• Most new users don't bother reading our rules. Here's the one that is ignored almost immediately upon signup: DO NOT ASK FOR FANEDIT LINKS PUBLICLY. First, read the FAQ. Seriously. What you want is there. You can also send a message to the editor. If that doesn't work THEN post in the Trade & Request forum. Anywhere else and it will be deleted and an infraction will be issued.
  • If this is your first time here please read our FAQ and Rules pages. They have some useful information that will get us all off on the right foot, especially our Own the Source rule. If you do not understand any of these rules send a private message to one of our staff for further details.
  • Please read our Rules & Guidelines

    Read BEFORE posting Trades & Request

Is our collective palate too refined?

D

Dethryl

Well-known member
Messages
164
Reaction score
0
Trophy Points
16
The question is, bluntly, do we in this community have too high standards for the movies we watch? Is there ANY satisfying us?

This is something I've discovered in myself in the world of fanfiction. I've read so many stories that it's hard to find one that I think is good and worth my time. Even when I go back to the original source material, I find myself just as critical. I start analyzing it and pulling it apart and not enjoying it. It's spilled over into other fandoms, and I can't just enjoy something for what it is, but I'm looking for ways it could be improved. I often say that I have a finely-honed crap detector.

I've tried to find a source for this quote, and I may be garbling it a bit. "I pity the true connoisseur who has trained and refined his palate to the point where he enjoys almost nothing."

What say you? I see people who've just walked out of the movie theatre hop on here and start talking about fanediting The Hobbit or Prometheus (not having seen either one, I can't say how justified that is, just using these as examples). Is there any satisfying you? What was the last theatrical movie you actually enjoyed?
 
Dethryl said:
What was the last theatrical movie you actually enjoyed?
Click to expand...

Prometheus
Dredd
Django Unchained
Lawless
Dark Knight Rises
 
Prometheus, DREDD, Dark Knight Rises were ones I also enjoyed when coming out of the theater.
 
Beasts of the Southern Wild - I couldn't stop smiling
 
I'm quite the opposite I guess: I most of the time enjoy (or not) the movies I see at the theater for what they are.

A: because I choose what I'm going to see according to my taste (stories, actors, directors, genre, etc) so there's always "something" I like. I know it's not very open minded... but money is money. (Long gone is the time when you could go with blind eyes to watch a movie just because the poster was cool.)
B: I'm not a blind appologist but I usualy try to understand the motivations of the filmakers when I don't like something. My first reaction is not "Damn I would have done it differently" ( it's sometime my second reaction, after the movie, I admit, but it does not prevent me to enjoy the show.).
C: I can very easily disconnect my brain... and so enjoy The Last Stand very much, for example!
D: To me fanediting is a cool hobby, but it's also a real "work" sometime. But when I watch a movie in a theater I'm not "at work".
E: I'm like everyone, some scenes can make my eyes roll, I can be bored. But that's just it. I'm not planning anything in my mind to change what's playing in front of my eyes.
F: I'm usualy editing movies that interest me in their original forms anyway. I can't spend months working on a movie I really don't like. So I guess that's also why I don't bother fanediting anything in my head while watching a movie for the first time. Ideas for a fanedit come after.
 
the last movie i saw in a theater was G.I.Joe. after that let down i vowed to stop paying to see a movie in the theater no matter how good i think it's going to be. unless i get a part-time job at a theater and can see them for free.
instead, i saved up for some fairly decent speakers and a tv and rent and watch whatever i want for a buck or two.
i've noticed i relax more when i watch something and it doesn't bother me as much if i end up not liking it.
but i know exactly what Deth is talking about. which makes it that much more amazing when i do see a film that completely blows my socks off.
(not necessarily a "great film" but as long as i totally like it. Looper for example. really liked it, wouldn't change anything.)
(Dark Knight Rises, it was nice, but i got really bored.)
 
agree with TMBTM - try not to "mindfanedit" too much or see fanedits as a sort of "bugfix" to iron out some things that bothered me, you only get frustrated and nitpicky if you follow that line :D
 
Let's see, out of all the films I've seen from last semester until now...(takes a deep breath)...Dredd, Frankenweenie, Seven Psychopaths, Cloud Atlas (both times), Wreck-It-Ralph, Skyfall, Lincoln, The Hobbit, Django Unchained, and Warm Bodies. Only films I didn't enjoy were Hotel Transylvania (only saw that to support Genndy Tartokovsky), Rise of the Guardians (I actuallly liked that one, but then I forgot it after a week) and Looper and Zero Dark Thirty (didn't enjoy these when I left, but I acknowledged they were well made, plus there's been so much going on in life that I've got to re-evaluate everything).

