BS: Womanly Jiggles: Who Cares???

Subject: Womanly Jiggles: Who Cares???
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 11 Aug 02 - 05:17 PM

I've read the other "womanly jiggles" thread with amused interest. Since it is so large, this is my response to my overall impression of the thread. There were many good points. Spaw, what you said about Karen was amazing, I salute you. I hope to meet you both one day and witness that for myself. That brings me to the point of this thread.

To me by far the most attractive thing about a woman is what I see in her eyes when she looks at me. The right look is so attactive that it completely eclipses EVERYTHING else. All that other stuff is either gravy or noise that gets in the way. I pity the man who would deny himself an exquisite woman because her hips were too narrow or her butt too round.

What is important is the beauty of her soul, and whether you can get around the superficial concerns and see that soul.

Cheers All

Rob

Subject: RE: BS: Womanly Jiggles: Who Cares???
From: Little Hawk
Date: 11 Aug 02 - 07:07 PM

Well, that is undeniable, Rob...and it's a good thing. Otherwise WalMart would soon be marketing female androids with just the right amount of "jiggle" and so on, and the results could be downright disastrous.

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: Womanly Jiggles: Who Cares???
From: Amos
Date: 11 Aug 02 - 07:08 PM

Disastrous, LH? Think of the population curve!! LOL!!

A

Subject: RE: BS: Womanly Jiggles: Who Cares???
From: khandu
Date: 11 Aug 02 - 07:15 PM

After looking in my lucky wife's eyes, everything else is just cheap whiskey!

khandu

Subject: RE: BS: Womanly Jiggles: Who Cares???
From: Penny G.
Date: 11 Aug 02 - 07:16 PM

Is it time to go to manly wandjiggles ?

Subject: RE: BS: Womanly Jiggles: Who Cares???
From: Celtic Soul
Date: 11 Aug 02 - 09:19 PM

Oh, nononononono...

I saw enough men's wandjiggles this past weekend to last me a lifetime.

Subject: RE: BS: Womanly Jiggles: Who Cares???
From: Bill D
Date: 11 Aug 02 - 09:39 PM

LOLOL...you gotta get some tamer gigs, Celtic Soul!

Subject: RE: BS: Womanly Jiggles: Who Cares???
From: Little Hawk
Date: 11 Aug 02 - 10:27 PM

Good joke there, Amos! LOL likewise...

God, I hope WalMart doesn't get on the "wandjiggle" thing...

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: Womanly Jiggles: Who Cares???
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 12 Aug 02 - 12:30 AM

Female androids? Wandjiggles? Seems like that IS what the world is coming to. One can certainly buy all of the jiggly parts one at a time, in those marital aid shops, or so I'm told.

Subject: RE: BS: Womanly Jiggles: Who Cares???
From: GUEST,Emily Latella
Date: 12 Aug 02 - 01:19 AM

What's all this talk about manly wand-sicles?!  I mean, first it's nekkid banjo players in Balboa Park, or Avalon, or wherever.  (The very thought of that makes me blush!)  Then a lot of you go on and on about females' wiggly parts.  And now it's gone so far as talk about men's wand-sicles.  Well, I never!  (I mean, how do you freeze the things, anyway?  And I thought we left that sort of thing back in the Oval Office with Monica Lewinsky, too. )

Such talk!   This is supposed to be a family cafe, after all!

For shame!

Emily L.

Subject: RE: BS: Womanly Jiggles: Who Cares???
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 12 Aug 02 - 09:14 AM

Thanks for the thread & your comments, Jack the sailor - I told off a good mate recently because he said he could really fancy a mutual friend if she didn't eat so much & lost weight. As I'm similarly overweight according to fashion magazines etc, I was annoyed at his superficial comment & said what I thought of it, so he backed off a bit. But it is a common attitude in our western society, tho not one I had expected from a very aware person like him.

ps. her partner obviously sees her as she is.

sandra

Subject: RE: BS: Womanly Jiggles: Who Cares???
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 12 Aug 02 - 10:06 AM

Sandra,

Thanks

I'm overweight myself. Some say obesity is the last politically correct prejudice. I've recently found a beautiful woman who sees me as I am. I feels like a miracle, an answer to prayers.

I'm not sure why people can be so cruel about this issue, but I've experienced it all of my life. No big deal now, but it was hell when I was a kid.

