panapp

@Lupin: your comment #204 had me laughing so hard, I could barely breathe! XDDD

Two bullshitters. And all to criticize a good movie, whatever.

@Cornell: I'm sorry, I forgot a piece. Regarding the idea that 50 great thinkers are better than 50,000 small thinkers, I'm not entirely sure I agree. Since the 19th and especially the 20th century, the various sciences have made such leaps that everything produced in the previous 5,000 years could be achieved in 50 years of work today: think of the advances in medicine, physics, astronomy, and so on, achieved by fast-tracking progress. This has been made possible by improvements in sanitary and educational conditions; the more people survive diseases and are educated, the more individuals there will be who can contribute, even in small ways, to human progress. What I mean is that while the average level of the middle class today is much lower than the average level of the upper class 500 years ago, at least now everyone can make a minimal contribution to human progress: think of the guy who invented aluminum foil for packaging food; without him, thin and lightweight insulation for the Shuttle wouldn’t have been possible, and so on... everyone makes a small contribution, and gradually we move forward, and the more people contribute, the more and better we advance. Of course, more educated people can lead to more problems (from wars to pollution and more), but I am optimistic and I know that we will solve this too, and you know who tells me that? David, with his forward-looking gaze, with his symbolic ability to have ingeniously solved a great problem. This is the message of the sculpture, not to communicate a sense of beauty that is subjective (to me, his perfectly sculpted veiny hands are disturbing). Bye.

@Cornell: Honestly, I thought I had given it a 2 precisely because, as you say, at least it is well-written despite being based on a fundamental mistake; I must have slipped with the mouse or something, forgive me. And thank you for the thoughtful reply: the meaning of "beauty" (better to speak of the Beautiful rather than Art, or we get caught up in inextricable paths) is relative and every era has its own; for example, an artist who currently expresses an idea of beauty (often with social critique) is the pop photographer David LaChapelle: his photos are stunning, rich in cultural references, and from a formal point of view they are very classical works of art in terms of compositions of shapes and figures, juxtapositions of color, a long process of conception and practical realization, and even depictions of saints and powerful figures (from the current media universe, but they are still saints and powerful figures). Despite the often shocking or iconoclastic subjects, you will notice that if they were paintings rather than photographs, they would indeed be "old-fashioned" paintings since they are never spontaneous photos, but always representations for which days, if not months, of work were required for their preparation. Take a look.

@Starblazer: yes, I (comment #61), and I also voted for you; it's well written, but since you liked the movie so much, I think you overrated it.

Ezekiel25_17, you are increasingly bogged down in infinitely pernicious and outrageously retrograde, ahistorical, stupid, racist, xenophobic, obscurantist, sexist, foolish, antiquated, outdated, and nonetheless ABSURD IN A.D. 2009 IN A CIVILIZED COUNTRY discourse. You know who you remind me of? An infinitely self-satisfied blogger who once maintained a ridiculous blog trying to prove an anti-empirical reality: being gay is a choice. His antithetical name was Veritas79 (!!!) and here’s the blog: nonsinascegay - Articoli e post su nonsinascegay trovati nei migliori blog Veritas79... sure, he believed he was the truth on Earth, not even the son of God: God himself. In this blog (now closed), this clown supported his ideas with anti-scientific studies disguised as scientific, statements taken from chats without any prior conditions of correctness (necessary for a scientific experiment to set precise terms) and other laughable pieces of evidence for the supposed voluntariness of homosexuality (he even claimed that if someone wants, they can stop being gay overnight simply by wanting it strongly, just like when one wants to stop smoking: we are in total ABSTRACTION from reality). All your legends about family only make people laugh: certainly, there are cases of absent fathers and overprotective mothers who have raised a gay child, but that doesn’t mean these are the scientific conditions under which homosexuality occurs; otherwise, all children of divorced parents living with their mother should develop homosexual tendencies, and evidently, that’s not the case. If there are cases of non-father and supermother with a gay child, it’s because there his sexuality has thrived prolifically, while in families with non-mother and superfather, the gay boy probably felt suppressed in not being able to express himself in activities he would have preferred (which doesn’t mean a gay boy can’t still love motors and fishing instead of flowers and embroidery: these are all stereotyped nonsense). The truth is that sexual tendency is entirely independent of the environment, just like intelligence: if Einstein had been born in the jungle, he probably wouldn’t have written the theory of relativity, sure, but not because he wasn’t intelligent, but because he didn’t have the right environment; he was still intelligent and would have used his sharpness to invent, say, slingshots or hunting tools. I don’t know if I’ve explained myself clearly, I think not... what I mean is that the environment can develop or suppress natural qualities, but it cannot generate them: Mozart was lucky to be born into a family of musicians. Intelligence, character, sexual preferences, and others are characteristics generated in the brain before birth, and the environment one lives in can either suppress or, on the contrary, bring them more to light, BUT CANNOT GENERATE THEM. If a family condition were to generate homosexuality, then it would mean that the brother of a homosexual should also be homosexual because he lived in the same environment, right? But this is obviously absurd in terms. What events, environments, conditions, etc. can highlight a characteristic is one thing, but that they can generate them is another. And the cosmic, galactic, worldwide nonsense of homosexuality generated by the decline of society is truly worthy of framing for its incredible stupidity and naivety, even before the total foolishness.

