Watchmen (Zack Snyder, 2009)

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exte
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Re: Watchmen (Zack Snyder, 2009)

#551 Post by exte » Sat Mar 14, 2009 11:26 pm

This was a great movie. I really enjoyed it, really had a good time. I thought the atmosphere, costume design and production values were the best I've seen in years. I could live in this world. Nothing looked shabby about it. It's the best that Hollywood has to offer, and only Hollywood can serve up production values like this. I've never read the comic, but a friend has the moving comic on blu-ray. I may try it when I get a chance, but I really had a good time today. It really pulled me in, more so than most films in so very long. For a film that is so low on rotten tomatoes, I have to say it entertained me far more than most of their highest recommendations...

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Re: Watchmen (Zack Snyder, 2009)

#552 Post by cdnchris » Sat Mar 14, 2009 11:49 pm

John Cope wrote:This is one of those rare occasions when the taste of the "average movie goer" was encouraging.
Not really. You do realize most people who hate it hated it because there wasn't enough gore or action, right? Even if the narrative worked (and it didn't, I agree) they'd still hate it because there wasn't enough slo-mo, blood, and drop kicking to keep their attention. The movie would still have the same amount of action, 20-30 minutes tops in a 3 hour movie, which will be death to most of the "average movie goers" who would be drawn to a super hero movie.

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Murdoch
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Re: Watchmen (Zack Snyder, 2009)

#553 Post by Murdoch » Sun Mar 15, 2009 1:32 am

I saw this and it was a decent enough experience, the only other people in the theater besides my friend and I were four other guys who probably were just die-hard fans of the comic. I admit that it was good enough for me, but the soundtrack was horrendous and used at the most inopportune moments (i.e. the sex scene with "Hallelujah"). But in terms of the bad acting and celeb impersonators I just thought of it as a sort of B-movie adaptation of Watchmen. The person I went with hadn't read the comic, but she enjoyed it enough after I gave a brief synopsis of the primary characters beforehand, however we both agreed that the soundtrack and acting were the weakest portions - and while Haley is good as Rorschach, I found his Bale-like growling to be irritating since I always thought of Rorschach's voice as a dead monotone in the vane of how Crudup did Doc Manhattan's voice, only more raspy. Also, as others have pointed out the non-Manhattan characters were given too much physical strength, making it seem like they had actual powers and weren't just average people with extraordinary habits.

I agree with JonathanM in that the movie tried to stick too close to the comic, but I don't think it would have benefited from taking more liberties with the story since the time it did do that - the ending - it completely conflicted with several aspects of the movie's story, so I don't think Hayter had it in him to successfully stray from what Moore laid out.

Overall I went in with my expectations low and it allowed me to see past the flaws and appreciate certain parts - the parts taken directly from the comic, Haley and Crudup, how round Malin Akerman's head is, Carla Gugino not being in every scene - so while I wouldn't want to see it again, I'm not regretting it.

And if one wants to see why this film doesn't appeal to the mainstream - other than the three hour running time - you don't have to look much further than the psycho-sexual dream Nite Owl has, not that anyone who hasn't seen the movie or read the comic would know about it but it's one of the parts of the movie that I'll bet didn't help with the bad word-of-mouth it's been getting.

Nothing
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Re: Watchmen (Zack Snyder, 2009)

#554 Post by Nothing » Sun Mar 15, 2009 8:40 am

You preferred this to Milk?... :-s

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Re: Watchmen (Zack Snyder, 2009)

#555 Post by JonathanM » Sun Mar 15, 2009 1:01 pm

Nothing wrote:You preferred this to Milk?... :-s
By a country mile. Interestingly, I'd say that Milk had a very similar approach to politics as most superhero films. It ignores the guts of social problems. The whys and wherefores. the clashes of culture and generation and class. It presents them simply as problems that can be solved by someone who is willing to knock heads together. It gives no real insight into Milk as a person and it effectively drains all the sex out of 1970s San Francisco, even going so far as to present sex as the nemesis to political engagement. It was a psychologically, sociologically and politically inert pat on the head from the cultural mainstream.

