Ellison on War of the Worlds...
Thunder, Agent '005
"Ellison Blasts Spielberg's War
SF writer Harlan Ellison blasted Steven Spielberg's efforts to film H.G.
Wells' War of the Worlds in comments to SCI FI Wire at Enigma Con at the
University of California, Los Angeles. "What annoys me is that Spielberg
is such an egomaniac these days that it has to be 'Steven Spielberg's
War of the Worlds,'" the outspoken Ellison said in an interview over the
weekend. "No, you puss-bag. It's H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds, and it
wouldn't kill you to put his f--king name on it."
Ellison, author of such books as I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream,
added: "That shows his arrogance. It's like Disney. Disney didn't write
Snow White or Robin Hood or Bambi, but it's 'Walt Disney's universe.'
It's the universe according to frozen Walt."
The irascible Ellison hosted a 90-minute lecture at the conference,
which he titled "How Does SF Stay in Business in a World of Marching
Morons?" He said that he does give Spielberg credit for directing 1984's
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. "Spielberg is only a craftsman,
that's all he is," Ellison said. "He's not a genius. He's not a
trendsetter. There isn't one moment of any Spielberg film, with the
possible exception of Doom, that matches the least moment of a Kurosawa
film. Kurosawa was a blinding genius of cinema. His vision was
astonishing."
Ellison said that he has little interest in seeing remakes and added:
"We live in a society that values less and less the original."
--
t.k.
Amy Guskin
(in article <9Swne.1538251$8l.319084@pd7tw1no>):
> From Sci-Fi Wire...
>
> "Ellison Blasts Spielberg's War
>
> SF writer Harlan Ellison blasted Steven Spielberg's efforts to film H.G.
> Wells' War of the Worlds in comments to SCI FI Wire at Enigma Con at the
> University of California, Los Angeles. "What annoys me is that Spielberg
> is such an egomaniac these days that it has to be 'Steven Spielberg's
> War of the Worlds,'" the outspoken Ellison said in an interview over the
> weekend. "No, you puss-bag. It's H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds, and it
> wouldn't kill you to put his f--king name on it."
>
> <snip>
>
> Ellison said that he has little interest in seeing remakes and added:
> "We live in a society that values less and less the original."<<
Harlan's just great. Man oh man. Hopefully he'll repeat that panel ("How
Does SF Stay in Business in a World of Marching Morons?") at some other con
in the future. You could just do that one on a yearly basis, really. Kind
of like the needcoffee.com panel they do annually at Dragon Con, "Make the
Bad Men Stop," which is about how Hollywood continually ruins sci-fi/genre
stories and comics.
Amy
--
http://www.shamanicmusicstore.com
The leading source for music created specifically for the shamanic journey!
Thunder, Agent '005
> "No, you puss-bag. It's H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds, and it
> wouldn't kill you to put his f--king name on it."
No argument here, although from the sounds of it I don't this movie is
that similiar to what Wells wrote originally (my friend and I would love
to see a book-faithful adaption just for once).
> "Spielberg is only a craftsman,
> that's all he is," Ellison said. "He's not a genius. He's not a
> trendsetter. There isn't one moment of any Spielberg film, with the
> possible exception of Doom,
Even still, Spielberg is one of the great directors of our time. Not a
trendsetter or a genius perhaps, but he is respected. Granted, he's done
some commercial movies but he's also done stuff like Amistad, The Color
Purple, Schlinder's List... I don't think Harlan's comments are entirely
fair here.
> Ellison said that he has little interest in seeing remakes and added:
> "We live in a society that values less and less the original."
No argument here either. I would enjoy some more originality
myself--even a lame attempt at it is better then remaking stuff ad
infinitum.
t.k.
Methuselah Jones
Thunder, Agent '005 of rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated make plain:
>> "Spielberg is only a craftsman,
>> that's all he is," Ellison said. "He's not a genius. He's not a
>> trendsetter. There isn't one moment of any Spielberg film, with the
>> possible exception of Doom,
>
> Even still, Spielberg is one of the great directors of our time. Not a
> trendsetter or a genius perhaps, but he is respected. Granted, he's
> done some commercial movies but he's also done stuff like Amistad, The
> Color Purple, Schlinder's List... I don't think Harlan's comments are
> entirely fair here.
Not to mention "Saving Private Ryan", "Always", "Empire of the Sun",
"Close Encounters of the Third Kind"; and whatever one thinks of the
changes he made to "E.T.", it is still a wonderful story either way.
As for remakes, I count only three in Spielberg's portfolio. I thought he
did OK with his segment of the Twilight Zone movie, and I felt that
"Always" was much more compelling than its original ("A Guy Named Joe",
which I did like, but not as much as the remake). I haven't seen "War"
yet, so can't comment.
As for Kurosawa, many great directors would yet come up short in that
comparison.
I think Ellison's jab would be more fairly directed at the general
pompous arrogance of Hollywood; while Spielberg may deserve some of it,
he is far from the worst offender.
--
Methuselah
"I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this
or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to
know His thoughts; the rest are details."
-- Albert Einstein
Wendy of NJ
<dece...@shaw.ca> wrote:
>
>
>> "No, you puss-bag. It's H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds, and it
>> wouldn't kill you to put his f--king name on it."
>
>No argument here, although from the sounds of it I don't this movie is
>that similiar to what Wells wrote originally (my friend and I would love
>to see a book-faithful adaption just for once).
>
>> "Spielberg is only a craftsman,
>> that's all he is," Ellison said. "He's not a genius. He's not a
>> trendsetter. There isn't one moment of any Spielberg film, with the
>> possible exception of Doom,
>
>Even still, Spielberg is one of the great directors of our time. Not a
>trendsetter or a genius perhaps, but he is respected. Granted, he's done
>some commercial movies but he's also done stuff like Amistad, The Color
>Purple, Schlinder's List... I don't think Harlan's comments are entirely
>fair here.
Yeah? But think what Kurosawa could have done with that material
(*drooling just thinking about it*).
>
>> Ellison said that he has little interest in seeing remakes and added:
>> "We live in a society that values less and less the original."
>
>No argument here either. I would enjoy some more originality
>myself--even a lame attempt at it is better then remaking stuff ad
>infinitum.
personally, I think that's a direct result from the advent of mass
media (i.e. television). My mother noticed a remarkable change in her
middle-school students during the mid/late 1950's. Before widespread
use of television, her students would all have widely varied
backgrounds in mythology and folklore, based on their families'
origins, and what the children had been reading. Then, almost all of a
sudden, there was a uniformity of thought and idea - and I remember
her telling a story about one of her classes, where she asked them if
they were all "pod people".
Now, we've had 2 or 3 generations raised by the One Eyed God, and it's
become increasingly difficult for new ideas to break in to the mass
consciousness, simply because it pushes our "comfort zone". The mass
consciousness wants that old comfort food; endless rehashing of the
Brady Bunch and all those early 60's sitcoms... I mean, do we *really*
need a re-make of "Bewitched"? Didn't we beat that horse thoroughly
to death during it's multi-year run? Is this so we can take our kids
to some film and say: "See? This is what we used to watch, only it was
different - Samantha wasn't permitted to display her powers overtly
because her husband's word was Law." The remake of "Bewitched" will be
some rose-colored quasi nostalgic fluff that won't come close to
showing what gender roles were like before the Feminist Movement. When
I re-watched an old episode a few years ago, I found myself really
liking Endora - if my son-in-law squelched MY daughter in that way,
I'd feel *exactly* the same way she did. Derwood, indeed.
-Wendy
Rob Perkins
>> "Spielberg is only a craftsman, that's all he is," Ellison said. "He's
>> not a genius. He's not a trendsetter. There isn't one moment of any
>> Spielberg film, with the possible exception of Doom,
>
>
> Even still, Spielberg is one of the great directors of our time.
Great directors tell honest stories consistently. Spielberg is
remarkable at getting a *scene* right, but he can't tell an honest
*story* any more which hangs together, or makes me want to care about
the characters, any more than George Lucas can.
Too bad, really. He used to be all that, but not anymore. Yipe, the guy
who directed "X-men" has more of a sense of characterization than
Spielberg, who, if you'll recall, spent the 80's plastering his name on
almost everything out there...
> Not a
> trendsetter or a genius perhaps, but he is respected. Granted, he's done
> some commercial movies but he's also done stuff like Amistad,
...except that he misrepresented the motivations of the white people in
that movie...
