>From:
DJ-Anonyme@webtv.net (Mark Sullivan)
[production codes helped art.
>
Frankly, I don't buy it as a
>global statement. Sure, some artists came up with
more artful ways of
>saying things, but others were hindered in presenting
their material.
>Just think of all of the false, tacked on "crime
doesn't pay" or happy
>endings <snip>were in the '40s and '50s as
artists were forced to be
> >positive by Joe Breen and company.
Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, look at the "Big Sleep"; quite
apart from various issues with the ending (to avoid
spoilers), making Vivian a widow rather than the wife of the
missing man completely changes our view of her character
(dunno if this was a production code issue or just a
corrolary to the stepped-up Vivian/Marlowe romance, but in
either case an obvious nod to
"morality"). And as common as Tennessee Williams adaptations
were in the 50s, most of them are barely comprehensible
because of the expurgation of
"sensitive" material. This is stuff that played on Broadway
for years but was apparently too shocking to be captured in
celluloid. The few isolated moments of forced creativity
hardly atone for the neutering of so much powerful
material.
>
>The whole idea is based on nostalgia and a feeling
that the best art is
>subtle, makes the audience work for it. I recently
heard the exact same
>argument about rap music, again -- there's no art to
it because the
>rapper just flat out says it, it's too explicit, no
subtlety. What
>crap.
I agree this is a silly blanket statement but I do think
subtlety is a bit of a lost art, particularly in American
films. So I can understand what these nostalgists are
yearning for, but of course sometimes art needs to be blunt
or loud or explicit. And most of those "tacked-on" endings
were anything-but-subtle.
Craig wrote re best films:
>I'd have to agree with this list, though I'd add
_Memento_ and,
> >possibly,_The Deep End_, both very
list-applicable.
Was the Deep End based on a crime novel? Wasn't it something
French? Anybody read it and have any insights in the changes
that were made? I dug Memento but TDE didn't do a lot for me.
It was quite a lovely film and well acted but I found the
story rather nonsensical and thought it ran out of steam well
before the end (as we've been discussing that some books want
to be shorter than the editors make them, I thought maybe
this feature wanted to be a short; there wasn't enough to
sustain a film IMO).
And I'm sorry, I can't remember who recommended it, but I
thought "The Heist" was terrible. Loved "Glengarry" and liked
"House of Games," but I think Mamet needs to get some new
schtick or hang it up. My brother and I were joking about
marketing David Mamet Mad Libs with blanks for:
[Expletive][ethnic slur][fairy tale
character][expletive][random cameo][plot twist][ethnic
slur][director's current spouse]. Yeah, this film should have
played like Westlake but it just played like Bad Mamet.
NSmith wrote:
>And
>then, thanks to The Ice Harvest and The 25th Hour,
finally we're getting
>those short and powerful works that feel complete
without all the extra
>pages.
I agree in general on the length thing; I commented earlier
on the refreshing brevity of the early Healy/Cuddy books
(haven't seen the later ones so I don't know if they've
gotten longer as the industry trend changed, or if this is a
good thing, but my point is he tells a very good, very
complete story in relatively few pages). But I couldn't get
through 20 pages of the Ice Harvest, much less the whole
thing. Would finishing it have been worth my time?
>
Mark wrote:
>Are books really like candy bars in that the company
makes them
>slightly bigger before raising the price? Just
because books cost more,
>does that mean there have to be more pages so readers
feel they are
>getting value for their dollars? Do readers really
judge books by how
>much they weigh? I far prefer tight books, some
short, some long.
>
Absolutely! I sometimes wonder if editors are afraid to do
their jobs (pay attention to what's in a book rather than how
long it is), and I've noticed this as much if not more in
"literary" fiction. On the other hand, J.K. Rowling can write
a 700+ page children's book where nothing is extraneous and
everything works perfectly [and sell a hundred gajillion
copies]. I'm a little more sympathetic to "too long"
complaints in films because you can pick a book up and put it
down whenever is convenient, but in a movie your a** is in
that seat for however many hours, and when 2 1/2 hours starts
creeping up, much less 3, the audience had better really want
to be there. Some films can certainly sustain this length,
but when the average mindless blockbuster is pushing 150
minutes (as was the trend a few years ago, I haven't been to
enough films lately to know if it continues), something is
amiss. Maybe it's a strategy to starve people and sell more
popcorn?
carrie
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