the cliche. Which is why I asked for Sideways nomination to be withdrawn, because at least the other 3 ARE often crassly linked.

WAIT I GET IT deeznuts posts from Bizarro World. You just have to hold his posts up to a mirror OF THE MIND.

ILX has opened your Netflix envelope and it has seen your SOUL

what the hell is that supposed to mean laurel

hey guys, we need to figure out a way to kill all these fish in this here barrel

"Sideways"? that was more about/aimed at middle-aged people wasn't it?

Can I get butt-annoyed about the whole amateur-demographer habit of making sneery generalizations about who consumes things and why as if we're really super-clever and see through everything?

http://www.sajaforum.org/images/2007/06/04/outsourcingcartoon.jpg

it was if youre posting from bizarro world, weirdo! xp

po.rk.y's vs. g.ard.en st.ate vs. fle.et f.oxe.s vs. a.c/dc

The only thing I thought "Garden State" represented was Zach Braff and Natalie Portman being cute at each other. I also liked seeing Braff do a role that wasn't manic slapstick.

Most of the time, when people yell about these movies, I feel like it's because the movies themselves are adequate and not revolutionary/earth-shattering and people are mad that they got their hopes up. Or, to put it another way, I feel like a lot of people go into movies saying "Make me BELIEVE you" whereas I try to go into them saying "Make me DISBELIEVE you" and, as a result, it seems like I have a much better time.

Shit like "The Hours" and "Magnolia" is straight-up booty, though.

vs. curvy colombian wife

magnolia was ballsy as fuck, i loved it

i had not very much hope for any of these when i saw them!

Donnie Darko lads!

ilx at least can love it some donnie darko surely

I don't know what any of you are talking about, I only watch movies with car chases in them.

"Donnie Darko" sucked. Very poorly executed outside of maybe three scenes and WAY TOO FUCKING LONG.

If I wanted to watch Jake G look ponderous and depressed for hours on end, I'd watch vacation vids of him with his sister and Staaaaaaaaaaarsgaaaaaaard.

Donnie Darko was woeful stereotypical "rebel" crap

I totally love I heart huckabees, I never like such jokey movies, but I thought it was so funny. I don't think I've laughed at any other movie ever except for my favourite year (that bit where she has to tell the joke is so so so funny)

the problem i had with garden state (et al) is that the thing it clearly claimed to represent was me, and it was so totally shitty.

-- goole, Thursday, August 21, 2008 8:21 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

but was it inaccurate? ;)

lol bnw I was gonna go there but refrained

Welcome to Who's Got The 10 1/2 Challop?

ha the joke may be that whiney HAS identified an exact type of movie and we all know what that is immediately...

xp i like method man, dudes who get high & chicks with short hair, so yeah i guess so

dude go into movies with the ed wood 'ever heard of suspension of disbelief' mentality & youll have the best time ever

i can immediately think of at least 3 scenes in DD that are not only not poorly executed but memorably classic xps

wait did whatserface have short hair in that movie?

I think she did but I can't remember now.

wes anderson?

you know what makes for really good movies though LG? streotypical rebel crap

eh she didn't bit was often tied back in a braid so it looks like she has short/no hair half the time

xp: "The Butterfly Effect" >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> "Donnie Darko"

Whoah that was weird, I had to wonder how deeznuts knew my initials. Phew!

lol hd

laurel i again ask, wtf are you talking about

"i <3 huckabees" was just a little too highfalutin for me. i like a movie that doesn't try to run circles around me.

surm you really felt you had to keep up with i heart huckabees?? its basically a really accessible slapstick representation of philosophy

i mean you did get that was a comedy right

I don't remember "I<3H" being highfalutin'! If anything, I thought it was super slapstick-y.

xp lol mean

i should watch again! i don't know, in the words of dorothy zbornak, i have trouble following Murder She Wrote.

xp, but it was hilarious it was like a comedy about trying to get your head around really academic theory. It just babbled away more and more confusingly with really good dialogue and brilliant visual gags

Maybe you have to know about the philosophy stuff to find it funny? I used to hate Woody Allen movies for that reason: I had just moved to NYC from the midwest and I felt like I was always just about to fall off the joke and be dragged behind the bus the rest of the way back to the Brooklyn garage.

I have other reasons for hating Woody Allen movies now.

the "have you ever transcended space and time?" bit

kindly remove sideways from that list, sir

-- Just got offed, Thursday, August 21, 2008 7:38 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

yeah it's way too shitty to be mentioned with the others.

My wife really enjoyed "Sideways" up until the scene where that dude mashed his junk up against the car window.

also everyone knocks juno for being so "middle of the road NPR watching 30-ish hipster friendly" and shit then how come that movie absolutely eviscerates the whole "grup"/peterpan/"cool dad"/hipster thing so ruthlessly with the jason bateman character?

That great huge sucking sound you hear is... ILE's giving so much attention to this thread.

Dude, it's 10 to 5. We have needs. Relax.

umm none of the questions raised in i heart huckabees were any more deep than youd find in any random circle of high school aged stoners

great scene - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPe1jhyf5sI

oh shit I "needs" to buy an anniversary present

(I know what I'm getting, I just need to pick it up before dinner)

</livejournal>

hahahahaha

this thread, starring HI DERE as Ray Romano

I can't get through two minutes of that Hucksabees clip without wanting to CLIP every person on screen with a brick. SHUT UP, ALL OF YOU.

youre one of those people who gets really stressed whenever theres any kind of awkward onscreen conflict i bet

Do you stay on ILX because you enjoy awkwardness so much in real life? Because that would explain a lot.

WE TOOK A SUDANESE REFUGEE INTO OUR HOME

the only onscreen things that stress me out are certain episodes of frasier, where he has like 2 dates, one in the bedroom and one in the kitchen and he has to keep running around trying to fake his way through the whole thing....RUN FRASIER RUN THEY ARE ON TO YOU!!!!!!!

i liked i heart huckabees

me too

Can I get butt-annoyed about the whole amateur-demographer habit of making sneery generalizations about who consumes things and why as if we're really super-clever and see through everything?

I mean, I know we all do this and I do it too and it's super-fun and all but eh

this ties into my whole "use of the word 'hipster' is a self-identifying behavior" theory which has yet to gain traction but when it does I'll be sitting right here holding the copyright

ohhh i forgot huckabees had jean smart in it. redemption.

but other than that nabisco I think you're basically asking undergrads to stop pretending they already know everything and y'know good luck w/that 'cause we were all undergrads once

indie guilt

^^^awesome use of irony xposts to J0hn's theory

hahaha J0hn OTM

sideways ruled

http://www.profilefunk.com/pics/comments/you_go_girl/youGoGirl22%5B1%5D.gif

http://i211.photobucket.com/albums/bb201/derekbergman/bearcub.gif

Congrats on the worst ILX thread that wasn't started by Tuomas this week.

-- The stickman from the hilarious "xkcd" comics

^^ someones jealousssssss

this ties into my whole "use of the word 'hipster' is a self-identifying behavior" theory which has yet to gain traction but when it does I'll be sitting right here holding the copyright

-- J0hn D

so basically you're saying that people call others hipsters are themselves hipsters. so are you yourself, by calling out these secret hipsters, in fact a hipster?

I THINK SO

ooh, I think nobody really cares about the idea of hipsters other than those that fear they are hipsters.

i also think this conversation might be the definition of hell.

my girlfriend's theory is that no one actually thinks they're a hipster.

hopenotsters?

christ

Results 1 - 10 of about 17,500 for "i'm a hipster". (0.24 seconds)

These movies are part of Indie as Mainstream zeitgeist this decade; or according to Hipster Runoff, the alt=mainstream conundrum. The sad thing is, at least that slacker "college" shit in the 90s produced some passable stuff; Ren + Stimpy, Liquid Television, Bevis and Buthead, even PCU is amusing with its Gen X animal house garbage.

Now let me get started on how this reflects the twilight of the Anglosphere.

God I hated the '90s.

go ahead

No results found for "twilight of the anglosphere".

how could you people be forgetting

http://www.impawards.com/2005/posters/me_and_you_and_everyone_we_know.jpg

fake indie is an amazingly brilliant construct

God I hated the '90s.

