I am informed that it actually becomes a decent movie in the last half hour, which I did not see.
Daniel Kahneman has shown that we tend to remember only the lattermost part of an unpleasant or traumatic experience, so that was very clever of Malick.
What part didn't work for you?
(I still haven't seen it, mostly because I couldn't deal with the Colin Farrel aspect of the movie).
1. Insufferable, gauzy voiceovers.
2. All that brooding.
3. It sure is hard to give a shit about Smith's dark night of the soul, in the circumstances.
Also, a lot of the dialogue was pretty bad, which is impressive given how little dialogue there was. There were some really obvious cuts and juxtapositions, and some really obvious imagery (I know! Let's make the boorish, cruel settler flick spittle when he speaks!). Lots of significant looking at things or persons, in a hard to take way.
But I'm told that the parts set in England work well and that the last shot's a doozy.
The New World is easily the best movie of the decade so far. You gotta see the whole thing. If you don't watch the last half hour you miss the Aufhebung and the movie makes no sense.
The dialogue is weirdly allusive.
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Snow Angels ...was my depressing slice-of-life indie for the evening. "Midwinter Tragedy" is what the Village Voice called the subgenre. including Sweet Hereafter & Affliction as examples.
Adapted & directed by David Gordon Green who I guess is hot right now. I have seen some of his work, liked Undertow, but I think he might be directing his actors so loosely that it approaches improvisation. Actors often do too much when given free reign, insecure about projection and interpretation. Or maybe as a low-budget indie, there wasn't time. Beckinsale was terrific.
(Fancy vacumn cleaner is on the fritz. Lady gets closer to North Dallas repair center. I just want some drive belts UPS'd, she wants a cleaning and maintenance. Meanwhile the carpet is dirty. Not really an argument, but a little tension.
The blogosphere doesn't feel real to me most days. Nothing but happy couples, leading harmonious lives)
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Fucking 94 in Dallas today. Fuckity fuck.
Actually, I rather like The New World. The music is good. I may have cried throughout, as is typical for me and Malick. They're not good movies in the way that other movies are good movies. Plus, yes, you have to watch the last half hour, and you should have seen it in a theater, where the effect is completely stunning.
"They're not good movies in the way that other movies are good movies." Certainly this has been my experience. Also the weeping. And plus shouting at the screen.
Lady.
Gets closer to North Dallas repair center.
I just want some drive belts UPS'd.
She wants a cleaning and maintenance.
Meanwhile the carpet is dirty.
Not really an argument;
But a little tension.
Ayup. And all I wanted was a plum.
I ask in all sincerity: what do you all think of the politics of the movie? Reading about it on Wikipedia raises my blood pressure, but that's Wikipedia for ya.
Obviously, it's substantially misleading about what actually happened, but Wikipedia also describes it in a way that suggests that it's yuppies in disguise as colonialists and Native people, at least in terms of careers versus love and nationality versus love. I do think this is important, that it's not sufficient to say "but it's fiction, Frowner.
(And I add that I am a terrible, terrible movie-goer because I pretty much only see films whose politics I am sure won't make me angry; also, I have been known to stop watching things half-way through (most recently Man of Iron, sequel to my all-time favorite movie Man of Marble, if I get too irritated. This means that my knowledge of cinema is parochial at best.)
And I can close neither tags nor parentheses correctly.
I recommend the discussions of TNW at The House Next Door. Also strongly disagree with the dismissals above, but I suppose my reactions are pluperfectly typical of the nature-worshipping solitary in the communal culture of the early 21st century.
You should go into any Malick movie expecting idiotic voiceovers.
Did you not like The Thin Red Line, Ben?
Just hit the mute button and watch it again.
You have got to be kidding me.
s/b
You cannot be serious!
TNW is one of those movies where you have to sort of bracket off all the stupidly racist stuff in order to get at the good stuff, and then you realize you've bracketed the whole movie. I apologized to the friend I dragged to see it, profusely.
Sometimes I think that movies about third world peoples should just stick entirely to the old stereotypes and caricature, because attempts to be more true to life and more sympathetic just create new inaccurate stereotypes. After all, movies misrepresent everyday American life too.
With great difficulty and a lot of work it's just barely possible to understand peoples far different than ourselves, but it might be impossible to put an accurate and fair portrayal of someone from one of those peoples into a story that would work on the screen.
19: What was racist about it?* The voiceovers? The position on the pre-colonization native population of North America that one might tease out of the bundle-of-twigs business at the end? I'm not trying to be more disingenuous than usual.
* In a non-"everything is racist, as is everyone; enjoy freshman week" way.
My particular concerns are factual (totally not having seen the movie!). It would be one (dubious, to my mind) thing to envision a rather silly romance between an anonymous colonist and a native woman but to create something that is seriously misleading about specific, well-known historical figures who are routinely invoked as part of the US nation-building project--that's worthy of serious political discussion.
Also, subjectivity--it just sounds silly to show historical figures who by happy coincidence have exactly the same attitudes towards romance as contemporary middle class white Americans. I'm not, you know, a scholar of Native cultures, but I am pretty damn certain that relationships were constituted really differently by the tribe in question than by, say, me. I think it's tragic that we get so few movies that talk about how people in the past aren't just today's people in historical dress--it really cripples the non-specialist's historical understanding.
On another note, if I were a famous film-maker, the silly romantic film I'd make about Natives and early settlers would be about someone who ran away to live with Native people. There were a lot of them and you could work up something very dramatic, cheesy, torrid, etc. Angela Carter wrote a really great short story that's all ready to be adapted (with teh sex and everything!), Our Lady of the Massacre, about a petty thief and prostitute who is sent to the New World, has violent dangerous adventures, runs away and ends up with a Native tribe.
22: A guy I knew in college had a bit part in a small '90s movie (the title escapes me) about an Irish slave who fled his Viking captors in Vinland to live with the native inhabitants.
22: In short, they turned it into a date movie, which must be more than half of all movies.
"The White Dawn", with Warren Oates, had a lot of authentic footage, for example the killing of an elephant seal, but in the end it turned into a date movie.
There's a play about Cabeza de Vaca, who spent about eight years among the native Americans in Texas and thereabouts, and who developed a great sympathy toward them.
23: It's not just for political reasons that this kind of story is more interesting to me--I just find it hideously boring to contemplate another movie about famous pilgrims.
And it's really neat how much people got around back before say the 18th century or so (and also interesting how people got around from Asia to the West before say the mid-twentieth century). I grew up thinking that there wasn't much traveling or mixing of cultures except for a little carefully-defined trade, but people were moving around all the time--Vinland, for example, but also tons of people going back and forth between North America and Europe, people living in the Middle East for a while and then coming back, all that stuff. And at a later time period, Chinese people living in Paris in the early 20th century and getting mixed up in WWI. Just fascinating! I could watch any number of movies about stuff like that.
you should have seen it in a theater, where the effect is completely stunning.
I was in a theater.
20: To go on, it's not just cultural differences, but historical differences. Even a century ago in the US people thought about relationships infinitely different than we do. For example, on the American frontier mail order brides were quite common.
One of the things I figured out during my dabbling in genealogy was that I'd have enormous difficulty communicating at all with any of my ancestors older than my grandparents, and not just because they hadn't experienced automobiles and TV. The great-greats were mostly pioneers, with all the attitudes and deprivations that came with that.
Well then you should have been stunned.
[I will thread-jack because it's a bit exciting (or to me, anyway): today is Zero Recruitment Day and the MPLS-area actions are wide-spread, well-coordinated and well-reported so far. Plus at least as of 10am, police refused to arrest some folks locked down to a door at the recruiting station. They made a bad mistake bringing the RNC here; it made us all extremely stroppy. I'm off to check out the UMN-area demo on my lunch.]
there's a nice series of children's books written in the 50s by henry treece -- viking's dawn, the road to miklagard, and viking's sunset -- about exactly that: a viking who travels from scandanavia to britain, ireland, france, the med and constantinople, up back to scando through russia where he meets mongols, and then in the last book to iceland greenland and vinland
the vinland stuff is a bit last-of-the-mohicans (without girls!) but i loved it as a kid
I also didn't make it to the final half hour; I hadn't been told to anticipate the Aufhebung. I'm still not exactly clear on what made it disappointing (I was watching on my computer and not giving it my full attention), so I suppose I should give it another go. Sure was pretty, though.
would be about someone who ran away to live with Native people.
Have I got a recommendation for you! It won the Oscar for Best Picture! And I am not talking about Apocalypse Now
At Play in the Fields with Lord Jim and Nobunaga.
I liked Silk but it was just pretty. There's Havoc with Anne Hathaway but that didn't turn out well.
is it all-internet have-a-hegel day?
Curious to know if Frowner has heard of Johann Padan by Dario Fo, and that they've made an animated movie of it.
27.1: I suspect that modern relationships might be a lot smoother if there was better definition of the expected roles of the participants. Back in the day the rigidity of gender roles served that purpose, but the damn FemiNaziIslamoFascists destroyed that with all their bitching about being people not property. I think one of the most important cultural shifts going on in our lifetimes is the emergence of new and more equitable ways of negotiating relationships. I'm hoping that in the long term there will emerge a rough consensus on how exactly these things are negotiated. If it happens as I hope I expect that the polyamory, swinger, and gay communities will serve as a source of models for how to negotiate roles, boundaries, and expectations.
35: No, I had not. However, I am now consumed with desire to see the movie, and possibly to show it at our bookstore summer movie series.
Have you seen it, mealworm? What did you think? (I assume one can procure a subtitled version...further research required.)
to 8: sorry about the temp, bob, that's brutal. it's april! it was about that hot here today, but, being on the equator and stuff it seems more fair. no, probably just 92.
That's only about 33 degrees C. , or 27 degrees Reaumur. Think positive!
Alameida and I are up at the same time!
Pathfinder
i was to watch the last of Mohicans, via netflix, then happened to read its review and its plot seemed to be different from what i remembered from the book, so i lost my interest
i thought Pathfinder is the other name for Hawkeye, but it seems different entirely periods and people, i mean movies
he has a difft name in each book, i think: hawkeye, pathfinder, leatherstocking, deerslayer, natty bumppo...
mark twain on the useless of j. fenimore cooper: very mean, very funny
44: Twain on Fenimore Cooper always makes me wonder whether, before embarking on his own novels, FC attempted a similar essay attacking the faults of whatever author he had been reading when he, anecdotally, threw the book into the fire and announced that he could write a better one.
Little Big Man, anyone? I remember loving it as a too-small child and hearing somewhere along the line that it stood up pretty well on the representational politics front.
What is the nineteenth rule? What did Cooper do right? How will we ever know?!
I hope the movie version of "A Dream in Polar Fog" depicts both the positive and negative aspects of Chukcha culture and their personalities, like the book does.
47: Bros before hos. Didn't really come up in that scene.
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38:Well, the 94 was a glitch, I hope, but we are forecast for low to mid-80s with scattered thunderstorms for the next two weeks, and once Dallas gets here we don't get out til October.
It's 80 at noon, so I think we may get over the forecast 84.
Ecopolis!! Some sci-channel last night on low-carbon footprint megapolis, and the Peninsular City was mentioned several times.
Best ideas, in order:nanosolar & dish concentrators, very light electric buses, aeroponic agriculture, and biochar.
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Little Big Man, anyone? I remember loving it as a too-small child
Likewise. My heart soars like a hawk. To maintain balance in the universe, there was Dances with Wolves.
this movie was shot in our country and the Indians were our actors
i don't know how good is the movie, forgot the plot
An 18th century relation (we think) of mine was kidnapped by Indians, and hid in a tree to avoid being ransomed by his scots-irish presbyterian relations.
i hope 53 is ToS and won't get deleted
well, after lunch and coffee, shigoto shigoto
colourful family history you have, mcmc, so what happened after that? but the relation was not your direct ancestor i suppose
a man called spencer horsey de horsey
Speaking of horses, it's a tragic shame there was no George Bailey at work at this pharmacy.
Eventually he switched teams again. He wrote a memoir, but I've only seen a little of it. The funny part is his foster-grandfather was making him sit in a freezing cold stream for an hour a day to toughen him up, and he still liked it better than home.
He's not a direct ancestor.
But is The New World worse than Disney's Pocahantas? (Overlap in more than story: actress who was the animation model and speaking voice for Disney's Pocahantas played TNW Pocahantas's mother.)
