Roger Ebert puts "Barry Lyndon" on his Great Movies list
MP
years he has been handing out "four stars" to complete dreck.
Nevertheless, his Great Movies List pointed me toward some films I
wouldn't have ordinary heard of.
Yesterday he put "Barry Lyndon" on his Great Movies List, having
changed his opinion of the film since first viewing it in the 70s. His
original review, in which he gave the film 3 and a half stars, is
here:
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19750920/REVIEWS/60510001/1023
________
This is his new review, from his Great Movies webpage.
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090909/REVIEWS08/909099993
Barry Lyndon (1975)
September 9, 2009
Cast & CreditsBarry Lyndon Ryan O'Neal
Lady Lyndon Marisa Berenson
The Chevalier Patrick Magee
Capt. Potzdorf Hardy Kruger
Capt. Quin Leonard Rossiter
Narrator Michael Hordern
Warner Bros. presents a film written and directed by Stanley Kubrick.
Based on the novel by William Makepeace Thackeray. Running time: 184
minutes. Rated PG.
by Roger Ebert
Stanley Kubrick's "Barry Lyndon," received indifferently in 1975, has
grown in stature in the years since and is now widely regarded as one
of the master's best. It is certainly in every frame a Kubrick film:
technically awesome, emotionally distant, remorseless in its doubt of
human goodness. Based on a novel published in 1844, it takes a form
common in the 19th century novel, following the life of the hero from
birth to death. The novel by Thackeray, called the first novel without
a hero, observes a man without morals, character or judgment,
unrepentant, unredeemed. Born in Ireland in modest circumstances, he
rises through two armies and the British aristocracy with cold
calculation.
"Barry Lyndon" is aggressive in its cool detachment. It defies us to
care, it asks us to remain only observers of its stately elegance.
Many of its developments take place off-screen, the narrator informing
us what's about to happen, and we learn long before the film ends that
its hero is doomed. This news doesn't much depress us, because Kubrick
has directed Ryan O'Neal in the title role as if he were a still life.
It's difficult to imagine such tumultuous events whirling around such
a passive character. He loses a fortune, a wife or a leg with as
little emotion as he might in losing a dog. Only the death of his son
devastates him and that perhaps because he sees himself in the boy.
The casting choice of O'Neal is bold. Not a particularly charismatic
actor, he is ideal for the role. Consider Albert Finney in "Tom
Jones," for example, bursting with vitality. Finney could not possibly
have played Lyndon. O'Neal easily seems self-pitying, narcissistic, on
the verge of tears. As one terrible event after another occurs to him,
he projects an eerie calm. Nor do his triumphs -- in gambling, con
games, a fortunate marriage and even acquiring a title -- seem to
bring him much joy. He is a man to whom things happen.
The other characters seem cast primarily for their faces and their
presence, certainly not for their personalities. Look at the curling
sneer of the lips of Leonard Rossiter, as Captain Quin, who ends
Barry's youthful affair with a cousin by an advantageous offer of
marriage. Study the face of Marisa Berenson, as Lady Lyndon. Is there
any passion in her marriage? She loves their son as Barry does, but
that seems to be their only feeling in common. When the time comes for
her to sign an annuity check for the man who nearly destroyed her
family, her pen pauses momentarily, then smoothly advances.
The film has the arrogance of genius. Never mind its budget or the
perfectionism in its 300-day shooting schedule. How many directors
would have had Kubrick's confidence in taking this ultimately
inconsequential story of a man's rise and fall, and realizing it in a
style that dictates our attitude toward it? We don't simply see
Kubrick's movie, we see it in the frame of mind he insists on --
unless we're so closed to the notion of directorial styles that the
whole thing just seems like a beautiful extravagance (which it is).
There is no other way to see Barry than the way Kubrick sees him.
Kubrick's work has a sense of detachment and bloodlessness. The most
"human" character in "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968) is the computer,
and "A Clockwork Orange" (1971) is disturbing specifically in its
objectivity about violence. The title of "Clockwork," from Anthony
Burgess' novel, illustrates Kubrick's attitude to his material. He
likes to take organic subjects and disassemble them as if they were
mechanical. It's not just that he wants to know what makes us tick; he
wants to demonstrate that we do all tick. After "Spartacus" (1960), he
never again created a major character driven by idealism or emotion.
