Always glad to see Trouble Every Day recognized as the worst movie ever made. It was so bad that a good friend and I swore off watching movies together after seeing it. That was what, five years ago? We haven't gone to a theater together since.
See, I actually saw it at Sundance (yes, namedropping) and I enjoyed it. Not the best flick, sure, but I thought it was worth it, especially for the first half when the spoofing and satirizing of the art school crowd runs highest. I can't quite figure out the visceral response to it though - Entertainment Weekly gave it a D+ (I'm guessing Basic Instinct scored higher).
The guy who paints cars and tanks isn't loathsome. In fact I was thinking as I left the theater that he was just about the only sympathetic character in the movie.
Also, you know, I find the claim that all the women are shrill and weepy (save one), and that all the straight male characters actively hate women, a little hard to swallow. The lesbian isn't shrill or weepy, e.g., nor is the one who has a show at the student gallery, and while he's not the nicest guy the guy who befriends Jerome doesn't seem filled with misogyny.
The lesbian's literal tone of voice isn't shrill, but she's actively obnoxious. Is not the guy who befriends Jerome the one who does the breast cartoon? In any case all he does is pick through files of women to get Jerome laid, and I'm pretty sure at one point--maybe more than one point--=he uses the word "pussy" as metonymy (or is it "syndecdoche"?) for the entire female gender.
23: Seriously, Ben, I think you know the difference between "Titties! Hooray!" and being assigned to draw a woman, and instead drawing a crude non representational cartoon of a pair of breasts, and saying "I draw the best part." Why you are choosing the character who did that as an example of a straight man in the movie who did not hate women, I am perplexed.
I went to art school and so was thinking of trying to catch this. THanks for the heads up. And there were some people tryng to make art because they loved it, or they had to. Then there were the rest, on whom you had to mentally call bullshit. I learned that I didn't want to be an artist. Recognition and sex and a pony!
Too bad it wasn't so bad it was good, like Highlander 2: The Quickening.
In a surprising revision of his earlier work, Francis Fukayama's latest book, Recognition and Sex and a Pony, suggests that most liberal democracies have not, in fact, attained the end-stage of History.
I just don't think that his having done that is evidence that he hates women. That he has other blameworthy attitudes towards women, sure, but not hatred.
What else would you call reducing women to a set of body parts? And are you talking about his *intent*, or the *effect* of his attitude? B/c I find that kind of thing pretty hateful, myself.
Stock? Um, actually we'd prefer not to be reduced, thank you very much.
Hatred may be the wrong word, but hateful contempt and dismissal isn't. If he thinks women are non-human props useful only for titillation, that doesn't have to be an actively hostile feeling on his end to feel awfully unpleasant on the receiving end.
Now, I haven't seen the movie, but come on, it's not hard to understand why the described attitude rubs people the wrong way.
Are you under the impression that people who go to art school are nice? This sounds just like what I remember. Tia, be glad you only spent 90 minutes there instead of four years.
Next up, hyper-realist treatment of an MFA writing program.
Oh, sheesh me with a sheeshed sheesh. My complaint is not that the movie has mean people in it, or that it has sexist people in it (I'm only talking about the latter because of Wolfson's puzzling nitpick). I wrote a post all about how I hate criticizing movies for depicting unpleasant attitudes. It's that they were both totally unpleasant and cliched, unmotivated stock characters. The movie was nasty, nihilistic AND false. But you know, a movie could even be nasty, nihilistic, and false if it delivers some aesthetic pleasure. Pulp Fiction is IMO kind of nihilistic and I don't think it had much relevant to say about human experience, but it was slick and had a compelling narrative and was enjoyable. I didn't mention it in my post because it was more of a PSA than an attempt at a full review, but this movie was also totally aesthetically incompetent. There was no logic to the progression of scenes, no investment or suspense, and often scenes would just end abruptly like the screenwriter got sick of writing dialogue.
Oh, and Wolfson, I don't know from the original graphic novel, but Enid was not loathsome in the movie of Ghost World. She was selfish and paralyzed, but she felt like a real person you could care about it.
I didn't walk out because I was with someone who was also hating it who wanted to see the end. And usually when I hate something, I'm interested in telling people later just how bad it was, and I can't do that if I didn't see the whole thing.