On the other hand, they claim to be making a movie of Blood Meridian.
58: He died at his house in Cowes.
Bad day at blackrock for Steinford alums: Condi the dungeon boss--DiFi the graft queen
Everyone here hates Feinstein, ToS. Your piss is blowing back in your own face.
64:From comments at link:"There's no other literature I can think of in the English language that is darker than Blood Meridian"
Before nosflow shows up to think in a language other than English, can we play?
Would citing R Jeffer's Medea be considered cheating? Is that dark enough, or lightened by the possible disapproval of Medea's act? Is Medea disapproved?
Well, I really enjoyed The New World but (a) I don't think I could, as a matter of physics or psychology or something, not enjoy a Malick film (I even like the voice-overs!) and (b) I very rarely strongly dislike anything.
I saw The Thin Red Line in a theater (@ Doc) last summer, and it was phenomenal.
Re: 17; it's funny, when I saw TTRL, there was an issue in the projector booth, so the first twenty or so minutes of the film were shown without voice-over (but, oddly, you could hear other sounds: waves, birds, and such). They figured out the problem, tho, and started from the beginning again. It was great fun.
Your piss is blowing back in your own face.
As is often the case.
Sorry, but I find it absolutely hilarious that there is a completely insane, moronic, unfunny and maniacal internet troll whose targets for obsessive and nonsensical insults are Jews, fat women, yuppies (yes...nothing unexpected so far...), and the Stanford philosophy department.
And all we did was fail him out on comps.
70: Don't forget fraternity members! (Presumably for reasons similar to 71.)
I killed $2,100,000 worth of horses with overdoses of selenium once, but it was my first day so they let me keep my job. Thank you, old boy network!
66 gets it right. You're a fucking bore, ToS.
Sorry, but I find it absolutely hilarious that there is a completely insane, moronic, unfunny and maniacal internet troll whose targets for obsessive and nonsensical insults are Jews, fat women, yuppies (yes...nothing unexpected so far...), and the Stanford philosophy department who trolls a blog devoted to cultural literacy one-upsmanship and cock jokes.
he reminds me of father jack:
*starts awake, yells to all and none*
feck! arse! dhrink! grrls! exterminate the jewish whores!
*zombies back off into thorazine mumble*
In all seriousness, ToS, get help.
i thought ToS is Hozo at LH, is that you, ToS?
but i overestimate my intuitively reading skills
on the plane yesterday one person was doing sudoku all 4 hrs, i thought it's like how it wouldn't bore him full 4 hrs of working brain and with numbers
We're being watched by the EFF? That cracks me up. OH NO! THE EFF!
Why exactly is the Troll of Sorrow called the Troll of Sorrow? It's a lovely and euphonious name, reminding me of "The Maid of Constant Sorrow", but 'sorrow' isn't something I associate strongly with ToS's comments.
78: Too late, John. No one can turn back the clock and undo the thoughtless, belittling remarks that young Rachel Edelstein made about his tiny, uncircumcised penis.
I thought we were being watched by the KLF. For being slightly more justified, though not quite as ancient.
On a thread here recently during off-hours, He-Who-Should-Not-Be-Named was confronted with (and clearly bested by) some near-verbatim vintage Serdar Argıç. The response was priceless (ToSsian vehemently denied his Armenian heritage), but both sides were quickly taken down by the thought police keepers of the blog (for understandable reasons, but I, at least, was amused).
My flatus is being monitored by the EPA.
I can't believe we're not being monitored by EMF.
88:
The things you say
Your purple prose just gives you away
I liked TNW all right, but that's because I'm a sucker for movies about early America. I just like to watch the landscapes and imagine the vast North American forest prior to Western arrival. I'm willing to forgive a lot so long as the setting looks convincing.
A movie called "Black Robe" is the best I've ever seen about early North America and the early contacts between Europeans and indigenous peoples. Set in the early 17th century, about a Jesuit mission to the Iroquois.
91: Oh, wow! Fantastic! werdnA is going to pluck his eyebrows!
He graduated to fly fishing and became expert at making his own flies, and at guessing which of the innumerable varieties of insect available in Sweden the fish he was pursuing would prefer.
Yeah, most places have only 2 or 3 varieties of insects.
But yay nworB!
94: I watched The Mission on cable the other day and man was that some depressing shit.
93: I hate ghost threads that I wasn't a party to. That with with the guy from New Arcadia was awesome though.
97:Black Robe might be better, and even more depressing. At least some of the natives got to live in The Mission
I didn't count those as White Fang Goes Dingo movies.
I guess I was pwnd by 94. I thought it was the Huron.
I've seen Black Robe! It's excellent, depressing, and atmospheric. Be prepared for a serious dearth of dialogue.
The Huron-Wyandot were an Iroquoian people. Whatever. To say why I insisted on Huron would be something of a spoiler.
yes, I stand corrected. I didn't find Black Robe that depressing. Life was hard back then.
101: Not unlike The New World in all those respects. And lovely, though less summery than TNW.
Malick was for sure influenced by Black Robe. But I thought Black Robe was much better. The romantic plot in TNW was weird in too many ways, and there were too many hints of the "European finding themselves in the primitive" theme that is really quite 20th century.
Black Robe gave otherness a lot more space to breathe than TNW did. The otherness of 17th century people in general, Europeans as well as natives.
Although, TNW was a truly physically beautiful movie, and props for that. There were some gorgeous parts, and the ending was very good.
To say why I insisted on Huron would be something of a spoiler.
Not if you're familiar with the actual history, I'd gather. But I haven't seen the movie.
An 18th century relation (we think) of mine was kidnapped by Indians, and hid in a tree to avoid being ransomed by his scots-irish presbyterian relations.
Depressingly, but perhaps more common, my great-great-great-possibly some more greats-grandfather kidnapped two Crow women and brought them back to the South in the 19th century. Married one of them, the other was rescued by her family. (Apparently the woman he married chose to remain, perhaps because of children, but such things are obscured now).
A movie called "Black Robe" is the best I've ever seen about early North America and the early contacts between Europeans and indigenous peoples. Set in the early 17th century, about a Jesuit mission to the Iroquois.
You guys know there's a book, right? One of the few cases, though, where I enjoyed the movie far more than the book.
perhaps more common
I don't know; I doubt there's any way to come up with reliable statistics, but there was an awful lot of kidnapping in both directions for a very long time.
109: Indeed. I'm really only familiar with Iroquois practices and what went on in the Southwest (cf. the excellent Captives and Cousins).
You'd be surprised how many couples would kidnap if they had the option, just to avoid the messy sex and parturition business.
111: Kidnapping probably stopped because you need an SS card to do anything now. Score one for taxes.
You guys know there's a book, right?
Right.
113: I just realized how insufferable that question sounded. I was trying to be helpful, honest!
I'm still not exactly sure why I didn't really enjoy the book. I think it felt forced, whereas for whatever reason the movie seemed to tell the story more naturally.
One of the few cases, though, where I enjoyed the movie far more than the book.
Are there canonical cases thereof? Certainly at least The Godfather and Dr. Strangelove count.
I also preferred the movie -- it doesn't feel at all like an adaptation of a book, either.
115: The Graduate; To Have and Have Not
115: I'm not coming up with anything immediately. A number of cases in which the movie was at least as good as, arguably better than (though different from) the book: The Shining, Do Andoids Dream of Electric Sheep/Bladerunner.
All my candidates seem to be in the popular fiction category. Probably because the question as posed has to do with enjoyability.
Even something like The Maltese Falcon: the movie's quite good, the book is also quite good, though different.
You guys know there's a book, right?
I've never read the book, probably because it's always seemed like one of those CanLit things that I'm supposed to have read, and therefore I haven't. Which is a bit silly, of course, and no doubt I should read it.
118: There are tons that are arguable; I'm looking for the unarguable. I think High Fidelity counts.
Is M*A*S*H the movie better than the book? Has anyone ever read the book?
123: There's a M*A*S*H book? Really? Er, no, I haven't read it.
117 To Have and Have Not
I think I would rather watch Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall open cans than read Hemingway.
things that I'm supposed to have read, and therefore I haven't. Which is a bit silly, of course, and no doubt I should read it.
God, there are so many books - and movies - like this. I'm a bad, bad person.
Everybody is a bad person like that. And if anyone isn't they should be shivved.
119: Certainly, per the recent thread.
Forrest Gump was not good, but the book was worse. Willard. The Bourne movies. Midnight Cowboy. The Graduate.
Any examples where the novelization was better than the movie?
114: You were helpful. I didn't know there was a book.
Rfts in 101 gets it exactly right about the movie. One of the precious few examples of movies that I was forced to watch in college that were worth every bit of my time and attention.
123: I did! Trapper John gets his name because he "trapped her" in his sleeping berth on the way home from a Dartmouth football game. Isn't that hilarious?
129: Once I was in costco and I saw, no shit, the book version of Passion of the Christ.
Once I was in a hotel and I stole, no shit, the book version of Passion of the Christ. Actually, I'm not sure if the Gideons consider that stealing.
The otherness of 17th century people in general, Europeans as well as natives.
Yes, one of the great things about that movie is that it doesn't make many concessions of familiarity for the audience. Lots of historicalish films are hurt by having people in period costumes act and speak and think more or less like people today (or whenever the film was made).
Is M*A*S*H the movie better than the book? Has anyone ever read the book?
Yeah, that's why the question is difficult: in order to say that the movie was better than the book, the book had to have been good enough to read in the first place.
I think I would rather watch Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall open cans than read Hemingway.
Well, sure -- the can-opening scene is a classic.
Lots of movies have been made from books so obscure that few realize they were made from books.
129: The novelization of Ethan Hawke's Great Expectations is better than the movie, which is better than the Dickens original.
"Natty Bumppo" would be a good name for a dog.
The English Patient, but that may just be me. Has anyone read either of the two Boulle books that made great films (River Kwai and PLanet of the Apes)? Apparently they were quite good, but hard to keep up with the movies. I have not read The Shining, does it measure up?
Yeah, that's why the question is difficult: in order to say that the movie was better than the book, the book had to have been good enough to read in the first place.
Huh?
I recall The Shining as just fine, but in no way comparable to the film. Also, I haven't read any Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay, but his books would have to be pretty awesome to compare to the Apu trilogy.
141: I'm with you on The English Patient.
For The Shining, a lot of people can't stand Stephen King, but the book was really quite good'n'scary. Back in his better days, before he turned into Cujo and then Christine-the-mad-car or whatever. There were a number of features in The Shining not included in the movie (the Jack Nicholson movie's maze was instead a bunch of giant hedges shaped as animals which moved in on ya). It was well done. The relationship between the kid and the hotel's cook (?) with whom he could speak semi-telepathically was well done. The movie didn't do as good a job in that.
142: That was mostly just self-reporting. Just saying the super-obvious thing that you'd probably have to have read the book to say that the movie was better, and that set of both-book-and-movie things is, for me, on the small side. Because if the book wasn't particularly good, I probably didn't read it.
For example, I didn't read The Godfather.
But maybe The Godfather, the book, was pretty good. Who knows. The Shining may actually suck, for all I know.
Yeah, that's why the question is difficult: in order to say that the movie was better than the book, the book had to have been good enough to read in the first place.Yeah, that's why the question is difficult: in order to say that the movie was better than the book, the book had to have been good enough to read in the first place.
Instead of good movies I haven't heard of, my question has yielded bad books I wish I hadn't.
146: But it isn't! I read it and it's horrible. And all Stephen King sucks.
When the film of The Shining came out, I remember thinking, hey! that's not the way it happened in the book! But when I read the book, I remember thinking, predatory topiary? Surely you could have come up with something better than that, Mr. King.
This phenomenon, of nobody reading the book, is why I hate Walt Disney and will ruin any dinner party or get-together by listing over and over again my reasons for hatred. I don't care if the book actually sucked or not. I care that your* basis for judgement is the movie.
*where "you" is someone who did not read the book and never reads the book and only saw the movie and only ever saw the movie and never read the fucking book even though IT'S A BOOK NOT A MOVIE.
Lots of historicalish films are hurt by having people in period costumes act and speak and think more or less like people today (or whenever the film was made).
I hear you, and I agree with you on this point, and yet: I strongly suspect that the hurt of which you speak is actually only experienced by those (a small minority of the film-viewing public, I'm convinced) who actually care about what it means to think historically, and that, overall, more harm might be done (in terms of injured sensibilities, and etc) than averted by a greater attention to historical accuracy.
