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I saw the preview, and whispered to the friend I was with, "That looks like it'll either be good, or hilariously bad. Normally I'd go see it with you to either enjoy or MST3K, but I've decided that Mel Gibson isn't getting any more of this Jew's money."
"Download it," he suggested.
However, it sounds like it'll be too violent for me, even blurrily and illegally downloaded. (I've seen neither Passion of Christ, nor Braveheart, both of which I heard were extremely violent. I have an allergy to Biblical stories. Nothing against Christianity! They just bore me. I haven't even seen The Last Temptation of Christ, despite the participation of both Martin Scorsese and Harvey Keitel. The other one, eh, I think I'd recently seen a bunch of horrible historical movies because I wanted to check out the battle scenes, and finally decided that even giant flaming balls of twine were not enough of a reward to make sitting through overall badness worthwhile. (I realize that this sounds odd given what I just wrote about violence. I like battle scenes. I don't like long and graphic torture and mutilation scenes.))
But I did look up some reviews of Apocalypto. (A title which really needs an exclamation point or three.) It got some interesting ones:
Negative: I fully intended to write a serious review of "Apocalypto," right up to the point where a 4-year-old boy closes his leg wound with the pincers of live fire ants.
Positive: If you have the stomach for it, though -- or if you like keeping in touch with the works of one of our wealthier outsider artists and/or don't mind funding an anti-Semite -- "Apocalypto" should be seen.
Perplexed: It would be inappropriate and probably inaccurate for any critic to pronounce on the mental health of a filmmaker based on his movie. Yet no description of "Apocalypto" can even begin, much less be complete, without noting -- say, in a colloquial, nonclinical, anecdotal sort of way -- that it seems like something made by a crazy person.
"Download it," he suggested.
However, it sounds like it'll be too violent for me, even blurrily and illegally downloaded. (I've seen neither Passion of Christ, nor Braveheart, both of which I heard were extremely violent. I have an allergy to Biblical stories. Nothing against Christianity! They just bore me. I haven't even seen The Last Temptation of Christ, despite the participation of both Martin Scorsese and Harvey Keitel. The other one, eh, I think I'd recently seen a bunch of horrible historical movies because I wanted to check out the battle scenes, and finally decided that even giant flaming balls of twine were not enough of a reward to make sitting through overall badness worthwhile. (I realize that this sounds odd given what I just wrote about violence. I like battle scenes. I don't like long and graphic torture and mutilation scenes.))
But I did look up some reviews of Apocalypto. (A title which really needs an exclamation point or three.) It got some interesting ones:
Negative: I fully intended to write a serious review of "Apocalypto," right up to the point where a 4-year-old boy closes his leg wound with the pincers of live fire ants.
Positive: If you have the stomach for it, though -- or if you like keeping in touch with the works of one of our wealthier outsider artists and/or don't mind funding an anti-Semite -- "Apocalypto" should be seen.
Perplexed: It would be inappropriate and probably inaccurate for any critic to pronounce on the mental health of a filmmaker based on his movie. Yet no description of "Apocalypto" can even begin, much less be complete, without noting -- say, in a colloquial, nonclinical, anecdotal sort of way -- that it seems like something made by a crazy person.
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another thing for me to do with my potential offspring!
That anecdote deserves a much wider audience. Would it be alright for me to metaquote it?
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/08/AR2006120801815.html
http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=542748
My personal reaction to the trailer, commercials, reviews, and articles about the movie is a shriek of "cultural appropriation cultural appropriation!" inside my head, so even if it weren't appallingly violent, I wouldn't be seeing it anyway.
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"accurate representation"?
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I actually had to go check out the review because I thought you were summarizing and that no way would something like that be in a review, but obviously I was wrong.
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It disturbs me that I used to be a fan of Mel Gibson's--if I'd known what a nutcase he was, would I have loved The Year of Living Dangerously as much? Then again, I used to like Tom Cruise, too, although he's not quite as *scary* crazy as Mel.
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I also like Mrs. Soffel, (http://imdb.com/title/tt0087751/) a painful, dark, gorgeous Gillian Armstrong film with Diane Keaton as a late-nineteenth-century prison warden's wife and Mel Gibson as the murderer she befriends. (Based on a true story, and actually shot in the prison where it happened.) But that is a Gillian Armstrong movie.
