5,962 Forum Posts by "Dr-Worm"
Yes, of course you do. You can't really be an artist unless you're intimately familiar with the form in which you're working. You have to know the foundation before you can build on top of it, and you have to know the rules before you can break them.
If there's any one commonality you'll find among virtually all successful authors, it's that they've all read a shit-ton of books. Among successful filmmakers, they've all watched a shit-ton of movies (and really it only helps to also be as well-versed as possible in art forms outside your own; good filmmakers also tend to be big readers, etc). And they love it, too, they're all huge nerds for the medium they're working in.
It's a fundamental part of the process of creating, and frankly I find it downright suspicious when a person claims to be passionate about their chosen art form (in my case filmmaking) but isn't interested in this step. It suggests that the person is more interested in being an artist than in the art itself, which is obviously a really shitty attitude to have that inevitably leads to really shitty art.
You have several centuries worth of other authors at your disposal who have faced the same problems you'll be facing as a writer and have come up with all sorts of different solutions you'd never have thought of on your own. So learning their techniques and styles and tropes and experiments (some good, some bad, doesn't matter; you can learn from both) will be invaluable to the development of your own individual approach, and you'd be shooting yourself in the foot not to take full advantage of that.
At 4/8/14 12:21 AM, Natick wrote: but i'm willing to guess that one of the ten commandments of good screenwriting is to never drown your audience in exposition without balancing out any emotional expression from the characters
i.e. "Show, don't tell."
here's a drinking game: take a shot every time one of the characters in that film says anything along the lines of "i feel..."
Yeah that kind of thing is just the worst.
The Randomizer hath spoken, and @Piggler will be picking this week's film! I somehow doubt you'll have much trouble picking something from a different decade.
At 4/7/14 12:32 PM, Piggler wrote: Almost 100% of the time, I like it when directors make use of dialogue. I'm quite fond of linguistics
Dude watch Deadwood.
At 4/7/14 05:32 PM, Oolaph wrote: Since @Dr-Worm was the only other one to participate, I guess that makes him this week's picker! You know how it goes, and pick somethin' good for us.
Woo! This was actually pretty difficult because so many of the things I would have picked are from the same decade as last week's, but I guess this week (unless you guys are cooler than I thought and have all listened to it already, in which case I have some backups) we'll listen to:
Big Star - #1 Record (1972)
Big Star, sadly unappreciated during the band's brief lifetime but now rightfully revered by a large cult audience, is pretty much indisputably the best power pop band of all time. Shepherded by the creative forces of Chris Bell and Alex Chilton, the band's songs are alternately suffused with both youthful pop exuberance and an undercurrent of yearning and melancholy. They may not have the universal recognition and acclaim of some other bands' albums, but #1 Record and Radio City (and, okay @Slint, maybe Third) are true pop masterpieces that deserve to be held up there with the best of the best. To quote The Replacements, "I never travel far without a little Big Star."
And even if you're not familiar with the band's music there's a good chance you'll recognize one of the songs on this album from somewhere else...
As of a couple weeks from now...
At 4/5/14 12:17 AM, Piggler wrote: Maybe its just because you're observing pure language of the figure, with no verbal language to comfortably identify with. It's almost like they're some weird bipedal creatures that just look similar to people but aren't because they lack perhaps the most common identifier of humanity.
I think maybe what you're responding to actually isn't the lack of dialogue, but rather the lack of closeups. The "most common identifier of humanity" isn't the voice, it's the face, right? Closeups and other elements of visual language have served as fundamental tools for generating empathy and forging identification with characters for virtually all of cinematic history, far more fundamental than dialogue. So in the absence of these basic visual tools it can definitely be much more difficult to make that connection. But I don't really see how a lack of dialogue would cause that. I mean, look at the first third of WALL-E.
For a brilliant, hilarious illustration of how movies can imbue their subjects with "humanity" through visual language alone, check out this classic Ikea ad by Spike Jonze.
But then also, yeah, of course the people in these films are going to look a bit off when they're wildly gesticulating instead of moving and acting like real people. Buuut....
That's the thing about silent films though: you can only convey so much through body language and music.
I mean, a silent film from the turn of the century is nothing like a silent film from the late 1920s. These Melies films are narrative cinema in its infancy. All the basic elements of cinematic storytelling we now take for granted, from motivated shot composition to simple associative editing techniques to the way closeups allow for more subtle and realistic acting, hadn't been developed yet, so instead the earliest filmmakers had to convey what they could through pantomime.
But these things did develop over the course of the silent period, and films from the height of the era make use of much more than just body language. Look at the editing in Battleship Potemkin or the camera movement in Sunrise or the closeups in The Passion of Joan of Arc. These are fully-formed, grown-ass movies. I think it'd be a mistake to assume that all silent films are somehow limited or primitive just because they don't have dialogue.
