Godless

B

Bruce Watson

Veteran
I think there needs to be a thread on Godless, an amazing bit of cinema from Netflix. I just finished the series; it's an all aces bit of storytelling. It is perhaps Jeff Daniel's finest role (and I thought he was perfect in The Newsroom but he easily surpasses that here). The script is first rate. Cinematography was first rate (gotta love wide screen in a TV series, but they really put it to good use). Sound was excellent, they really used LFE to good effect, and sparingly like it should be used.

But the best thing is the script. So many characters fully fleshed out and made real. So many different arcs. A big solid ending. Catharsis that made sense and was perfectly tasteful, appropriate, and the icing on the cake.

Dang, I think I liked this one. A lot. Whether one is trying to learn how to do it, or just looking for entertainment, or anything in between, I highly recommend Godless.

Now this is new, only been out for a week or so, so warn people about your spoilers!
 
Just because it is Bruce Watson who recommends it, and Mark Williams who seconded, I'm gonna check this one out. Originally I wasn't gonna watch it, based on the poster. Yes, I know, that seems thin ground to judge upon, but with so much good content out there, time is a precious commodity and choises have to be made.

This also shows how things like posters are important in selling to a prospective audience.

What I hated about the poster: the look of the "western". The real West in those times was a gritty, grimy place. The clothes actors wear should not look like they just came out of the wardrobe department freshly pressed. Actors should not look like they haven't worked physically a day in their lives. The women should not look like the only way to get hair like that is through modern shampooing and high priced hair stylist. It shouldn't look like the actors are "dressed up" for a high school production and all of this is play-acting. The actors should not look well-fed and overweight like it's 2017. It's farking elemental - if you can't get that right, what are you doing making a period piece? Go stage a high school production. Those choices (along with set design and production design) throws me out of the show/movie within the first frames and I can't get back in. This is a problem with many period pieces, but in westerns it's particularly jarring, just because unlike in ancient times we have photographs of the real thing. Those exist. It was GRITTY and GRIMY. You know who did at least that part reasonably well? Many spaghetti westerns. Think of the costumes and look and set design in many Sergio Leone westerns, especially TGTBATU.

Now I look at that poster from Godless and I'm already hating. That hair on that woman. The costumes. To me, that's a hard pass.

BUT: Bruce Watson and Mark Williams. So I'll give it a try.
 
Bruce Watson said:
Sound was excellent, they really used LFE to good effect, and sparingly like it should be used.
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LFE means Low-Frequency Effects, right? Would you talk a bit more about it general as well as in this show?

- What is it? This is the first time I have heard of it. I had to google it. I'm not even sure these questions make sense:
- How do you make them?
- How do you do them well?
- How do you do them poorly?
- Anything else I should know?

I'm a jack of all trades, and I'm trying to round out my knowledge of sound.
 
combatentropy said:
LFE means Low-Frequency Effects, right?
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Yes, low-freq effects. These are sound effects that support the story, like all sound effects do. What makes these different is that they are designed to play out on subwoofers. That is, when you're listening to a 5.1 or 7.1 surround track, this is the ".1". It gets this designation because it's not a full range audio channel, it tops out at 120 Hz.

What's here is the very low end of music, and the low end part of effects like car doors slamming, books being dropped on the floor, explosions, earth quakes, etc. It's provides the "boom" of a crack-boom rifle shot, or the rumbling power of thunder after the lightening strike. It ads that visceral feel that makes it real.

It's really interesting to me how this small frequency range can make such a large contribution to immersion in the narrative and "suspension of disbelief" that lets one "get into" the movie.

That said, this is all about the sound designer. They either have to find and record a suitable sound, or tap a library for it, and place it correctly, with the correct volume, and do all the audio shaping necessary to bed it down in the sound track. If they do it well, it makes the movie seem more real. If they do it poorly, it just adds a bunch of rumble and noise that obscures the dialog.

combatentropy said:
Would you talk a bit more about it general as well as in this show?
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What's interesting about this stuff to me (I'm not a sound designer, I'm just a consumer of what the sound designers create) is how it's changed. In particular, how it's changed since about 2009 (in the US, the "digital changeover"). The rise of blu-ray disks with their lossless (uncompressed) sound tracks, and remastering of older movies onto blu-ray with new (or "improved") sound tracks, was able to really exploit that low end in ways that you really couldn't do with a DVD. Not that DVDs were bad, but the newer technology is better.

