WARNING: Defense of "Stalker" In Progress

[MantaRay at aol.com]

PynHeads:

>Okay, MR, how about chacun a son gout?  Or, de gustibus non disputandem est?

Come again?

>If you didn't like it, you didn't like it.  That doesn't mean those of us
>who enjoyed it are wrong.  

I never told you all that you were wrong. I just wanted someone to give me an
interpretation of their impressions (something extending past "Stalker was a
great film"), which someone's wife did (I accidentally lost that email before
I could reply to it). Memo to whoever that was: You're never out of your
league; 
the P-List is NOT a hive of braniacs where you have to say something
revolutionary to be admitted.

What I'm not liking is the high/low binarism employed when differentiating
b/t the merits of film (impersonal clock management) and lit
(at-your-own-pace-compatibility), or even b/t bad film (sound-bite-happy
America) and good film (dragging-but-menacing exercises in brilliance). It's
not a question of telling someone they are right or wrong about their tastes,
but of questioning how they configure their choices in comparison to some
questionable standard. This could easily apply to TRP's work. We've been
lambasting any critic who said one bad word about M&D without considering the
fact that it might very well be accurate. I'm deep into M&D now, and, truth
be told, I'm miles away from the breathlessness I felt when first
encountering GR. 

And, not A-and...

>A-and, if you didn't like _Stalker_ don't see the brilliant recent film
>_SAFE_, another movie that creates moods through brilliant use of empty
>spaces and times.

Actually, I thought Safe was awesome, as well as Todd Haynes' first movie
which creeped me out. Safe had characters which weren't one-dimensional
parrots. 

As for the nerd who keeps telling us to get back to TRP: screw you. Where
were you when there was a forty week debate over whether Rosebud was a vagina
or an asshole?

MantaRay