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Don Quixote is a funny one given there's emphasis on the ridiculousness and cruelty of how people go out of their way to take advantage of his madness and set up ridiculously elaborate pranks just for their own entertainment, like the time they make him the governor of a town and he actually does a better job than the usual authorities.
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Jan 3, 2024 15:40
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Data Graham, I highly recommend that you check out Wings of Honneamise, alternatively titled Royal Space Force, which deals directly with your concern.
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Jan 3, 2024 15:42
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FreudianSlippers posted:Got the Ferrari trailer as a YouTube ad over Christmas late at night after far too many drinks and thought it began with the line "we're all racist" for a few seconds. Well it is about Italians in the 1950s.
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Jan 3, 2024 15:47
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Like half of Herzog's filmography is a direct counter to those kinds of movies, examinations of people whose obsession destroys them.
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Jan 3, 2024 15:49
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Anonymous Robot posted:Data Graham, I highly recommend that you check out Wings of Honneamise, alternatively titled Royal Space Force, which deals directly with your concern. Ah good point, I just rewatched that a year or two ago. I need to refresh it again with this context in mind
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Jan 3, 2024 15:52
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The Life Aquatic is also pretty much about that. If anything I feel like the idea of all-consuming obsession being utterly ruinous to everyone involved is possibly the more popular archetype, though so much of it tends to be inspired by Moby-Dick.
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Jan 3, 2024 15:53
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It's literally every Micheal Mann movie
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Jan 3, 2024 15:54
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Data Graham posted:How many other movies/stories follow this pattern? Do any subvert it (like by showing how a quixotic quest just ends up nearly destroying the person's life and that's a good thing because other people's lives actually do have meaning and value too, not just the solipsistic protagonist's)? I'm sure I could think of some (lol yeah there's Don Quixote) The TV show The Dropout from a couple of years ago was a fun take on this kind of story. It's a dramatization of the Elizabeth Holmes story so there's a lot of stuff early on with Holmes being a scrappy underdog in the biotech industry fighting against the more experienced people telling her she can't make her dream a reality, only in this case those people telling her to give up on her dreams were absolutely correct and she was making a product that didn't work at all and was a huge scam. Zodiac is a good movie about obsession as well.
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Jan 3, 2024 15:55
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The counter point being that most Mann protagonists don't or at least don't feel they have a choice to not do what they are doing. Frank in Thief just wants a normal family, Wife a Kid trips to the beach and cookouts and all that promised by the American dream but because of the abusive upbringing he was served in his youth and his time entombed in prison his avenue form legitimate living is cut off, as is his chances at things such as adoption. Crime is not a way of life for Frank, it is a way of making a life, but it is also the destruction of the very life he wants because his pride in his work and his inability to accept the inherent imbalance in the capitalist underworld tilts towards the management and not the people putting their necks out. Neil in HEAT as well is looking for a sense of security after the ruinous existence that has preceded the film, something only accomplishable using crime given the taboo on employing him regularly as seen in Haybert's character. However the code that he has adopted that makes him impervious to the tendency towards destruction is incompatible with the life he would like to live. Love and Leaving are diametrically opposed, and when he chooses that he Loves Eady he is also giving up on his chance to leave because that same passion that courses through him for her is coursing through him inducing revenge against Waingro.
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Jan 3, 2024 16:02
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Gaius Marius posted:It's literally every Micheal Mann movie This bodes well for when we finally get Ferrari on stream Flying Zamboni posted:The TV show The Dropout from a couple of years ago was a fun take on this kind of story. It's a dramatization of the Elizabeth Holmes story so there's a lot of stuff early on with Holmes being a scrappy underdog in the biotech industry fighting against the more experienced people telling her she can't make her dream a reality, only in this case those people telling her to give up on her dreams were absolutely correct and she was making a product that didn't work at all and was a huge scam. Good call, WeCrashed counts too I guess. "I manifested it  " runs the risk of seeming like vindication of course, with the ultimate downfall being everyone's fault but his own, for not committing and sacrificing enough
Data Graham fucked around with this message at 16:07 on Jan 3, 2024 |
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Jan 3, 2024 16:02
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Data Graham posted:This bodes well for when we finally get Ferrari on stream You can say the same for Manhunter. Graham might destroy his life, but he does save the young blind lady and the future victims of the Blakeaphile.