Good for you for setting your mate straight. After all, the body types in the fashion magazines are more unhealthy for most women than being moderately overweight. It is good that you have the courage not to live to an impossible standard.

Cheers,

Rob

Subject: RE: BS: Womanly Jiggles: Who Cares???
From: Little Hawk
Date: 12 Aug 02 - 10:22 AM

I think most of us went through hell when we were kids, Rob...for one reason or another. In my case, it was being small, underweight, and bookish. Every society has an ideal of feminine and masculine beauty that it holds up to people...look at old paintings from Europe and you will see how much the ideal has changed over the years.

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: Womanly Jiggles: Who Cares???
From: EBarnacle1
Date: 12 Aug 02 - 11:29 AM

In this Summer of corporate malfeasance, it is interesting to find something that one of the biggies probably would not do. I seem to recall that WalMart is very big on "Family Values," whatever that means. As they feel free to censor and reject music and videos, they probably would refer us elsewhere on these devices. Even so, someone would eventually sell the damn things.

Subject: RE: BS: Womanly Jiggles: Who Cares???
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 12 Aug 02 - 01:11 PM

Anyone seen the movie "Shallow Hal"? In spite of some cheap laughs it was a good illustration of the ideal of "inner beauty".

Subject: RE: BS: Womanly Jiggles: Who Cares???
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 13 Aug 02 - 08:54 AM

Jack - best wishes to you & your partner. As many of us know being different (bigger, smaller, sporty, not sporty, wrong colour...) causes hell, but we do survive.

Little Hawk - I loved the reference to different times, different shapes. I have been overweight since I was about 11 & have always been interested in historical costume. A wonderful Edwardian advertisment pictured a beautiful lady who had returned to her "former sylph-like weight" of 11 stone (154lb, around half of that in kilos) after taking the product. I was an 11 stone sylph in later high school, which was not the fashion in the late 60's. I wonder if I can still find the product!!

More power to real people, people like the wonderful Mudcatters.

Sandra

Subject: RE: BS: Womanly Jiggles: Who Cares???
From: GUEST,Fred Miller
Date: 13 Aug 02 - 10:55 AM

I only wish I could chime in and say that I'm above all the superficialities other people are prone to. I'm not sure I've always been cooly unaffected by my wife's cute-as-all-get-out-ness, never let my thoughts stray from her eternal soul.

But when I met her what got me was how unguardedly she told me about herself, casually rattling off personal stuff that made my hair stand on end--like quills upon the fretful porcupine. I was such a messed-up kid, any thing I said was edited for it's impression on her, veering toward a childish lie. So I thought Here's an amazing person. That's how people ought to be, I thought. I'd like to learn to see someone's spirit at a glance, but for me and my shallow ilk, it's an effort, takes attention, and when we're tired and beat we enjoy the relaxing superficialities that come easy.

I saw Shallow Hal--I think it's a pretty funny movie that just touches on a grain or two of truth in passing. It's not very disappointing because it doesn't really try too hard. On the other hand, American Beauty portended to be all about a heightened plane of perception, but was often merely clever, formulaic, self-congratulatory and kind of smug. It didn't really walk it's own talk, and I was disappointed in it. There's more truth in an unpretentious movie like Marty, imho. Most of us care about some silly stuff, sometimes. Must be easy going for unclouded minds, not distracted by fluff.

Subject: RE: BS: Womanly Jiggles: Who Cares???
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 13 Aug 02 - 11:32 AM

Hmmmm Fred, you had me up until American Beauty.

To me that movie was a fine exploration of character, acted brilliantly. I don't think a moral was intended, certainly not according to the director, whose commentary on the DVD I very much enjoyed!

The Farreley Bros. DID intend that Shallow Hal preach about "inner beauty". I know this because they said so in their commentary. To me they lost a lot of credibility with the bit where the child gets splashed out of the pool. Then again, they needed jokes like that to get their target audience to pay attention.

Subject: RE: BS: Womanly Jiggles: Who Cares???
From: GUEST,Fred Miller
Date: 13 Aug 02 - 01:34 PM

Well, Jack I lose everybody with my opinion on American Beauty. Sure, The bros meant to preach, but rather flippantly, not too deep.

