NoPe's Reviews Coming Soon & Comments

[Deleted]

Fun is too subjective. As far as professionalism is concerned- art is the important thing. Nolan wants his films to be reality. To me, that's just not what a superhero movie should be. It places the bar for what characters like The Joker must be far too high to feasibly be reached. By anyone. Reality is too difficult to achieve and have it be dramatic enough to move the audience. Making it art is a skill but not impossible. Watch the animated television series, you'll see why Nolan's films are overrated. I mean, I wouldn't have compared characters between one film and another if the Nolan psycho-fans hadn't taken the first step. But, in terms of great material- tell me the show didn't nail it better. Also, might want to check out Sin City for another telling reason why we really didn't need Nolan's films that much.

[StevePulaski]

Nov 12, 2012 12:57:39 GMT -5 @iliveagain said:

Fun is too subjective. As far as professionalism is concerned- art is the important thing. Nolan wants his films to be reality. To me, that's just not what a superhero movie should be. It places the bar for what characters like The Joker must be far too high to feasibly be reached. By anyone. Reality is too difficult to achieve and have it be dramatic enough to move the audience. Making it art is a skill but not impossible. Watch the animated television series, you'll see why Nolan's films are overrated. I mean, I wouldn't have compared characters between one film and another if the Nolan psycho-fans hadn't taken the first step. But, in terms of great material- tell me the show didn't nail it better. Also, might want to check out Sin City for another telling reason why we really didn't need Nolan's films that much.

I admire the fact that Nolan's films tried to immerse themselves into reality. That is his vision, and not every man feels that Batman's only place is in a campy work of eighties cinema. The fact that he brought them into the real-world and fleshed them out into identifiable characters with emotions, feelings, and humanity make them truly good movies. Emphasis on good. They're good films. They're dark, a little hard to enjoy because of the heaviness of the material and the fact that they feel like adding more and more weight to the superhero scale just to see how much the genre can sustain, but they are very well done movies from a cinematic point of view.

I'd be eager to see your reviews on them if you ever bucked up and watched them. By the way; I feel these two reviews are some of your best work, on my site at least. I read your writing and realize how I pale in comparison.

[Deleted]

You really still aren't getting the purpose of art, you are writing it off as camp. But, you can't write off a delusional filmmaker who doesn't really get cinema. He doesn't have a personal connection to these characters, look at how much of a mockery they are (Batman with his Cookie Monster voice, intended to "make up" the darkness they couldn't write, and how much The Joker's costume was based on the gimmicks of pro-wrestlers: ooh, his hair is SO BADASS because it looks wet, tussled, and so scraggly). Look at how what he's doing is a cash-in move. Did audiences of the 80's like basically odd and outrageous films that much? Then, tell me why Garbage Pail Kids or Teen Witch weren't as financially successful. This isn't about camp, it's about art. And it's really fucking sophisticated too, at least the first film is. It never blows its' load on action scenes and trying to make the villains feel threatening. Or, Batman himself. Like I said, the path Burton took made the characters purely his own and they were extremely interesting. They could never be compared to characters in any other film.

As for me reviewing them, I've told you before that I'm limited by availability. Netflix: Watch Instant is my go-to house. There are some franchises they simply will Never Load into Their Databases. I'm pretty sure Back to the Future and sequels have never been there. But I know you have never seen Batman, Indiana Jones, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean, X-Men, Twilight, and a shitload of classic Disney films. Everything from the 30's to the late 90's, unless they were made for television. And more that I'm forgetting.

If you want my personal feelings on the 2 films I watched: Batman Begins is shit. Really, really bad. The Dark Knight has some characters that didn't drive me insane and it wasn't as boring as the first film but it was every bit as overcompensating. Nolan does not have the chops for a groundbreaking superhero film. He can't make genuinely dramatic characters and situations, so he overcompensates. With the same unoriginal, uninteresting, hack tricks everyone else uses these days. He's not an outstanding filmmaker, he's a dime a dozen. But... try, just try to tell me you know another Tim Burton. For better or worse, Frank Miller is real Christopher Nolan. And Sin City easily and totally wipes out the need for a Dark Knight trilogy. I think it's you who needs to re-evaluate these films. I can think of no better research than more films like it. Even loosely. Try Blade Runner, A Clockwork Orange, any Mad Max film. The guy is coasting.

