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[CortJstr]

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.

[jaydub]

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.

[CortJstr]

He writes a shared-universe series called The 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.

[robot_god]

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.

[wombat]

I don't know about Tarentino, but Ben-San needs to come round here more often.

[KeithHernandez]

Yeah, the naysayers are right, but that doesn't mean it isn't also awesome.

[theinevitable]

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.

[Golfhaus]

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.

[Doc]

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?

[colmore]

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*

[theinevitable]

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.

[Arachno-capitalist]

Saying overrated is so overrated.

[colmore]

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.

[littlefallsmets]

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.

[Enkidu]

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.