And for a novel that I think meets your criterion, I think I can put forth:
These are terrible examples. Just say Robert Heinlein.
Reminds me of a joke: What comes in a black, furry box and never stops ticking? Tom Arnold.
1 Like
You can argue that art is bad but nobody has ever made a âso bad itâs goodâ argument about any of these.
Did someone order a so-bad-itâs-good movie?
https://x.com/HIDEO_KOJIMA_EN/status/1759403494963061196?s=20
Thatâs just not true. Starting with The Fountain, the whole point of it is that it both a minimally updated everyday object, and itâs mainly noteworthy for being an object of excrement. Some commentary:
The artist is a not great creatorâDuchamp went shopping at a plumbing store. The artwork is not a special objectâit was mass-produced in a factory. The experience of art is not exciting and ennoblingâat best it is puzzling and mostly leaves one with a sense of distaste. But over and above that, Duchamp did not select just any ready-made object to display. In selecting the urinal, his message was clear: Art is something you piss on .[58]
On Donât Worry Kyoko:
The live version included on Some Time in New York City, Bielen and Urish call âa stunning masterwork.â[7] Lewis finds this version to be âastonishing,â stating that Ono "sounds remarkable: screaming, yelping, howling and ululating over a blues-funk jam.[11]
Note, not one of those verbs include âsinging.â
On Finnegans Wake:
The value of Finnegans Wake as a work of literature has been a point of contention since the time of its appearance, in serial form, in literary reviews of the 1920s. Initial response, to both its serialised and final published forms, was almost universally negative. Even close friends and family were disapproving of Joyceâs seemingly impenetrable text, with Joyceâs brother Stanislaus ârebuk[ing] him for writing an incomprehensible night-bookâ,[231] and former friend Oliver Gogarty believing the book to be a joke, pulled by Joyce on the literary community, referring to it as âthe most colossal leg pull in literature since Macphersonâs Ossianâ.[232] When Ezra Pound, a former champion of Joyceâs and admirer of Joyceâs Ulysses, was asked his opinion on the text, he wrote âNothing so far as I make out, nothing short of divine vision or a new cure for the clap can possibly be worth all the circumambient peripherization.â[233] H. G. Wells, in a personal letter to Joyce, argued that âyou have turned your back on common men, on their elementary needs and their restricted time and intelligence [âŚ] I ask: who the hell is this Joyce who demands so many waking hours of the few thousands I have still to live for a proper appreciation of his quirks and fancies and flashes of rendering?â[234] Even Joyceâs patron Harriett Weaver wrote to him in 1927 to inform him of her misgivings regarding his new work, stating âI am made in such a way that I do not care much for the output from your Wholesale Safety Pun Factory nor for the darknesses and unintelligibilities of your deliberately entangled language system. It seems to me you are wasting your genius.â[235]
The only reason people think this collection of gibberish has any value is because the author has previously been great and because the book is indecipherable gibberish. Thus because itâs indecipherable gibberish it must actually be great.
The erased work is noteworthy only because it destroyed a fine work of a great artist, and only because of that is it framed and hanging in a museum.
What does this mean?
These are not good analogies. They are all an artist either playing with form, commenting on something in the art world or both. They are not failures at doing standard art that people claim to enjoy for the failure.
The Room isnât trying to be a comment on the form. Itâs trying to be straight forward relationship crime drama. It just does a really bad job at it.
A better analogy in the art world might be something like folk art but even that isnât a great example. People just are not enjoying any of your examples, or folk art, because itâs terrible.
Even if we can find a couple examples that we agree on there just isnât a whole infrastructure focussed on the bad examples of the art form in any other medium than movies. Think of something like Mystery Science Theatre 3000. Nothing like that exists in any other art form.
Broadly agree with clovisâs point re: âso bad itâs goodâ movies. I really canât think of an example of a movie I enjoy that I wouldnât happily defend as good. Even this one.
3 Likes
Watching âMay Decemberâ and âThe zone of interestâ in theaters on back to back days has me feeling pretty optimistic about the state of movies (but not so much about humans though lol)
5 Likes
That would do it!
1 Like
The Color Purple
Iâve never read the book or seen the 1985 movie, so I canât really comment on any similarities/differences, including whether or not this movie was necessary (Last year, I was pretty negative on the pointlessness of remaking West Side Story)
Itâs definitely an engrossing story. The trope of the downtrodden hero becoming successful has been done before, but itâs still well done.
I will say itâs a bit jarring how quickly they go from pretty heavy stuff to a singing and dancing number. Not sure how I feel about that.
