The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board
Achewood => Achewood => Topic started by: CortJstr on February 07, 2008, 01:52:57 pm
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http://www.achewood.com/index.php?date=02072008
I'm always happy to seen Roomba movie re-enactments but I was never all that crazy about Pulp Fiction. For which I caught no end of flack in 9th grade.
Their hair and Beef's mustache are pretty tight, though.
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I LOLed pretty hard on this one. French people are just plain silly.
Also, weren't we all supposed to die of bird flu like 5 years ago or something? What ever happened to that?
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I'm always happy to seen Roomba movie re-enactments but I was never all that crazy about Pulp Fiction. For which I caught no end of flack in 9th grade.
Dammit, and I thought you were cool.
Bacon tastes goooood. Pork chops taste goooooooood.
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I like Pulp Fiction, but I think a lot of people don't see how silly it is sometimes, they're just like, "OMG, masterpiece!" This strip riffs on the silliness a little, that's all.
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I went through the same thing with Jurassic Park in middle school. Both are fine flicks, but for not claiming them as the best ever I was shunned. I was also pretty tired of hearing the Pulp Fiction soundtrack every fricking day.
Now Rent I thought was all but unwatchable. That opinion practically got me ejected from drama.
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You know what else is OK but is definitely not the damn best picture of all dime? Donnie Darko. Sheesh, I caught flack for that one in frikkin' college.
Bird Flu are a hardcore band in Athens, Georgia. They're fun, but I think we're safe.
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I wonder if Teodore can dance on the Roomba.
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Tragically- or fortunately - I have never seen Pulp Fiction, so I don't get this at all.
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Tragically- or fortunately - I have never seen Pulp Fiction, so I don't get this at all.
And you've never even heard reference to the Royal with Cheese conversation? Come on, the Simpsons did a bit about that with Krustyburgers.
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That does sound vaguely familiar now that you mention it but I wouldn't have known it was from Pulp Fiction. Wasn't that a movie where they shoot a lot of people? Why would they be talking about hamburgers in France?
I don't watch the Simpsons enough either so that doesn't help.
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Yeah, "Pulp Fiction" is a decent movie but it is heavily overrated.
The direction and the dialogue are top-notch and some of the character moments are really quite awesome but... there's a whole lot of hipster-pop-culture-douchery and violence-worship in the mix there to counter-act the really good bits.
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It's Quentin Tarantino. Quirky dialog and ultraviolence are like his trade marks.
Vincent: You know what the funniest thing about Europe is?
Jules: What?
Vincent: It's the little differences. I mean they got the same shit over there that they got here, but it's just - it's just there it's a little different.
Jules: Examples?
Vincent: Alright, well you can walk into a movie theater in Amsterdam and buy a beer. And I don't mean just like in no paper cup, I'm talking about a glass of beer. And in Paris, you can buy a beer at McDonald's. And you know what they call a, uh, a Quarter Pounder with Cheese in Paris?
Jules: They don't call it a Quarter Pounder with Cheese?
Vincent: Nah, man, they got the metric system, they wouldn't know what the fuck a Quarter Pounder is.
Jules: What do they call it?
Vincent: They call it a "Royale with Cheese."
Jules: "Royale with Cheese."
Vincent: Thats right.
Jules: What do they call a Big Mac?
Vincent: A Big Mac's a Big Mac, but they call it "Le Big Mac."
Jules: "Le Big Mac." [laughs] What do they call a Whopper?
Vincent: I dunno, I didn't go into Burger King. But, you know what they put on french fries in Holland instead of ketchup?
Jules: What?
Vincent: Mayonnaise.
Jules: God damn!
Vincent: I seen 'em do it, man, they fuckin' drown 'em in that shit.
Jules: That's some fucked up shit.
I also just noticed that the alt text says both "edged out" and "landslide." Aren't those antonyms?
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Yeah, that's kinda the thing. I'm not much of a Tarantino fan at all and... in some of the circles I've moved in at points of my life, I might as well have two heads to say that.
There's no doubt that he's a talented screenwriter and a solid director but... instead of making good movies pretty well, he likes taking awful ideas and awful genres remaking them really well. Arthouse versions of direct-to-video crap.
In "Pulp Fiction" there were these... hints of the talented filmmaker rising above all the chopsocky bangbang quip-quip bullshit and those were the parts of Pulp Fiction I really quite liked... and then the rest was a bunch of people talking about ALF and shooting each other in the balls or whatever.
Basically, I only like Tarantino's stuff when he isn't being Tarantino.
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That does sound vaguely familiar now that you mention it but I wouldn't have known it was from Pulp Fiction. Wasn't that a movie where they shoot a lot of people? Why would they be talking about hamburgers in France?
