Harry’s Place Arts

Going to the cinema is getting ridiculously expensive, imho people won’t risk shelling out for something that’s not been explained to them before hand. People who see their movies for free would do well to bear this in mind.

Well I admit that I do rely on movie reviews to a certain extent. Reviewers more often get it right than wrong. Celluloid is spot on in pointing out the snootiness of this [Bergan] reviewer though. What a fucking snotball.

I like obscure, thought-provoking movies as much as anyone but sometimes I just want to see aliens from planet X get their asses kicked!

Same thing with music. Schubert wrote great music but I can’t dance to it.

I used to rent movies from Blockbuster’s ‘obscure movie’ section because they were cheap and almost always good. Many had won (or been nominated for) this or that obscure award. But comparing a movie like Wall-E with something like The Machinist is just fucking stupid.

Is that the grauns full time movie critic? Seems to me it’s a case of finding a reliable critic, someone who thinks about movies in something like the same way you do and calibrating against that… At the moment I’m using ‘Dr’ Mark Kermode on radio 5

I think it may be true of movies, less true of popular music.

Hear, hear!

Mark Kermode is one of the VERY few film critics I would trust. The others being the incomparable John Patterson and, tentatively, Jonathan Ross. The common factor between all three of those? They understand the difference between good and bad populism. A good populist movie is a spectacular construction and can reward repeated viewing as much as any more downbeat production can. Back To The Future, I guess, is the pinnacle, but there are many others, most starring “The Rock” or Sean William Scott.

I refuse to acknowledge a “high” “low” opposition in films or any other art form. Emphatically not because I subscribe to some relativist everything-is-as-good-as-everything-else nonsense, but because the whole thing is almost always an over-simplification and is more about class and snobbery baggage than it is about any technical, historical or cultural detail of the artworks in question. Film critics, with the exceptions of the ones I mentioned, are among the worst offenders for aligning themselves to one side or another of the artificial arthouse/popcorn divide and going from there rather than assessing movies on their merits. For some it becomes absolutely crippling: Peter Bradshaw in the Guardian is the worst example of all that I can think of - so shit-scared of admitting, say, that there might be value in the belly-laughs and taboo breaking in one of the Jackass movies lest it destroy his carefully-constructed persona as tastemaker for the nimminy-pimminy classes that I can almost 100% of the time guarantee that if he loathes a film I - and most sane, fun people I know - will adore it.

I like the format of Kermode’s reviews too, he’s bantering away with wassisface, nicky? And answering text messages that the listeners send in so he gets to explain his thinking. Otoh Ross looks very much like he’s reading a script.

wassisface, nicky? Simon Mayo?

Ross IS reading a script and his delivery is completely ripped off Barry Norman - but nonetheless his passion for and knowledge of film, including supposedly “lowbrow” film, comes over.

“Ross IS reading a script and his delivery is completely ripped off Barry Norman - but nonetheless his passion for and knowledge of film, including supposedly “lowbrow” film, comes over.”

It used to, when he was doing the Incredibly Strange Movie Show. But now he’s overstretched and, when it comes to new movies…how can I put this politely?…underresearched.

Kermode doesn’t like ‘Superbad’. No credibility.

Movies are always shite, without exception. 100 minutes of compromised bollocks made to make money rather than express anything deeper. I really really can’t be arsed to watch anything that long that doesn’t have half time.
The idiot Ross, the very definition of Charlie Brooker’s ‘Shit Film Liker’, is a fan not a critic. ‘Passion’ is the last resort of the loser. Only twats think ‘passion’ beats ‘reason’, ‘intelligence’ or ‘argument’.
And Kermode’s real name is Mark Fairey- why the hell did he choose to name himself after a 19th c lavvy?
I am right and all of youse are wrong. Cheers.

this reminds me of a zen phrase that I read in a book my mother gave me.

‘everything with moderation, including moderation’.

it is very close to a quote by montesquieu that said something like that, but refering to virtue: that too much virtue was dangerous and thus needed to be constrained.

this is a classic example of people who take themselves too seriously. that’s not good. they miss the small pleasures that life can offer, and one of them is watching a movie just to relax, laugh for a while, and have a good time.

we don’t need to constantly feed our high IQ brain with very deep things.

movies for “”made for 12-year-olds or adults with the same mentality. “” can be compared with icecream: they can be delicious, and even if you really don’t want to gain weight, still, an ice cream now and then will not disrupt your metabolism.

but I imagine that these people stopped eating ice cream when they turned 12, because ice cream is for children.