So what we're getting now is designers pushing the envelope, going down below 20 Hz (playing with your vestibular system to induce a little awe, dread, a feeling of being a little disoriented, etc.) (why did so many churches build pipe organs that included a few 32' pipes [16 Hz]? Hmmm.... :grin:), and producing a lot of body-slam moments. As with all tools, people tend to go overboard as they learn what a new tool can do, then they learn to dial it back and use some subtlety unless a big thack is needed.

It's also created a group of movie and game consumers who self identify as "bass heads" who seem to live for shaking pictures off the walls, rattling the plates in the kitchen from across the house, etc. The extreme variety won't bother to see a movie that doesn't map out with sufficient LFE for them. I like a little chest resonance like most people, but it's not the whole reason to watch a movie for me. Just sayin'...

So... back to Godless. What I like about the LFE in this series is that they use it as a tool to tell the story. So for long periods of time there aren't any LFE. But when they need it, they use it. And it's always motivated by the story. The story is never there to be an excuse for LFE (some horror movies apparently work that way, similarly to how some action adventure movies seem to be built around a CGI set piece, instead of using the CGI budget to support the story).

I feel sorta silly going on about this, but sound is at least half of what you see on screen...
 
To the extreme was "Sensurround" which I believe used two tones of 25 Hz and 35 Hz and a special sound system. Anyone else remember the film "Earthquake". The resulting rumble could be felt as well as heard.
 
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I just watched the first episode. As always, what I find absolutely fascinating, is how perceptions differ. That by itself would not be amazing, except, when the perceptions that differ are those of people you respect, like here. How can intelligent, sophisticated viewers - i.e. ones who understand the craft of moviemaking - have such radically different takeaways from the same piece of work? Because I have a very different reaction to the first episode than the previous posters - mind you, it's just the first episode. This of course, is just *my* opinion, and to each his own.

*********POSSIBLE SPOILERS ALERT***********

I found the whole episode clumsy and badly made, and a slog to get through. Here's how I saw it. A rider (a sheriff) appears, in a heavy cloud of dust, then a group of riders joins, wind swept bleak surroundings. So far so good. They're moving through a ravaged Western town, dead bodies lying around - and this is where we get to the first terrible note... literally. Revolting music - I guess the highly praised sound effects are joined by dime a dozen choral wailing that's like fingernails on a chalkboard. First, why such a lame and *expected* cliched music? Do these filmmakers have no imagination? No other music could have served here, to highlight or give an accent to the scene, than the one that follows like stench on a sh|t? How about counter-effects? I guess not... "sad scene = sad music" - headdesk. Yuck. Then it gets worse, and worse, and worse, the singing becomes unbearable and we transition to a woman sitting over a corpse singing sadly - SHOOT ME NOW, I CAN'T TAKE IT! Bad music, badly done, with a cliche image to boot. YUCK. But we soldier on. And on. And on. And on. Like... we got the point there, captain. But no, more bodies, and the scene goes on and on and on, which is sin #1 in most films - when the dramatic content of the scene does not match the time given to it. There is about 50 units of drama here - you should have 50 units of time spent on it. Instead, they take 50 units of drama and belabor it with 250 units of time, utterly diluting the effect. There's a reason brevity is prized. Belaboring is to be avoided at all costs. You want a palate cleanser? Reach for The Good The Bad and The Ugly. Now, I am not counting the music, because it's hard to ask for a masterpiece every time - it just doesn't happen too often. So discount that. But that opening scene, with the head of a guy popping into frame, the way he looks out and we're on tenter hooks immediately. The surroundings. The two other riders that appear. How they dismount. No music, only sound effects. They approach. Immense tension and intense pleasure of anticipation - shootout? Insane twist - they jump into the doorway, shots fired OS, and Tuco crashes out through the window, freeze frame title The Ugly, thematical musical accent. BRILLIANT. It has everything that the opening scene of Godless doesn't have. Done half a century ago, and infinitely better. Now *that's* entertainment! OK, you may complain that I'm comparing Godless to one of the greatest westerns ever made, TGTBATU. But really, I'm not comparing them at all - merely illustrating a well-done beginning and a clumsy beginning - there are tons of westerns that similarly begin with far better dramatic tension than here - Godless is clumsy, and badly done.