> The Color
> Purple,
...didn't see that one...
> Schlinder's List...
...except that the climactic scene of Schindler's regret couldn't
possibly have happened; the man escaped Germany with enough wealth to
keep himself and his family in comfort for the rest of his life...
Not even Empire of the Sun could stay honest from start to finish, in
terms of me feeling preached-to and bludgeoned on a night when I came to
see not a film, but a movie. In that sense Spielberg has all the finesse
of Veggie Tales, when it comes to moralizing.
> I don't think Harlan's comments are entirely
> fair here.
Heh. Harlan's comments are *never* fair. He speaks what he thinks is
Truth to Power, in his loudest voice.
Rob, risking unpopularity yet again
Rob Perkins
> I mean, do we *really*
> need a re-make of "Bewitched"?
Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! :-p
> Didn't we beat that horse thoroughly
> to death during it's multi-year run?
Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Doesn't mean we can't cheez it up again! :-p
(nota bene: I haven't watched an episode of Bewitched since I was 13 or
so!)
But if they lampoon it, like they did with The Brady Bunch, all the
better! W00T!
> When
> I re-watched an old episode a few years ago, I found myself really
> liking Endora - if my son-in-law squelched MY daughter in that way,
> I'd feel *exactly* the same way she did. Derwood, indeed.
Wendy, that's delicious! Thinking of the producers of Bewitched getting
feminism past the censors by putting it in the mouth of the ascerbic
mother-in-law! You almost make me want to sign up for NetFlix and get a
DVD season set delivered, or TiVO some Nick-at-Nite, to see if there's
something to decode...
Rob
Amy Guskin
(in article <ulh0a1t7dg188ja0p...@4ax.com>):
I finally saw a trailer for the new "Bewitched" (and I confess to having some
cognitive dissonance that Nicole Kidman will be acting alongside of Will
Ferrell), and horribly...it's a meta-film. Ferrell is an actor involved in a
remake of the Bewitched series, and Kidman is an actual witch he finds on the
street, mistakes for an actress, and casts her opposite him. See?
Winkety-wink? It's so ironic! It's a _meta_ story!
Augh. Kill me now!
Vorlonagent
"Rob Perkins" <rper...@usa.net> wrote in message
news:3gb60mF...@individual.net...
> But if they lampoon it, like they did with The Brady Bunch, all the
> better! W00T!
Or find a tongue-in-cheek angle such as George of the Jungle...
--
Spirituality without science has no mind. Science without spirituality
has no heart.
-Methuselah Jones
Rob Perkins
>
> "Rob Perkins" <rper...@usa.net> wrote in message
> news:3gb60mF...@individual.net...
>
>> But if they lampoon it, like they did with The Brady Bunch, all the
>> better! W00T!
>
>
> Or find a tongue-in-cheek angle such as George of the Jungle...
George of the Jungle was already tongue-in-cheek...
Rob, nothing up my sleeve!
Josh Hill
<voxw...@gmail.com> wrote:
>Yeah? But think what Kurosawa could have done with that material
>(*drooling just thinking about it*).
Or as a friend said about AI, if Kubrick had made it, you would have
left the theater shaking . . . I think that Spielberg will be
remembered for light movies like ET and the Indiana Jones series
rather than for his serious efforts, which remind me of immensely
popular but now forgotten beat-em-over-the-head Hollywood message
movies like The Big Parade.
--
Josh
Vorlonagent
Presto!
ARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHH!
no doubt about it. I gotta get another hat.
The film was transferred well to both live action and the big screen.
Notable in its rarity.
Wendy of NJ
<rper...@usa.net> wrote:
>Wendy of NJ wrote:
>
>> I mean, do we *really*
>> need a re-make of "Bewitched"?
>
>Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! :-p
>
>> Didn't we beat that horse thoroughly
>> to death during it's multi-year run?
>
>Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Doesn't mean we can't cheez it up again! :-p
>
>(nota bene: I haven't watched an episode of Bewitched since I was 13 or
>so!)
>
>But if they lampoon it, like they did with The Brady Bunch, all the
>better! W00T!
Well, I've never seen an episode of the Brady Bunch. Ever. So the
remake was even less interesting for me (and I didn't see that,
either). I think I was watching the Partridge Family instead during
that time.
>
>> When
>> I re-watched an old episode a few years ago, I found myself really
>> liking Endora - if my son-in-law squelched MY daughter in that way,
>> I'd feel *exactly* the same way she did. Derwood, indeed.
>
>Wendy, that's delicious! Thinking of the producers of Bewitched getting
>feminism past the censors by putting it in the mouth of the ascerbic
>mother-in-law!
But that's not what they were doing. Endora was the "horrible
mother-in-law" stereotype and she was NOT supposed to be a sympathetic
character. You were supposed to be sympathetic with poor Darrin,
married to that kooky wife of his.
>You almost make me want to sign up for NetFlix and get a
>DVD season set delivered, or TiVO some Nick-at-Nite, to see if there's
>something to decode...
I'm sure you can catch an episode on Nick at Night or TV Land...
-Wendy
Wendy of NJ
I guess the Ferell character missed watching "Practical Magic" - then
he would have known she was a witch... Do they cast Sandra Bullock as
her dark-haired (naughtyt) sister?
*rolls eyes*
At least the Fantastic Four movie looks like it will be fun...
-Wendy
Amy Guskin
(in article <7j61a1hvd8pk4psb5...@4ax.com>):
> On Fri, 3 Jun 2005 13:58:53 +0000 (UTC), Rob Perkins
> <rper...@usa.net> wrote:
>
>> Wendy of NJ wrote:
>>
>>> I mean, do we *really*
>>> need a re-make of "Bewitched"?
>>
>> Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! :-p
>>
>>> Didn't we beat that horse thoroughly
>>> to death during it's multi-year run?
>>
>> Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Doesn't mean we can't cheez it up again! :-p
>>
>> (nota bene: I haven't watched an episode of Bewitched since I was 13 or
>> so!)
>>
>> But if they lampoon it, like they did with The Brady Bunch, all the
>> better! W00T!
>
> Well, I've never seen an episode of the Brady Bunch. Ever. So the
> remake was even less interesting for me (and I didn't see that,
> either). I think I was watching the Partridge Family instead during
> that time.<<
When they were both new, and on at the same time, they followed one another.
Friday nights. One was on at 8, one at 8:30. I can't believe I remember
that!
Thunder, Agent '005
> or makes me want to care about
> the characters, any more than George Lucas can.
I think Lucas has shown that Spielberg is a much better
director--whether due to his higher amount of films or what, I don't
know, but he's definitely the superior of the two.
t.k.
Josh Hill
As Stanley Kubrick put it (paraphrased), The Holocaust was about 6
million people who died; it seems to me that Stephen has made a film
about 300 who lived. Spielberg seems always to think in terms of
manipulating the audience, and that's great in a lighthearted Indiana
Jones frolic that's intended to amuse, but it keeps him from the
frequently painfully honest insights that IMO characterize the very
best art.
--
Josh
Josh Hill
I think you're right -- Lucas is by nature a screenwriter rather than
a director. But as things now stand in Hollywood, the credit and power
go to the director and producer, so what are you going to do.
I think Woody Allen suffers from the same problem -- he's a great
screenwriter who's too shy to do a good job directing actors.
--
Josh
Rob Perkins
> Or as a friend said about AI, if Kubrick had made it, you would have
> left the theater shaking . . .
As it was, when we turned of the DVD player, my wife and I looked at
each other and just said, "That was weird."
> I think that Spielberg will be
> remembered for light movies like ET and the Indiana Jones series
> rather than for his serious efforts, which remind me of immensely
> popular but now forgotten beat-em-over-the-head Hollywood message
> movies like The Big Parade.
Nail on the head. Indy Jones movies are his best work.
Rob, *still* shuddering at that waste of film, "The Terminal"
Rob Perkins
> As Stanley Kubrick put it (paraphrased), The Holocaust was about 6
> million people who died; it seems to me that Stephen has made a film
> about 300 who lived. Spielberg seems always to think in terms of
> manipulating the audience, and that's great in a lighthearted Indiana
> Jones frolic that's intended to amuse, but it keeps him from the
> frequently painfully honest insights that IMO characterize the very
> best art.
Bingo!
Hey Josh, did you ever think after the last four weeks or so that you
and I could come to agree on anything?
