THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2023
Also, watching The Fabelmans: As the minutes have ticked by today, the Feiler faster thesis (FFT) seems to have struck again.
A new arrival on the front has shoved the debate about the College Board aside. We'll put the new arrival off until another day. Next week, we hope to offer a wider array of reactions to the debate about the College Board's Advanced Placement course—about the debate which seems to have been eclipsed by today's new arrival.
For now, we'll offer a quick reaction to something we did last night. In a bit of an homage to the Feiler faster thesis, we semi-watched the Oscar-nominated film, The Fabelmans, fast forwarding all the way through.
Having fast forwarded through the Spielberg film, we decided to peruse the reviews. We were stunned by the many raves it received, but no review was more surprising than the one by Manohla Dargis in the New York Times.
Dargis is one of the Times' two chief movie critics. Like her colleague, A. O. Scott, she didn't include The Fabelmans in her list of the year's ten best films. There's still justice in the world!
That said, in Dargis' case, it gets better, or possibly worse! As you can see by clicking this link, she also didn't include The Fabelmans in her list of 23 other films from last year which she said we should "make sure to watch."
That would seem to mean that, for Dargis, The Fabelmans was, at best, the 34th best film of the year. And yet, her review of the film strikes us as a borderline rave. These major reviewers today!
The Fabelmans died at the box office too, though not as badly as Tár; it struck us as a serious dud. That doesn't mean that we hate all films. Last Friday, we stumbled upon 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, a bit more than fifteen years after it first appeared.
The film appeared in 2007, live and direct from Romania. It won three awards at Cannes, including the Palme d'Or.
It kept us watching till late in the night. We're grateful that we stumbled upon it.
For background information, click here. We're very glad that we saw it.
Domestic box office to date: According to Box Office Mojo, The Fabelmans has brought in $17.0 million. Tár is closing in on 6.5.
ReplyDelete"Friday, we stumbled upon 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, a bit more than fifteen years after it first appeared."
Hey, is this a British zombie flick? That was good.
...wait, no, that's 28 Weeks Later... And yours sounds like some bullshit melodrama again... Gosh, why don't you watch something entertaining for a change, dear...
What we need, I guess, is the Fast Forward Academy Awards, for the people without the attention span to actually watch the films.
ReplyDelete"According to Box Office Mojo, The Fabelmans has brought in $17.0 million. Tár is closing in on 6.5."
ReplyDeleteThat's what the Spielberg name is worth on a film.
Meanwhile, the film industry is dying. Increasingly, major film stars are appearing in streaming series shown on TV. Somerby seems to be attributing this to the quality of the film, but I think it was a trend in process before covid that is accelerating after the lockdown and putting stress on actors. Kevin Bacon is doing an insurance ad.
Good riddance. The storytelling industrial complex can’t die soon enough - plenty of media can be fun and entertaining, but the handful of movies/shows with positive impacts just can not balance out the utter disaster that industry has been for society.
DeleteProducing music and tales and comedy are natural resources, same as running and jumping, same as breathing and pooping; none of these things should be commodified, none should be claimed by a few privileged, none should be gate kept.
Stop watching others, go out and experience life; stop being servile to corporations and marketing schemes.
Left is life, right is death.
9:27: I hope you’re not suggesting that artists shouldn’t be paid for their creative efforts. Because creating art and music takes effort, slightly more than pooping, for crying out loud.
DeleteGenerally appreciate your comments, but your wading away from muddy waters into what may be overly deep waters.
DeleteThe “effort” theory of value is not something positive on which to base a society.
To my shame, I work in the entertainment industry, and my work is less effort than when I was a janitor in college, less effort than being a parent - which is the joy of my life and it’s worth mentioning nobody is paying me for having produced what is probably the greatest thing in the universe, my kid.
Consider that with respect to art or entertainment, it is from the attempt to commodify content that most effort is applied.
Indeed, being authentically and naturally creative is a joy, decidedly less effort than pooping, which can involve discomfort and the inevitable tedium of wiping along with the obligatory washing of hands.
Valuing “creative” effort over other efforts is arbitrary and broadly unhealthy for society; having said that, it is not clear that - pick any highly paid “artist” - Bob Dylan say (a Somerby favorite), is more creative than the efforts applied to developing the polio vaccine.
Check out the value of an immediate-return based society, you may find that your creative effort-to-commodification pipeline is perhaps toxic for society, or you may not. Either way, I appreciate and find value in your comments. But I’m not going to pay for them!
It's difficult to fast forward through subtitles, so maybe Somerby liked the Romanian film better because he actually gave the film a chance.
ReplyDeletepico balloons
ReplyDeletehttps://aviationweek.com/defense-space/aircraft-propulsion/hobby-clubs-missing-balloon-feared-shot-down-usaf
I enjoyed "The Fabelmans". If I hadn't known that it was about Spielberg and if I weren't Jewish, I wouldn't have enjoyed it as much. The best I can say about the movie is that it involved real people in real, non-catastrophic situations: no comic strip characters, no car chases, no super-heroes, no explicit sex scenes.
ReplyDeleteLatest embarassment from Fox "News":
ReplyDeleteOn Nov. 12, in a text chain with Ms. Ingraham and Mr. Hannity, Mr. Carlson pointed to a tweet in which a Fox reporter, Jacqui Heinrich, fact-checked a tweet from Mr. Trump referring to Fox broadcasts and said there was no evidence of voter fraud from Dominion.
“Please get her fired,” Mr. Carlson said. He added: “It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke.” Ms. Heinrich had deleted her tweet by the next morning.
Their job isn't to believe what they say. Their job is to play the bigots who watch them.
DeleteIf it weren't for bad faith arguments, the Right would have no arguments at all.
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