It kinda seems like when people say a piece of art has a "point" they actually mean that whatever it has to say can be boiled down to a short phrase that would fit on a bumper sticker. Thus making bumper stickers the only form of art that doesn't waste your time.
Jeff, just a heads up, if you don't happen to share my opinion that A Serious Man is a tragically underrated near masterpiece, I will likely come to believe you are an anti-art dilettante who possibly hates Jews.
I thought Barton Fink’s other message was “Studio executives are assholes, especially ones as brilliantly portrayed by Michael Lerner”; for Hail, Caesar! it was “there really were Communists at work in Hollywood.”
I think a movie can have more than one message. It's just a shame that they can't have more than one Michael Lerner.
One thing I love about Hail, Caesar! is that they make fun of Hollywood communists. That's a real type of person -- I'm in the WGA, I've met the modern-day version of those guys! And yes, the writers of that era had a First Amendment right to believe whatever they wanted, and yes, McCarthy persecuted them in a paranoid and awful way...but there were communists! And they spout confused nonsense just like in the movie! Which absolutely deserves to be mocked but never is.
🤣. You know what's funny, that Dalton Trumbo movie with Heisenberg in it, is very well made and entertaining on it's own terms. But boy, it really does skirt the problem that they really were advocating a terrible thing that killed a bunch of people. At one point, his young daughter is asking what communism is and he implies it's something innocuous like "give unto others" or " share and share alike."
No man, it isn't.😬
The character played by Louie CK kind of alludes to the hypocrisy of Limousine Communists but it's very underplayed. Which is fine, to me the point is, free speech protects dumb and wrong speech as well, but it's not like the Hollywood Ten were Right is some larger sense.
It kinda seems like when people say a piece of art has a "point" they actually mean that whatever it has to say can be boiled down to a short phrase that would fit on a bumper sticker. Thus making bumper stickers the only form of art that doesn't waste your time.
oh brother is the best
Agreed! But it's one of the eight that -- for me, anyway -- doesn't have a message. And that's fine! Movies without messages can still be really good!
But Raising Arizona!
Jeff, just a heads up, if you don't happen to share my opinion that A Serious Man is a tragically underrated near masterpiece, I will likely come to believe you are an anti-art dilettante who possibly hates Jews.
No pressure. 🤣🤣
As it happens, I do share that opinion. This blog was almost called "The Goy's Teeth".
Whew😁
I thought Barton Fink’s other message was “Studio executives are assholes, especially ones as brilliantly portrayed by Michael Lerner”; for Hail, Caesar! it was “there really were Communists at work in Hollywood.”
I think a movie can have more than one message. It's just a shame that they can't have more than one Michael Lerner.
One thing I love about Hail, Caesar! is that they make fun of Hollywood communists. That's a real type of person -- I'm in the WGA, I've met the modern-day version of those guys! And yes, the writers of that era had a First Amendment right to believe whatever they wanted, and yes, McCarthy persecuted them in a paranoid and awful way...but there were communists! And they spout confused nonsense just like in the movie! Which absolutely deserves to be mocked but never is.
Edward Dmytryk’s book Odd Man Out: A Memoir of the Hollywood Ten (he was one of them till he wasn’t ) lays out the issues with unsparing nuance.
🤣. You know what's funny, that Dalton Trumbo movie with Heisenberg in it, is very well made and entertaining on it's own terms. But boy, it really does skirt the problem that they really were advocating a terrible thing that killed a bunch of people. At one point, his young daughter is asking what communism is and he implies it's something innocuous like "give unto others" or " share and share alike."
No man, it isn't.😬
The character played by Louie CK kind of alludes to the hypocrisy of Limousine Communists but it's very underplayed. Which is fine, to me the point is, free speech protects dumb and wrong speech as well, but it's not like the Hollywood Ten were Right is some larger sense.