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This song perfectly captures that bittersweet, warm, melancholy remembrance we all feel sooner or later in our lives, doesn't it?
Paul getting back to the 1950s American roots of so many English bands, and wonderfully, too.
There is that, too. :)
I also remember him from his supporting role in the TV-movie Dummy.
Your argument only works if you think "the arts" contribute little or nothing to a nation, or to a civilization. The best of "the arts" shape not only the soul of a culture, but of the world as well. Sadly, there are some who think of "the arts" just as a luxury, when in fact they are a sustaining necessity to any living, thriving culture.
So sorry to hear this. He was a wonderful actor in anything he appeared in, capable of playing both warm geniality & cold-eyed evil, comedy & heartbreaking drama.
And just a certain segment of the American populace at that. At least before they went to live audience, they made an effort at making it seem somewhat like the 1950s, to a reasonable sitcom degree. After the live audience came in, though, all pretense of reality went out the window.
There were some interesting episodes, and I wish Jeffrey Combs could have been a cast regular, as he was so delightful as Shran … but overall, it felt like a step backward. Star Trek was always about looking & moving forward, as by setting TNG some 80+ years after the Kirk era.
And I really disliked them retconning things like the Organians, by making an earlier encounter with the first Enterprise change their ways, instead of leaving them as the evolved-beyond-violence-for-millions-of-years race they were in TOS. Or having them encounter the Mirror Universe prior to Kirk & company. To me, it seems more & more like bad fanfic as it went on. "Let's see how we can put a twist on this classic TOS story that was perfectly good the first time around and 'improve' it."
Well said! And all too accurate.
I always felt that the film does tell a story, and a very clear & direct one … albeit in purely visual terms. To me, 2001 has always been something of a tone-poem, a symphony, as well as a film. It had that powerful an effect on the 14-year old me in 1968! :)
Absolutely agree. Clarke was a fine, thoughtful writer & I still love most of his books. But in this case, Kubrick's 2001 is the masterpiece; Clarke's novel, while thoroughly enjoyable & smart in the Clarke style, doesn't come close to Kubrick's film.
That's fair enough! :)
The ending is presaged & predicted in the very first sequence of the film. And it's not all that difficult to read or understand at all, if you're reading it as the visual poetry that it is, conveyed through images rather than words. The viewer is meant to experience it above & before all else; mere intellectual analysis can wait for later, and in many ways is beside the point anyway. It's as much visual symphony as anything, meant to be immersed in, just as we'd immerse ourselves in Beethoven's 9th or Coltrane's A Love Supreme.
I'd say it's more difficult to keep something completely open to all manner of interpretation and still make it cohere, so that it's more than just a collection of random parts. Kubrick accomplished all of that & more, and did so masterfully & poetically. It was Kubrick's stated purpose to encourage the viewers to discuss & think about the ending, rather than spoon-feeding something pre-digested to his audience, an audience he credited with intelligence & imagination.
You say that as if it's a bad thing. :)
As many have noted, it's not to be taken quite so literally, but as a cautionary fable. Allegorical & metaphorical storytelling was much more common in those days; they weren't going so much for literal, logical truth as for emotional truth: the biosphere can be damaged (as it was being damaged then) & we shouldn't become so enmeshed in our technology that we lose our connection to the natural world, which we're still part of. This isn't hippie propaganda or doom-saying, but simply a reminder that much that is precious & beautiful can be lost before we even realize it, and so we should cherish & preserve as much of it as we can. Which isn't a bad message at all.
This, exactly. He does what he feels must be done to preserve the last remnants of the natural world. But he's still a human being & his guilt simply will not go away, even for (in his mind) the most justified of causes. It eats away at him. Dern portrays his dilemma & disintegration with heartbreaking sorrow.
Whatever its logical flaws, its heart is in the right place. I saw it when it first appeared in theaters & loved it then; when re-watching it in recent years, while noting those logical flaws, I find that overall it still works for me. I see it as a cautionary fable from the dawn of the modern environmental movement, warning about the fate of the natural world if we "develop" every inch of greenspace. And if that's exaggerated, it's still done to good effect.
I saw it in the theater when it came out, loved it but even then noticed the logical flaws. However, that innocence to the film is the key, as it really is more of a parable than anything else, a cautionary tale about the fate of the natural world if every square inch is strip-mined & "developed" in the end. Right now scientists are warning of Sixth Great Extinction, with countless species dying, so the fears of the filmmaker were justified.
It's not a perfect film, but overall it's a good one, I'd say. Dern is superb, as he pretty much has to carry most of the story by himself (with some robot help). And while some modern viewers might find the ecology message a little heavy-handed, it's sincere & sadly still pertinent. Remember that this is from a time when environmental issues were just beginning to become important to the public at large, and pollution was terrible, with almost no regulation or oversight. It's the time when the EPA was created, for instance (and much as I loathed Nixon, that's something he did that I'm grateful for).
But issues & messages aside, as a character study, it's strong & moving. Dern's essential loneliness, even before the events of the film that accentuate & exacerbate it, is beautifully portrayed. As is his inner struggle between conscience & guilt.
I agree with you on both Marienbad and Certified Copy. Not films for everyone, to be sure, but deeply rewarding for viewers who are willing to give themselves over to them. They both credit their viewers with intelligence & imagination, refraining from spoon-feeding them pre-digested one-size-fits-all answers.
Personally, I've never found either film pretentious, whatever that overused word might mean to some posters. That, and faux-intellectual. Now <b>those</b> are one-size-fits-all responses! :)