EDIT: Oh, and Gangster Squad. Played out like a dark and gritty reboot of Dick Tracey. Don't need to see that movie again anytime soon.
 
Tis true - I was a speech and drama student at high school, and I found it really hard to just sit back and enjoy a theatre production without analysing it to death. Same thing can happen with movies very easily - I've deliberately steered myself away from being overly critical!
 
I enjoy most movies for what they are. I only have the urge to edit stuff that I want to watch multiple times anyway, and the older I get, the smaller that list gets.
 
TV's Frink said:
I only have the urge to edit stuff that I want to watch multiple times anyway, and the older I get, the smaller that list gets.
Click to expand...
Very true. The older you get the less you bother rewatching most of the movies, even some of the ones you liked. I don't know why exactly, maybe it's just because you begin to realize that time is precious (!)


A bit off topic but:
I also wanted to add to what I said before that even if I like most of the movies I saw in theater this past year, I rarely enjoy them the way I enjoyed movies when I was a kid (I guess that's the same for everyone). Sometime I think it's because we don't have our "child's eyes" anymore and sometime I do think it's because the sens of wonder of movies from the 70's/80's was better. The stories were more original (or at least they did not fear to go silly and imaginative) and each new special effects made impression on everyone because it really was something new and unseen. A bit like in the video games: each year you had amazing technical progress. Today, even if there ARE great technical progress, everyone is just saying "good CG stuff" or "bad CG stuff" and that's it. The good thing is that I think hollywood is now forced to understand that stories and good characters ARE the real special effects now. Big budget movies will not make impression anymore because low budget movies can afford good special effects more and more. So in the end I think imagination and storytelling will win...
And I know I should not, but I can't help hoping that Star Wars 7 will learn that lesson.
 
I used to suffer from this when I first got into fanediting, then after about a year or two I realised that I was purposely ruining one of my favourite hobbies. I gave myself a good talking to and now enjoy most movies I go and see.

The only thing I really must insist on is an interesting and/or original story; which is why I watch so much Korean, Japanese and European cinema.

I only ever get the urge now when the movie I'm watching is crap, but since my I tend to choose my movies more carefully these days I rarely suffer from it.
 
^ Aye. I like nearly everything I see, mainly because I'm very careful about what I risk wasting my time on. I pretty much never Netflix a disc, much less buy a ticket, to something I haven't read/skimmed several reviews and checked the Metacritic score of. As a result, and thanks to the mind-boggling freedom of sampling that Netflix especially provides, almost everything I do see is pretty good. I see movies I'm neutral to or mildly dislike (John Carter, Skyfall) pretty rarely, and see movies I actively dislike (I gave up on Fight Club halfway through, bored stiff) hardly at all.
 
Sometime I think it's because we don't have our "child's eyes" anymore
Click to expand...
that right there is it for me.
i remember watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and completely loving it. now when i watch it i think, i could do without this or that.
i have to remind myself that these movies are largely made for a child audience (children, tweens, teens, you know).
studios also know they can draw in the nostalgia crowd too. and that crowd wants something their kids can watch.
(Transformers, Prequel SW, GIJoe, etc, etc and on.)
 
It's not our collective palate. It's the movies. They're horrible. I think the high water mark for films was the span from 94-04. Staring some time around Pulp Fiction and ending some time around Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It's been all downhill since then. It was a great span that had dozens of fresh, creative, well made movies each year. Now, I see maybe one or two films a year that can measure up to what was done from 94-04. Film WAS the one artform that got better as time passed. But we have had nearly a decade of almost nothing but sequels, reboots and book adaptations. The films that don't fit that mold are just bad. Original writing doesn't seem to be as fostered as it used to be. Get off my lawn.
 
