I Read Current Releases And So Should You!

The Something Awful Forums > Main > General Bullshit > SA's Front Page Discussion > I Read Current Releases And So Should You!

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

Reminder that this was a joke frontpage once upon a time, and now the Current Releases reviews on the actual frontpage are somehow more Pitchfork.

# ¿ Oct 8, 2014 00:32

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 09:21

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

bonestructure posted:

This is an apt and instructive comparison. One is a merciless and extremely funny takedown of its subject and the other is an effort-free turd. Even when swinging at softballs like Radiohead, the front page used to manage actual humor.

I'm not sure that you really understood my point there. Maybe not even the point of the page that I linked.

# ¿ Oct 9, 2014 01:58

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

bonestructure posted:

if your point wasn't that the old frontpage was funny and the new frontpage sucks, then yeah, I missed it

It was specifically about how there used to be a scathing Pitchfork parody and now we have the exact same "clever" bullshit reviews as the actual Pitchfork. (Ironically, Pitchfork itself eventually managed to outgrow that crap, so it's doubly shameful that we have it here.)

Sham bam bamina! fucked around with this message at 14:47 on Oct 9, 2014

# ¿ Oct 9, 2014 14:37

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

ArfJason posted:

Might as well quote this while I'm at it. :swoon:

# ¿ Oct 9, 2014 14:38

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

Black Bones posted:

"No! Don't think about children's art, it has no merit!"

If you seriously think that this is what people hate about Professor Clumsy, you're a loving idiot.

# ¿ Oct 10, 2014 13:16

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

I've already posted this elsewhere, but I might as well put it here too:

# ¿ Oct 10, 2014 20:55

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

Reminder that Professor Clumsy's review of the last Die Hard movie was so bad that another reviewer had to pop in at the end to say, "Actually, this guy is a loving idiot, and everything that he said about the movie is dumb and wrong."

# ¿ Oct 13, 2014 03:32

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

I don't read Current Releases, and neither should you, but a quote in a FYAD thread made me check out the Boxtrolls review and welp

quote:

There is also a subplot that will be sure to anger some and confuse others. Snatcher pretends to be a woman through large portions of the film to help seed a false tale of the Box Trolls and to spy on the elite members of society he wishes to join. It's bizarre and more than a little offensive at times. Tumblr is already seething about this, and after seeing it, I cannot blame them. It's tasteless and serves little purpose but to poke fun at a man in a dress, which is really not needed in a 2014 children's film.

"Tumblr is already seething about this, and after seeing it, I cannot blame them."

# ¿ Oct 15, 2014 04:45

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

Why the hell is this piece of poo poo on the front page of a comedy website. Why. What the gently caress, Lowtax. Kick these worthless pisstards out already.

# ¿ Oct 15, 2014 04:46

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

You are diluting your brand, Lowtax.

# ¿ Oct 15, 2014 04:48

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

...of SCIENCE! posted:

they wrote an article decrying the death of "real opinions", by which the author really means "people whose opinions aren't the same as mine".

I made it about halfway down that page before my eyeballs started fighting to escape my head.

# ¿ Oct 15, 2014 13:01

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

100YrsofAttitude posted:

Why not have "fun" with such an article though?

I personally far prefer fun (g0m) to "fun" (everyone else). That's just me, though.

100YrsofAttitude posted:

No such thing as bad publicity and all that.

Ahahahahahahahahahaha how old are you

# ¿ Oct 15, 2014 21:50

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

100YrsofAttitude posted:

Last week featured actual reviews even if they were bland.

That's the most fundamental problem here. The basic loving idea of "serious film reviews on Something Awful Dot Com" is just dumb. This is a comedy site. There is no reason for a series like Current Releases to exist in the first place; the awfulness of the reviews themselves is incidental to their inherent pointlessness.

And no, I'm not moving any goalposts here. I never wanted the things from the beginning.

Sham bam bamina! fucked around with this message at 22:15 on Oct 15, 2014

# ¿ Oct 15, 2014 22:10

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

Black Bones posted:

Why not? There are already reviews of video games and other nerd stuff, why should new movies be exempt?

Because the video game reviews are tweet-sized snippets at the ends of actual comedy articles, moron.

# ¿ Oct 15, 2014 23:34

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

Black Bones posted:

deader than authors

lmao

# ¿ Oct 16, 2014 14:17

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

On the other hand, appealing to authority about the purpose of film criticism isn't the way to go here. There are numerous worthy points to be made against Current Releases without pretending that Ebert's word is somehow final.

# ¿ Oct 16, 2014 14:20

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

theflyingorc posted:

I disagreed with Ebert about tons of stuff, but if you think there's something seriously wrong with his "what movies should be judged on" mantra you are a very stupid person IMO

He was absolutely right, but it's not enough to just cite him when you're dealing with someone who clearly has the opposite mindset from the beginning; that's not going to go anywhere. He was only one guy - it's the ideas themselves that matter, and they're right on their own merits.

Still, saying, "Current Releases is really bad by Roger Ebert's standards, and you should pay attention to what Roger Ebert says about criticism," is infinitely better than Pirate Jet's "NUH-UH ACTUALLY HE WAS WRONG not that I'll make any points of my own" bullshit.

