I find that response unfortunate, because if you'd risked a little precision you might have made it evident that your views have some substance after all, which I'd have enjoyed reading. Essentially what I'm getting at is that declaring an opinion is not equivalent to criticism. As mentioned, if I'm to grant someone's judgment any weight, let alone allow it to influence me, they have to offer something more.
I've offered plenty of reasons for my why I hold the opinions I've expressed in this thread. I honestly have no interest in "influencing" you one way or another. I don't come on imdb to make someone "think" one way or another; I come on here to articulate my thoughts on films and, when I do engage in discussion with other people, I hope to learn something from them. I have obviously learned nothing of substance whatsoever from you, but I'm glad to have interacted with you. It's good to talk to people that are intentionally obfuscatory because it maintains one's mental acuity (I would stop telling people that they're vague, though...it is quite the instance of calling the kettle black).
What constitutes that "something more" - that "interest and significance" - is just the kind of criticism I've been encouraging you to take up. A criticism that emphasizes causes, the actual composition of qualities which produce the effects you describe. That would interest any discriminating reader, regardless of whether one ultimately agrees or disagrees.
I actually have done this. That you've selected only portions to respond to gives weight to the belief that this is o.
As it stands, even after you've been challenged to offer something more than vague terms of praise and condemnation, you balk at taking that minimal responsibility. Again, it's only reasonable to be skeptical of any opinion until one knows the reasons for it.
This would be a valid conclusion if one were only to read your responses (and thus the portions of my post that you've chosen to italicize). I've already satisfactorily responded to this criticism so I'll now take the time to give you some words of advice: you're nowhere near as lucid and perceptive as Socrates, so I'd stop trying to assume a similar role here, on an internet forum.
Except you still assume that my opinion had to do with the relative quality of the films, when it was about the quality of your opinion. The point would be no less cogent if I were a fanatic about The Secrets In Their Eyes, which I am not. As it happens I found things to value in both films. I called your opinion into question because it dismissed one film and praised the other without offering anything of substance to justify those pronouncements, and that is still the case.
Riiiight. I've skimmed the posts you've made across all of imdb's forums and I've yet to find a post as similar as the initial one you've made here. I can't definitively conclude that your intention was to defend this film (I don't have access to your head), but it's a more than reasonable inference.
Actually, since I identified those generalities and abstractions, anyone would have a pretty easy time believing that case.
Yes, it's easy to identify generalities and abstractions when you've intentionally skipped over portions of another user's post in order to make your response look more persuasive. Even with your selectivity, you did, at most, an average job at responding to my second post. I've already explained why this is the case in my last post so there's no point in a doing a recap here.
You're using hyperbole there to avoid taking the trouble to be precise. Now you imply that "beautifully shot" should have been understood as "masterfully and skillfully," rather than an aesthetic call; but there was no way to know your precise meaning, tdigle. Moreover, the distinction now turns out to be irrelevant, since what you mean by "masterfully and skillfully" is "crisply defined" images after transfer from colour to black and white - that is, it is a judgment related to an aesthetic value after all.
The context within which I used the word "beautifully" made it quite obvious what I meant by it. Also, you've started to now resort to the fallacious tactics that you used in your second response to me; you've intentionally conflated my praising The White Ribbon's cinematographic alteration with my praising its look. Don't get me wrong, I do think highly of its look, but I took care in my last post to mention that it's a testament to Berger's skill that he was able to keep the film so crisply defined even after the alteration. Am I now to believe that Berger's maintenance of clarity is a feat whose impressiveness is in the eye of the beholder? This would be quite an absurd conclusion.
Yet you remain vague about that aesthetic value. Stating that images are "crisply defined" goes only half-way to informing a reader how you think that aesthetic contributes to the film's overall effect, and offers no information about why you think it should be considered of higher value than the DP's work in the other film, whose images you do not refer to, even vaguely. Again, what are the principles you've used in judging the relative quality of shots in these films?