This is a problem with Godless throughout - they overestimate how well the content can hold that time frame. And so you have ponderous statements that are meant to hang in the air meaningfully, while in actually their trite content is exhausted in seconds, and the scene grinds on and on and on, like an engine on a car that's spinning its wheels instead of translating into movement. The dialogue is a **disaster**. Why oh why is it so trite and so easilly anticipated? Example: the scene where the boy is watching Roy Goode lay down the horses... who here did not anticipate exactly down to the words, that the boy would say exactly these words by the clumsy screenwriter "like I said, he knows horses". That is an unforgivable sin. But so much of the dialogue is clumsy in the extreme, long expository declaiming aimed at the audience, transparently so. Some of the clumsiest verbal exposition I've had the displeasure of hearing in a long, long while. The whole thing is a higgidly piggedly ramshackle structure of pointless silences that don't carry their weight and sudden lurches of verbal diarrhea that begs to be stopped. And so painfully implausible psychologically. Roy Goode refuses to answer the multiple interrogations from the household for seemingly days on end - as if that sh|t wouldn't be confronted with a gun lickety split, if he showed that attitude in real life. And then, very suddenly they have a conversation by the fence post where the woman goes on a long, long long long expository declamation of her backstory. Oh vey. None of these interactions are believable in the least psychologically.

What a mess. Multiple story lines are introduced, which - fine. But each story line should carry its own weight *as it's being shown*. Which they don't, resulting in dull stretches of confusion we don't care about in any case. How do we know that? Because the filmmakers resort to a high school move - a shameful admission of defeat - of inserting flashbacks of scenes we ***already saw***, but now with the clumsy expostion, they have to show them *again*, so we are oriented and clarified. Flashbacks of scenes we ALREADY SAW, and all within the very first episode (not even as a reminder, in, say, episode 6 by which time we might have forgotten) - oh, how can the filmmakers live with the shame of that? I'd die of embarrasment. They need to resort to such dire measures already within the first episode. Hey, Mr. Screenwriter and Mr. Director - that's why you write and direct scenes so that they pull the audience effortlessly without needing to be forcefed something that's already been vomited out as untasty and revolting. Do it once and do it well, so you don't need to flashback on junk we already saw minutes ago within the same episode.

And the use of music throughout. Never mind the dull nature of the music - I cut them slack, as coming up with a good soundtrack is hard. No - the *use* of that music. Here it is used in a classically needy way - as a way to generate some drama in a scene that's sorely lacking in drama. That's bad screenwriting and bad direction - and music can't rescue it. Music should be used to open a new avenue of artistic effect, not serve to try to rescue a broken underlying scene dynamic. Here, it's the latter, all the time. And it's oppressive. Please, it's so much better to just junk the music in such a case.

