This topic contains 12 replies, has 4 voices, and was last updated by davidsmith 8 years, 10 months ago.
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What about
BLAZING SADDLES
INCEPTION
THE BISHOP’S WIFE (the original) -
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Nominations? I’m not a movie buff, but I’ve seen a few beautiful films.
The Big Chill – smooth, it flowed, a seamless whole.
The Grand Illusion
Night of the Hunter
The Ladykillers (the original, with Alec Guiness)
Blazing Saddles, I agree, was great fun. A great film? I dunno.I know there are others. Just blanking at the moment. Film, for me, is problematic. It’s always a large-group effort, and so is, it seems to me, not really creative at all.
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Oh, I don’t know. I’m close to being willing to trash, say, graphic novels, at least in their present form. I’ve seen movies I like very much, but no one can honestly say that they were the production of any one person or, indeed, of any one small group. They just followed a formula, slavishly – it had to be slavishly or the thing would not have come together – and, miracle of miracles, a beautiful whole appeared on the screen. But if you leave out any of a hundred or five hundred people or substitute a few for the few who showed up, the whole thing begins to creak or crumble, and it simply doesn’t bear watching. Film, I think, is not art, at least in the sense of having been produced by an artist. The director gets her name in lights and in the cinema journals, but she really did not do much of it, let alone do it alone.
Film is, perhaps, socialist art: something produced by the commune for the masses. So, to a socialist, I suppose, it’s high art. To me, if it works, it’s just a pleasing bit of machinery, like an expensive sports car. Nobody made it; it made itself.
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If only movies actually could be produced using formulas and assembly lines, then perhaps fewer films would fail at their intention. Look into the auteur theory. Film director is one of the few dictatorial positions left in society. They sometimes control every aspect of production. Especially if the write it, they are responsible for a large portion of the piece. And even if the film is a product of many hands, why does that preclude it from being classified as art?
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Of course, that depends on your definition of “art”. For me, it’s the product of individual effort, at least at its best. So, I suppose, that severely demotes fourteenth-century cathedrals, and even the most successful movies. Maybe all I want to do is simply to articulate a personal hierarchy of values, in which the individual human, acting alone, matters almost infinitely more than the hive mind.
A building, which, like a movie, is made by many people, can be pleasing, but buildings seldom are, even if they look glorious in the drawings. A building that works in real life is a happy accident. Movies almost always fail. Now and then one comes to life, but considering how many movies are made, the exception proves the rule that a million monkeys can make anything.
However, we live on a planet ruled by people for whom everything is a machine. The individual is merely an assemblage of cogs and has no great value in herself. We also live in a time of great respect for powerful systems, and an individual is a weak system. So there we are 😎
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“Art” is whatever anyone says it is, especially if that person is an “art critic”. For me, though, art is an object made by a person. I don’t think individuals made fourteenth-century Gothic cathedrals, but they’re certainly awe inspiring. And, of course, they’re art – because the critics have said so. Maybe that’s why I like crafts, rather than “the fine arts”. A craft object is a made thing, made by a person. It’s usually unprepossessing, simple, approachable, and to the point, although, for all that, it can be exquisite. “Beauty” is sort of like “goodness”, isn’t it? The user gets to make up his own definition.
I don’t think I’ve ever been thunderstruck by a building. Now and then, a space is pleasing. Exteriors of Frank Lloyd Wright buildings can be, um, well, maybe breathtaking, but the interiors of the few I’ve been in have been cramped, like doll houses. I. M. Pei’s Louvre pyramid seems just wrong in that place. Skyscrapers can be impressive and overwhelming, but so can a locomotive or an airplane or an army tank. Gaudi’s cathedral in Barcelona is supposed to be overwhelmingly beautiful, and maybe it is if you’re in it, but from the photos, I’d say it’s just weird. Art, beauty, and the ability of an object to strike thunder into a human heart are, as you say, personal.
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Yes, but this
http://clv.h-cdn.co/assets/cm/15/09/54eb988037c2b_-_brz-xln.jpg
or this
http://clv.h-cdn.co/assets/cm/15/09/980×735/54eb98811c43d_-_131010_canoebay_104-he0yjb.jpg
rather than this
http://clv.h-cdn.co/assets/cm/15/09/54eb987cb29fe_-_small-of-fame15-0215-xln-49277923.jpg
or this
http://clv.h-cdn.co/assets/cm/15/09/54eb9887812aa_-_small-of-fame14-0215-xln-70461932.jpg
Minimal, spare, and unobtrusive, in a woods or on a hilltop or on water.
It might be fun, if one had the money and the time and didn’t mind the bugs :o)
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