Classic films you just "don't get".

[Cup of Char]

litterature has not the means to SHOW anything

Right. We seem to have different definitions for the word 'showing".

If it means, and only means,"projecting pictures on a screen in a dark room with people eating pop corn sitting by your side", literature certainly doesn't "show" anything, and I would thank God if he existed.

I never ate pop corn while watching a film in a theatre...

I would have guessed that, but surely you realise you are a member of a proud minority here.

Well, I won't say that I'm "proud" of that but, seeing the reaction of Diamonddog (who says that I'm snobbish), I understand that I'm in the minority. Which, like Nanni Moretti woud say, is all right for me.

I totally understand cedric : Imagine PopCorn's crumbs on the "Fritz Lang" chair at the Lumiere's Cinematheque. Heresy.

Wow ! Brilliant idea ! I'll have to try this.

[Cup of Char]

litterature has not the means to SHOW anything

Right. We seem to have different definitions for the word 'showing".

If it means, and only means,"projecting pictures on a screen in a dark room with people eating pop corn sitting by your side", literature certainly doesn't "show" anything, and I would thank God for that if he existed.

You know, Fred, it is you who are so accurate about the meaning of words. & when I just try to tell you that you lack of accuracy on a particular point, you don't answer properly. Strange.

& besides, to show isn't reserved to a screen...

[Cup of Char]

litterature has not the means to SHOW anything

Right. We seem to have different definitions for the word 'showing".

If it means, and only means,"projecting pictures on a screen in a dark room with people eating pop corn sitting by your side", literature certainly doesn't "show" anything, and I would thank God for that if he existed.

You know, Fred, it is you who are so accurate about the meaning of words. & when I just try to tell you that you lack of accuracy on a particular point, you don't answer properly. Strange.

& besides, to show isn't reserved to a screen...

Why are you calling a disagreement an inaccuracy? You said literature doesn't have the means to show anything, and my answer meant: I think it's true only if you accept the word 'showing' in the narrow sense of 'physically showing images'. As you said, and it was my point, there's much more to the word than that. Is this properly answered, or is a proper answer one that goes your way?

Tstststs... Don't enter this kind of argument, please. I am able to discuss the meaning of any word, it's even a large part of my job, actually, at least in french ; I was just pointing out the fact that when I was discussing the meaning of "to show", you answered with a pop corn post which was not a proper reply, in my opinion. Disagreement has never been a problem to me.
& I know that "to show" can have a figurative sense, but if we compare cinema & literature, I think we have to narrow the words' field of meanings, in order not to confuse everything.

[geoffcowgill]

I think subsequent generations of scholars are going to study my priceless pearls much like they do Shakespeare or Faulkner...

"A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing"?


Just teasin'.

[Matt Wilson]

I think subsequent generations of scholars are going to study my priceless pearls much like they do Shakespeare or Faulkner...

"A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing"?


Just teasin'.

When I was in college I didn't like Faulkner but when I read Sound and Fury a few years ago I thought it was a masterpiece, so there ya go...

[Cup of Char]

]in order not to confuse everything.

Confusion has never been a problem to me.

[king feeb]

When I was in college I didn't like Faulkner but when I read Sound and Fury a few years ago I thought it was a masterpiece, so there ya go...

A similar thing happened to me with Herman Melville, especially Billy Budd. Weird how a few years of 'life seasoning' can change one's perceptions.

[Matt Wilson]

When I was in college I didn't like Faulkner but when I read Sound and Fury a few years ago I thought it was a masterpiece, so there ya go...

A similar thing happened to me with Herman Melville, especially Billy Budd. Weird how a few years of 'life seasoning' can change one's perceptions.

I was an English major with an emphasis on American lit, and still haven't read all of Moby Dick yet.

I'm so ashamed...

[Drama Queenie]

That's where we disagree. The fact that cinema shows images, and literature doesn't, is a bit trivial, isn't it ? (We could also compare painting and music by saying the former doesn't produce sound, which is true, but where do we go from there?) It can't be the only argument to conclude that cinema has to deal with reality more than literature.

I always see images when I read literature. That's my imagination.

Have I missed the point?

[Drama Queenie]

Have I missed the point?

It depends. Do you eat pop corn while reading?

I'm not sure that I have the dexterity to manage that. How about I read a book about popcorn and use my imagination?

Have I still missed the point?

[Drama Queenie]

Have I missed the point?

It depends. Do you eat pop corn while reading?

I'm not sure that I have the dexterity to manage that. How about I read a book about popcorn and use my imagination?

I can't recommend any book about pop corn. But I know a great one about a cup of tea and a madeleine?

Are you sure you haven't imagined that?

[doctorlouie]

When I was in college I didn't like Faulkner but when I read Sound and Fury a few years ago I thought it was a masterpiece, so there ya go...

A similar thing happened to me with Herman Melville, especially Billy Budd. Weird how a few years of 'life seasoning' can change one's perceptions.

I was an English major with an emphasis on American lit, and still haven't read all of Moby Dick yet.

I'm so ashamed...

And so you should be. It is the great American novel. If you don't count the Great Gatsby. And don't give me no Don DeLillo shit....

[KeithPratt]

Can someone please explain what the great American novel should be about?

It's not as if we've had a great British novel is it?

[Guest]

Can someone please explain what the great American novel should be about?

Red meat and boobies. And lots of both.

[Flash Gordon's Ape]

These are films that have been mentioned here that i truly love.if that helps you


Les Enfants du Paradis
Taxi Driver
Chaplin (all the ones i've seen and i have the 2 box sets)
Citizen Kane
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
It's a Wonderful Life
Nosferatu

[The Write Profile]

Taxi Driver. Think the ending's totally wrong.