The events in "Barry Lyndon" could furnish a swashbuckling romance. He
falls into a foolish adolescent love, has to leave his home suddenly
after a duel, enlists almost accidentally in the British army, fights
in Europe, deserts from not one but two armies, falls in with
unscrupulous companions, marries a woman of wealth and beauty, and
then destroys himself because he lacks the character to survive.
But Kubrick examines Barry's life with microscopic clarity. He has the
confidence of the great 19th century novelists, authors who stood
above their material and accepted without question their right to
manipulate and interpret it with omniscience. Kubrick has appropriated
Thackeray's attitude -- or Trollope's or George Eliot's. There isn't
Dickens' humor or relish of human character. Barry Lyndon, falling in
and out of love and success, may see no pattern in his own affairs,
but the artist sees one for him, one of consistent selfish
opportunism.
Perhaps Kubrick's buried theme in "Barry Lyndon" is even similar to
his outlook in "2001: A Space Odyssey." Both films are about organisms
striving to endure and prevail -- and never mind the reason. The
earlier film was about the human race itself; this one is about a
depraved minor example of it. Barry journeys without plan, sees what
he desires, tries to acquire it and perhaps succeeds because he plays
roles so well without being remotely dedicated to them. He looks the
part of a lover, a soldier, a husband. But there is no there there.
There's a sense in both this film and "2001" that a superior force
hovers above these struggles and controls them. In "2001," it was a
never-clarified form of higher intelligence. In "Barry Lyndon," it's
Kubrick himself, standing aloof from the action by two distancing
devices: the narrator (Michael Hordern), who deliberately destroys
suspense and tension by informing us of all key developments in
advance, and the photography, which is a succession of meticulously,
almost coldly, composed set images. It's notable that three of the
film's four Oscars were awarded for cinematography (John Alcott), art
direction (Ken Adam) and costumes (Ulla-Britt Soderlund and Milena
Canonero). The many landscapes are often filmed in long shots; the
fields, hills and clouds could be from a landscape by Gainsborough.
The interior compositions could be by Joshua Reynolds.
This must be one of the most beautiful films ever made, and yet the
beauty isn't in the service of emotion. Against magnificent settings,
the characters play at intrigues and scandals. They cheat at cards and
marriage, they fight ridiculous duels. This is a film with a backdrop
of the Seven Years' War that engulfed Europe, and it hardly seems to
think the war worth noticing, except as a series of challenges posed
for Barry Lyndon. By placing such small characters on such a big
stage, by forcing our detachment from them, Kubrick supplies a
philosophical position just as clearly as if he'd put speeches in his
characters' mouths.
The images proceed in elegant stages through the events, often
accompanied by the inexorable funereal progression of Handel's
"Sarabande." For such an eventful life, there is no attempt to speed
the events along. Kubrick told the critic Michel Ciment he used the
narrator because the novel had too much incident even for a three-hour
film, but there isn't the slightest sense he's condensing.
Some people find "Barry Lyndon" a fascinating, if cold, exercise in
masterful filmmaking; others find it a terrific bore. I have little
sympathy for the second opinion; how can anyone be bored by such an
audacious film? "Barry Lyndon" isn't a great entertainment in the
usual way, but it's a great example of directorial vision: Kubrick
saying he's going to make this material function as an illustration of
the way he sees the world.
Incorporating parts of my 1975 review.
Jim Emerson's analysis of "Barry Lyndon":
http://cinepad.com/reviews/blyndon.htm.
French critic Michel Cement's interview with Kubrick:
http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/interview.bl.html
MP
manages to write reviews that say absolutely nothing worthwhile.
Looking at his Great Movies List I see he's added Scorsese's "After
Hours" as well. How is that a great picture? And this is after giving
four star reviews to "The Departed" and "Aviator", two of Scorsese's
worst pictures. Baffling.
Cosmic Gnome
"MP" <mystic_...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:c234f709-209c-486b...@x37g2000yqj.googlegroups.com...
> Well, I just read the review and it's pretty horrible. Ebert somehow
> manages to write reviews that say absolutely nothing worthwhile.
Yes, this is the affliction infecting the vast majority of mainstream film
reviewers. Even the Jonathan Rosenbaums suffer from a severe bout of such pr
vacuousness from time to time.
> Looking at his Great Movies List I see he's added Scorsese's "After
> Hours" as well. How is that a great picture?
Because Ebert says so, apparently, or rather ...