Watchmen, in some limited ways, takes the opposite path. Not only does it attack the idea that the world needs just one guy to knock our heads together (which is present in the subject matter) but it actually feeds into the source material a lot of the stuff that was not included presumably because of where and when the original novel was published. It suggests that idealism is not a pure instinct but rather a profoundly dirty one wrapped up in feelings of sexual inadequacy, power fantasies and the fascistic and oepidal urge to force people to do as you will.

I can recognise Milk as a milestone in the long-overdue acceptance of GLBT people by Hollywood but as a film it's as sanitised as the Hall of Presidents.

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Re: Watchmen (Zack Snyder, 2009)

#556 Post by filmnoir1 » Sun Mar 15, 2009 1:24 pm

I can't believe that someone is trying to argue the vital political rhetoric of Watchmen over Milk. Snyder's "vision" of the novel and its world is one informed by the hyperbolic rhetoric of Neo-Conservatism and a belief that the only way to solve problems is through violence, violence that is dictated by the extreme positions of old white men in suits who believe that it is their "manifest destiny" to transform the world so that it resembles the boring, alienated Mc-economy of the United States.
Milk may not be a perfect film but it is an intimate, emotional, and psychological profile of an entire movement, its struggles, and the deep seeded prejudices of those who consist of the Neo-Con movement and their silly need to hold onto regressive values and ideals in a world that is rapidly changing and passing them by. These are the same people who in the 1950s and 1960s believed that African Americans and whites should not marry, co-exist in the same place, or for that matter even have rights because after all "they were nothing but animals anyways." Much of this same resentful rhetoric is addressed in this film, only now it is in regards to questions of sexuality and gender (which are not the same thing). Milk unlike many other "queer" films does not play up the sex because Van Sant is attempting to illustrate that those individuals within the GLBT community are more than their sexual desires, in fact they are people like everyone else. It is this message that he celebrates in the film, which is a more introspective strategy in regards to telling a "queer" narrative than even Ang Lee was able to achieve with Brokeback Mountain.

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Re: Watchmen (Zack Snyder, 2009)

#557 Post by rs98762001 » Sun Mar 15, 2009 2:43 pm

I'm getting tired of reading all this stuff about how WATCHMEN has flopped because it's too arty, or not mainstream enough, or too original, or whatever. The reason it's flopped is because it's a bad movie - a poor translation of a novel that would have been a test for the best directors in the world, so of course it defeated Zack the Hack. His director card should be revoked simply for his atrocious music choices.

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Re: Watchmen (Zack Snyder, 2009)

#558 Post by JonathanM » Sun Mar 15, 2009 2:51 pm

Firstly, I'd rate an intelligent neo-conservative film over an empty-headed liberal one any day. I respect depth of thought regardless of the content of that thought. and an intelligent neo-conservative film would be much more interesting to me than the cascade of posturing but ultimately clueless liberal anti-war films we've had. This isn't a reflection of my politics BTW, I'm a leftist and I was vehemently anti-war (and continue to be so) but I have more respect for intelligence than I do for conformity to my worldview.

As I said, I understand that Milk has importance by virtue of being a film about gay politics but I don't think it's a particularly interesting or well thought-out film about that topic. In fact, I'd argue that it is actually quite right wing in its approach to history (is airbrushes out the role of sex and exaggerates the role of the individual in what was essentially a community becoming aware of its power and its need to voice its concerns). I disagree that it's intimate or psychological and your point about sex is a complete straw man. I've reviewed enough indie gay cinema to know the fondness for films about hot guys taking their shirts off and sucking face. I'm not talking about playing up the sex, I'm talking about recognising the fact that one reason why the gay community in San Francisco was so perfectly positioned for political mobilisation was because they were al fucking each other left right and center (indeed, I'd argue that the same atmosphere that made Milk's elevation to public office possible was the one that made 1980s SF so vulnerable to HIV/AIDS).