-- Laurel

or according to Hipster Runoff

Seriously?

hipster runoff, huh

ha xp

god i hat?

or this, even

http://stores.homestead.com/unitedindependentmedia/catalog/Me-and-You-and-Everyone-DVD.jpg

I Love Everything "Hipster" as pejorative.
I Love Everything hipster bingo
I Love Everything Would 'hipster' (cough cough) culture seem less obnoxious if it wasn't so knotted up with fashion ideals?
I Love Everything I saw the Shins night before last in Hollywood: am I a hipster?
I Love Everything Oy Vey! A New Hipster Thread!
I Love Everything The hipster ethos, as promulgated in Vice Magazine, is indistinguishable from Ayn Rand's Objectivism
I Love Everything some hipster dude wants to buy one of my T-shirts!
I Love Everything some hipster dude wants to buy my Gmail account!
I Love Everything Hipster Cuisine
I Love Everything Indie Hipster Sports Teams
I Love Everything If there were a hipster superhero, what would his/her special powers be?
I Love Everything Hipster zombies versus Nerds of the Round table -- in Canda
I Love Everything i met my hipster doppelganger tonight
I Love Everything ILX thread titles that are abstruse hipster t-shirt slogans in a parallel dimension
I Love Everything just in time for the holidays: hipster bullshit action figures
I Love Everything Hipster men and testosterone (or lack thereof)
I Love Everything Let's speculate on actors (and to a lesser extent trends) that are likely to be the subject of future hipster/nerd internet fads
I Love Everything hipster tee shirt yoo are a tweet!
I Love Everything Hipster girls and that faux-lesbian vibe
I Love Music "It's their NAMES. Fuck the "cuteness", it's the NAMES that hold sway over the hipster throng. You can't deny folks named Julian Casablancas & Nikolai Volkov III (or whatever it is.)"
I Love Music What's Your "Hipster" Top Five?
I Love Music What's the hipster attraction to obscure reggae?
I Love Music What's the next big hipster scene going to be?
I Love Music HIPSTER (the pit of vipers)
I Love Music What will happen when today's terrible hardcore (colored vinyl) 7 inches are unearthed by the clueless hipster morons of future?
I Love Music How do you know hipster boys are bad in bed?
I Love Music Another of the Onion's "aging hipster" stories...
I Love Music Is this pitiful or what? Brooklyn Hipster Lite
I Love Music great songs hipster smugglers cannot enjoy on ideological grounds
I Love Music Historical Hipster Analogues
I Love Music Danny Devito: hipster
I Love Music Where is the LOVE for all these Christian rock acts who are ripe for hipster reappraisal?
I Love Music TS in Punk Band As Root Of All Bad Hipster Fashion : THE JAM vs. SEX PISTOLS vs. TUBEWAY ARMY vs. ROBERT SMITH's FACE
I Love Music "Kill Whitey"--'Ironic' so-called hipster dj night in Brooklyn
I Love Music Feist is just hipster Norah Jones, True or False
I Love Music is hipster interest in grime on the wane?
I Love Music is hipster interest in "Da Ha" by Rappin' Duke on the wane?
I Love Music THE RENTALS ARE BACK, YOU SMUG HIPSTER ROCKISTS, RETURN OF THE RENTALS 2005!!!!!
I Love Music HIPSTER ALERT : THE R KELLY SINGALONG
I Love Music The densest hipster record store scene in America?
I Love Music Bands that hipster types diss to sound superior
I Love Music C60 - Unironic Hipster Ennui
I Love Books JT Leroy-hipster trash or wunderkind?
I Love Books what are 'hipster' books?
I Love Comics SPIDEY! vs. that damn NYC hipster chick!
All Noise Dude Summertime Fun Board and Pickle Bar HOW TO HIPSTER
All Noise Dude Summertime Fun Board and Pickle Bar WHICH OF THE LA DUDES KNOWS REALLY HOW TO HIPSTER
1 pWN 3v3Ry+h1n G!!!1 As a hipster, I find that a lot of people on the bus try to sneak a peak at my iPod screen...
I Love Everything Naked hipster runs amok in New York
Idiot Thread Repository THEY MOVED ME NEXT TO ELITIST HIPSTER DOUCHEBAG AT WORK
I Love Music at what point did grind core and black metal become the hipster music du jour?
I Love Music can we give some love to the ladies of the 60's/70's that aren't receiving any hipster kisses?
I Love Everything Oh my god, I'm a hipster
I Love Music chicago's "hipster-hop" scene and backlash
I Love Music Hipster-Hop singles: Search And Destroy
I Love Music Ringtone rap versus hipster hop
Thread Dump TS: Bullshit Hipster DJ vs. Bullshit Hipster Rappers

This thread is such a perfect example of this thread.

STOP STOP

STOP THIS THREAD

Animal House >> PCU > Old School >>>> later national lampoon movies

SHUT IT DOWN

http://datacore.sciflicks.com/dark_city/images/dark_city_large_11.jpg

"people born in 1980 are too old to be hipsters."

the only onscreen things that stress me out are certain episodes of frasier, where he has like 2 dates, one in the bedroom and one in the kitchen and he has to keep running around trying to fake his way through the whole thing....RUN FRASIER RUN THEY ARE ON TO YOU!!!!!!!

-- M@tt He1ges0n, Thursday, August 21, 2008 9:04 PM (22 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

This is exactly why I cannot watch Three's Company (especially after having this reaction every single day while watching it with a terminally ill not-super-English-speaking aunt who really enjoyed the slapstick)

can we have a list of stuff "hipster spotters" like that they assume places them outside the hipster circle?

1) this bear

http://i211.photobucket.com/albums/bb201/derekbergman/bearcub.gif

Can we have a list of presidents of the U.S. who were lesbians?

can we not?

xp

agreed

bear is pretty much the most valuable thing in the thread

people who self consciously wear giant colorful pizza hut sunglasses = hipsters

huckabees was bad but the commercial naomi watts shoots when she's depressed and lays on the floor is some funny funny shit. sitting through the rest of the movie isn't worth it though

I walked out of Sideways, thought Juno was a huge pile of crap and was bored by Garden State. Don't even get me started on You Me and blah, blah, blah.

I did enjoy LMS. Whatever, that kid was awesome.

Huckabees ruled.

Whomever said breakfast at Tiffanys - really? What a weird choice.

Can we have a list of presidents of the U.S. who were lesbians?

http://www.positivityblog.com/_images/Eleanor_Roosevelt.jpg

x-post Or Me, You, blah blah as the case may be.

Cute bear.

fucked up choice xp

LMS was great of course

some of these movies were good, some of them were bad

some of our presidents were muff-divers, others were not

LOCK THREAD

http://blogs.nypost.com/movies/photos/jimmyy.jpg

A better way of putting my point is maybe that as soon as you say "I am not X because I like Y," you are a hipster in someone's book, if only because you are proud of yourself for liking the right thing

I mean, Jesus, "I am not a hipster because I enjoy more acceptable cultural products"???

YOU'D BE SURPRISED

I WOULD NOT BE SURPRISED I WOULD BE ROLLING MY EYES

http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj242/donaldparsley/bishop.jpg

1) Greetings, I am the Bishop of Battle.

this is not a fugazi t-shirt

Dear valued clients, readers and friends

We are pleased to invite you to The L Magazine's final night of SummerScreen 2008 at McCarren Pool on Tuesday, August 26th.

The night kicks off at 5:30pm with a Taste of Williamsburg, where the neighborhood's finest establishments will come out to sell appetizers and snacks- all proceeds going to the Open Space Alliance of North Brooklyn. Participating restaurants include Lodge, Urban Rustic, Lokal, Fanny's, Brooklyn Label, Taco Chulo, Marlow & Sons and many, many more.

At 6pm, performances by indie rockers Trashed on Fiction and The King Left.

And at dusk, a screening of RUSHMORE, Wes Anderson's beloved dramedy about a young man with an extended extra-curricular resumé, introduced by Kent Jones of The Film Society of Lincoln Center.

It's been an amazing summer at the pool and we hope you can come by to celebrate with us.

Sincerely,

The L Magazine

commerce + art -> mediocrity

A better way of putting my point is maybe that as soon as you say "I am not X because I like Y," you are a hipster in someone's book, if only because you are proud of yourself for liking the right thing

-- nabisco, Thursday, August 21, 2008 5:40 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

pretty much

it's a wonderful life is amazing

I love art with a capital A. ART. But is it Art, honey? ART? ART ART ART ART

people aren't people
so why shouldn't we
type them by the movies
that they like to see

Categorizing is awesome

Burt it is totally not in your interest to take that position

I'm pretty sure it is

You're pretty sure of EVERYTHING

I smell like a dish rag

I have a controversial opinion about whose sock puppet burt is

???

D
I
S
H

R
A
G

burts not a sock hes a dishwasher

I'm real, but I don't blame you for being unable to believe I could possibly exist. You just don't read the boring ass threads I post on as my actual human self.

I am my own sock puppet. My life is sock puppetry. I am afraid t o look at myself in the mirror so I live life as a mirror. see yourself in me?

this has gotta be the weirdest thread on ilx in like 2 weeks at least

I have long suspected that Burt is a sockpuppet employed by my mother to make me never want to talk or think about popular culture ever again and run screaming in the opposite direction from Brooklyn and move back to the midwest and go to med school

burt is deeznuts.

Fuck that shit

Totally different styles there m8. Burt is Real

lars & the real burt

I didn't study LITERATr sk i URE and work as a writer to not pull p r o f s & to u n dll the . Take the medicine, baby. I'll eat you

this is my response

I used to have a Wolfman Jack record.

"they say the pressure's getting to me. but I tell them, "what pressure?" """

i think burt is nabisco's sock puppet

oh those dizzy cunt housewives

mommy!

fuck it!

Winner, lock thread.

Didn't read under the cut but

I'm tired of dismissing things because of what I think they represent, rather than just enjoying them for what they are.

-- Super Cub, Thursday, August 21, 2008 8:04 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

I think this is called maturity and people still b-hurt about these movies because of their place in culture or because of their fanbase seriously need to grow the fuck up imo

i fart fuckabees

This thread is TL;DR. Did anything happen in it?

no dom

This thread's title is TL;DR. Did anything happen in it?

confusion about the tastes of both fratboys AND housewives

quick recap--

whiney g weingarten clowned
louis gets mad at me
whiney clowned more
dan continues to reveal his bizarre taste in movies
nabisco uses the phrase 'butt-annoyed' to clown whiney
j0hn d gets outed as a hipster by gear
burt_stanton clowned in place of whiney

Guys, I made the title as challopsy as humanly possible on purpose. Jokes, bruvs.