>And this is after giving
> four star reviews to "The Departed" and "Aviator", two of Scorsese's
> worst pictures. Baffling.
He's written a (glowing) book on Scorsese. He's a Fan. For Ebert, Scorsese
can do no wrong (especially when he does wrong). But then, isn't Scorsese
ridiculously over-rated by everyone anyway? I haven't been particularly
impressed with any of his post-Goodfellas movies. Their over-hyped reception
is indeed baffling, and seems more related to the "Scorsese" brand than to
the quality of the individual films themselves.
[BTW, Ebert is actually wrong to claim that BL had a 'cool' reception on its
initial release (rather, this was HIS response). As with most movie critics,
he's almost entirely at the mercy of financial and quantitative criteria in
initially judging a film: because, in the US at least - though BL was quite
successful in other countries, receiving widespread positive reviews - the
film wasn't a box office hit, it is deemed a 'failure' or some other shallow
pretext is invoked to justify its dismissal ... even though it was on the
cover of TIME, with Richard Schickel interviewing Kubrick and praising the
film. Because Kubrick's films are now part of the formal cinematic canon,
the Eberts of the movie world suddenly revise their prior judgments, as is
now occuring with EWS].
MP
Streets" and "Age of Innocence", but I think I've fallen out of love
with the rest of Scorsese's filmography. The only film of his that
still gives me a buzz is "Kundun". I love the ten minute "Passage to
India" sequence toward its end and that Philip Glass score never fails
to give me goosebumps.
Since seeing "The Wire", I've also changed my views on Scorsese’s
gangster movies. “Goodfellas”, for example, is really just a kinetic
retread of the early pre-code Warner Brothers gangster movies.
Scorsese makes a few cosmetic changes – more swearing, more violence,
more blood, faster editing, more nudity - but it still conforms to old
narratives.
But what’s striking, especially after rewaching “The Public
Enemy” (1932), is how similar Malcolm Mcdowell’s facial expressions in
“A Clockwork Orange" are to James Cagney’s. Mcdowell has Cagney’s
nose, his walk, his smile, his eyes, and really does seem to be
channelling Cagney’s whole gangster persona. After "A Clockwork
Orange's" release, both Mcdowell and Kubrick even admitted that they
were big Cagney fans. Niether said Cagney was an influence on Alex's
character, but the similarities are startling.
"A Clockwork Orange" never gets branded a gangster flick, but it fits
as neatly into that genre as it does scifi, comedy or satire. What’s
radical about "A Clockwork Orange" is that Alex and his gang commit
crimes for no financial purpose. They rape, pillage and destroy but
have no desire to accumulate anything. Indeed, Alex’s gang only falls
apart when his droogs get greedy and desire to rob a woman purely for
financial gain. Significantly, they later become police officers,
enfolded into the very system Alex abhors.
So far from being edgy, subversive or anti-establishment, these
gangster films are all quaintly conformist. They all make romantic
comparissons between the gangster and the businessman, these guys just
wanting to accumulate more toys and more money. "A Clockwork Orange"
does away with all of that. It's almost like it's a gangster film from
the point of view of Joe Pesci's crazy "Tommy" character in
"Goodfellas".
Cosmic Gnome
The Last Temptation), but I think Glass film scores were well past their
sell-by date by the time of Kundun, having been exhausted by Mishima,
Koyaanisqatsi, and The Thin Blue Line. Today, almost every 'human interest'
TV doc blindly and blandly tags on a Glass soundtrack; they've become the
aural wallpaper of a banal feelgood consumer 'spiritualism' ...
Interesting about Cagney's archetypal Oedipal gangster in his early movies
as the possible basis for both Alex De Large and Pesci; sometimes seemingly
'radical' characters have actually more pedestrian cinematic precursors:
watching The Dark Knight again on DVD recently, I was struck by how the
Joker resembled not so much Alex De Large (or Pesci's Goodfellas character)
but the equally nihilistic baddie in Don Siegel's Dirty Harry from around
the same time as ACO, and the resemblances even go much further than in ACO
or Goodfellas - the character in Dirty Harry even uses a yellow school bus,
has no problems with being beaten to a pulp, has that same combination of
psychopathic laughter and twisted calculation we see in Joker (actually, my
favourite shot from the film is of Joker, dressed as a nurse, emerging from
the exploding hospital, pausing briefly in dismay because the hospital isn't
exploding quickly enough, and then, reassured, climbing aboard a school bus
as everything totally blows up: a vision of manically unbounded nihilism).