Secondly, I do not think that you can get, in good faith, neo-conservatism out of Watchmen. It's a film about a) the compromised morality and psychology behind the zeal of masked vigilantes and b) the ultimate futility of trying to solve complex political problems through individual action, particularly when that action is violent. Snyder's a director who panders to the worst in people much in the same way as right wing politics does. He's all about the pornographic joy of self-righteousness and crushing one's enemies under the heel of one's boot. He works well with Watchmen because he makes films from the same perspective as the characters in Watchmen. But because Watchmen ultimately attacks that worldview, you can't in good faith read the film as embodying that worldview.

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cdnchris
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Re: Watchmen (Zack Snyder, 2009)

#559 Post by cdnchris » Sun Mar 15, 2009 3:36 pm

rs98762001 wrote:I'm getting tired of reading all this stuff about how WATCHMEN has flopped because it's too arty, or not mainstream enough, or too original, or whatever. The reason it's flopped is because it's a bad movie - a poor translation of a novel that would have been a test for the best directors in the world, so of course it defeated Zack the Hack. His director card should be revoked simply for his atrocious music choices.
That's never stopped a bad movie from being a hit. Watchmen is not a good movie, and yes Zack is a hack (though I'll give him credit for having his heart in the right place even if he didn't have the chops to pull it off) but that's not why it bombed. The complaints I've heard is "there's not enough action" and that "it's boring" because of this and that it had "too much story and talking." Even if it was pitch perfect adaptation of the comic, because of the nature of the comic, it would still bomb.

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Re: Watchmen (Zack Snyder, 2009)

#560 Post by swo17 » Sun Mar 15, 2009 3:51 pm

John Cope wrote:This is one of those rare occasions when the taste of the "average movie goer" was encouraging.
The taste of the average moviegoer was to go see a movie starring The Rock or Tyler Perry instead. It's not like Snyder directing Watchmen led anyone to discover Bergman or anything.

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John Cope
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Re: Watchmen (Zack Snyder, 2009)

#561 Post by John Cope » Sun Mar 15, 2009 4:32 pm

Okay, you guys have convinced me that I'm giving people too much credit. Are you happy now? :wink:
cdnchris wrote:The complaints I've heard is "there's not enough action" and that "it's boring" because of this and that it had "too much story and talking."
Seriously though, Chris, this is just depressing. Where have you been to have had to be subjected to such stuff?

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knives
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Re: Watchmen (Zack Snyder, 2009)

#562 Post by knives » Sun Mar 15, 2009 4:56 pm

I convinced a guy to watch The Seventh Continent and Amarcord instead if that brightens your world view any.

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Re: Watchmen (Zack Snyder, 2009)

#563 Post by Cde. » Sun Mar 15, 2009 6:07 pm

Wow, I wish I had such open and malleable friends.

"I'm seeing Watchmen tonight. Looks awesome."
"I've seen it, it's actually not good."
"Really?"
"Yeah, rather than go to Watchmen, stay at home and watch some good movies. These are from guys called Fellini and Haneke, I'm sure you'll love them."
"Fantastic, thanks!"

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franco
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Re: Watchmen (Zack Snyder, 2009)

#564 Post by franco » Sun Mar 15, 2009 6:39 pm

I actually like this movie. I am so surprised by my own reaction that I feel compelled to mention it. Of course, I have not read the graphic novel. The best thing I can say about Watchmen is that it reminds me of Southland Tales.

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zedz
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Re: Watchmen (Zack Snyder, 2009)

#565 Post by zedz » Sun Mar 15, 2009 7:39 pm

franco wrote:The best thing I can say about Watchmen is that it reminds me of Southland Tales.
If that's not a perfect one-sentence Rorschach Test review, I don't know what is.

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Jean-Luc Garbo
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Re: Watchmen (Zack Snyder, 2009)

#566 Post by Jean-Luc Garbo » Sun Mar 15, 2009 7:52 pm

Franco, I loved Southland Tales so I'd like to hear your thoughts. How do these two films relate in your mind? The way both reflect on current politics?