Rob
Rob Perkins
>>Wendy, that's delicious! Thinking of the producers of Bewitched getting
>>feminism past the censors by putting it in the mouth of the ascerbic
>>mother-in-law!
>
>
> But that's not what they were doing. Endora was the "horrible
> mother-in-law" stereotype and she was NOT supposed to be a sympathetic
> character. You were supposed to be sympathetic with poor Darrin,
> married to that kooky wife of his.
Even so. The wheel turns...
At any rate, as I think back on it, there's this barely restrained
contempt for a man who cannot deal with "reality" as depicted in
Bewitched's universe. The idea that a mother-in-law would call all of
that nonsense, and just upset his applecart at every opportunity is
entertaining.
Endora is our 21st-century heroine!
"No magic in *my* house" indeed. I can just imagine what it would have
been like, had my grandfather tried to pull something like that one on
gramma. And that was the generation previous to Bewitched's audience. Hoo...
Rob, grabbing the strainer
Neil B
> From Sci-Fi Wire...
<snip diatribe>
Successful only in making himself sound like a ten year-old. I couldn't
disagree with his comments on Spielberg more.
Neil B
Captain Infinity
> From Sci-Fi Wire...
>
>"Ellison Blasts Spielberg's War
I can't seem to find it...do you have a link?
**
Captain Infinity
Raven Woman
> director--whether due to his higher amount of films or what, I don't
> know, but he's definitely the superior of the two.
>
>
> t.k.
>
The scary thing is, *Lucas* can show that, independent of anything SS is
doing.
But Spielberg gets good actors -- he's really got a knack for casting the
right folks.
Whoopie Goldburg debuted in The Color Purple, IIRC, and while the movie
wasn't half up to the book (imagine that) no one else could have played
Suge.
And the Ben Kingsley/Liam Neeson pairing in Schindler's List was awesome.
Not to mention what's-his-face as the commandant. Ralph something???
Jenn
Raven Woman
> million people who died; it seems to me that Stephen has made a film
> about 300 who lived. Spielberg seems always to think in terms of
> manipulating the audience, and that's great in a lighthearted Indiana
> Jones frolic that's intended to amuse, but it keeps him from the
> frequently painfully honest insights that IMO characterize the very
> best art.
>
> --
> Josh
>
I wouldn't say he pulled any punches there. I couldn't see Schindler's List
again -- it was too strong for me, really -- but I certainly had the feeling
that there had been so much death that the few saved meant hardly a thing.
On the other hand, how do you measure? In one sense, any life is an
absolute value. Doesn't B5 go into that question? I'm thinking of the
scene w/ Delenn & the Inquisitor . . . and Sheridan makes the opposite
argument in his Coventry speech . . .
And as for the final scene, in color, w/ the survivor's descendants -- the
living *can* remember. The dead can't.
Sad, true.
Jenn
Thunder, Agent '005
>>As Stanley Kubrick put it (paraphrased), The Holocaust was about 6
>>million people who died; it seems to me that Stephen has made a film
>>about 300 who lived.
It seems to me that it shows there can be hope in the face of adversity
and I don't see why that's a bad thing.
t.k.
Thunder, Agent '005
>
> I can't seem to find it...do you have a link?
>
This is a link to the original article...
http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire2005/index.php?category=3&id=31121
t.k.
Methuselah Jones
of NJ of rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated make plain:
> But that's not what they were doing. Endora was the "horrible
> mother-in-law" stereotype and she was NOT supposed to be a sympathetic
> character. You were supposed to be sympathetic with poor Darrin,
> married to that kooky wife of his.
I don't know; even watching it as a kid, it was pretty clear to me that
Darrin was a buffoon. His wife said, "Yes, dear", but then did what she
wanted to anyway.
--
Methuselah
"It's never too late for a happy childhood."
-- John Bradshaw
Methuselah Jones
> But Spielberg gets good actors -- he's really got a knack for casting
> the right folks.
>
> Whoopie Goldburg debuted in The Color Purple, IIRC, and while the
> movie wasn't half up to the book (imagine that) no one else could have
> played Suge.
Actually she was in an art film called "Citizen" before that, but
"Purple" was her first feature film.
> And the Ben Kingsley/Liam Neeson pairing in Schindler's List was
> awesome. Not to mention what's-his-face as the commandant. Ralph
> something???
Ralph Fiennes. Absolutely brilliant performance. He was one of the most
chilling aspects of the whole story.
--
Methuselah
"Researchers have discovered that chocolate produces some of the same
reactions in the brain as marijuana. The researchers also discovered
other similarities between the two, but can't remember what they are."
-- Matt Lauer on NBC's Today show
Josh Hill
For me, the Hollywood ending was only part of it. I had the sense
while I was watching the film that I was watching a "Holocaust Lite"
version so sanitized as to scarcely resemble the holocaust I've seen
in photographs and films, the holocaust of living skeletons and
children sewn together and mothers with babies being lined up and
driven into furnaces to be burned alive.
Here are the images that came up when I searched for "holocaust" on
Google (I think we've all seen their like, but still, I should warn
that they're disturbing):
These seem to me as remote from the depiction of events in Schindler's
List as the historical Vlad the Impaler is from a boo ride in an
amusement park. Even if he wanted to, I don't think that a director
could reproduce those death camps scenes or the look on the faces of
those boys. But Spielberg went in the opposite direction. He said that
when he made Schindler's List, he was always asking himself what the
audience would find tolerable, and it seems to me that if you're going
to do that, you aren't going to end up with a film about the
holocaust.
--
Josh
Josh Hill
LOL
But then, politics has a way of doing that, doesn't it. :-)
--
Josh
Josh Hill
<rper...@usa.net> wrote:
>Josh Hill wrote:
>
>> Or as a friend said about AI, if Kubrick had made it, you would have
>> left the theater shaking . . .
>
>As it was, when we turned of the DVD player, my wife and I looked at
>each other and just said, "That was weird."
Heh -- about as good a description as any.
>> I think that Spielberg will be
>> remembered for light movies like ET and the Indiana Jones series
>> rather than for his serious efforts, which remind me of immensely
>> popular but now forgotten beat-em-over-the-head Hollywood message
>> movies like The Big Parade.
>
>Nail on the head. Indy Jones movies are his best work.
>
>Rob, *still* shuddering at that waste of film, "The Terminal"
You know, I'd never even heard about "The Terminal" until you
mentioned it and I did a search . . .
I think I'm going to avoid Spielberg movies until Indiana Jones IV.
Last one I saw (after avoiding it for several years) was Saving
Private Ryan. Only Spielberg could have made a supposedly
ultra-realistic war film that had me in stitches -- all those plastic
guts -- it reminded me of the "horror houses" we used to make when I
was a kid, the ones where you went into a tent and crawled through
spaghetti (worms! worms! heh heh heh heh heh).
--
Josh
Wendy of NJ
<methu...@altgeek.org> wrote:
>Carved in mystic runes upon the very living rock, the last words of Wendy
>of NJ of rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated make plain:
>
>> But that's not what they were doing. Endora was the "horrible
>> mother-in-law" stereotype and she was NOT supposed to be a sympathetic
>> character. You were supposed to be sympathetic with poor Darrin,
>> married to that kooky wife of his.
>
>I don't know; even watching it as a kid, it was pretty clear to me that
>Darrin was a buffoon. His wife said, "Yes, dear", but then did what she
>wanted to anyway.
No, that was Jeannie. She was a much cooler magic user (and Larry
Hagman was way cuter than any of the Darrins). I always thought
Jeannie was better than Samantha, hands down... (and Major Nelson was
an *astronaut*!)
-Wendy
Wendy of NJ
<methu...@altgeek.org> wrote:
>Carved in mystic runes upon the very living rock, the last words of
>Raven Woman of rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated make plain:
>
>> But Spielberg gets good actors -- he's really got a knack for casting
>> the right folks.
>>
>> Whoopie Goldburg debuted in The Color Purple, IIRC, and while the
>> movie wasn't half up to the book (imagine that) no one else could have
>> played Suge.
>
>Actually she was in an art film called "Citizen" before that, but
>"Purple" was her first feature film.
And didn't she have a one-woman show on Broadway previous to any film
apperances? (I think it got "adapted" for HBO, back in her stand-up
comedy days)
Wendy of NJ
That's where my mom fell short with her novel writing... she just
would not look too deeply into things that might be painful. We would
talk about that from time to time. For example, "A Morning Moon" ended
in 1928 or so, because she didn't want to write about the Holocaust.
