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PaperclipPerfector
13hr ago
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Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
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Transnational Media Thread
I am very tired after a long week of work. Any local art, music, film, etc you've been consuming from far-flung parts of the globe?
Anime still doesn't count.I haven't really mentioned Soviet media around here much, except for the time I wrote about my experience with Tarkovsky's Stalker a while back, but I've had a longstanding love affair with it. There's an inexplicable poetic, sometimes haunted desolation to a lot of Soviet art that really grabs me, and I find no other nation manages to capture this as well as the Russians do. The latest music I've been very into is a Soviet rock band named Kino; they found quite a bit of popularity in the Soviet Union but not quite so much outside of it, and their relevance in the global music scene has steeply declined ever since the founder and helmsman Viktor Tsoi died and the group disbanded. But the music is so very timeless, with some incredibly evocative lyrics and musicianship. Gruppa Krovi is a great introduction; it's a very strong and immediately likeable number that's probably Kino's best known song (and was my introduction to the group), but Spokoynaya Noch is their masterpiece and towers head and shoulders above the rest of their discography. It's a six-and-a-half minute long rock ballad that manages to craft the most potent atmosphere I've encountered in the genre, with some very poetic and abstract lyrics; I never tire of listening to it.
On another note, here is your regular daily dose of Sinoposting; I continue to be surprised at how much interesting stuff there is in China that is just completely internationally unknown. This time, I've been looking at their 20th century works of ink-wash animation, which are so very singular and unique I'm surprised that I barely ever hear about them. The project started in the 50s, when the state-funded Shanghai Animation Film Studio was tasked with creating cartoons for children, and the animators working there quickly started trying to create something that looked uniquely Chinese in the style of traditional painting. The technique they used to create their animations was unorthodox, and it's mostly secret even today, but apparently it was so laborious that according to one of the creators it was possible to create four "traditionally animated" films in the time that it took to make one in the ink-wash style. Such a style was really only viable in the days of socialist state funding and ownership, and after the market reforms of the Deng era this style declined due to the introduction of financial and commercial incentives. As such, there are only four "original" ink-wash animation films, and of these four probably the best and most refined is Feeling from Mountain and Water (1988), which is completely wordless and stunning. A close second for me is Buffalo Boy and his Flute (1963). Apparently ink-wash techniques have slowly made some resurgence in Chinese animation ever since then with the introduction of more modern animation techniques that made it more cost-effective to produce, but these early works have a very good vibe to them.
I'm sorry to tell you this, but I got to halfway through Tarkovsky's Stalker and turned it off. I managed to read Roadside Picnic and play Shadow of Chernobyl all the way through, but the movie was different. The book and game resembled books and games pretty well, but the movie was extremely slow, shot weirdly, with characters that didn't really have names, with dialogue that wasn't particularly interesting to me. It is funny to see so much praise of this movie, everywhere. I guess only a certain type of person seeks it out? On the other hand, Roadside Picnic is probably my favorite book.
I've been listening to the Metro 2033 audiobook in my car while driving. Pretty good. Not as good as Roadside Picnic, but pretty good. The narrator has a great voice and he can do the Russian accent well. There are a lot less trips to the surface, way less fighting, seemingly more supernatural stuff to the tunnels. I will say that the game character Uncle Bourbon is far superior to the book version, and I think the Dark One hallucinations add something to the game.
Tarkovsky is the cinematic equivalent of Joyce or Proust. I refuse to watch anything by him on principle.
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My wife and I got halfway through Stalker, sped it up to 1.5x, and managed to make it to the end. I’m glad I watched it, if only to change my answer to “what was the last movie you watched?” Plodding Soviet atmospheric fantasy is more respectable than Marvel. She didn’t think it was worth it.
I would say it worked as an artistic experience, which is not the same thing as being a good movie. The plot was basically nonfunctional. When there was actual conflict, it had goofy choreography (the train) or laughable props (the bomb). Likewise for the characters, who oscillated between cryptic assholishness and physical comedy.
My favorite scene was the Stalker lying down in a puddle for 15 minutes. It actually got me questioning what was real and what the characters thought was real. I’m not joking; this was the scene which best conveyed what other commenters are saying about a dreamlike, threatening atmosphere.
I can’t imagine it would have been any better if we hadn’t both played STALKER. Again, incoherent plot. On the other hand, she’d read Picnic and I hadn’t. Maybe that’s the secret sauce.
The next movie we watched was Escape From New York, having recently played Metal Gear Solid. Ridiculous, but actually fun to watch.
Thanks for sharing your experience. I will have to remember the 1.5x speed trick.
While the world gained a legendary weird arthouse movie, it is quite sad that the book will never have had a proper movie adaptation. There was a LOT to like about it, one of the densest entertainment values in any book ever. Just 4 chapters and each one introduces multiple new angles on the premise. For how popular it was, it must have taken quite some restraint to keep it to that length and then not even write a sequel.
Movie or game adaptations almost always create a division in the fandom, and so do sequels. Thus, I kind of resent the movie for being so radically different, creating a bigger division than necessary. Should have been its own thing.
Escape from New York is great.
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You made the right choice. I sat through the whole thing and it didn't improve.
It's bad enough when people die as a result of making a good movie. No one should die as a result of making a boring movie that sucks.
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I definitely get it, it's a weird niche movie that's extremely slow-paced and abstruse; I have a hard time justifying recommending it to anyone because of that. Your general perceptions of the movie probably correlates with how much patience you have for arthouse, and how much you enjoy the vibe (which is the aspect that carries the entire movie). For the most part, I wasn't expecting to like it either. I don't usually like exceptionally pretentious types of media and consider myself sort of ambivalent on arthouse (some are good, some aren't) and I'd heard Stalker was a particularly difficult one to get through. So imagine my surprise when I'd finished the whole thing and felt as if only an hour had passed, it was very dreamlike.
I suppose part of the reason why I had a different takeaway was because I conceptualised the movie in a bit of a different way than I do other films? It kind of felt a bit like a fable or myth to me, and I engaged with it as such. Your familiarity with the source material probably also has an impact since I never read Roadside Picnic and never built up any expectations.
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