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franco
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Re: Watchmen (Zack Snyder, 2009)

#567 Post by franco » Sun Mar 15, 2009 8:38 pm

Jean-Luc Garbo wrote:Franco, I loved Southland Tales so I'd like to hear your thoughts. How do these two films relate in your mind? The way both reflect on current politics?
Ha... my comment was only meant to be a tongue-in-cheek one-liner, so please don't go see the movie expecting another Southland Tales. In order to enjoy Watchmen, you must be prepared for something even worse than 300. And only then, you might find something that reminds you of Southland Tales.

Here are the things that I find common between Watchmen and Southland Tales: length, conspiracy, TV channels, loud music, sprawling storyline, poor special effects, rioting crowds, fire in the sky, some kind of flying airship, concerns with the end of the world, attempts to reflect on current politics, and tons of ridiculousness. The difference is that obviously, Southland Tales is full of humor, and it's supposed to be funny. Watchmen, on the other hand, has no decent humor and doesn't look like it's meant to be funny.

Anyway, I enjoyed Watchmen way more than Dark Knight.

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Re: Watchmen (Zack Snyder, 2009)

#568 Post by Nothing » Sun Mar 15, 2009 11:31 pm

JonathanM wrote:an intelligent neo-conservative film
A contradiction in terms, surely. Of course, there are intelligent neo-conservatives, but their intelligence extends primarly to scheming up ways of extending their personal wealth and power. Also, whilst I haven't seen Watchmen, the neo-conservative credentials of 300 are unquestionable - one need only look at the changes and additions Synder and team made to the graphic novel. Synder is also known to be under the wing of some prominent neo-conservative zionists.

I still feel it is very much to the credit of Milk that it doesn't overemphasise or dwell on (nor does it paper over) the sex. Honestly, there's nothing duller than a film that forms it's whole identity around the director's sexual orientation - 'queer cinema' being a ghetto which genuinely talented gay filmmakers, for example Van Sant or Fassbinder, have never had to mine. Applying your logic the other way, every 'straight' movie would have to be directed by Jess Franco.

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Re: Watchmen (Zack Snyder, 2009)

#569 Post by JonathanM » Mon Mar 16, 2009 7:20 am

Nothing wrote:
JonathanM wrote:an intelligent neo-conservative film
A contradiction in terms, surely. Of course, there are intelligent neo-conservatives, but their intelligence extends primarly to scheming up ways of extending their personal wealth and power. Also, whilst I haven't seen Watchmen, the neo-conservative credentials of 300 are unquestionable - one need only look at the changes and additions Synder and team made to the graphic novel. Synder is also known to be under the wing of some prominent neo-conservative zionists.

I still feel it is very much to the credit of Milk that it doesn't overemphasise or dwell on (nor does it paper over) the sex. Honestly, there's nothing duller than a film that forms it's whole identity around the director's sexual orientation - 'queer cinema' being a ghetto which genuinely talented gay filmmakers, for example Van Sant or Fassbinder, have never had to mine. Applying your logic the other way, every 'straight' movie would have to be directed by Jess Franco.
First Bit - I think that there are very few sources that deal properly with neo-conservatism as an intellectual tradition. Mostly, the focus is on the practical side of what these people did when they were in power. If you did the same with a more liberal approach to foreign policy and looked at it in action during the Clinton years you'd find liberal foreign policy thinking to be brutish, populist, knuckle-headed, moralistic and inconsistent. Even Adam Curtis' The Power of Nightmares only looks very briefly at neo-conservatism the theory before examining the fact that neocon politicians effectively made the same moves re terrorism as they once did re communism. I think viewing neo-conservatism as a kind of evil fraternity full of hypocrites is not only short sighted, it lets them off the hook. I don't think they believed that the US should invade iraq because it was a good way to cement power and funnel money to their friends, I think they did it because they genuinely believed that it was in the interests of the US and the world to force democracy on the middle east. I think there's ample room for an intelligent and sympathetic approach to that set of theories.