-Wendy
Wendy of NJ
<Hraf...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> As Stanley Kubrick put it (paraphrased), The Holocaust was about 6
>> million people who died; it seems to me that Stephen has made a film
>> about 300 who lived. Spielberg seems always to think in terms of
>> manipulating the audience, and that's great in a lighthearted Indiana
>> Jones frolic that's intended to amuse, but it keeps him from the
>> frequently painfully honest insights that IMO characterize the very
>> best art.
>>
>> --
>> Josh
>>
>
>I wouldn't say he pulled any punches there. I couldn't see Schindler's List
>again -- it was too strong for me, really -- but I certainly had the feeling
>that there had been so much death that the few saved meant hardly a thing.
>
>On the other hand, how do you measure? In one sense, any life is an
>absolute value. Doesn't B5 go into that question? I'm thinking of the
>scene w/ Delenn & the Inquisitor . . . and Sheridan makes the opposite
>argument in his Coventry speech . . .
or even the epsiode where Vir does the Schindler thing, under the
auspices of "Abrahaml Lincolni"
-Wendy
Rob Perkins
> And as for the final scene, in color, w/ the survivor's descendants -- the
> living *can* remember. The dead can't.
There are few things I disagree with quite as much as that idea.
Rob
Raven Woman
> when he made Schindler's List, he was always asking himself what the
> audience would find tolerable, and it seems to me that if you're going
> to do that, you aren't going to end up with a film about the
> holocaust.
>
> --
> Josh
Or an audience?
Jenn
Rob Perkins
> I think I'm going to avoid Spielberg movies until Indiana Jones IV.
> Last one I saw (after avoiding it for several years) was Saving
> Private Ryan. Only Spielberg could have made a supposedly
> ultra-realistic war film that had me in stitches -- all those plastic
> guts -- it reminded me of the "horror houses" we used to make when I
> was a kid, the ones where you went into a tent and crawled through
> spaghetti (worms! worms! heh heh heh heh heh).
Wasn't he behind "Poltergeist?" That one made my father laugh his head
off for similar reasons.
Rob
krueg...@hotmail.com
Ah, but it explains one of my main questions about how the faithful can
believe in a "heaven". Surely at some point in time a mother was sent
to heaven and her beloved offspring to hell. How can this be?
The dead have no memory actually would explain this. :)
Of course, what the point to an afterlife is if you delete my
personality (and a major part of my personality was made up from my
memories), I do not know. :)
Raven Woman
> > Raven Woman wrote:
> >
> > > And as for the final scene, in color, w/ the survivor's descendants --
the
> > > living *can* remember. The dead can't.
> >
> > There are few things I disagree with quite as much as that idea.
> >
> > Rob
>
Well, we can't know til it's over, can we?
> Ah, but it explains one of my main questions about how the faithful can
> believe in a "heaven". Surely at some point in time a mother was sent
> to heaven and her beloved offspring to hell. How can this be?
>
> The dead have no memory actually would explain this. :)
>
> Of course, what the point to an afterlife is if you delete my
> personality (and a major part of my personality was made up from my
> memories), I do not know. :)
>
I can't imagine wanting an afterlife. Or rather, I wouldn't mind living
again -- maybe as a tree, or something that could experience sensation but
not emotion?? -- but I wouldn't want to keep this consciousness and/or
memory.
Being part of Goddess/Mother Earth/Anima Mundi, yes.
Being Jenn for ever, no. No desire to be immortal as me.
Jenn
. . . definitely rooting to be a horse chestnut tree next time around . . .
. or just to be buried under one . . .
Josh Hill
<Hraf...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>But Spielberg went in the opposite direction. He said that
>> when he made Schindler's List, he was always asking himself what the
>> audience would find tolerable, and it seems to me that if you're going
>> to do that, you aren't going to end up with a film about the
>> holocaust.
>
>Or an audience?
Well, not as big an audience. It comes down to whether you're more
interested in art or moolah, I guess . . .
--
Josh
Josh Hill
I didn't know he'd been involved in that, but I did a search, and
"POLTERGEIST is a film conceived, co-written and produced by Steven
Spielberg. A clause in Spielberg's contract with Universal for E.T.
THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL forbade him from directing POLTERGEIST and E.T.
simultaneously. Spielberg hired up-and-coming horror film director
Tobe Hooper, whose biggest credit to date was the classic horror film
THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, to helm the picture."
http://www.spielbergfilms.com/poltergeisthome.html
Kind of an interesting story -- it seems some claimed that he directed
the film on the sly . . .
--
Josh
Raven Woman
>
> Well, not as big an audience. It comes down to whether you're more
> interested in art or moolah, I guess . . .
>
> --
> Josh
>
It's not such a simple dichotomy. Many forms of art (not all, and not all
the time, of course) are about communicating with an audience. And you may
want a larger audience to communicate with than a few hardy souls.
The desire to communicate is strong in lots of writers . . . so, I would
guess, in directors. I've gotten the most "fan mail" for an article I put
up on Witchvox a few months ago -- and I left off a lot of the "theory,"
religious & feminist, that I could have included if I wanted to write a
scholarly piece. But in this case I wanted to speak my thoughts to lots of
people, so I matched style to audience. And got about 50 letters of people
for whom I'd "touched a cord" etc.
I could have treated the topic much more dryly & scholarly-ly (?!) but that
isn't the trade-off I was after. And it wouldn't have meant so much to so
many readers.
Now, a *deceitful* piece is another story . . .
. . . and there have certainly been deceitful treatments of plenty of
historical subjects!!
Jenn
Wendy of NJ
My brother is in Europe right now, and he blogged about visitng the
Auchwitz Museum about a week ago, here:
http://thecolumnistmanifesto.blogspot.com/2005/05/dispatches-from-poland-auschwitz.html
-Wendy
Eliyahu Rooff
"Josh Hill" <usere...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:qeb3a198dsfj3mk6h...@4ax.com...
opened. Someone had asked her if things were really as bad as the film
portrayed. Her response was that the film made things much nicer than
they really were. As a Jew, I'd have preferred that the movie be
realistic to the last pile of bodies, but I also realize that he wanted
to make a movie about the Holocaust that people would watch. If they're
watching it, some, at least, are going to ask questions and try to learn
more about it, hopefully to keep it from ever happening again. More
importantly, it was a movie that could be shown to children, who will
absorb the lesson that one person can make a difference. Schindler
didn't stop the Holocaust, he didn't defeat the nazis, and six million
of my people still died, but to the three hundred or so that he rescued,
he made all the difference in the world. For many of us, that's the
most we can hope to do in life.
I also realize that every one of us need something different to feel a
connection to an event; to identify with the victims and to understand
what it was like for them. A few years ago, a man was on a tour of
Auschwitz. He'd seen the remains of the gas chambers and ovens, the
barbed wire and everything else, and while he felt sad, it just didn't
connect with him until he looked at an exhibit that included a pile of
toys left behind by the children who went to the gas chambers. He
started to give it a perfunctory glance until he spotted a little green
toy monkey. It was identical to his most beloved childhood toy, and as
he stared at it and realized that the child who owned it and had been
murdered there was no different than himself, he began to weep
uncontrollably. For some of us, the sight of bulldozers burying piles
of emaciated bodies will do it. For others, it takes a little green
monkey or a red jacket to personalize and humanize the tragedy.
Eliyahu
Dan Dassow
> ...
> I also realize that every one of us need something different to feel a
> connection to an event; to identify with the victims and to understand
> what it was like for them. A few years ago, a man was on a tour of
> Auschwitz. He'd seen the remains of the gas chambers and ovens, the
> barbed wire and everything else, and while he felt sad, it just didn't
> connect with him until he looked at an exhibit that included a pile of
> toys left behind by the children who went to the gas chambers. He
> started to give it a perfunctory glance until he spotted a little green
> toy monkey. It was identical to his most beloved childhood toy, and as
> he stared at it and realized that the child who owned it and had been
> murdered there was no different than himself, he began to weep
> uncontrollably. For some of us, the sight of bulldozers burying piles
> of emaciated bodies will do it. For others, it takes a little green
> monkey or a red jacket to personalize and humanize the tragedy.
>
> Eliyahu
Eliyahu,
Thank you for sharing this.
