Unexpectedly subverting Seinfeld is Unfunny and movies

That's probably not the best way to put it. A more standard thing would be for me to ask, which movies, those that do great things and mark themselves in film history, do you think have considered to have stood the test of time? Films that the steamboat Talks-About-Films-A-Lot keeps on screening with decent returns in the lounge. I don't know where I got that one from either, but steamboats are neat?

We're all aware with the TV Tropes definition of Seinfeld Is Unfunny. Although it's impossible to speak for everyone (everyone's a critic, ho ho!), there's somehow a magical force that allows us to say "people think this and people think that". Hey, it's where that tired old joke, "I think I'll log on to TV Tropes instead of forming my own opinions!" comes from! So get your pinches of salt at the stand.

I'll also mention an aside about me: I've had film school experience. Hearing people my age moan about how "nothing happens" in The Passion Of Joan Of Arc is at least a bit of personal evidence for filing that film the above-mentioned trope.

Here are some ideas:

Eraserhead. You have a surreal horror film here where temptuous lines are blurred. It's not a technologically sophisticated movie - the worst way to track film history yet apparently one of the most popular. People continue to love and be enthralled by it however; I believe the film High Octane Nightmare Fuel page once had quite a rambling section on the film and it was wonderful to read. The reasons for this are pretty obvious: it doesn't treat its handicaps as disadvantages - it doesn't come off as a cheap, shoddy garage debut, and it has some narrative framework that technically puts it fields away from the classic '20s European avant-garde... which apparently has not avoided the "modern art is a sham" stigma like Eraserhead has.

Double Indemnity. Its screenplay was once referred to as "great" in a college class I was in. This was the same crowd that upon seeing the monochrome logo at the start of Vertigo, gasped "oh no, it's not black-and-white is it?". I think film noir surprises some people when it goes far beyond what the tributes and parodies do (Fast Talking, High Trousers!... though weirdly, screwball comedies haven't gone the same way here), and there's a great sadness in melancholy people don't foresee when they sit down to watch Double Indemnity for the first time. This is of course after having been taught to hate American cinema before the hippies/George Lucas came*

The Good The Bad And The Ugly. In the grand context of the western genre's history, it's actually somewhat incredible that this one still gets a reputation as "the best". Related to the ending of the previous point, this is likely because TGTBaTU has a more polished American stereotype of the genre to lean back on (obviously Once Upon A Time In The West is more overt and humourous about this). It's a cool film, yes? It also stays away from a potential slippery slope in its exaggerations. Some may be surprised to hear this, but there's always been the view that, say, Sam Peckinpah's westerns take rebellious brand of revisionism too far. You might also notice I've been extremely rude and stupidly not mentioned Sergio Leone's great talent. It was an honest mistake up until that point.

Some others I had in mind that I don't want to write about right now for whatever reason probably the collective sanity and patience of everyone reading myself included: Duck Soup, Nosferatu (probably unique in the case of German Expressionism; I was never the same when I started seeing people walk out of Metropolis screenings), The Searchers, Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless and The Night Of The Hunter.

I'd greatly appreciate any thoughts, suggestions, additions! Although I would not technically appreciate them, comments regarding my intense snobbery will at least be savoured and digested.

Anyway, I hope you were entertained somehow.

edited 21st Jan '12 12:38:20 PM by TheSollerodFascist

Oddly enough, Seinfeld itself. Occasionally I catch an episode and yes, it's still funny.

Despite the TVT Ropes page telling otherwise, I think the last scene jump scare in Carrie works better than in many later films, because it's inside the person's head and it's more tragic than plain scary.

I think Seven Samurai holds up better than other ensemble cast action movies, because it has better character development and interaction and it looks still beautiful. It's much less dated than any westerns I've seen made in the same era, mostly because of the grit. I also thought it was bold that Kurosawa didn't whitewash history too much in how the villagers and the samurai interacted and how the romance between Shino and Katsushiro was dealt with.