But thanks for the compliments. If it seems like I'm being mean, it's just to the fans who don't get what they're watching. They don't have a deep enough Base of Comparison. Check out anyone who made a name for themselves through movies like this: Ridley Scott, Frank Miller, David Fincher, David Lynch, Stanley Kubrick, James Mangold (Identity), Andrew Niccol (Gattaca, S1m0ne), Darren Aronofsky (of course: Requiem for a Dream, Pi), Alex Proyas (THE CROW, Dark City, I Robot), Neil Jordan (In Dreams), The Wachowskis (Matrix, V for Vendetta)... that's one hell of a list of films to come before The Dark Knight which share many similarities to Nolan's films- not just his Batman's.

[Deleted]

I guess you could say I feel the itch to get back to work again but... this summer is going to soon be FILLED with content from yours truly. What do I have planned, you ask?

• Music Video Mayhem: Ever wanted to know which wild and wondrous videos of the last 35 years are actually worth your time to watch? Wait no longer, because I'm about to do an insane OVERLOAD of music video watching with a Letterboxd.com-style ranking of each year in music videos
• The Return of... my Mighty Morphin Power Rangers episodes review: covering each episode of the first 3 seasons of the frighteningly successful, 21-year spanning franchise
• The Return of... my Disney Movie Best-to-Worst Countdown!: now that Netflix has every single "classic" line-up animated feature from 1996-2003, which I was forced to not count during my original "Disneycember" project back in 2011, I will now be able to watch these films and add them to my special Best-to-Worst Countdown reviews thing

And... one more surprise coming your way. Watch out for it.

The festivities are set to begin sometime around July 15th and will continue throughout September.

[Deleted]

Said it before and I'll say it again - Real Life SUCKS! So, July was nothing short of freaking chaos. Raining down, all cylinders. More financial woes, power blew and the company sent a team of 2 dozen guys to just FIND the source of the blow out (we were without power for almost 8 hours), internet went down a couple times, storms storms STORMS / bad weather out the wahzoo, a ton of computer updates (WAY more than usual, everything from Java to Silverlight to manual defragging to installing a new Windows downloading agent) which had my system blocked up / shut down for hours at a time. Fucking chaos!!

Things have finally begun to slow down... and, I just want to say that (about a month off-schedule), I do have intentions to keep some of my previous promises. The music video project I've realized is a bit of a bust. And I realized this when I took a look at a Letterboxd project I started last year to rank Disney animated shorts and the problem is that I can't guarantee the amount of intense focus necessary to really judge hundreds of cartoons (and thousands of videos) enough to the point where a ranking would be fair. I mean- I could try seasonal marathons, wherein I don't re-watch videos I already rated.

Anyway, there IS stuff coming. First of all, I want it to be clear that the Steve Pulaski / Steve the Movie Man message board will be the official port of call wherein my Best Singles of the [Decade] is posted. I'm... oh yes, re-doing my 90's list. Mostly just re-sorting the ones already in. But there are some new additions and, of course to accommodate them, some old choices were booted. I should be done with that in September. Fingers crossed. I'm using all the old links anyway, so half the work I did before is already done. Though it's a whole new ballgame to re-listen to hundreds of songs and then choose what new order they will fit in.

Also, the Power Ranger reviews are coming back this week. As well as a new project dealing with films, film trends, and just stuff of the 80's and 90's that deals with my nostalgia and my opinions, etc. This series started on Letterboxd and I want to move it over here as an extension of my old Cultural Insanity banner I had set-up here about 4 years ago. To flesh it out with more photos and some other cool stuff, to mix medias, etc. Something a message board does better than a system like Letterboxd's. That project is called "Backward Into the 80's from the 90's and Reverse." Long title, but... hey, content is coming!

Also, I'll be trying to start a thread on my favorite films. That might not work out, depending on how much I write for the above thread. Might just end up being a little throwaway thing. We'll see.

To go along with the Power Ranger reviews, I'll also be reviewing the first 2 SNES games for the franchise. I'm EXTREMELY excited about that.

And, finally (?), I will be doing a thread discussing my views on popular (and maybe not-so-popular) music. I actually started this a couple of months back for this board and have a banner image thing for the post and also a fuckton to say about some actual popular artists.

Also- horror reviews might be coming back. MIGHT be. See, the idea with Book of Horror was to make a definitive miniature guide to the genre without turning it into something overly self-indulgent or that felt like an appointment. So, what I'm thinking of doing instead of in-depth reviews is taking the "chapter" idea and expanding it into themes. Overarching subjects and topics that cover a variety of films. I'll see what I come up with. Something to think about.

Anyway, stuff is coming. And VERY soon.