As for 300 being right-wing. I think it can be read that way, but it can just as easily be read as a parody of right-wing film making and values. I prefer to think of it as tapping into the same human instincts as really bad right wing thought. He panders to the worst parts of our nature and that is why people hate him and it's also why I find him to be one of the more interesting directors working in mainstream US cinema at the moment. BTW, I wrote up my thoughts on Snyder on my blog.

http://ruthlessculture.com/2009/03/13/z ... h-gimmick/

Second Bit - You are completely right. It would be terrible to look at Milk's life purely in terms of his being gay. However, my problem with the film is that the role of sex as a tool of community building and therefore of political mobilisation has been airbrushed out of the picture. The gay community at that time were united because they all came to a place where they could hang out and fuck each other without being overly hassled. I'm not saying that ALL gay people are like this, I'm just saying that at that time and at that place, the community was held together by sex and in order to understand the politics of the period, you need to address that fact and the film completely refuses to. It's like trying to make a film about the 60s counter-culture whilst trying to suggest that free love and drugs had nothing to do with it. Nor does Milk provide us with any other explanation as to why the gay community might have politicised at that point, why Milk was particularly well placed to be the figure-head for that movement or, indeed why Milk would want to do that anyway. All it does is present him as the sole source of social change and then it symbolically offs him. It's actually very similar to the Dark Knight in terms of its approach to politics.

I'm not entirely surprised that it comes out like that. The noughties effectively saw the political class waging an all-out war on the grass rots elements of democracy. Right up until the moment when Obama was mocked for having been a community organiser. Those types of roles are the building blocks of democracy and weirdly American political culture seems to have forgotten this in favour of this quasi-fascistic image of politicians as guys who can get shit done. Who can overturn all that tiresome red tape (by which they mean laws and consutation periods) by strength of will and force the country into the desired shape. Milk is very much a film of its time because it perpetuates the idea of the individual over the social and the systematic.

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Re: Watchmen (Zack Snyder, 2009)

#570 Post by Nothing » Mon Mar 16, 2009 9:08 am

JonathanM wrote: If you did the same with a more liberal approach to foreign policy and looked at it in action during the Clinton years you'd find liberal foreign policy thinking to be brutish, populist, knuckle-headed, moralistic and inconsistent..
Isn't it?
JonathanM wrote: I don't think they believed that the US should invade iraq because it was a good way to cement power and funnel money to their friends, I think they did it because they genuinely believed that it was in the interests of the US
Isn't this the same thing, though? ie. What does 'the US' mean to them? African-Americans in tenement blocks? I disagree, however, that the interests of 'the world' played any factor whatsoever (unless you're referring to their friends in Saudi Arabia).
JonathanM wrote: As for 300 being right-wing. I think it can be read that way, but it can just as easily be read as a parody of right-wing film making and values.
I can't see any indication that 300 should be read as parody. By contrast, one doesn't even need to read the right-wing agenda into it - the politics are overt, the language frequently borrowed verbaitim from the neo-con book of quotes (making sacrifices for freedom, blah blah blah), the biggest change to the graphic novel being the sections that depict the soft-bellied council/congress, the weak-minded liberal politicians whose instinct is to sell out their glorious leader and appease the Iranian aggressor. Honestly, you must remember these films are made for (American) kids primarily, they are a form of blunt propaganda that doesn't assume even a basic intelligence of the part of the audience. And if you're still doubting this for some reason, look at who Synder associates with, look at who got him into the business. And (re)watch Starship Troopers for a genuine parody of right-wing filmmaking values (although you claim not to like this, hmm...)