TMBTM said:
Very true. The older you get the less you bother rewatching most of the movies, even some of the ones you liked. I don't know why exactly, maybe it's just because you begin to realize that time is precious (!)
Click to expand...
For me it's a combination of things:

1) Time is indeed precious - I used to have a less demanding job and no kids
2) Money is more available - I'm no longer limited to a few select movie purchases a year
3) Choices are more numerous - especially thanks to Netflix
 
Gaith said:
I like nearly everything I see, mainly because I'm very careful about what I risk wasting my time on.
Click to expand...
Same here.

As for the OP, I agree that I think a lot of people do have this mind set. I do not believe I am one of those people. Typically, when I'm watching a movie I love, even if it has glaring issues, I'm loving it anyway. The issues don't become glaring until afterwards, and, even then, if I love the movie, I won't let that affect my opinion too harshly.

Here's an example: growing up, Return of the Jedi was in my top three favorite movies (the other two Star Wars films being the others). As I've grown older, I've become more and more displeased with various aspects of the film. And, yet, I re-watched it recently, and still found myself loving every second.

What I'm trying to say is: I love movies. If a film can entertain me, I'll let it entertain me. If the quality's not that good, then I probably just won't regard it highly. But I'll have still been entertained.

Adabisi said:
It's not our collective palate. It's the movies. They're horrible. I think the high water mark for films was the span from 94-04. Staring some time around Pulp Fiction and ending some time around Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It's been all downhill since then. It was a great span that had dozens of fresh, creative, well made movies each year. Now, I see maybe one or two films a year that can measure up to what was done from 94-04. Film WAS the one artform that got better as time passed. But we have had nearly a decade of almost nothing but sequels, reboots and book adaptations. The films that don't fit that mold are just bad. Original writing doesn't seem to be as fostered as it used to be. Get off my lawn.
Click to expand...
I have to really disagree with this.

First of all, the best span of movies was from 1972-1982.

Secondly, I get your argument. It's one I've heard before. It's one of made before. But it simply isn't true. It probably helps that I'm younger, and that most of the movies I've watched were released years before I saw them, as opposed to seeing them as they've come out. The thing is, I feel it's such an easy thing to say that film is not as original or as good as it was before (especially considering, yes, the dearth of unoriginal product), but I honestly think there are great films out there, and not just a few, but a lot. And hell, a lot of that unoriginal stuff is great too.
 
I guess I'm one of the few that has actually benefited from the fanedit mindset in this regard. I too tend to stick to certain themes, actors or directors, but even then there have been movies I walked away from disappointed.

The difference lately is that I actually still tend to see the good elements that the movie in question offers up and it's all because that's how I would approach a movie to start a fan edit.


I must say, though, regarding "original stories"? There's no such animal.

Joseph Campbell, folks.
 
Fettclone1 said:
I guess I'm one of the few that has actually benefited from the fanedit mindset in this regard. I too tend to stick to certain themes, actors or directors, but even then there have been movies I walked away from disappointed.

The difference lately is that I actually still tend to see the good elements that the movie in question offers up and it's all because that's how I would approach a movie to start a fan edit.


I must say, though, regarding "original stories"? There's no such animal.

Joseph Campbell, folks.
Click to expand...

yeah - i also prefer to see fanediting as "seeing the good in darth vader approach" instead of "the senat is corrupt and must be cleaned" approach. When I come around ediitng a movie where some elements pain me it is because i love the other elements and want to highlight what i like about it for people who might get turned off by the things i merely accept as annoying
 
Fettclone1 said:
I must say, though, regarding "original stories"? There's no such animal.

Joseph Campbell, folks.
Click to expand...

Well that depends on what value you assign to original, if you are talking about the old 'there's only seven stories in the whole world' chestnut then yes technically I suppose you are correct, if you mean in a a day to day real life context then sorry there's loads of original stuff out there you just have to look for it and you won't be finding much if any in traditional western cinema.

Check out the Japanese, Korean, Italian, German, French and other European movie markets, you'll be surprised at how much original and interesting stuff there is out there.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom