'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

[knives]

=; Google is your friend.

[Sloper]

=; Google is your friend.

Jesus, that's the shape of things to come, isn't it?

"WAS THAT SO HARD?"

[zedz]

That's pretty funny, but it assumes I actually want to know the answer enough to be arsed.

[Oedipax]

This comment on the Wells blog blew my mind

You know, every cineaste and DVD collector type has a huge-time hard-on for Criterion, but don't you guys ever wish you could just get the damn movie with the original poster art?

Not to insult the work of artists who love these movies and who've developed a style they're proud of, but I've never really gotten into Criterion just because that cover art seems so cheesy, like instead of getting a real disc sanctioned by the original studio with a proper poster, you're getting some hand-scribbled minimalist paper sleeve. Makes you feel like the DVD isn't even official, like some teenaged kid in 1983 dubbed a Def Leppard cassette onto a blank Memorex and chicken-scratched "Pyromania!!!" in Bic Pen on the flimsy case, probably misspelling it in the bargain.

How do people like this exist in the world?

[TheGodfather]

That`s just hilarious... Too bad though that the wanker is taking himself seriously...

[Murdoch]

If you think that comment is bad, don't look at the same guy's other one where he uses The Hitcher as his basis for why old movies didn't "have it yet"

[domino harvey]

My favorite Wikipedia article sneak-in was the opening description of ...And Justice For All as a "screwball comedy"-- it was up for a while, too

[Jameson281]

This comment on the Wells blog blew my mind

You know, every cineaste and DVD collector type has a huge-time hard-on for Criterion, but don't you guys ever wish you could just get the damn movie with the original poster art?

Not to insult the work of artists who love these movies and who've developed a style they're proud of, but I've never really gotten into Criterion just because that cover art seems so cheesy, like instead of getting a real disc sanctioned by the original studio with a proper poster, you're getting some hand-scribbled minimalist paper sleeve. Makes you feel like the DVD isn't even official, like some teenaged kid in 1983 dubbed a Def Leppard cassette onto a blank Memorex and chicken-scratched "Pyromania!!!" in Bic Pen on the flimsy case, probably misspelling it in the bargain.

How do people like this exist in the world?

The same guy wrote this follow-up remark:

In the Maltin book's review of THE HITCHER, which I worshipped as a teenager, they state the Hauer-Howell movie is reminiscent of DUEL and NIGHT OF THE HUNTER.

I'd already seen Duel a zillion times and could obviously see the connection there, so I made a mental note of NIGHT OF THE HUNTER and swore to check it out next time it was on WOR.

I was fully expecting some lean, laconic, spare, desert-set chase-and-pursuit movie with car chases and open roads and synth music and Mitchum being a bad-ass trying to run some unsuspecting kid off the road. I was thinking it would be sinister and intense and surreal and dark and violent.

Then it finally comes on, and lo and behold, it starts with that OLD MOVIE MUSIC and there's this part where these two kids are like shampooing their hair in like fast motion while some whimsical 1922 Looney Tunes music plays, and I'm like, WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS? Where's Rutger Hauer and synths and car chases?

Obviously that's an exaggeration, but here's what I'm saying when I gripe about old movies. They just didn't have it down yet. Yeah Mitchum rules and yeah you gotta take it for its time, but if they made it today EVERY SCENE would be awesome. It's like they didn't have QC down yet or something... You can't play WHIMSICAL MUSIC in something that's supposed to be edgy and hardcore.

There really AREN'T many pre-Psycho, pre-Bond, pre-Leone movies that had a singularity of style or a "contemporary" feel where the whole thing is of a piece. Even in The Searchers or, YES, Citizen Kane, there are moments that you'd NEEEEVER put to film today, that just seem like some holdover relic from VAUDEVILLE or something where people hadn't adjusted to the artform yet and it's all over the map.

It's why, as was pointed out from that other thread, no, I don't include any pre-1960 movies on my favorites list. They're an interesting historical document but they're not the way I prefer to have stories told, they don't resonate with me, I don't like the acting or cinematic style, there's no explicit sex and violence, and they never transcend anthropology to enter the realm of the visceral.

This guy needs to have his TV and DVD player taken away. He doesn't deserve to watch movies.

[matrixschmatrix]

Shouldn't this discussion be in the ridiculous reviews thread? In any case

There really AREN'T many pre-Psycho, pre-Bond, pre-Leone movies that had a singularity of style or a "contemporary" feel where the whole thing is of a piece. Even in The Searchers or, YES, Citizen Kane, there are moments that you'd NEEEEVER put to film today, that just seem like some holdover relic from VAUDEVILLE or something where people hadn't adjusted to the artform yet and it's all over the map.

It's funny, this is obviously absurd in this context, yet I've heard a number of serious scholars say the same thing about silent film- even ones from the late 20s- with a totally straight face.

[Peacock]

I always thought Freaks was missing something, now I realize what: explicit sex.

[domino harvey]

OLD MOVIE MUSIC could be a new board meme, I just know it

[hangman]

Shouldn't this discussion be in the ridiculous reviews thread? In any case

Thing is I think everything posted about this guy goes beyond ridiculous funny to just plain awe at how "informed" his views are. Heck I think the ridiculous reviews on the thread are lot less cringeworthy than the stuff Well's writes.

A thread could be made about him but that would just be a plain waste because the stuff he says isn't even funny like the Armond White thread.

[Perkins Cobb]

OLD MOVIE MUSIC could be a new board meme, I just know it

My vote's for THEY DIDN'T HAVE THE QC DOWN YET.

[HistoryProf]

so at least we now know where Wells gets his info: internet forums! He really is an insufferable prick, but that post makes the world's insufferable pricks collectively sigh: "Man, what an INSUFFERABLE PRICK!".