One of my co-workers recently died in a motorcycle accident.
Although I attended his wake and funeral, it did not really
hit me until I was talking to another co-worker about a third
co-worker losing her father in the last two weeks.
Dan Dassow
Eliyahu Rooff
> On Sat, 4 Jun 2005 02:17:30 +0000 (UTC), "Raven Woman"
> <Hraf...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> >> As Stanley Kubrick put it (paraphrased), The Holocaust was about 6
> >> million people who died; it seems to me that Stephen has made a
film
> >> about 300 who lived. Spielberg seems always to think in terms of
> >> manipulating the audience, and that's great in a lighthearted
Indiana
> >> Jones frolic that's intended to amuse, but it keeps him from the
> >> frequently painfully honest insights that IMO characterize the very
> >> best art.
> >>
> >> --
> >> Josh
> >>
> >
> >I wouldn't say he pulled any punches there. I couldn't see
Schindler's List
> >again -- it was too strong for me, really -- but I certainly had the
feeling
> >that there had been so much death that the few saved meant hardly a
thing.
> >
As I point out elsewhere, it matters a great deal if you're one of the
few that he saved. We also have our own teaching from the Talmud that
"whoever saves a single life, it is as if he saved the whole world."
We never know where the next world leader, Nobel laureate or inventor
will come from. The one person we rescue might be a street person, a
crook or a complete jerk, but he could also be the person who will save
your child's life years from now, who will stop a major crime from
happening, or who will someday save humanity. When a submarine crew
fished George Bush out of the ocean in the South Pacific, no one had the
slightest idea that they'd just rescued a future president of the US.
He was just another pilot who'd been shot down.
Have you read the story of Japanese diplomat Sugihara, who provided the
means of escape for thousands of Jews, putting his own life and family
at risk while not expecting any personal benefit or gain from it?
http://www.sushiandtofu.com/sushi_and_tofu/features_sugiharasList.htm
Eliyahu
Amy Guskin
(in article <5gi3a1hv4riufnqqp...@4ax.com>):
I always identified more with the brunette evil sister/cousin in all of those
kind of shows. Go figure.
Amy
--
http://www.shamanicmusicstore.com
The leading source for music created specifically for the shamanic journey!
Amy Guskin
(in article <Q9soe.48643$rt1....@fe04.lga>):
>
>
> I also realize that every one of us need something different to feel a
> connection to an event; to identify with the victims and to understand
> what it was like for them. A few years ago, a man was on a tour of
> Auschwitz. He'd seen the remains of the gas chambers and ovens, the
> barbed wire and everything else, and while he felt sad, it just didn't
> connect with him until he looked at an exhibit that included a pile of
> toys left behind by the children who went to the gas chambers. He
> started to give it a perfunctory glance until he spotted a little green
> toy monkey. It was identical to his most beloved childhood toy, and as
> he stared at it and realized that the child who owned it and had been
> murdered there was no different than himself, he began to weep
> uncontrollably. For some of us, the sight of bulldozers burying piles
> of emaciated bodies will do it. For others, it takes a little green
> monkey or a red jacket to personalize and humanize the tragedy.<<
I had nearly the identical reaction at the Holocaust Museum in DC - but to
the pile of shoes. I looked at the shoes they'd taken from the prisoners,
and everything I see about the Holocaust always looks so gray, and old, and
shoddy, I just assumed these would be old, gray, shoddy-looking shoes...but
these were beautifully-made shoes, in colors, in leather so finely tooled
that you could still tell that they were good shoes all those many years
later, and clearly some very frivolous, fun, stylish pairs...and I got a
sweeping sense of connection to these people who were _very_ like me, from
reasonably well-to-do Jewish families who, before they had all of their
property taken away and were driven like cattle to slaughter, were thinking
about things like...
Like buying a completely impractical new pair of shoes to go with their new
outfit for their upcoming family dinner or party or vacation.
And even though we had neighbors who had numbers on their arms, and were Jews
ourselves, and the Holocaust was no secret to me, it was that pile of shoes
that brought it all slamming home for me. I was just astonished to think
that someone would dare to come in the night for me, or my family, or
_anyone_ like us, and kill us, and leave our pretty new shoes - bought with
money _we_ had worked hard to earn, shoes they didn't have a right to take -
in a pile with thousands of others, for someone to look at and "tsk" over in
a museum someday.
Blair Leatherwood
The art of this movie (in my opinion) is knowing how to find the maximum
audience without disrespecting the history. I recall seeing this on a
preview (therefore, before any purportedly critical evaluations had been
made and before any public discussion).
I have always had a strong interest in the period around WWII, and I
have more than a passing knowledge of the Holocaust. I was not
unfamiliar with the stories or the many explicit images of the dead and
the abused. I was, therefore, not unprepared going into the movie
(except that I knew little about Schindler himself at that time).
I remember my feelings while watching the random brutality in the
streets. I remember beginning to feel extremely uncomfortable, as if I
were actually witnessing the events. At just the moment when I thought
I wouldn't be able to take any more, two things happened. One was the
realization that if people could live through that horror for ten years
(and relive it for the rest of their lives), I could certainly sit
through three hours of it. The other was that Spielberg let up just
enough so that he could tell the story he needed to tell and let the
discomfort remain on its own.
The art, in this case, was knowing when to stop. If this seems to be
pandering to an audience, I think that's selling the filmmaker short. A
filmmaker or a writer or an actor is an audience member, too. Many of
the most successful artists seem to stick to the credo of doing work
that pleases them--as long as they can retain that sense of being in the
audience, they remain successful. How often have we seen an artist lose
that connection with the audience? How often have we seen someone not
know when to stop?
Blair
Methuselah Jones
Hill of rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated make plain:
> As Stanley Kubrick put it (paraphrased), The Holocaust was about 6
> million people who died; it seems to me that Stephen has made a film
> about 300 who lived.
God forbid we should show that, even in the midst of all that death and
horror, there was still some good, that not all humanity was lost. Corrie
Ten Boom should have skipped the first part of her book where they were
helping people, and just focused on her experience in the concentration
camp. "Life is Beautiful" can be truncated to just the last scene, and
let's not even talk about "The Sound of Music".
I don't know what movie Kubrick saw, but in the version of "Schindler's
List" that I saw, there was no shortage of death, if that's what he
wanted. The execution of the Jewish architect still gives me chills.
--
Methuselah
"Forgive all who offended you, not for them but for yourself."
-- Harriet Uts Nelson
Methuselah Jones
> Have you read the story of Japanese diplomat Sugihara, who provided
> the means of escape for thousands of Jews, putting his own life and
> family at risk while not expecting any personal benefit or gain from
> it?
> http://www.sushiandtofu.com/sushi_and_tofu/features_sugiharasList.htm
Cool; I had never heard of him. Does he have a tree on the Avenue of the
Righteous?
--
Methuselah
"Nobody makes a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do
only a little."
-- Edmund Burke
Methuselah Jones
>> Rob Perkins wrote:
>> > Raven Woman wrote:
>> >
>> > > And as for the final scene, in color, w/ the survivor's
>> > > descendants -- the living *can* remember. The dead can't.
>> >
>> > There are few things I disagree with quite as much as that idea.
>
> Well, we can't know til it's over, can we?
You can if it's over for whomever you were before, and you remember.
--
Methuselah
Opportunity may knock only once, but temptation leans on the doorbell.
Amy Guskin
(in article <g081a1p0367ok76vb...@4ax.com>):
> about 300 who lived. Spielberg seems always to think in terms of
> manipulating the audience, and that's great in a lighthearted Indiana
> Jones frolic that's intended to amuse, but it keeps him from the
> frequently painfully honest insights that IMO characterize the very
> best art.<<
(Apologies if this appears twice - my newsreader crashed during sending, so
I'm trying it again.)
Here's the whole quote, in context in the interview:
******************************************************************
And then Kubrick drops the big one. "The Holocaust, what do you think?"
Raphael stalls a moment. "As a subject for a movie. Can it be done?" The
director's insinuation, of course, is that it hasn't been done; his strategy,
akin to briefly exposing one's queen in order to snatch a few pawns, compels
the writer to offer some examples from film history and then await their
swift dismissal. Proposing the French documentary Night and Fog and a Polish
obscurity called Passenger, Raphael withholds mention of the cinematic
gantseh megilleh until, finally, he has no choice. "Well, there's
[Spielberg's] Schindler's List, isn't there?" "Think that was about the
Holocaust?" teases Kubrick, reaching for his rook. "That was about success,
wasn't it? The Holocaust is about six million people who get killed.