It's actually quite difficult, for example, to convince someone (an undergraduate in a history class, say) that not everyone in the past was basically a modern American manqué, who would have lit out for the territories if only church/crown/family had not got in his/her way. Most people tend to think that "we are the world," and that that "we" is "me," and that the past "we" would have been "me" as well, had it not been for those crazy/kooky socio-politico-economic-cultural impediments.
149: It's possible that I found the maze in the movie lame, so my affection for the predatory topiary has retrospectively increased. The film was totally Jack-driven (which was great); the book wasn't, as much.
I've just remembered that I've read The Witches of Eastwick, but after I saw the movie. Nicholson just owns anything.
I read MASH. And the sequel.
I liked TNW, and Black Robe too. And Last of the Mohicans. And The Shining.
You know, these aren't supposed to be documentaries. Homer wasn't trying to give an accurate account of exactly what Hector said to Paris, and Shakespeare wasn't trying to put down the St. Crispin's Day speech verbatim. And of course a storyteller uses elements of old and new in trying to reach the audience.
You know, these aren't supposed to be documentaries.
Very true, and I generally give most historical movies a pass precisely because of that - particularly when it is clear that they are using the historical backdrop just as another tool in movie-making. But when they take on the mantle of telling the only true, real, accurate, behind the scenes story (or however they're billing it that day), then they're up for grabs when it comes to criticism on their mangling of the history.
(MASH Goes to Maine)
Wait, MASH the book (there was a book?) was the precocious juvenilia of the thrills-and-chills author Stephen King? Well, who knew? and I feel like such a functional illiterate.
And speaking of Maine, I'm a huge fan of Sarah Orne Jewett. Some of her short stories are "surprisingly modern" (or so they're often described), except when they're not. And she has all those crusty old sea captains and such.
Taking up that mantle is always just a narrative device, and never, ever, to be taken seriously. At least not in a feature film.
Maybe I'm turning into a crank, but when people complain about the historical lapses in feature films, I feel like asking if they think the people of Jerusalem really preferred the release of Roderick to that of Jesus.
Actually, I rather liked Ondaatje's novels.
Hawkeye Pierce was from Maine. Crabapple Cove. Liked to say 'finestkind.' If you look at the beginning of the TV series, you see that they tried some fidelity to the book, but dropped it after an episode or two. People weren't interested in Maine, or even Korea. The TV series was about Viet Nam.
158: The English Patient is a heavy, difficult, painful book. The movie is more 'enjoyable', which was the original question. One reason the question was weird. I would not say the book was worse than the film in any way. That'd be a strange thing to say in that case.
157: Ok, ok. As a historian I am allowed to get cranky. But I'll keep my whining to myself. (And it's largely just shit like that remake of King Arthur proclaiming itself as the new true history behind the myth that really yanks my chain. Well, and The Patriot).
140: Brunner-pwned!
(But you knew that, right? So it was more of an in-joke, really.)
115/118: The Voyage of the Space Beagle/Alien
The novelization of Speed was way better than the movie.
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['The dialogue could've been better.']
The translation of the Apu Trilogy books is tragically hard to come by.
157: The complaint is not that they're not historically accurate in every detail, but they completely empty them out of any sense that people in the past weren't exactly like us.
161: Mel Gibson patriotically wielding the flag as a weapon in that awful film was tastefully prefigured in Simpsons 11: 1.
As a historian I am allowed to get cranky.
Tim Burke sez otherwise.
Does anybody know what happens in the last six minutes of The Battle of Algiers? My copy pooped out.
The Shining is one of King's best books. Nicholson plays it a little too twitchy from the very start. It is obvious when reading that King's ambition was to write a first-person descent from neurotic to madness and murder, but gave up about a third of the way thru, perhaps because such a book would be uncommercial, and, well, for a lot of technical reasons.
The book is fine horror, but the first third is very fine. You identify with the protagonist, who really is a decent guy, and slide down with him. Kubrick & Nicholson did not adequately portray that, and I think Nicholson was miscast for that purpose. He is not likable enough.
Kevin Costner played a serial killer recently, and managed it very well. You really really like his character, you laugh at his jokes and share his successes, and it terrifies you.
I am having a lot of trouble thinking of a movie that improves on an original good piece of fiction. They are different experiences, etc etc.
Just say The Dogs of War again recently, which cut most of the preparatory dtails, but those details, like whaling in Moby Dick are part of the process and point of the reading.
And, although I haven't read it, according to my understanding the story In the Bedroom is based on is very short, really just the last scene in the woods, and more powerful for what is left out.
I don't agree with most of the examples above.
167, 168: Burke does not get to speak for me just because he is a tenured professor at a respectable institution!
And I don't like "an" because it sounds pompous, and I'm led to believe that either is technically correct.
Asking for historical "accuracy" in art, including movies, is pretty stupid -- that's not the artist's responsibility, and art isn't "accurate" about anything in the way that academic history purports to be. Both The Searchers and Murder in the Cathedral are great works of art, but neither are remotely accurate in the pedantic sense.
With that said, badly mangling a historic setting is generally (not always) a good indicator that an artwork will suck. Movies set in the past need to justify their use of the historical setting. Crappy historical films (Braveheart, marie antoinette) limit their justification to swords, bodices, and the like. Good history films (I'd put both Black robe and TNW in this category) have something to say about why their period setting is interesting, and should be interesting to us.
Asking for historical "accuracy" in art, including movies, is pretty stupid -- that's not the artist's responsibility, and art isn't "accurate" about anything in the way that academic history purports to be.
I'm aware of this. I did not say that I was searching for academic accuracy. And something can be incredibly accurate in capturing the feel of a place or time without being accurate in the details of the story in the least.
I agree with Walt when he wrote: The complaint is not that they're not historically accurate in every detail, but they completely empty them out of any sense that people in the past weren't exactly like us. I think this is a reasonable expectation, and perhaps what you're getting at with the claim that films need to justify their setting.
But all of that does not mean that my hackles don't raise sometimes. For example, Marie Antionette didn't bother me in the least because it very clearly wasn't purporting to be a serious historical piece. The Patriot, on the other hand, does have such pretensions, and in it the director/screenwriter/Mel Gibson completely distort the period to push a very specific set of political ideals, among other things. I am bothered by that, even if I don't give a shit about the fact that they also show 18th-century muskets being reloaded too quickly. Just because a film "art" doesn't absolve such sins, or rather, I should say, it doesn't mean that such things shouldn't be discussed seriously. (For example, isn't one of the things that makes The Searchers great the way it distorts the history of the West because of the exact historical moment the film was made in? In other words, one of the things that makes a film like that wonderful is because of the insight it gives into the 1940s).
that they also show 18th-century muskets being reloaded too quickly.
Ahem, I feel it necessary to say that I would never had known this were it not for a student who talked to me endlessly about this very problem with the film.
that they also show 18th-century muskets being reloaded too quickly.
It's the sort of thing that does help you grasp the alienness of the period, though, which is actually important. I had a "shit, really!!" moment reading this when the author pointed out that English galleons at the time of the Spanish Armada could fire their canon once an hour with luck if they were at the top of their game, and that this gave them a huge advantage over the Spanish, who were even slower.
A movie which totally took leave of history but nevertheless worked for me was Kapur's Elizabeth. Because it was in a way an Indian director's commentary on how English directors portray Indian history. And because it was great fun.
Surely being "bad" history was only one amongst 10,000 aesthetic and political sins committed by Mel Gibson's The Patriot.
There are also plenty of examples of movies that try to be "historical" in the good sense, and that clearly had multiple researchers on staff, but that are aesthetic failures. I'd put Gangs of New York in that category.
It's also pretty rare (maybe impossible) to have a historically-set film in which there's no attempt to differentiate the historical otherness of the characters -- even Mel Gibson's folks use swords and the like and talk about kings and queens -- but the othering is generally done in stupid and superficial ways in bad movies, and in better ways in better movies.
I guess the bottom line is that the historical setting is really just a tool, like any other setting for any other movie --sensitive treatment of the historical setting isn't sufficient to make a good movie, but if the movie can't figure out something interesting to say about its setting, it will fail.
169
Does anybody know what happens in the last six minutes of The Battle of Algiers? My copy pooped out.
The French win the battle and lose the war.
The Battle of Algiers:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4008498016489872474
English galleons at the time of the Spanish Armada could fire their canon once an hour with luck if they were at the top of their game, and that this gave them a huge advantage over the Spanish because all their priests had tenure.
177.2: I challenge! By the ancient laws of combat, we are met at this chosen ground to settle for good and all who knows anything about cinema. Us Unfoggedtarians, born rightwise to this fair domain... or the foreign hordes defiling it!
But seriously. Aesthetic judgments are subjective... except for the ones that are plain wrong. I contend that even if one wishes to see it as a flawed film (I actually think it's underrated as a whole), the fact that it produced what's widely acknowledged as one of the greatest performances in cinema makes it hard to call Gangs an "aesthetic failure."
It's not too big a deal if a "historical" film toys a bit with historical "accuracy" in the interests of improving drama. What's not so good is if the period filmmaker discards accuracy, and doesn't get anything artistically worthwhile out of having done so. Or worse, discards parts of the historical setting that would have made for much better drama had they been included. (Classic case: Gladiator, whose Commodus is a whiny milquetoast with daddy issues rather than the lethal, over-the-top nutcase that his contemporaries described.)
I'd contend that there's almost always better drama to be had in exploiting the actual history... if you can find a director with the courage to do it, and enough of a sense of balance that the results don't turn into a mere history lecture. The Rome miniseries on HBO comes to mind here.
It's not too big a deal if a "historical" film toys a bit with historical "accuracy" in the interests of improving drama.
What if they toy with it in the interest of box office draw, as in U-571?
I had a "shit, really!!" moment reading this when the author pointed out that English galleons at the time of the Spanish Armada could fire their canon once an hour with luck if they were at the top of their game, and that this gave them a huge advantage over the Spanish, who were even slower.
Wow, that's slow. Wiki has 18th century ships -- which wouldn't be using technology that was much different -- firing up to 3 rounds in 5 minutes.
EAT CAKE AND DIE, HALFORD!
184. Yes, it is surprising. I think there must have been technical advances we wot not of, also better drill (any drill at all?), but AFAICS 16th century ships mainly fought in the way ships have fought since the dawn of time, by closing and grappling and then letting the soldiers on board do their thing. Greville's Revenge was locked together with a Spaniard for about 24 hours before surrendering.
Of course the Armada weren't interested in fighting the English navy. Their job was to get to the Netherlands to pick up the invasion force.
I was thinking of King Arthur while writing 157.
I'll admit to being slightly annoyed by The Patriot, inasmuch as Tarleton (the basis for the villain, I'm sure) didn't get killed by the good guys, but went home, and eventually served in Parliament.
183: OFE, are you saying that we clever and industrious Yanks didn't recover the first Enigma machine?! Liar!
(I saw one for sale semi-recently in a fancy gallery. They're really lovely objects, all wood and brass.)
190. No, you clever and industrious Yanks can have all the credit for breaking Purple, but the key work on Enigma was done by the Poles and don't you forget it.
191: Actually, I thought your fellow FE recovered the first machine the Allies ever laid their hands on. But yep, as to who broke the code.
I will always have a soft spot for William Friedman, who led the team which cracked Purple, because of his work on the "Baconian Cypher". Apparently he applied this "Cypher" to a number of Shakespearean texts and managed to extract the following message:
"Theodore Rooseveldt wrote these plays but I, Shakespeare, stole them. Friedman can prove it by use of this cock-eyed cypher."
191 Certainly it was the Royal Navy which captured the first Naval Enigma (from U-110, I believe). And I don't want to knock Alan Turing's contribution. Just think the common story is a bit unfair to the Polish efforts.
Classics nerds = cryptology nerds. A fair whack classics grad students and profs at the time were shipped off to places like Blechley Park and its American equivalents. There was a Latin prof. at Chicago who when she was a grad student during the war was shipped off by whomever to learn Thai and then listen in on things.
Also, some of the best 3rd generation language programmers I've known have been classicists, which puzzles the mathematicians. I used to conduct email correspondence in Latin with my team leader at work when we were bored.