Beyond this, Synder is just a plain bad filmmaker. Yes, I'm afraid I saw Watchmen today... Hilariously / depressingly, Synder can't even direct a simple dialog scene. The film is essentially a series of sporadic music videos / commercials, complete with attention-grabbling popular music stings (the best of these being the Dr. Manhattan - Philip Glass sequence and the, er, Leonard Cohen moment) tied together with the drabbest, flatest narrative filmmaking possible. What one might call a porno movie structure.

Yes, I would argue that Synder and his people work fairly methodically to undermine the politics of the original: glorifying / softening Rorsach (eg. the child killer is now unambiguously guilty - and the moment where he taunts Rorsach is classic Synder liberal bait: "I did it! I'm sick! I have a problem! Take me in!") and then demonising Veidt so that, in the climax, Olwman can become the voice of the narrator and say something along the lines of "you've done something wrong, Veidt... you've twisted the path of humanity", with Veidt's environmentally friendly technology then presented in the closing minutes as some kind of 'evil' socialist despotism... except Rorsach 'wins' in the end with the diary reveal, the implication that things will be returned to their 'correct' state - ie., by the finale, Synder and co. have attempted to invert entirely the political intent of the graphic novel. Interestingly, though, they fail, resulting in a film without any coherent perspective whatsoever, meaning that all most people are going to see in this is a total fucking mess.

Still, ultimately, it's no better or worse than, say, The Dark Knight, or the rest of the pap that Hollywood churns out these days. Something to watch on an aeroplane if you can't sleep and really have nothing better to do.

re: Milk, would suggest you repost this in the Milk thread. Quite a few posters there (eg. david) seem to actually have lived through those times, so they are probably best placed to answer your accusations of misrepresentation. For me, though, the background shennanigans or whatever seem fairly implicit. Why else are they all converging on San Francisco? Why is it they all seem to know each other (eg. Emile's split screen sequence, with the various phone conversations)? I didn't feel these needed to be underlined. As for the celebration of individualism... Well, it is ultimately an American film made by a major studio, not the second coming of christ... However, I feel I should note that communist cultures also celebrate the achievements of individuals- witness the mausoleums of Lenin, Mao and Uncle Ho. And more lowly individuals too, eg. it is a common tactic of communist news services / history books to laud Mr. so-and-so for his personal contrubution to the cause, either by growing x amount of sugar/wheat/rice, or killing fifty Americans in combat, or whatever. Collective action cannot be achieved without the contributions of committed individuals.

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Re: Watchmen (Zack Snyder, 2009)

#571 Post by Mr Sausage » Mon Mar 16, 2009 1:38 pm

Nothing wrote:the language frequently borrowed verbaitim from the neo-con book of quotes (making sacrifices for freedom, blah blah blah), the biggest change to the graphic novel being the sections that depict the soft-bellied council/congress, the weak-minded liberal politicians whose instinct is to sell out their glorious leader and appease the Iranian aggressor.
To be fair, these are all mostly historical. The Greeks really did see this as a battle for freedom and used that rhetoric to help cohere the various political factions against the Persians; and the Greeks looking to sell-out their country were very much present, they were called medizers, and they amounted to whole city-states. There would always be debates around giving in vs. going to war in the councils of the various poleis. One of the diversions from history in the movie actually subverts the neo-con allegory: Leonidas finds he has to seek the advice of those ugly people on the hill who use superstition to maintain political power, but the hero is under no illusions as to their worthlessness, and indeed it's shown they are not only an encumbrance but have in fact sold everyone out. None of this is historical: those ugly hill-people never existed.

I don't know what to do with 300 when people make these convinient political allegories out of it because the convinience seems contextual rather than aesthetic. If the movie had taken place within democratic Athens and had had the same politics, then then it would be an allegory without question; but Sparta was a kingship, not a democracy, and much of the movie is in line with standard narratives about the trials facing a king in war: the rousing of the people, the machinations of factions against the king, the pull between the duty he fears is wrong and the reckless actions he knows are right. To me it's all clearly out of a specific, non-allegoric narrative tradition, and actually hits the beats very obviously. But people want to overdetermine the movie with the political context in which it was made. Reminds me a bit of how Cronenberg's The Fly is often called an AIDS allegory because it came out in the eighties, even tho' it's pursuing the same themes and ideas Cronenberg had been working with back to his first movie in 1975, and even tho' the movie is not about disease in the usual sense.