I've never even seen these movies.

i haven't ever been to williamsburg

youre admitting that proves youre not in fact dom you just out-dommed dom

great thread

I did see Sideways. It was pretty OK.

I shouldn't get drunk and read a thread where people like Sideways and hate Donnie Darko. No, I should not do that.

Larry Flynt Presents: Fratboys and Housewives, Vol. III

wait, you're arguing DD is BETTER than sideways??????????

i think maybe "mamma mia" can be in this list?

http://www.threespeech.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/Comicbookguy.png

I really like Little Miss Sunshine AND Sideways. Garden State might have been tolerable had it had Natalie Portman's woobly naked arse in it, but then the danger is that it would also have Zach "cunt" Braff's wobbly naked arse, also, and I would become a murderer.

poopsockpuppet

I liked when HOOS was goin off about maturity and Abbott chimed in with I Fart Fuckabees. Abbie always makes me laugh.

revive

did somebody cite "this thread" in this thread?

I sure do hate them fratboys

Guys, I made the title as challopsy as humanly possible on purpose. Jokes, bruvs.

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Thursday, August 21, 2008 8:56 PM (3 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

hands up, who doesn't buy this for a second

I know tons of losers who still listen to Cake

― I've encountered Whiney on numerous message boards and (Whiney G. Weingarten), Friday, November 21, 2008 1:13 PM (35 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I sure do hate them fratboys

― TOMBOT

<3

doesn't everyone?

what a great thread that address some immediate concerns of mine

― max, Thursday, August 21, 2008 2:43 PM (10 months ago) Bookmark

posts that summarize the spirit of ilx hall of fame edition

WARNING: (500) Days of Summer

that Away We Go movie would be in this category, right?

I think I successfully answered Netflix's questions such that it doesn't suggest these movies to me. Instead, it really wants me to see Battle of Algiers and the Secret Agent tv show.

also donnie darko is the best film of the decade, right next to INLAND EMPIRE

no mention of napoleon dynamite at all in this thread??? shameful

Donnie Darkie is actually the worst film of the decade. Right on with Inland Empire tho.

max this might not be the most incisive of threads, nay, it may be kinda obvious, but yr ubiquitous smug snark'n'ride is rly beginning to piss a lot of ppl off

― Just got offed, Thursday, August 21, 2008 9:45 PM (10 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^^^ says what we're all thinking

According to 1p3 real women don't like Breakfast at Tiffany's.

^^^truthspeaker

We went to tiffanys you know. Not even a coffee bar!

Why the fuck was "I Sure Do Hate Those Frat Boys" deleted?

http://www.takegreatpictures.com/content/images/tip1_6965.jpg

snark 'n ryde

snarkenRYDE

you must be this tall to ride the snark

I have long suspected that Burt is a sockpuppet employed by my mother to make me never want to talk or think about popular culture ever again and run screaming in the opposite direction from Brooklyn and move back to the midwest and go to med school

― nabisco, Thursday, August 21, 2008 5:09 PM (10 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

LOL

i pretty much dug Juno

that movie should have been called "jew? no."

What a great thread! I love snark and snide. Representation is EVERYTHING.

us steel representin'

If a film leaves you to aware of its marketing, there is a problem. But I don't take my opinions too seriously.

http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/c/carroll/lewis/snark/images/snark8.jpg

http://keithwiley.com/pictures/snark/snarkTitle1.gif

http://www.meltyourfaceoff.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/snark2.jpg

http://abbeville.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/snark.jpg

http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/c/carroll/lewis/snark/images/snark4.jpg

Be careful, though, lest your snark turn out to be a Boojum.

Those illustrations are fucking terrifying imo

Is this thread about The Shings?

― contenderizer, Thursday, 21 August 2008 20:02 (10 months ago)

yeah, i'm okay with Juno, too.

List twee little indie (or faux-indie) movies long enough, and eventually everyone's going to go, "Ok, but that was good."

A better way of putting my point is maybe that as soon as you say "I am not X because I like Y," you are a hipster in someone's book, if only because you are proud of yourself for liking the right thing

Well, sure. There is plenty of room to watch movies and not feel superior about your tastes. What's so awful about Garden State, which is the only truly offensively bad movie that has been mentioned here IMO, is that it actively invites the audience to feel proud of themselves for having enough sensitivity and good taste to love Zach Braff. Being so narcissistic that you think everyone else should be narcissistic too, because it feels so great and liberating, does not make you kind and generous.

Little Miss Sunshine isn't hip, it's just kind of a mess. There's supposed to be this bittersweet misty-eyed smile behind it, but the machinations of the plot are so ludicrous that what the movie needs FAR more than gravitas is Gene Wilder screaming "I'm hysterical! I'm hysterical!" It just doesn't work.

And I don't think Huckabees belongs on a list of whimsical and slight efforts. At least it has the balls to be completely inscrutable. It doesn't really work, either, but I love that it exists.

Fuck Huckabees.

It wears its inscrutability like a badge of honor.

Fuck it for that.

Does it? I think it's confused about its own inscrutability.

I mean, I didn't get the feeling that it gets to the bottom of nothing AND THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT, hey aren't we smart for knowing that we know nothing. I got the feeling that it gets to the bottom of nothing because maybe O. Russell needed some sleep, and to throw it in a drawer for a decade or so until he decided what to do with it. But fuck it. Let's make a weird mess of a movie!

The ending feels really self-congratulatory to me--"well, we get it. do you get it? do you?"

I saw it with a group of friends and I spent a few moments staring dumbfounded at the credits. A asked me "what, man?" B said "He's thinking about it, man." A said ".....what was there to think about?"

He was right.

The Ebert review is worth a read. I mostly agree with him. And you.

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041007/REVIEWS/40920003/1023

i'm sorry, but people acting like huckabees is "inscrutable" or head-scratching is weird to me. it's like freshman-level philosophy. the central argument is between comic-book existentialism and comic-book zen. and the resolution is just a sort of wishy-washy, 'hey, maybe they can both be right.' it's a shallow movie about deep things, but it's not hard to understand.

but i like it because it's funny.

(and i don't think huckabees belongs on this thread anyway. whatever its merits or offenses, it's a whole different thing from garden state. it's more in charlie kaufman territory.)

I think you are underestimating me, and I'm nearly (but not really) offended. I know it's freshman philosophy (and the thinnest reading of quantum physics ever) -- I'm not confused by that level. Nor impressed because wow my mind is blown. I'm not a complete dumb-ass, thanks. No, I'm confused because the movie is also perfectly aware of how silly it is, and isn't getting at that. So what the hell IS it getting at? It's like a movie about a conversation where neither person knows what the hell they're talking about, and it just kind of fizzles out because there's nothing else for it to do. Who makes that movie? Why?

"My Dinner With Mark Wahlberg"

Exactly--it's really shallow and points at its own shallow "conclusions" as though it gives it some kind of depth. Basically I hated it because it was about things I liked and it managed to bore me.

I liked Saved! way more than Juno.

i could kill juno for making me hear all these bad songs in my t.v. commercials. the ones that sound like juno songs. or maybe they are juno songs.

the "philosophy" in Huckabees reminds me a little of those Woody Allen aphorisms in Getting Even

i didn't mind huckabees, but i think if you were to subtract the wahlberg factor i wouldn't have enjoyed it nearly as much

I know it's freshman philosophy (and the thinnest reading of quantum physics ever) -- I'm not confused by that level.

fair enough, but ebert sounds like he is. (and rex reed and various other dopey critics were too -- "omg this movie makes no sense!" it makes plenty of sense. too much for its own good, everything is spelled out in block letters.)

and who makes that movie is someone who is a.) not that deep a thinker and b.) is trying to turn all those ideas into slapstick and laffs. which, actually, russell's pretty good at. (the slapstick and laffs, not the deep thinking.) it's not really notably shallower than a lot of woody allen's philosophical riffs -- woody's its biggest influence, i think -- and it's also not as funny as them, but there's still a lot of funny stuff in it.

(and i didn't notice the woody allen mention right above until i posted that, but yeah. and woody's not really that deep a guy, he's a comedian riffing on philosophy. i think russell belongs on that continuum too. along with charlie kaufman, who's a little smarter i think than either woody or russell. which is not to say better, necessarily.)

i mean, the whole idea of a wal-mart advertising model suddenly developing -- and acting out -- a sense of existential despair is a very woody allen notion. and a funny one too.

and anyway, huckabees is a whole different animal from the movies this thread was started about.

most (all?) of these movies come out on the major studios' psedo-indie imprints, right? like fox searchlight, focus etc.

pseudo

mis-read as paedo-indie imprints. yikes!

*little miss sunshine joke*

in the end i heart huckabees is a pretty funny movie so

other movies that are funny:
godzilla vs. the smog monster
the beast master
goodfellas

^poll

this thread title make'a me mad (furio voice)

that movie should have been called "jew? no."