Hey, the flick was amusing, though certainly not great.
Tia complains about the stock characters. The stock characters are part of the joke; "Best Parts" guy actually describes the stereotypes to Whatshisname-Protagonist. As for the immature sexist assholes, well, I thought the movie made it pretty clear that they were indeed immature sexist assholes, contrasting them with W-P's Frederic-Moreau-like infatuation.
As enjoyable fluff caricaturing art school, which is all anyone should've expected, my wife & I both got a kick out of it. The biggest problem we had was the shallow/nonexistent characterization of the female lead, which does indeed hint at a certain incomprehension of or indifference towards women.
Well, they were supposed to be loathsome. I guess it's a loathsomeness-tolerance test, and thus a matter of taste. I can't ever finish "A Confederacy of Dunces" for similar reasons. "But he's *supposed* to be an idiot," I'm told. Fine, but I can't stand him.
I would indeed make the case for the movie's misogyny, in the run-of-the-mill Hollywood manner.
Edward_ (formerly of Obsidian Wings) left the movie depressed and a little disturbed. But then, he's a curator and gallery-owner who runs an art-blog, so he's professionally implicated.
I know they're supposed to be loathsome, Anthony. But it's really not a good project for art to parade a bunch of loathsome stock characters in front of the camera in arbitrary sequence and then take the same pot shots at them that have been taken a hundred times before.
Don't forget to comment on my post even though it is below LB's.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 05-16-06 11:16 AM
Always glad to see Trouble Every Day recognized as the worst movie ever made. It was so bad that a good friend and I swore off watching movies together after seeing it. That was what, five years ago? We haven't gone to a theater together since.
Posted by The Dead Man's Pants | Link to this comment | 05-16-06 11:18 AM
Geez, I was getting to it! What's your hurry?
Posted by The Dead Man's Pants | Link to this comment | 05-16-06 11:19 AM
I just wanted to make sure everyone knew it was there! LB's post had, like, lots of words in it. People might not have noticed me.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 05-16-06 11:20 AM
Really, the world might be better off if nobody noticed that post. What if you inspired a few Unfogged readers to go see Trouble Every Day?
Posted by The Dead Man's Pants | Link to this comment | 05-16-06 11:23 AM
Don't do it, a few Unfogged readers!
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 05-16-06 11:24 AM
The girl who gets the fake blood dumped on her isn't shrill or loathsome.
Of course the protagonist is supposed to be loathsome; it was written by Dan Clowes.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 05-16-06 11:26 AM
Wow, that's a scathing review. Kudos!
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-16-06 11:27 AM
But do download the title track, by The Tindersticks. It may be tainted by the whole cannibal sex thing, but it's still a damn fine song.
Posted by The Dead Man's Pants | Link to this comment | 05-16-06 11:28 AM
Wolfson, are you defending this movie?
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 05-16-06 11:28 AM
I didn't think it was very good, but I also think that your reaction in 10 is a little absolutizing.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 05-16-06 11:29 AM
I've found that lately the only Tindersticks I listen to is "People Keep Comin' Around".
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 05-16-06 11:30 AM
You are either with us, or you're with Art School Confidential.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 05-16-06 11:30 AM
11: Is that an answer to 10?
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-16-06 11:34 AM
I'm glad for the warning. I thought both Crumb and Ghost World were very very good, so I would have seen Art School Confidential without the warning.
A pity.
Posted by NickS | Link to this comment | 05-16-06 11:38 AM
See, I actually saw it at Sundance (yes, namedropping) and I enjoyed it. Not the best flick, sure, but I thought it was worth it, especially for the first half when the spoofing and satirizing of the art school crowd runs highest. I can't quite figure out the visceral response to it though - Entertainment Weekly gave it a D+ (I'm guessing Basic Instinct scored higher).
Posted by moira | Link to this comment | 05-16-06 1:03 PM
No, that isn't the Unfogged secret police at your door, moira. Keep typing.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 05-16-06 1:08 PM
That would explain the Winston Smith bout of paranoia. Perhaps I should knock off the Victory Gin...
Posted by moira | Link to this comment | 05-16-06 1:38 PM
The guy who paints cars and tanks isn't loathsome. In fact I was thinking as I left the theater that he was just about the only sympathetic character in the movie.