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Jan 3, 2024 16:14
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Gotta awkwardly jump in here with my video on similar themes, 'The Fanatic' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGbRQ6MOQWM but beyond that I'd just say that most of these are versions of the classical tragedy, where someone's unshakeable qualities lead them to great heights of personal heroism but also necessarily lead to their downfall. Ford v Ferrari ends with a car crash.
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Jan 3, 2024 16:27
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X-Ray Pecs posted:An interesting look at that idea is Take Shelter, where Michael Shannon has dreams of a coming apocalypse so he throws everything he has at building a shelter to weather the storm that’s coming, to the detriment of his wife, community, and his own well-being. I think Take Shelter was in the middle or at the tailoring end of a few films like this. One of them had Sean Bean as the patriarch and boy did it have one of the most akward sex scenes. It wasn't particularly gross but it was just like 'You know those 10-second scenes where we imply sex so that you know the married couple is still intimate with each other? Do it but the whole thing from foreplay to climax'.
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Jan 3, 2024 16:29
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josh04 posted:but beyond that I'd just say that most of these are versions of the classical tragedy, where someone's unshakeable qualities lead them to great heights of personal heroism but also necessarily lead to their downfall. Ford v Ferrari ends with a car crash. I think what separates Wings of Honneamise from this framework is that it’s informed by a political layer, as well. The actions of the characters are overtly shaped by their material/ideological circumstances, and contribute to those circumstances in turn, in a way that moves the work beyond the scope of a classical tragedy structure.
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Jan 3, 2024 16:33
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Yeah, I wouldn't count a protagonist who is swept along by the tides of history, even if those tides lead him to heights of greatness or tragedy. More like, a person just decides arbitrarily that HE has a high and lonely destiny, and everybody else can either get on board with that (and give him all their money) or he has no time for them.
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Jan 3, 2024 16:49
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The best movie about obsession is Bug.
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Jan 3, 2024 17:27
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being so obsessed with something that you ruin your life and the lives of those around you is the American dream
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Jan 3, 2024 17:28
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Uncle Boogeyman posted:the American dream There's this film from the late 2000s called The Trotsky, and the protagonist at one point is called out on how he's supposed to be leader of the new organization when he attends private school and has never worked a job in his life. He basically responds by saying someone has to be the leader and if fate chose him then there's a reason. But it's not fate. He's choosing himself. And there are likely far better candidates from among the factory workers he's organizing, which is something he could see readily if he hadn't internalized the idea that the upper class is inherently more capable than everybody else. He gets a pass because he's a kid. But I've known people like this in real life. People who have (or are studying for) a BA in economics and if you ask them what they'll do once capitalism is overthrown will tell you that they (and not say any one of hundreds of Marxist-Leninists professors/professional economists) will be Minister of Finance since they brought about the change. Class struggle isn't a trip to the amusement park where if you organize the outing you get to choose the rides lol
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Jan 3, 2024 17:38
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Gripweed posted:My second movie of 2024 was The Raid: Shadow Legends. It's very good! you watched what now?
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Jan 3, 2024 18:04
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Hey what happened to the alien thread?
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Jan 3, 2024 18:15
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Data Graham posted:This may be kind of an E/N post, but it involves film literacy and I needed to get these thoughts down somewhere so this seemed the best place. Interesting. I think there is quite a lot of overlap with your friend and his perception of the world and following one's dream to the detriment of everything and everyone else, and a lot of Ayn Rand's characters like Howard Roark and John Galt*. It's a hyper-individualistic view of the world, and I think inherently selfish. it's always about one person (usually a man, so add misogyny to the mix) fighting for their dream - very rarely do we see films or stories about groups or communities banding together to accomplish something amazing. *https://imgur.com/a/J0Hbron Gaius Marius posted:Look in the mirror. You are doing a lot of castigation for someone who is implying others hold the general mass in contempt. I didn't read it like that and I think you're being a bit harsh.
