The Willy Wonka example is interesting, because even in elementary school I hated the book and movie for its lack of narrative build-up (though I intriguingly was first introduced to it by a 2nd grade substitute teacher who I thought fucked my real one because she was on maternity leave. The fact that the dude's name was "Mr. A" didn't help dilute that misperception) I think about those two movies and that book, and strangely enough the experience reminds me of eating the gross kid-oriented health food you see other homeschoolers pack. And even with my poptimist sensibilities, those nineties comic book movies are hard to stomach for their effects (though I haven't seen Cars 2 since he release, so I may learn to like that decently). In general, I just don't understand the enjoyment one gets from that stasis; it is almost exactly the opposite of boom boom boom. Devin Faraci explains this well on the Sound of Music episode of The Canon.
I guess you could compare my beloved Magic Mike XXL to that (I believe the RogerEbert.com critic called it "arthouse fluff"), but I could probably use a dozen better adjectives to describe why I love it, including "sex-positive", "body-positive", "inverted Soderbergh", and of course, "arthouse fluff" (and considering that the movie is about the happiness sex can bring everyone, I think it still becomes "about" something beautiful). Same with the Tyler Perry movies I love; in fact, I think he's at his best when he makes ridiculous tonal shifts (like in his masterpiece Diary of a Mad Black Woman), and that he still has a lot of interesting things to study when he goes more monotone (for any questions related to this, Ethan Saathoff's book on Tyler Perry is a great resource. http://birthmoviesdeath.com/2012/04/23/why-i-love-tyler-perry-and-you-should-too).
And of course, you can apply lots of context to almost any of the other great structure-less arthouse movies, from Slacker to the work of Jim Jarmusch to Syndromes and a Century and Tropical Malady to mumblecore. Calling any of those just "entertaining" (even things like Lena Dunham's Tiny Furniture) would be a huge disservice.
Hm ... I still get something more out of Wonka, as I said, if nothing else just from the Oompa Loompa songs, but there's a certain amount that that's a valid critique. I am gonna call you out though and say that The Avengers (1998) isn't a comic book film at all, it's an adaptation of an old spy show from the 60s. And I still don't understand what "boom boom boom" is and I think I've given up trying.
And I mean I can call a movie anything I want, too. There's the whole fantheory that The Chocolate Factory is an allegory of fascism. I can call The Holy Grail surreal and hilarious. I could claim that Kung Pow is a commentary on the very structure of comedy, being that only a few of the jokes are full on jokes and a lot of the jokes in the movie are simple presentation, with some of them even being realistically plausible (albeit exaggerated here) in the kung fu movies they're based on. Or that Tarzan is a discussion on learning to control your id, as Tarzan's violence, etc. is still presented but much more toned down than Kerchak and Clayton, both of whom are punished for it. Kung Fu Hustle could be interpreted to have the same message. When you look for something in a movie, you can find it.
The thing is, you shouldn't have to go looking. If the messages are so universally missed in a movie by everyone else, maybe there's a point where you should ask yourself if it's just something you picked up on. And that a movie without some sort of deep interesting commentary can still be a good movie. And what do you say about it then?
I guess this is really more my defense of entertaining movies than the word entertainment itself, sorry _________________
Now ti be fair, a huge part of this is that I get easily frustrated by films where the protaganist is the cause of all his own problems and could simply solve everything by just getting his head out of his own butt
When I watched it the first time I was roughly the same age as Antoine and caught it by chance on tv late at night when there was no one home. I hadn't seen that many movies so the movie as a whole was like a haze to me as I didn't understand much but it was a very intriguing and entrancing experience. Retrospectively one of the main factors of this intrigue to me seems to be the fact that Antoine has little control over what he does and what happens to him. Little mistakes having consequences he couldn't foresee, indecision and pure bad luck heaping up as he observes his life from afar with little engagement much like some of Camus' characters while trying to get what he wants from the small things that he has in his life. This was just like epiphany to me, I was in this condition and only realized this to a certain extent (and in a misguided way) after watching the movie. The notion that the teenage character in his situation can take a hold of his life is very far from my experience of the movie (and the absolute opposite mindset to my interpretation of director's intents) and also my experience of my own formative years. The criticism you have applies to dumb Hollywood movies in which writers try to achieve the desired plot progression through violating the logic of the narrative. _________________ "I feel like for the last two years there’s been sort of a sonic evolution happening and I’ve been experimenting more and more."