By my rough count, they shoot four people. Whether that constitutes "a lot" probably depends on how many action movies you watch.
I love Pulp Fiction. I know it has its flaws, but it's one of those movies that when I'm surfing past Encore and it's on, I end up watching it just about every time.
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There's no doubt that he's a talented screenwriter and a solid director but... instead of making good movies pretty well, he likes taking awful ideas and awful genres remaking them really well. Arthouse versions of direct-to-video crap.
We postulate first that some people enjoy the usually-done-poorly ideas and genres which Tarantino enjoys remaking, and moreover that they are neither idiots nor bad people for doing so. This may be difficult for some of us, but it is a necessary step.
Next, we imagine that in our own favorite genres or conceits, most directors do not put much effort into their films. This will be easier for some of us than others depending on what one's favorite genre might be.
Now we imagine how we would feel if told that, because that genre is usually done badly, the directors who put effort into it are wasting their time and should be doing something else. Or, perhaps, we imagine that a director has started to put effort and talent into films of this genre without doing that thing where someone unfamiliar with the genre creates a movie superficially within the genre but substantially of another genre so as to get mainstream reviewers praising you as the first person to do well with the genre ever. (cf. reviews in mainstream publications whenever a Real Novelist works on a superhero comic book and addresses issues that she's absolutely sure she's the first writer ever to address in comics because, y'know, she's a Real Novelist.)
Anyhow, this is how the Tarantino fans I know feel about him: that he's a director who is applying directing ability to usually-poorly-implemented genres they like in a non-deconstructive and non-hostile-to-the-fans-of-those-movies fashion.
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Ben, can'd.
This is exactly how I feel about Steven Erikson books. Fantasy writing is on the whole so poor that the genre has a stigma. but he's a dude that can put down words that I don't feel ashamed for reading and have to seriously pay attention to. Now if only they could find a cover artist with the same talents.
His next book is due out next month and I'm getting all antsy waiting.
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Color me intrigued, Cort. I may have to check that author out. I'm getting tired of reading yet another book about spunky detectives tracking down serial killers.
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He writes a shared-universe series called The Malazan Book of the Fallen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malazan_Book_of_the_Fallen). So far the other author, Ian Cameron Esslemont, hasn't had his book published in the US yet.
Canada and the UK are 1-2 books ahead of the US because for a couple of years no US publisher would touch it because it was too smart for fantasy writing. Apparently they think we all want another 300 DragonLance knock-offs.
Personally I really like that there are no real villains. In book 1 (Gardens of the Moon) for example you have an imperial army on its way to lay siege to an independent city. The focus keeps shifting from the army to the city's inhabitants so you find yourself sympathizing with both sides. A lot of people decide that the Empress (who never appears in this book) must be the villain, for ordering the army forcibly take more territory, but later books might change your mind.
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Tragically- or fortunately - I have never seen Pulp Fiction, so I don't get this at all.
All these haters have a point, Pulp Fiction is overrated, but the first time you see that movie: it is amazing.
The first time I saw that movie: I was amazed.
edit: oh yeah, also: this strip is awesome.
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I don't know about Tarentino, but Ben-San needs to come round here more often.
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Yeah, the naysayers are right, but that doesn't mean it isn't also awesome.
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probably one of my least favorite things in the world is when people call things overrated. The degree of "I know what is good and you don't" that it implies makes me want to puke feces all over them.
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But how do you get it in your... never mind.
This is a fine strip. I will laugh every time I see someone comedically use "Sacre bleu!" It is a weakness.
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Yeah Pulp Fiction isn't the greatest movie of all time but that's hardly a total slam of it. I know exactly what I'm getting into with Tarantino movies and I am more than happy to pay the price of admission because there are very few people doing what he does with the money and credibility (slightly questionable these days maybe) to do it well. Sometimes it feels like it's basically just him and Robert Rodriguez.
I think people (read: studios) forgot for a while that action/crime movies do not (and often should not) need to be family friendly and the kind of new wave of film makers epitomised by Tarantino made them remember it. I got to reading wikipedia pages about Max Payne last night, a video game about an undercover cop infiltrating a drug running mafia family/conspiracy corporation in a gritty film noir setting. According to whoever bought the movie rights they want to make a PG13 picture. Come on fellas, you're losing your heads.
Also: I like snappy dialogue, even if it is contrived.
But how do you get it in your... never mind.
2inev1cup?