One of the philosophy professors I once had [in the British sense of Professor, not the US] briefly mentioned in an informal talk he was giving that he'd been co-opted into spy stuff. I think that was fairly common.
I don't know what he did, though.
[Ah, googling, he spoke Russian. Mebbe via JSSL. Which'd be par for the course, I suppose, given the stellar literary/academic accomplishments of JSSL graduates].
Has anyone read either of the two Boulle books that made great films (River Kwai and Planet of the Apes)?
I read Planet of the Apes as a teen, and boy did the movie take liberties with the plot. There is a pretty rich social commentary in the book (e.g. the caste distinctions between gorillas, oragutans, and chimpanzees) that the film does not attempt to replicate. OTOH, the scene at the end of the movie where Taylor discovers the protruding torch of the Statue of Liberty is cinematic genius, IMHO, and has no counterpart in the book. (The book also has a surprise ending, which I will not spoil.)
I haven't seen the late 90's remake of the original movie.
Java Smart Services Lab? Japan Studies Student Leader? Jazirah Soccer Simulation League?
Joint Services School for Linguists!
184, 186: The technical advances had to have been metallurgy, wouldn't you think? I can't imagine how it could take an hour between shots unless you were waiting for the cannon to cool off so it wouldn't melt (well, soften enough to sag out of shape). I'm making this up, but it seems plausible.
re: 200
Yeah, it's quite famous. They pioneered really quick, effective language instruction. The number of former graduates who then became well-known as novelists, playwrights, etc is pretty amazing.
re: 201
The process of reloading is described on wiki. It doesn't seem like it'd take long, unless there was some other reason, like you say. Metallurgy, maybe, or even the fact that, at the time, cannon bores and shot weren't standardized.
201: paging Robert Farley!
I think 186 is roughly correct. Naval battles were not settled by artillery duels in those days. The tactical innovation of the English was to stay out of range of grappling (while staying windward of the Spanish) and fire repeated volleys from their cannons.
There's a performance in Gangs of New York that's supposed to be one of the all-time greats? Which one?
Early cannon frequently exploded the first time they were used, and were reputed to kill more crew than enemy.
The Caron Ironworks that made the Caronade [innovative short bore naval cannon] is in my home village. Our high school backed onto the 'Carron Dams' which was the flooded area used for cooling water by the iron works.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carronade
205. True, but whether this was still the case in Europe in the late 16th century, I just don't know. I've seen it argued that the advantage of European armies over Indians (in S.Asia) in the 18th century was partly that their canon were cast, which made them more reliable than Indian canon which were bored and more likely to explode, but at what date the manufacturing process changed in Europe I have no idea.
207: The problem of exploding breeches wasn't really solved until the 19th century with the invention of hollow casting. Though obviously cannon were more lethal to the enemy than to their crews for a long time before that.
183: Yeah, see, exactly. Because as the James Bond franchise proved, American audiences won't go to see anything that stars British heroes.
204: Most people say Daniel Day-Lewis, but I thought "French whore who says 'I'm clean!'" delivered her line pretty movingly. I think her breasts the subtleties of her intonation put her right up there with Streep, call me crazy.
207: "I've seen it argued that the advantage of European armies . . . was partly that their canon were cast, which made them more reliable than Indian canon which were bored"
A colonialist myth. The casting-couch to get into the European canon was hell on earth, and the Indian canon was quite excited, thank you very much, owing to the spicy foods to which its writers had access.
(See the restraint? I'm not even going to touch "exploding breeches." Which would probably be inadvisable in any case.)
I'm not even going to touch "exploding breeches."
Every parent here knows all about those.
204:I wasn't impressed either, Walt. Seems to me any underacting or control in a Scorcese movie has to come from the actors. DeNiro vs DeVito in several examples. I found GoNY unwatchable.
But a lot of people thought DDL in TWBB was nearly comatose, so it might be a matter of taste.
On the subject of the film Last of the Mohicans, I have a cousin who leads/teaches neolithic camping in the mountains of Northern Alabama. He was engaged to take DDL and WS (not sure about RM -- about whom I've undoubtedly commented elsewhere) out for a few days. Killing squirrels with a blow gun, roasting them stuffed with local leaves, that sort of thing.
212 -- The book is unreadable; a sort of fidelity then.
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One word: gracious.
If you read history about Bobby Kennedy's unfinished race in '68, this was, in my view, the unfinished Bobby Kennedy campaign - the idealism, the passion, the inspiration he gave to people, it was organic and it was real and it wasn't manufactured at a tactical level in the campaign. It was a function of the president's unique skill set and presence, and it was really taken advantage of by a campaign that for the first time using the social networking technology....
-- McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt. (For all I know, he's a total bastard and engineered the Obamuslim smear campaign, but it was a gracious thing to say.)
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212: The biggest flaw in TWBB was that Plainview was clearly a somewhat-lower-key retread of the iconic performance in Gangs. (On the plus side, it did have Eli Sunday, who's a great character.) I liked TWBB on a first viewing... but it's not a Great Film. Gangs is. I've got a whole essay about this just raring to go.
I did not like DDL at all in GoNY, but loved him in TWBB.
No kidding: This link actually claims that Ottoman cannon were superior to European cannon because they uses damascene steel (wootz steel) which was originally developed in India. However, it looks to be one of the somewhat questionable Wiki articles.
The knife makers process was adopted by early gun makers from India and Persia. Eventually the technology to make damascus gun barrels was adopted by European gunmakers. In 1634 Hungarian gunsmith Caspar Hartmann was making guns with damascus barrels for King Gyorcki Raboczi I. A watershed event occurred in 1683 with the Siege of Vienna. The defeat of Kara Mustafa by Poland's Jan III Sobieski at Vienna resulted in thousands of Ottoman-produced weapons being left on the battle field. Many of these had damascus barrels. By 1700 damascus barrels were being produced at Liege, Belgium. Over time, Liege became the major source for damascus barrels. Damascus barrels were produced by every major gun making center in Europe. The great majority of these barrels were used in shotguns. This usage continued until World War I. After the war, damascus barrels fell out of favor amongst sportsman. By the early 1930s commercial production of damascus barrels had for all practical purposes stopped because stronger, cheaper fluid steel became available after W.W. I.
213: Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz and Lucy Liu went out into the Utah desert with some Boulder Outdoor Survival School instructors around the time that the Charlie's Angels remake came out, for a women's magazine feature. Apparently, movie stars don't quite know how to deal with people who don't know who they are and get their names mixed up, but they were reportedly decent sports about it.
This far in a discussion of native peoples as represented on film, and even a mention of Mel Gibson, but no mention of Apocalypto? Shame!
Not even a mention of Mel Gibson in Braveheart? Shame! (What? Celts are native peoples?)
221: In Britain, aren't they post-Ice Age migrants from mainland Europe?
I believe that the Celts reached Britain within a few centuries of 500 BC, one way or the other.
They can claim to be one of the first colonized peoples, though, both by Caesar and Cromwell. Lots of the other peoples colonized by Greece and Rome have disappeared.
Somehow Aguirre, one of Malick's inspirations for TNW, was also overlooked above, though it doesn't really attempt to portray native people much.
221: Natives are brown, silly person.
218: that article's almost certainly talking about handgun barrels, not cannon barrels. Cannon were brass or bronze, not steel.
James II was killed at Roxburgh by an exploding cannon: "slain by ane gun, the quhil brak in the fyring".
Aha, we've descended into name-dropping. "Where The Green Ants Dream" was super-cool. And its star has been described as the tallest man ever to be the star of a movie.
201: overheating seems to have been the problem. Mons Meg* could only be fired about once an hour for that reason. Between the Armada and the 18th century there was a shift to larger batteries of smaller, rapid firing, accurate guns (such as carronades - small, large calibre, short range, rapid firing guns) on ships, rather than a few massive guns.
*great big bombard in Edinburgh Castle
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In case people haven't noticed, occasional commenter Werdna Nworb has just won a significant literary prize.
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Leather guns in Sweden, Scotland, and Ireland. These may have been the ones that exploded a lot.
It's the sort of thing that does help you grasp the alienness of the period, though, which is actually important. I had a "shit, really!!" moment reading this when the author pointed out that English galleons at the time of the Spanish Armada could fire their canon once an hour with luck if they were at the top of their game, and that this gave them a huge advantage over the Spanish, who were even slower.
That's not quite it. The big Spanish ship-killing guns were really damn long (8-10' including carriage), which made it difficult to reload them. Since the barrel would protrude a coupla feet out over the water, the reloaded would either need to climb out on the barrel and hang over the water, or the gun would have to be pulled inside which could take quite some time. So the Spanish didn't count on reloading the big guns, they just kept the bigs guns loaded before battle, and at the start of the battle, they would fire, and then close, and start using the small AP cannon, and muskets. Then they would grapple and lock and fight it out. Or that was their plan, anyways.
The English main cannon had shorter barrels and much shorter carriages, so pulling them inboard was much easier. So they planned on reloading during battle. And that's apparently how it worked at Gravelines: the English stayed out of grappling range and kept reloading and the Spanish tried to close, couldn't and were forced to perform the larborious process of reloading the big guns. It looks like, from the evidence, that they managed no more than one reload on all guns.
So if I were going to figure a rate from ammo usage, the English would've been reloading each gun at the rate of 10-20 minutes (maybe less for skilled crews), and the Spanish managed just one at that battle (or more likely multiple reloads on one or two main cannons). So much less than an hour, but only one or two guns at a time.
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['Whee.']
re: 223
Current views I think lean towards the view that the native Britons aren't the product of some Celtic migration onto the island in the centuries BC. My semi-hazy recollection of recent pop-science/anthropology articles I've read is that current best evidence suggests that most Britons are probably descended from the original Neolithic inhabitants of Britain rather than from any incoming Celtic 'wave'.
Wiki has the following quotes from recent scientific work which seem to back that up:
The Oxford archaeologist David Miles, in The Tribes of Britain, states that 80% of the genetic makeup of native Britons probably comes from "just a few thousand" nomadic tribesmen who arrived 12,000 years ago, at the end of the Ice Age. This suggests that later waves of immigration may have been too small to have significantly affected the genetic homogeneity of the existing population...
Stephen Oppenheimer has recently argued that neither Anglo-Saxons nor Celts may have had much impact on the genetics of the inhabitants of the British Isles, and that British ancestry can mostly be traced back to ancient peoples similar to the modern-day Basques instead.
There's apparently some contradictory evidence for and against larger migrations during the Saxon period, but very little evidence at all for a Celtic migration.
I'd be careful citing Oppenheimer, who is a bit eccentric (too soon to tell if he's right or wrong), but there's plenty of evidence of significant genetic continuity from the neolithic or even earlier.
Of course the only people who ever called themselves Celts before the Romantic age were one of three tribal groups in Gaul. Certainly many if not all Britons spoke related languages, but they probably didn't call themselves anything collectively. And the early Irish would have been gobsmacked at being regarded as Celts.
re: 233
Yeah, I don't doubt there's a lot of eccentricity around this. However, my memory of some of the Cavalli-Sforza type work -- not necessarily him, but work of that type -- and others is that they seem to endorse somewhat similar conclusions. With cultural transfer and migration of small numbers of elites replacing earlier 'mass migration' models.
But I'm sure they all landed correctly at Thanet and overran the country from right to left with Fire.*
*and, according to some obstinate historians, the Sword.
179: Thanks, lemmy caution. It was worth watching those minutes.
217: A whole essay, I tell you. Five thousand words minimum.
What I remember has the number less than 80%, but the heirarchy IIRC was Original Population / Celts / Anglo Saxons / Norsemen / Roman Imperial (of various backgrounds).
It strikes me that distinguishing Celts, Anglo-Saxons, and Norse would be extremely tricky. The other two groups seem more plausibly distinguishable.
The Basquelike people were probably Gimbutas's "Old Europeans" who built Stonehenge. The were presumably non-Indo-European, which makes the Basques a likely suspect. Speculation abounds.
The were presumably non-Indo-European, which makes the Basques a likely suspect. Speculation abounds.
It sure does. Inferentially Basquelike because the Northern Pyrenean region was the only continuously occupied refugium in Western Europe during the last glacial maximum, and there's no archaeological evidence of the Basques coming from anywhere else. OTOH, I believe there's some evidence that the "Aquitani", another of Caesar's "three parts" spoke a language related to Basque, so it's known to have been more widespread than now. Speculation abounds.