I'll actually go out of my way to answer this one since it's the one valid criticism of my posts that you've made. If I could only use one word to describe The White Ribbon's cinematography, it would be aseptic. Not only do I have a personal preference for such cinematography (I prefer natural lighting and high-contrast photography), but it also belies the sordidness of the villagers' lives. I'd say that the cinematography of this film makes its viewers just as tense and uneasy as its use of nothing but diegetic sound.
The Secret In Their Eyes's cinematography, on the other hand...well, I wouldn't say it's poor, but I would say that it does absolutely nothing to emphasize the film's themes. I'd therefore consider The White Ribbon's cinematography better precisely because it significantly contributes to the film's intentions while that of The Secret In Their Eyes does not.
That is another avoidance tactic. Such knowledge is irrelevant because "technical aspects" could mean anything, even to one who knows quite a bit about film terminology. As it happens, I am in that category. Again, good criticism is concerned with causes, the sources of a film's overall effect. "Technical aspects" says nothing - the aspects themselves are unspecified, as are their particular contributions to the film as a whole. When confronted by so much vagueness, it's only natural to wonder if the writer is as familiar with the subject as they imply. Perhaps you are, but there's no way to know.
I'm not going to quibble over a perfectly acceptable catch-all term whose usage was appropriate in the first place. You obviously have pretensions to being an educated individual. Why don't we just call this a failed attempt on your part to play dumb?
My second sentence put the first in context: you’ve not appealed to "an" authority - on film, or any other subject - but to academia itself. In your framing of it, the film's potential to be an "area of specialization" to academics associates academia's authority and the subject's gravity with the film's value. But neither the potential of a film to be an "area of specialization" to an academic, nor the gravity of its subject is much relevant to its paramount value as a product of the cinema. There are plenty of films made about subjects important enough to be academic specialties, but this says nothing about their quality as films.
Now you're just grabbing at straws. I'll gladly argue with you over whether or not a film posing open-ended questions comprises a portion of its "paramount value as a product of the cinema," but to justify your calling a portion of my post an "appeal to authority" is just downright laughable. We're all wrong sometimes, dude, it's nothing to be ashamed about.
This is more avoidance. “Relativity” is already assured because you refuse to be precise and reveal the criteria you’ve used to judge and compare these pictures.
Well, I've given you a bit more to chew on with this post here (I'm not shocked at all that you've given me nothing to consider...don't you find it at all odd that the one thing you're asking someone to do is also the one thing that you have failed to do all throughout this interaction?). That being said, I already know what the answer to the aforementioned question will be: something about your intention never being to defend The Secret In Their Eyes but to tell me why you don't take my opinion seriously.
The adjectives in question brook no denial because they refer to conclusions about effects, which are entirely personal. For example, you found the picture “mawkish,” and that reaction cannot be denied. On the other hand, the sources of this effect are open to discussion. Except you’re unwilling or unable to discuss them.
This is more conflation on your part. Of course you can't deny that I think that The Secret In Their Eyes is mawkish. However, you are more than able to argue that The Secret In Their Eyes isn't, in fact, mawkish. Let me clue you in right now on where our principles differ: I think that, if you're going to criticize a person's post, you should at least make some attempt to criticize their argument. As unsupported as my initial argument was, I have made attempts in good faith to back them up in the posts that follow. You, however, have refused to remove yourself from the position of the Socratic, unknowing meta-critic. I don't see you switching gears anytime soon so I'll more than likely only be responding to you one more time after this.
You made pronouncements about these pictures, and when challenged to support them you've been unwilling to do so. Since you made the pronouncements, it's only fair to ask you to substantiate them.
I've already responded to this.
Except my actual belief, and point, was not that adjectives are improper tools of criticism, period, but that they are insufficient "tools of criticism" on their own. When a critic is willing to go beyond bold yet vague terms, they make it possible for readers to take the measure of the man or woman making the judgments - important context when considering someone's point of view.
I disagree, but I've already told you this.
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