Big Train

On 'Big Train' Mao Tse Tung died and then he got up, in spirt, and joined the Roxy Music band as Bryan Ferry and played 'Virginia Plain.' The band was recreated perfectly, down to every detail. They didn't just start the song and then fade out - to suggest the joke - they played the song the whole way through from start to finish. Excess is so pleasant! - Maryann

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Happiness

Was it attempting to be post-humanist or compassionate? To anyone who isn't aware, it is completely out of the league of 'American Beauty'; there's no comparison, although they were compared over and over again because 'American Beauty' was released at the same time. AB is one of the phoniest movies I have ever seen.

Back to the original question: I think that the movie was supposed to be cold, flat and post-humanist. It called upon some grinding cliches, such as the use of ironic popular songs for incidental music. But it still exceeded the reach of many other movies I've seen that have attempted this kind of frigid objectivity. It's difficult to pull off; the director's disdain usually ruins the illusion of flat, nihilistic realism. Although that did happen in this movie, the brutal 'truth' was also - defended? submitted to? painted? - Maryann

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I Hate Music

A review of the site 'I HATE MUSIC'

Hate is one of our favourite emotions (purely as an object of study, of course!) You could even say that we hate people who deny that they hate things. (I recently found out that there's a test routinely used at job interviews which relies upon people's inherent 'hatingness' to diagnose whether they're a liar or not. There are three scales on the test:

1) the degree of neuroticism of the potential employee
2) the degree of introversion of the potential employee
3) the degree to which the potential employee is lying (known as the 'L' factor)

This 'L' factor is tested by a few questions included at random in the overall list of about 50 questions. Lending credence to my argument that we're all haters, they're questions like, 'amongst your acquaintances, are there any you don't like?' Anyone who answers 'no' to this question is automatically assumed to be lying on the test.)

Consider the following table, from Volume 1, No 3 of 'Laughing Matters' magazine, edited by Dr. Joel Goodman.

HUMOR VS RIDICULE

HUMOR

1. Pokes fun at universal human foibles
2. Characterised by empathy
3. A person makes a choice to be the 'butt' of the joke (ie 'laughing at yourself')
4. Supportive
5. The intention is to disrupt social divisions

RIDICULE

1. Reinforces stereotypes by singling out a group as the ‘butt’
2. Characterised by contempt
3. A person does not have a choice in being the ‘butt’ of the joke
4. Sarcastic
5. The intention is to confirm social divisions

People with a weak sense of personal identity will often enjoy humor based on ridicule , as it lessens the inherent ambiguity of human society by making social hierarchies more apparent and easily understood.
- Maryann

(SEE ALSO the entry on "humour,wit,satire,sarcasm,invective,irony,cynicism & the sardonic" in FOWLER'S MODERN ENGLISH USAGE) (I'm too lazy to copy it out & I haven't got a scanner. Later.)

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Moulin Rouge

I liked MR, but I thought it was dumb they had to kill the pretty girl in 2001, in Titanic the pretty boy got killed but then he was the poor nobody too and that movie was unmentionable, agony is too weak to describe it.

I thought Nicole Kidman's acting was cold and restrained, if I'd been casting I would have cast a black girl, cos that would have been such a kick, to see a black girl descend from the ceiling on a trapeze (Nicole's entrance scene) and everybody unanimously agree that she was the most beautiful in Paris WITHOUT QUESTION, and with no explanation ever in the movie; a great aesthetic moment, a testament to the triumph of art over life, very amusing and pleasurable, and also a comment on the actual important role of Africa in French art. And of course, with this initial unanimous suspension of disbelief (please don't pedestrianly point out to me that 'they wouldn't have to suspend their disbelief to think a black woman was beautiful') the english guys undying love for her would have been instantly believable.- Maryann

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