...Gets too much credit for his work on LotR.

Sure, they're good films, but really, how many people have seen Bad Taste, Brain Dead or The Frightners?

I've never seen Meet the Feebles but I hear its pretty awesome, Heavenly Creatures is supposed to be pretty good too.

Seriously, I saw Bad Taste and Brain Dead quite some time before LotR and the difference is incredible.

Brain Dead (AKA Dead Alive to some folk) is one of my favourite films, it has a quality mix of comedy, tension, character, the lot, I enjoyed it a great deal, meh, it just aggrivates me when everyone bots on about him doing LotR and they never mention his previous work, sure they were big movies, but damn, he has made some totally original classics before he got some popular ideas from another popular source and worked his magic.

Anyone else a fan of his early work?

Never saw his earlier work, but...LONG LIVE LOTR Wooooooooooo!!!!

>.>
<.<

/runs

The frighteners > *

Heavenly Creatures is just wonderful.

Fixed.

I love Dead Alive/Brain Dead

but... Meet the Feebles was horrid.

I love The Frighteners. I don't see why people think it's a bad film.

I love Dead Alive/Brain Dead. I have not looked a lawnmower the same since that movie. I also thought that the Frighteners was really good.

Frighteners wasn't that bad actually IMO. By today's standards maybe, but back then it was a nice little flick. It got Michael J Fox out of the back to teh future role.

...murdered an amazing story for another Hollywood money-grab, and (naturally) succeeded. I recently heard the phrase 'brutally raped.' It fits.

When I first heard about LOTR (and saw amazing trailers for Fellowship), I had every intention to see his earlier work as well. However, after watching Two Towers and witnessing the mutilation of my favorite fantasy trilogy, I have no respect for the man. No, I will not apologize.

well thats your loss.

the older movies own.

Yeah, I thought the Frighteners was a great little movie. Sort of like a mini-Beetlejuice, on all levels.

He took one of the most dry, boring trilogy of books and made it into an entertaining trilogy of movies. Seriously. I tried reading The Fellowship. What a boring, boring, boring book. And I understand the Sam and Frodo part of the Two Towers is even worse.

i loved dead alive.

and holy crap is PJ skinny now or what?

The works of Tolkien are the most important pieces of English literature of the 20th century.

No, they are not an easy read, you do not 'read' Tolkien, you study Tolkien. What Tolkien created was not an idle story or fairytale, it was a full blown mythology. That was his aim, a modern mythology. Just as how you won't casually read a Norse epic, nor will you Tolkien.

The incredible detail and intricacy that Tolkien created is beyond anything that's been produced in modern times, and being a Star Wars forum, you should easily appreciate this. Tolkien created two full languages, and constructed various others. Tolkien outlined a full genealogy of several dozen generations.

He created an alternate timeline of 15 000 years, for this Earth, and intricate storylines and characters across that entire timespan.

Obviously there is no way to recreate this as a movie, but no-one could have made a better attempt at it than Peter Jackson.

And you see, this is the reason I hate classic literature. It's all so damn BORING. I could care less if the man created another universe which was full of amazingly interesting...stuff. If the writing is crap, I see no reason I have to like it.

I read fiction, mostly fantasy and Sci-Fi, a LOT. The most entertaining series' for me are the Dragonlance, Battletech, and Sword of Truth series'. Why? Because they're not drawn out ridiculously on the most uninteresting of details, they read like stories instead of encyclopedias, and they don't try so hard to create this 'world of mythology' tolkien has created.

Personally, I think the man's a genius as far as making stories and histories and whatnot. But he sucks at writing. Personally.

COULDN'T.

THANK YOU! I hate it when people make that mistake!!

I meant could. I also could care more.

¬_¬

Dude, there's a difference bettween bad writing boring writing and writing that take effort to enjoy. If you think anything that's difficult to read is bad, you're missing quite a bit. On the other had, many of the "classics" are books that everyone wants to be able to say they've read, but don't actually enjoy reading. If you want pure unadulterated boredom, try reading Kidnapped. And Robinson Crusoe is just stupid. "Oh look, a rifle tree!"

Peter Jackson should direct Star Wars.

Trust me, I've read more of these classics than you can name off. Goddamned Honors English. I know what I'm talking about, and I stand firmly behind my opinion--if your books are no fun to read, then why the hell would they be good?

I agree. I only got about halfway through The Fellowship before I gave up, bored out of my mind.

Porn magazines?

Those are fun to read.