What about all that talk in American Beauty about being ugly, or ordinary, or what is beautiful? I find it has an element of an aesthetic super-hero fantasy, Super-Perceptiveman--"I don't get afraid." Sure, and Up up and away, To infinity and beyond, and all that. I think critics over-rate it because they feel it's their story, their quest. What if that dancing bag said Wal-mart or McDonalds on it? What if plain Jane were acted by a plain actress? I'm not saying it's a bad movie, but I had read a review before I saw it that led me to imagine a much better movie. It's a little short on kindness, a little smug--the writing is what I'm talking about--it was superbly done. I liked Boogie Nights much better.

The movie that's routinely made for the artsy niche market goes a little like this:

There's a repressed community. (an asylum, a boys school, a religious community subsisting on a bland diet of bread and fish, a slice of Americana.) They don't know how to live! There arrives a wild-card outsider, who shakes things up, (stirs up trouba, stands on his desk and does impressions, roasts and serves up whole baby birds in sauce, fires up a doobie) and somehow sets one or more of them free! Typically somebody dies. When there are villains they're often military types (Big Nurse was an Army nurse.) The most ambitious versions of this tale, like C. Nest and Am. Beauty try to effect a convincing first-person-omnicient p.o.v. After a while you begin to nitpick at the details that don't ring true--those poetry-loving townie girls in Dead Poets Society! I knew those girls, they didn't give a rat's ass about poetry. The homophobic dad in A.B., who of course therefore must be a repressed gay man--now that was acted so brilliantly that you may let it pass, but there's a pat syllogism of self-hate-turned-outward in the film, every bit as silly as the yuppie self-esteem pop-psych motivational-tape stuff that is being satirized. So I find it more fun to pick at it than love it, that's all. There's something not quite nice about it.

Subject: RE: BS: Womanly Jiggles: Who Cares???
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 13 Aug 02 - 07:11 PM

You seem to have missed a good movie. The relationship between Spacey's and Benning's characters was the heart of the movie. Homophobic Dad was the least developed and least interesting character and the shopping bag was just an accident that the second unit captured. American beauty wasn't about a repressed community. It was about male menopause. Forget the reviews and watch it again.

Subject: RE: BS: Womanly Jiggles: Who Cares???
From: Little Hawk
Date: 13 Aug 02 - 09:39 PM

American Beauty? Hmmm...well, gosh, I've never seen it. Now I don't know what to think. Do I rent it or do I not? Think hard, LH, there are a few bucks and a couple of hours at stake here...(grind, grind....*smoke rises from ears*).

I had mixed feelings about Dead Poets Society. It was sort of annoying...

I was also a bit perturbed with Cuckoo's Nest, mainly because Jack Nicholson did not resemble the original Randall McMurphy nearly enough, as far as I was concerned. That's what happens when you read the book first.

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: Womanly Jiggles: Who Cares???
From: GUEST,maryrrf
Date: 14 Aug 02 - 10:18 AM

Well, just by coincidence I saw American Beauty last night so here's my verdict - it wasn't a perfect movie, but I liked it. I recognized a lot of people I know (including myself in some respects) in those stereotypes. It really was a pretty insightful commentary on contemporary American life - yes it was cliched but it was supposed to be. It had some surprising twists - like the repressed gay character and the "slutty" blond that really hadn't slept around at all, etc. And the dark ending was disturbing but at least it wasn't a cop out where everybody resolves their differences and gets back together. I'd give it 4 stars.

Subject: RE: BS: Womanly Jiggles: Who Cares???
From: GUEST
Date: 14 Aug 02 - 10:28 AM

Well, I'll throw my hat in the ring with Fred. I thought AB was pretty much of a yawner.

If you aren't living as part of the so-called "American mainstream" it is easy to view the film as, well, stupid. Just like the American mainstream is.

There are very few American filmmakers creating films with depth and substance. Rather they make glitzy looking pics and flicks that appeal to the mainstreams addictions to glamour, violence, and romance--and if all three elements are combined, as they were in American Beauty, the mainstream critics think you are brill.

Yawn.

Subject: RE: BS: Womanly Jiggles: Who Cares???
From: GUEST,Fred
Date: 14 Aug 02 - 11:15 AM

No, now Jack, I saw a good movie, 3 times, and will probably see it again. There's a lot to it, surely, and the writer and director seem to have had different core concerns. It was just those concerns that led someone to call it "American Beauty" that I thought lent it to this thread. And those were the particular aspects that I found weak in it, not that they were necesarily the most important.