The way that after he's gone on his rather minor rampage and killed Harvey Keitel, Bickle just returns to a kind of normal life; he seems to be satisfied by having killed just one pimp. The rest of the film has built up a lot more than that and it seems something of a cop-out ending to me.


Sorry for wasting all that space

Basically, I don;t think the film is suggesting that he's back to normal, particularly in the way the last few frames are shot (Bernard Hermann's theme is played backwards in a 'sting' for one), more than that he's hailed as a tabloid hero in the same way John Wayne's Ethan Hunt seems to be the 'hero' in "The Searchers" (and "The Searchers" is the closest to Taxi Driver).

Scorsese took this idea and run with it wholesale in the "King of Comedy": in its own way, Rupert Pupkin's crushingly mediocre stand-up routine getting celebrated (after capturing and detaining the Jerry Lewis character) is just as vile as Taxi Driver's ending. In fact, King of Comedy sticks to its thesis far more closely too, it's the better, more successful film. But 'Taxi Driver' has a greater impact. The Searchers is probably more elqoeunt in dealing with a characters' barely suppressed racism, too. Somehow Taxi Driver just goes the gut spectacularly.

I don;t think he ends up all 'fine' either: he's twitching uncontrollably in the cab when he picks up Betsy (and why the hell is it that Betsy is framed in angelic glow), in fact the final shot is very off-kilter. The lighting is very fazed, the newspaper clippings read suspiciously close to Travis' monologues. Schrader was never the most subtle of screenwriters, but I think his lack of subtlety is paramount to the picture. But I understand where you're coming from, too.

Yeah, and I know that the "Russian Roulette" scenes should be kept there in The Deer Hunter, but gosh it makes it hard to like. I still think the sections back home are the most powerful and subtly done. If I view it as fiction (which it undeniably is), then its soothes me a bit. And I guess they're meant to be difficult.

[Snarfyguy]

Yeah, and I know that the "Russian Roulette" scenes should be kept there in The Deer Hunter, but gosh it makes it hard to like. I still think the sections back home are the most powerful and subtly done. If I view it as fiction (which it undeniably is), then its soothes me a bit. And I guess they're meant to be difficult.

You can keep the rest of the film and leave me with the Russian Roulette scene.

[Penk!]

Taxi Driver. Think the ending's totally wrong.

The way that after he's gone on his rather minor rampage and killed Harvey Keitel, Bickle just returns to a kind of normal life; he seems to be satisfied by having killed just one pimp. The rest of the film has built up a lot more than that and it seems something of a cop-out ending to me.


Sorry for wasting all that space

Basically, I don;t think the film is suggesting that he's back to normal, particularly in the way the last few frames are shot (Bernard Hermann's theme is played backwards in a 'sting' for one), more than that he's hailed as a tabloid hero in the same way John Wayne's Ethan Hunt seems to be the 'hero' in "The Searchers" (and "The Searchers" is the closest to Taxi Driver).

Scorsese took this idea and run with it wholesale in the "King of Comedy": in its own way, Rupert Pupkin's crushingly mediocre stand-up routine getting celebrated (after capturing and detaining the Jerry Lewis character) is just as vile as Taxi Driver's ending. In fact, King of Comedy sticks to its thesis far more closely too, it's the better, more successful film. But 'Taxi Driver' has a greater impact. The Searchers is probably more elqoeunt in dealing with a characters' barely suppressed racism, too. Somehow Taxi Driver just goes the gut spectacularly.

I don;t think he ends up all 'fine' either: he's twitching uncontrollably in the cab when he picks up Betsy (and why the hell is it that Betsy is framed in angelic glow), in fact the final shot is very off-kilter. The lighting is very fazed, the newspaper clippings read suspiciously close to Travis' monologues. Schrader was never the most subtle of screenwriters, but I think his lack of subtlety is paramount to the picture. But I understand where you're coming from, too.

Yeah, and I know that the "Russian Roulette" scenes should be kept there in The Deer Hunter, but gosh it makes it hard to like. I still think the sections back home are the most powerful and subtly done. If I view it as fiction (which it undeniably is), then its soothes me a bit. And I guess they're meant to be difficult.

I suppose I agree in a way that he isn't back to normal; but he's as normal as he ever was, which suggests to me that his actions have had little effect on him, and to me that just doesn't sit true; but nor would it if he'd suddenly changed. I think that the film falls flat here in that it doesn't really know what to make of its main character, it seems to be very vague and poorly-sketched.
As for the King of Comedy though, I always thought that the most telling point wasn't that the routine was celebrated, but that you could hear the audience reaction and they were only making the occasional half-hearted attempt at laughter. Mind you I haven't seen it in ages and I can't remember what happens afterwards.

[Dave the Jackal]

Taxi Driver. Think the ending's totally wrong.
*LOOK AWAY AND SCROLL DOWN TO WHERE THE OTHER BIG WRITING IS IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE FILM*
















The way that after he's gone on his rather minor rampage and killed Harvey Keitel, Bickle just returns to a kind of normal life; he seems to be satisfied by having killed just one pimp. The rest of the film has built up a lot more than that and it seems something of a cop-out ending to me.

I don't think that's it, I reckon its looking inside his head at what he's imagining the outcome to be. He dies and never sees the reality.

*YOU CAN LOOK BACK NOW IF YOU WANT*

Sorry for wasting all that space

[Penk!]

I completely contradicted myself with my two explanations there, didn't I. Oh well, I just didn't like the ending.