As to the story such as it is - I personally didn't care. At all. I really wanted to find out more about Tuco in TGTBATU, but not in the least about anything in Godless. That may be down to personal preference, so whatever, I'm just signalling - I hear that the story interests you, I'm telling you it is NOT UNIVERSALLY SO, because it doesn't interest me (or my wife who gave up on the whole thing after 20 minutes). But whatever, the story may be a personal matter, but the clumsy filmmaking is I believe just bad filmmaking. Bad dialogue, bad use of music, and... bad cinematography. Not bad in the sense of technically bad, but artistically bad. The cinematography was overrought. We are supposed to sit there and admire it, when the content itself is of little interest - like watching an ad with the Marlboro man. It screams FAKE. Form over content. Example: the scene where the gang is crossing the river - all shot through with light, water splashing and to drive the postcard nature home - all in SLOW MO... headdesk, facepalm, embarrasment. Please - you didn't earn that dramatic picture, not by a millionth of a fraction. You know who can get away with slow mo for a dramatic scene? Peckinpah. But please note - he *earns* the drama and it's good enough to *pay* for the slow mo. The guys in Godless earned jack sh|t in that scene and the slow mo overrought cinematographic set piece merely comes off a FAKE with as much drama as that ad for Marlboro man. So it's not that the DP didn't know how to light - it's that it was inappropriate for the dramatic content, the content was too feeble to carry such a grand form. Like putting an extremely fancy 15th century elaborate Roccoco golden frame around a velvet Jesus painting - a Da Vinci painting can carry that frame, but a crying clown painting can only look grotesquely overmatched by such a frame - INAPPROPRIATE. So too with the cinematography.

And by the way, I didn't think much of the way it was shot either. F.ex. all those close ups on the hands of Roy Goode as he's laying down the horses - yeah, we get it, they did it because they can't actually show him laying down the horses, because he can't in fact do it, so cheat, but that cheat is not only insulting, but also *ugly*. If you're gonna cheat, at least do it well.

In short - I had the opposite takeaway about Godless. I thought it was GodAwful.

OK, looking for positives, some of the acting was decent. And yes, Jeff Daniels hit it out of the park - hard to believe it's him. That man has *range*.

All IMHO, YMMV.
 
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OldCorpse said:
In short - I had the opposite takeaway about Godless. I thought it was GodAwful.
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Why so shy? Tell us how you *really* feel.

If you don't like it, you don't like it. But I really do like it, enough that I'm going to rewatch it in January probably. Considering how rarely I rewatch anything, that's high praise indeed.

One of the things I find problematic about a lot of cinema, is me. I know too much. Knowing a little about a broad range of stuff is dangerous. I can see what the cinematographer is doing, have a clue why she's using the camera angles she's using. I get a fair amount about lighting, I get a fair amount about dialog and sound effects. I've got a clue about the music and how it's used to do the heavy lifting in communication the emotions of the scene (thank you Mozart, who is generally credited with being the first to do this with his operas back in the late 1700s). I love editing and how it can control pacing and make a good performance better, etc. But if I watch these things, pay attention to how it's done, it sucks the joy out of the show for me. It makes entertainment into work. Meh.

I have to make a conscious effort these days to focus on the story I'm being told. I try to block all thoughts on how it's done, and just focus on the story. Clearly, some shows are harder to do that with than others. For me, Godless was easy. Probably because I like the way most of it is done so it doesn't rub me the wrong way (as it clearly rubs other people the wrong way).

So the test for me is can the story rope me in and keep me interested, and can I believe the characters, and is the craft of building it all sufficient that it doesn't pull me out of my "suspension of disbelief"? And the answer for me with Godless is a big "yes!"
 
OldCorpse said:
...and the scene goes on and on and on, which is sin #1 in most films - when the dramatic content of the scene does not match the time given to it.
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That opening scene does go on a while. But... I thought the content was a really good match to the time given to it. I was afraid they'd cut it short; thankfully they did not. Because it's not solely about the dramatic content -- it's also about giving the viewer sufficient time to take it in, think about what they have seen and are seeing, and understand it.

This is a similar argument that comes up over and over again, most recently about scenes in BR 2049, which I also loved. Lots of people (I'm in the minority here, yet again ;) thought it was (much) too long. I thought it was perfectly paced, and just as long as it needed to be to make its point. I couldn't think of even a minute more I would have cut. But most argued that the pace was just too slow for them. I'm not saying they are wrong; people like what they like. I'm just sayin' that I liked it as shown.

It comes down to what the film maker wants. Directors can't please everyone. All they can do is make the film they personally would want to watch and hope that other people want to watch it too.

