Letters to the Editor
Mayor's Income
Published Letters: 9 Editor's Choice: 1
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Craig Rhodes
[Read the article: "The Bourne Ultimatum"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Please. Do you realize how rediculous it is to compare Altman's and Kubrick's films with the Bourne films and the rest of Greengrass's work? Altman is my favorite filmmaker of all time, and Kubrick is a master, but when did either of them helm an action movie or even a film comparable to Bloody Sunday or United 93? Never.
I will grant you that comparing the choreographed action sequences with a Fred Astaire dance sequence is an interesting one. However, where Fred Astaire's dance is graceful, smooth and obviously choreopraphed, the Bourne fights are disjointed and rough in their nature. Thus Greengrass decides to film them as such. Matter and manner. Present the art in such a way that reveals what the art is about.
You even say, "you can't tell who's fighting whom, who's chasing whom and all you can remember are short visual images that don't connect; which is an apt description of the movie itself." I believe that's exactly the point.
I love the constant whining against this so-called "MTV school of filmmaking." It seems its detractors are offended by a style, not by the many incompetent directors practicing the style. Let's remember the shower scene in Psycho. The shots are extremely short and the cuts are numerous yet it is still hailed as a masterpiece of film.
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Slackie
[Read the article: "The Bourne Ultimatum"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If you see Ultimatum, much of his struggle to deal with who he was, who he was turned into, and why, and who he is now, is what the movie is about.
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hmm
[Read the article: "The Bourne Ultimatum"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I guess to me it's simply a matter of what the technique brings to the film. Brian's Song using slow motion is arguably the same issue as Greengrass using fast cuts. They both are used to heighten the intended effect on the audience. One to make the audience cry, the other to make the audience feel the immediacy and speed of the situation. Also I agree that had Hitchcock used hyperfast cutting in Psycho it would be rediculous, but then, he wasn't making a film about a CIA-trained killing machine fighting for his life.
I guess the best defense I can muster is the three Bourne films. I believe the second and third ones to be far better than the first. Damon's acting improved, but I give the credit mostly to Greengrass (and Doug Liman who, as producer of these films, seems to agree, as he hired and retained Greengrass). Bourne (the character) is fast, kinetic, he's never quite aware of exactly what his purpose is or what he is doing. He is at once in the middle of the action/fighting and mentally removed from it. The same can be said about the films (TBS & TBU) themselves. When the manner of presentation can become the material its presenting, that reinforces said material. Identity did not do this as explicitly (or at all) and therefore is inferior in my eyes.
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umm...
[Read the article: Art movies: R.I.P.]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"When Antonioni's plotless "L'Avventura" was shown at Harpur, the entire theater emptied within a half-hour -- except for the front row of me and my friends."
Allow me to update what you wrote for the year 2007.
When Lynch's plotless "Inland Empire" was shown at my local art theater, the entire theater emptied within a half-hour -- except for the front row of me and my friends.
So explain to me exactly what was so different/better about the 60s? Don't try to place your generation's revered work above the present generation's when most of your generation walked out on art-house fare just as much as this one.
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...
[Read the article: Football fans: How to return a lost digital camera]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Umm...yeah. That's a buckeye on his shoulders. Not a giant head. (Well yes, it's a head shaped like a buckeye, but a buckeye nonetheless)
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Awesome
[Read the article: Sexiest Man Living 2007]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm not gay, but I appreciate the Tony Leung and Jeffrey Wright love.
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Whiskey Bottle
[Read the article: King Kaufman's Sports Daily]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Bitter Bears fan? I think so, but then, there doesn't seem to be any other kind.
Thanks Brett.
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South Park
[Read the article: Can Stephen Colbert save America?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]That aside does the book seriously rip on South Park? Does he even watch the show? Granted the political edge of the show may not be quite as sharp as the Daily Show/Colbert Report's edge, the show is easily as smart and satirical as those two. Often that satire is pointed elsewhere.
People that still deride South Park as little more than poo-poo and potty humor need to realize the show has moved on.
[This is not to say that Parker and Stone are above feces and semen jokes, they just don't base the show around them anymore, and it's debatable if they ever did in the first place.]
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Also
[Read the article: Can Stephen Colbert save America?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Evidence to Colbert's greatness...
"If I were a waiter, and I were to offer you two different slices of pizza. One was half Hawaiian, and you weren't entirely sure what it was going to taste like, and the other one was plain, with cheese, and had been under a heat lamp for thirty-five years. I mean it had seen everything. Which would you go for?"
Just wanted to post that.