I honestly had no idea that there are people who think of GoNY as a great movie. I thought it was unwatchable, but I'd love to read DS's defense and might have to watch it again.
I liked TWBB but found much of it kind of unintentionally hilarious. I'd kind of like to end my career by drunkenly killing my enemy in my own private bowling alley while shouting "I am the third ressurection! I drank your milkshake!"
Also, I was surprised to learn recently in a book review that the current scholarly consensus seems to be that there was no coherent ethnic group called the Huns, just a collection of diverse bad-asses united by Atilla's personality. The theory that the Huns were the Hsing-Nu from Chinese sources is now out of favor.
we maintain Hunnu are our ancestors, hun means hu/man, nu means go, wander, move
their customs were similar to ours, they sang long songs like our long songs! i often listen to the long songs on my ipod, very soothing, i don't understand the words too, it's too long lasting words to recognize particular words, so if the people whom i send my CD compilation listen to them, you listen to what i listen, not understanding the lyrics, i know of course what about is the song
i remember i read 1984 in 1984 in the Russian literary magazine, Zarubejnaya Literatura it was iirc
i used to read a lot of Nedelya, Yunost', Novoe Vremya, with transition it became mostly AiF, now don't read at all Russian press for some reason, almost 10 yrs, though maybe they all are available online now, just got fed-up like 'phenomenon' maybe
the best i remember from the book is familyless robot like people who are eternally happy and the birth control, some colourful balloons, i'm not sure what balloons they were, maybe i mix with some other book the balloons, forgot the plot, maybe there was no plot, just description of the brave new world which i find quoted everywhere, should re-read the book perhaps
240: The usual critical consensus is that it's flawed but redeemed by the production design and by DDL. I do, however, think it's a genuinely great film. (I also think it's a cheesy film, mind you, but the two categories aren't mutually exclusive; I am an avowed lover of fine cheese.)
The short reasons why:
1. It has bravura. Its New York is a spectacularly brawling, atavistic, alien mish-mash of a city; in a way the city is almost a character in itself. This is probably what the praise of "production design" is about, but for me it ties in with another of the film's virtues:
2. It has intellectual ambition. It's ultimately a story about the transition from one stage of American history to another -- or more accurately (and I think this is what muddled its reception), from one version of the American myth to another. It's a period piece that's far more about myth than history, a fact alone which speaks to an insight about American identity, what with modern America being the ultimate mythogenic* society. What makes the characters of Scorsese's imagined Five Points fascinating is that they're emblematic of a dying era about to be steamrolled over by the next iteration of the modern world. It's that intellectual ambition that generates two more of its virtues:
3. It has originality and nuance. There are the bones of a typical "vendetta for the memory of my father" story, but it doesn't follow the typical trajectory and thank God for that. Nor does it have anybody standing in as the avatar of modern democratic, racially-harmonious morality; Monk McGinn is about as close as it gets, and even he's a brawler with forty-four notches on his club for the men he's killed in street fights. Neither is it nuanced in a way that abdicates moral judgments; it certainly doesn't let its characters off the hook for their atavistic view of life, which ultimately wind up rendering them irrelevant to the march of an uncaring history. It's a moral film without being moralistic, one of the few period films that's really willing to present the period it talks about on something like its own terms.
4. Of course, it has Bill the Butcher, who commands so much critical attention because his character is really the sum of the above virtues. In some senses he's a despicable thug with perverse moral priorities, given to spouting the vilest forms of nativist filth at the slightest provocation. On the other hand he does have a kind of code, aberrant though it may be, and more importantly his actions persistently belie his verbal hate. In all his vicious calumnies against the Irish there's a palpable strain of denial: most of his trusted lieutenants are Irish, recruited from the defeated Dead Rabbits -- he plainly has no regard whatever for his own lickspittle "Native" minions, despite their supposed "racial" affinity -- and the only two men for whom he ever displays any genuine respect (even love, in a twisted way) are "Priest" and Amsterdam Vallon. He's the embodiment of a dying era, twisted up by contrary urges, bewildered by change and ultimately unable to adapt and abandon the nativist creed that finally dooms him (even without the Draft Riots to intervene, it's plain that he's a spent force after his profitable alliance with Boss Tweed collapses). In the end all that's left to him is yearning to die a death as "honourable" as that of his erstwhile great enemy.
If someone tells me that's not a great film character, I have to suspect that someone's judgment about both films and characters.
5. And finally, it has entertainment. If DDL really were the only good performance, it would still, for all the above, be a less than great film. But it also has a spot-on rendering of Boss Tweed; P.T. Barnum functioning as a kind of bizarre court jester; the blustering McGloine (his hysterical racism an eloquent rendering of the struggle of many Irish to "whiten" themselves in the WASP mind by distinguishing themselves from the next rung down on the pecking order); Brendan Gleason as a dignified and tragic Monk McGinn; an astonishingly charismatic almost-cameo from Liam Neeson that gives some meat to the "Priest" character who hovers over the rest of the film; underrated performances from Leo DiCaprio as Amsterdam and Cameron Diaz as Jenny; a fuck-ton of memorable set-pieces, with the Civil War as a haunting backdrop that eventually storms full-throated into the foreground...
I really don't see what's not to like. Honestly, I'm amazed to have to make an argument for a movie that has this much good stuff packed into it. But there we are.
* Is that a word? It is now.
(I'd also add that Gangs is in fact a very good example of a director departing from historical accuracy to good dramatic effect. Bill the Butcher is based on a real guy but is a largely invented character, the Bowery Boys never allied with Tammany Hall, Monk McGinn is actually loosely inspired by a Jewish gangster from a later time period, and so on. All good departures that made for a better film.)
were
Gangs of New York is a great film, i liked Di Caprio in it the best than his other movies, maybe and Catch me if you can was great too
the objection to Last of the Mohicans movie was that i remember from the book Uncus and Cora's romance, even not romance but something like untold between them, and they both die like b/c of that Huron demanding Cora, not Uncus and Alice or Hawkeye and Cora romance somethings as it is in the movie they said, but i forgot, i read the book when i was 10-12 perhaps
with beautiful illustrations, old looking lithography like
There's plenty of DNA research going on out there, and I think there will be surprises in store. My own patrilineal line, demonstrably English (neighborhood of Stonehenge) from the 16th century, reportedly shows DNA markers that are more typical of the southern steppes. Obviously, then, the Clive Owen version of King Arthur -- the knights of the round table are Sarmatian -- must be correct after all.
A prominent pre-historic structure in the Saarland was known for years as the Hunnenring. It's now the Keltenring.
Poking around on wikipedia, I see that there really was a planted colony of Sarmatians in Roman Britain. Huh.
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The beloved grandnephew is 4 1/2 and has morphed from adorable toddler to kid. Alas, this means that he's now jabbery and demanding. All good things must come to an end.
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Why are members of the Axis of Eeeevil suddenly arresting all of our good looking journalists?
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this is the photo of the imperiled Japanese-Iranian-North Dakotan journalist I wanted to link to.
243, 244 - DS does indeed get it right.
Gangs of New York was one of the few films in recent history that made me feel anything for a historical period, even if I wasn't sure that on the balance I actually liked it.
Obviously, then, the Clive Owen version of King Arthur -- the knights of the round table are Sarmatian -- must be correct after all.
I think I've said it before (and not just in this thread), but I truly embody the stereotype of the pearl-clutching historian aghast at what has been done to my beloved history when it comes to Keira Knightly's character and costuming in that film. As for the rest of it, I rather enjoyed the dirty, tough-talking, rough-fighting men of the film.
It would have been nice to see her naked and painted blue.
It would have been nice to see her naked and painted blue.
Seconded, actually.
Hey, lookit that, you're right about their initial association with Tammany Hall, though. So he didn't just make that up. Another point, Scorsese.
243: underrated performances from Leo DiCaprio as Amsterdam and Cameron Diaz as Jenny
Everything but this I agree with. DS, Gangs of New York is a movie about men. Hitting other men. And sometimes stabbing them. Cameron Diaz is the most obvious, and uninteresting beard in the history of homosocial/homoerotic cinema. Yawn, yawn yawn to Diaz! DiCaprio is alright, but I don't think it's his best work.
It would be cool to see Herbert Asbury's other works adapted for the screen. Especially Up from Methodism.
259: Well, Diaz's is a pretty typical woman-as-escape roupe-and-plot-device sort of role, Gangs is no pioneering movie in terms of feminism. But it's easy to take a good performance in that kind of role for granted, and the role is a pretty integral part of the otherwise dude-focussed plot.
DS! Your point (2) above in 243 convinces me that I should see this movie, which I hadn't been avoiding particularly, just hadn't seen. I'm curious as hell now. Thanks.
261: Oh good! Uhhhh, sorry I just riddled the thread with spoilers... I do recommend it, though...
262: Spoilers? Didn't notice a thing.
I skimmed your comment for sexy words, like "intellectual ambition," "bravura," "originality," and "nuance." There are a whole bunch of them in there, really.
I used to conduct email correspondence in Latin with my team leader at work when we were bored.
Too cool.
243 demonstrates that GoNY has the description of a great movie, but I don't think it adds up to a great movie. The bigness of the screen fools us into forgetting that a movie is a narrow canvas -- two or three hours is just not that long. A movie can only squeeze in lots of "good stuff" by whittling it down past the point where it's no longer that good.
GoNY is a case in point. Bill the Butcher's nativism is entirely schematic. He says it, but he only pals around with the Irish, and he holds his big celebration at a Chinese restaurant. I'm sure this is supposed to be deeply symbolic of something or other, but the movie doesn't use it it any effect.
The opening with Liam Neeson is excellent, however. It is so excellent that I found the rest of a movie a letdown.
I am so biased against Leonardo DiCaprio that any movie he is in is automatically unwatchable. It's really only him as an adult that I hate. There's just something about his face.
This has been another installment of AWB's Unaccountable Antipathies. Next up: mayonnaise!
Next up: mayonnaise!
What a sad life you must lead.
God I fucking hate mayonnaise.
Mayonnaise is terrible. Hopefully that statement doesn't lead to some European showing up and saying "Have you tried all 5,000 wildly different types of mayonnaise before making that blanket slur?" like it did when I said I hated olives.
269: I hear you. I think that's the kind of conversation that's more annoying online than in person, though.
I weep for all of your empty sandwich experiences.
Hating mayonnaise? You're either monsters, or you're trolling.
269: But you like feta, yes?
No world with mustard in it can be truly empty.
I am so biased against Leonardo DiCaprio that any movie he is in is automatically unwatchable. It's really only him as an adult that I hate. There's just something about his face.
I have similar feelings, though I manage to overcome them.
269: But surely you've had homemade mayonnaise? It's a completely different experience. (And now, I just feel mean).
265: Well, to each his own. I don't see how any of the good stuff is "whittled down," it's just a well-made film of epic scale. I mean, sure if you only had a couple scenes of Bill the Butcher palling around with the Irish and one of him hanging out in a Chinese restaurant, that would suck, but... there's sort of more to the character arc than that, it seems to me.
266: Okay, but why? Let's Unpack That.
I understand that some are moved to resent pretty-boy Hollywood stars because, well, the sons of bitches have everything else going for them, why should we admit they having acting talent on top of it all?
Yet, your Leo DiCaprios and Brad Pitts and George Clooneys and even your Tom Cruises (Scientology-related nuttiness notwithstanding) just keep on churning out decent performances anyway. It's a paradox.
Also, I eat mayonnaise on everything. Everything.
I thought Gangs of New York was a really terrible, badly made, botch of a movie, an epic fail. It was a hugely ambitious movie by a great director, and you could see the *intention* of a great movie in there. But it overreached in so many ways and ended up like a stylized comic book.
If the Scorsese of Mean Streets had made that movie, it would have been one of the greatest American movies. But instead, the Scorsese of The Departed made it. (Another potentially great plot that became a cartoon).
Oh, and I love Leonardo DiCaprio, think he's a terrific actor -- Catch Me If You Can was wonderful.
See, now The Departed, that's not a very good film. Not a terrible film, but sure as hell not the film for which he should have won Best Director.
276: I think he's a good actor, but for some reason his face makes me grind my teeth a little...this did not happen in his youth, like in, say, What's Eating Gilbert Grape? I have no idea what sets AWB off when it comes to him, but I suspect that he reminds me of someone I do not like. It's totally irrational, in my case.