I did have some problems with some abrupt changes in time, but my biggest complaint would be with the producers. Apparently this film cost $90 to $100 million to make? How is that possible?
Anyway, movie was good. Only one Academy Award nomination definitely feels wrong.
7/10
Killers of the Flower Moon
Oppenheimer was going to be my other movie this weekend, but my wife wanted to watch this one instead. I was okay with that.
It was 3 and a half hours; many people (including my wife) thought that it was far too long. I actually think the opposite. I wanted more, specifically from the perspective of the Osage people. I know some of that can be justified by Haleâs comment about the Osage being a quiet people, but I still feel like almost all of the Osage characters were underdeveloped. I think this would have been better as a prestige mini-series.
My only other real complaint is the casting. I know Scorsese probably likes working with them. But FFS, both De Niro and Dicaprio are 20 years too old for those roles. If I recall correctly, there was one seen where Fat Damon called Ernest âsonâ or âboyâ or something like that, which makes sense in the actual history (where the investigator was 10 years older than Ernest), but comes of out of place when the actor playing the investigator is over 10 years younger than the actor playing Ernest.
Thatâs a lot of complaining for a movie that I really liked, but I just had to vent about those two things.
8/10
4 Likes
I basically have two primary complaints about 2023 Color Purple (that I mostly loved):
Misterâs turnaround is much too abrupt. Iâm instantly glad when a piece of shit stops acting like one, but Iâm gonna need more time with babyface Mister if Iâm really going to fully forgive him by the end.
Ciara as grown-up Nettie falls pretty flat, and it feels like it flattens out an ending that had potential to be quite a bit more powerful.
But again, I loved it, I gave it 4/5 on first watch. Re: KOTFM, your age complaints arenât wrong by any means, but that aspect just didnât bother me at all.
1 Like
Saw the taste of things this weekend, I thought it was well done but too long, not engrossing enough for that length. Say like 7-8 out of 10?
I think I looked at my watch and was like holy hell 30 mins left still
Going to see perfect days this weekend
Really hoping my local AMC adds Perfect Days to this weekâs schedule. I see that itâs going to be available for digital sale on March 5 and the preorder price is $15. Paying an indie the $13 ticket price to see it a week and a half earlier feels like a difficult sell. Definitely going if I can get it through A-List though.
Saw Wonka today. Overall my feelings are mixedâmaybe this director just doesnât know how to do musicals. My kids really liked it though.
I agree with this, but Iâm glad it was there (apparently this face turn was not in previous iterations?). If they could have done a less abrupt turn without adding 15 minutes to the film, I would be all for that.
Like you, I havenât experienced the other renditions, but if thatâs right then I do agree. And to the extent that itâs too abrupt, it should be said that Colman Domingo makes it work through sheer natural charm better than most could.
Scarface
9/10
Finally saw this after seeing clips my whole life. I was expecting a mafia movie, man rises to the top though crime, lives the high life for a while, until it catches up to him. I wasnât expecting the fall to start immediately the next scene. I was expecting a couple of scenes of living the high life, but like the very next scene after him climbing to the top is the hot tub with carpet scene (all I could think of was, my god the mold in that place) and everyoneâs immediately pathetic. I also didnât expect everyone to be explicitly voicing all the time how pathetic they were. âYou know what weâre becoming Tony? Losers, weâre becoming losersâ.
Like his mom said, he poisoned everything he touched. He killed his best friend, he wanted to fuck his sister. It was like an old school Greek tragedy.
4 Likes
Bob Marley: One Love
Sometimes my brain just works at cross purposes with me. When the new releases came out last week, I said to someone, âIf I was snowed in at a theater, Iâd probably buy a ticket to Madame Web before Iâd buy one to Bob Marley.â That was a smarter rendition of me. But then the CinemaScore came out really positive for Marley while it did better box office than expected, and I got curious. After all, I tend to skew more positive than the average person does re: these formulaic music biopics. I decided to optimize my chances of liking it by catching it while it was still had Dolby screenings available.
My initial impulse was correct. This is bloodless and boring. The Marley concerts in Dolby were enjoyable but fleeting, and of course most people wonât have the benefit of taking those scenes in with the enhanced sound/seat rumble, so they would probably just be better off dialing up actual Bob Marley music from the comfort of their home. This also had the Marley family in with a producer credit, which always feels like it greatly compromises the chance of getting an honest film that strays very far from hagiography.
It should be noted that Kingsley Ben-Adir does a great job in the lead and continues to impress. For his sake, Iâm glad this isnât flopping at the box office, because he deserves to continue getting these opportunities. I just hope the material heâs working with is better next time.
2/5.
1 Like