Author Topic: Filmspotting is my escape from the Mainstream shallow culture,whats up with 533?  (Read 8207 times)

Neoman

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I'm far from an elitest in terms of culture. What ever floats your boat is great. I just happen to be a lyrical rapper, aspiring composer, cinefile, I love art in general. So my tastes are not geared towards what is considered mainstream culture. I do tend to avoid as much as possible as I haven't had cable by choice since 2008.

It's because of my taste for substance that I found Filmspotting. I have been spoiled by them with their wonderful intellectual gaze into usually fantastic cinema. It's because of Filmspotting that I have inadvertently become a film snob. I love these guys, I love the show, it's a weekly ritual.

Now to my qualms with the show.

Lately they have been a reviewing a good number of publicly accessible films. In mid review of those films I find myself not even listening which usually never happens. No matter how much Adam and Josh try to find some grain of substance in these movies i just don't see it.

Episode 533 seems as though they've gotten big enough that studios are willing to pay for them review big budget films. I certainly hope this is my paranoia and that there is nothing to this suspicion.

Also I never thought I'd hear 2 chains and Wiz Kalifa on filmspotting. LOL i'm laughing now but boy I was pretty mad at the time.

So doesn't anyone else remotely agree with my gripe or am I just another angry suburbanite who needs to exercise his mommy and daddy issues still lol .

Adam

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I'm far from an elitest in terms of culture. What ever floats your boat is great. I just happen to be a lyrical rapper, aspiring composer, cinefile, I love art in general. So my tastes are not geared towards what is considered mainstream culture. I do tend to avoid as much as possible as I haven't had cable by choice since 2008.

It's because of my taste for substance that I found Filmspotting. I have been spoiled by them with their wonderful intellectual gaze into usually fantastic cinema. It's because of Filmspotting that I have inadvertently become a film snob. I love these guys, I love the show, it's a weekly ritual.

Now to my qualms with the show.

Lately they have been a reviewing a good number of publicly accessible films. In mid review of those films I find myself not even listening which usually never happens. No matter how much Adam and Josh try to find some grain of substance in these movies i just don't see it.

Episode 533 seems as though they've gotten big enough that studios are willing to pay for them review big budget films. I certainly hope this is my paranoia and that there is nothing to this suspicion.

Also I never thought I'd hear 2 chains and Wiz Kalifa on filmspotting. LOL i'm laughing now but boy I was pretty mad at the time.

So doesn't anyone else remotely agree with my gripe or am I just another angry suburbanite who needs to exercise his mommy and daddy issues still lol .
Thank you for the kind words, and don't want to hijack your thread... but we've spent a good chunk of this year reviewing movies like Buzzard, It Follows, Maps to the Stars, What We Do In the Shadows (plus six Satyajit Ray films). We've always balanced mainstream and non-mainstream. Same as it ever was.

[Episode 533 seems as though they've gotten big enough that studios are willing to pay for them review big budget films. I certainly hope this is my paranoia and that there is nothing to this suspicion.]

I can't say there's nothing to your suspicion because I don't actually know what this means.
« Last Edit: April 10, 2015, 04:29:07 PM by Adam »
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Neoman

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I agree you have always balanced it out with mainstream movies. I guess I meant movies with substance more than mainstream.  Django, interstellar,  the Wolf of wall street are mainstream movies with a little more to grab at than the furious franchise in my opinion. Its good for the show to attract a larger audience so I get it. I'm just use to listening to filmspotting on the edge of my seat digesting your analysis like it's chocolate cake.

Excuse my juvenile and paranoid response, I'm just spoiled by a usually fantastic and informative podcast, not to say 533 wasn't lol, but it was hard to sludge through the furious franchise.

Adam

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I agree you have always balanced it out with mainstream movies. I guess I meant movies with substance more than mainstream.  Django, interstellar,  the Wolf of wall street are mainstream movies with a little more to grab at than the furious franchise in my opinion. Its good for the show to attract a larger audience so I get it. I'm just use to listening to filmspotting on the edge of my seat digesting your analysis like it's chocolate cake.

Excuse my juvenile and paranoid response, I'm just spoiled by a usually fantastic and informative podcast, not to say 533 wasn't lol, but it was hard to sludge through the furious franchise.
It's fun to, uh, broaden your horizons. :)
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Junior

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I think there's enough to the Fast series now that it has 7(!) entries to devote most of a show to it. It's a large part of the cultural zeitgeist now, and it fills an interesting role in it as basically James Bond for the millennial generation. Take that, xXx.
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Neoman

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It just doesn't resonate with me. Even when I was 14 the first fast and furious didn't do it for me. I'd argue against it being a cultural zeitgeist. Harry potter was a zeitgeist. the Dark Knight series was a zeitgeist. I'm not a fan of either series but it certainly owned it's time in cinema history. Any time a new Fast and Furious came out I always said to my self "really? another one?". When a new Dark Knight came out I recognized it's power over the masses. And the movies weren't  that bad. The Fast and Furious lacks any cultural icon status.
« Last Edit: April 10, 2015, 06:59:03 PM by Neoman »

Junior

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The box office success would say otherwise, especially since the series has only grown in popularity with each release. Maybe you're just not part of the group that the movie speaks to, but it certainly does speak to a large part of the population, and it's often a part of the population that doesn't get served by big releases. How many other movies feature such a diverse cast? Surely that is of some import.
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Neoman

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I'll go back to my example of Batman and Harry Potter.

When these two franchises were at their zenith you couldn't escape the fever of these movies. I would regularly see people dressed as wizards and people dressed as batman or wearing garb with these franchises on them.

I've never seen a fast and furious shirt.

Everyone I seem to know in non internet reality doesn't even know the existence of a new one.

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Batman and Harry Potter are fantasy universes, and that encourages a more visible type of fandom.  And those franchises have all kinds of "canon" minutia for nerds to geek out over.  The F&F movies are ridiculously popular, as evidenced by their box office, the number of IMDb votes, and the fact that they've made 7 of the damn things.

I've only seen the second one, which I thought was mildly entertaining but not enough to keep me coming back.  I don't care about the series, so this was the shortest episode of FS ever for me (intro, notes/filmspotting madness, close).  But I don't deny the popularity of these movies, or the fact that people who I consider to have reasonably good taste seem to enjoy them.  Suggesting that Adam & Josh are reviewing Furious 7 as a grab for a wider audience is ludicrous.  And the idea that they're getting paid off by the studio is insane.

Neoman

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I wholeheartedly agree with your last 2 points.

But Fast and Furious isn't in a fantasy universe? I know it's more "plausible", but come most of those stunts and plot lines are fantasy.

 

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