280: I disagree. I don't think it will be remembered as anyone involved with its best work, but it was a solid gangster movie. I don't think it transcended genre, if that's what you mean by "not a very good film". At least the beard in that movie knew she was a beard.
some European showing up and saying "Have you tried all 5,000 wildly different types of mayonnaise before making that blanket slur?"
I can't wait for the Europeans to come to the defense of mayonnaise. Sure, you could live without sauce rémoulade (and verte, aïoli, rouille, chantilly, andalouse, gribiche and tartare). You could also live without kittens and flowers and babies and love, you sad, sad man.
My reaction to Scorsese's The Departed was "this would make a kick-ass Hong Kong action movie". (The actual Hong Kong action movie it was based on is not all that kick ass.)
DS, did you like Bertolucci's 1900?
Having skimmed the thread only, Leonardo DiCaprio continues to command respect for The Basketball Diaries, if nothing else (also that Gilbert Grape movie). His adult acting self seems just confused about who he is.
I see that the people at IMDB don't think awfully highly of DiCaprio in The Basketball Diaries.
I remember the day I ordered something that came with aïoli on it, and I found out it was motherfucking mayonnaise.
I thought of a fake pull-quote for movie critics that want to make fun of a self-consciously epic movie and yet still get on the movie poster: "...the historic sweep of Forrest Gump...".
I think I'm beginning to figure out that Walt and I have diametrically opposed taste buds. (Cause, seriously, I love Spanish food, and don't find it bland in the least. And mayonnaise, mm. It always amazes me how things taste so radically different to different people).
His adult acting self is embodied by that facial hair he sometimes sports. It does not rest naturally upon him.
I spent a lot of time during Gangs of New York thinking "the rivalry between Priest Vallon and Bill sounds great, let's watch a movie about that instead of this shite."
289: But he likes mustard, so he's not entirely a narrow-minded mediocrity.
The rabbit I had to make after last weekend's fridge disaster was fabulous, BTW. Braised in about a third of a bottle of Madeira, with 2-3 tbsp each of stone-ground mustard, smooth Dijon mustard and tomato paste (with leeks and bell pepper and morels).
290: Agreed. He also chose to pump some iron, which, okay, a kid grows up and gets to make some choices, which is why: Give the guy a break. He was HOT as a slender kid. He's grown up now and he is who he is. He's been in some pretty bad movies in the recent while, but I don't hold it against him. He's just a person.
Bamboo shoot with mayonnaise is one of the authentic Chinese foods they don't sell in restaurants, like udder and pike maw.
280: Yes. 282: No.
Departed was a mediocre movie, with the exception of the opening, which was brilliant. Scorsese inexplicably grants screen time in inverse proportion to the quality of the actor's Boston accent.
i liked mayonnaise provansal, it's sour
or if homemade, have to add vinegar to make it white and sour and if to mix the eggs yolks with the vegetable oil the wrong way, not clockwise or as we say, nar zov, the sun movement wise, never could get them blended or get the right consistency
if not sour i don't like much mayonnaise
Do Mongolians eat eggs? I mean, it doesn't seem traditional.
284: I haven't seen 1900, actually, though I'd like to.
I can't wait for the Europeans to come to the defense of mayonnaise. Sure, you could live without sauce rémoulade (and verte, aïoli, rouille, chantilly, andalouse, gribiche and tartare).
Aioli is the same thing as mayonnaise. Tartare is even worse. I've lived without all those other things so far, whatever they are.
sure it's not traditional, but
a surprise! we eat salads and mayonnaise and drink cola and pepsi and all other shit
personally i do not drink cola and pepsi though, coz have hives b/c of them
295: I want to know WTF is up with Jack Nicholson in that movie. "Hey! Look at me, I'm a crazy gangster, I'm throwing cocaine around by the fistful!"
Of course, everybody eats everything. I just find it hard to imagine a Mongolian style of eating eggs.
303: "When I tell you throw a bawdy in the mosh, you throw a bawdy in the MOSH!"
i don't know, chickens can't survive in our climate or what, like, traditionally
so, no traditional egg dishes for you
untraditionally, we eat it fried and boiled and in salads and bakery
Boiled eggs are the devil's work, much like modal. They should be abolished.
Aioli is the same thing as mayonnaise
False!
308: Yeah. Aioli is garlic mayonnaise. Ish. I dislike mayonnaise on sandwiches, but aioli I adore for any number of things. Hating aioli is like hating that excellent creamy fresh dill sauce drizzled on your grilled salmon. And your fresh asparagus, if that's there too. Not that the dill sauce is the same as aioli.
It was rather hot here today. 94. Miserable.
I have discovered that I do not hate mayonnaise on banh mi.
309: No. "Authentic" aioli only consists of olive oil and garlic.
307/11: Lord, yes. Squick. Also, boiled eggs and mayonnaise undo me so completely that I pretty much cannot watch anyone eat egg salad. I'm still scarred from seeing vast amounts of it stay in the braces of junior high cafeteria mates.
312: I've been trying to remember how I made it, to be honest. It's been years. And yes, it didn't involve eggs. Yes, olive oil and garlic. So I don't know where this mayonnaise business is coming from.
And you have the nerve to call yourselves white people.
Good grief, I've been politely not saying a word about the disgustingness which is egg salad. I am very polite around people who are proud of their devilled eggs. That's nice, dear, you sprinkle those with paprika, do you? I see, yes.
I am very polite around people who are proud of their devilled eggs. That's nice, dear, you sprinkle those with paprika, do you? I see, yes.
This made me giggle. I do the same thing. Mm! Those sure are lovely! What careful piping you've done! Why no, thanks, I just ate.
"Authentic" aioli only consists of olive oil and garlic.
For certain highly restrictive values of 'authentic'. Egg yolk is commonly used to enable the emulsion, even in Provence. And if James Peterson says it's a mayonnaise, I say it's a mayonnaise.
315: Ha! In our household growing up, mayonnaise was too tangy or something, we had Kraft Miracle Whip.
317: Yep. It's the only way to proceed. I can sometimes be that way with stuffed mushrooms/mushroom caps, but it's not quite so bad. I can't be enthusiastic, though. I know that in some quarters that's heresy.
Hopefully that statement doesn't lead to some European showing up and saying "Have you tried all 5,000 wildly different types of mayonnaise before making that blanket slur?" like it did when I said I hated olives.
Besides the above mentioned varieties, and besides simple homemade mayo with good olive oil and nice raw eggs, the French (!) make this awesome package mayo that's like the good stuff, but just tinted with mustard. Fucking awesome stuff.
max
['You should complain about ketchup.']
314: Neb (naturally) and I are just being pedantic. Most variants of aioli are indeed made with egg as an additional emulsifier. I've seen recipes which use milk or mustard instead of egg, too.
If anyone of you has ever eaten in a german cantina she or he has maybe encountered Senfeier, boiled eggs in a white mustard sauce, one of the most disgusting foods known to man which are definitely an aquired taste.
Also, aren't poached eggs a species of boiled egg?
Me as an infant, preparing for a brave new world of culinary adventure.
315: I had a Jewish friend whose mother thought the fact that I liked mustard and hated mayonnaise was the most hysterical thing she'd ever heard. It struck deep into the heart of her stereotype of Protestants, who apparently put mayonnaise on everything, and eat mustard about as often as they eat matzoh.
'You should complain about ketchup.'
Will fucking do. Hate, hate hate hate ketchup. Hate.
His adult acting self seems just confused about who he is.
Nic Cage has this problem. He's great as a schlub and a yokel (Adaptation and Raising Arizona). He's terrible trying to be a hero, a tough guy, a cool dude, or any of that, which he goes for way too often.
Regarding mayo, eekbeat *thinks* she hates it and insists that I not tell her when it's on a sandwich I've made her. Then she really, really likes it. It's odd behavior, but I'm a patient, gentle soul.
That's some serious hate. At what point during your childhood did you first encounter ketchup?
Have I ever related the story of the (famed, because I've heard it reported twice now) all-white meal? A friend and his wife had dinner with a couple and their family which consisted of devilled eggs to start, boneless breast of (white) chicken, mashed potatoes with white sauce, and white bread with butter. Dessert was vanilla ice cream with .. marshmallow topping. Wow. No kidding. That's impressive.
323: I can choke down a poached if I have to, and did after my first overnight with my ex. He was so proud of his poached eggs with homemade hollandaise; I couldn't spoil it by explaining that both poached eggs and hollandaise give me the willies. I also learned that I like overmedium fried eggs in that relationship, which was very useful. I had one today, in fact.
A functional hollandaise ain't nothing to fuck with. The ability to make one does not happen overnight.
326: Oooh. Me too. I'll eat homemade aioli, say. But ketchup? Oof. No can do.
I couldn't eat a poached egg -- but I have a really weird relationship to eggs, due to a severe childhood allergy. I can only really enjoy them smooshed up, as in scrambled or in an omelet.
328: I liked it when I was a kid. I don't remember when that shift happened, but it's bad enough that I gag a little if I accidentally eat a french fry that's nudged the ketchup. Used to be that way about olives but grew out of it. Liked mustard as a little kid, then hated it for twenty years, then began to be able to tolerate small amounts.
I have no idea how these things happen. I don't remember particular incidents that occurred in tandem with these eating experiences.
A functional hollandaise ain't nothing to fuck with. The ability to make one does not happen overnight.
Indeed. Tracking down the proper plate for presentation is one of the most challenging aspects of the process.
It struck deep into the heart of her stereotype of Protestants, who apparently put mayonnaise on everything, and eat mustard about as often as they eat matzoh.
This is very much the Jewish stereotype of Protestants. I believe I've mentioned this before here.
I think my culinary low came during the 7th grade when for lunch nearly every day I had a bologna sandwich on white bread with ketchup. Even I get the willies to think about it now.
336: Thanks, Stormcrow, we're getting the willies thinking about it.
Ketchup has its place. There are people who will tell you that homemade ketchup is, or can be, to die for, and is nothing like the bottled kind. They may be correct, but I have yet to try someone's homemade ketchup that made me crazy with desire.
My mom used to make some kind of 'swedish meatballs' thing in a slow-cooker, in a sauce involving beer and ketchup. They were actually quite good. They involved cooking for several hours.
Mmm, poached eggs and hollandaise.
Yep.
Looking back at that thread, I seem to have been a lot more clever then.
I went through a phase of not being able to eat ketchup, after working in a greasy spoon burger place and refilling the bottles on the tables from the giant can dozens, and possibly hundreds, of times per bottle. God only knows how old the oldest bits of ketchup in some of those bottles were.
Many years hence, I'm now neutral on the stuff, but I still won't eat it out of a restaurant bottle.
I love deviled eggs, at least when I make them. (So there!) I only just learned that I also like egg salad, but only if it has been made á la minute and the sandwich is assembled seconds before I begin to eat it. I have a long history of thinking that I hate sandwiches only to discover that it is their bloated and made-ahead versions that I hate.
Homemade ketchup may be dandy, but it is superfluous:
When I want ketchup, I want Heinz, and when I don't want it, I don't want any at all.
339: Looking back at that thread, I find I repeat myself a lot here.
I still won't eat it out of a restaurant bottle.
You could add some baking soda.
I live on a hill right above where Henry Heinz got his start, and where he was rumored to have grown vegetables for an early venture. Possibly true as the company was Heinz, Noble & Company (went bankrupt in 1875 and Henry started his succesful one soon after), and where I live used to be known as Noble's Hill and my house lot was carved out of the Noble estate in the 1890s.
I love egg salad, but I don't like the way they make in New York (at delis and diners and such): too many big pieces of egg, which just looks nasty. The eggs should be thoroughly mashed into tiny bits, and lightly seasoned with salt and pepper (no paprika! no cumin!). A bit of minced celery and/or scallion are good, but not too much. Lots of mayo, of course.
I hate ketchup.
I just drank a cocktail made with peanut butter, cream and scotch. It was freakin' delicious. I considered pause/playing this comment, but hey, it might be on topic.
347: Made how? I mean, it sounds disgusting, but I'd be willing to give it a try. (Also, just in case you weren't aware, Ellsbury just stole home.)
Also, devilled eggs are fucking fabulous.
I enjoyed re-reading that old thread.
