Thursday, August 04, 2005

Plays Well With Others

It's my total pleasure to finally share my Film Experience sandbox. Please welcome Joe Reid to The Film Experience with his first column. Some of you may already know his work from his former column "Happy Hour" at 411 Mania or his blog Low Resolution (which has been linked in the side bar here for some time as one of my favorite blogs). For those who are new to Joe...

Joe, You.
You, Joe.

You'll like each other.

8 comments:

adam k. said...

That Prime trailer looks pretty funny. But then, so did the first Something's Gotta Give trailer and that turned out to be bad. Tricky categorizations... but I think Meryl has that comedy globe nom in the bag.

Joe R. said...

I should probably clarify: I don't have a problem with movies tackling the issues brought about by September 11th. Security issues, war issues, freedom-vs-safety, America's place in the global climate, what it means to be an American post-9/11. Those are the kinds of things being dealt with, as you say, in music and literature, and I have no problem with that. I often embrace it.

I generally (and I'll say generally because I know there are going to be exceptions to this even without thinking of specifics) don't like movies mining real-life tragedy for subject matter. It comes across as crass and cheap to me unless it really has something of substance to say. I especially dislike mining recent tragedy - the mining cave-in in Pennsylvania, for example. We needed a movie about that, why?

And I know 9/11 is a much more significant event than a mine caving in, but from what I hear aboout Stone's intentions, I don't think the result will be much different. A triumph of the human spirit? Excuse my cynicism, but I can't think of anything more cliche.

But by all means, explore the issues brought about by the 9/11 tragedy. It will no doubt be of artistic merit. But the event itself? The nuts and bolts examination of senseless violence and doomed heroism? It needs no dramatization.

Joe R. said...

Also? We will ALWAYS need another edition of Big Brother. Always.

Anonymous said...

Joe, bravo on your first column! I hope you contribute more to the site. Nathaniel, I hope this means you get more time to contribute stuff as well.

par3182 said...

excellent first column, joe (and well done nate, for finding the perfect addition to an already ace site).

as for real life event movies - spookily enough, last night i watched 'a night to remember', which proves they can be done well if you don't waste more than half the running time of a film on events other than the event itself (cough*jamescameron*cough).

Joe R. said...

Thanks, everyone, for the kind words. I'm glad you've seemed to enjoy the column.

darkcypherlad, agree to disagree sounds good. I definitely see the points you're making, but I'm still way queasy about Ollie's project.

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