Schindler's List was about six hundred people who don't. Anything else?"
******************************************************************
I was hoping maybe you'd misinterpreted the quote out of context, Josh, but
I'm afraid you're right about Kubrick's intent. And I have to throw in my
hat with those who disagree with him. If you wanted to make a _documentary_
about the Holocaust, sure, it would have to be much different, much more
graphic and harsh. But the point of art isn't to document an event
unswervingly from its actual happening; it's intended to be commentary on it,
a mirror put up against it to see what's reflected. Something that's gives
people a way to look at the thing and get something out of it. Spielberg
didn't document the Holocaust; he put a mirror up against it and let people
see something about it, something that might make them think about the event
itself, or about the way they treat their fellow man, or about hope in
seemingly hopeless circumstances, or about the passing of unjust laws in a
democracy and the idea that it's wrong to complacently accept them in the
name of "security."
In that regard, I think that Spielberg's film was a success.
And you know, even documentaries fail in depicting the entirety and enormity
of such an event. They generally focus on one aspect or another of it. I
just saw one miniseries on PBS that focused on Auschwitz specifically. Did
they fail because they didn't show people having their possessions taken away
and thrown out of their homes in Berlin, or because they totally ignored the
Warsaw ghetto uprising?
Wendy of NJ
did you get to see "Night and Fog"? We were shown that film in
religious school, when we were maybe 12 or 13 - I think the school
and/or the rabbi sent notes home to the parents about when everyone
thought it was "appropriate" for us to learn about the Holocaust. I
think I only saw it the one time, but it was enough.
I also remember seeing a (recent) teleplay based on a Jane Yolen (I
think) short story about a modern girl who "inhabits" her
grandmother's body and experiences the camps first-hand.
-Wendy
Eliyahu Rooff
"Methuselah Jones" <methu...@altgeek.org> wrote in message
news:Xns966C5A7F5A18me...@216.196.97.131...
> Carved in mystic runes upon the very living rock, the last words of
> Eliyahu Rooff of rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated make plain:
>
> > Have you read the story of Japanese diplomat Sugihara, who provided
> > the means of escape for thousands of Jews, putting his own life and
> > family at risk while not expecting any personal benefit or gain from
> > it?
> >
http://www.sushiandtofu.com/sushi_and_tofu/features_sugiharasList.htm
>
> Cool; I had never heard of him. Does he have a tree on the Avenue of
the
> Righteous?
>
had a special program on him a few weeks ago.
Eliyahu
Carl
"Amy Guskin" <ais...@fjordstone.com> wrote in message
news:0001HW.BEC87B23...@news.verizon.net...
Coming in to this late.... If the criticism is that Spielberg didn't
adequately reflect the whole horror of the holocaust..was that his intent,
or was it to show a particular piece of it? The best stories are about
individuals, not about abstract millions. How do you tell a story about 6
million individuals?
Reverting back to a general discussion on artists, do you judge someone by
their intent (and how well they fulfilled it), or by your own expectations?
Carl
Josh Hill
Good point. I'm no fan of overly academic art myself, you know, the
kind that seems to be directed at critics and professors rather than a
living, breathing audience. It would have come as news to Shakespeare
or Dickens or Dumas that they weren't supposed to amuse!
Still, don't you think that there's a difference between writing for
an audience and pandering to it? It isn't necessarily easy to
quantify, but I think most of us sense it, sense the fact that --
quite apart from their popularity -- some works have a degree of
integrity that others don't.
--
Josh
Josh Hill
I don't have the sense that it happens very often. Not in Hollywood,
anyway, where writers routinely complain that the powers-that-be veto
their attempts to be depressing.
Admittedly, the line between pandering and entertainment isn't easy to
draw. Often, I think, it depends on context -- it's great fun to see
Xena defeat an entire army with nothing but a frying pan and a dead
fish, but I don't think we'd want to see a soldier do that in All
Quiet on the Western Front. My argument with Spielberg isn't with his
fun movies, but with my feeling that the sensibility that's
appropriate to Indiana Jones just doesn't work in a film about the
Holocaust or World War II. There's a manipulative quality to it, and
that manipulative quality is apparent whether he chooses not to show
spattered guts in Schindler's List or to fill the screen with them in
Saving Private Ryan.
An old-fashioned movie that shows nothing graphic can leave you shaken
for days, a modern movie that shows people being hacked to death with
chainsaws can make you chuckle. It has to do I think with a certain
honesty, a certain willingness to present honesty one's vision,
whatever it is, rather than just pulling this or that string for this
or that effect.
--
Josh
Raven Woman
>
> --
> Methuselah
Yeah . . . forgot about that. I've always been skeptical of the "past life"
thing. But I have no evidence either way.
A Ouija board demon once told me I was on my *first* life, but somehow I
don't think he counts as an authority . . . . . . or at any rate, no more
than Jon Edwards does. *evil grin*
Jenn
who thinks Jon Edwards is a crank, and likes him anyhow
Raven Woman
Is there a story there?
Jenn
Vorlonagent
"Raven Woman" <Hraf...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:d7vf4d$p9u$1...@f04n12.cac.psu.edu...
> A Ouija board demon once told me I was on my *first* life, but somehow I
> don't think he counts as an authority . . . . . . or at any rate, no more
> than Jon Edwards does. *evil grin*
>
> Jenn
> who thinks Jon Edwards is a crank, and likes him anyhow
I never watched much of Jon Edwards' show, but from what little I saw, his
technique seemed/seems VERY close to George Anderson's.
Since I have never seen two psychics (or even "psychics") who have operated
at all alike, this alway stuck out in my mind...
--
Spirituality without science has no mind. Science without spirituality
has no heart.
-Methuselah Jones
Josh Hill
<lro...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>I remember an interview with Schindler's wife shortly after the picture
>opened. Someone had asked her if things were really as bad as the film
>portrayed. Her response was that the film made things much nicer than
>they really were. As a Jew, I'd have preferred that the movie be
>realistic to the last pile of bodies, but I also realize that he wanted
>to make a movie about the Holocaust that people would watch. If they're
>watching it, some, at least, are going to ask questions and try to learn
>more about it, hopefully to keep it from ever happening again. More
>importantly, it was a movie that could be shown to children, who will
>absorb the lesson that one person can make a difference. Schindler
>didn't stop the Holocaust, he didn't defeat the nazis, and six million
>of my people still died, but to the three hundred or so that he rescued,
>he made all the difference in the world. For many of us, that's the
>most we can hope to do in life.
That's a good point. I didn't mean to question the fact that in making
the movie, Spielberg had performed a public service.
>I also realize that every one of us need something different to feel a
>connection to an event; to identify with the victims and to understand
>what it was like for them. A few years ago, a man was on a tour of
>Auschwitz. He'd seen the remains of the gas chambers and ovens, the
>barbed wire and everything else, and while he felt sad, it just didn't
>connect with him until he looked at an exhibit that included a pile of
>toys left behind by the children who went to the gas chambers. He
>started to give it a perfunctory glance until he spotted a little green
>toy monkey. It was identical to his most beloved childhood toy, and as
>he stared at it and realized that the child who owned it and had been
>murdered there was no different than himself, he began to weep
>uncontrollably. For some of us, the sight of bulldozers burying piles
>of emaciated bodies will do it. For others, it takes a little green
>monkey or a red jacket to personalize and humanize the tragedy.
I suspect that's frequently the case. When I looked at those holocaust
pictures to which I posted the URL the other day, the photos that most
deeply affected me were the most seemingly ordinary ones -- the look
on the faces of those boys, the seemingly well-dressed people being
marched from the Warsaw Ghetto. And after 9/11, I reacted more
strongly to those missing posters that people put up everywhere than
to the debris and body parts, which seemed almost surreal . . .
--
Josh
Josh Hill
<voxw...@gmail.com> wrote:
>On Fri, 3 Jun 2005 18:29:17 +0000 (UTC), Josh Hill
><usere...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>As Stanley Kubrick put it (paraphrased), The Holocaust was about 6
>>million people who died; it seems to me that Stephen has made a film
>>about 300 who lived. Spielberg seems always to think in terms of
>>manipulating the audience, and that's great in a lighthearted Indiana
>>Jones frolic that's intended to amuse, but it keeps him from the
>>frequently painfully honest insights that IMO characterize the very
>>best art.