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I think you're interpreting "overrated" a bit incorrectly. I don't really see how it casts more judgement on another individual's taste than "good" or "bad" do (in the sense that they too will agree or disagree with what the other person thinks). In context, if the word is being used properly, both the speaker and the audience are aware of the general judgement of the work in question by the received voice of some (usually implied) community. So if everyone thinks it's an 11 and you assert that it's merely and 8, "overrated" doesn't carry much more weight or judgement than just saying "it's an 8." With good / bad, you're judging relative to points of abstract ideal, with underrated / overrated your judging relative to what you believe some group consensus to be. This isn't snobbish by default unless you always think the opinion "my minority opinion is in fact more correct in some sense than a majority opinion" is snobbish.
For instance, if I believed the general consensus out there (not on this board, going into a fans' den and yelling "overrated" is a jackass move) to be "achewood is THE best comic strip of all time." I would say "no, it's on the very short list of best webcomics, and one of the more innovative serial comics on or offline from the past ten years or so, but going back over the entire history of the medium, it does have its betters." Or in fewer words "These people are out of hand, achewood is a bit overrated."
Most overrated things are in fact very good. Just not nearly as good as people who won't pull their nose more than three inches away from it declare them to be. Barack Obama, for instance. *and now he runs*
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it is mostly the attitude with which it is typically said.
and the fact that when I hear it, it's always such as "The Velvet Underground are overrated" or even JESUS CHRIST "the Beatles are overrated" and I get into a huge argument with the person.
It seems like a lot of the time (not necessarily this one, you guys know your shit) when people call things overrated, they lack context and are looking at it in retrospect. "Shakespeare is overrated" is another favorite of mine. Last semester a kid in one of my classes said that Plato wasn't a very good writer.
So I guess it isn't this particular instance. But typically I shy away from saying things that other people who are knowledgable think are important are Bad or Overrated if I don't like them. I just say, "I don't like them." People really like The Rolling Stones? That's nice. I'm sure they are really great, as they have influenced so many other bands, were apparently very influential at the time, etc. But they don't do anything for me except maybe once a year when I listen to Satisfaction or Jumping Jack Flash. Same thing, to a lesser degree, with Metal. Just doesn't do anything for me, but I can accept that it has some kind of value because... um... it's really complicated sometimes? and has influenced other music that I like.
Basically, I guess really it's a reaction to the part of me that thinks I am the only person who knows what is good. I try to avoid being that guy, and instead simply say whether I like or do not like something.
But also, I like Quentin Tarantino. I think he took a lot of elements that were entertaining from Horrible movies, and movies that are good but only in a very narrow sense, and put them together with things that are characteristic of "SERIOUS FILM" or whatever. I think it's interesting and worthwhile.
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Saying overrated is so overrated.
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I dunno. I'd still go with the Beatles and Velvet Underground being overrated. By some at least. There is a limit to the amount of hyperbole that can be thrown upon a pop group. Even very good pop groups and very creative ones. This has little to do with the fact that along with Sonic Youth, this rounds out my list of three favorite white performing groups.
Underrated is more interesting. Bo Diddley is underrated. There would be no garage rock without Bo. Nor half of classic rock for that matter. No Velvet Underground (also see the bridge from "Peggy Sue") and no Stooges. No punk. No 80s. Of course, I'm exaggerating a bit. Like Beatles fans do. This stuff would have found a way to be invented. Maybe later and by different people. There's more of a point to Beatles and Dylan hyperbole in that, Rock and Roll really could have been a passing fad, and without some pioneering attention being drawn back to the medium, soul music (say) could have dominated the 60s -- more than it did, if you look at the charts, rock was really only one piece of the 60s. Once the collective creative energy of the entire collegiate english speaking world was being applied to rock and roll, I don't think there were many innovations that wouldn't have happened naturally. The world did not hinge on the Beatles' every single activity. But in 1963 - 1966 a lot of people heard the Beatles and Dylan said "OK, my friends and I need to do this." Most things since then have been occasionally amazing, but not essential in the same degree.
I guess there's two spirits of "overrated." 1) In my judgement, a popular opinion is a bit off. and 2) GOD! It's so irritating that everyone likes this! Listen to what I like!
Like "ironic" and a lot of slang. It's a word that begins to say more about some group of people who use it than the intended definition of the word itself.
Tarantino is to filmmaking what Prince Paul and the Dust Brothers were to music production. Which is to say, not nearly everything, but certainly a lot, especially if you're considering modern film in and of itself, and not directly against 100 years of history. Tarantino is a lot more overrated if you're pitting him against Welles et. al. than if you aren't.
So yeah, I'm one of those people who may know way too much about this kind of stuff. But I don't believe that any aspect of taste is objective, not even harmony vs. disharmony (listen to field recordings of pre-agrarian societies - it's a real mixed bag), but rather a slow invention by society at large. I can't imagine anyone not liking Duke Ellington (over 5 decades of recording and more of performing and he did almost no wrongs) but what we can't imagine in other people is more an indicator of our social conditioning than what is and is not possible or even legitimate.