I actually will defend DJYoshi in this. Strange, i know. But what he says has merit. the only books that will be good to anyone are those one enjoys reading. what i disagree with him on, though, is the fact of wetehr tolkien is 'good' or not. It is a matter of personal opinion. I personally love his works. i consider them som eof my favorite stories. The mythology is, frankly, amazing. But its a manner of personal opinion. You don't like them. Ok. i think you're missing out, but its your opinion. I also like many 'classics'. I enjoyed Moby Dick (except for those horrific 'cetology' chapters). I love Eugene O'Neill with a passion. I liked Death of a Salesman. Demian was jsut awesome. Metamophoses was... interesting, but still enjoyable. But the reason i like these isn't because they're 'classics'. For instance, i despise shakespear. I just like them because i find them a great, occationally fun, read. People only get things out of stuff they read because they enjoy them. if people don't enjoy something, they'll forget its details very fast, while if you like something, you remeber it. I can quote, maybe not verbatem but still competantly, from all of those. Youa sk me for one from Faulkner or shakespear, i'd only manage shakespear, and thats because our english teacher beat him into our skulls with a large sledgehammer.

Anyway, i guess what i was saying is that you shouldn't determine a books worth based on 'classic' status. It should be based on one's own estimate of it.

LotR < everything else

No no, I love the stories behind LotR. Hate the books. With a passion. Hate the writing style, hate everything BUT the story. Reading LotR for me is a strange experience--I hate it, but end up coming with a decent experience. But while I'm reading the books it's torture.

Right, and if you could also care less, then what have you actually said? What have you actually told me?

Nothing.

You've said to me that this 'thing' is on your list of things you care about to various degrees, so it sits there along with everything else ever. You've told me nothing about its relative position on that list.

Look, I've drawn a diagram.




Now, if you say 'I could care less about X' it tells me what 'X' could be anywhere on that list. It's obviously on that list, along with everything else, but it could move downwards. or upwards.


If, however, you said, 'I could not care less about X', it would tell me that X is on the absolute bottom of that list. Even the social status of traffic cones in Moldova is higher on that list than X.


Grr.

Mort. You have firefox right? Follow this list.

1. Press Control
2. Press the T key simultaneously.
3. Copy this and paste it in the address bar, sans quotation marks. "dict sarcasm"
4. Hit enter. Enjoy.

And for your information, I care a lot about the social position of traffic cones in Moldova. Thanks.

Yes, I've heard 'could care less' be explained away by 'sarcasm' before too, and that doesn't float either. You can't say something stupid and then say "oh.. uh.. I'm not stupid, I was.. uh.. being sarcastic".

The phrase "I couldn't care less" is sarcastic as it is, and it's also a fairly clever, abstract phrase.

'could care less' is not some witty mockery of that phrase, it's simply someone who heard it wrong and started using it wrong. and people were too stupid to understand its original meaning to realise that the misheard version is completely meanginless.

For something to be 'sarcastic', it has to be witty.
'could care less' is not wit, it's a crime against logic.

I meant my comment. Not the grammatical error.

Mort, not only are you blowing this way out of proportion, but you're also misinterpreting me.

It wasn't a grammatical error, it was a logical error.

No, it was a grammatical error. I meant couldn't, but typed could. It's something that's just an offhand, meaningless error.

In other words--STFU, it doesn't matter.

Yeah, Mort, again, i'm not the guy to normally come to Yoshi's defence, but you're really blowing this out of proportion. it was an offhand and easily made grammatical, yes, grammatical error, and when someone caught it he made a joke that is used all over these boards and elsewhere. Really, what the hell's the problem?

Things that require lots of time and effort for you to develop a taste for them are ultimately more enjoyable than things which are instantly enjoyable.

Hense, to say that these more easily read books are better than LotR is similar to saying Britney Spears is better than Bach or Mozart. Britney Spears songs are more 'catchy', because that's how pop songs are engineered. Those who take the time and effort to enjoy Bach and Mozart will truly understand why their music is timeless and significant.

(I probably should use a less hated example than Britney Spears, so as to be less inflammatory, but the analogy still works.)

Note that this applies to almost anything. Food for example: Wine tastes like rancid run-off from a pile of rotting grapes the first time you drink it, but if you drink enough of it, you might become a Wine Snob. See also: Marmite

It didn't violate any grammatical rule. It was grammatically correct. I think the best way to describe it is a "semantic error". It just happens to be a terribly viral cliché of a semantic error.

Frighteners was a very good movie...

R. Lee Ermey's character was great.