― dr. morb's adventures beyond the ultraworld (s1ocki), Saturday, July 11, 2009 10:41 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i made this joke when it came out except i was saiyan that i'd like it more if it was saying no to jews @_@

i didnt see juno until a few weeks ago btw and it didnt infuriate me like i expected it to

I really like Huckabees. I am another one that didn't *hate* Juno. I had some issues with it but I expected it to leave me fuming and it didn't. Plus, I love J.K. Simmons and he could probably save anything for me. I did hate Garden State.

ya honestly divorced from all the hype (i saw it before i knew dick all about it... like i seriously had no idea besides michael cera & pregnancy) juno is... fine

after all those fratboys watched it to look smart tho

the dialogue in juno is so horrible - diablo cody should honestly be jailed for some of the shit in that

i really think that high school parlance and just the way kids that age act evolves so quickly that even i - out of high school for three years - hear my brother - a junior in hs - talk about shit that goes on and it makes me feel out of touch and like i couldn't write an accurate movie centering around high school kids, let alone diablo cody who was just years removed from that age. shit just seemed so desperate to be in touch never mind that juno herself was so irritatingly "interesting", as like everyone in the whole world has pointed out

i think superbad was so great because it seemed really in touch - i guess gross out boys humor and shit doesn't change that much over the years - but just compare the way that high schoolers are portrayed in superbad (fuck it, just compare cera's chracters!!) vs the way they are portrayed in juno and it's like yes seth rogen you are awesome and funny and diablo cody you are an idiot who should not be writing dialogue for teenagers

yes seth rogen you are awesome and funny and diablo cody you are an idiot who should not be writing dialogue for teenagers

LOL. Yeah, the dialogue was one of things I didn't love about Juno.

But it didn't bother me enough to ruin it for me completely.

in the end i heart huckabees is a pretty funny movie so

― rip dom passantino 3/5/09 never forget (max), Sunday, July 12, 2009 6:18 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

otm. i hate philosophy and still liked it.

ilx never really weighed in on 'nick & norah' iirc. i liked it, except all the shitty music.

the story was awful

I didn't see it basically because I assumed it would be really annoying. Maybe I was wrong and should give it a chace?

thought it crossed that line of reasonable plausibility to the point of ridiculousness

ha - or maybe not

no it was really annoying and not good

i spent the whole time thinking up stupid alternate titles to better describe the film - "nick & norah's infinite shithole", "nick & norah's infinite holocaust" etc

nick and norah's infinite disaster

and the cankles memorial title "nick & norah's infinite fagfest"

xp i think that one wins

Yeah ok. I'm glad I didn't see it now. I remember seeing the previews and just thinking . . . ew.

ehhh... it's definitely better than 'juno' and 'garden state'. depends if u think michael cera playing michael cera is played out yet. i thought i was burned out on him but it turned out not. it's as much a teen movie about rich kids as an outright quirk-a-thon tho.

yeah it's not really a quirk-a-thon at all - it's just kind of a stupid movie - the idea of kids running around new york searching for a secret band based upon radio clues and shit sounds really boring and surprise it was - it wasn't really funny or exciting, just kinda zz - cera was great (ima stan tho) and i thought kat dennis was too but that's about it

michael cera playing michael cera is played out yet

Maybe not quite yet but getting there.

yeah I thought I was gonna be charmed in spite of myself by young love or something with Nick and Norah and I think the two leads are pretty charming in other things but anyone would have struggled to inject any personality into that movie. One night of fun movies are meant to have this frazzled sugar-rush of excitement about them but New York felt like a soundstage, safe and free of spontanaeity, the gaiety of a wild night where anything could happen was kept on a pretty short leash and defanged. Rent Foxes or Dazed and Confused or uh, Superbad instead maybe. This movie was appallingly boring and I wonder who it was meant to appeal to, I hope it isn't to middleclass indie kids because if even they have such a conservative self-image that they want to see reflected like this then we should crash the pitchfork server and burn urban outfitters to the ground who's with me? Also payoff she's gonna let him use her dad's studio=vv depressing.

I'm white btw

Also payoff she's gonna let him use her dad's studio=vv depressing.

― ❉❉❉❉❉❉❉❉Plaxico❉❉❉❉❉❉❉❉❉ (I know, right?), Sunday, July 12, 2009 5:23 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

this bothered me too! "hey nick i really like you you are so much nicer than my old boyfriend who was so obviously using me because of my record exec dad oh hey btw wanna fuck in my record exec dad's studio after you use jimi hendrix's guitar? cool!"

also the implied heritage from hyper-twee indie with bunny in the name back to Hendrix, did I dream it or is Mushaboom on the soundtrack

yeah no, but he *gets it*, music-wise + he fingerbangs her to orgasm in ~10 seconds, which dude from 'undeclared' never could.

the implied heritage from hyper-twee indie with bunny in the name back to Hendrix

lol yes, this sucked.

which dude from 'undeclared' never could.

that's how I recognise that guy!

Maybe it's the Californian in me not understanding what New York is like, but I was irritated that they always seemed to find parking really easily.

btw i rescreened the huck last night due to this thread and i dont really see where hoos and kenan are coming from--the movie doesnt take itself seriously at all; the half-bakedness of the "philosophy" in it is 90% of the "joke"

that being said

if in some weird parallel universe i heart huckabees had the same kind of college-kind cult following as donnie darko and fight club w/ the attendant over-rating &c i would probably feel real down on it. but as it is its pretty f-in funny, especially mark wahlberg

btw i am still feeling uncomfortable from the fingerbang scene in nick and norahs infinite playlist, otherwise it was cute & entertaining

i didnt read this thread btw but i liked huckabees a lot but i havent seen it since it came out so idk

i remember one thing i liked about it was that ppl argued realistically - in most movies a sympathetic character gets to make a speech or say something hilarious and the antagonist has no choice but to adopt a defeated gaze and stutter incoherently - in huckabees it felt like ppl having conversations and responding to one another instead of reading dialogue (sometimes) (kinda)

anyway mark wahlberg owns

word!

I feel like I should watch Huckabees again since I did like it a lot but also haven't seen it since it first came out.

fingerbangs her to orgasm in ~10 seconds, which dude from 'undeclared' a real life teenage boy never could.

The worst part about Garden State was that one of my good friends was like, "Oh man you have to see this movie. You are really going to love it." When I finally did I had to wonder why on Earth he thought I would like it. I was all - Oh K, DON'T YOU KNOW ME AT ALL?!

This is the only place I could find this scene but MW is so great: http://www.narod.tv/?vid=27670

Wow. Smart, pretty, and she can Google the cyrillic alphabet.

do you use a keyboard converter?

i wasnt mad at nick & norah's. say what u want about fingerbanging but a movie where the climax is a teenage kid helping his girlfriend climax is at least different...

Does Pushing Daisies fit in to this? Is it still going, even?

x-post ok so I haven't actually scene N&N so maybe if that scene was done a certain way it could have been a positive thing.

illustrated with a rising equaliser bar iirc

i wasnt MAD just you know UNCOMFORTABLE

yeah i watched that with my parents and little brother and it was definitely uncomfortable

saw an advert for 'sunshine cleaning' on the tube today, seems to belong in this thread

that looks pretty awful ...though not quite as twee as Juno or that Away We Go movie.

ehh, it just looks a bit bland. there's never been an era when indie movies were especially interesting (or especially indie). you get the occasional good one. after 20+ years of miramax people should be used to effective marketing techniques... but idk, how do people think 'blood simple' or 'stranger than paradise' got anywhere?

steve zahn is cute tho

'Sunshine Cleaning' is actually pretty good. The whole vibe of it a bit too working class to fit with the other films people have been bagging here. It's all about people trying to pay their bills/keep their houses, and the best way they can earn money is by crime scene clean-up.

i have no desire to see Away We Go, and my opinion of sam mendes is quickly deteriorating

Ah, this was one of those threads where you can predict its course after the initial post, but you read it anyway and it makes you depressed.

Yeah--and I still can't figure out the 'Jew? No.' joke, which I know must make me dense.

Ah, this was one of those threads where you can predict its course after the initial post, but you read it anyway and it makes you depressed.

― Cunga, Sunday, July 12, 2009 8:34 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

what direction would this thread have to go in to make it life-affirming 4 u?

more teenage fingerbanging

I liked Saved! way more than Juno.

Saved! is my BFF.

http://www.impawards.com/2003/posters/how_to_deal.jpg
4eva
T/S "Indie" films vs. bubblegum pop films

nah just ts good marketing vs inadequate marketing.

saved! is a better film, but wasn't supported by an oscar campaign. it also lacked the 'hook' of diablo cody's novel approach to dialogue. idk if it even got a theatrical release in the uk.

also it wasn't very good

was Juno?

Sideways was made to remind middle-aged people (and those approaching middle age) that they're supposed to go to one token "indie" movie at the smaller theater in town once a year so they can go on about having done so, right?

kudos to you guys for hating stuff, it really makes you special

in which hi dere judges entire thread based on OP

and the most recent post!

and scattered posts throughout

Sideways is a good, funny film fwiw

sideways is probably the only film on this thread i really didn't like

ilxors hating stuff is not exactly news

I suppose it isn't the hating as much as it is the predictable tribal response sneering at tribal pandering that smacks of identically-dressed gutter punks sneering "BE AN INDIVIDUAL, LIKE US!" to me

also I like the word "sneering", a lot

Is anyone on this thread besides Whiney actually saying they hate all of these movies? (honest question, I'm not reading all this shit again)

people (on ILX and in the world) are always gonna think they're more individual than the rest of the lot. it's funny, sad and futile all at once.

I guess I like "tribal" too

people (on ILX and in the world) are always gonna think they're more individual than the rest of the lot. it's funny, sad and futile all at once.

― I love rainbow cookies (surm), Monday, July 13, 2009 11:01 AM (8 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I think the mistake is in thinking that other people are less individual that you.

