Life vs Film

[Ed_David]

The biggest issue with life is that there is no structures, no resolution, no ending.

There is no order.

It's a mass of complete randomness, where being good or bad does not matter.  Some times you get caught, some times you don't.  

Just an endless mess, floating in space, a turtle's hallucination.

Vs film - a good film - it takes you on an emotional complex journey - a window into characters that are interconnected and with emotions and ideas that matter.

It all matters in there.

A good film can be better than life itself, just like a good book, a good video game - an experience that elevates you to another place.

With the scam chapter on this camera nerd site not closed - it will never be closed.

It will continue forever.  There will never be a resolution.  The scam artist will not learn his lesson and become a good human being.

Life is strangly unwritten and messy and frustrating and we're all just floating around in it.  Never to know what we should have done better.

[sandro]

Amen.

[sanveer]

1 hour ago, Ed_David said:

The biggest issue with life is that there is no structures, no resolution, no ending.

There is no order.

It's a mass of complete randomness, where being good or bad does not matter.  Some times you get caught, some times you don't.  

Just an endless mess, floating in space, a turtle's hallucination.

Vs film - a good film - it takes you on an emotional complex journey - a window into characters that are interconnected and with emotions and ideas that matter.

It all matters in there.

A good film can be better than life itself, just like a good book, a good video game - an experience that elevates you to another place.

With the scam chapter on this camera nerd site not closed - it will never be closed.

It will continue forever.  There will never be a resolution.  The scam artist will not learn his lesson and become a good human being.

Life is strangly unwritten and messy and frustrating and we're all just floating around in it.  Never to know what we should have done better.

Some films have unresolved endings. Like 'Zodiac/ the Zodiac'. 

[squig]

1 hour ago, Ed_David said:

Vs film - a good film - it takes you on an emotional complex journey - a window into characters that are interconnected and with emotions and ideas that matter.

It all matters in there.

A good film can be better than life itself, just like a good book, a good video game - an experience that elevates you to another place.

Alien on acid elevates you to the Nostromo.

I made the mistake of leaving the comfort of the living room on a munchies mission to the kitchen.

The corridor was pitch black. In the distance, white light emanated from the galley. I headed towards the light, triggering a motion sensor. The corridor was bathed in a red glow. I froze. I couldn't move. My eyes darted around, scanning all the voids where a zenomorph could hide, ready to attack. I knew if I stayed there I was done for, so I made a run for the galley. Beyond the galley was a darkened void, it was the perfect hiding spot. I grabbed the Doritos and ran for my life. I entered the living room, I was white as a ghost.

Roomie: "What happened"

Me: "Don't go out there".

[Ed_David]

2 hours ago, sanveer said:

Some films have unresolved endings. Like 'Zodiac/ the Zodiac'. 

No they don't.  The film ends.  It has structure.  128 minutes running time.  And then that's it.  We have no running time.

[Liam]

We die..

[sanveer]

31 minutes ago, Ed_David said:

No they don't.  The film ends.  It has structure.  128 minutes running time.  And then that's it.  We have no running time.

Maybe you're right. Though, once the thief was mocking people he stole from, the chances of him improving his ways, became zilch.

That was clue enough, that he won't return anything, without the Cops, Social Media, his family, and/or authorities in the picture. 

[Damphousse]

4 hours ago, Ed_David said:

The biggest issue with life is that there is no structures, no resolution, no ending.

There is no order.

It's a mass of complete randomness, where being good or bad does not matter.  Some times you get caught, some times you don't.  

 

Watch some nonAmerican films.  A nice tidy happy ending that resolves everything is the hallmark of American films.  If something is left unresolved it is usually a setup for five sequels.

There are movies that continue after they end.  You can go to a coffee shop afterwards and discuss them.  Not all movies are Marvel movies.

[Ed_David]

8 minutes ago, Damphousse said:

Watch some nonAmerican films.  A nice tidy happy ending that resolves everything is the hallmark of American films.  If something is left unresolved it is usually a setup for five sequels.

There are movies that continue after they end.  You can go to a coffee shop afterwards and discuss them.  Not all movies are Marvel movies.

I watch nonAmerican movies.  I also watch great American ones.  Like Elephant by Gus Van Sant or Erasehead by David Lynch or Cassevetes or Orson Welles.  Don't hate on US cinema.  We gave the world Citizen Kane.

