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Friday Fun Thread for January 5, 2024

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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Do you normally watch movies in one sitting? I'm not really into cinema overall, but I watched The Northman the other day and it took me several sittings even though I liked it, especially the last third or so. Today I started watching Princess Mononoke and I decided to do something else half-way through and finish it tomorrow, even though it's not like I ran out of free time or anything like that. Can't imagine paying for watching either movie in a theater only to get robbed of my Rewind and Pause buttons. I think I'm fairly normal psychologically. I guess it's just a zoomer thing

Yes. A good film is like a good song. Part of the experience is the tempo - how it flows and how it carries a feeling throughout. If you drop it and come back later, the continuity is lost the same way your favourite song is ruined if you keep pausing it every 30 seconds.

Example: Uncut Gems is a tense movie! It's stressful! It doesn't let up for two hours straight, and then when you finally get to the end, the last scene very much cashes in on it having taken you for that exhausting ride.

Uncut Gems is a miracle of writing, directing, and acting.

Even in films that are well written, it's pretty common for me to sort of detach and think, "Oh, this is the redemptive scene. This is the contemplation scene. This is the remorse scene." And I'm not a very talented cinephile. I think it's just incredibly difficult for a director to utterly absorb the audience for 2+ hrs straight.

But Uncut Gems! I can't imagine how much attention had to be paid to every line of the script both in writing it and then acting it out on screen. It's like a swiss watch in terms of complex integration yet almost no extraneous material.