# ¿ Oct 16, 2014 17:03

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

Pirate Jet posted:
A movie is an inanimate object. It doesn't have thoughts or feelings, it doesn't have have goals or ideals, and it certainly doesn't have any intentions. Defining a movie's quality by "how well does it accomplish what it intended" is a fool's exercise because there's no way to measure what a movie intends.
You can't "measure" a movie's intent (and nobody is claiming that the movie itself is the agent here, you dork), but it's usually apparent, and ambiguities can often be resolved. There's more nuance than what Ebert said, but it's a good rule of thumb, which I think was the idea. Michael Bay's Transformers films are very obviously an attempt at basely entertaining spectacle, and they fail at that by delivering that spectacle in a way that numbs rather than entertains. They're not bad because they lack compelling social insights or novel narrative viewpoints or anything else blatantly outside their scope; they're bad because the lovely characters take away any personal investment in the action and because the lovely editing (both shot-to-shot and general pacing) makes it actively tiring to watch, both factors working against what is patently the goal of the film.

Then you have something like Strange Days, which sets itself up to be an indictment of systemic police injustice and in the final act reveals that there were only two bad apples the whole time. It's a neutered film - its last-minute attempt to avoid being offensively radical undermines the impact of the streets full of armored, violent police officers that you see over the previous two hours. Again, the intent is obvious, and (for far different reasons; this reeks of outside interference) it is again executed ineffectively.

The entire point of art in general, let alone cinema, is to invoke some kind of response in the audience. A well-made film is focused on producing such a response - whatever it may be - effectively; the response to a badly-made one is blunted or outright contradictory. Intent is a major factor in this, and that is why Ebert gave it such consideration.

Pirate Jet posted:
Even if you don't believe in "death of the author*," that old CineD chestnut, it's impossible to say that a movie shares intentions with its creators because movies take thousands of man-hours from hundreds of people to be made. The classic argument is that Ridley Scott doesn't think that Deckard is a replicant, but Harrison Ford does. Who's correct!? They were both involved in the character's creation! The answer is neither of them are technically "correct," and the ambiguity and people discussing what THEY thought the answer was is what makes the movie fun.
I'll give you a pass on the Scott/Ford mixup, but Scott didn't even think of Deckard as a Replicant until after the fact, so Deckard's humanity is "technically correct" - the film was written, played, and shot with it in mind, and despite Scott's retroactive wishes, it is more intellectually and emotionally effective when this is not rejected. (For one thing, the theme of the "inhuman" Replicants being more sympathetic than the "human" Deckard goes right out the window if Deckard is himself a Replicant.) Even basic elements like Deckard's extremely outmatched physical prowess against the Replicants contradict the idea of a Replicant Deckard.

In fact, your example shows exactly the kind of dissonance that deliberately ignoring a film's intent can produce. Scott may find a Replicant Deckard more interesting, but it's too late to change the mindset that actually produced the movie. (His attempt to Lucas his way out of this with the unicorn shot only makes things worse - the origami unicorn makes far more sense as a symbol of the futility in Deckard's and Rachael's life to come than as part of whatever the hell is supposed to be going on with the dream, if only because it follows the pattern of the chicken and the erect man from earlier on.)

Wait a minute; I completely forgot your other posts in this thread. If this is a dead end and we both agree on Current Releases being bad, then who cares if we disagree on why it's bad? And we might not even disagree on that; it might just be a misunderstanding. I apologize if this has been a pointless discussion.

Sham bam bamina! fucked around with this message at 05:09 on Oct 17, 2014

# ¿ Oct 16, 2014 22:49

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

TetsuoTW posted:

Also CR is meant to be reviews not critical interpretations, so this is all irrelevant bullshit that walks right around the many reasons CR sucks, such as "they don't review movies" and "the 'reviews' are pretentious, self-serious garbage".

Oh, right, it's important to distinguish between "criticism" in the academic sense and "criticism" in the sense of reviews. I was definitely using the second sense in my posts about Ebert's statement.

Sham bam bamina! fucked around with this message at 05:07 on Oct 17, 2014

# ¿ Oct 17, 2014 04:58

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

Black Bones posted:

Sorry, I wasn't very clear there. I was attempting to provide a quick example of when children's art can be cool and interesting, so I thought I'd read the characters of Jungle Book as representing the underclasses of the inner city. Like, Baloo is obviously homeless, Bagheera is a manic street preacher (a Black Panther!), the wolves/vultures are street punks, Louie is a gangster or lounge singer (jazz? I dunno, some kinda old-timey stuff), Kaa is I guess a pimp, Shere Khan a murderer of some sort, the elephants would be cops. All these groups want to claim the orphan Mowgli in some fashion.

To be clearer, Baloo's culture-gender mixing is good. He is a hero, who successfully seduces Louie and topples his palace, freeing Mowgli.

Black Bones posted:

Then why is the last frame before the credits his smile? That and the text imply that he is enjoying the confrontation. If you have a better reading, go ahead and make it. It's fun!

You posted both of these things in complete earnest.

# ¿ Oct 17, 2014 12:02

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 09:21

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

Black Bones posted:

I read Current Releases and so do you!

Of course, I do so because I enjoy them on the whole, not sure why y'all do it if they're so terrible. Is masochism really that much fun?

Sham bam bamina! posted:

I don't read Current Releases, and neither should you, but a quote in a FYAD thread made me check out the Boxtrolls review and welp

Even so, why are you surprised that people on Something Awful are reading and posting about terrible things?

It's because you're a loving dumbass who should :frogout:

(Also, is Current Releases really gone? Can it be? :pray:

)

Sham bam bamina! fucked around with this message at 14:21 on Oct 20, 2014

# ¿ Oct 20, 2014 14:16

The Something Awful Forums > Main > General Bullshit > SA's Front Page Discussion > I Read Current Releases And So Should You!