I think Ken Kesey may still not have seen Cukoo's Nest--he swore he wouldn't, then later said maybe if it came on t.v....

People are saying threads like "jiggles" are silly and even demeaning, but I've always wondered why it's so hard, why there is so much resistance to extrapolating ideas about general aesthetic questions, empirically from daily life, stuff everybody sees and is aware of, has opinions about. And even in art school--you can take art-history all you want, and it's important to have that perspective in any subject, but you often will be a grad student in philosophy before you can focus on aesthetics. Why is this? I think it's interesting, bears thinking about. I haven't meant to derail these threads into my rambling lines of b.s., but hoped to see if they'd grow a little less fleshy, broader, so to speak, more abstract. That's why I brought up that angle in Am. Beauty.

Subject: RE: BS: Womanly Jiggles: Who Cares???
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 14 Aug 02 - 11:39 AM

GUEST.....Glamour? Violence? Romance?

There was a second or two of violence but you and I obviously disagree on the meaning of the other two words! A.B. was obviously sick and sordid to make a point.

Good Point Fred, that's also why I brought up Shallow Hal. Discussions of values of beauty should take popular culture into account.

Subject: RE: BS: Womanly Jiggles: Who Cares???
From: GUEST
Date: 14 Aug 02 - 12:52 PM

Just because the subject matter of the film attempts to address the shallowness of popular culture's fixation with glamour, violence, and romance, doesn't mean it does it successfully. Sometimes, as I believe is the case with AB, it simply points the finger at it, without giving us any insights. In that sense, I find it exploitative, rather than illuminating.

BTW, there is a pretty strong undercurrent--a lurid sort of threat of violence that is always present in AB, IMO. And of course, I wouldn't dismiss the obvious violence in it nearly as cavalierly as you have Jack. But you and I don't agree about this film, so perhaps we should just leave it at that.

Subject: RE: BS: Womanly Jiggles: Who Cares???
From: GUEST
Date: 14 Aug 02 - 01:04 PM

BTW Jack, I meant to mention I thought Shallow Hal failed too, and hold the opinion that it just came off as tasteless exploitation of people's hatred of fat girls and women. A real stinker of a film, that one, despite good efforts by Gwyneth and Jack to make it otherwise.

Subject: RE: BS: Womanly Jiggles: Who Cares???
From: Kim C
Date: 14 Aug 02 - 01:26 PM

Little Hawk, I liked the book better too, because I liked how it told the story from the Chief's point of view. That's totally lost in the movie.

I married a tall skinny guy. But I think John Goodman is way sexy. And Danny DeVito, too, in an elfish sort of way.

Everyone has a different idea of what they think is beautiful. A friend of mine was always going on about how picky he is about women, blahblahblah... then I saw a picture of his ex-wife. I did not think she was pretty at all, but apparently at one time he did. I refrained from making any catty comments. :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Womanly Jiggles: Who Cares???
From: Little Hawk
Date: 14 Aug 02 - 01:31 PM

I saw the trailer for Shallow Hal and thought "Kee-rist, that's one to avoid..."

Mind you, this is how 19 out of 20 movie trailers affect me. :-) Obviously, I do NOT fit the demographic the marketers are aiming at!

I am particularly sick of the guy with the portentious voice (a combination of growl and amplified whisper) who does the voice-overs on all of them. Who the hell is he anyway? What a bore.

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: Womanly Jiggles: Who Cares???
From: GUEST,Fred Miller
Date: 14 Aug 02 - 02:47 PM

Whee. As long as this is a jiggly movie thread for a while, why not point out the good, along with the bad and the ugly?

I mean, if there's something one hated, let's toss in something better.

A couple of my obscure favorites are The Stone Boy--but I may be the only person who saw and thought anything of that one. The Return Of Martin Guerre is great, though I think I utterly disagree with an aesthetic implication it seems to me to make. Tomorrow--from the Faulkner short-story, Duval is note-perfect. Camille Claudel, etc.

Subject: RE: BS: Womanly Jiggles: Who Cares???
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 14 Aug 02 - 03:19 PM

GUEST first you say the movie exploits glamour, romance and violence then you say it addresses them. Again you and I obviously have wildly different definitions of these concepts.