I think it depends. The irony is hilarious, but i just can't laugh at the Soup Nazi.

people my age moan about how "nothing happens" in The Passion of Joan of Arc

Man, i thought that just looking at pictures from it.

^^ Having again read briefly about Seven Samurai recently, I think one of the key notes that hits audiences today is that it's (supposedly) surprisingly honest. People may dispute why we pick certain examples of genres, the samurai adventure being quite wealthy in examples, but in this case there certainly are numerous reasons.

Seven Samurai and Yojimbo come off strange to me here. It seems that there is a nostalgic audience for something of a golden age in Japanese cinema (read: the selected works of a non-typical director), and also of a strictly recent revisionist audience scared to trim anywhere near the border lines of World War II. It's weird because the supposed line between Seven Samurai, Yojimbo and their respective remakes is so dim. It goes that way throughout the history of the Hollywood western before that, yet the post-WW 2 Hollywood western is known for stereotyping (John Wayne, the idol, stereotyped himself better in contemporary war films). I felt from the start that including The Searchers in my post was an iffy.

And I've completely ignored Kurosawa's (brilliant) noir efforts. I've not seen how these go down in a bigger group. PS, they are good.

edited 25th Jan '12 6:51:18 PM by TheSollerodFascist

I'd say The Truman Show, not the least of which being because when it was released it was ahead of its time, predicting the advent of reality shows like Big Brother. Even after those shows go away, if they ever do, it still has themes that could be greatly applied to Western society in general, such as the question of privacy for celebrities, how ethical the type of imprisonment that Truman is in is, knowing who you can trust in your life (though, admittedly, not to the ludicrous degree as it is in the film). Even the setting is somewhat timeless, in that they deliberately scouted out a place (a real town in Florida) that has a sort of "frozen-in-time" quality to it, a place that's somewhat of a pseudo-50s/late 90s hybrid.

Also, Jim Carrey is freakin' awesome in it, so how can you not love it no matter what decade you're in?

You know, those points about Truman are interesting to me because they somewhat echo some of the most trumpeted points about Network, which some people seem to label as being way ahead of its time with its methods to its satirical madness. This, to me, falls into a trap which many of us make when assessing the great American directors of the '70s, in that we seem to self-consciously forget that they came from '60s TV, doing all these episodic western and camp detective shows of questionable quality.

Maybe there's a cultural thing in television, that as much as we say we hate it we love to have the listings spelt out for us. It took "reality TV", the resurgence of pro wrestling popularity in the late '90s and more direct self-reflective satire (particularly here in Britain) to build an ironic-but-apparently-not-so "new look for the new millenium". Not that I'm trying to dumb down any individual innovation of the time, far from it.

Also, I'm a fan of Carrey in his prime, particularly in that movie.

Anyway, I'd say that when some films grow older, you just have to look at them in a different light and examine different aspects than what would have looked at when they came out. You mentioned Nosferatu, which I think works well as an example - The film itself is not scary in the slightest to a modern audience, but a modern day viewer can still take into account the non-horror aspects, such as the excellent use of lighting, or the impressively grotesque makeup on the title vampire.

I don't really understand what you're saying here (I mean the connection between those movies and the bad tv shows of the 60s and 70s).

Also not really sure what you were arguing about with Yojimbo and Seven Samurai. Was it that they are already in the direction of being deconstructions? I do note that Yojimbo is based on an American detective novel, and has a jazzy soundtrack, so I can definitely see it there (haven't seen Seven Samurai).

I watched Unforgiven shortly after I watched Yojimbo, and what's funny is that while I haven't seen A Fistful Of Dollars, I could really get exactly what Unforgiven was deconstructing, because there's so many similar plot elements with Yojimbo.

edited 8th Feb '12 6:46:06 AM by Jordan

^^ The title was moreorless deliberately stupid. And I wanted to use a TV Tropes reference. I like being stupid. It's a primary trait.