At 4/5/14 09:59 PM, Oolaph wrote: After rewatching these two films today I noticed something I had never caught with previous viewings. In A Trip to the Moon, they travel from left to right to get to the moon, and in The Impossible Voyage they travel from right to left to get to the sun.
Wait whoa that's actually kind of awesome. Nice catch.
At 4/6/14 09:57 AM, Jackho wrote: A Trip to the Moon just makes me wonder what people of the time thought of the moon in general. Like did many people have these kind of crazy imaginative ideas of what might go on up there, since actually getting there would have been such an impossible concept. I've probably seen similar stories before but this was the first time it made me think of the moon as another world full of life and not just a dead lump of rock in the sky.
Yeah, I love the sense of imagination and optimism about science in these movies. It's something that's sadly but necessarily faded as we've developed a more accurate understanding of the world around us.
At 4/6/14 10:02 AM, TheMaster wrote: Show up, murder the king, kidnap a native and fuck off back to Earth to put him on display.
Yup, that's colonial-era Europe for ya.
Also vaguely disappointed that none of the astrophysics lectures I sat through were taught by wizards.
Hahaha.
At 4/6/14 05:08 PM, Sense-Offender wrote: I was thinking of the people that these shorts must have influenced. Terry Gilliam and Wes Anderson both came to mind.
Definitely. Obviously Melies has had a direct impact on those directors' aesthetic sensibilities, but really any filmmaker who embraces the performative and constructed aspects of cinema instead of trying to hide them owes some debt to him.
This is a gross oversimplification but I feel like virtually every filmmaker can ultimately trace their creative DNA back to either the Lumieres or Melies.
And since it's cool to use several short films instead of one feature length movie, I have a certain anthology on mind if I'm ever picked again.
Yeah, a collection of shorts is cool as long as they're all from the same filmmaker or movement or have some other significant connective tissue. Also it'd probably be a good idea to make sure you're selecting at least a feature's worth of material overall (so like an hour at least).
Avatar: The Last Airbender, The Adventures of Pete & Pete, Invader Zim, Hey Arnold!.
At 4/7/14 12:40 AM, DoctorStrongbad wrote: Television is one of the best inventions of all time.
Television! Teacher, mother, secret lover.
At 4/7/14 12:23 AM, mrfry wrote: If its a newer Will Ferral movie, its unfunny. If its a family comedy, its unfunny, if the movie has "movie" in its title its unfunny
Counterpoint to all three of these: The LEGO Movie.
At 4/5/14 10:05 PM, Atlas wrote: I didn't you were a Toy Love fan.
I'm a big fan of all things Chris Knox. Tall Dwarfs, Toy Love, his solo stuff, everything. A lot of the other "Dunedin Sound" bands are cool too, like The Clean, The Bats, The Verlaines, The Chills, etc., but Knox is in a different league entirely.
Huh, I didn't even know this club existed. Check out this good shit from New Zealand.
So I listened to the Tracy Chapman album and I thought it was pretty cool. The instrumentation can be a little bland and at times makes the album teeter on the edge of sounding like something you could buy at Starbucks, but the album has two big saving graces that make things much more interesting. First of all, there's the acute social consciousness of Chapman's lyrics. Throughout the album she deftly tackles issues of race and class in a way that's direct without being preachy (except I guess for "Talkin' 'Bout a Revolution," but there that's kind of the point seeing as it's an old-school anthemic protest song, and a pretty good one at that). Second, obviously, there's Chapman's unique and powerful low singing voice. It reminds me a little of the more recent work of Mavis Staples.
So even though "Fast Car" is the catchier, more obvious standout track, I think the highlight of the album for me might be the spare "Behind the Wall," which takes full advantage of both aspects I talked about and strips everything else away entirely, to great, haunting effect.
At 4/4/14 09:59 PM, Darthdenim wrote: I see a parasite. A sexually depraved miscreant who is seeking only to gratify his basest and most immediate urges
I sense great vulnerability. A man-child crying out for love, an innocent orphan in the postmodern world.
I got some nice Blu-rays during Criterion's last big sale a while ago. This time I picked up 8 1/2, Seven Samurai, The Red Shoes, Days of Heaven, and Fanny & Alexander. I hope they do another sale soon, I've got my eye on their upcoming A Hard Day's Night release and their reissue of The 400 Blows.
I also got some sweet Zelda-themed socks from Fangamer.
At 4/4/14 04:11 PM, TheMaster wrote: Guessing it's good, then? Picked it up on the cheap off the back of a recommendation from @Dr-Worm
Awesome, I hope you like it. I'm curious to see what you think so definitely don't hesitate to post some thoughts in the Cinema Club thread once you get around to watching it.
