30th January 2005, 10:39 AM
Quote:Bah, Tarantino's best effort, Pulp Fiction, was completely organic. Dialogue being ripped off of other movies? No way. Along with being a great director, what makes his movies great are his screenplays. The dialogue in Pulp Fiction is sharp, witty, and definetly original. With his direction and screenplays, he has made a style unto his own, has been a huge influence on other directors and writers, and has had so many others copy his direction and style. What do you have against Tarantino anyways? It's not like he stole a script from a bunch of Asian flicks and Western flicks. He incorporated many elements from those types of films, but what movies don't? I'm not an expert on Asian films by any means, but I'm willing to bet that not all of them are completely groundbreaking, and that some of the best have used ideas from other movies. Godammit, we've had a discussion similar to this before and I still don't get how you (or anybody) thinks that Tarantino's style is anything but original.
Bubba, I like Tarantino's movies a lot, but if you're going to call him original then you really don't know a damn thing about him at all. Even he admits to being derivative. Everything he does is derivative, or as he puts it, an "homage". His talent is ripping off other sources and seemlessly putting them together to make a fine movie. If you would watch the movies that inspire his works, you would notice scenes and dialogue that he took. Remember that dialogue in Pulp Fiction with the needles and everything? Taken straight from an old 70's movie. That rape scene? Taken from Deliverence. Just about every memorable part in all of his movies are "homages" to the stuff that influenced him. To deny that his work is completely derivative is to show utter ignorance towards the director and his work.
Quote:The Average American watches too much crap period. Too many movies, too much TV. People should read more. Readers are more intelligent people, and while everyone makes a movie out of a good book in their own mind, the beauty of it is that no one's imagination shows them the same image as anyone else's, requiring the author to be creative in description, and requiring the reader to be creative in comprehension. And unfortunately, for the TV-numbed masses, that's a cognitive function that's too advanced.
Thus, we get Survivor and Aliens vs. Predator.
There's nothing about tv or movies that make them inherently mind-numbing, it's the quality that matters. People can read just as equally dumb books. And judging by your poor opinion of movies as a whole, you are simply not exposed to good movies that would get your noggin' working just as much as the greatest novel. I suggest you stop watching the crap that Hollywood produces all of the time and start looking for movies from directors like Jean-Luc Godard, Sergei Eisenstein, Ingmar Berman, Akira Kurosawa, Yasujiro Ozu, Francois Truffaut, Bernardo Bertolucci, Fritz Lang, Jean Renoir, and Federico Fellini, for starters. That's the older stuff, but there's nowhere better to start.
Quote:No, but my brother has it.
Well you better ask to borrow it!