If it makes you feel any better (why would it? IDK, but it's a saying) lots of people really like Dunkirk. I just wanted my money back.
 
I totally get what you are saying. One of the reasons I like to exchange views with you, is that you don't take differing opinions as a personal affront (which unfortunately happens a lot on dvxuser). I always learn something in our exchanges. Re: watching films/TV for the experience rather than the technical aspect of moviemaking - yes, but don't you feel that happens naturally? I mean, if you are sucked into a film, or carried on by the action onscreen, you simply don't have the time, bandwidth or desire to nitpick technical aspects. But when what you see is not engaging, you start looking around and noticing stuff. Your attention has to go somewhere, so you start pulling apart what you see, because the narrative doesn't engage you. Of course, when something is actively grating, it can be a huge obstacle. I find bad music very, very grating, and unfortunately, many otherwise fine films have poor music - but because the rest of the film is so good, I can overcome that irritation and enjoy the movie. That did not happen here. The music was torture from the get go and the rest was not redeeming so it made for an overall miserable experience (for me). I couldn't help but THINK about the music as I was not distracted by otherwise superior content. And so on for so much else. Regarding the length of the opening scene - sure, it gives you the atmosphere and orientation, but again - you get that in about 75% of the time, and the rest is just repetition without addition. Plus then you're also confronted by horrific cliches, and then the length is just that much more offensive (f.ex. the cliche of the woman sitting over the corpse - and then freakin' SINGING the horrible tune... GAH! I felt like vomiting). With an opening like that, you're set for a very rough start - it bodes very, very badly - my wife was ready to bail by that point asking "do you imagine it'll improve after this appalling start?", but I felt I owed it watching the whole episode, I forced her to stick around for another 20 minutes before she just couldn't take it. I'm stronger that way, I stuck through the whole episode :).

But regarding slow, low energy, long scenes - nothing wrong with that in principle, but the content has to be engaging on *some* level. It can be quite mundane, and still engaging. Example: the beginning of "The Disapperance of Alice Creed" where you have a long series of scenes without dialogue that start with something as mundane as buying supplies at a Home Depot type store - and it is absolutely riveting (in fact the best part of that movie, although the movie is quite decent overall). But the problem starts when you have a long stretch - or short stretch! - of something that is simply not engaging. Then it DRAGS no matter how long or short - it can be mere seconds, and still DRAG. It's not about attention *span*. It's about the director being able to *engage* viewer attention.

In the end of course, there are issues of taste and personality. What one person finds engaging the other may not, and vice versa. For me, Godless was just not engaging on any level - I can't help it. I still have not seen either Dunkirk or BR2049, but plan on seeing both.
 
I gave it a chance for 3 episodes but it just didn't work for me. I thought the writing was, not good. But as said, different strokes for different folks.
 
OldCorpse said:
...the content has to be engaging on *some* level.
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Absolutely. It has to engage you or there's no reason to keep watching.

In books I have what I call "the 40 page test". If I'm not into the book by the 40 page mark, I'm not likely to ever be. Other people may have other "page thresholds" or other tests, but this is what decades of reading have boiled down to for me. It's not a perfect test; I've had a number of books perform at very high level for me until the last 10% or so of the book where the author can't figure out how to end it. But it does weed out any number of books that I'd just be wasting my time on.

I'm just sayin' that it's definitely about engagement. On that we are in complete agreement. But clearly, what engages me doesn't engage that many other people. Sigh... oh well. As you say, it's interesting how we disagree.

As an aside, I watch a forum (seldom have anything to contribute) that's about bass in soundtracks. They seem to self identify as "bass heads". I'm constantly amazed at the movies they'll watch (often over and over) because of the LFE channel in the soundtrack. This is what engages them. Some seem to loose interest if their 18" servo subwoofers (yes, that's plural) don't rattle the dishes in the kitchen one floor up and on the opposite end of the house. This would drive me out of the room screaming, and I like LFE effects. I'm not saying they are wrong either; just... interesting.