>
>That's where my mom fell short with her novel writing... she just
>would not look too deeply into things that might be painful. We would
>talk about that from time to time. For example, "A Morning Moon" ended
>in 1928 or so, because she didn't want to write about the Holocaust.
I can understand that. I've found that writing fiction can be a lot
more emotional than reading it -- it's almost as if you're
experiencing the events yourself.
Then too, you have to ask yourself when taking on something like that
whether you can do it justice -- there's always the fear that what
your doing is somehow falling short.
--
Josh
Josh Hill
Unlike the critics of the time, I don't think there's anything wrong
with The Sound of Music, depart as it may from the actuality of the
events and the overall situation. Heroic fiction is about doing the
right thing, after all -- it needn't be realistic.
That being said, I still felt betrayed by Schindler's List. Not
because it depicted one small success -- there's plenty of room for
that as an object lesson -- but because having seen documentaries and
photos and read books and heard people describe the actual events, it
seemed to me as I watched it that I was seeing Holocaust Lite. He took
on a serious subject and his main concern seemed to be to sanitize it,
to make a Hollywood popsicle out of horror.
--
Josh
Josh Hill
<ais...@fjordstone.com> wrote:
I guess I don't see it so much as a matter of breadth of coverage or
whether one focuses on a positive story like Schindler's as I do of
truth, of a willingness to challenge the audience with some of the
horror, the enormity, the truth of what took place. It's not just a
matter of what one shows and doesn't show -- it could be done without
showing any graphic details at all. But in Spielberg -- whatever he
does, it always seems to be Indiana Jones, it always seems to be like
a Disney castle version of the real thing.
After Schindler's List came out, I read a story about reactions to it,
and I remember vividly the ghetto kids who said they weren't affected
by it, because they watched their friends die all the time. A shocking
commentary on ghetto life during the crack epidemic, on what these
kids were living with -- but beyond that, it seemed to me that if
Spielberg had done his job, they would never have felt that way.
--
Josh
Methuselah Jones
Woman of rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated make plain:
> PS
>
> Is there a story there?
Well, I remember having lived before 1961, if that's what you mean, and I
suppose I could tell some stories about it. But it's not something that's
really a big deal to me, any more than it's a big deal to remember having
lived before today. I know it's somewhat of a big issue with people on
both sides of it, but it's just always been pretty obvious to me.
Steve Martin used to do a routine where he'd say something like, "Hey,
you remember when we were on that other planet, and the sun was going to
explode? Remember that? And we were making all these preparations to
leave, but some people didn't believe it, and didn't want to go, so we
had to erase their memories of..... Oh, um...nevermind." I always liked
that.
--
Methuselah
"How many husbands have I had? You mean apart from my own?"
-- Zsa Zsa Gabor
Methuselah Jones
Raven Woman of rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated make plain:
> who thinks Jon Edwards is a crank, and likes him anyhow
While I don't think what he does is impossible, I agree that Edwards is a
crank. If you know what to look for, he's *very* obvious. He's not really
even that skilled, but people want to believe, so they give up the
information and trick themselves into believing it came from him.
--
Methuselah
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three rights make a left.
Methuselah Jones
of rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated make plain:
> Reverting back to a general discussion on artists, do you judge
> someone by their intent (and how well they fulfilled it), or by your
> own expectations?
By their stated intent, I should think. If someone says they're making
"Airplane!" I don't fault them for not making "Fail Safe", but if someone
says they're making "Star Wars" and then makes "Three Stooges in Space," I
have a problem with that. It's like a bait-and-switch. It all comes down to
honesty, and artistic integrity.
--
Methuselah
"He has turned almost alarmingly blond - he's gone past platinum, he must
be plutonium; his hair is coordinated with his teeth."
-- Pauline Kael, about Robert Redford
Thomas A. Horsley
>become increasingly difficult for new ideas to break in to the mass
>consciousness
I don't know about that - new ideas break into the mass consciousness
all the time (as long as they come from TV :-).
For instance - I was reading an article the other day that said prosecutors
are having a hard time getting convictions these days as defence attorneys
are exploiting the "CSI consciousness" of jurys - if there isn't a mind
numbing mass of DNA and fibers and wot-not, the defence is convincing th
jury there must be a reasonable doubt.
Rob Perkins
>>Or an audience?
>
>
> Well, not as big an audience. It comes down to whether you're more
> interested in art or moolah, I guess . . .
"Schindler's List" doesn't erase all the holocaust footage, and it's
kind of ironic that they'll show me the holocaust footage in Social
Studies in the 7th grade, but not depict it in a film.
Perhaps he was serving a story, instead of a history, which would be
typical for Spielberg.
I don't have it completely in for Spielberg, mind now. "Catch Me If You
Can" was a fine film. Too bad I can't think of another since the last
Indy Jones film...
Rob
Rob Perkins
>
> http://www.spielbergfilms.com/poltergeisthome.html
>
> Kind of an interesting story -- it seems some claimed that he directed
> the film on the sly . . .
I've seen Poltergeist about 20 times (it was a boring summer, and my
brother was kind of a tyrant with the TV and VCR that year) and I don't
recall it having quite the same directorial style as other Spielberg films.
Rob
Rob Perkins
>
> Rob Perkins wrote:
>
>>Raven Woman wrote:
>>
>>
>>>And as for the final scene, in color, w/ the survivor's descendants -- the
>>>living *can* remember. The dead can't.
>>
>>There are few things I disagree with quite as much as that idea.
>>
>
>
> Ah, but it explains one of my main questions about how the faithful can
> believe in a "heaven". Surely at some point in time a mother was sent
> to heaven and her beloved offspring to hell. How can this be?
"Heaven" and "Hell" do not exist as an Aristotlean dichotomy.
Rob
Rob Perkins
>>>>living *can* remember. The dead can't.
>>>
>>>There are few things I disagree with quite as much as that idea.
>
Not with any kind of perfection, no.
> I can't imagine wanting an afterlife.
It isn't a matter of wanting it, it simply is.
> Being Jenn for ever, no. No desire to be immortal as me.
You're better and more prized than you suppose.
Rob, expressing faith through a glass, darkly
Methuselah Jones
> Carved in mystic runes upon the very living rock, the last words of
> Raven Woman of rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated make plain:
>
>> who thinks Jon Edwards is a crank, and likes him anyhow
>
> While I don't think what he does is impossible, I agree that Edwards
Er, rather, what he claims to do.
--
Methuselah
"I am become death, shatterer of worlds."
-- J. Robert Oppenheimer, after witnessing the first nuclear explosion
Josh Hill
I don't either, but I didn't watch it under very good circumstances --
on the little monitor above the VTR in a post production house, as I
recall -- someone was making a dub, and it caught my eye. I probably
never even saw the beginning.
--
Josh
phil
<usere...@gmail.com> wrote:
>On Fri, 3 Jun 2005 21:53:41 +0000 (UTC), Rob Perkins
><rper...@usa.net> wrote:
>
>>Josh Hill wrote:
>>
>>> Or as a friend said about AI, if Kubrick had made it, you would have
>>> left the theater shaking . . .
>>
>>As it was, when we turned of the DVD player, my wife and I looked at
>>each other and just said, "That was weird."
asked what I thought by my best friend I replied "when love endures
beyond the grave, then that person, even if robotic, has a spirit & is
"human'" ymmv
>Heh -- about as good a description as any.
>
>>> I think that Spielberg will be
>>> remembered for light movies like ET and the Indiana Jones series
>>> rather than for his serious efforts, which remind me of immensely
>>> popular but now forgotten beat-em-over-the-head Hollywood message
>>> movies like The Big Parade.
Jaws still his best work in my mind, even if sharks do shake their
heads when they bite
you never see the monster until the third act
the dolly/zoom on the sheriff during the beach attack on the child
Arthur C Clarke himself said that Roy Scheider had 1 of the best lines
in film " you're gonna need a bigger boat"
>>Nail on the head. Indy Jones movies are his best work.
>>
>>Rob, *still* shuddering at that waste of film, "The Terminal"
>
>You know, I'd never even heard about "The Terminal" until you
>mentioned it and I did a search . . .
>
>I think I'm going to avoid Spielberg movies until Indiana Jones IV.