De Large and Pesci are utterly quaint by comparison.
"MP" <mystic_...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:37c58420-ecb4-4dde...@y36g2000yqh.googlegroups.com...
I love "Kundun" and "Taxi Driver" and to a lesser extent, "Mean
Streets" and "Age of Innocence", but I think I've fallen out of love
with the rest of Scorsese's filmography. The only film of his that
still gives me a buzz is "Kundun". I love the ten minute "Passage to
India" sequence toward its end and that Philip Glass score never fails
to give me goosebumps.
Since seeing "The Wire", I've also changed my views on Scorsese�s
gangster movies. �Goodfellas�, for example, is really just a kinetic
retread of the early pre-code Warner Brothers gangster movies.
Scorsese makes a few cosmetic changes � more swearing, more violence,
more blood, faster editing, more nudity - but it still conforms to old
narratives.
But what�s striking, especially after rewaching �The Public
Enemy� (1932), is how similar Malcolm Mcdowell�s facial expressions in
�A Clockwork Orange" are to James Cagney�s. Mcdowell has Cagney�s
nose, his walk, his smile, his eyes, and really does seem to be
channelling Cagney�s whole gangster persona. After "A Clockwork
Orange's" release, both Mcdowell and Kubrick even admitted that they
were big Cagney fans. Niether said Cagney was an influence on Alex's
character, but the similarities are startling.
"A Clockwork Orange" never gets branded a gangster flick, but it fits
as neatly into that genre as it does scifi, comedy or satire. What�s
radical about "A Clockwork Orange" is that Alex and his gang commit
crimes for no financial purpose. They rape, pillage and destroy but
have no desire to accumulate anything. Indeed, Alex�s gang only falls
MP
<hundredmillionlifeti...@fastmail.fm> wrote:
> I agree about Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Age of Innocence (and maybe add on
> The Last Temptation), but I think Glass film scores were well past their
> sell-by date by the time of Kundun, having been exhausted by Mishima,
> Koyaanisqatsi, and The Thin Blue Line. Today, almost every 'human interest'
> TV doc blindly and blandly tags on a Glass soundtrack; they've become the
> aural wallpaper of a banal feelgood consumer 'spiritualism' ...
You mean you get a Richard Attenborough eco-porn vibe from "Kundun"?
I haven't seen "Mishima", but I agree that "Kundun's" score feels like
second hand "Koyaanisqatsi". Scorsese even rips a couple sequences out
of that documentary (the film's sand mandala and dream sequences).
Still, I find the picture strangely soothing. I like its ethereal
marriage of sound and visuals. It's a bit like "2001", in that it's
driven by mood and music and features very little dialogue.
> Interesting about Cagney's archetypal Oedipal gangster in his early movies
> as the possible basis for both Alex De Large and Pesci; sometimes seemingly
> 'radical' characters have actually more pedestrian cinematic precursors:
> watching The Dark Knight again on DVD recently, I was struck by how the
> Joker resembled not so much Alex De Large (or Pesci's Goodfellas character)
> but the equally nihilistic baddie in Don Siegel's Dirty Harry from around
> the same time as ACO, and the resemblances even go much further than in ACO
> or Goodfellas - the character in Dirty Harry even uses a yellow school bus,
> has no problems with being beaten to a pulp, has that same combination of
> psychopathic laughter and twisted calculation we see in Joker (actually, my
> favourite shot from the film is of Joker, dressed as a nurse, emerging from
> the exploding hospital, pausing briefly in dismay because the hospital isn't
> exploding quickly enough, and then, reassured, climbing aboard a school bus
> as everything totally blows up: a vision of manically unbounded nihilism).
> De Large and Pesci are utterly quaint by comparison.
Recently Chris Nolan's brother, one of the writer's on "Dark Knight",
even said the whole crime subplot of the film was based on him
watching "The Wire" while writing the screenplay. So the whole film is
a big mass of influences.
My favourite shot was also that of Joker leaving the hospital in his
nurse's outfit. There's also another good shot of Joker with his head
sticking out of a car window like a dog, savouring the night-time air.
Those two moments stand out for me, but otherwise Nolan is very weak
with his visuals.
Cosmic Gnome
>You mean you get a Richard Attenborough eco-porn vibe from "Kundun"?
