I actually agree with him, except for his comments about the post-dubbing.domino harvey wrote:Mike D'angelo does it again
The Mike D'Angelo Thread
Re: 747 Fellini Satyricon
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Re: 747 Fellini Satyricon
You mean the part where he calls into question whether he's ever even seen an Italian film before?
Re: 747 Fellini Satyricon
Exactly why D'angelo lost me there.swo17 wrote:You mean the part where he calls into question whether he's ever even seen an Italian film before?
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Re: 761 Valerie and Her Week of Wonders
Mike D'Angelo outdoes himself (don't click, you'll be happier not reading it)
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Re: 761 Valerie and Her Week of Wonders
Actually, to be fair, the comments cheering him on and justifying this (or calling the film CP) are worse
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Re: 761 Valerie and Her Week of Wonders
I read it and I just see a guy explaining that he didn't like the movie but people should try it because they might be more receptive than him.domino harvey wrote:Mike D'Angelo outdoes himself (don't click, you'll be happier not reading it)
At least, it didn't want to force an ominous opinion on the reader, but true, on the other end, it also means that it doesn't even take a side.
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Re: 761 Valerie and Her Week of Wonders
It reads as amateurish. I'd expect to read that type of thing on a forum like Blu-Ray.com. If you don't like the film, commit to to your opinion. And complaing that the film was boring is the type of insipid assessment which makes me wonder more about the critic's attention span than about the film.tenia wrote:I read it and I just see a guy explaining that he didn't like the movie but people should try it because they might be more receptive than him.domino harvey wrote:Mike D'Angelo outdoes himself (don't click, you'll be happier not reading it)
At least, it didn't want to force an ominous opinion on the reader, but true, on the other end, it also means that it doesn't even take a side.
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Re: 761 Valerie and Her Week of Wonders
Lost Highway wrote:It reads as amateurish.
You think an amateur could have come up with critical gold like that?MDA wrote:some will see not so much a week of wonders as a week of wanking.
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Re: 761 Valerie and Her Week of Wonders
Yuck. The last thing I want to be thinking about when I rewatch the film is that kind of clickbait-nonsense opinion. "Some" see the film in that light? Who? This reminds me of Fox News's use of terms like "some say" to insert an opinion into a story without clear attribution. I don't mean that analogy to imply that I hold up a movie review to the same criteria as a news story, but some of the same standards of journalism should apply to people writing about films who are supposed to be professionals. Such damning charges as the ones he's throwing around here need to be articulated clearly and substantially, or the review is little more than trolling.
"Some" (religious fundamentalists in Oklahoma) saw a week of wanking or an eternity of fire in The Tin Drum, and I wonder if D'Angelo realizes how close he's seeming to approach something similar to that kind of view of what qualifies as obscenity in sexualizing/exploiting/etc. an underage actor, or at least failing to distinguish himself from it.
And claiming that the camera "all but leers" during a rape scene sidesteps the role of the (re)viewer's subjective eye, a cop-out that may reveal a lot about where he's coming from here.
"Some" (religious fundamentalists in Oklahoma) saw a week of wanking or an eternity of fire in The Tin Drum, and I wonder if D'Angelo realizes how close he's seeming to approach something similar to that kind of view of what qualifies as obscenity in sexualizing/exploiting/etc. an underage actor, or at least failing to distinguish himself from it.
And claiming that the camera "all but leers" during a rape scene sidesteps the role of the (re)viewer's subjective eye, a cop-out that may reveal a lot about where he's coming from here.
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Re: Victoria (Sebastian Schipper, 2015)
Does he even realize how few people his iconoclast routine fools?
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Re: Victoria (Sebastian Schipper, 2015)
Sometimes a bad movie is just a bad movie. Just look at Fish & Cat to see how single take filmmaking allows you to pull off cinematic coups that would not be possible in more traditional forms.
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Re: Victoria (Sebastian Schipper, 2015)
I listened to D'Angelo's appearance on The Cinepheliacs and while he came off as fairly intelligent, though quite arrogant (surprise!), he made his dislike of long takes in cinema abundantly clear. Victoria would have to be a masterpiece for him to even give it the time of day.
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Re: 277 My Own Private Idaho
Mike D'Angelo offers another Mike D'Angelo review of My Own Private Idaho over at AV Club...