Is he though? I think the last shot complicates this point of view considerably and is one of the most striking endings in all of cinema. Agreed that Marienbad is the best French film, though.
Norman Bates wrote:
There are a lot of reasons. The fantasized autobiography you can feel, owing to notably the incredible empathy with Léaud is totally stunning. While aiming at a freer (for the times) mode of filming (natural setting in the streets of Paris, with a lot of stolen, unauthorized sequences shot), Truffaut finally ends up with a very classical bildungsroman - Truffaut is probably the most 'classical' New Wave director - that will find some beautiful complications in his following Léaud films, in an semi-conscious attempt at filmwriting his own Comédie humaine. His ability to capture late-50's Paris, still traumatized by the occupation, is quite unrivalled - except for maybe Godard's Breathless. Like Satie said, the final sequence is one of the most beautiful closers of the era. It's all really beautiful.
I simply don't understand how you can read the character like that. All the sequences involving his mother yell the contrary.
Muslim-Bigfoot wrote:
When I watched it the first time I was roughly the same age as Antoine and caught it by chance on tv late at night when there was no one home. I hadn't seen that many movies so the movie as a whole was like a haze to me as I didn't understand much but it was a very intriguing and entrancing experience. Retrospectively one of the main factors of this intrigue to me seems to be the fact that Antoine has little control over what he does and what happens to him. Little mistakes having consequences he couldn't foresee, indecision and pure bad luck heaping up as he observes his life from afar with little engagement much like some of Camus' characters while trying to get what he wants from the small things that he has in his life. This was just like epiphany to me, I was in this condition and only realized this to a certain extent (and in a misguided way) after watching the movie. The notion that the teenage character in his situation can take a hold of his life is very far from my experience of the movie (and the absolute opposite mindset to my interpretation of director's intents) and also my experience of my own formative years. The criticism you have applies to dumb Hollywood movies in which writers try to achieve the desired plot progression through violating the logic of the narrative.
All these actually help a lot. Going to give it a rewatch and see if I can catch all these points, since I clearly missed them or misinterpreted last time.
As far as I'm aware, I think of that phrase in terms of weird surreal stuff happening that places like RYM love because of its randomness. There's a joke made about nerds like me on RYM, that we almost take weirdness as a sort of comfort food. The perfect example I can think of is Michael Snow's Back and Forth, where the camera is spinning around the room so fast and I take it like a 45-minute visual DJ mix, going "whhooooiiopppppp" as it goes to each side in glee. This was taken to be experimental, but because we at RYM are obsessed with the experimental, it becomes comfort food.
In that Tyler Perry piece I linked it sorta-kinda touches on this:
Quote:
I assume most visitors to BAD have at least some taste for abnormal films. Maybe you like Lynch or Jodorowski or the tamer weirdness of Gilliam or Refn. But you have to understand that artistic symbolism and abstraction are not truly strange in the same way Tyler Perry is strange. Art films, for lack of a better term, typically come in easily identified doses so people know whether to flock to or avoid them. Tyler Perry's weirdness is hidden in plain sight enough that he repels the people who admire abstraction, while attracting those normally hate such things. On both sides, people see his films yet do not really SEE what's actually happening.
Does that make more sense? When something gets openly "experimental" enough, a lot of us take it as a sort of thrill ride blockbuster. In at least one context, that's boom boom boom.
The opposite of boom boom boom, then, would be these polite (neo)realist historical dramas like (I dunno, it was too lacking in boom boom boom to finish) A Room With a View that keep everything grounded in a sort of "polite" literalism (or at least formalism). This is also why I find most classical music composed before 1850 to be really fucking boring. And as much as I'd hate to say it, Mike Leigh's work often fits this definition as well, and Film Crit Hulk argued that this is what keeps him from being recognized as the genius he is. RYM tends to love big abstract weird things, and this subtlety is just a bit hard for us to handle.