EDIT: Actually, I figured there is some reasoning to this. It plays up the subjective, self-assuming nature of it to me. Anyone can ask "which films have stood the test of time?". And you'd just get a Guardian article with a picture of Bogart on the side proudly stating that while Casablanca isn't classic, it's romantic, all coming complete a self-fulfilling prophecy that alienates the contemporary mainstream, proving them right that cinema didn't exist before Star Wars.

Just off the top of my head right now, one part of Nosferatu I rarely see commented on is this great little cut when Hutter first meets Orlok. You get this archway shot with the two characters at a distance and then you get sudden close-ups of the two, I believe with the 180 positioning switched. The lighting you mentioned shows off Schreck's eyes. I don't know why that came to mind right now, just

^ Hell knows what I was talking about. Maybe I'll try later, don't really care right now. Got out of bed on the wrong side, but still not afraid to admit defeat. I deserve a medal for providing a first in the history of the Internet.

edited 10th Feb '12 1:45:52 AM by TheSollerodFascist

Ehh, don't worry about it. I just really hate it when people awkwardly cram tropes into everything they do - like when they'll type "what" and pothole it to "Flat What", like nobody would have a clue of their context without that clue.

edited 10th Feb '12 2:31:21 PM by TravisBickle

I often wonder about the staying power of movies and tv shows when they're parodied/referenced in other works. Like from older episodes of The Simpsons, such as "Two Dozen and One Greyhounds", where there's the song "See My Vest", which is an elaborate parody of 'Be Our Guest'; or "Sideshow Bob Roberts", which has one of the earliest 'You can't handle the truth!' parodies, not to mention spoofing Bob Roberts with the very title.

All those works were fairly new at the time, so can any really know whether those works would still be famous or relevant years later, or is it all a leap of faith?

The more something relies on topical humor, the less likely it is to have staying power, and in the future, it's more likely to be analyzed for meaning than watched for enjoyment.

This topic reminded me of that John Carter Of Mars movie coming out. I could be wrong (and I know this is the popular opinion), but I think it's very likely to bomb because the original stories were so influential on a lot of now more famous works that it's gonna come across as the worst Cliché Storm ever. Among other things, Avatar is probably the best John Carter film every made, and Star Wars also has a big influence from it.

Alright fine, I still find Nolan's The Dark Knight Saga to be Lighter and Softer than Batman and Batman Returns,actually I'd say The Dark Knight is the lightest of the films that aren't intentionally trying to be so light. Between Batman being forced to kill all those people, Catwoman as the most morally ambiguous character,Penguin already implied to have committed all those homicide on children, and The Joker doing exactly what Ra's al Ghul did,except without the noble intentions and actually succeeding horrifically.

True it takes a hell of a lot of Fridge Brilliance because Nolan's films are devoid of any kind of camp,and take so much time spelling things out.

Actually the '89- Returns canon even with the more ridiculous ideas,is still the darkest interpretation away from the comics,even if Nolan's and Dini's more "realistic" approaches overshadow them.

edited 18th Feb '12 3:21:24 PM by terlwyth

Are you posting in the right thread?

Most people claim with BTAS and The Dark Knight Saga that it's hard to see the Burton Batman films as dark,they are listed under Seinfeld Is Unfunny,so yet it fits.

After watching it again after completing The Dark Knight,I expected it to be Lighter only for it to turn out to be still be really dark.

Unless this is only about films that started a comedic standard and are considered unfunny,this seems like the right place.

I'm sorry, when you started off with "Alright Fine" it sounded like you were trying to reply to someone.

I think the Nolan films are the most "realistic" yet, but they aren't actually the darkest. They may come across as darker though because the setting is more like the real world compared to the creepy/grotesque Crapsack World of the films (which actually might be more faithful to the comics).

My point exactly,not to mention because of the "sequels" which were kinda campy and TAS being able to flesh things out more,and because of all the small little moments such as The Penguin's clowns or some of The Joker's antics,the two just aren't seen as dark,despite pretty much making the curve in the first place

I find myself to be an apologist,hence the beginning.

Despite all the references to it making it predictable*

edited 16th Mar '12 7:20:18 PM by EgregiousEric