TFT 142 – SCOTT PILGRIM / EAT PRAY LOVE / THE NATURAL
posted by
Jett Loe
TFT 142 running time: 50 minutes 27 seconds – 24.2mb mp3
SCOTT PILGRIM starts at 2 minutes 20 seconds
EAT PRAY LOVE starts at 26 minutes 10 seconds
THE NATURAL starts at 40 minutes 49 seconds
- – -
Subscribe to the Podcast – Become a TFT Member
Follow TFT on Twitter – Follow TFT on Facebook
- – -
HELP JETT FIND WORK IN LA – CLICK HERE FOR HIS RESUME
This entry was posted on Monday, September 6th, 2010 at 3:59 pm. It is filed under Action, Blog, Drama, Fantasy, Gareth Higgins, Gareth Higgins Reviews, Jett Loe, Jett Loe Reviews, Podcast, Reviews and tagged with film review podcast, movie review podcast.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
who said, “we’re only going to make movies that are remakes, sequels, are movies based on an existing property” ?
oh no, you’ll make me have to go back and check The Google. ;)
If you feel like making the search yourself i believe the actual quote used the word “franchise” in place of “existing property”
My reading of Scott Pilgrim, having not read the comics, is that the flippant disregard for other people, including the person that Scott decides to fall in love with, is in fact the essence of the film’s satire. The film’s repetitive and flat structure is a perfect mirror of the type of game that Scott Pilgrim most resembles and in fact was made into as a tie in with the film. Thus, you have a narrative structure and a central character who are flattened out, in contrast with any sort of narrative or indeed human depth, and this is mostly compensated for by increasing the frequency of the film’s scenes rather than their amplitude, if you will embrace this wave analogy. This technique in itself mirrors the attention span of its characters and enhances the feeling of the flippancy of the characters’ interpersonal behaviors. I don’t think the sort of failure to consider the greater implications of their interpersonal behavior is unique to ‘my’ generation of kids, either, as the ever-increasing divorce rate will attest, so I don’t think the film’s satire is centralized entirely on the current generation, and indeed it becomes all the more scathing the older the person is who the film’s satire accurately reflects. Now, it is probably the case that the two seemingly estimable gentlemen who run the podcast are and have been for the duration of their lives more attuned to demands of a compassionate human being to live a respectable life in whatever society they found themselves at, but I can imagine the universality of human beings will hold true in showing the kids of their older generation similarly clueless when they were of the same age when it came to fully understanding the impact of their actions on other human beings.
Another interesting aspect of the film which I think should be addressed is the craft of the film in adapting a comic book in a style which both adapted the rapid pace of a typical comic book while at the same time recognizing and making use of the similarity when it comes to ‘visual framing’. There are few ‘wasted panels’ in the film, and there are few instances in all of film where the rapid cutting of a film more perfectly matches the demands of its source material. Now, I do think the demands of explicating satire through abandoning of standard modes of characterization and plot development are both innovatively and cohesively realized, as I mentioned before, but I do believe that the net sum of these efforts is certainly limited by the very methods of truncation that the film employs. It is difficult to say something meaningful by adapting a multitude of forms of expression which mirror the ineptitude of the targets of your work, but I think we can recognize in this very statement the similarity in principle to the extended tradition of buffoonery in satire and perhaps even gain renewed respect for the film in developing these principles of Greek Old Comedy delivered through form rather than the standard, being dialogue. Thus, I think there are drawbacks to the film’s general approach, but those drawbacks are as old as comedy in the recorded literary history of western civilization, and yet we have managed to appreciate many other works in that tradition all the same – many works that were less innovative, I would argue.
I think when you look at a film in order to find merit and nothing else you stand a far greater chance of appreciating the art which others have spent so much time and thought on where leaving the possibility of dismissiveness both often precludes such a possibility and results in absolutely nothing positive to compensate. And I’m speaking of Jett and The Fountain in this case, for the record.
Thank you andrzej for your detailed thoughts on Scott Pilgrim which I find both valid and valuable.
Re: the suggestion to “look at a film to find merit and nothing else” = when I see a pic I am not looking for merit or the opposite, good or bad, etc. I react to the filmmaking craft in a way that I can’t turn off = this prob comes from being a working director in that I can’t turn off the constant monologue in my head regarding camera movement, direction of actors, editing rhythms, thematic nicities etc. = I think that limiting myself, or more accurately seeing a film with an agenda in mind does not play to my strengths as a commentator on the current culture = make sense?
Re: The Fountain, since I’ve never released the two episodes where Gareth and I investigate the fountain in depth am not sure what you’re basing your opinion on ;)
I can definitely see, especially when you’re reviewing a wide array of films, how you can slide into the mode of, “Holy hell, how did this happen?” and begin to dissect things that could have been done better. It’s certainly common, natural, and so tempting, and in the case of Hollywood films which have 12 different writers tasked with ‘fixing’ a script it is almost imperative for the audience to do it because at that point it is so far removed from any sense of ‘point of view’ that there’s really no need to attempt to glean some greater underlying idea out of the film because, well, that has been killed long ago. This is an extreme example, of course, but I think the grey area is what causes all the trouble – and, indeed, the grey area where this sort of dissective impulse supersedes the appreciative one in a film which, had the appreciative one been given a bit more time to formulate a coherent viewpoint in the mind, precludes what would have been inevitable enjoyment. I don’t say this in a purely abstract manner, either, as there have been several cases where I find myself, on the second viewing of a film, recalling exactly the problems that I had which I, in my infinite stubbornness, could not get over and which, on revisit, are completely erroneous and definitely prohibitive to my appreciation. And, really, I’m watching films for that appreciation, not just for another turd to flush down the toilet. In recently listening to your podcast on Zardoz it reminded me of this same thing, and I believe you pointed out how people missing the tone of the opening perhaps precluded them from enjoying the film because they were too quick to jump to dismissal. I think operating on the assumption that what you are watching is indeed a work of brilliance can open up certain avenues. You two are obviously fine critics and I think you do your best to avoid such pratfalls, but I think the very nature of general release criticism puts that bad habit in play. Thus, when I see an instance where I think you two have perhaps sold a film short it is both surprising and understandable, since you two are arbiters of taste, somewhat, and that grey area may get you on the wrong path on a good film at times, I think. Or maybe you just disagree with me outright, who knows. It’s certainly not black and white, and a lot of it is my own speculation and projection from my own experiences. I don’t mean to impose any preconceptions on you, but I probably am. Ah, well. If nothing else, I hope I at least provided a different perspective to consider, and I can understand how many factors, your directorial and critical experience included, can predispose you to one approach or another, thus the value of discourse. You two have certainly provided insights that I had not developed on my own, and I thank you for that immensely.
As for The Fountain, your bemusement is even in the lead-in for the show, so I thought I’d toss it in for fun. I got a slight taste of the flavor of those conversations in your ‘best of the decade’ podcast, but if nothing else I think it’s fair to say that our level of appreciation differed.
I should also add that my psuedonym – because what’s in a name? – is a reference to the great Andrzej Zulawski, a man whose films are never talked about too much! Just throwing it out there…