So... you think what engages me is strange? Have I got a forum for you!
 
I write a bit, so I have a great deal of interest in how professional gatekeepers score these things. From personal experience, stuff communicated to me, reading and so forth, I've gathered a bit of data. For screenplays, I feel I have a great deal of knowledge about this, because for close to a year I ran the department that did coverage at a major talent agency. So I read tons and tons of screenplays and did coverage and supervised readers. We had to read all incoming screenplays, but you very quickly develop a feel for what the script will be like. We got stuff submitted by mostly established writers, so it was rarely complete amateur garbage. Anyhow, you got a decent feel for what you were in for after as little as the first 2 pages. If it didn't grab by then, it rarely got better. Usually by page 10, it was set game match. So my advice to a screenwriter is to make sure your first two pages are solidly engaging, because if they are not, you are prejudicing the reader and would have to work much, much harder for the rest of the script to rescue it. Another piece of advice - make super human efforts to make your script as easily readable as you possibly can. I spend almost more time on that than anything else - that includes rules of thumb, like don't make paragraphs longer than 4 lines (best: 1-2 lines and the shorter the better), keep dialogue lines to 4 max (when you see a character name followed by a chunk of 10 lines, you know it's amateur hour... just read out for yourself, who speaks that many lines at a time??). All pages should look like swiss cheese - mostly air and a few lines on a page... when a reader sees a page of dense text, his/her heart sinks, and they are already prejudiced against you. And of course clarity - no confusion. Nobody has time to sit and decrypt your script. Often I had 7-10 screenplays to read *and* do coverage in a weekend. Guess how much time that leaves - you read fast and you skip. Big non-secret - most industry execs hate to read. HATE. The less you make them read, and the easier it is, the better for you. Also - appallingly - and I hate to say this, but I know it for a fact from speaking to very high execs who have the power to greenlight... they skip. Yep, they'll read a page, skip a few, read a bit more etc. When they see a page of dense text - SKIP. Of course your screeplay suffers that way. But the best you can do is to engage IMMEDIATELY and then hold on to their attention for dear life, so they feel COMPELLED to read. Because the moment things slack, they're skipping, and you're dead.

For novels, I have had many communications from editors and other gatekeepers who read submissions - and it is very, very tough. How tough? In as little as 8 lines - that's LINES, not pages - the editor already is making up their mind. The basic advice, is, start well, from the very first sentence. By that standard, your 40 page threshold is generous in the extreme. Of course, you are reading published novels, while the gatekeepers are reading general submissions, which are 99% absolute garbage, so the gatekeepers have an incentive to throw the novel on the reject pile as soon as possible.

Bottom line: ENGAGE, ENGAGE, ENGAGE. Especially in this day and age when there are millions of alternatives and constant claims on your attention. That's why a director (writer, creator), who is so lost in their own ego that they self-indulgently drag out a scene come across as utterly clueless. When I watch a movie at home, the most frequent remark I make aloud is "I hope this is GOING somewhere, and fast!" - at which point I'll give it another 1-2 minutes and it's gone - on to the next one. So please be aware as a creator - HAVE RESPECT for the time and attention of your viewers, if you abuse their attention, you will be off the screen in no time.
 
OldCorpse said:
Bottom line: ENGAGE, ENGAGE, ENGAGE. Especially in this day and age when there are millions of alternatives and constant claims on your attention. That's why a director (writer, creator), who is so lost in their own ego that they self-indulgently drag out a scene come across as utterly clueless.
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I get where you are coming from. And I get how your experience conditions your response -- everyone's experience conditions their responses. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it), my experience is different that yours. I haven't been in the position of having to cull hundreds of screenplays a week (I've done it with resumes, but that's a different story), so I'm not as insistent on quick engagement. But I certainly see why you are. I would be too, almost certainly.