At 4/4/14 03:16 PM, FRAYDO wrote: FLCL
FLCL
FLCL
Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
At 4/4/14 04:26 PM, Viper wrote: Yes. Yes it is. There are very few anime I can honestly say that I like more than FLCL.
There are very few pop cultural things of any kind I can honestly say I like more than FLCL.
Tenth of December, George Saunders's most recent short story collection. It's really, really good.
Um, yes, and it's right now?
Like with any other pop culture I think game reviews are pretty tangential to most people's purchasing decisions. They're certainly a factor, and I can see how a game getting really bad reviews might be a dealbreaker for some, but I would hardly say people "depend" on them.
At 3/29/14 10:02 PM, The-Great-One wrote: The video game world doesn't have someone with a standard yet to review video games, we don't have a Siskel and Ebert like the movie goer world has.
Don't hold your breath. Our modern, highly fragmented and heavily content-saturated media landscape really doesn't allow for that kind of monolithic mainstream critical voice anymore. But it's not like we even need one. Ebert was great and continues to cast a big shadow and all, but great film criticism existed before and alongside him, and it's certainly not like even close to all current film crit is derived from his style. There are all sorts of critics out there writing with all sorts of different styles and focuses and lenses, you just have to actually look for them now, and find which niches are right for you.
Besides, at this point the mainstream games "journalism" outlets are so tangled up with publishers/developers and so entrenched in their thoroughly uncritical and exclusionary reinforcement of the status quo that they're basically a lost cause. Even if it were possible or desirable to have an "Ebert of games," I doubt he or she would be able to flourish in one of those places.
There are plenty of games critics and writers doing outstanding work right now, they just aren't writing for IGN or making shitty YouTube videos. Check out some of the work of Tim Rogers (and everyone at Action Button Dot Net), John Teti (and everyone at Gameological), Aevee Bee, Leigh Alexander, Rowan Kaiser, Patrick Miller, Mattie Brice, Simon Parkin, etc.
Just as an example of the immense variety and talent you can find in games writing if you're willing to look for it, here's "Who Killed Videogames? (A Ghost Story)", Tim Rogers's hilarious, depressing, and brilliant examination of mobile/Facebook "social games." It's basically my favorite piece of games writing ever (it's also very long and very dense, so I wouldn't read it until you have a good chunk of time for it).
This made my day when I saw it earlier. Amazing.
I really hope this is just the beginning, but who knows.
At 4/1/14 06:27 PM, Auz wrote: Voyage Dans La Lune (1902)
Voyage à travers l'impossible (1904)
Fun! Though this link for "Le Voyage Dans La Lune" might be preferable, since I don't think it was originally colorized (or at least it hasn't been colorized any other time I've seen it).
At 4/1/14 06:42 PM, TheMaster wrote: Legitimately crushed when I saw this this morning and then realised what the date was.
Hahaha, that's pretty good.
So since nobody really got the chance to see last week's film since we got such a late start, and since it doesn't seem to be readily available anyway (I can't find a version with English subtitles), I guess we should just have a do-over this week. So @Auz, go ahead and pick something else!
At 3/26/14 01:34 AM, Joelle wrote: Bats!
No. 4/10
Plus there's Hannibal, Bates Motel, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and Les Revenants.
Most of these shows are very loose adaptations or only tangentially related to the original films, though. I think what's happening is less that production companies are just rehashing old ideas (though that's certainly part of it, on some of these shows more than others) and more that they're making new series that bank on familiar names. Neither are particularly ideal, obviously, but it could be worse.
And hell, who knows. Adapting movies to TV gave us M*A*S*H and Buffy, so it's not all bad.
At 3/24/14 11:16 PM, DoctorStrongbad wrote: Nude girls are the hottest girls. That is probably why they got nude.
Nice username-post synergy there. I can totally imagine Strong Bad saying this.
@Auz will be picking this week's film! Different decade, genre, preferably country, make sure to @ mention everyone, etc.
Aw man, this is so sad.
Just a few months ago GWAR did this surprisingly kickass cover of Billy Ocean's "Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car," of all things (along with a little something extra...), for the A.V. Club.
At 3/23/14 10:04 PM, EvilicusCheese wrote: I want to get better at directing and writing please recommend me some books if know any. Basically I want to improve my delivery and organize my creation process.
Screenwriting 101 by Film Crit Hulk. Seriously, it's the best book on writing I've ever read. And really any of his articles are worth a look too.
At 3/22/14 06:11 PM, TheMaster wrote: Finished Cowboy Bebop last week, and loved it, but other than that I've really only seen Akira and NGE. Was eyeing Gurren Lagann, mostly just down to the people who put out the excellent Bebop blu-rays I've got having it as their next release.