That's not to say I automatically like everything with this, though. For all the faults I could give Birdman, I couldn't say that it was at all lacking in the boom boom boom, and that's what made it such a surprise to win Best Picture. And Gabe was certainly right when he said that anime Mind Game had it, to the point where it ended up being a bit too much for me (it was still really great, though).
it astounds me that after months, possibly years, of having a new definition for "boom boom boom" every time it comes up that you've refused to just adopt a film criticism vernacular that can actually be critiqued on its own terms. but you are the king of mobile goalposts.
it astounds me that after months, possibly years, of having a new definition for "boom boom boom" every time it comes up that you've refused to just adopt a film criticism vernacular that can actually be critiqued on its own terms. but you are the king of mobile goalposts.
There can't be that many times he's brought it up, ri-
Applerill wrote:
Oh, sorry. I assumed that the onamonapea-ness (am I spelling that right?) spoke for itself, but in this context, I basically mean "shock value". We like the term "experimental" because we think there will be cool explosions or weird stuff happening. I don't think it necessarily is just to feel "cultured".
Applerill wrote:
I had trouble getting into the narrative, and I still had that trouble connecting to the characters here. However, I was really visually pleased by the surrealism, and when it comes to boom-boom-boom, it's hard to get any better than this. Every shot had something crazy in it, and it amazed me how much variety there was in the set design and cinematography.
Applerill wrote:
Are you guys trying to exclude anything populist from your lists? I have lots of "serious" books on my list, but lots of fun YA, kids, and adult genre choices, too. Maybe I'm pointing fingers the wrong way, and Sartre and Proust are the only novels you've enjoyed in life, but it is simply sophomoric to only include books you think will make you look smart, and saying you're a populist because you have Harry Potter on your list is like saying you're a poptimist because you don't mind that one Beyonce album...
I feel like this poll would be a lot of fun if people were more open to posting random books they loved in middle school...
Maybe I'm just addicted to the "boom boom boom" on my book lists, and wish we had more genre fiction on our list.
I'm listening to several Neuwirth pieces right now, and she may become one of my all-time favorite classical artists. I don't want to be sexist and compare her to Sofia Gubaidulina (she actually resembles Maurice Kagel much more, but bear with me), but it's almost like if she had a Charlie Boom Boom Surgery performed on her music. This is glorious, and everything I learn about her makes me love her more and more, from her progressive big band elements in her live album to the fact that she has an opera based on Lost Highway.
Applerill wrote:
The boom boom boom, if you will, is the rebellious, surreal, or overtly-casual nature that can be added to a movie by many sorts of elements. It literally is a set of booms in Alan Clarke's Elephant, and that hedonism of shootings amidst the glacial pace makes it more fun to me than any Michael Bay movie. It happens in Chantal Akerman's cinema when there is that TV running in the back of the restaurant in I, You, He, She, or that whole twist at the end of (spoiler removed). It's the Lady & the Tramp reference halfway through Satantango. There are many arthouse directors (from Todd Solondz to Lars Von Trier to David Lynch) who specialize in this, but you can see it in a lot of movies. Not in Ozu, though. Yuck.
Applerill wrote:
It's hard to explain in the case of the Coens [why they don't have the boom boom boom], but I guess it comes down to a lack of this "memey" quality that is hypnotic to me. There's obviously a lot of satire and symbolism in their movies, but it's hard for me to turn my brain off and just enjoy them viscerally.
Applerill wrote:
I don't see it as an aesthetic philosophy at all (or at least I hope I don't, because that would be extremely close-minded). But in terms of what movies viscerally attract me as a sardonic, hyperactive nerd, there seems to be an indescribable quality that some directors have and others don't. I really don't have a good way to explain it, so until I do I just describe it as "boom boom boom" (since very often this attribute is parallel to gratuitous sex, violence, surrealism and satire). I know it's base of me to have this preference, but hey, I like what I like
why are you against Deadpool again?
Applerill wrote:
That's the thing: I don't mean [boom boom boom] as a way of "evaluating art" (at least not in an "objective" sense, forgive me for using the term). I thought this thread (and, to a lesser extent, my RYM ratings) was about personal enjoyment, and that's all I was meaning to measure. Devin Faraci often makes a distinction between art he respects and art he enjoys (the latter of which normally skews towards blockbusters and genre films), and I guess I'm trying to make the same distinction. I wasn't at all questioning their place in the canon.
apparently, Charlie Boom Boom surgery is done to take one composer you like to namedrop and turn them into a completely unrelated composer who uses entirely different compositional techniques and has completely different philosophical and aesthetic aims. thanks for the indexing, ben.
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