^^^^ I agree with this (lol irony)

I just saw OC and Stiggs, which is the opposite of this, every one see that to be individual

every, one

I think the mistake is in thinking that other people are less individual that you.

― congratulations (n/a), Monday, July 13, 2009 5:02 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

we're agreeing here, i think

Is anyone on this thread besides Whiney actually saying they hate all of these movies? (honest question, I'm not reading all this shit again)

― congratulations (n/a), Monday, July 13, 2009 12:00 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Guys, I made the title as challopsy as humanly possible on purpose. Jokes, bruvs.

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Thursday, August 21, 2008 8:56 PM (10 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I've never even seen these movies.

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Thursday, August 21, 2008 8:57 PM (10 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I meant my Sideways comment as tongue-in-cheek, I thought it was a pretty decent film but its overuse as some sort of cultural touchstone rubs me the wrong way.

the only funny cultural touchstone thing abt sideways was how it helped tank merlot sales

I haven't seen any of these movies either, but with possib exception of Juno, they all seem to really be about boys. There are girls & women in them, but they sound like plot devices.

I actually saw Sideways since I posted the OP

It was dumb.

what was dumb about it? i thought it was funny.

who is worse, housweives or fratboys

in fairness, Thomas Hayden Church was pretty dumb (Paul Giamatti was more pathetic than dumb)

btw I loved "Sideways"

fratwives/houseboys

sideways is a fucking war crime imo.

i can never finish watching Sideways without falling asleep.

Laurel the fact that a movie is called "Little Miss Sunshine" might be a hint that a female character features as more than a plot device. See also "Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist." Context clues.

war crimes always make me drowsy xp

I hate "Little Miss Sunshine", not because of the thread idea, but because it is a crap awful movie. Haven't seen any of the others.

O.C. and Stiggs is fucking awesome tho.

Alan Arkin is the bomb

"hey nick i really like you you are so much nicer than my old boyfriend who was so obviously using me because of my record exec dad oh hey btw wanna fuck in my record exec dad's studio after you use jimi hendrix's guitar? cool!"

I dunno, Nick, that doesn't say to me that she's a person as much as a gratification plot point for the teenaged(?) guy. Of course there are tons of movies where the male characters are equally device-y, but everyone calls those "girl movies" and makes fun of them (27 Dresses, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, etc). But somehow Nick & Norah and the rest of these are for all audiences, and are supposed to be artistically credible.

Eh whatevs, I'm not going to see them anyway.

N&NIP was based on a book written by a male author and a female author, the male author writing Nick's chapters and the female author writing Norah's chapters. So the book, like the movie, is split pretty much evenly between the male and female perspectives. But I guess someone had to carry on Dr. Morbius' legacy of having strident opinions about movies they haven't actually seen.

I'll try to be less strident less time I say "seems to be" and "sound like, although I haven't seen them".

oooh, n/a droppin the knowledge about nick n norah.

Get off your fucking high horse, max. it certainly was some cutie-poo adorable when you were coming the defense of the poor innocent housewives and fratboy strawmen in my wacky thread title a year ago, and now it's just latepass exhibit 700 in the case for "Whiney G Vs. Max Is A Shitty Poster."

And it's especially annoying since everyone pretty much gave up trying to be lol models of inclusiveness and understanding and just accepted what the thread was essentially supposed to be about and started posting about how shitty 500 Days Of Summer looks.

you're like reverse burt_stanton in this thread

whiiiiiiney

n/a & n/n

Ha I wasn't even that crazy about N&N, I just, you know, actually saw it before forming opinions about it.

lol @ Whiney turning into me

lol @ Whiney finally dropping the "this was a parody thread, I don't actually hold this opinion" facade

oy

Guys, I made the title as challopsy as humanly possible on purpose. Jokes, bruvs.

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Thursday, August 21, 2008 8:56 PM (3 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

hands up, who doesn't buy this for a second

― dumb pseud (some dude), Friday, November 21, 2008 1:47 PM (7 months ago) Bookmark

I never said the thread was a parody, I said it was intentionally hyperbolocally challopy for lols

i'm going to preemptively stop taunting whiney now so he can go back to chewing out max, btw

http://bazanye.files.wordpress.com/2007/12/proceed-lolcat.jpg

some dude, it's like when someone says "OMG WHAT A SCOURGE! WHAT RETARD LISTENS TO BROKENCYDE I HOPE THEY ALL FUCKING GET ASS CANCER AND DIE" as opposed to starting a thread called "I don't think i like brokencyde"

the lols are certainly being brought atm

whiney that wasnt a zing aimed at you it was a classic snark-n-ryde comment directed at the current tone of the thread

ill leave u with this quote from a classic poster who i learned a lot from--RIP:

max i have nothing against you. we were exchanging barbs here which bros often times do. in conclusion i think this was a great thread and we all learned a lot about each other.
http://i85.photobucket.com/albums/k61/rancidrancid25/op8.jpg

― chaki, Tuesday, March 25, 2008 5:22 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

xxp OH I GET IT!!

ass cancer is no laughing matter, though

"i don't think I like brokencyde" is the funnier hypothetical thread title fwiw

guys let's never let Garden State come between us again

actually, i would bet money that this movie has ended friendships

I just didn't see all that much in "Garden State" that was hateworthy! I mean, parts of it were good and parts of it made me roll my eyes (lol @ The Shins), but on the whole it seemed like it was easily ignorable and not really offensive or polarizing, so coming back and seeing "ZACH BRAFF MUST DIE"-type screeds directed at this movie is really hilarious to me.

(It probably helps that I'm like 5 years too old to be the direct analogue of Zach Braff's character and ergo I never really felt like the movie was trying to speak for me.)

"ass cancer is no laughing matter, though"

for realz

http://www.libreopinion.com/members/charliesangels/FarrahFawcett_LogansRun.jpg

http://blog.wdka.nl/minorkunsttheorie0809/files/2009/03/artaud11.jpg

i love you all

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuJXtcDvlrc

natalie portman was much more annoying than Z.B. in that movie.

gonna be a long hot summer for fingerbanging

ilx is all angsty today

it's monday

One person's angst = another person's lololololols

I liked Nick and Norah, it didn't try to be jaded and ironic, hip, whatever charges usually get levelled against Juno etc. - nerds who love music geek out/fall in puppy-love to music. It was sweet and felt honest about the way the main two kids would have interacted (ex-boyfriend, alkie buddy were a bit wackier).

I was the only person in the cinema when I saw Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist.

The scene I really did like about Juno was when Michael Bluth was showing her his music collection and she was all, "wow, she lets you have a whole room".

Garden State/American Beauty/Sideways - if you hate one of them, you hate them all, yes?

Juno would have been tolerable sans Cera.

Garden State/American Beauty/Sideways - if you hate one of them, you hate them all, yes?

Probably! I didn't hate any of them.

I kinda like all these films, I'm being sold an image of quirky Americana aren't I?

i hated american beauty but did not hate sideways

gotta admit, Molls made me chuckle with the LOTR bit. xxxxxxxxxxxpost

american beauty is lame, sideways isn't bad at all

Did not hate any of them, Sideways was my least favorite. But really I can't imagine Garden State and American Beauty really being in the same category.

i certainly didn't hate American Beauty but at this point i think i'd find it tedious

American Beauty made me deeply, viscerally angry. Sideways was just kind a boring/blah, altho Haden Church had his moments. Did not see Garden State because I am not a glutton for punishment re: the Braff

I always expect that I'll dislike these twee quirkfests more than I actually do. Juno was fine. Mildly irritating at times, but fine and ultimately forgettable. The only one of these flicks that I HATED beyond all reason was Me And You And All Of The Douchey Creeps We're Acquainted With. It's right up there with Crash on the Most Hated List.

lolz @ Molls rocking Cut Copy in the bkgd

I have opinions on ALL of these movies.

i dont see how sideways is 'twee'

guzzling wine instead of beer like in most buddy movies

overweight nude guys mashing their junk up against a car window is the definition of twee

protagonist (as obvious stand-in for screenwriter) is a loathesome, pathetic loser who needs the strength that only love brings before he can unleash his brilliant novel upon the literary elite.

maybe i just dont know what twee is

i just liked all the sequences involving dude from Wings.

when a middle school teacher who is also a weekday drunk and general lowlife is actually a v. sensitive artist with a novel that no editor can see the brilliance of it is twee imo.

protagonist (as obvious stand-in for screenwriter) is a loathesome, pathetic loser who needs the strength that only love brings before he can unleash his brilliant novel upon the literary elite.

Oh yes, this. And the xpost one, too.

I walked out of Sideways. I like the guy from Wings but found the whole thing intensely irritating.

but wasn't his novel shit?

i could seriously spend the rest of the afternoon writing one-liners that summarize my hatred of sideways.

xp no his novel was brilliant and impenetrable like his SOUL iirc.

that's not really how it went down in the movie tho

Although that indie one about the teacher with the drug problem seemed all right to me, cos it didn't make much pretense about what a loser he actually was. Also he wasn't writing a novel.

LOOOOOOL CAD. I've had so many ppl tell me I was wrong and need to see it again but I was just really bored and irritated and couldn't sit still so I left.

xxxp the film of hatred is probably causing my misremembering.