As for the comments, it's typical for his stuff...that's the standard caliber of his readers....which should tell him something about himself, but he's too busy being right to care.

[Brian C]

Strange as it may be to say, I'm willing to give LexG (the Wells commenter) a pass. True, he seems mentally ill, but he's been encouraged both by the Wells readership and the Poland readership (and sometimes Wells and Poland themselves) to develop his shtick to the point that he's at now. It's really too pathetic to get angry about.

Wells, on the other hand, should really fucking better know better. He deserves all the scorn we and anyone else can muster.

[Adam X]

aah, Leonard Maltin, the pinacle of film criticism...

...they never transcend anthropology to enter the realm of the visceral.

LexG sounds like an arrogant 1st year Cinema Studies student, who thinks he know more than the teachers. The above quote is something that would seem to prove this, and could easily come straight from a use of film theory before someone has a grasp of what to do with the language.
and I'm not really sure how he expects films made more than 40 years ago to have a "'contemporary' feel". I mean I'm sure they did (for the most part) when they were released .

[matrixschmatrix]

aah, Leonard Maltin, the pinacle of film criticism...

...they never transcend anthropology to enter the realm of the visceral.

LexG sounds like an arrogant 1st year Cinema Studies student, who thinks he know more than the teachers. The above quote is something that would seem to prove this, and could easily come straight from a use of film theory before someone has a grasp of what to do with the language.
and I'm not really sure how he expects films made more than 40 years ago to have a "'contemporary' feel". I mean I'm sure they did (for the most part) when they were released .

I mean, it's a recognizable feeling- that older movies have elements that are different from modern ones, and if you didn't grow up watching them it takes some actual effort to learn how to take them on their own terms- but just to give up and decide anything pre-1960 is unbridgeably foreign, and that anything that seems foreign must be less artisitically evolved than the familiar, that's pretty remarkably arrogant.

[BillWatkins]

A user comment about the Night of the Hunter Criterion Newsletter comment:

In the Maltin book's review of THE HITCHER, which I worshipped as a teenager, they state the Hauer-Howell movie is reminiscent of DUEL and NIGHT OF THE HUNTER.

I'd already seen Duel a zillion times and could obviously see the connection there, so I made a mental note of NIGHT OF THE HUNTER and swore to check it out next time it was on WOR.

I was fully expecting some lean, laconic, spare, desert-set chase-and-pursuit movie with car chases and open roads and synth music and Mitchum being a bad-ass trying to run some unsuspecting kid off the road. I was thinking it would be sinister and intense and surreal and dark and violent.

Then it finally comes on, and lo and behold, it starts with that OLD MOVIE MUSIC and there's this part where these two kids are like shampooing their hair in like fast motion while some whimsical 1922 Looney Tunes music plays, and I'm like, WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS? Where's Rutger Hauer and synths and car chases?

Obviously that's an exaggeration, but here's what I'm saying when I gripe about old movies. They just didn't have it down yet. Yeah Mitchum rules and yeah you gotta take it for its time, but if they made it today EVERY SCENE would be awesome. It's like they didn't have QC down yet or something... You can't play WHIMSICAL MUSIC in something that's supposed to be edgy and hardcore.

There really AREN'T many pre-Psycho, pre-Bond, pre-Leone movies that had a singularity of style or a "contemporary" feel where the whole thing is of a piece. Even in The Searchers or, YES, Citizen Kane, there are moments that you'd NEEEEVER put to film today, that just seem like some holdover relic from VAUDEVILLE or something where people hadn't adjusted to the artform yet and it's all over the map.

It's why, as was pointed out from that other thread, no, I don't include any pre-1960 movies on my favorites list. They're an interesting historical document but they're not the way I prefer to have stories told, they don't resonate with me, I don't like the acting or cinematic style, there's no explicit sex and violence, and they never transcend anthropology to enter the realm of the visceral.

[scotty2]

Arrogance is right. Coming from a background in literature and history, that kind of thinking is pretty much inconceivable to me. I shudder to think what Wells and his readers would have to say about Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, Austen, or Proust. Opportunities for sacred-cow bashing no doubt. I still can't fathom Wells' Third Man rant.

[HistoryProf]

aah, Leonard Maltin, the pinacle of film criticism...

...they never transcend anthropology to enter the realm of the visceral.

LexG sounds like an arrogant 1st year Cinema Studies student, who thinks he know more than the teachers. The above quote is something that would seem to prove this, and could easily come straight from a use of film theory before someone has a grasp of what to do with the language.
and I'm not really sure how he expects films made more than 40 years ago to have a "'contemporary' feel". I mean I'm sure they did (for the most part) when they were released .

the tell is his "when I was a teenager I loved the Hitcher!" line....which means he's probably 23 or 24....only twits in their early 20s ever say that in order to project some sense of maturity

[matrixschmatrix]

the tell is his "when I was a teenager I loved the Hitcher!" line....which means he's probably 23 or 24....only twits in their early 20s ever say that in order to project some sense of maturity

Haha, older twits have entirely different strategies for faking maturity.

[LexG]

I'm 37, and I have a degree in Film Studies.

Feel free to google my years of posts on Hollywood Elsewhere to see I absolutely know what I am talking about.

Thanks for reading though.

[Mr Sausage]

I'm 37, and I have a degree in Film Studies.

This disaster claimed to have a Masters in film. None of us are much wowed by film credentials anymore.

[Steven H]

I'm 37, and I have a degree in Film Studies.

It's like they didn't have QC down yet or something...

[Brian C]

Feel free to google my years of posts on Hollywood Elsewhere to see I absolutely know what I am talking about.

Now that sounds like a good investment of our time. But at any rate, I don't think that'll get us much more than a hundred posts about young actresses' feet.