Adam Cadre ([info]adamcadre) wrote,
@ 2009-05-08 00:00:00
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Stuff
[info]mattlibby
2009-05-10 02:10 am UTC (link)
On the myriad disconnected names in Lord of the Rings: Your reaction very much reminds me of my own experience in the "bugs and drugs" classes I've been taking all spring. This is a large part of the reason I'm skimming four months of back-log on your calendar despite my exams coming up in two weeks.

On roller coasters (Jan minutiae): Your progression is very different from my own. When I was very young, I was too terrified to even try riding a roller coaster. The first one I rode went upside down in a loop, then did a corkscrew, then did it all again... backwards. Surviving it was such an exhilarating experience that I was a convert, and loved them for years. But one day, on the way up the hill my first time riding "Superman" at Six Flags New England, I suddenly had complete confidence in my safety; the rest of the ride was boring, despite the fact that it was the biggest coaster I'd ever been on. I've never enjoyed roller coasters since.

On the new Batman series: I'm glad you had good things to say about Batman Begins. It is one of the few movies I can tolerate watching multiple times--I really like it. I also liked The Dark Knight, but I did find the Joker's character baffling. I just can't fathom a character who has no fundamentally Human motives (reasonable or not) at the core. Despite that character not being a good metaphor for terrorism (and perhaps that wasn't even the idea) I liked the themes brought up in Batman's character: that sometimes, to do the right thing, someone may have to be misunderstood and scapegoated. That isn't at all what I want to believe, but it does match up to reality, I think. Also I your line "they've just discovered that the bank is easier to rob with a contract and a desk than with a gun and a getaway car" is a neat synopsis of a crucial reality people need to wake up to.

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Re: Stuff
[info]arctangent
2009-05-11 06:20 pm UTC (link)
I really don't know that "To fuck with people" is not a "fundamentally human motive"; it's obviously unrealistic to encounter it in total isolation and coupled with a godlike level of competence at fucking with people, but I didn't have that hard a time suspending disbelief over it. People have gone to all kinds of crazy lengths to fuck with other people, historically speaking. If anything the Joker is mostly guilty of having more style and intelligence than the people who just start throwing rocks at windows or starting forest fires.

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Also
[info]arctangent
2009-05-11 06:37 pm UTC (link)
I think Adam's reaction to Benjamin Button (which I personally am ambivalent about) has to do with his being a narratively-oriented rather than visually-oriented moviegoer. The positive reviews I've seen of the film claim that it's a North American reclaiming of the "magic realism" style that took root and blossomed on Latin American shores far south of here, where it's not so much the narrative logic of what's going on onscreen that matters but the way the juxtaposition of the off-kilter visuals with the narrative they're supposed to be depicting creates a distance between us and the movie that makes us think.

In other words, no, on paper Button's life really isn't affected all that much by his reverse aging in all the obvious ways you would expect it to, but that's not the point. It's supposed to be the case that Button's life is a fairly "normal" if somewhat charmed life, a life that would be a fairly boring movie if Button were aging forwards ("Why did they make a movie about this guy?"), but because of the reverse-aging gimmick and the striking visual of watching the guy get younger and younger over time you pay attention to Button's changing personality and the way life events affect him in a way you normally wouldn't. The fact that you know he's actually 60 but he appears 20 makes you stare at him a little harder and gives those scenes a weird, hard-to-define pathos they wouldn't have if played straight.

That's the theory, anyway, and it obviously worked on a lot of movie reviewers. It apparently didn't work on Adam, and it didn't work on Roger Ebert either (who I think gave the movie a hard time for saying that a reverse-aging gimmick was "inherently meaningless" -- I don't think it is, but I think it *was* intentionally meaningless *in this movie*), and I'm not sure it worked on me. I think it's just one of those personality traits where this kind of "magic realism" gimmick strongly affects you or it just annoys you and keeps you from appreciating the straightforward story the gimmick is intentionally obscuring.

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