About the previous blog--I just realized something ironic and a bit embarrassing that I am not too big to confess:
"...nothing makes me gag harder than trying to swallow some hamfisted moral message with a sappy soundtrack backing it up."
This is bullshit. I'm a sucker for plotlines and characters, and have happily choked down MANY a craphappy morality tale as the result of empathizing with the characters or overidentifying with the film's plot or subtexts. That's what fiction does. It sucks me in--sometimes even the bad stuff.
I suppose that what really bothers me the most is when I know I'm being sold a product that some greasy Hollywood mogul recycled from some other successful flick and decided to fling at the groundlings this year. And I find myself especially resentful of said commodification when they (faceless whoevers, all of them fat-ass, silk-suit, steakeating rapists, as is well-documented by the cartoon that plays constantly inside my insomniac cerebrum) create some stale, garbage-pail catastrophe and market it as an art film with sullen celebrities who just went slumming for the folks who worship filth. See also: Closer, Vanilla Sky, V for Vendetta (and this is largely due to the total betrayal of Moore's text and the soppy revolutionary sentimentality throughout), and Requiem for a Dream.
My readers (and many others besides) just might hate me for slamming those films, especially the ever-revered Requiem (and I'm sorry, but "Requiem for an Anything" just oozes smarmy arthouse pretension in the worst way)...and I'd have to refrain from commenting very thoroughly on the film, because I won't do what a good critic would do--because I'm not a "good critic," just some schmuck who likes to bitch about shit as a pasttime-- and watch the film again. Strap me down Little Alex style and force me to view it again on the big screen with my eyelids peeled back and see if I don't spontaneously combust.
So, that's that, I suppose. My gift to you. A blog about a blog, the ultimate in narcissistic wordspew. All I'm saying is that I'm just as guilty as anyone for liking things that show little to no artistic merit. Just please, for the love of the sins someone died for, please don't make me watch some vapid crap about the oh-so-precious plight of the bourgeoisie and call it "a brutally honest insight into the downward spiral that is drug addiction." And they can keep their textbook descent into what the suburbs call "the underworld" while peeking through their fingers and masturbating their own captive boredom.
For the price of a Friday night film, I'll drive you to Orange Mound so you can hug a fucking junkie and see what happens.
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3 comments:
First, thanks for the quote and the post. I think of God as the idea that things could possibly make sense. Who wouldn't long for that?
I like your music, books, films, ideas...so much that reading you feels like incest. I didn't have negative feelings about Requiem though - do you have personal reasons for hating it so much? I'm guessing so. Keep in touch!
http://old-things.blogspot.com
"Reading you feels like incest" might just be one of the best things I've ever seen about myself in print.
I think that, with Requiem, I felt that the pretension was so thick as to be the equivalent of bad brainporn. I just didn't buy it. And again, it falls a bit into the category of heavy-handed moralizing that tends to raise my eyebrow while turning my stomach.
You're the very best procrastinator I know. A+
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