Skip to main content

The meaning of "absolutely brilliant"

Kicking around in the comments, I see that some think there’s an anti-Inception bias here at Movieline HQ. Let me dispel that scurrilous rumor by saying I think Inception was absolutely brilliant and probably one of the best movies of the year. (Dixon Gaines, “Weekend Receipts: Inception Wakes Up At Number One,” July 18 2010)

I don't mean this as a snark, but when you say, "Let me dispel that scurrilous rumor by saying I think Inception was absolutely brilliant and probably one of the best movies of the year," as a believing listener you're kinda forced into thinking that for Inception to be absolutely brilliant and still only PROBABLY also one of the year's best, to you this has been a year chock-full of epic-brilliant movie-making. If I walked up to you in a crowded room and said to you you were absolutely brilliant, probably one of the smartest people in the room, the room had better be filled with obvious "Einsteins" for this not -- en totale -- to seem much better than, "THE COMPANY OF THIS ROOM makes you seem beyond outstanding," which may or may not make you feel objectively superior, and probably has you thanking at first and then pausing -- "hey, wait a minute..." If the room was actually full of the retarded-leaning average -- which is how many critics judge this (ostensibly) dumbest movie summer / year ever (!) (one they were hoping to be rescued by Inception) -- then you'd have to think I sashayed over to you PRETENDING a compliment but INTENDING a mock-down of an insult.

This is play, I know, and your enthusiasm (for the film) is obvious, of course: but "absolutely brilliant" you'd think would have put it CLEARLY the year's best, probably ONE OF THE DECADE'S. If you genuinely think the year was so full of really great films that a clearly absolutely brilliant may still not count amongst its very best, it's a contrarian take, and I'd like to hear more about that. Myself, I saw three films that will stay with me a good long while (Please Give, Greenberg, Cyrus, [four?: Drunk History Tesla?] -- I also kinda liked Jonah Hex some [Stephanie is right, it was very pleasantly leisurely, if not very -- or much at all -- inventive), and I count it as a decent but necessary appetizer: I've liked the year more than others seem to have.

Link: Weekend receipts (Movieline)

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Discussion over the fate of Jolenta, at the Gene Wolfe facebook appreciation site

Patrick McEvoy-Halston November 28 at 10:36 AM Why does Severian make almost no effort to develop sustained empathy for Jolenta -- no interest in her roots, what made her who she was -- even as she features so much in the first part of the narrative? Her fate at the end is one sustained gross happenstance after another... Severian has repeated sex with her while she lay half drugged, an act he argues later he imagines she wanted -- even as he admits it could appear to some, bald "rape" -- but which certainly followed his  discussion of her as someone whom he could hate so much it invited his desire to destroy her; Severian abandons her to Dr. Talus, who had threatened to kill her if she insisted on clinging to him; Baldanders robs her of her money; she's sucked at by blood bats, and, finally, left at death revealed discombobulated of all beauty... a hunk of junk, like that the Saltus citizens keep heaped away from their village for it ruining their preferred sense
Post a Comment
Read more

Salon discussion of "Almost Famous" gang-rape scene

Patrick McEvoy-Halston: The "Almost Famous'" gang-rape scene? Isn't this the film that features the deflowering of a virgin -- out of boredom -- by a pack of predator-vixons, who otherwise thought so little of him they were quite willing to pee in his near vicinity? Maybe we'll come to conclude that "[t]he scene only works because people were stupid about [boy by girl] [. . .] rape at the time" (Amy Benfer). Sawmonkey: Lucky boy Pull that stick a few more inches out of your chute, Patrick. This was one of the best flicks of the decade. (sawmonkey, response to post, “Films of the decade: ‘Amost Famous’, R.J. Culter, Salon, 13 Dec. 2009) Patrick McEvoy-Halston: @sawmonkey It made an impression on me too. Great charm. Great friends. But it is one of the things you (or at least I) notice on the review, there is the SUGGESTION, with him being so (rightly) upset with the girls feeling so free to pee right before him, that sex with him is just further presump
3 comments
Read more

Too late -- WE SAW your boobs

I think we're mostly familiar with ceremonies where we do anointing. Certainly, if we can imagine a context where humiliation would prove most devastating it'd probably be at a ceremony where someone thought themselves due an honor -- "Carrie," "Good Fellas." "We labored long to adore you, only so to prime your hope, your exposure … and then rather than a ladder up we descended the slops, and hoped, being smitten, you'd judged yourself worthless protoplasm -- a nothing, for letting yourselves hope you might actually be something -- due to be chuted into Hades or Hell." Ostensibly, nothing of the sort occurred during Oscars 2013, where the host, Seth Macfarlane, did a number featuring all the gorgeous Oscar-winning actresses in attendance who sometime in their careers went topless, and pointed this out to them. And it didn't -- not quite. Macarlane would claim that all obscenity would be directed back at him, for being the geek so pathe
Post a Comment
Read more