 

And movies do end and the have structure - beginning, middle, and end.  I don't need a happy ending.  I just wish life had some more structure.  It's so open ended.  There is no end.  Death is just random.  It just happ

[fuzzynormal]

5 hours ago, Ed_David said:

The biggest issue with life is that there is no structures, no resolution, no ending.

There is no order.

It's a mass of complete randomness, where being good or bad does not matter.  Some times you get caught, some times you don't.  

Just an endless mess, floating in space, a turtle's hallucination.

Vs film - a good film - it takes you on an emotional complex journey - a window into characters that are interconnected and with emotions and ideas that matter.

It all matters in there.

A good film can be better than life itself, just like a good book, a good video game - an experience that elevates you to another place.

With the scam chapter on this camera nerd site not closed - it will never be closed.

It will continue forever.  There will never be a resolution.  The scam artist will not learn his lesson and become a good human being.

Life is strangly unwritten and messy and frustrating and we're all just floating around in it.  Never to know what we should have done better.

I read all of that with my inner-head Werner Herzog accent.  

11 minutes ago, Ed_David said:

We gave the world Citizen Kane.

Also Casablanca.  One of the "Hollywood-ist" films ever made, and all the better because of it.

12 minutes ago, Ed_David said:

There is no end.  Death is just random.  It just happ

RIP Ed. :-(

[Damphousse]

10 minutes ago, Ed_David said:

I watch nonAmerican movies.  I also watch great American ones.  Like Elephant by Gus Van Sant or Erasehead by David Lynch or Cassevetes or Orson Welles.  Don't hate on US cinema.  We gave the world Citizen Kane.

I'm not "hating on" American movies.  They just happen to be a certain style of movies.  I watch and enjoy a lot of movies that don't necessarily have Oscar winning scripts or really thought provoking themes.  Sometimes I just want to have fun.

 

12 minutes ago, Ed_David said:

And movies do end and the have structure - beginning, middle, and end.  I don't need a happy ending.  I just wish life had some more structure.  It's so open ended.  There is no end.  Death is just random.  It just happ

Actually no.  The amount of modifiable factors one has control over in their life is more than we want to admit.  Drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, promiscuity, eating terrible food, obesity, inactivity, excessive risk taking activity.  No, you can spot most people's deaths coming a mile away.

I suppose thinking death is "random" absolves people from taking personal responsibility.

[AaronChicago]

That's why movies are so popular. It's an escape from the norms of life.

[Liam]

I think a lot of films are realistic and don't feel a need for a character to change, or the bad guy to get caught, or the couple to get married etc. It's a difficult discussion.. I'm sure there are movies you could watch without obvious motifs etc, from objective camera angles, that show things going on, and when you step back and look at the scene you don't really see a reason that couldn't have been a real conversation. There are probably several films in everyone's life you could make if you cut out the irrelevant, boring stuff. True Adolescents (and tons of films obviously, only looking at the ending, not this whole concept) - it's not the end of his life and doesn't solve his problems. It's just somewhere in the character's life where they ended the film. Maybe a series could do reality more justice and keep going forever. Maybe it helps to skip years and years at a time and end with the character's death and never use an omniscient voice over. But we've probably strayed entirely from what you were saying. I didn't expect a resolution with the ES thing. It was dumb, it's still dumb. The resolution could be someone sitting at the computer, refreshing, hoping to finally see a reply from Ebrahim... and it never comes... (Social Network)

[Ed_David]

1 hour ago, Damphousse said:

I'm not "hating on" American movies.  They just happen to be a certain style of movies.  I watch and enjoy a lot of movies that don't necessarily have Oscar winning scripts or really thought provoking themes.  Sometimes I just want to have fun.

 

Actually no.  The amount of modifiable factors one has control over in their life is more than we want to admit.  Drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, promiscuity, eating terrible food, obesity, inactivity, excessive risk taking activity.  No, you can spot most people's deaths coming a mile away.

I suppose thinking death is "random" absolves people from taking personal responsibility.

Keith Richards

[Lintelfilm]

Films are just stories and stories are the way humans are programmed to make sense of/give structure/meaning to the chaos of life. 

Zodiac is based on real events. Fincher chose the story he wanted to tell about the chaotic real events within the time constraints of a feature.