Subject: RE: BS: Womanly Jiggles: Who Cares???
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 14 Aug 02 - 03:25 PM

"What Dreams May Come" was a very pretty movie which made some nice points about outward appearances and inner beauty.

Subject: RE: BS: Womanly Jiggles: Who Cares???
From: GUEST
Date: 14 Aug 02 - 04:19 PM

Jack, it is quite easy to "address" the popular obsessions with violence, glamour, and romance by exploiting people's voyeuristic interests and prurient desires, wouldn't you agree? I mean, that is what the Hollywood machine thrives on. As American Beauty and Shallow Hal were both products of the Hollywood machine, I don't really think it is contradictory to say that they only superficially "addressed" the subjects they attempted, and the end result was exploitative.

Subject: RE: BS: Womanly Jiggles: Who Cares???
From: Little Hawk
Date: 14 Aug 02 - 06:34 PM

Yep. That's what's wrong with the trailers too. Plus they are usually just a tad too loud...kind of like being a mile or two from ground zero when "the big one" goes off.

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: Womanly Jiggles: Who Cares???
From: robomatic
Date: 14 Aug 02 - 10:04 PM

I think you're all wrong, but entitled to your opinions...:-) No, really, my ha'pnee's worth.

I've seen some movies I really really liked and think they're great: To Kill a Mockingbird Harvey Public Enemy Treasure of the Sierra Madre Day the Earth Stood Still Killer Klownz From Outer Space (Yeah, I know, but try seeing it with a Russian girl who's just gotten off the plane and it's her FIRST AMerican movie!) I think Citizen Kane is every bit as great as the highest flutin' critic who ever gave it his upper crust upper thumb.

On the other hand:

I was bored and disappointed by Moulin Rouge. I hated Independence Day not so much because it was an over-effected, jingoistic plotless piece of crap, which it was, but mostly because it blatantly stole just about every sci-fi idea and plot device from something much better if more obscure. I enjoyed most of Saving Private Ryan but felt the old guy weeping at the grave at the end was a bit over the top. I really liked American Beauty (and the dancing bag, to me a symbol of the vagaries of a life, like Forrest Gump's little feather. I like Forrest Gump - okay I'm a sucker!)

Good recently vintaged Yank movies, not made purely for the dollar and incorporating real ideas:

Say Anything What's Eating Gilbert Grape Fight Club Gattacca <= possibly English ?

I've come to the conclusion that few directors are speaking to me personally, that none of 'em have a hang on the isness of life any better'n me, they are just a bit better in expressing it or something like it. I take my movies scene by scene and much of the time Ebert and Roeper (popular yank critics) can help me avoid wasting two hours of my life at a time, leaving me free to blow an entire contiguous eight hours at a go.

I think poo-pooing American flicks is simply not being open to the great range of films that are out there, even in Ameridom. Most people make films because they want people to watch 'em, and yanks and indians seem to be supremely gifted in that regard. After all, the greatest instrument of propaganda yet devised has been The Western.

As for jiggles, I'm pretty open minded. I think it's nice if a woman starts with a couple of jiggles, but if she's got a personality, ultimately that's what matters. I suspect a woman would like a man to start out with something that's not at all jiggly, and tolerance makes life endurable. After all, we all ultimately lose everything we start out with.

Thanks for the opportunity to vent.

Subject: RE: BS: Womanly Jiggles: Who Cares???
From: CarolC
Date: 14 Aug 02 - 10:36 PM

Snatch!!!!

Lock Stock and two Smoking Barrells!!!
Dem was movies!!!!

And of course everyone on the Mudcat LOVES!!!!!!! "O Brother Where Art Thou?"

Subject: RE: BS: Womanly Jiggles: Who Cares???
From: CarolC
Date: 15 Aug 02 - 07:00 AM

Oops. That last post from me was from Jack the Sailor. We're in a hotel in Parsippany New Jersey, on the way to New York City, and I put my cookie on his laptop. Oops.

(Heading for a gathering of acoustic guitarists on Sat.)