Mel Gibson can be a useful element in the collaborative work of making a film, but generally he is best suited as an element on the surface -- not the element that thinks or feels or directs.
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It's like violence porn, with a very simple plot that simply serves as something on which to hang the violence, and with characters about whom it's very difficult to care seeing as they pretty much make some dick jokes and eat dinner before they start getting slaughtered.
I had to stifle some of my laughter in the theater. The fact that it's being taken seriously boggles the mind. Sure, it looks pretyy; it's a freakin' jungle. And the sets are neat. But mostly I'd like my 139 minutes back now.
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http://www.jewishjournal.com/home/preview.php?id=16935
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FWIW
In a weird way, he reminds me of Orson Scott Card, whom we liberals like to label an arch-conservative, but who regularly upsets the many readers of the local weekly Rhinoceros Times tabloid, where his column has defended Jane Fonda, supported the local African-American political power structure (who are usually demonized by the Rhino's readership), attacked Joseph McCarthy (causing readers to quote Anne Coulter at him), argued for completely open borders and free education for the children of illegal immigrants, and praised big government while denouncing unfettered capitalism (of course, Card is ALSO a homophobe who thinks that we need to occupy the entire Middle East and that we're winning the war in Iraq, positions with which his readers resoundingly applaud, and which have gotten him quoted by Rush Limbaugh).
Since when were you particularly opposed to violence, at least of the action film rather than the horror film variety? Antisemitic loons and bad movies, yes, but violence per se?
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Still, Apocalypto does apparently feature dark-skinned handsome near-naked sinuous mean with tattoos and tribal markings going at each other with spears, clubs and knives, and I didn't think you'd necessarly be opposed to that. But the torture and the depiction of the Mayans as blood-thirsty quasi Aztecs, maybe not so much.
Fwiw, though, I'm not sure why people are finding the ant thing risible (admittedly, I've not yet seen the movie). I mean, that really is a kind of jungle medicine that I've been reading about since I was a kid, and it strikes me as the kind of detail that would add grit and authenticity in a story by someone like Walter Jon Williams or George R. R. Martin. It's certainly the kind of thing I'd use in a story.
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The ant thing, curiously enough, appeared in Card's Wyrms, a bizarre novel featuring tentacle rape and probably many other glimpses into Card's id, but which is also compelling and, in my opinion, pretty good. At least, it manages to make a lot of moments which sound trashy and ridiculous in synopsis play out as serious drama when you read it.
The review citing the ants cracked me up, which is why I quoted it, but the ants themselves are pretty cool and a real medical technique, though I don't know if it's a Mayan one. I would absolutely use suture ants in fiction myself.
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Hah, I was about to say that! Icky yet vaguely cool, hence it's right up my alley. ;-)
I didn't think Troy was too bad, violence-wise, especially when you fast-forward the excessively drawn-out Achilles/Hector arch-battle. I thought seeing Sean Bean and Peter O'Toole made it well worth the occassional winceworthy moment.
Braveheart's most appalling feature is its utter lack of historical accuracy. I mean really, it featured the Battle of Stirling Bridge and there was no bridge. That alone says it all, I think. It was no more violent than your average historical war movie, though, and there were a fair few amusing moments. (And some of which were even intended to be funny!) There's no torture until the last five minutes of the movie, and you see it coming in plenty of time to turn it off.
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... it totally is.
Wow.
I think I like the book even better now.
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In his eyes, you're not virtuous till you suffer, and all suffering is virtuous (the worse the better). He just ends the movie before legions of loving auburn-haired enchantresses swoop in with bowls of chicken soup.
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Make syou wonder what's the difference between 'spiritus naturaliter christianus' and 'spiritus naturaliter fan'. There's a lot of overlap.
I've always wondered- is there an innate mindset (sentimental masochist) that means people are likely to turn into fans, or is it just that many fans are sentimental masochists? Since not all fans are sent_mas but all the sent_mas I know are fans. Well, or romance novel readers. Well, or Hans Christian Anderson. Or Charlotte Bronte. Or a whole bunch of 19th century writers.
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inaccuracies
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That actually doesn't strike me as the unlikeliest element of the movie.
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Here from <lj user=metaquotes>
But ... but ... that's an accepted and actual practice in many parts of the world! Why was he complaining about that?