[geeks] Bad UPS II: The Sad Mac

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

Fri, 07 Oct 2005 @ 18:32 -0400, Nadine said:

> > Of course, I don't tend to like exaggerated humor as a medium for ideas
> > except in rare circumstances anyway, so it may be that more than
> > anything else.
> 
> I think this is more a matter of personal taste myself.  Sometimes
> you have to hit people with a trout to get them to get the point.

Well, I'm not usualy one of those.

Besides, herring works better.

> > Kubrick talked about and covered a lot more themes than just that.  The
> > theme of human language and communication failures is not exactly rare,
> > and all films that feature are going to be about that to a degree.
> 
> I didn't say that he didn't cover other themes, I said that every movie
> has the language theme.  

Well, Dickens and Asimov included it in nearly every literary work they
created too.

It's quite a common theme.

That's one reason why Dickens wrote the way he did. He feared his
message being misinterpreted, so his stories often have a lot of complex
redundancy in them. I mean besides the fact he was English.

Beethoven had the same issue. His characteristic repetition when writing
symphonic music came from his fear of not being understood when he
spoke.

Asimov is more complex. He was very concerned with being clear. Much
of his dialog is actually an internal dialog he had with himself. You
can think of his characters as each being Asimov, arguing with himself.
I do the same thing in my head all the time. When I'm trying to work
something out in my head, I'll often imagine a dialog between two
people, both me.

> Though I do consider the inadequacy of human language to be his
> primary theme in the major works of 2001, Dr. Strangelove, A Clockwork
> Orange. Watch these films and note the juxtaposition of music and
> spoken words, and his emphasis becomes quite clear.

Of course it was the central theme of Strangelove. I just found it too
jarring. One trout too many I guess.

I see it as one of several in 2001 and A Clockwork Orange.

I always found it interesting how both Clarke and Kubrick would talk
about the first part of 2001 and explain it. But Kubrick refused to
discuss the ending, and Clarke said he had no idea what it meant.

> On some days I rue the skeleton-picking bent that six years of
> literary analysis gave me (BA in English plus a close shave with a
> MA in English--a mere 6 credits shy). Though, I can now go to the
> lowest of low-brow action flicks and generate interesting critical
> conversation that goes beyond, "Wow, those blue screens sucked," or
> "Geez, could they have used more explosives in 90 minues?" :-D

I took 6 semesters of English, for some reason. But most of our time was
spent on Old English, Celtic, and other root languages and literature,
and the mechanics of writing. Had an excellent English teacher, who
taught and acted a lot like the one in "Dead Poet's Society", so
it wasn't so bad. He failed a lot of people because he was rather
merciless, but was never unfair. If you actually listened to him, it was
quite impossible to fail.

Not a waste of time at all though, as I really enjoyed it in college,
even though I'd hated it for 12 years previously.

Besides, Perl was written by an English major so... it kind of fits.

Anyway, my instructure used to say that the best essays were like a
miniskirt, and that was all the help he would give you when one was
assigned. He spoke in riddles, and had an amazingly subtle and devious
sense of humor. Some loved him for it, some students hated it.

Regarding nitpicking: I have a hard time with inaccuracies that don't
serve a plot purpose. I like fantasy just fine, but even that has to be
self consistent or I can't suspend my disbelief very well.

Aside:

I just saw "Oliver Twist", and I liked it quite a bit. The only low spot
for me was that Nancy was not as well done as the Nancy in the better of
the earlier versions (one from 1968 I think). Not the actress herself,
but the scripting of the part. The Artful Dodger stole the show along
with Ben Kingsley as Faigin.  This version had probably the best and
most menacing Bill I've ever seen too.

But also you have to say that the modern technology's ability to
recreate an old city is just better than anything ever done before. They
are really starting to produce amazing results in that regard. Also nice
was how they processed the film so the whole movie looks like a moving
oil painting. Pretty amazing stuff.

It's nice to see a movie that does the special effects *AND* the story
very well.






-- 
shannon "AT" widomaker.com -- ["And in billows of might swell the Saxons
before her,-- Unite, oh unite!	Or the billows burst o'er her!" -- Downfall
of the Gael]