Overhyped books / movies / music?

[elegant20]

That's why I am so glad that this isn't youtube. Because at youtube...you are rated when you comment on something....good or bad....sometimes, you have a low rating or a higher rating...sometime below negative. I hate the rating system there. That's why I am glad this forum is not based on rating you a positive or negative....that's like a grading system over there. Because over there...if you say, "I hate this movie...so and so...." You are rated negative than a jack rabbit. That's why I love this forum here. It is never based on rating what you have comment before.

Anyway...to get on topic.

People might disagree with me on this, but I thought the Broadway play, Next To Normal, wasn't all it is cracked up to be. I thought it was alright at least. Not the Tony award winning play that it was.

 

[Sergeant_Torpedo]

Of course the books are always better than the dramatizations on screen. The direction, art direction, insight, and dialogue are all delivered in a superior way - by your own aesthetics and empathy and imagination. And the protagonists don't have to be played by pretty boys and girls with nada talent and intellect.

 

[DiscoBoy]

Rent. I hated Rent.

 

[ZOS23xy]

I not enthralled by the hyperbola over TWILIGHT. Vampires were supposed to be unholy, soul destroying blood suckers. Not Prettyboys who could do a toothpaste commercial.

My daughter likes them. I'm glad she took most of that stuff out when she moved to be on her own.

And I'm not fond of BUFFY, the Vampire Slayer.

 

[B_hungprepjock]

Right. Buffy, the original film was... forgettable. But the television series, and the Angel spinoff, were both brilliant! Funny, campy, well-written and well-acted with sharp, incisive, insightful dialogue that went far beyond merely riffing on pop culture.

The beginning of one memorable episode was a masterpiece of consision: Buffy returns home from school one day. She enters the house, slams the front door, throws down her books by the stairs in the entrance hall and calls out, 'Mom, I'm home!'

Buffy waits for an answer, quizzically, then, turning, notices her mother lying on the couch in the next room, as if takng a nap. She brightens, takes a step forward and again says, 'Mom!'

Buffy stops in her tracks. There is no answer. Her face clouds, and tears begin to form. 'Mom? Mom? Mommy?'

For kids, caught up in that show, who might have had a parent die suddenly, that episode (and the few, following episodes that completed the story arc of the death of Buffy's mother) must have seemed like the most extraordinary thing they had ever seen on television. They would have been right. Television has seldom been so good, so rich, so true.

For once, an entertaining and popular show (however based on an absurd, fantasy premise) took on a serious issue and did not flinch, but treated the fraught subject matter of the death of a parent with sensitivity and purpose.

 

[SilverTrain]

I'm with that. The movie was nothing like the critical acclaim it received.

But my worst film? Easy. It's another one that received critical praise that I considered awful: Beloved. I mean, I failed to see the point of filming Oprah Winfrey squatting down to take a piss in the bushes.

And books? Glad you asked.

That would be Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. God, what a pompous POS that was.

Agree that There Will Be Blood was massively overpraised. I love Day-Lewis, but an Oscar for that? Come on. And the film was just boring, boring, boring.

Also agree that Ayn Rand was majorly overrated. Pompous bitch? Yes. Interesting novels? Eh....

 

[midlifebear]

I believe the Holy Bible is overrated. As well as the paintings of Andy Warhol. Neil Simon plays, Bauhaus architecture, Joan Crawford movies.

You'll not make me give up my Barcelona chairs, Vassily leather and zinc sling lounge chairs (designed by Breur) and my Rae and Charles Eames lounge/study chair with matching ottoman until you pry them loose from my cold, dead hands. Then you can sell them on Ebay. :wink:

 

[midlifebear]

The film version (and the book, for that matter) of The English Patient? Sorry, I've never finished either because they quickly put me to sleep. At least they have a purpose.

 

[D_Gunther Snotpole]

Inglourious Basterds ... How did Tarantino ever get recognized for his achievments is beyond my understanding.

Have to disagree with you there.
I thought it was a very good film.
But I do think Tarantino is a very special cup of tea.

The film version (and the book, for that matter) of The English Patient? Sorry, I've never finished either because they quickly put me to sleep. At least they have a purpose.

I found the book so poetic that nothing that happened, seemed to happen anywhere in particular.
Nothing was grounded.
I can't abide poetic prose when it goes on and on for hundreds of pages.
As you say, it's soporific.
I much preferred the film.

 

[jason_els]

Out of Africa - One giant Ralph Lauren Safari Collection™ commercial. Lots of pretty shots of people in expensive clothing.

Madame Bovary - Endless ennui brought about by reading about the endless ennui of a housewife.

Anna Karenina - About midway through the book I would have pushed her on to the tracks myself.

A Farewell to Arms - Potentially great story told in words of one syl.la.ble. More awkward stops and halts than the synthetic voice of a shareware text reader program. There's stoic and then there's constipated.