Subject: RE: BS: Womanly Jiggles: Who Cares???
From: GUEST,Fred Miller
Date: 15 Aug 02 - 10:32 AM

Little Hawk, I can sort of agree about Hollywood and all, but don't you get frustrated and depressed hoping to see really good movies? I tend to go back and forth, sometimes watching movies of a lesser god, just to stay conversational, then eventually you begin to feel--Where are the movies I'd want my grandkids to see? Ones that will still seem to matter? Usually I read more in that phase, not because I suppose reading is a higher thing, but there's a bigger backlog of good stuff around. For me mediocre stuff is sometimes more tiresome than really lousy stuff. I confess I sometimes read about movies instead of seeing them, and when they actually come around I think, oh yeah, I sort of liked that one. I liked the idea of the plastic bag in American Beauty much more when I read about it than it looked on film, where it's doing a slightly comical little dance. It looked like a funny thing that anyone might notice, whereas seeing the beauty of a random piece of litter, garbage, requires setting aside the general idea of it. Joeseph Albers used to have his art students at Black mountain College practice something like that, for an exercise.

I seem to take a middle view on American Beauty--I don't see an intent to directly address issues of glamour and violence, while actually exploiting those things--I count on Oliver Stone to do that. I think it meant, very ambitiously, to address values, how to live, what is a good life, and this was largely played out in the Spacey-Bennet relationship, sure. But it has something the matter with it, for me.

Here's one thing, the movie starts out with a video clip of the two young characters talking about killing the father, we later find out, facetiously. And it sets up a frame around the story, when in the end the father is dead, the two abruptly leave town, and there exists this disturbing, possibly incriminating tape. Male menopause doesn't explain why the movie does this device.

I supposed that it may be meant that the story exposes a truth behind the appearances and ugliness of so-called "trash t.v." and sensational "reality" images. So I can see how you might find that it attempts to address things like violence and if not "glamour" maybe "sensationalism" and fails to be convincing. I was calling this kind of thing mere cleverness--it's a clever device--but it may come to the same thing--it just doesn't all add up right, in the end, some things seem wrong about it, it leaves a sour taste;

does anyone believe the way the daughter just stands there in the room with her murdered father while her boyfriend takes a long moment to appreciate the beauty of it? That may be the worst, wrongest, most absurd moment in it for me. But there are a few others--lingering over that Nazi plate seemed odd. But I agree also that there were very good things, elements, threads, mostly the acting was fantastic.

I liked Fight Club in the beginning, when Norton and Bonham Carter were going to support groups, and I wish it had just kept going with them, but the doppelganger identity thing ruined it for me, by the end I couldn't remember or care what it was about at all. Womanly jiggles?

I like the way some b.s. topics spin off into other things, isn't that the art of b.s., anyway? how most people talk and think? I really enjoyed the stuff I got to read today, and appreciate being tolerated too.

Subject: RE: BS: Womanly Jiggles: Who Cares???
From: robomatic
Date: 15 Aug 02 - 12:32 PM

One more bit from me. I feel free to poke fun at people's politics and religion, but I respect the seriousness of what people listen to and eat. Which is why I didn't venture to say that one of the things I really liked about American Beauty was the Thomas Newman score. (And it's one of the reasons I watch CSI on television).

Subject: RE: BS: Womanly Jiggles: Who Cares???
From: Kim C
Date: 15 Aug 02 - 01:35 PM

I love CSI!!! Seems like we had a thread about it some time ago.

About jiggles, if I didn't say this before: nobody likes a really skinny belly dancer. In some countries they like them rather plump.

About movies... I watched a good one last night that I hadn't watched in several years, called Pharaoh's Army. Very well-made Civil War movie without all the Hollywood claptrap and Victorian mythology. Kris Kristofferson's Preacher character is creepy beyond belief.

It came out in 95 or 96, and some of the PBS stations played it (which is where I taped it from). I think the video is still available, but may be hard to find.

But where's the happy little tire swing? ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Womanly Jiggles: Who Cares???
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 15 Aug 02 - 01:37 PM

American Beauty was among other things a murder mystery. Keeping the mystery til the end is the reason for soem of those devices.

The corpse of Spacey's character is narrating the picture. Everything in the picture and each character is seen from his point of view.

I loved a lot of things about fight club. The plot wasn't one of them. But I don't see any other way they could have told the story. The novel writer in his commentary on the dvd explains the genesis of some of the characters and their actions.

Movies are a business, the market must be served. Every year there are three or four movies which are works of art and worth watching. Last year,"The Shipping News",and "A Beautiful mind" were two of them.