348: uh it was at a bar so I can't say for sure, but I believe the egg yolk and peanut butter were emulsified, then the simple syrup and cream were added, then the scotch? And it was shaken? And then the nutmeg was ground over the top? I dunno. But it was fabulous. Tasted like the inside of a Reese's.
Ellsbury! I'm paying limited attention to tonight's game so far because I went yesterday and it broke my brain.
351: You went, like you're in-country?
I think appreciation of hard-boiled eggs in whatever form is a decent metric of honkydom.
Was 334 just too easy? Do I need to make these set-ups more difficult? I'm willing to try, if need be.
Ellsbury, indeed. It'll be a while before we see something like that again.
I think appreciation of hard-boiled eggs in whatever form is a decent metric of honkydom.
Psh. They eat plenty of hard-boiled eggs in India, the Middle East, and China.
gged in that thread: "And I do care about the blog, so someone who isn't just disinterested, but actively disdains it, would also be best off staying away."
Wow, she converted him away from his belief in...himself!
357: He converted himself away from it.
I love eggs in all forms, though runny yolk used to gross me out. Mustard is amazing, but plain yellow French's mustard should be banned. Ketchup, mm, glorious Heinz. (But only on very specific things and never in scary amounts).
I think I need to develop a food revulsion. I'm lacking in them.
but plain yellow French's mustard should be banned
Aw, but what about that cute yellowy watery stuff that comes out after it sits in the fridge for awhile. So adorable!
326: Will fucking do. Hate, hate hate hate ketchup. Hate.
Ketchup on white bread with a hamburger patty. Ugh. The trash french fry experience is learned, I think, but I found A1 worked much better on fries. Actually, I found that vinegar worked much better on chips, but A1 is OK, since nobody wants to give you vinegar.
What is truly weird is that I have steadily gone off soy sauce. Not fish sauce and the rest, but tired of soy and recipes with soy in them. Started leaving it out and stuff tastes better.
max
['Very weird.']
Not to derail the culinary chat or anything, but did I just see someone compare DiCaprio to Nic Cage? Seriously?
361: I've been off anything calling for soy sauce for a while now, which is too bad. But even if you're using good quality tamari (less chemical-y, technically fine in itself), pretty much anything in that family of asian cooking doesn't appeal. Maybe I should check out other ways to make a stir-fry.
362: I was just suggesting that both seem to have a problem choosing roles that match their talents.
Stanley playng defense on two threads simultaneously.
365: The overwhelming number of supportive e-mails coming from lurkers is amazing. Thanks, lurkers!
DS: I asked about 1900 because I had a theory that you liked self-consciously epic movies, and I don't. (I didn't like 1900.)
Growing Pains needs to be mentioned here. DiCaprio's greatest role?
I'm just waiting for DS to launch into an eloquent discursis on the difference between Leonardo DiCaprio and Nicolas Cage. It's a weird comparison.
359: I hate eggs in all its forms, which is further evidence that we have opposite taste in everything. And yet, I like all mustard except French's. (Actually, I like French's on hot dogs.)
379: I can concur with the French's on hot dogs. Hm. Perhaps the exception that proves the rule?
Well, I don't have an eloquent discursis really, just... you know, Next versus Blood Diamond? Bangkok Dangerous versus Revolutionary Road? The Wicker Man versus The Aviator*? The comparison sort of... surprised me.
367: I do have a fondness for epic films, done right. Give me your Hoffas, your Gandhis, your Cry Freedoms yearning to be viewed. (And Troy was indisputably cheese but was underrated IMO.) But they can go epically wrong: I didn't, for example, care for the last two instalments of The Lord of the Rings. The post-JFK Oliver and the Epic should never again be allowed near each other, as Nixon and especially Alexander demonstrated vividly.
I'm in sympathy with the politics of 1900, but to be honest one of the reasons I haven't made time for it yet is that it does sound a little... well, preachy.
(* Not that I'm saying all the Leo D examples are Awesome Films, mind you, but they seem to me to be in a different class, is all. The Aviator was a maddening hagiography of a largely vile man, but at least it didn't have a dude dressing up in a bear suit and punching women as the major action.)
i never watch Cage movies, his talking is strange, very nasal like
tomato based products are cancer preventing
i used to dislike tomatoes when i was young, especially if canned, now tolerate them well coz if it's necessary, though i'm pretty indifferent whether i'll get cancer or not, like, whatever, to die one way or another
on the plane i watched Will Smith's movie, without sound, he's so suffering from the guilt that he caused death of many people in a traffic accident including his gf b/c of him txt messaging
so he tolerates somehow his misery, but when he meets a new gf and there is some possibility of a new life and love, he can't stand it and kills himself in the bathtub full of ice water, i thought how strange way to die, then maybe he needed to amplify his pain with cold and if it would coz arrhythmia, maybe it's not that bad a death
very illustrative of "my" theory of guilt and suffering
or in Rachel getting married, Anne Hathaway's heroine can't stand her father who is so supportive and non-judgemental, but her sister who judges her very harshly helps her somehow to bear her misery
I thought both Gangs of New York and The Departed were bloated films in similar ways and disliked them similarly, but that the former was clearly more ambitious than the latter. I liked Infernal Affairs but did not think it was "kick-ass" and likely wouldn't have liked it had it been.
One thing I've come to enjoy is how completely at odds aesthetic judgments in terms of "good" or "bad" can be even when people agree on other aspects. Nothing original in that thought, and sometimes disagreements can be expressed in ways that make them frustrating, but for some reason I like that people can disagree so completely on these things. Maybe it's the expression of individuality.
("The bees! Oh God, not the bees! AGGGHHH!")
Not to derail the culinary chat or anything, but did I just see someone compare DiCaprio to Nic Cage?
I would totally not put mayo on Nick Cage. Vinegar would cut the grease way better. I bet DiCaprio is pretty good with scrambled eggs.
363: Maybe I should check out other ways to make a stir-fry.
Well, I finally developed an excellent perfect no-soy fried rice recipe. Lots of Xichuan pepper and such, but not soy and it's not... dim and blanded out.
max
['The other other white meat!']
377: This is what the food wiki is for, man.
DS at 277: Also, I eat mayonnaise on everything. Everything.
I just read further up in the thread. DS puts mayonnaise on waffles, folks, so suck on that.
But look, here's how it is: we like mustard (not honey mustard or yellow mustard as much) and must take mayonnaise only very lightly. Leo DiCaprio gets a pass for having done some very good roles. So does Brad Pitt. Eggs are best scrambled, unless you have a really brilliant chef at hand. Self-consciously epic films are fine if they pull it off; they are not out of the running simply because they're epic films.
Lastly, anyone who hates olives clearly hasn't had them properly.
DS puts mayonnaise on waffles
You jest, madame, but it's fucking awesome.
I posted 379 without previewing. Gosh, I gotta cut that out.
It's possible that I like olive in all its forms, but it's also possible that I haven't had all forms yet. I only really like scrambled eggs if they're scrambled in such a way as to preserve the distinction, if not the full separation, of yolk and white. Uniform scrambled eggs are ok, but not the same. I like to eat eggs sunnyside up pessimistically.
I only really like scrambled eggs if they're scrambled in such a way as to preserve the distinction, if not the full separation, of yolk and white.
How would one go about this? As a scrambled-egg fan, this fascinates me.
Hm. Perhaps the exception that proves the rule?
I also believe that regular yellow (French's or what have you) mustard is canonical on Cuban sandwiches.
I've done it, but I don't particularly like it. If you crack the eggs into a hot pan and scramble them a little as they're cooking, you can preserve the white/yellow.
Xichuan pepper
No! Si chuan pepper. Four gorges!
P.S.
Why 379 should pack so much wisdom in a minor thread is beyond me, but pack it she does.
You break the eggs directly onto the pan instead of beating them first and the white cooks white before can all mix as a liquid. All my Taiwanese relatives cook it this way.
(I've never done this myself because I'm so lazy I don't put in the minimal effort it takes to make eggs, but this is how I remember it from when I was a kid and my sister and I would call this "popo eggs" because my grandmother always made it like this and "popo" is "grandmother".)
I've also frequently made poached scrambled eggs, which are very yummy. If you drain off the thin part of the white of the eggs before beating them, you can pour them into a swirling pot of simmering water, cover, count to 20, then drain them, dress with a little butter or oil, salt, and pepper. So fluffy, soft, and delicious.
387: Oh. Okay. I do that, usually. I've never noticed much difference between it and the results of beating the eggs beforehand.
388: Now that sounds interesting. I'll have to try that.
the results of beating the eggs beforehand.
There are even those who advocate beating the yolks and whites separately for a fluffier result. I do this with omelets, but I'm possibly just being hand-wavy.
386: Why 379 should pack so much wisdom in a minor thread is beyond me, but pack it she does.
That's parsimon for you.
It came from the NYT, in which some story was told about how the guy's wife forbade non-stick pans due to poisony attributes and he had to figure out a way to get his scrambled egg on. The draining of the thin part of the white is key or you end up with nasty floaties in the water.
I'm pretty sure what I really like is the way my relatives season the scrambled eggs, but still all yellow scrambled eggs weird me out.
I have no idea what 392 means.
This scrambling of the egg with white and yolk separate, sort of, is ... yeah, I've done that. I invariably make scrambled eggs with a bunch of stuff among 'em, though. Basically the kind of all yellow scrambled eggs that weird eb out. I'd include sauteed onions and greens in there.
In theory, I'm going to start learning the family recipes when I move to Vancouver in the fall since I'll finally be living somewhere with no shortage of Chinese markets. In practice, I might be just as lazy as I now.
395: It's praise, dear! Praise!
Yes, greens, onions, even tomatoes. Even olives. Scrambled eggs are like the friendly house party of the breakfast culinary world.
401: It's at least the very shell of one.
399: Even olives, even tomatoes, yes. Those are the eggs I make. God's gift to the kitchen, I figure.
About that praise thing, I'm embarrassed, so you will at least have to say what else you put on the damn waffles with mayonnaise to make them so awesome. Capers.
403: Peanut butter. I'm not even joking.
404: You're making me smile. Waffles with mayonnaise and peanut butter. Ah, damn, this is making me smile, and you're a good man. You should put some raspberry preserves on there. I am not joking. Just don't put salsa, okay, please?
You're talking crazy talk, Stanley. Salsa is one bridge too far, plainly.
We need nosflow or somebody to explain how peanuts, tomatoes, and emulsified lipids go together. It can be done. I just don't have the guts, myself.
I've had Asian peanut sauces with dishes containing tomatoes. Though, no mayonnaise or otherwise emulsified lipids.
Not liking homemade mayo. Weird. Have you tried using faded olive oil or mixing olive oil with a neutral oil - you avoid the bitter problem that way. What do you eat with your asparagus or artichoke. Hardboiled eggs - sprinkle with some good salt and fresh ground pepper and munch. Especially good with really fresh eggs. But not with mayo, that's a bit redundant. For poached eggs use a microwave. Crack an egg into a glass with some water, nuke and presto, perfect poached egg.
Saying that things "should be banned" should be banned.
but when he meets a new gf and there is some possibility of a new life and love, he can't stand it and kills himself in the bathtub full of ice water, i thought how strange way to die, then maybe he needed to amplify his pain
No, he needed a way to preserve his organs for donation. This much I know from the trailer.
411: There is no should. Either ban or do not ban.
403 Yay piperade! (The ham and croutons are totally superfluous IMO.)
This comment mandates that self-referential comments are not to be read.
400-402: Get a room, you two. In the Catskills.
organ donation, that explains it, hm my deductionist powers are so limited
i was thinking just cardioplegia, hypothermia, a smart way to die
hopefully he donated not to the new gf, now i recall she was sick and getting operated, coz that would be horrible, to the recipient to know that it's from a dear one and through a suicide
When I want ketchup, I want Heinz,
I have lately found a new favorite ketchup; one of the first organic ketchups that I've tried with a genuinely pleasing flavor balance.
But I almost never eat ketchup, so you shouldn't take my opinion too seriously.
For a non-soy stir fry, I've been making a variation on scallion chicken lately that is very tasty.
I chop chicken thighs, cook them with salt and ginger. Then remove from the pan, and using the fat/liquids from the chicken add, in order, more salt and gnger (cook for 3-4 minutes), sliced carrots, diced green onion. When that's cooked add frozen peas and the chicken and cook until they've been brought up to temperature and serve over rice.