The incredible thing is that the thread in question read like a true crime doc as it unfolded. The odds of it tying up neatly were minuscule. Stories are created in the retelling. Like Rashomon we'd all tell it a bit differently. Some might wait for a resolution in real life, some may tell it now, open-ended as Fincher chose to. Some may see resolution/ending in the excommunication of ES. 

Stories are, like all art, representation. How a person or community make sense of an event or experience. Life itself is just chaos death murder etc (adopt Herzog voice to taste).

[Axel]

2 hours ago, Ed_David said:

Don't hate on US cinema.  We gave the world Citizen Kane.

The audience realizes in retrospect what Rosebud meant to Kane. His whole career, everything he accomplished, Xanadu, didn't define the man. A tragicomic truth, because most of us follow storylines that lead us away from what we really want.

35 minutes ago, Lintelfilm said:

Films are just stories and stories are the way humans are programmed to make sense of/give structure/meaning to the chaos of life.

And like genre movies the plans we make for our own lives are often trite. We call life chaotic, but by that we ignore it's actual conditions, which don't follow our arbitrary beliefs. Connected to chaos theory is the law of self-similarity, where billions of individuals eventually resemble each other. Were our lives recorded in three-minute time-lapse clips and published on Youtube, you would stop watching those after the fourth or fifth, because the individual histories would seemingly repeat themselves. 

As I see it, life only takes place in the moment. The past is gone, we compound it into a sequence we wrongly deem meaningful, the future a bunch of prejudices and projections from the made-up past. We should run for our lives, save our asses. Now.

[HelsinkiZim]

9 hours ago, Ed_David said:

The biggest issue with life is that there is no structures, no resolution, no ending.

There is no order.

It's a mass of complete randomness, where being good or bad does not matter.  Some times you get caught, some times you don't.  

Just an endless mess, floating in space, a turtle's hallucination.

Vs film - a good film - it takes you on an emotional complex journey - a window into characters that are interconnected and with emotions and ideas that matter.

It all matters in there.

A good film can be better than life itself, just like a good book, a good video game - an experience that elevates you to another place.

With the scam chapter on this camera nerd site not closed - it will never be closed.

It will continue forever.  There will never be a resolution.  The scam artist will not learn his lesson and become a good human being.

Life is strangly unwritten and messy and frustrating and we're all just floating around in it.  Never to know what we should have done better.

A very fine and much appreciated brain-fart.

Seriously.

[HelsinkiZim]

1 hour ago, HelsinkiZim said:

A very fine and much appreciated brain-fart.

Seriously.

That sounds ruder than I meant!

[squig]

5 hours ago, AaronChicago said:

That's why movies are so popular. It's an escape from the norms of life.

I was a Dj/Producer for 15 years. When I started out I didn't think my job was very important in the scheme of things. Over the years I came to realise how important it was. A night in a club is a tribal gathering. That few hours a week debt slaves get to escape from the capitalist dystopia means everything to them. Reality sux. Without music, dance, and film the world would be a much darker place.

[Damphousse]

4 hours ago, Ed_David said:

Keith Richards

As if you know Keith Richards.  Making life decisions based on celebrity culture is what is one of the things destroying America.  You have to be able to discern real life from fiction.  The personas celebrities and the media project to us good or bad should not be taken as irrefutable complete scientific knowledge.

Quote

On average, smokers' life expectancy is 10 years less than non-smokers. The long-lived smokers are the exception and the researchers said that their findings suggest that they may be a "biologically distinct group" that is endowed with genetic variants that allow them to respond differently to exposure.

"There is evidence that these genes may facilitate lifespan extension by increasing cellular maintenance and repair," Levine said.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2015/09/10/long-lived-smokers-may-be-a-biologically-distinct-group-with-an-extraordinary-gene-network/

By the way Keith Richards mother died at 91.  Keith is 72.

There is a saying "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."  In this context I would substitute "complex" for "advanced".  The human body is complex.  But it isn't random.  And considering what we know about it today the idea that people are just keeling over unexpectedly all over the place is ludicrous.

Quote

More than two-thirds (68.8 percent) of adults are considered to be overweight or obese.

https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/health-statistics/Pages/overweight-obesity-statistics.aspx

The fact a little poor country like Cuba has the same life expectancy as the richest country in the world is not "random" nor surprising.

A really good movie to me is something that doesn't dumb down reality to randomness... unless it is some summer tent pole popcorn movie that is there just for fun.  Of course a good movie can't be simplistic either.  It has to be complex but not random.