Silent Hill Heaven

"Supposed to be good"... People are such sheep.

eddieatemypizza wrote:looks like shr finished in 10th place at the box office for last week. its so sad that friggin wreck it ralph earned more $ opening weekend than both silent hills combined. what the hell has this world come to? and it lost to here comes the boom, like seriously?

To be fair, we're talking about an age restricted low budget horror film vs. an all ages family flick with characters everybody knows popping up for a cameo. If a Disney film didn't outsell a horror film I would be worried.

Numb Body01 wrote:So right now BOM has the total at $20,408,482. SH:R needs to make roughly $40,000,000 to break even

And it doesn't seem impossible - now it's $30,684,399 worldwide. Revelation made $8,023,036 during past weekend.

DistantJ wrote:"Supposed to be good"... People are such sheep.

Better a sheep than a dumbass.

Better polite than banned.

Droo wrote:Better polite than banned.

So he can participate in shit-slinging and I can't? Cool bias guy.

You both got reprimanded, actually.

Droo wrote:You both got reprimanded, actually.

Oops. My apologies. Foot, meet mouth.

No worries. Play nice, y'all. There's no reason to get angry at each other over a movie.

Exactly. Droo contacted me too about it.

But what I was trying to say was I really dislike the way the internet have their little clubs of agreement for films. The whole 'and this is supposed to be good' thing really rubs me up the wrong way because this isn't the way this awesome medium is supposed to work. Everybody is different and wants different things - just like every director's vision is different - and this whole 'general consensus' idea of a film (which tend to be the consensus of basically everybody bored enough to want to go online and rate, not those who are actually out enjoying the films) and the resulting ridicule of people whose tastes don't line up with that, just craps all over the art form.

I mean this "Rotten Tomatoes" idea especially irks me, the thought that something so subjective and varied can just be given a percentage of 'how good it is' based on what a selection of people said, usually people who jack it to Meryl Streep too, not people passionate about the genre... I mean, according to Rotten Tomatoes, the best movie of all time is Toy Story 2...!

DistantJ wrote:Exactly. Droo contacted me too about it.

But what I was trying to say was I really dislike the way the internet have their little clubs of agreement for films. The whole 'and this is supposed to be good' thing really rubs me up the wrong way because this isn't the way this awesome medium is supposed to work. Everybody is different and wants different things - just like every director's vision is different - and this whole 'general consensus' idea of a film (which tend to be the consensus of basically everybody bored enough to want to go online and rate, not those who are actually out enjoying the films) and the resulting ridicule of people whose tastes don't line up with that, just craps all over the art form.

I wanted to point out that I actually see this here too, for example, now that the new film came out - both the ones who feel negatively and the ones who feel possitively about it speak of the game it is based on as inherently a) uninteresting, b) derivative, and c) unoriginal as if it was esentially a widely known assesment, and thus validates the quality of the film for better or worse.

DistantJ wrote:I mean, according to Rotten Tomatoes, the best movie of all time is Toy Story 2...!

Not gonna lie, but that moment when Woody gasps, "Rosebud..." and drops the snowglobe with Buzz's head in it made me tear up a little...

DistantJ wrote: But what I was trying to say was I really dislike the way the internet have their little clubs of agreement for films. The whole 'and this is supposed to be good' thing really rubs me up the wrong way because this isn't the way this awesome medium is supposed to work. Everybody is different and wants different things - just like every director's vision is different - and this whole 'general consensus' idea of a film (which tend to be the consensus of basically everybody bored enough to want to go online and rate, not those who are actually out enjoying the films) and the resulting ridicule of people whose tastes don't line up with that, just craps all over the art form.

To be fair, there is a reason there are film studies students; there are parts of movies that can be objectively bad, such as acting and script (for instance, the constant exposition dumps in SH:R as well as the single long infodump of the first film are instances of going against "SHOW, NOT TELL", which... well, ruins the pacing and feels unnatural [and not in a surreal way]).

But at the same time I know a lot of people who are thankful for that scene in Silent Hill 1 (these people in particular have yet to see SH2 so I don't know their view on Vincent's dialogue yet) because it brought it all together for them. Hell, it's the first thing that happens in the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. Then there's Watchmen, and just about every James Bond movie, where the villain will expose the whole plan in one unbroken monologue. The Dark Knight Rises (a film I personally hated but the internet wants me hung for that) ended with a character explaining away the entire trilogy, and Shutter Island (one of my favourites) had Ben Kingsley lay the entire thing out in the same way Alessa did.