Subject: RE: BS: Womanly Jiggles: Who Cares???
From: GUEST,Fred Miller
Date: 16 Aug 02 - 10:21 AM

Robomatic, For me Moulin Rouge was a stylisic stunt that didn't have any believable people in it. Well, okay, maybe the green fairy. I didn't see independence day, but Strictly Ballroom is a movie that uses everything from every dance movie ever made, and turns out to be the feel-good film of the decade. Nicely subversive, great for kids I think.

It embarrasses me how much I like belly dancing, there's a great mid-eastern band, Shalom, I think, who appear with one around here. The music sounds ambient and improvised, rolling along, but then suddenly everyone is right together--probably I'm overly amazed by that, I have trouble counting measures very long.

I don't like to put down stuff that people watch or listen to, I even still feel bad about making fun of an Ayn Rand book somebody felt strongly about, but sometimes you can't help it. Why is it so different from politics? I may be the most liberal person I know, in many ways, but I try to be tolerant of some aspects of conservatism as a sort of "alternative lifestyle". One of which sort of ties back into jiggles, or at least the phenomenae of attraction. There's a particular attractiveness about the people one grew up, was young with, which lingers forever about them. There's probably something good, a little lucky, about being with one person a long time, when that works out. But I wonder if that's a male perception, because I've always felt I simply get more intensely boring as time goes on, that to my wife I'm like a record player and half a dozen lp's she's heard too much already. Maybe that's why I'm mailing my b.s. out into cyber-space now?

Subject: RE: BS: Womanly Jiggles: Who Cares???
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Aug 02 - 10:34 AM

Maybe some of you should broaden your horizons a bit beyond schlock stock Hollywood films. There are always great American films being released by indie film makers and "outsiders" like Spike Lee and John Sayles. Considering what good film makers they are, and how easy it is to see their films, I'm wondering why their films aren't popping up in the discussion?

And I thought Moulin Rouge was brilliant. I loved it. I also loved something else that John Leguzamo was in a few years back, which was the remake of Romeo and Juliet, with Clare Danes and Leonardo Di Caprio. It wasn't the best version of Romeo and Juliet I ever saw (I reserve that for the Zefferelli version), but it was a stunning piece of filmmaking.

Subject: RE: BS: Womanly Jiggles: Who Cares???
From: Amergin
Date: 16 Aug 02 - 10:46 AM

i love john sayles....especially the Secret of Roan Innish...and Matewan.....

also tend to love the Terry Gilliam movies that I have seen....like Time Bandits....The Adventures of Baron Munchausen....and 12 Monkeys....

Subject: RE: BS: Womanly Jiggles: Who Cares???
From: Kim C
Date: 16 Aug 02 - 11:57 AM

I saw Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing. Nobody did the right thing, and the tension in the movie made me tense. (I guess that was the whole point.)

Red Violin was good.

Subject: RE: BS: Womanly Jiggles: Who Cares???
From: GUEST,Fred Miller
Date: 16 Aug 02 - 12:11 PM

Guest, now, no need to get condescending. um, wasn't that Romeo and Juliet a schlock hollywood thing? As with Moulin Rouge and most of the Shakespeare done here at Actors Theatre, I have trouble with all that surface-dressing-post-modern illustrational anachronism. One of the worst things I've ever seen was a Bedouin King Lear-ance of Arabia fiasco. Another was the Ethan Hawke Hamlet. See? Hamlet was a grunge dude? Get it? It's facile, pedestrian, condescendingly explanatory to the audience, it intrudes, calls attention to how clever the director thinks he or she is. I can't grant it, somehow. How do you deal with it?

A friend of mine who loved Moulin Rouge could always one-up my complaints though. I said I didn't think they had saturday night specials or smith-coronas back then, and he said no, and they didn't have Elton John either. But I've done a little research, and it turns out they did.

The Zefferelli picture was the first time it occurred to me what a director was, when I was a kid, watching the Tibalt Mercutio scene, and how the sense of it was more than what the lines said. Great stuff.

I feel defensive--Martin Guerre was a french thing, remade into hollywood's Sommersby. Camille Claudel also french, (also with that Gerard guy, as Rodin)and the only credible artist-bio-pic I've ever seen. Strictly Ballroom is Australian. The Dutch The Vanishing was remade into "the vanishing" around the same time as sommersby--hollywood was making all my favorite foreign things into their versions, and the videos had this crawl on them:

The following motion picture has been altered from its original version. It has been formatted to fit your little pea-brain.