It's a very clean flavor, with the salt, ginger, and chicken fat as the primary elements.
No, he needed a way to preserve his organs for donation. This much I know from the trailer.
Also a way to make sure his organs were filled with venom.
Especially good with really fresh eggs.
Except for the part where it is really, really hard to peel truly fresh hard-boiled eggs and you end up losing bits of your egg.
even if to put the eggs into the cold water? i'm not sure about freshness of the eggs, never tried it like directly from under the hen so to speak
but it was usually easy to peel boiled eggs if to put it into cold water after boiling
i recalled my friends' 7-8 yo daughter helped her mother to bring a bottle of vine from the refridgerator, so when the bottle was brought into the warm room its bottom cracked and fell off
the daughter had so quick reaction that she immediately turned the bottle upside down and no vine was spilled at all, really amazing for the small kid
i'd let it spill all over the place perhaps
i think it means the vine was frozen or bottled with some air or the bottle glass was just the cracking fragile kind, the vine itself was pretty delicious, though i can't tell any difference between the vines, just because it was cold maybe
Yes, truly fresh eggs are very difficult to peel when hard boiled.
Peeling eggs is so fey. Just eat the whole thing!
Peeling eggs is so fey. Just eat the whole thing!
That was Tripp's theory
Yes, truly fresh eggs are very difficult to peel when hard boiled.
it changes the way they bake too.
people are mostly accustomed to eggs > 1 month old if I'm remembering the shipping stats correctly. Eggs only a few days old are very different.
423, 426:
I was so pleased when I started getting eggs from my CSA that I decided that of course one of the things that I should do to truly experience the pure eggness of the fresh beauties was to eat them hard-boiled. Such a frustrating experience! It also marked a degree of ignorance about eggs that has since been remedied through extensive reading.
I get really really fresh eggs and have had good luck with the following method:
Cover the eggs in water and put them on medium high but not blasting heat. Once the water reaches a full boil cover the pan and take it off the heat. Let sit for about five to ten minutes, then plunge the eggs into a bowl full of ice cubes and water. Let them completely cool.
After that treatment they usually peel pretty easily (if you start on the larger end that's usually where the air pocket is and you can get under the membrane easily), although there is still the occasional stubborn one that peels horribly.
419: with the salt, ginger, and chicken fat as the primary elements
The vegetarians among us are nodding politely here, Nick.
429: Thanks! I had come up with a method similar but yours sounds a bit more effective. I find that I generally end up with at least a few eggs sitting around for a few weeks, which are generally my candidates for the hard-boiling. (Since I'm never doing this on a large scale, it works out).
The vegetarians among us are nodding politely here, Nick.
Yeah, it really wouldn't be the same as a vegetarian meal.
Along the same lines, one other ingredient I commonly use in soy-sauce free is a touch of this. They do make a vegetarian version, I wonder if that would contribute richness to a stir-fry sauce.
Never mind, I see that does contain soy sauce as an ingredient (though, probably in relatively small amounts), so it doesn't get you a soy-free sauce.
The vegetarians among us are nodding politely here, Nick.
Are you saying that chicken fat is an unclean flavor, or something?
434: I remember you veggie-baiting at UnfoggeDCon I, ben. It's not a particularly interesting or attractive trait, and you've got so little else going for you that I would kindly advise you to cut it out.
Let's not allow this thread to descend into schmaltziness.
435 came across harsher and less avuncular than intended. Were it not for minne's wise admonition in 436, I would express my fondness for neb in florid terms.
I remember you veggie-baiting at UnfoggeDCon I
Really? I don't remember this. Anyway I wasn't baiting parsi, or anyway not intentionally; I wouldn't have thought, for one thing, that it was because she finds the flavors muddy that she's a vegetarian in the first place.
438: Somehow I doubt your ingenuousness, young neb.
435: Aw hell, what's that all about? neb's defensive about what are, by all accounts, his excellent cooking skillz, which involve meat and its various byproducts. That's okay; nobody here hates on the meat or the chicken fat. Just don't partake, that's all.
440: Just as some meat benefits from being pounded with a hammer, our neb needs to occasionally be given shit in order to bring out his best qualities.
In other words, parsimon is banned.
I'm not being defensive (he said defensively, but at least about something different), and I really was being ingenuous.
I wouldn't have thought, for one thing, that it was because she finds the flavors muddy that she's a vegetarian in the first place.
Actually, it partially is. I'm not a complete vegetarian anyway. I eat chicken and fish on occasion when out. I love fish. But I'm not big on fattiness in foods. "Muddiness" would be one way to describe that. I just really enjoy what I think of as, experience as, the cleanness of a lentil salad, over, say, a chicken salad made with mayonnaise.
That's not to say that when I had excellently prepared venison a year ago or so, I didn't rave.
I'm not being defensive
I've never noticed you being defensive about your cooking either.
and I really was being ingenuous.
I find this implausible.
some meat benefits from being pounded with a hammer
I find this implausible.
Really? About what do you think I was being disingenuous? That I don't remember having done what you say I did, or that I wasn't baiting parsimon?
Looking back at that thread, I seem to have been a lot more clever then.
Apparently losing your virginity has robbed you of your power.
Apparently losing your virginity has robbed you of your power.
It certainly led to a vast reduction in the amount of time I spend commenting on Unfogged.
the cleanness of a lentil salad, over, say, a chicken salad made with mayonnaise.
I think it's the mayonnaise, not the chicken that makes that less clean (I am strongly on the anti-mayonnaise side).
fwiw: "better-than-bouillon" really, really isn't. It's not even close.
Really? About what do you think I was being disingenuous? That I don't remember having done what you say I did, or that I wasn't baiting parsimon?
Parsi says, "Maybe I should check out other ways to make a stir-fry."
NickS provides a recipe involving chicken.
Parsi says, "The vegetarians among us are nodding politely here, Nick."
To me, it's pretty clear that parsimon was pointing out that a recipe involving meat wasn't what she was looking for, because it involves meat, which she, generally, does not partake of.
Apparently your mileage varied in an ingenuous manner, but I thought you were just trying to be clever by pretending that her objection was to the flavor as opposed to the fact that meat was involved.
449: Right, agreed. It's a question of approaches to the food: there's a whole family of foods that lean somewhat heavily on fat (chicken fat too, sorry), and there's another family that doesn't. I'll favor the latter, and it tends to be vegetarian. Personal preference. My palate is trained this way now.
OT, the dumbass radio commentator insists on telling us that it's an absolutely beautiful day out there, full sunny skies, 95 degrees. Dude, stop perpetuating this myth that 95 is "beautiful." It's way too hot, okay?
If parsimon didn't say she wanted a vegetarian recipe, she shouldn't have been annoyed when she got a non-vegetarian recipe.
454: parsimon's 430 didn't come across as annoyed to me. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Parsi says, "Maybe I should check out other ways to make a stir-fry."
Ah, you see, I hadn't read that.
Dude, stop perpetuating this myth that 95 is "beautiful." It's way too hot, okay?
Agreed.
fwiw: "better-than-bouillon" really, really isn't. It's not even close.
Compared to which bullion? It's better than the bullion that I've tried.
Penzey's soup bases are tasty.
I will have to try that at some point.
whole family of foods that lean somewhat heavily on fat (chicken fat too, sorry)
No apologies necessary. For myself, I have been consciously trying to add more dishes to my repertoire that have noticeable salt of fat flavors, because I had an embarrassing tendency to cook simple things for myself, and then go out when I wanted "a treat." At some point I decided that I would be well served to prepare more "treat" recipes for myself, so I could more easily separate them impulse of "I want a style of food that I don't cook myself" from "I want something with indulgent salt/fat flavors" as reasons to eat out.
454: I wasn't annoyed. People cook with meat. I know that.
I had an embarrassing tendency to cook simple things for myself, and then go out when I wanted "a treat."
I wouldn't say I was ever embarrassed by it, but my lifestyle certainly tended this way for a while. I've largely avoided it lately by living in a place where going out isn't really an option, but I suspect I'll be back to something like it when I go off to school in the fall.
Compared to which bullion? It's better than the bullion that I've tried.
Ah, I should remember that USian usage is only the cubes right? I'm used to the word meaning a real broth. Even a half assed job of that is much better.
In the former case (bouillon cubes), they are nearly universally dreadful. But then again, so are essentially all store-bought stocks, so it's a bit of a wash. The "better-than" brand is roughly middling at best in my experience. I was fairly disappointed on trying it. Depends a lot what you're using it for, how much damage that does.
Some of the Penzey's stuff isn't bad, actually, as AWB pointed out. I'll try and dig out some names of other sucks-less alternatives.
Ah, you see, I hadn't read that.
Well I hope you've learned a valuable lesson from this episode, neb.
I'm assuming sb stands for soup biscuit? At first I was thinking Standpipe Bridgeplate, but the style didn't seem right.
If it is soup biscuit, he's changed his punctuation style.
461:
You guys are so fucking cute. Right, so, carry on. Um, over and out.
I wouldn't say I was ever embarrassed by it
I wasn't generally embarrassed about it, but it is certainly an embarrassment to any claims of foodie-ness (which I don't actually make all that often).
Depends a lot what you're using it for, how much damage that does.
I don't generally use it to make broth, I use it as an additive for things like a stir-fry sauce where I mostly want to add salt, and some additional flavor as well.
I've also used it a bit of that as a flavoring when frying tofu. I wouldn't want it to be a dominant flavor, but I think of it as a better version of "seasoning salt."
That doesn't sound like soup biscuit at all.
I haven't bought soup base in quite a few years, as it's much cheaper and tastier to make broth out of veg trimmings, but doing so apparently makes some people outraged. My mom watched me make risotto this way once and I had to kick her out of the kitchen. Half an onion! Wasted on broth! The ends of celery! Wasted on broth! The butt of a carrot!! WASTED! Etc.
If it is soup biscuit, he's changed his punctuation style.
I noticed that, which is why I'm unsure.
That doesn't sound like soup biscuit at all.
Does so.
No, I already knew you're a jackass, motch.
Some lessons need constant reinforcing, neb.
The ends of celery! Wasted on broth! The butt of a carrot!! WASTED!
What, pray tell, did she think you ought to be doing with the bits that people generally throw out?
"better-than"
Definitely not `soup biscuit.'
Does so.
Totally does not. You cannot be serious.
Stop fighting!
THERE ARE STARVING CHILDREN IN KOREA THAT WOULD CLAW YOUR EYES OUT FOR THAT CARROT BUTT.
471: Who the hell knows? I think she felt I was trimming my veg awfully wastefully to get bits for broth, which is true. But making broth is not a waste of food!
474: THEY'LL HAVE BROTH AND THEY'LL LIKE IT.
466: Ironically, this post is what got NickS's name turned in to the dread Velveeta Avengers. They had checked his home cooking style and had decided to let him take a pass.
472: See 469. Anyway, he dropped by a couple of days ago and said he was too busy for anything but flyby comments until sometime next month. So maybe he's also too busy to do that punctuation thing he does. Also, the non-US thing plus interest in and knowledge of cooking . . .
So yeah, I'm serious.
I use it as an additive for things like a stir-fry sauce where I mostly want to add salt
Well, if you want to add salt, use Better Than Bullion, because it's really freaking salty. It's okay maybe for augmenting a weak stock, but otherwise it's mostly good for making your sodium levels go through the roof.
"give him a pass" is what I meant.
479: Well, alright. I guess sb can change his commenting style if he wants to.
482: What is it about the style that strikes you as so uncharacteristic?
483: I'm off in a minute, but this at 460:
In the former case (bouillon cubes), they are nearly universally dreadful. But then again, so are essentially all store-bought stocks, so it's a bit of a wash. The "better-than" brand is roughly middling at best in my experience. I was fairly disappointed on trying it
There's high-handed brit-sounding terminology there. "dreadful," "a bit of a wash," "roughly middling."
I don't have a big stake in this, nor should anyone, I imagine. soup biscuit was most recognizable for his typos and slightly headlong way of writing. This doesn't sound that way. But he's also said that he just didn't/doesn't bother to edit, so if he edits, maybe he sounds like that.
And what you say in 479 makes sense.
Penzey's soup bases are tasty.
I just placed a small order with Penzeys.
When it shows up I'll be curious to see how it compares with the spices from world spice which I am quite fond of.