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To be fair, the glorification of gun violence is one of my irrational trip-switches.
It is one thing if a dude hunts for food or keeps a shotgun locked up in the closet because he lives in a bad neighborhood or in the country where he might have to take down a wild thing to protect his pets or whatever.
It is another thing when the protagonists are cracking wise about the Brady Bunch and blowing dudes heads off and lookin' cool doing it in slow motion.
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And you've never even heard reference to the Royal with Cheese conversation? Come on, the Simpsons did a bit about that with Krustyburgers.
The one I always remember is from when cartoon network did short interstitials of famous cartoon characters doing famous scenes from contemporary movies. Shaggy (from Scooby Doo) and Droopy (the dog, from old Tex Avery cartoons) driving in a red convertible . . . hey whadayaknow, I found it. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoxAqotfA6I)
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Oh, see, I think that the Beatles were on a completely different plane from any other musical group I have heard, ever. Everything they made is Golden.
They could have recorded a fart, and put some piano and guitar behind it, and I would want to listen to that song, I think.
I realize this is maybe ridiculous, but the number of times I have listened to some old Beatles' song and freaked the FUCK out about how good it was is... overwhelming.
I actually do this thing where I have different... I don't even know what the word is, but I think of certain bands in ways so different from other bands that I can't even compare them. The Beatles are one of those bands.
which reminds me, we had that argument before where I was saying the Clash are not punk, and about a month later I finally realized what I was trying to say.
The Clash were not punk, in the same way the Beatles were not a Merseybeat group (I had to look this term up).
"White Riot" is punk. "Love me Do" is Merseybeat.
"Spanish Bombs" is not punk. "A Day in the Life" is not Merseybeat.
But both of those groups grew so much beyond their original sound that just calling them Punk or Merseybeat is missing what made them great. This is what I think I was trying to say.
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in the same way the Beatles were not a Merseybeat group (I had to look this term up).
Huh. Edu-fuck*ng-cation.
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I caught Casablanca on the big screen, some 10 years ago.
Afterwards I was asked what I thought. "It was ok. It was pretty cliché."
It seems like a lot of the time (not necessarily this one, you guys know your shit) when people call things overrated, they lack context and are looking at it in retrospect. "Shakespeare is overrated" is another favorite of mine. Last semester a kid in one of my classes said that Plato wasn't a very good writer.
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The one I always remember is from when cartoon network did short interstitials of famous cartoon characters doing famous scenes from contemporary movies. Shaggy (from Scooby Doo) and Droopy (the dog, from old Tex Avery cartoons) driving in a red convertible . . . hey whadayaknow, I found it. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoxAqotfA6I)
"In Morocco, Morocco Mole is just called 'Mole.'" HELLS YES
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I caught Casablanca on the big screen, some 10 years ago.
Afterwards I was asked what I thought. "It was ok. It was pretty cliché."
I hate it when I watch/read/etc something that started a cliché and can't really get into. Because I'm familiar with the followers all I can think of are things that the imitators improved on or elements that seem lame because they've been done to death since.
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And if you don't really watch for what other movies *weren't* doing at the time, Citizen Kane is a really good fictional biography, but a little heavy handed, and only so well acted. Touch of Evil is probably a better fit for modern audiences.
Overrated/Underrated. Citizen Kane is pretty well rated as among the most important popular American movies and also having a lot of merit in the way that is judged for movies of its day. But that doesn't mean anyone has to like it. Or Plato (who is frequently translated to be very dry). Or the Beatles. Or what anyone puts up in any art gallery. Or Achewood. Or anything. If you disagree with a widely held critical belief, you likely place your aesthetic priorities in a different place than those critics do. Since it's all, at its root, faulty logic based on unprovable assumptions, don't worry about the taste of authorities.
And don't worry about the taste of some nerd whose area of geeking out happens to overlap in one or two places with your music collection. And don't worry when that nerd says, perhaps with even a bunch of little references and nerdy little arguments that something is SO great and nobody has heard of it and everyone should. They're really just flipping out over finding a new song they like, like anyone else, they just happen to be saying "oh I think this is so great" in music nerd talk. Probably even if they dress too alt-fancy and live in Williamsburg, Austin, or Portland.
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I hate it when I watch/read/etc something that started a cliché and can't really get into. Because I'm familiar with the followers all I can think of are things that the imitators improved on or elements that seem lame because they've been done to death since.
I'm that way with the Rolling Stones and Weird Al polka covers.