Sadly, I haven't thought a lot of American-Indie-n films were very good, so I don't recomend them, though I do enjoy that they're a bit different.

What's the sexiest movie (jiggles thread? Or maybe just a Who cares thread, now), funniest movie, saddest movie? is a fun survey. Maybe I'll post it elsewhere.

Subject: RE: BS: Womanly Jiggles: Who Cares???
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Aug 02 - 12:23 PM

Anyone seen Sayles' latest? I can't wait. I loved Do the Right Thing. I do believe the point of it was to make everyone watching it feel uncomfortable, regardless of their race. That is something Spike does really well in all his movies. I thought Son of Sam was brilliant, as I did Malcolm X. I'm also a big fan of documentaries. Love 'em. Barbara Kopple is a goddess.

I don't really care if a film is a Hollywood film or not, as that is a silly thing to use as a standard for what is a good or a bad or a mediocre film. I think there has been excellent work done by indie filmmakers. John Waters is another one of my faves. Pecker was fabulous.

As to the Shakespeare films, there is really no shortage of really bad ones. I don't think Shakespeare translates to film very well. I like the Romeo and Juliet version I mentioned because it did work for me, and I loved all the NY actors in it like John Leguzamo and Paul Sorvino. I didn't much care for the performances of either of the leads, but the rest of the cast was damn fine in that film, and the sets were brilliantly done. It seemed credible the way they made it in a contemporary time setting. I'd agree about the Ethan Hawke "Hamlet". And the remake of Great Expectations was a disappointment--that one with Gwyneth Paltrow. I was really bummed about that one, because I adore Anne Bancroft. Oh well, they don't always work, but I give many more kudos to the filmmakers who try something different and innovative, instead of following the Hollywood formula rule book.

Subject: RE: BS: Womanly Jiggles: Who Cares???
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Aug 02 - 01:35 PM

Julia is one of my fave artist bio-pics. It was based upon a story in Lillian Hellman's book Pentimento. Also, I loved Delta of Venus (Anais Nin), and Amadeus, I loved Tap with Gregory Hines (not a bio pic) and All that Jazz (Bob Fosse), with Roy Scheider.

Subject: RE: BS: Womanly Jiggles: Who Cares???
From: Kim C
Date: 16 Aug 02 - 02:14 PM

I understand about filmmaking as an art, but I don't go to the movies to feel uncomfortable. I go there to be entertained. If I am entertained I believe I got my money's worth, whether it's Ishtar or Shakespeare in Love. If I'm not entertained... well, y'all know that saying about, when momma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy. :-)

Fred, that pea-brain thing is HILARIOUS.

Subject: RE: BS: Womanly Jiggles: Who Cares???
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Aug 02 - 02:35 PM

Thats fine if you are only interested in entertainment, and only use that as your yardstick to measure good, bad, or whatever. I also understand you can be entertained by art that doesn't make you feel uncomfortable. Nothing wrong with that.

But being comfortable and feeling safe isn't what art is about for many artists. Many of us prefer to be challenged by the art we engage with, and we have our ways of measuring good, bad, and whatever too.

Those who prefer the entertainment side ususally want to "check their brains at the door" (and I don't say that negatively, as I too, on occassion, want nothing more than a little mindless entertainment--isn't that what cable TV is for?) and not have to think about the film, play, the painting, etc. Those who prefer the art side usually want to be challenged to think though, and so that is one measure we use to evaluate a work of art. And there is nothing wrong with that either.

The two aren't always mutually exclusive, at least in theor, but often are in a practical sense.

Subject: RE: BS: Womanly Jiggles: Who Cares???
From: GUEST,Fred Miller
Date: 16 Aug 02 - 04:59 PM

Thanks KimC, pathetically, my only goal in life is to be funny. I do all right with people I only see once a year, that's about how much material I have.

Guest, I meant painters and sculptorswhen I said Artist, and much prefer your correct usage. I've seen pretty good movies about other artists--saw Nora last night, about Nora Barnacle and James Joyce, and it wasn't bad. It reassurred my about the way I understood The Dead, which I was unsteady about--in college I got the impression I simply didn't get the story, maybe I did after all.