>Last one I saw (after avoiding it for several years) was Saving
>Private Ryan. Only Spielberg could have made a supposedly
>ultra-realistic war film that had me in stitches -- all those plastic
>guts -- it reminded me of the "horror houses" we used to make when I
>was a kid, the ones where you went into a tent and crawled through
>spaghetti (worms! worms! heh heh heh heh heh).
Band of Brothers produced by Speilberg and Hanks best war film EVER
after > 10 years renacting Civil War I think I understand what it
truly would be like to be under an artillary barrage random
terror & destruction don't ever think LUCK doesn't play a role in
combat
.
Wendy of NJ
wrote:
Probably because the source material was stellar. I haven't read the
book, though. However, the intervews with the veterans was telling -
you could still see that the memories of war haunted them still, even
after more than half a century.
I loved BoB, but it's not something that I can "just watch" even
though the performaces are great. (But I think of it more like a Hanks
thing than a Speilberg thing -- I also liked Hank's series "From the
Earth to the Moon")
-Wendy
Josh Hill
wrote:
>On Sat, 4 Jun 2005 15:08:16 +0000 (UTC), Josh Hill
><usere...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>On Fri, 3 Jun 2005 21:53:41 +0000 (UTC), Rob Perkins
>><rper...@usa.net> wrote:
>>
>>>> I think that Spielberg will be
>>>> remembered for light movies like ET and the Indiana Jones series
>>>> rather than for his serious efforts, which remind me of immensely
>>>> popular but now forgotten beat-em-over-the-head Hollywood message
>>>> movies like The Big Parade.
>
>Jaws still his best work in my mind, even if sharks do shake their
>heads when they bite
>you never see the monster until the third act
>the dolly/zoom on the sheriff during the beach attack on the child
>Arthur C Clarke himself said that Roy Scheider had 1 of the best lines
>in film " you're gonna need a bigger boat"
It's my favorite too
>>You know, I'd never even heard about "The Terminal" until you
>>mentioned it and I did a search . . .
>>
>>I think I'm going to avoid Spielberg movies until Indiana Jones IV.
>>Last one I saw (after avoiding it for several years) was Saving
>>Private Ryan. Only Spielberg could have made a supposedly
>>ultra-realistic war film that had me in stitches -- all those plastic
>>guts -- it reminded me of the "horror houses" we used to make when I
>>was a kid, the ones where you went into a tent and crawled through
>>spaghetti (worms! worms! heh heh heh heh heh).
>
>Band of Brothers produced by Speilberg and Hanks best war film EVER
>after > 10 years renacting Civil War I think I understand what it
>truly would be like to be under an artillary barrage random
>terror & destruction don't ever think LUCK doesn't play a role in
>combat
Never saw that one, but I agree with your point about combat -- modern
warfare has little to do with the individual.
--
Josh
Carl
"Josh Hill" <usere...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:ofdca11eu533mtf3l...@4ax.com...
> On Tue, 7 Jun 2005 20:45:14 +0000 (UTC), phil <stew...@alltel.net>
> wrote:
>
>>On Sat, 4 Jun 2005 15:08:16 +0000 (UTC), Josh Hill
>><usere...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>On Fri, 3 Jun 2005 21:53:41 +0000 (UTC), Rob Perkins
>>><rper...@usa.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>>> I think that Spielberg will be
>>>>> remembered for light movies like ET and the Indiana Jones series
>>>>> rather than for his serious efforts, which remind me of immensely
>>>>> popular but now forgotten beat-em-over-the-head Hollywood message
>>>>> movies like The Big Parade.
>>
>>Jaws still his best work in my mind, even if sharks do shake their
>>heads when they bite
>>you never see the monster until the third act
The only reason you don't see the shark until that late in the movie is
because the mechanical shark kept breaking and he had to improvise.
If the mechaical shark had worked, the movie probably wouldn't have.
Josh Hill
mike.v...@gmail.com
Amy Guskin <ais...@fjordstone.com> wrote:
>Harlan's just great. Man oh man. Hopefully he'll repeat that panel ("How
>Does SF Stay in Business in a World of Marching Morons?") at some other con
>in the future. You could just do that one on a yearly basis, really. Kind
>of like the needcoffee.com panel they do annually at Dragon Con, "Make the
>Bad Men Stop," which is about how Hollywood continually ruins sci-fi/genre
>stories and comics.
In general, I don't much care for Harlan Ellison's fiction
(though "Pennies off a Dead Man's Eyes" and "Repent,
Harlequin...." are at the top of my list of good stuff. Oh,
yeah, and "Mefisto in Onyx.") but there are few people who do
the full-out rant as well and entertainly as he does, either on
stage or in written essay. Denis Miller could only hope to
achieve that level of quality performance art some day.
(It occurs to me I've seen an Ellison story or two filmed.
"One Life, Furnished in Early Poverty" comes to mind, I think,
as a New Twilight Zone episode. I recall disliking the story
when I read it, but I liked it on screen. Maybe Ellison's
fiction, in general, tends to work better as screenplays.
At least, for me.)
Per Abrahamsen
> "What annoys me is that Spielberg
> is such an egomaniac these days that it has to be 'Steven Spielberg's
> War of the Worlds,'" the outspoken Ellison said in an interview over the
> weekend. "No, you puss-bag. It's H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds, and it
> wouldn't kill you to put his f--king name on it."
I suspect the title 'Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds' will sell
better than the title 'H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds'.
Patty Winter
>
>I also remember seeing a (recent) teleplay based on a Jane Yolen (I
>think) short story about a modern girl who "inhabits" her
>grandmother's body and experiences the camps first-hand.
"The Devil's Arithmetic" on Showtime. A chilling story. Well done.
I have no idea what Stanley Kubrick's standards are for an acceptable
Holocaust film, but IMO there have been any number of excellent ones,
definitely including "Schindler's List." If he isn't satisfied with
any of them, he knows what he can do about it. ;-)
(And speaking of films that take place during WWII, yeah, that last scene
in TSoM of the von Trapps escaping from the Nazis by climbing over the
mountains behind Salzburg--that lead to GERMANY--was definitely not
realistic. They actually escaped on a train. But I'm not quibbling,
because the opening and closing scenes of the movie are gorgeous.)
Patty
Wendy of NJ
"Repent, Harlequin!" also made it to the small screen (and I forget
whether it was a new(er) Twilight Zone or a new Outer Limits), and
when I saw the title, a literally jumped up and down squealing in
delight and dragging everyone else in the house over to the TV to
watch it.
-Wendy
Wesley Struebing
"A Boy and his Dog" was a decent (won the Hugo, IIRC) short story.
Was made into a rather execrable movie, imho...
Then, in 1969, he won the Hugo for "The Beast that Shouted Love at the
Heart of the World."
He is/was also a very decent editor (witness the first two "Dangerous
Visions" anthologies)
--
Wes Struebing
I pledge allegiance to the Constitution of the United States of America,
and to the republic which it established, one nation from many peoples,
promising liberty and justice for all.
Patty Winter
Patty Winter <pat...@wintertime.com> wrote:
>
>I have no idea what Stanley Kubrick's standards are for an acceptable
>Holocaust film, but IMO there have been any number of excellent ones,
>definitely including "Schindler's List." If he isn't satisfied with
>any of them, he knows what he can do about it. ;-)
I realized, of course, moments after I sent this message that I should
have put that paragraph in the past tense. Sorry about that.
Patty
Paul Harper
<methu...@altgeek.org> wrote:
>His wife said, "Yes, dear", but then did what she
>wanted to anyway.
I assumed this was genetically-programmed default behaviour?!
Paul.
--
. A .sig is all well and good, but it's no substitute for a personality
. Humour is very subjective. One man's light-hearted comment is another's insult
. EMail: Unless invited to, don't. Your message is likely to be automatically deleted.
Neil B
> I suspect the title 'Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds' will sell
> better than the title 'H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds'.
By the by, I haven't seen this film advertised anywhere as 'Steven
Spielberg's War of the Worlds'. I've seen it advertised as 'A Steven
Spielberg Film', but then, that's conventional on the marketing for any
movie by such a prestigious director.
Maybe in the US, but not here.
Let's not forget the farce that was 'Bram Stoker's Dracula', while we're
at it, which should quite properly have been called 'Francis Ford
Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula' for all the resemblance some of it bore
to the book.
Neil B
Matt Ion
On the other hand, he now has a whole new perspective on doing
"afterlife" scenes...
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