HOM:

Giving you something to read on the toilet since 2009.

"The mistake lies in seeing debate and discussion as secondary to the recovery of meaning. Rather, we should see them as primary: art and literature do not exist to be understood or appreciated, but to be discussed and argued over, to function as a focus for social dialogue. The discourse of literary or art criticism is not to recover meaning, but to create and contest it. Our primal scene should not be the solitary figure in the dark of the cinema but the group of friends arguing afterwards in the pub."
-Don Fowler (1996) "Even Better Than The Real Thing"

Saturday, November 14, 2009

The Men Who Stare at Goats - By Timothy Johnston


Sometimes I wonder,

What if...
...the trailer had not already given away every single punchline?
...the scenes still had edges and were not as perfectly rehearsed and edited as they are?
...we were given a plausible explanation why Ewan McGregor ended up in the Middle East?
...this Allstar-cast had lived up to its name and wasn't put to shame by Stfephen Lang?
...the film was less full of itself?
...I had never seen Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove?
...this was not the film everybody is talking about?
...the director didn't try so hard to be a Coen Brother?
...it had at least one aspect you hadn't already heard beforehand?
...the joke about them being Jedi-soldiers had been made less frequently?
...a less prominent cast had been chosen, thus lowering expectations?
... the people around me hadn't laughed so hysterically, neutralising my risible muscles even more?
...I had smoked pot before seeing it?

Well, I think then I might have liked this movie.

1 comment:

  1. JamesJanuary 3, 2010 at 9:13 AM

    man, this review tells me everything that I need to know

    ReplyDelete

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