There Will Be....

[ellenkushner]

elisem made a necklace/crown based on our wallpaper. We discussed it.

* * *

We watched There Will Be Blood last night. I enjoyed it - but then it didn't push any of my buttons - I tend to like art about violence, on occasion, and views into alien worlds of all kinds. It gave Delia a horrendous emotional hangover, though. It was fascinating to both of us, the way nobody ever said anything much. So Not Our Kind.

Which causes me to establish the following rule: Violence is permissable only when accompanied by entertaining dialogue.* There is probably some kind of ratio that a more mathematically-inclined person could work out.

We may try for Sweeny Todd this weekend. Then I'll know whether violence is also allowed to include singing. (* "You break it, You sing for it"?)

Too much caffeine (and too little sleep*)? Moi?

Now must run out to get Provisions, between time snow has stopped falling (and doormen on every block have shoveled it) and time promised icy sleet begins.

*Official Houseguest couldn't help knocking over bedside table in the middle of the night. She was being abducted by villains in a truck or something. But it was a bit distracting.

Comments

[voidmonster.livejournal.com]

Personally I really dug There Will Be Blood, but I'm a sucker for movies about emotional constipation that end with horrific bowling. My favorite movie of last year though was The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford. Similar emotional constipation, less bowling. Much more dream-like.

Sweeny Todd on the other hand is easily accessible fun. It makes fun a morose Johnny Depp. It has singing. It has an alcoholic 10 year old. It has great swathes of arterial spray. It also has a song about how people taste when cooked into a pie.

[gerbilicous.livejournal.com]

It is very violent singing. I've been a fan of the musical since I was a little kid (I had a weird but musical family) and I've got to say that, while Depp is a bit too much of a crooner for the Todd roll, he does beautiful-crazy better than anyone. Helena Bonem-Carter really steals the show, though.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Man, I HATED There Will Be Blood. The main character was a waste of human space, the other characters weren't appreciably better, the pacing wandered around in a soul-draining funk, and I wanted to set the score on fire.

On the other hand, things that evoke lukewarm reactions are rarely great art.

I'm not going to assume that it's great art just because I hated it, and I think it's a weak defense when others try to hide behind it. But some people have obviously liked the film, and certainly it was bold about what it was doing. I suppose they get points for that?

[tasiha.livejournal.com]

if you allow P to = the Permissability of Violence, and D to = the snarkiness of the dialogue) then P is proportional to log(D); which means that as D increase, P increases, but only up until a certain point. i.e., there's a limit to the permissability of violence. (unless I'm mistaken as to the convergence of a log function; in which case perhaps a squareroot function would be more accurate?)

.... one would suspect that the lim as D-> infinity of P would be = to M, where M is a measure of how much you personally associate the Violence with those you care about; M is probably an individual characteristic.

... ... ... -.- sorry. don't know where that came from.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Ha! I knew someone would come through for me! Brilliant.

(Though note that I did not say "snarky" dialogue - I was careful not to write even "witty" or "clever" or even "scintillating" dialogue. It just needs to be about words as much as the rest. Though "snarky" certainly qualifies!)

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

I liked the fact that it didn't talk down to me - in fact, I barely knew what the hell was going on half the time - and I can Respect that. I'm guessing that a certain amount of its rhetoric was more readable by people who go to see This Sort of Thing more often? If I'm wrong, then I still like it a whole helluva lot better than all those movies that treat me like a moron, either by having plots that, sure, I understand, but they actually make no sense; or else ones that are so painfully simplistic, and so self-congratulatorily so, that you can feel them patting themselves on the back at, "See how nice we're being to you, Moron Viewer? Isn't this eaaaasy for you? Now have another alcoholic beverage that tastes like somehting you drank when you were 7, and go back to sleep."

I'm afraid "Notting Hill," which I had looked forward to being pleasantly diverted by, gave me that feeling, alas.

[tasiha.livejournal.com]

hmm, I see what you mean. A matter of quality motivation behind the Violence.

Now if only we could test this theory. Have you seen Shoot 'Em Up? Lots of violence; plot's a little fuzzy. Or, perhaps, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen?

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

(laughing so hard!!!!!!!) Delia will love this.

And I'm with you on the bowling. I always knew that was a dangerous sport.

Thanks for the TAOJJBTCRF reviewlet. I actually want to see that; now I just know that Delia doesn't. Though she'll put up with a lot (like, um, gory Japanese obscure anime like "Mononoke") if it is sufficiently stylized.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Try substituting "revelance" for "snarkiness" and I think we just might have something here! Because it's not the motivation behind the Violence, it's how much it engages (either the perp or the viewer, I think) with the language side of the brain.

But then, I'm in way over my head with all this theoretical math. I'm the one who had to get help from her 7-yr-old brother for my 4th grade Problem Questions concerning little Pamela and her various lengths of string or fast-moving trains.....

I haven't seen those films. Howbout Pulp Fiction?

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I have a place in my life for things that are simplistic; they make good things to watch while I'm working on other stuff like sewing or grading or cooking or whatever. Mostly I rent or Netflix those.

I felt like I mostly understood what was going on, but I didn't care. I did not WANT to know what the main character did next. I did not WANT to spend more time with him. Because whatever he did next was sure to be awful and hateful and otherwise corrosive to my soul. And the secondary characters, who I would otherwise turn to for sympathy, were all obnoxious or hateful in their own ways. I don't think I liked anyone until the brief scene with the son as an adult.

It's possible to get me to like a story where I hate the characters. The Prestige got me but good, even though the two guys were in a race to the bottom all movie long. More often, though, it's my Death of a Salesman reaction, where I just want all the characters to get run over by trucks so I don't have to deal with them anymore. But I had to keep reading that play because it was for school, and I had to keep watching the movie because a friend had given me a ride and besides which I've never actually walked out on a movie halfway through, though sometimes I've been tempted.

[tasiha.livejournal.com]

I have not yet seen Pulp Fiction, but it's on my list (ah, the mythical, never ending list of movies to watch and books to read).

So would V for Vendetta rank high on the "relevant dialogue" charts?

[voidmonster.livejournal.com]

We do aim to amuse, and sometimes even hit the target!

The Assassination of Jesse James is a hard movie for me to recommend to people. If you've seen and liked any of Terrence Malick's stuff, you might well be at home with it. But it's slowly paced and deeply introspective and its violence is brief but carries a terrible emotional weight.

Having read Swordspoint, I think there's a decent chance you'd like the movie. I mean... Disconsolate characters of decidedly questionable moral quality grappling with fame and style.

I grew up near the places where the movie takes place. Despite being filmed in Alberta (instead of Kansas and Missouri), it frequently felt Just Right. It's got a bullet-proof sense of place.

As for stylized mayhem, that is Sweeny Todd in a nutshell. My only real complaint of it was that the blood looked like paint, but that was so clearly intentional I couldn't get very worked up about it.