Beerfest was way better than Sideways. (though i still have irrational 80's crush on V.M.)

protagonist (as obvious stand-in for screenwriter) is a loathesome, pathetic loser who needs the strength that only love brings before he can unleash his brilliant novel upon the literary elite.

that's a not-very-vaguely accurate take on "Sideways" IMO, considering that dude never actually sells his novel even after finding true love

I mean this is basically Projection 101 here.

also his true love also tells him that his ending doesn't make sense

This seems to be Miles' lot in life, but about a month after Jack's marriage he arrives home to find that Maya has left a message on his answering machine. She thanks him for a letter he wrote to her, and says that she needed some time to think about what happened. She also says that she enjoyed his book and thinks that he is an excellent writer, although she expresses some confusion regarding the novel's ending. As her message plays we are made privy to some information that might help to explain Miles' bleak perspective on the world, which apparently helped Maya understand him better.

k so he found the one woman in the universe that liked his shitty novel.

yes because you know that never happens in real life, where people make allowances/apologies for the work of people to whom they are attracted, what totally unrealistic twee nonsense

tbf the movie actually lost me way back at the beginning when it's supposed to be hilarious that the friend is using the whole road trip so he can get fucked a few times before he gets married.

How yall feel about the tweeness of 'adaptation'

tbf that ended up being pretty hilarious xp

"adaptation" rocks hard

another piece of twee bullshit, how one of the main characters of "Sideways" spends most of the movie fucking around on his fiancee, ugh how can people even stand to watch this type of cutesy garbage

with that chick from arli$$

it would be easier to take criticisms of some of these movies more seriously if the people making them seemed to have an idea of what the words they were using meant

i'm not even arguing "twee" at this point dan. ultimately it was a movie about shitty people doing shitty things to themselves and others and w/that i am done.

i felt bad for greys anatomy. that was sad.

ultimately it was a movie about shitty people doing shitty things to themselves and others

ftr this is exactly what I liked about "Sideways"

So out of the whole thread title, the one word that doesn't apply to Sidways is "twee"? Yeah, wow, better get this thread back on track!

xp i think we watch movies for different reasons?

Really, Dan? Huh. How does any of that make a movie likeable? Yeah xp to that.

lets talk more about O.C. and Stiggs

yeah, if anything, there was a meanness to sideways, esp the scenes with fattey waitress and her trashy towtruck hubby, that was kinda lame altho it def. brought the lulz

made King Sunny Ade 10000% more well known in N. America.

to be honest, i can see liking a movie about fucked up people doing stupid things to one another. this happens in the real world sometimes, whether or not it's pleasant to think about.

i'll have to admit, the only image that comes to mind as an example of "twee" is Brian Posehn in a sundress drinking camomile with his pinky outstretched with Tullycraft playing on a portable record player, and this is probably not what "twee" is.

I dunno, Tullycraft is pretty twee?

also, the scene where he obviously doesn't give a shit about his mom and steals her money!

oh sorry i meant Bullycraft, the metal Tullycraft coverband.

c'mon, how many films consist of noble people doing wonderful things to and for each other?

saw

i mean thematically yes a movie abt fucked up people doing stupid things is fine; what kills me about sideways is the pettiness and smallness of it.

peeps who enjoy watching fucked up people do stupid fucked up things to each other should prob just put "Burn After Reading" on constant loop.

not twee, btw

or what was the recent george clooney one

with tilda

I don't have any problem with mean ppl doing shitty things to one another in films. I just thought Sideways was ridiculously boring and the Paul Giamatti character annoyed the hell out of me. Also made me hate the term "pinot noir" for a long long time.

for some reason i never even got the urge to see it, i think cuz i usually feel annoyed by too much wine talk

maybe a nice glass of chardonnay would loosen you up

xp yeah E i feel like there was a lot of misplaced pinot noir buying on the part of ppl that saw that movie.

one of the things I liked so much about oc and stiggs was that the tone of the characters voices were way off from anything that should be in a teen movie

or what was the recent george clooney one

― I love rainbow cookies (surm), Monday, July 13, 2009 6:53 PM (1 minute ago)

with tilda

― I love rainbow cookies (surm), Monday, July 13, 2009 6:53 PM (1 minute ago)

Uh

recent Clooney = "Michael Clayton"? Because that movie was BAD-ASS. And not really comparable to "Sideways" in terms of this conversation.

I like mean-spirited humor. I liked that THC went out on this "I'm gonna use women" bender and, for his troubles, got his nose broken and lost his engagement rings. I liked the hapless hopelessness of Paul Giamatti's character and his self-delusion re: his novel. I liked Virginia Madsen's character and the sweet core she saw within Giamatti's. I liked Vengeful Sandra Oh. I loved how Giamatti kept trying to have a positive mental attitude and how life relentlessly, grimly kept smacking him in the face. The interweaving between broad slapstick and dark fatalism is exactly my bag and, while I also love hyper-exaggerated over-the top treatements, I really liked how everything that happened was on-balance restrained and followed logically from the setup. (Giamatti's ex is one of the most devastating characters ever created IMO.)

btw I fully intend to see "Burn After Reading", just haven't gotten around to it

what is UH, justen? i loved Michael Clayton, but it was about fucked up people doing fucked up things

"Mom, we're going to find some doped out women, we call them sluts"

i think the description of 'sideways' is why i like wes anderson's films so much (though the tone is a lot different.)

jjj was referring to tilda being in 'burn after reading' i think

I tihnk the "Uh" is because "Michael Clayton" is not a comedy.

oh lol surm, "Burn After Reading" has George Clooney and Tilda Swinton in it, I thought that was what you were referring to. xpost

ohh ha

however dan is wrong "Michael Clayton" is a hilarious romp in the tradition of great caper movies

I saw bits of the original Rocky for first time after countless Rocky III/IV reruns on TV, and was surprised how nerdy Stallone played him.

xxxp i don't have the stomach for mean-spirited humor and you read the giametti character w/a LOT more sympathy than I did. also thc DID use women, get away with it (broken nose? who cares?), and go back to marry his fiancee who is never the wiser. fuck dat.

OMG, speaking of terrible people, you HAVE to see the mike leigh movie Nuts In May if you haven't seen it. just watched it the other night. such a great laugh to cringe ratio:

http://www.ica.org.uk/thumbnail.php?max=408&id=4272

cad, I am totally on your wavelength with these descriptions. Glad someone else cd articulate the objection(s) with some coherency.

Giamatti's character was almost wholly broken and not really meant to be sympathetic; he was just supposed to be pathetic. The only sympathetic characters are Sandra Oh and Virginia Madsen.

I am completely fine with THC getting his nose broken and then going back and marrying his fiancee, because this is a movie and not real life; I'm not going to spend too much time worrying about the feelings of a fictitious character.

i always wanted to see nuts in may based on the description (shooting fish in a barrel tho i'm guessing)

because this is a movie and not real life; I'm not going to spend too much time worrying about the feelings of a fictitious character.

Oh come on, Dan. I was following you up til that, but if you really thought that, why read or see ANYthing?

velko if u wait 10 months ill come visit u and make ur wish come true

OH YES I WENT THERE

i'd see ur nuts any month, max

thanks laurel--i would like to be a little sharper re: this movie but that would involve having to watch it again.

this:

I am completely fine with THC getting his nose broken and then going back and marrying his fiancee, because this is a movie and not real life; I'm not going to spend too much time worrying about the feelings of a fictitious character.

confuses me.

there is sympathy for the nutty couple in nuts in may. sympathy AND repulsion! a hard mix to pull off.

x-post

btw dan burn after reading is 50% hilarious awesome and 50% wtf awful. also you really get the feeling that the movie not only hates all of the characters, but you as well. so not a totes ringing endorsement.

i think we are disagreeing about whether THC got any karmic payback for his dickish plan?

Oh come on, Dan. I was following you up til that, but if you really thought that, why read or see ANYthing?

Because I am looking to be entertained? Obviously there are instances where something is gratuitously offensive but by and large I divorce morality from the equation. It doesn't really matter whether THC was right or wrong to do what he did in the context of the movie (although I would argue that, regardless of the outcome for him by movie's end and whether he's "learned a lesson" or not, it's unambiguosuly clear that he has done a bad thing; the fact that he gets to marry his fiancee anyway is not played as an endorsement of his behavior) as his actions are supposed to drive some amusing slapsticky scenes that have a slight edge to them due to the fact that their all driven by his unrepentant infidelity.

Or, to put it another way, it is perfectly feasible to enjoy something that contains depictions of acts that you don't condone, so I don't really know why it is apparently beyond the pale to like a movie where one of the dickish characters acts like a dick...?

I kind of hate Wall Street for valorizing Gordon Gecko, even though it didn't really.

i mean i know why everyone is out to generalize on these points but let me be clear that i am talking about "sideways" and not "movies where someone acts like a dick"

wall street at least captures a particular place, time, and culture effectively.

To Dan: Yes but apart from all that, if the feelings of a fictional character didn't matter, there'd be no force behind his infidelity! All the wrongness of his behavior comes from her anyway. So you do care.

daryl hannah's interior decorating is all time lol in wall street

To Dan: Yes but apart from all that, if the feelings of a fictional character didn't matter, there'd be no force behind his infidelity! All the wrongness of his behavior comes from her anyway. So you do care.

― But not someone who should be dead anyway (Laurel), Monday, July 13, 2009 2:19 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

wtf -- you have to hate all movies where there are unlikeable characters or their unlikeable characteristics dont matter?

