> -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Travis Edmunds > Sent: Monday, January 05, 2004 08:18 AM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: RE: Return of the King Review Re: my mini review > > > You make some good points. And I tend to agree in a > generalized way. However > my argument lies not in movies as movies, but in books as > movies. For > example, a film that is NOT based on a book (for our purposes > we shall call > it a stand-alone film) can indeed be judged by your gereral criteria. > However, a film that is based on a book must, I repeat must > be scrutinized in relation to that book itself.
Why? Coming from an educated art background, there's very little basis for insisting that any single source is a "true receptacle" of the art, nor any real consensus that derivitave or reinterpretive art needs to reflect anything other than the secondary artists interpretations of their experience of the art. Read up on Pop Art (Warhol and Lichtenstein, especially) as that's a good example of artists re-expressing Art imitating Life. Is Warhol's Campbells Soup Can portrait any /less/ art because it is an expression of his experience of the object, or is it greater art than, say, what Picasso might have done with the same subject, because of his fidelity to the source? Would you similarly dismiss the paintings of the Impressionists or Abstracts or Minimalists? That is, would you dismiss Seurat's famous paintin Grande Jatte (http://artchive.floridaimaging.com/s/seurat/jatte.jpg) as only comparable to the "original" lazy summer afternoon which hey painted, which can ergo only be discussed in such terms by people who were there on that exact afternoon to experience it, and compare that moment against the painting? Further, the very notion that that there is a "true receptacle" of the story of LotR is misguided; as a pure text, yes, we can say this line or that event is quantifiable, but in sum the text must be taken as an experiential work, as many things in this world outside of science and computers are practically judged. Some people read Tolkien and are disturbed by the blatant racism implicit in the story. Some are moved by the heart-achingly beautiful mythic reality woven through the narrative, brought low by crass humanity. Some are roused by the martial heroics of its masculine characters as they strut and stride their way towards saving the precious spark of Good. So, who's right? -j- _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