I just watched the Cowboy Bebop movie for the first time earlier today. It's nothing revelatory, but it's like an extra-length, big-budget, pretty good episode of the show. Plus the show gives us so few episodes where the entire Bebop crew actually gets along and works well together that it's nice to have the extra chance to see everyone firing on all cylinders.
I can't say I'm a fan of Gurren Lagann. I think it starts off really strong, and the animation is gorgeous, but somewhere around the obligatory beach episode it becomes way too silly and juvenile for its own good. And then the story wildly shifts gears, becoming flat-out boring in the process until the show's go-for-broke, universe-scale final episodes, which rally a little but don't quite shake off the show's problems. It's not a waste of time but I'd hardly consider it essential.
As far as recommendations go, first of all WATCH FLCL. It's not for everyone, but it's only six half-hour episodes long and if you liked NGE then if nothing else you'll find some amusing parallels. It was made by a lot of the same personnel and it's basically a great big cathartic burst of joy after they spent so much time wallowing in the unrelenting depression of Eva. I don't know much about anime but FLCL is pretty much my favorite pop cultural work of recent memory, period.
Baccano! is pretty cool too.
At 3/22/14 09:43 PM, Oolaph wrote: I don't really get why people consider Gurren Lagann an 'anime classic', it never really found it all that great to be honest.
Wow, I thought I was the only one.
*Things gets a little SPOILER-Y below*
The whole thing just seemed really -- I don't know, average, I guess. The characters never grabbed me, the animation was really lazy past episode 3, and I wasn't really impressed with any aspect of it. Maybe some important element just passed over my head when I watched it or something, idk.
I think the show's ballsiest and most dramatically compelling move ends up becoming its biggest problem. That Shocking Thing Happens at the end of the first arc, radically changing the tone and setting up all sorts of fascinating character work and new story directions, but the show never quite figures out how to recover from it and quickly loses its steam. I thought dealing with that was going to be the show's primary thematic concern, but instead it ends up devolving into trite bullshit about the indomitability of the human spirit or the power of friendship or whatever dumb fucking thing it is.
But even after the story elements crapped out I still thought the animation was pretty fantastic for a while. I wouldn't say the visuals got "lazy" until the time-skip.
As for recommendations, if you haven't watched End of Evangelion yet you should give it a shot, it's an interesting closing to the series and very polarizing among NGE fans so it'd be interesting to see what you think.
Yeah, I think I still like the show's ending better, but the movie has its merits. For better or worse it's much more explicit about a lot of things the show is content to leave as subtext, not just in terms of the Instrumentality plot stuff but also in terms of the character relationship dynamics and the particulars of Shinji's mental state. I'm not sure if it all totally works but it's certainly memorable and affecting, if occasionally mortifying to watch.
For space-y stuff, LOGH is top notch, an easy contender for greatest anime of all time.
I once heard it described as "The Wire in space," which is probably absurdly inaccurate, but still. I need to watch this at some point.
At 3/23/14 04:12 AM, blyndid wrote: walt disney was one of the biggest racists ever
I don't see how he was any more racist than the average white American of his generation. Sure, some of his earlier works feature some horrible, ugly stereotypes and caricatures, but so did everyone else's at the time. Unfortunately that's just the way non-white characters tended to be depicted on film during that period, and in Disney's case as with many others I think these depictions were largely the result of ignorance, not malice.
Obviously that doesn't make any of it right, but you do have to consider the historical context before making a sweeping statement like "one of the biggest racists ever."
At 3/22/14 12:36 PM, Ragnarokia wrote: It is like Henry Ford, he was a despicably vile and disgusting nazi supporter and there was nothing at all good about him. But no one holds it against the Ford car company now, as the guy is long dead and whatever he believed doesn't matter anymore.
I mean, one big distinction between the two is that Ford really was a raging anti-Semite while Disney actually wasn't.
Gave the Maritime album a few listens throughout the week. I thought it was pretty good, straightforward indie rock, so pleasant and unassuming that it occasionally threatens to be boring but mostly avoids that trap. The back half is definitely better and more interesting than the earlier songs, and I agree with the rest of you that "Faint of Hearts" is the big standout of the album. "Apple of My Irony" is a good song but god is that title atrocious.
And I didn't realize the band had a such a strong pedigree until I looked them up after listening. Members of Cap'n Jazz (which I love, though they don't seem to be much of an influence here), The Promise Ring and The Dismemberment Plan. Whoa.
Also I spent a while trying to figure out where I'd heard this music before, until I realized "It's Casual" was used as the theme song of sorts for A.V. Undercover for a couple years. So that's cool I guess.