I’d decorate her interior xp

this part of the conversation is actually getting at my general issues with lots of small-scale film dramas/dramadies, which might be summed up as they best figure out how to show me something i had not considered before--like, the THC character's attitude and actions are so fucking common. if i wanted to find a guy who doesn't take fidelity seriously i could just start striking up conversations with strangers at bars ffs.

this is totally silly -- like dan said its clear that hes received his comeuppance & in the real world shitty cheaters still get married all the time, the film still made it clear he was wrong but im glad it wasnt so heavy-handed

this part of the conversation is actually getting at my general issues with lots of small-scale film dramas/dramadies, which might be summed up as they best figure out how to show me something i had not considered before--like, the THC character's attitude and actions are so fucking common. if i wanted to find a guy who doesn't take fidelity seriously i could just start striking up conversations with strangers at bars ffs.

― north sea jazz dit weekend (call all destroyer), Monday, July 13, 2009 2:24 PM (42 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ITS A MOVIE

i completely disagree that he received his comeuppance.

Take 5 deep breaths and call me in the morning, deej. I said nothing about Dan hating the movie, I just said he's being facile to claim that the feelings of a fictional character don't matter.

i think you're supposed to see thc as having a bit more self-awareness that you initially think, but also as being incapable of ever "growing" as a person and you can totally see his marriage crashing & burning at some point in the future because he's a childish, insecure horndog (if you care to think about the chartacter's future)

i react pretty strongly to the feelings of fictional characters. it's kind of embarrassing sometimes.

yes deej, it is a SHITTY MOVIE

Yeah, I mean, when I get mad at fictional characters, I throw cushions at the TV and shout imprecations. By some standards, the whole point of fiction is to move you with the feelings & actions of people who not only are not you, but don't really exist!

i completely disagree that he received his comeuppance.

― north sea jazz dit weekend (call all destroyer), Monday, July 13, 2009 2:25 PM (15 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

as far as the scope of the movie was concerned, he did -- the entire ending was like a comic vehicle for him to be humiliated in front of the main character

@ laurel, the feelings of a fictional character dont matter outside of the story's framework -- of course you think 'man, shes marrying such an asshole, sux 2 be her'

uh guys movies do not require redemption or punishment of "bad" characters. this is a srsly weird argument.

yes deej, it is a SHITTY MOVIE

― north sea jazz dit weekend (call all destroyer), Monday, July 13, 2009 2:27 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

if you dislike any movies with unlikeable characters you must see a lot of SHITTY MOVIES

I don't think that's weird at all, jj.

"If i see a movie with a shitty character, I think what a waste of time -- there are shitty people in real life!"

So let me rephrase:

If the storytelling is skilled and/or engaging enough, I will enjoy a piece of work that runs counter to my value system. "Sideways", as it stands, is about a couple of baseline repellent guys, but the story woven around them was engaging to the point where I didn't particularly care that neither one was someone I would ever want anything to do with in real life; as a result, I enjoyed watching what they did but it had no particular impact on my value system.

Now, devling deeper into the politics of the movie, I argue that all of the nonsense THC goes through as a result of his infidelity and his attempts to cover up the aftermath does the job of showing that his cheating was not a good idea, so from a storytelling standpoint the movie does not need to give him the ultimate punishment of taking away his fiancee; his actions generate nothing but misery and it's pretty clear that, in the world of the film, continuing down that road is going to ruin him. Also, from a more pragmatic point of view, taking away the marriage removes the conflict between Giamatti and his ex, which is the most critical confrontation of the movie; having THC lose his fiancee not only removes a particularly painful avenue for that conversation, but it also removes the extra sledgehammer for that scene, namely that THC did all of this shit and got married anyway and appears happy while Giamatti tried to do all the right things in his relationships and got smacked with a hammer. The inherent unfairness of the situation helps magnify the emotion of that scene.

can i recommend
http://cm.iparenting.com/fc/editor_files/images/1042/Articles/Care_Bears_Movie.jpeg

xp

i think there's something to be said that the ending leaves open room for interpretation, cf. what velko said

@ laurel, the feelings of a fictional character dont matter outside of the story's framework -- of course you think 'man, shes marrying such an asshole, sux 2 be her'

― mustafa moe money (deej), Monday, July 13, 2009 8:29 PM (36 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

if a movie or program matters to me, i am more affected than this, to be frank.

i saw slap shot last night, which is a movie about (mostly) kind of shitty losers, and the ending doesn't spell anything out but you kinda know it's gonna end in heartbreak for reggie dunlop and the entire town.

also the care bears movie is

so

good

Shitty people doing shitty things to each other is great - I probably would have been down with Sideways if Giamatti had driven his car into a telephone pole while wasted and died or something.

this gr8 thread has given me a lot 2 think about

My tutor once spent ten minutes of our seminar talking about Daryl Hannah's interior decorating in Wall Street, he didn't have a point to make btw iirc

elaborating further on Laurel's point, i think the experiences of a lot of TV/movie characters have shaped my personality in a very meaningful way, as odd as that may sound.

i mean, obviously, this depends on what you're watching.

I don't have the lit crit language to get far with these arguments, I guess, but I def put more of myself into most characters, or more of them into me, or something, so their feelings and choices do matter. And I like to see justice dispensed, so if the story has gone out of its way to show that someone is BAD and their behavior is wrong, I expect them to pay for that. This is the whole reason stories are better than real life.

hahahah see y'all are missing the point (which i guess is my fault because i didn't really finish making it). basically given that neither the THC character or his actions are interesting to me in any way (and the film makes no case that they SHOULD be interesting beyond its little encapsulated world), stuff like being a dick and cheating on yr fiancee just kind of sits there as unpleasant and vaguely objectionable. like i said a while ago, it's not that he's unlikable, it's that he's unlikable in a movie that is small, petty, and completely unrelatable to me.

xp, mmhmm, i even wrote a (bad) paper or two in college on the personal impact of the choices of fictional characters

like not a single thing that happened in that movie resonated with me. so i went to my next reaction which was essentially "wow i can't fucking stand these guys."

I just didn't think Sideways was entertaining or compelling but then I got a good nights sleep and never really thought about it again u no. The idea of Juno (esp Diablo Cody, esp her oscar win) kinda pissed me off a bit too much to bother I saw this interview with ellen paige and she was talking about what a great script it was and i was all shut up nobody cares what you think but then I realised that if they didn't they probably wouldn't be watching this programme and then I felt alone so i wrote a novel about it but it is 2 real 4 u. Still think wes anderson has had his moments.

i didn't know you wrote novels

<3

ilx is the greatest novel ever written

let's publish it

I'm trying to think of what show I watched that would have been the most embarrassing influence on my personality. It is probably a tossup between "Automan" and "Manimal".

hahahah see y'all are missing the point (which i guess is my fault because i didn't really finish making it). basically given that neither the THC character or his actions are interesting to me in any way (and the film makes no case that they SHOULD be interesting beyond its little encapsulated world), stuff like being a dick and cheating on yr fiancee just kind of sits there as unpleasant and vaguely objectionable. like i said a while ago, it's not that he's unlikable, it's that he's unlikable in a movie that is small, petty, and completely unrelatable to me.

What movie makes a case that its characters should be interesting beyond their encapsulated little world? The only ones that have a shot at this are biopic/based-on-a-true-story things that might get you to look deeper into what inspired it; everything else, as part of its definition as fiction, is going to be constrained by its fictional nature.

if a movie or program matters to me, i am more affected than this, to be frank.

― I love rainbow cookies (surm), Monday, July 13, 2009 2:32 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i feel this way too i guess but in this case its a comedy & he totally does get beat up on by his actions w/in the framework of the movie, but not more than would be realistic, which is fine -- a lot of times, you know what, shitty people dont get all the comeuppance they deserve. its still funny when dude runs naked from the house after the husband busts him having sex w/ his wife

i think there's a particular kind of encapsulation that happens in a lot of these american indie dramas but really couldn't explain it much further.

so dan, you're saying that the definition of fiction states that it is self-contained?

i don't know, i really feel like a lot of the fictional things i watch became a part of who i am outside the experience of watching them

deej you're right, with comedy it's different

Arrgagjsdfgjsfkgja I am totally over my head w this convo and have just erased like 3 posts.

I want fiction to give me something to aspire to, to be somehow inspirational and to have relevance outside the movie itself. Or else to satisfy my desire for justice to be meted out immediately and violently, which might explain the kung fu/action movies <3.

my sister only likes movies where somebody overcomes something, mainly Braveheart and Mighty Ducks-type movies

Hey juno fans/haters what you guys think about "hard candy" in comparison?

also what are your guys's beefs with darryl hannah interior decorating?

"What movie makes a case that its characters should be interesting beyond their encapsulated little world?"
I dunno about interesting but I heard Dick Cheney was a big fan of Jack Bauer/torture. Maybe some more nuanced writing on 24 could have affected national policy for the better?

ok laurel maybe i am misreading some of the things on here, but it seems like people are conflating "not getting his proper comeuppance" w/ an endorsement of the actions of the character which is just totes wrong on so many different literary levels that i kind of dont know how to respond to it.

wow holy shit 10 billion xposts there btw

http://images.hollywoodgrind.com:9000/images/2007/11/charles-bronson.jpg

im done thinking now rip sisterhood of the traveling pants your secrets will b buried with u

No, jj, we are conflating "I don't care if he gets his comeuppance b/c I don't think that's the point" with "and therefore I still like the movie" which I think is basically Dan's point in the first place.