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Jan 3, 2024 18:48
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happens when other people are required to work to help the protagonist fulfill his dream. Like for example in Indian the guy's pursuit of his dream of speed is self-funded, it's not to anyone else's detriment (except making noise in the morning and almost burning his neighbor's house down); the townspeople pull together to send him to America just as a nice gesture for a likable old weird guy. But in Ferrari Ken Miles pursues his singleminded desire to drive race cars to the degree that it makes him unemployable and impossible to get along with by anyone except his long-suffering wife, and Carroll Shelby has to stick his neck out again and again in order to secure Miles' test-driver job and keep him there in spite of Ford's persistent resistance; and in Astronaut Farmer the guy puts his entire life savings into building his rocket—and then, alarmingly (to me)—his wife's father dies and she unhesitatingly gives him her entire $X00,000 inheritance in order to allow him to keep going. (When I saw that movie I wondered why, when the wife first pushed back against his crazy singleminded project, the guy in question didn't shout "bitch" or "don't stick your dick in crazy" like he usually does whenever a wife or girlfriend protests against the protagonist in a movie, like the wives in The Right Stuff. Turns out it's because in this case she ends up laying down her entire life and fortune just so he can go to space like he wants to. And apparently this is supposed to be seen as noble and praiseworthy behavior for a wife and partner.)
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DeimosRising posted:you watched what now? That movie about the cops who raid an apartment building run by a drug lord but then have to fight their way out
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Jan 3, 2024 18:54
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Like every YouTuber has done promos for it.
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Jan 3, 2024 19:09
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Great, now gripweed's going to post again in a few weeks about how clever their joke that nobody liked was.
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Jan 3, 2024 19:25
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So if you enjoyed Beau is Afraid, you might could need to see Eileen. It's billed as a psychological thriller but it's really a kind of tragicomedy I think. It has the same mix of wholesome and abusive, the real the the surreal, somehow feeling like it's the past but clearly set in the present, an unexpected point of escalation, and a twist in the same vein although not the same sort. Plus a very light smattering of weird sex stuff kept to a minimum. On that note, I used to wonder how they can possibly cast actresses like Thomasin McKenzie as the sexually frustrated virgin. She's cute as buttons! Below-average but some amount of social skills. Can fake self confidence for the 10 seconds it would take. I used to find this utterly unrealistic Hollywood nonsense until most my friends slowly became women. The ending is very different and the protagonist is less pitiful in ways but there's a strong resemblance.
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Jan 3, 2024 19:31
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Baron von Eevl posted:Great, now gripweed's going to post again in a few weeks about how clever their joke that nobody liked was. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYEPYkYbXS4
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Jan 3, 2024 19:32
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DeimosRising posted:Hey what happened to the alien thread? It's in a new home at Syfy Wifi
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Jan 3, 2024 19:32
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Baron von Eevl posted:Great, now gripweed's going to post again in a few weeks about how clever their joke that nobody liked was. Nah that one was just ok.
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Jan 3, 2024 19:39
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Data Graham posted:
I loved Gattaca but after a decade I started thinking hey this guy with a heart condition that could die at any time lied his way into a year long space mission where he could jeopardize the whole thing by dying, all so he could feel better about himself ***** I dunno if it’s related but the “I’m destined to win” line of thinking is why I don’t care for most sports movies and why my favorite ones are the ones where the main character doesn’t win (Rocky, Crying Fist, Bad News Bears (although that one hasn’t aged well for other reasons))
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Jan 3, 2024 19:43
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X-Ray Pecs posted:Cheers to my local library system for carrying Western and noir DVDs, jeers for not carrying blu-rays. They know exactly who rents things from the library, and they are not 30-something Vinegar Syndrome enthusiasts.
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Jan 3, 2024 19:44
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feedmyleg posted:They know exactly who rents things from the library, and they are not 30-something Vinegar Syndrome enthusiasts. librarian here: incorrect
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Jan 3, 2024 20:08
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feedmyleg posted:They know exactly who rents things from the library, and they are not 30-something Vinegar Syndrome enthusiasts. What sucks is the rich suburb across the state line has blu-rays and I think even video games to rent, but my city proper’s library doesn’t have hi-def movies except through Kanopy or Hoopla. I love my library and I support them, but c’mon y’all, throw me a bone.