Not at all. In fact I gave a positive review of the film around the time of
its release, and it was discussed here, back in 1998. But there is something
seriously wrong with the 'Google Groups' archive search facility, as, among
other problems, a search using 'Kundun' just returns the posts in this
thread despite the film having had a number of different threads in the
past. What's happening to the Google Groups Archive (if anyone knows)?
Numerous past posts and threads are now 'missing' ... Is there another
(alternative) usenet archive anywhere?
stalepie09
<hundredmillionlifeti...@fastmail.fm> wrote:
> "MP" <mystic_prow...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
Yes, and only 215 results for 'kubrick'. I posted a query here:
http://groups.google.com/group/is-something-broken/browse_frm/thread/c166942fd938c60d#
gh
> But whatÔøΩs striking, especially after rewaching ÔøΩThe Public
> EnemyÔøΩ (1932), is how similar Malcolm McdowellÔøΩs facial expressions in
> ÔøΩA Clockwork Orange" are to James CagneyÔøΩs. Mcdowell has CagneyÔøΩs
> nose, his walk, his smile, his eyes, and really does seem to be
> channelling CagneyÔøΩs whole gangster persona. After "A Clockwork
> Orange's" release, both Mcdowell and Kubrick even admitted that they
> were big Cagney fans. Niether said Cagney was an influence on Alex's
> character, but the similarities are startling.
"The Public Enemy" influence on ACO also shows after Cagney has a
shootout with some old associates and is stumbling about in the heavy
rain before collapsing. The next scene is a reunion in the hospital ,
where Cagney is in bed, bandaged head to toe, having a sentimental
reunion with family he was at odds with earlier, including his weepy Ma.
G
kelpzoidzl
The archives are still there, but it has not been searchable in the
usual way using search terms.
Someday there will be AMK: The Movie. A Three hour Epic of people
typing into space.
dc
MP
>
> - Show quoted text -
What do you mean it's not searchable in the usual ways? Is there
another way to search the archives?
kelpzoidzl
Old posts can be found by going into posters profiles and then the old
threads show up--its a pain in the neck because it takes much longer
to find anything.
dc
Cosmic Gnome
lol. The ultimate Neo-liberal spin-speak: it's not that Kubrick is dead,
it's just that he's not alive in the usual way; it's not that your house has
been repossessed, it's just that you won't be living in it in the usual way;
just because Google Groups Search is no longer working doesn't mean it's not
working ...
The search function, in fact, hasen't been working since July, as numerous
post and queries across the web have been confirming. And the people at
Google, the Google-bots, are not responding to any of these enquiries, not
even recognizing the issue as a problem (see
http://www.diigo.com/list/grahamperrin/google-groups-problems?v=p). And
going into 'poster profiles' doesn't help either: clicking on their
'calendar' of posts by month returns in most instances a 'no document'. The
only way of 'searching' the archive is to click on the "About this Group'
link, choose a month from the calendar and 'hope' you might find something
among all the posts (sometimes thousands) from that month, like 'searching'
for a needle in a haystack.
Given Google's own silence, its indifference concerning the issue, it's not
unreasonable to conclude that they are 'phasing out' the archive completely
(already, you can't respond to posts/threads that are more than 60 days
old).
You are not permitted to have a memory, to remember, in Googleland(C, TM),
just a continuously repeating (Groundhog Day) present ...
kelpzoidzl
<hundredmillionlifeti...@fastmail.fm> wrote:
Google said long ago the archives were to be for 5 years.
I was still able to find things I was looking for but it was a pain.
dc
Cosmic Gnome
"kelpzoidzl" <kelpz...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:932efb23-078a-4a9d...@v23g2000pro.googlegroups.com...
This is a supreme example of "borrowed kettle" logic: We all remember the
old joke about the borrowed kettle which Freud quotes in order to render the
strange logic of dreams, namely the enumeration of mutually exclusive
answers to a reproach (that I returned to a friend a broken kettle): (1) I
never borrowed a kettle from you; (2) I returned it to you unbroken; (3) the
kettle was already broken when I got it from you. For Freud, such an
enumeration of inconsistent arguments of course confirms per negationem what
it endeavors to deny - that I returned you a broken kettle...