There are points in fiction that can relate to real-life situations, but IMO there is a reason most movies are called "fictional" and not "allegorical".

xp in response to Laurel: I am looking for a world I can escape into. I am looking for a story that doesn't have to warp the rules of the world in which it is taking place in order for the plot to unfold. Oftentimes I'm looking for something funny, silly or absurd; sometimes melancholy, but not often. If I wanted aspirational, I would not be watching a movie; I would be attending a lecture.

xxp: YES

for me, this conversation begs the question of actors as role models.

ok laurel maybe i am misreading some of the things on here, but it seems like people are conflating "not getting his proper comeuppance" w/ an endorsement of the actions of the character which is just totes wrong on so many different literary levels that i kind of dont know how to respond to it.

i don't think anyone did this. i certainly didn't mean to imply that the movie "endorsed" his actions however in the context of how most ppl think of cheating dude definitely "got away with it" for what that's worth to you, me, or laurel as a viewer.

Dan I know we're on massively different wavelengths here and I'm just visiting your country of the mind in this conversation, because you say "I am looking for a world I can escape into" about a movie that we've already established is exactly LIKE THE WORLD ALREADY IS. Whereas for me, the way the world already is IS the problem, and I want to go somewhere mentally that is better than that.

What movie makes a case that its characters should be interesting beyond their encapsulated little world?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/92/Cool_World.jpg

i just want to see colours moving really

And there's a lot more to aspire to than "improving" lectures and sermons, and I think you know that, so now you're just being difficult.

no i think dan is totally right--when you start inserting aspirations and motivations into art you get, like, the last 30 pages of the Jungle, which is a hot mess.

There's every other thing in this world or any fictional one that makes you want to do better, be better, be more moral, compassionate, stronger, just as a few examples -- anything that you think is ultimately good for you or for some bigger picture. I want that out of the fiction I consume.

xp What?? I'm not talking about some kind of morality play here, I want my art (if you like) to have something like that as part of it already. Because that's the way it came out in the artist's work. I don't know! Dammit.

xp: haha to put it lightly!

I think I see better what you mean, Laurel; you're looking for a fantasy world where things are better, where the good people triumph and the bad people don't, where you get to imagine yourself with all of the things and abilities you don't have in your real life. I like those types of stories, too, and I've certainly wasted time imagining myself as a martial arts master or superpowered hero etc etc etc. I don't really see that as aspirational, though; for me, aspirational involves doing something in a concerted, intentional effort to make yourself better. Going to the gym would be an aspirational act for me; watching a movie never would. Aspirational and entertainment really don't go together for me.

art is always instructive, get used to it?

Instructive or illustrative? I think there's a difference...?

No nonono you're talking me too literally, Dan. I'm not talking about fantasy or superheros here. Even "realistic" fiction can choose to be about things that uplift and show how struggle progresses you/us/whtever, or it can make a lie out of all of that and pretend there's no greater consequence and what you put out into the world has no rebounding effect. The second point of view is actually kind of upsetting to me.

.......WHICH has nothing to do with the thread topic now at all, but hey, that's ILX on a Monday, I guess.

from the sotomayor NYT liveblog:
"(After mentioning how the judge was inspired by Nancy Drew novels, and moving on to her achievements, Senator Schumer seemed to choke up a bit. His eyes watered.)"

Are the Nancy Drew books that good?

yep

nancy drew: too twee or not too twee?

not at all

I dunno, but it's interesting that there's no Mother in them.

whoa that is weird. was there a back story on that? she died young?

I think you're giving my examples too much weight, Laurel; I meant everything from the prosaic to the fantastic (and was also extending the point you made upthread re: action/kung-fu movies). I think your clarification still fits into what I was talking about, at least the positive aspects of your clarification.

I tend to really like futility stories because, by and large, I think they are more honest. More people are going to fail than succeed; the question then becomes how the characters handle the failure, something that delves deeper into the question of the human condition and (IMO) asks harder questions about integrity, fortitude and the desire to fight.

Nancy's mother died when she was three (10 in earlier versions).

btw

but if you're looking for stories that delve into the human condition and ask questions about integrity, fortitude and the desire to fight, aren't you taking these questions and struggles outside the movie itself? or do you only entertain them at the time?

oh cool thx, that's what i thought

More people are going to fail than succeed; the question then becomes how the characters handle the failure

I think whether or not something counts as failure depends on the story you tell about it, a spectrum that probably has one end in your "futility" stories.

dan did sideways satisfy u on this front?

the question then becomes how the characters handle the failure, something that delves deeper into the question of the human condition and (IMO) asks harder questions about integrity, fortitude and the desire to fight.

And anyway, if a movie has delved into the human condition and integrity and all that, then it's already relevant outside the framework of the movie, it's saying (or trying to say) something timeless...so that's more than entertainment right there.

YEAH

Insofar as nothing remains in amber, yes I take them outside of the movie itself, but the point is whether the story works based on its own framework. One reason why so many romantic comedies don't work is because the movie spends so much time on comical misunderstandings that lead to mortal offenses that drive the characters apart in ways where the tidy resolution doesn't actually make sense; there usually isn't enough growth in the characters to justify the happy ending. (One part where "The Devil Wore Prada" REALLY fucked up was in having Anne Hathaway's character go through that huge growing experience of a job, then throw it all away and retreat back to her shitty no-confidence boyfriend who was a total douchebag towards her for the entire movie; can't wait until her "legit" journalism career takes off and he gets just as sulky and pissy that she's working late on legit stories.)

I don't think that saying something about the human condition is by definition saying something timeless, particularly since social mores are constantly changing.

when a middle school teacher who is also a weekday drunk and general lowlife is actually a v. sensitive artist with a novel that no editor can see the brilliance of it is twee imo.

― north sea jazz dit weekend (call all destroyer), Monday, July 13, 2009 1:35 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

huh who knew bukowski was twee

CIA Superior: What did we learn, Palmer?
CIA Officer: I don't know, sir.
CIA Superior: I don't fuckin' know either. I guess we learned not to do it again.
CIA Officer: Yes, sir.
CIA Superior: I'm fucked if I know what we did.
CIA Officer: Yes, sir, it's, uh, hard to say
CIA Superior: Jesus Fucking Christ.

lock

Btw the Laurel position on this thread seems to me to be pretty much the position everyone took on the 808s & Heartbreak thread, except she's making a lot more sense imo.

Wasn't Juno really pro life/heritage foundation propaganda? I'm half serious, but it did kind of struck as an attempt to make pro lifers hip.

imo the abortion angle of juno comprised such a small part of its content that it's not really worth talking about. in addition, if juno had an abortion, there would be no movie.

the movie juno was the real abortion

SLAM

Hey juno fans/haters what you guys think about "hard candy" in comparison?

hard candy is dumb gay trash in comparison to anything

but is it fit for twee housewives?

when a middle school teacher who is also a weekday drunk and general lowlife is actually a v. sensitive artist with a novel that no editor can see the brilliance of it is twee imo.

Wait, is that the plot of sideways? It does read like a story-within-the-song from Belle and Sebastian's Tigermilk.

And what are the common characteristics in these movies that drive you guys nuts? As others have said, a lot of the films listed are technically quite different from one another.

does "Kids Are All Right" belong here?

I just saw the trailer for that, and, while I don't think it looks amazing, it seems like it may be the first relatively wide-release American film that centers on a lesbian nuclear family, and I feel like it deserves some credit for that.

it's been getting great reviews, was wondering if there's going to be a backlash

It's definitely the movie equivalent of a book club book. But I find a genuine backlash hard to believe unless you mean one coming from the more radical part of the lesbian community.

no, more that any decent indie flick tends to get overrated because it's put in opposition to cgi flix and then a modest film gets sort of blown up and then people expect too much from it....or something

500 days of summer is definitely the worst in this case. oh wow he listens to the smiths. so indie.

The Graduate.

― Eazy, Thursday, August 21, 2008

wtf does this mean? there were no indie types in 1967, just "discontented youth"

I presume they mean that this has moved into being a movie that people watch for the reprehensible purposes Whiney explained.

what up yo?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism_of_small_differences

fuck this fuckin thread

wishin fratboys and housewives the best in 2012

fratwives and houseboys

if only

Just old words for "Tumblr Whites".

where have you gone, joe dimaggio
the nation turns its lonely eyes to you
whoo whoo whoo

you can replace joe dimaggio with whiney weingarten and the lyric still scans

nah, just fuck amateurist and ILE not understanding anything pre-T*r*ntino

where have you gone, joe dimaggio
the nation turns its lonely eyes to you
whoo whoo whoo

I think it's possible that part of the lyric is not heard in The Graduate, btw, bcz it wan't written yet. Nichols asked S&G for some music in the climax and they just stuck the name "Mrs Robinson" into an unfinished song.

Sideways wasn't bad, but youd have to strap me in a chair to get me to watch the other 3 films in Whiney's 1st post btw

I've probably seen The Graduate 25 times, but I had to double-check--you're right, no Joe DiMaggio. The relevant section (start around 6:30):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5gb79X2ZG8&feature=related

I think it is the template for films like Garden State (so-so example) and Rushmore (superior example)--it, The Sterile Cuckoo, The Heartbreak Kid, and a few others. Not for Sideways, though.

I love the Graduate but hated GS. Rushmore is pretty good although I'm not the biggest WA fan. Did not like sideways. I haven't seen the others.

Not that you asked. lol.