What I'm afraid of, whether my fears are founded or not, is that the industry is increasingly bending everything toward the attention span, and critical thinking ability, of 14 year old boys. Short attention span theater. You can already see it in the average length of time between cuts. It's down to like seven seconds or so (even less?). But can't every movie be a Marvel comic book hero movie. Can it? Wait... it seems like that's where we're heading.

What I worry about is loosing stories that are worth telling, because the stories are sufficiently complex that they take some time to develop. Stories you have to think about to fully appreciate.

And this is perhaps why I watch some of the movies I do, and like some of the movies I like. Because they aren't built on the standard "grab your eyeballs and never let go" quick cuts, lots-o'-noise template. I do tend to like movies that are more contemplative. Because critical thinking is more contemplative. So I like films like Arrival, BR 2049, and shows like Godless.

Of course I also like to have characters I can actually root for too, but that's just a personal character flaw I'm sure. ;-)

We want different things from movies. Thank goodness. Without it, we'll end up with 78 variations on The Avengers every year. Or 12 Star Wars movies every year. How boring would that be?

So, IMHO, this is cool. Vive la différence.
 
I can see the validity of your concern, in view of what I wrote. That said, I'm not sure we are that far apart, actually. It really comes down to understanding the term "engagement" - because nothing about engagement says it has to be through high energy action, fast cuts and hyperactivity. I understand that term much more broadly, which can fully incorporate mundane actions (in the example I gave, of buying supplies at Home Depot), or lengthy scenes with no cutting. In fact, from a purely technical point of view, I love long takes if for no reason than it allows for creative staging and psychological effects impossible with fast cuts. The problem with Hitchocks "Rope" was the content, not the long takes. But even long takes and super slow low action scenes need to engage.

But I take your point more broadly. To give an analogy from music - Eno's conception of ambient music as something that you can hear, but not have to pay attention to (or the antecedent, Satie and "furniture music"). Eno also had the idea of the background painting in "77 million paintings" - it's an app that runs from a computer displaying ever-changing paintings that evolve and are shown on a large monitor (I often have it in the background for parties at my place). You don't concentrate on any particular painting, because they are ever changing and never the same within a give time frame. Or to go directly to film - Andy Warhol (Morrissay) with 8 hour films of the Empire State Building and such. It is a completely different psychological space, and has its own value. I get it - and in fact am a big fan of, in both music and visual arts.

Still, I think there is room for everything in the market - the gripping fast paced thriller, and the contemplative free form artfilm and anything in between. To me, the dividing line is not pace and psychology, but rather engagement (in the broadest sense) and plain old ineptitude and miscalculation. Ultimately, yes, tastes will differ and not all boundries are hard and fast. And now we've completely derailed this thread :).
 
Back on track- love it (loved Dunkirk, too, just for the record).
My wife and I have one episode of Season 1 left (just looked it up... aaaand there is no Season 2- disappointed!)
Though I see it's billed as "A Netflix TV series", interesting... "TV"- is it "televised" on the internet??? (if HBO is "not TV", how can Netflix be?).

I disagree with Corpse on just about everything except cleanliness, which of course is next to... Godlessness? :grin:
Deadwood (loved) was the perhaps the best yet at capturing the disgusting filthiness of the West- horse sh!t and mud and p!ss and vomit and filth just everywhere.

A month ago I saw Silverado (1985) for the first time since it came out- though sometimes a fun romp (Kasdan-lite) in the early goofball Kevin Costner scenes (stars Kevin Kline, Danny Glover and Costner, supporting cast Brian Dennehy, John Cleese and Jeff Goldblum), there's a lot of vendettas to be settled.
I enjoyed it more than I thought I might. It's also an interesting time capsule of that period of writer/director Kasdan and the actors.

I didn't watch Westerns for a decade or two (thought they were cheesy when I was younger), now I do- love 'em if they're good.
But it's a genre, with strong conventions (and allegories), so that's always a consideration.
Which makes me wonder what Kubrick might have done with a Western (since he went through the genres of boxing (doc), film noir, crime caper, war, sandals and swords, sci fi, horror... what have I left out?)

We now return you to the previously scheduled Godless thread...
 
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