Kelps' borrowed kettle 'logic': (1) There's nothing wrong with the AMK
archives or the Google search facility; (2) The search facility is faulty
but you can still find things from the archive; (3) The archive is being
shut down/searches made inaccessible by Google.
ultimately (the ideological feint of neo-liberalist irrationalism): (1)
There is no problem; (2) If there is a problem, it's easily solved; (3) So
what if there's a problem!? Just ignore it and it won't be a problem ...
kelpzoidzl
<hundredmillionlifeti...@fastmail.fm> wrote:
> "kelpzoidzl" <kelpzoi...@gmail.com> wrote in message
I hate to read meaning into it. I hate google. No further ideation
necessary.
dc
kelpzoidzl
> On Sep 18, 4:00 pm, "Cosmic Gnome"
Are you afraid all your masterpieces will just vanish into dust?
Ya transiency. mean old universe--REVOLT against the universe!!!
Stack up those matresses I want to see if the pea underneath keeps
you awake at night?
dc
Bill Reid
> On Sep 18, 1:15 pm, "Cosmic Gnome"
>
> <hundredmillionlifeti...@fastmail.fm> wrote:
>
> Google said long ago the archives were to be for 5 years.
>
archives still go back to 1990 or before last I checked...
> I was still able to find things I was looking for but it was a pain.
>
It's the Google(TM) Groups specialized search functions
that are broken, along with a whole bunch of other stuff
in Google(TM) Groups that is broken, including stuff I've
discussed here and elsewhere before, and all this broken
stuff is the result of the idiocy of the idiots that are
currently "running" Google(TM) Groups, not any "design"
or "policy".
It's also an example of how large seemingly fabulously
successful companies become increasingly disfunctional
as they grow. New staff are both by definition less
competent, but even more importantly negatively motivated
to perform competently as they are surrounded by low badge number
option $billionaires and thus their "reward system"
is based on the typical large company "beaurucratic
infighting" rather than skillful cohesive execution (if
Google(TM) Groups is "broken", their "solution" is to
ask to be promoted to supervise all the new incompetents
"required" to fix the problem that THEY created, and
the situation just continues to degenerate)...
But you CAN search the Usenet archives if you know how...I
know I've been able to do it as part of my work on my lawsuit
against certain Usenet miscreants, and most recently searched
Usenet archives for evidence to oppose the latest idiotic
dishonest motion by defendant Michael "Lubow" Tenenbaum
to vacate the default in the case I took against him, and
was easily able to find a "smoking gun" post by the defendant
that proves his default was the result of his own intentional
actions, and thus the default should stand and the default
judgement should be rendered and stand...
I'd tell you how to search the archives, but since there
is at least one person still posting here who has committed
the same type of unlawful acts against me as the defendants
I sued, I choose not to help THEM in any way...
---
William Ernest "Very Perry Mason" Reid
kelpzoidzl
> On Sep 18, 3:00 pm, kelpzoidzl <kelpzoi...@gmail.com> wrote:> On Sep 18, 1:15 pm, "Cosmic Gnome"
>
> > <hundredmillionlifeti...@fastmail.fm> wrote:
>
> > Google said long ago the archives were to be for 5 years.
>
> I never heard that, and in any event Google(TM) Usenet
> archives still go back to 1990 or before last I checked...
>
Google took Deja news and manipulated it. When that first happened
they said 5 years. But they kept it longer,
I don't use google to search with.
dc
Cosmic Gnome
for the usenet archive:
OT - Cannot Search Old Posts Using Google As Newsgroup Reader Options
--------------------------------------
Sept 9, 2009
Jay Chan wrote:
> I am currently using Google as the newsgroup reader. It works fine for
> years. Recently I have noticed that when I seach something in a newsgroup
> such as this one, all I get are very recent posts. Can someone tell me a
> way to expand the search?
> Thanks.
> Jay Chan
Google has changed their search policy with respect to USENET/dejanews
archive.
Basically, the old way of doing searches, emphasized the quality
of the search. They really did a good job of digging out good
results.
Well, the board of directors had a meeting, and ask the question
"how are we making money on this thing". The answer is, it costs
a lot, in terms of the number of computers used to support all
these real-time searches. So some evil person in the meeting,
spelled it out for them. "Give the users results with plenty
of Google sponsered advertising on the returned pages."
So they broke and hobbled the search engine for USENET, making it virtually
useless. That means more searches can be done with fewer computers,
but with poorer results.
If you accept the default setting, to return web forum
searches, you'll be connected to all the USENET leech sites that
have Google Adwords on them.
So, Google makes more money, and you become their "click monkey".
They make money, and... you lose.