Exalted review of a film that is absolutely average. If it weren’t for the sexuality of the protagonists, the film would have been labeled as a romantic cliché like so many others, perhaps done better than many others, but it would still remain a romantic cliché just like the rest. Wong Kar-Wai directed "Happy Together" in 1997: how come no one was outraged at the time and no opinion movements were born? One fine day, I hope soon, we will stop talking about this film as "the love story between two gay cowboys," and we will simply say "the love story between two cowboys." And Ezekiel26_17’s words leave me speechless, if not disturbed; thank you nes for your relevant responses. "Gay propaganda"... I can't even think about it... sigh.

I will briefly liquidate the work to focus on the review: the "David" is a masterpiece. As for the review, MarKco took the words right out of my mouth and wrote exactly what I was thinking. Setting aside the rather naïf description of the work (the "David" is perhaps the most disproportionate naturalistic work ever sculpted by Michelangelo or any other artist), the reviewer relies on a melancholic and ahistorical nostalgia for an art and creative capacity now considered (definitively?) lost in contemporary incomprehensibility: this is called ignorance (absolutely no offense intended and in the etymological sense of the term, I would never presume otherwise). Contemporary art has absolutely nothing to envy from ancient, medieval, and modern art. One might argue that in the last 10-20 years no truly powerful phenomena have emerged, but perhaps we will be able to judge better in the future. I was particularly struck by the entire section titled "Reflection," and especially the paragraph "Which works will be worthy of being called masterpieces?", where the superiority of "modern sculpture" over "Renaissance sculpture" is implied: given that the Petronas Towers are disgusting to everyone and that the adjective "modern" in art and historiography refers to everything from 1492 to 1789, therefore the "David" IS modern, and that's that. The problem is that we witness the worst blunder, namely the error of lumping everything into one category, which is ALWAYS wrong. Let's make a small comparison between an example of Renaissance sculpture and a contemporary one: how about, say, any Crucifix found in mountain churches and Duchamp's "Bottle Rack"; which of the two works holds more value and significance from an artistic point of view? And which of the two has more historical value? Here, in my opinion, the reviewer confuses historical value with artistic value, which are foundational in the study of art, inevitably different and always perfectly distinguishable. Now, there are objects with neither historical nor artistic value (a box of cotton swabs bought today), objects with historical but not artistic value (a shard found in Pompeii), objects with artistic but not historical value (a painting by Damien Hirst finished just today), and objects with both historical and artistic value (the "David"): one must be extremely careful not to confuse the categories. Have you ever seen the film "Dove vai in vacanza?" In the third episode, "Le vacanze intelligenti," Alberto Sordi and his wife visit the Venice Biennale, a dodecaphonic music concert, and other events that they find completely incomprehensible; the film is hilarious, but also sociologically interesting in the perspective of the common man towards contemporary works: he does not understand them. As for the Renaissance, which the reviewer would have hoped could be infinite: in 15th century Florence, there were at most 50 literate people and 50,000 illiterate sheep herders; are you really sure the situation was better than today?

@(!): "Sentimental Journey" means "sentimental journey," not "sentimental days" (and it's the title of a song featured on the album). Let’s say, then, that this album is a sentimental journey through his favorite music; I doubt the days with the Beatles have anything to do with it.

Okay, I listened to the album and it's undeniable because it's very beautiful and pleasant to hear, but fundamentally it doesn't have an actual musical role... 3 and a half stars (the half because Ringo has always been really likable to me).