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Jan 3, 2024 20:12
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Uncle Boogeyman posted:librarian here Thank you for your service. o7
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Jan 3, 2024 20:12
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X-Ray Pecs posted:What sucks is the rich suburb across the state line has blu-rays and I think even video games to rent, but my city proper’s library doesn’t have hi-def movies except through Kanopy or Hoopla. I love my library and I support them, but c’mon y’all, throw me a bone. Count yourself lucky you get access to Kanopy, a lot of libraries don’t
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Jan 3, 2024 20:39
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It's time for immortal aliens to show up on earth and swordfight over climate change! https://boingboing.net/2024/01/02/highlander-ii-was-set-in-2024.html
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Jan 3, 2024 20:53
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therattle posted:Interesting. I think there is quite a lot of overlap with your friend and his perception of the world and following one's dream to the detriment of everything and everyone else, and a lot of Ayn Rand's characters like Howard Roark and John Galt*. It's a hyper-individualistic view of the world, and I think inherently selfish. it's always about one person (usually a man, so add misogyny to the mix) fighting for their dream - very rarely do we see films or stories about groups or communities banding together to accomplish something amazing. That would track, and I bet if challenged he would say "yes, and people like me/Ken Miles/Carroll Shelby/Rand al'Thor/pick your favorite self-styled Chosen One or Randian ubermensch etc serve a valuable purpose to the world, which is to inspire everyone else to something greater than their dreary beige lives. That is how humanity elevates itself, by each person individually trying to become Alexander the Great or Chuck Yeager or Napoleon, not by dreaming of nothing greater than being a cog in a machine or a Matrix battery. That's how we advance as a species" Which is kind of terrifying to me, it feels like this is how you get people talking themselves into leading suicide cults or taking over countries. Because ultimately we know all the fallacies of greatmanitude, and we know that mankind doesn't advance through individual flashes of "eureka" brilliance out of a sea of boring stasis; all of humanity slowly marches forward and one person might be a half a step ahead but if he wasn't there someone else would be along shortly to accomplish the same feat. Which isn't to minimize personal achievement, it's just to argue for the value of community and colloquy, especially when the result is greater than the sum of its parts. Fuckin billy bob thornton couldn't have built his rocket if he hadn't stolen the plans from NASA
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Jan 3, 2024 21:26
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Data Graham posted:That would track, and I bet if challenged he would say "yes, and people like me/Ken Miles/Carroll Shelby/Rand al'Thor/pick your favorite self-styled Chosen One or Randian ubermensch etc serve a valuable purpose to the world, which is to inspire everyone else to something greater than their dreary beige lives. That is how humanity elevates itself, by each person individually trying to become Alexander the Great or Chuck Yeager or Napoleon, not by dreaming of nothing greater than being a cog in a machine or a Matrix battery. That's how we advance as a species" Right. In short, your friend sounds like an rear end in a top hat.
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Jan 3, 2024 21:46
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Is it too late to post movies about destructive obsession? I think Downfall falls into that category
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Jan 3, 2024 22:46
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Uncle Boogeyman posted:being so obsessed with something that you ruin your life and the lives of those around you is the American dream This is the plot of my hopefully made feature film which is pinned on this board! Except he realizes that chasing aliens and then finding aliens is terrifying and dangerous and not good!
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Jan 3, 2024 23:24
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Bright Bart posted:So if you enjoyed Beau is Afraid, you might could need to see Eileen. It's billed as a psychological thriller but it's really a kind of tragicomedy I think. I enjoyed it, I think McKenzie played the mousy-girl-grows-in-confidence-thanks-to-an-older-femme-fatale character quite well, even if it wasn't that dissimilar to her role in Last Night in Soho. My word, was Anne Hathaway gorgeous in this one though, I would also assist her in committing crimes. THAT twist which I was absolutely not expecting was insane - but I did spend the entire time thinking that the kidnapped woman was Andrea Riseborough.
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Jan 3, 2024 23:37
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