So when someone says "let me Google that for you", what they don't tell
you, is they've actually switched to using some other search engine.
I have about 20000 posts on USENET, and hardly any of them
can be found by doing a (Dejanews) search any more. I have a lot of
web links in those postings, which are now lost to me.
Is Google evil ? You decide...
Paul
-------------------------------------------
"Cosmic Gnome" <hundredmill...@fastmail.fm> wrote in message
news:h8lu78$2ub$1...@news.doubleSlash.org...
Cosmic Gnome
"Cosmic Gnome" <hundredmill...@fastmail.fm> wrote in message
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>
1998:
To my mind this last film [Kundun] is Scorsese`s most ambitious and
innovative
- if not his best film to date. But >comparing< Scorsese with Kubrick
vis, for instance, Age of Innocence and Barry Lyndon only serves to
highlight their formal differences, not some crude, ego-centered and
insular pecking order ... Indeed, Age of Innocence and Kundun are the
closest Scorsese has come to emulating Kubrickian aesthetic and
metaphysical cinematic strategies (Medium=Message, etc).
And Kundun is clearly a Scorsese movie. Like all of his films, it
positions the dynamics of its central concerns - the structure of
power - within a tradition-laden patriarchal society violently
threatened with potential extinction. And while we all know that
Scorsese studied for the priesthood before finding his true vocation,
Kundun (like The Last Temptation of Christ before it) represents an
aesthetic and spiritual convergence: the power and philosophy of
passive resistance, focussing on the expression of a culture (Tibetan
Buddhism) where aesthetics are inseparable from spirituality. In the
film colour and texture are fully integrated with gesture and meaning.
Kundun is one of those rare films where the meaning is embodied in the
form. As Amy Taubin stated in a recent interview with Scorsese, "When
the Dalai Lama says that line about past, present and future being one
- its Buddhism, but its also about editing. It sounds like Dziga
Vertov: `The Kino-eye is a victory over time`."
Just when my faith in contemporary film-making was reaching a low ebb
along comes Kundun (and The Butcher Boy: both even share the same
brilliant DoP, Roger Deakins). Kundun does mirror films like Taxi
Driver, Goodfellas and Casino, but whereas the latter portray worlds
completely devoid of spiritual values, Kundun implores us to meditate
on such values in its odyssey through the second half of the twentieth
century. In Taxi Driver`s Travis Bickle`s explosion of sociopathic
rage and Goodfellas` Henry Hill`s drug-induced paranoia we witness the
mirror perversions of the Dalai Lama`s spiritual transendence.
And it is Cameron`s innocent archetype, Georges Melies, who Scorsese
chooses for the Dalai Lama`s first encounter with film, a work of
imagination and magic. Lesser talents would have chosen the
sensationalist Lumiere Brothers` L`Arrivee d`un train en gare de La
Ciotat or some such platitudinous anachronism. But Cameron is no
Scorsese, and while Kundun can be criticised, like Titanic, for its
simplistic script (Mathison wrote it), it`s left to Scorsese to remind
us that modern technology can be used to create totally new worlds,
new colours for the palette, and can use cinema`s inherent potential
to expand its form in ways that few film-makers have the courage or
the ability to achieve.
And its no coincidence, then, that Scorsese chose Philip Glass to
compose the score. After Scorsese saw Mishima and Koyaanisqatsi he
noted that "One day I would love to be able to make a film that would
cry out for a score by Philip Glass ... I like the emotional power of
his music, and yet the music is intellectually disciplined". And Glass
admitted that he had waited twenty years to write such a score.
Glass`s three-act opera from 1980, Satyagraha (meaning: passive,
non-violent resistance), concerns itself with the period Ghandi spent
in South Africa (1893-1914). Each act takes a historical figure as a
sort of spiritual guardian (Leo Tolstoy, Rabindranath Tagore, and
Martin Luther King Jr) representing the past, present and future of
Satyagraha; and just like Kundun, Satyagraha is about both historical
time and politics, and how to be truly civilised in a gratuitously
hostile, indifferent world: how to be holy in an unholy world.
Critic David Denby`s review of Kundun mistakenly suggested that you
can`t make a movie about Buddhism because it`s too passive, you are
only "allowed" to make action movies. He mustn`t like Kubrick so.