Also, you know, I find the claim that all the women are shrill and weepy (save one), and that all the straight male characters actively hate women, a little hard to swallow. The lesbian isn't shrill or weepy, e.g., nor is the one who has a show at the student gallery, and while he's not the nicest guy the guy who befriends Jerome doesn't seem filled with misogyny.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 05-16-06 3:01 PM
The lesbian's literal tone of voice isn't shrill, but she's actively obnoxious. Is not the guy who befriends Jerome the one who does the breast cartoon? In any case all he does is pick through files of women to get Jerome laid, and I'm pretty sure at one point--maybe more than one point--=he uses the word "pussy" as metonymy (or is it "syndecdoche"?) for the entire female gender.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 05-16-06 3:08 PM
And before I hear about it, I don't mean "all he does" literally. Sheesh.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 05-16-06 3:09 PM
(and accompanies the breat cartoon with a comment like "I just draw the important parts"?)
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 05-16-06 3:14 PM
Bad news for "Titties! Hooray!".
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 05-16-06 3:28 PM
Honestly, Tia,
I think you might be reading too much into thisI didn't like the movie either, but I'm not sure it was as bad as you make it out to be.Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 05-16-06 3:31 PM
I didn't care for Ghost World too much. But I loved Crumb. Those scribble-books that R.'s older brother Charles made really stunned me.
Six Feet Under and Me and You and Everyone We Know both featured rote art-world stereotypes. It seems to be irresistible.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 05-16-06 3:31 PM
The crazy thing, 'Smasher, is that the Six Feet Under stuff was way measured, humane, and realistic compared to this movie. If you didn't like that...
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 05-16-06 3:34 PM
23: Seriously, Ben, I think you know the difference between "Titties! Hooray!" and being assigned to draw a woman, and instead drawing a crude non representational cartoon of a pair of breasts, and saying "I draw the best part." Why you are choosing the character who did that as an example of a straight man in the movie who did not hate women, I am perplexed.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 05-16-06 3:43 PM
"...misanthropic in great disproportion to any actual wrongs he's suffered..."
I feel like my religion has been gratuitously dissed. Misanthropy is not a consequence of experience but a free choice, a leap-of-faith.
Ghost World was too cute, I couldn't finish. Crumb was unspeakably depressing. I loved it.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 05-16-06 4:02 PM
I went to art school and so was thinking of trying to catch this. THanks for the heads up. And there were some people tryng to make art because they loved it, or they had to. Then there were the rest, on whom you had to mentally call bullshit. I learned that I didn't want to be an artist. Recognition and sex and a pony!
Too bad it wasn't so bad it was good, like Highlander 2: The Quickening.
Posted by benton | Link to this comment | 05-16-06 4:46 PM
I'm gonna say that in the Tia/Ben difference of opinion, Tia seems to be winning the argument by a mile.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-16-06 5:09 PM
Hmm. I think Wolfson sound more convincing. Not going to see it in any case.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 05-16-06 5:32 PM
I know I want recognition and sex and a pony.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 05-16-06 5:42 PM
31: More convincing based on what we call "evidence" or just based on this weak-assed "you're reading too much into it, baby" crap?
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-16-06 5:52 PM
In a surprising revision of his earlier work, Francis Fukayama's latest book, Recognition and Sex and a Pony, suggests that most liberal democracies have not, in fact, attained the end-stage of History.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 05-16-06 5:57 PM
33: Mostly on the theory that it would really irritate you if I disagreed with you.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 05-16-06 6:23 PM
35: I hate you.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-16-06 6:24 PM
Get a room, you two.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 05-16-06 6:28 PM
I'm sorry, but is anyone thinking an Unfogged movie night would be awesome? Check weapons - but not flasks - at the door!
Posted by moira | Link to this comment | 05-16-06 6:41 PM
Unfogged movie night = great idea. Your place, Moira?
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-16-06 6:57 PM
I just don't think that his having done that is evidence that he hates women. That he has other blameworthy attitudes towards women, sure, but not hatred.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 05-16-06 6:57 PM
What else would you call reducing women to a set of body parts? And are you talking about his *intent*, or the *effect* of his attitude? B/c I find that kind of thing pretty hateful, myself.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-16-06 7:00 PM
41: What would you rather he reduce women to, if not body parts?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 05-16-06 7:14 PM
Laughter?