To Kill A Mockingbird - The book and the movie. I can't identify with any of the characters, want to slap Scout silly, and Finch just has a fucking pole up his ass. I just do not care.

Raging Bull - Sacrilege I know but again, I don't like any of the characters one iota and while beautifully shot, edited, directed, and acted, the B&W thing strikes me as overly auteur. Downbeat films need to have a compelling plot even if the story is biographical. Raging Bull just doesn't engage me beyond its technical beauty.

Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid - So 60s it hurts. And that horrible Oscar-winning song and it has no tension. Who thought Katharine Ross can act? She looks just like a hippie in a prairie dress. Just awful.

Tom Jones - Womanizer makes out with a lot of women and hilarity ensues. Snore.

Barry Lyndon - Astonishing cinematography with lovely sets and costumes surrounding the most bored-looking actors in a feature film and who can blame them? Nothing happens even when it does. The film would be more interesting if portrayed by department store mannequins. Thackeray's story is infinitely better.

Love Story - DIE ALREADY!!!

 

[D_Gunther Snotpole]

To Kill A Mockingbird - The book and the movie. I can't identify with any of the characters, want to slap Scout silly, and Finch just has a fucking pole up his ass.

Gave him outstanding posture, though.

I thought the book Out of Africa was beautiful. (I don't know if you're referring only to the movie.)

Hemingway was so uneven. I did think that the first two pages of A Farewell to Arms included some of his best writing, though. (He knew of his stylistic faults, y'know. He once said [I paraphrase], "When I started, it was very hard and I wrote very awkwardly. Mistakes and awkwardness are easy to see, and they call it 'style.'")

I get your point about Raging Bull, but I still find it a great film.

 

[earllogjam]

Carrie Underwood and most of the American Idol winners.

 

[SilverTrain]

Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid - So 60s it hurts. And that horrible Oscar-winning song and it has no tension. Who thought Katharine Ross can act? She looks just like a hippie in a prairie dress. Just awful.

Newman. Redford.

'Nuff.

But also, Bill Goldman script, George Roy Hill direction. Character actors galore.

Ah, forget it. You just don't KNOW, man!

 

[D_Gunther Snotpole]

Newman. Redford.
'Nuff.
But also, Bill Goldman script, George Roy Hill direction. Character actors galore.
Ah, forget it. You just don't KNOW, man!

Yeah. Jason's right ... it is terribly 60s. And Katherine Ross ain't Anna Magnani.
But so what? Newman ... Redford ....
(Maybe the boi's secretly 100 percent straight, which would be too straight. What do you think, ST?)

 

[D_Gunther Snotpole]

For some reason, I dunno why, I truly loathed the film Pecker.

 

[jason_els]

Gave him outstanding posture, though.

I thought the book Out of Africa was beautiful. (I don't know if you're referring only to the movie.)

Hemingway was so uneven. I did think that the first two pages of A Farewell to Arms included some of his best writing, though. (He knew of his stylistic faults, y'know. He once said [I paraphrase], "When I started, it was very hard and I wrote very awkwardly. Mistakes and awkwardness are easy to see, and they call it 'style.'")

I get your point about Raging Bull, but I still find it a great film.

I never read Out of Africa. The movie turned me off completely. That patronizing bit, "I beg you to take care of my Kikuyu," was so patronizing and told me all I want to know about Dinesen. Maybe I'm wrong.

Hemingway's perpetual fascination with machismo bores me. I find his ability to find heroism in defeat pointless because he seems to do nothing but say, "This is what a REAL man does!" He's one of those people who says, "If it's worth doing then it's worth doing well," without realizing that no, not everything has to be done well. We have to choose what we devote our time to with discretion because otherwise we'll find personal defeat in refilling a Kleenex dispenser the wrong way. He never looks at the wider picture.

Like I said, Raging Bull is beautiful 100 different ways but it's not entertaining. I respect that you think so and know many others who do too. I'm not big on boxing anyway. I think it's a stupid sport. Getting punched in the face and body on purpose seems so completely counterintuitive to me that I question the intelligence of anyone who wants to turn their brain to jelly on purpose.

 

[jason_els]

Newman. Redford.

With 1970s The Dry Look hairstyles.

 

[DiscoBoy]

For some reason, I dunno why, I truly loathed the film Pecker.

That little synopsis on the main page is extremely misleading: "A Baltimore sandwich shop employee becomes an overnight sensation when photographs he's taken of his..."!

 

[D_Gunther Snotpole]

That little synopsis on the main page is extremely misleading: "A Baltimore sandwich shop employee becomes an overnight sensation when photographs he's taken of his..."!

Yes, you couldn't deliberately make a more perfect break.:tongue:

 

[elegant20]

A couple of Streisand films....some of them you know when she is just full of herself at other times.