300 is neither a neo-con allegory nor a parody of neo-conservatism: it's too inconsistant to be either. It's obvious Snyder had no overarching message or intention because there's nothing systematic: one moment could be allegory, another could be parody, another could be uncomplicatedly sincere--to the point where it's clear the movie does not intend to say anything cohesive with its narrative and is more interested in postering and entertaining. That's not to say it's an empty movie as most charge (it's not, although it's a very simple movie), but it's never as cohesive as you guys are claiming. (I'm surprised I just wrote this, as I'm indifferent over whether or not I ever see the movie a second time).

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Re: Watchmen (Zack Snyder, 2009)

#572 Post by Lemmy Caution » Mon Mar 16, 2009 1:49 pm

Nothing wrote: However, I feel I should note that communist cultures also celebrate the achievements of individuals- witness the mausoleums of Lenin, Mao and Uncle Ho. And more lowly individuals too, eg. it is a common tactic of communist news services / history books to laud Mr. so-and-so for his personal contrubution to the cause, either by growing x amount of sugar/wheat/rice, or killing fifty Americans in combat, or whatever. Collective action cannot be achieved without the contributions of committed individuals.
Learn from Lei Feng campaigns are still practiced especially in smaller cities and rural areas of China. Lei Feng was a young soldier who became famous posthumously after his diary showed that he selflessly got up early to wash his comrades socks and assorted other good deeds. Being dead conveniently allowed the powers that be to portray Lei Feng however they wished. The tragicomedy of errors of his legacy begins with how he died. I'm pretty certain they made a number of Lei Feng films over the years, but a few years ago they made a film about the fellow soldier who accidentally bumped Lei Feng off. Chronically depressed from killing a friend and soon-to-be national hero, this soldier goes on to do Lei Feng-style good deeds.

At least in China, I'm not aware of any individuals being praised for farm production. But one village was anointed a national model when Mao declared "in agriculture follow DaZhai." This led to a whole Potemkin village phenomena where the harvests of DaZhai were wildly inflated in order to prove what a success it was. And then other villages competed to announce phony record harvests in order to keep up. DaZhai became a showplace where foreign dignitaries and village leaders from across China were brought to be literally shown the fruits (and grains) of communist ingenuity (at least partly trucked in from elsewhere). So the central gov't dumped bushels of money into this small village, for advanced irrigation and other engineering projects, in order to show how impressive simple peasant farming was. Chinese charades.

I also once had a bit part in a film about another national hero, a great Chinese railway engineer ... but I probably should stop now.

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knives
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Re: Watchmen (Zack Snyder, 2009)

#573 Post by knives » Mon Mar 16, 2009 2:12 pm

I have to agree with Mr. S on how 300 is simply to stupid to be any allegory. It was made because Frank Miller's a, or at least was a, hot commodity and 300's one of his more popular/ mainstream stories.

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Re: Watchmen (Zack Snyder, 2009)

#574 Post by jbeall » Mon Mar 16, 2009 5:56 pm

Antoine Doinel wrote:David Hayter goes off the deep end and writes a terribly embarrassing open letter to Watchmen fans begging them to see it again due to the film's underperformance at the box office. Word around the water cooler is this thing needs to do $400 million to break even.
Hayter's plea has apparently fallen on deaf ears.

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Re: Watchmen (Zack Snyder, 2009)

#575 Post by stwrt » Mon Mar 16, 2009 7:59 pm

The new Blu-Ray release made up of the comic strips looks very good, very bright, my 1987 copies of the comics are fading badly even though they've been kept in plastic bags but seeing caps of the Blu-Ray they look excitingly sharp and bright, that might be the way I want my Watchmen movie experience to be, haven't seen the live-action one yet/don't know if I'll bother.

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