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-16-06 7:16 PM
What if he captioned the picture: "Law and Order."
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 05-16-06 7:18 PM
Stock? Um, actually we'd prefer not to be reduced, thank you very much.
Hatred may be the wrong word, but hateful contempt and dismissal isn't. If he thinks women are non-human props useful only for titillation, that doesn't have to be an actively hostile feeling on his end to feel awfully unpleasant on the receiving end.
Now, I haven't seen the movie, but come on, it's not hard to understand why the described attitude rubs people the wrong way.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 05-16-06 7:19 PM
Are you under the impression that people who go to art school are nice? This sounds just like what I remember. Tia, be glad you only spent 90 minutes there instead of four years.
Next up, hyper-realist treatment of an MFA writing program.
Posted by mcmc | Link to this comment | 05-16-06 7:22 PM
Also, what LB said.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 05-16-06 7:29 PM
Liked the review, but couldn't help wondering: Tia, were your boots not made for walking?
(That should have been my solution to both Pulp Fiction and Leonard Part VI, the one only slightly less ghastly than the other.)
Posted by Doug | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 4:14 AM
Oh, sheesh me with a sheeshed sheesh. My complaint is not that the movie has mean people in it, or that it has sexist people in it (I'm only talking about the latter because of Wolfson's puzzling nitpick). I wrote a post all about how I hate criticizing movies for depicting unpleasant attitudes. It's that they were both totally unpleasant and cliched, unmotivated stock characters. The movie was nasty, nihilistic AND false. But you know, a movie could even be nasty, nihilistic, and false if it delivers some aesthetic pleasure. Pulp Fiction is IMO kind of nihilistic and I don't think it had much relevant to say about human experience, but it was slick and had a compelling narrative and was enjoyable. I didn't mention it in my post because it was more of a PSA than an attempt at a full review, but this movie was also totally aesthetically incompetent. There was no logic to the progression of scenes, no investment or suspense, and often scenes would just end abruptly like the screenwriter got sick of writing dialogue.
Oh, and Wolfson, I don't know from the original graphic novel, but Enid was not loathsome in the movie of Ghost World. She was selfish and paralyzed, but she felt like a real person you could care about it.
I didn't walk out because I was with someone who was also hating it who wanted to see the end. And usually when I hate something, I'm interested in telling people later just how bad it was, and I can't do that if I didn't see the whole thing.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 7:51 AM
Hey, the flick was amusing, though certainly not great.
Tia complains about the stock characters. The stock characters are part of the joke; "Best Parts" guy actually describes the stereotypes to Whatshisname-Protagonist. As for the immature sexist assholes, well, I thought the movie made it pretty clear that they were indeed immature sexist assholes, contrasting them with W-P's Frederic-Moreau-like infatuation.
As enjoyable fluff caricaturing art school, which is all anyone should've expected, my wife & I both got a kick out of it. The biggest problem we had was the shallow/nonexistent characterization of the female lead, which does indeed hint at a certain incomprehension of or indifference towards women.
Posted by Anderson | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 8:21 AM
I have never complained about the *movie's* misogyny. I mentioned the *characters'* misogyny just as an example of how loathsome they all were.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 8:25 AM
Well, they were supposed to be loathsome. I guess it's a loathsomeness-tolerance test, and thus a matter of taste. I can't ever finish "A Confederacy of Dunces" for similar reasons. "But he's *supposed* to be an idiot," I'm told. Fine, but I can't stand him.
I would indeed make the case for the movie's misogyny, in the run-of-the-mill Hollywood manner.
Posted by Anderson | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 9:17 AM
Edward_ (formerly of Obsidian Wings) left the movie depressed and a little disturbed. But then, he's a curator and gallery-owner who runs an art-blog, so he's professionally implicated.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 9:31 AM
I know they're supposed to be loathsome, Anthony. But it's really not a good project for art to parade a bunch of loathsome stock characters in front of the camera in arbitrary sequence and then take the same pot shots at them that have been taken a hundred times before.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 9:37 AM
Sorry, Anderson! I'm an idiot.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 10:21 AM