Scorsese`s response to this is, "It`s like this conversation I had
with Elia Kazan a few years ago. He said, "Yes, I can make pictures
with plots and the normal traditional action. But what if you do
something that`s passive? Can you make a film about passive
characters, where inaction is action? Then you really see if you can
go inside the mind and the heart." How many years more must we just
do act one, act two, act three? Polish cinema has done something
else. Kieslowski has. And Russian cinema. There`s a new Sokurov film
that Paul Schrader told me about <Mother and Son>. This is also
cinema. Why can`t America make cinema like that? ... I wish I could
find another project like this one <Kundun> one day."
I have to say that I agree completely with Scorsese`s sentiments here
(though Scorsese is, as ever, being way too modest - Hollywood movies
have always been predicated on acts of violence), though he might also
have included Kubrick as a master of the cinema of inaction. And
Angelopoulos, among others. And, more recently, Iranian film-maker,
Abbas Kiarostami, whose superb A Taste of Cherry won last year`s Palme
d`or at Cannes.
Apart from Kubrick, no other major American director of the past few
decades has managed to make films like The Last Temptation of Christ
and Kundun >within< the studio system. Scorsese is virtually alone
among directors of the past 30 years who is still succeeding in making
highly personal, passionate and dynamic work. (Most of the rest have
either burnt-out or sold-out ... :--( ).
Padraig
Ironic that it was also Denby who recently lamented, in April`s issue
of The New Yorker, the systematic degeneration of the role and ethos
of the film critic. And Boorman`s latest issue of Projections is also
devoted to the issue, which, according to Sight and Sound, maintains
that a "conspiracy of lickspittle colleagues, unintelligent movies and
gullible youth has made the critics` role almost redundant." But
Graham Green made similar complaints back in 1936 in that very same
magazine, decades before the politique des auteurs emerged. So where
does that leave us ... ? (So is David Thompson America`s best film
commentator these days?)
"Nobody up here pays attention to film reviews ... most of the written
word has gone the way of the dinosaur." -----Bruce "Dick-Head" Willis
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.movies.kubrick/msg/9433a460b44f7d4c?hl=en
MP
<hundredmillionlifeti...@fastmail.fm> wrote:
> "Cosmic Gnome" <hundredmillionlifeti...@fastmail.fm> wrote in message
>
> news:h8lu78$2ub$1...@news.doubleSlash.org...
>
>
>
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> > "MP" <mystic_prow...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>
> - Show quoted text -
I think its this passivity of "Kundun" that makes it appealing to me.
Many people talk of Scorsese's violence being repulsive, real and
gritty, but I always thought that his whole documentary approach to
film actively relies on violence. Scorsese needs the threat of
violence to keep you watching, he needs volatile characters who hit
you like a sledgehammer to keep you engaged, and because his whole
style is such that he can follow his characters indefinitely, his
films often end in a nihilistic bloodbath, the director calling down
violence to arbitrarily terminate the story. IE - the car crash at the
end of "Mean Streets", the bloody battle at the end of "Gangs of New
York", the orgies of destruction at the end of "Casino" etc.
Structurally, "Kundun" is the same biopic he's always been making, but
it just seems to transcend everything he's done before. Instead of
method actors pretending to be real, we get real people who have no
acting experience, instead of rock and roll music, we get something
more ethereal and instead of a his usual energetic editing, we get
something more fluid. And, like you say, instead of gangsters who
depend on violence, we get a central character morally opposed to
violence.
MickeyMoop
> > On Sep 14, 1:23 pm, "Cosmic Gnome"
> >
> > > "MP" wrote in message
> > >
> >
> > > >You mean you get a Richard Attenborough eco-porn vibe from "Kundun"?
> >
> > > Not at all. In fact I gave a positive review of the film around the time of
> > > its release, and it was discussed here, back in 1998. But there is something
> > > seriously wrong with the 'Google Groups' archive search facility, as, among
> > > other problems, a search using 'Kundun' just returns the posts in this
> > > thread despite the film having had a number of different threads in the
> > > past. What's happening to the Google Groups Archive (if anyone knows)?
> > > Numerous past posts and threads are now 'missing' ... Is there another
> > > (alternative) usenet archive anywhere?
> >
> > Yes, and only 215 results for 'kubrick'. I posted a query here:
> >
> > http://groups.google.com/group/is-something-broken/browse_frm/thread/...
>
> The archives are still there, but it has not been searchable in the
> usual way using search terms.
>
> Someday there will be AMK: The Movie. A Three hour Epic of people
> typing into space.
>
> dc