And then we talk about pacing, like there's a way every film should be paced, but when I think of some of my favourite films I think of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - a film with no real buildup or climax, Pulp Fiction - a film with the pacing of a drunk on a segway, Napoleon Dynamite - one which never even goes anywhere, and Mulholland Drive - one which intentionally falls to pieces for the last 3rd.

Then there's talk about dialogue having to be fully realistic or believable, but then that throws out films like Romeo & Juliet, Moulin Rouge, most musicals, anything by Dario Argento...

Kenji wrote:

DistantJ wrote:I mean, according to Rotten Tomatoes, the best movie of all time is Toy Story 2...!

Not gonna lie, but that moment when Woody gasps, "Rosebud..." and drops the snowglobe with Buzz's head in it made me tear up a little...

Ahahahah! Nice. Citizen Kane is another great example though, it has very very slow pacing and is told in chunks, each beginning and ending with exposition from the character being interviewed, and it in fact remains inconclusive until one final shot which pulls it all together but actually renders most of the film's information practically useless. And yet it's an amazing film. This is my point.

It won't be released in France until the 28th of November. I don't think it'll he a huge success here, but it'll still add some numbers to the box office.

DistantJ wrote: Ahahahah! Nice. Citizen Kane is another great example though, it has very very slow pacing and is told in chunks, each beginning and ending with exposition from the character being interviewed, and it in fact remains inconclusive until one final shot which pulls it all together but actually renders most of the film's information practically useless. And yet it's an amazing film. This is my point.

There definitely is a "school" (if you wish to credit it with such a distinction) that follows along with Channel Awesome in shouting down anything that smacks of exposition, yet the great films of old were chock full of it. For example, Yojimbo spends a good five to seven minutes on pure exposition, where the old restaurateur explains the situation of the town (along with his own opinion and his own personality) to Sanjurou.

If you listened to the manchildren of the Internet, you'd think it a kiss of death, and yet it's fucking Yojimbo, and I needn't say any more than that. As with many things, it's not the element but how and why you execute it. In the case of Yojimbo, it's about clearly laying out the rules of the "game" before Sanjurou sets about playing it.

Exactly! Everybody now judges every film by an actual criteria, when most of the best movies ever made (and also most of my personal favourite films) are ones which don't play to this. This "criteria" then brings about this horrible notion that there is an infallible "good" and "bad" to film, which is probably the most subjective medium there is (apart from music, of course).

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is one of my favourites, but if you review it by this criteria that people force on films now, it'd come out really really badly. Michael J. Basset knows more about film structure, exposition etc. than any of us could hope to. Anything done here was intentional or requested by the studio (my movie buddy was really thankful for the exposition that I bitched about, because it helped him to follow after the first movie was so inconclusive, so likely they were considering people like him) and for the budget involved there's a pretty stunning visual feast in here.

Truly great films break the mould.

DistantJ wrote:Michael J. Basset knows more about film structure, exposition etc. than any of us could hope to.

I don't know if I'd go that far. Why do you say this? Based on what criteria? Because he made a movie that got released? Does that automatically make him an auteur? Does Britney Spears know more about music than the rest of us just because she's made a bunch of albums? I think not.

DistantJ wrote:Truly great films break the mould.

Even if you liked Revelation (I can't fathom why that might be, but I digress), I don't think you could ever argue it was "truly great" with a straight face.

Droo wrote:

DistantJ wrote:Michael J. Basset knows more about film structure, exposition etc. than any of us could hope to.

I don't know if I'd go that far. Why do you say this? Based on what criteria? Because he made a movie that got released? Does that automatically make him an auteur? Does Britney Spears know more about music than the rest of us just because she's made a bunch of albums? I think not.

Considering Bassett's an actual director that's had multiple jobs, I'd say that yes, he does have a better understanding of film structure and exposition (even if he doesn't necessarily always do a great job of showing it).

Michael Bay has directed numerous films, yet he clearly confuses film structure with special effects. Similarly, Uwe Boll has directed 29 films, with more on the way, and we know full well how his films end up.

No matter how horrible someone may see Revelations, it's a low blow to compare MJB to Uwe Boll. That man is completely incompetent.