The disagreement over the two "parts" of the film remind me of reactions to George Eliot's Daniel Deronda, with critics disagreeing over which of the two stories are worthwhile, and which should have been excised. First seeing this film on a VHS in college, where I was studying theater, I actually dug the Shakespeare scenes. For one, I enjoy the way those particular scenes are translated into the narrative and setting, and will always love Flea's "Jesus...the things we've seen." The Shakespearean scenes offer a level of linguistic poetry that complements both the poetry of the street/hustlers and the visual poetry of the cinematography. And intentionally or not, the performative nature of these scenes underlines the performative nature of the work of the hustlers as well as the performance that Keanu's character gives throughout the film (which itself is underlined by Keanu's typical wooden performance as an actor).
I bought this film at the former Kim's on St. Mark's in New York prior to the release date, as one does, and will get the upgrade soon enough. I've lived in Portland for the past eight years, so I look forward to watching it again with a particular focus on how much the city has changed since this was filmed, considering how much it's changed since I moved here.
The disagreement over the two "parts" of the film remind me of reactions to George Eliot's Daniel Deronda, with critics disagreeing over which of the two stories are worthwhile, and which should have been excised. First seeing this film on a VHS in college, where I was studying theater, I actually dug the Shakespeare scenes. For one, I enjoy the way those particular scenes are translated into the narrative and setting, and will always love Flea's "Jesus...the things we've seen." The Shakespearean scenes offer a level of linguistic poetry that complements both the poetry of the street/hustlers and the visual poetry of the cinematography. And intentionally or not, the performative nature of these scenes underlines the performative nature of the work of the hustlers as well as the performance that Keanu's character gives throughout the film (which itself is underlined by Keanu's typical wooden performance as an actor).
I bought this film at the former Kim's on St. Mark's in New York prior to the release date, as one does, and will get the upgrade soon enough. I've lived in Portland for the past eight years, so I look forward to watching it again with a particular focus on how much the city has changed since this was filmed, considering how much it's changed since I moved here.
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Re: Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller, 2015)
UhI should note for the record that a fan theory exists regarding Hardy’s character in Fury Road—namely, that he’s not the same Max played by Gibson, but is The Road Warrior’s feral kid as an adult. This would invalidate my entire argument, but since I don’t buy their argument (which is mostly based on the fact that Hardy-as-“Max” has a music box similar to the one Max gave the feral kid), I’m not worrying about it. And even if I did buy it, that just means this Max should have been played by Emil Minty. Recasting any major role has an inevitable downside, and it can hamper even a movie as blatantly superb as this one.
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Re: Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller, 2015)
"I'm right, but there are people saying things that would invalidate totally my argument. However, they're wrong, so I'm still right. And even if they were right, actually, they would be wrong".
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Re: Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller, 2015)
This is fundamentally telling about how D'Angelo sees film itself: self-limiting, with no capability to think outside what he already knows or expects. In many ways this is one of the most stunningly naive things I've ever seen professionally "printed", and it is the kind of position you hear from ignorant fanboys, not educated film writers. I've hated so much of what this guy has written, but now I realize I was wasting my energy: he's a child, incapable of deep thought, and not worth investing even derision.
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Re: Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller, 2015)
Palindromes must've made his head explode.
One thing I've noticed from following him on Letterboxd is that he seems to prescribe from that old "every film is only worthy of 2.5 to 3 stars or so, until I'm really blown away" (he actually rates on a 0-100 scale, which is mind-boggling in and of itself - and most films seem to be scored somewhere in the 40-70 range) that all-too-easily makes a critic come off as somehow a superior thinker because they're not easily pleased by the sorts of films getting effusively praised elsewhere. It's a clever way to market oneself as an intellectual film writer, along with these sorts of pieces, until you dig a little deeper and actually read them.
One thing I've noticed from following him on Letterboxd is that he seems to prescribe from that old "every film is only worthy of 2.5 to 3 stars or so, until I'm really blown away" (he actually rates on a 0-100 scale, which is mind-boggling in and of itself - and most films seem to be scored somewhere in the 40-70 range) that all-too-easily makes a critic come off as somehow a superior thinker because they're not easily pleased by the sorts of films getting effusively praised elsewhere. It's a clever way to market oneself as an intellectual film writer, along with these sorts of pieces, until you dig a little deeper and actually read them.
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Re: Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller, 2015)
I try not to get too aggravated by the iconoclasticism he seems to have (where it feels like he goes out of his way to propose anything that is beloved in any circle might actually be terrible), but I do feel kind of bad for him that he subjects himself to so many, many movies and can't seem to enjoy many of them at all. I don't think he's wrong, I just can't agree with his outlook, I'm always hoping for the next movie I see to be a new favorite.
(And maybe it's just me, but isn't there supposed to be some degree where critics should acknowledge something is good but they personally just don't like it?)
(And maybe it's just me, but isn't there supposed to be some degree where critics should acknowledge something is good but they personally just don't like it?)
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Re: Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller, 2015)
The three pieces I can immediately remember from Mike D'Angelo were one dismissing Sundays and Cybele because he assumed it had pedophilic undertones, one about how he would watch the first few minutes of dozens of movies and only actually finish the ones he felt had justified themselves in that time, and one about how the famed tracking shot in Children of Men was actually bad because you see editing is the essence of cinema and it didn't do that. He's the like the AVClub's IV mirror image doppelganger- every time I'm reading something and I'm so delighted by it that I need to check the byline to see who wrote it, it's IV. Every time I'm reading something and I roll my eyes at every single point it makes, when I scroll up, it's D'Angelo.
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Re: Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller, 2015)
I used to rate on a 0-100 scale, and it's actually not so complicated (though I was at the time mostly writing and rating movies that were part of my most favourites one, so it was even less difficult). I’m currently rating Blu Ray at 0.25 out of 10, it’s not so different in the end (reviewers on AVS also use a 0-100 scale, I believe it’s also the case for the movie rating).
On the other end, I’m mostly reading only the music section of AV Club. My other source for music reviews is Pitchfork, and I’ve read some pretty appallingly written reviews there, things you wouldn’t expect from a renowned website like Pitchfork. I especially remember the review for Ought’s 2nd album, where the reviewer writes at length about the singer using a full proper “Yes” (emphasize on the S) instead of today’s “Yeah”. IIRC, this extremely specific point makes for about 2 thirds of the whole review.
(that’s actually an issue I frequently stumble onto with Pitchfork’s reviews : many of them don’t even talk about the album being reviewed but only tackle it peripherically by about past albums, or parallel projects, or focus on 1 or 2 songs, or compares it with so many other albums it barely talks about the intrinsequial qualities of the reviewed one, etc etc. There are many cases I don’t even know what type of music it is, and I often ended up listening to electronic music expecting metal, or other completely wrong expectations).
I've never followed him so I can’t speak about the longer term, but I share this feeling about this specific Mad Max. It struck me as something a fanboy would theorise : something extremely self-centered, which works only in its own universe, and which basically rebukes any counter-argument as something not factual (“I don’t buy this argument”) but something you can choose to simply ignore. It’s just naively simplistic, much more indeed than what you would expect on a professional website.domino harvey wrote:In many ways this is one of the most stunningly naive things I've ever seen professionally "printed", and it is the kind of position you hear from ignorant fanboys, not educated film writers.
On the other end, I’m mostly reading only the music section of AV Club. My other source for music reviews is Pitchfork, and I’ve read some pretty appallingly written reviews there, things you wouldn’t expect from a renowned website like Pitchfork. I especially remember the review for Ought’s 2nd album, where the reviewer writes at length about the singer using a full proper “Yes” (emphasize on the S) instead of today’s “Yeah”. IIRC, this extremely specific point makes for about 2 thirds of the whole review.
(that’s actually an issue I frequently stumble onto with Pitchfork’s reviews : many of them don’t even talk about the album being reviewed but only tackle it peripherically by about past albums, or parallel projects, or focus on 1 or 2 songs, or compares it with so many other albums it barely talks about the intrinsequial qualities of the reviewed one, etc etc. There are many cases I don’t even know what type of music it is, and I often ended up listening to electronic music expecting metal, or other completely wrong expectations).
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Re: Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller, 2015)
Or Fight Club, or The Machinist, or Inception, or any adaptation of classical material after 1935, or any biopic not To Hell and Back (they should have resurrected Lou Gehrig), etc. I really don't even understand how someone could come to that argument. Recasting roles is as old as theater an whether the silly fan theory is real or not doesn't matter unless you're willing to argue every film must be a Boyhood style production. It is just not an internally consistent argument.mfunk9786 wrote:Palindromes must've made his head explode.
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Re: Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller, 2015)
I wonder how the phrase "blatantly superb" got published on a real website. That sounds like thesaurusism run amok, while in the service of a point that has no place in professional criticism in the first place (i.e., the childish idea that it's self-evidently great)
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