Books/Films You Know Are Good But Can't Get Through

[KDawgCometh]

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I really, really wanted to like The Graduate (the soundtrack is one of my favorites). I could not get through it. It seemed so completely unrealistic and awkward. It did not age well.

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I disagree, it is still very funny and one of dustin hoffman's best performances. HIs going to San Fran was redone in almost romantic comedy since and inpsired a lot of other going a far way for the girl scenes ala say anything

[KDawgCometh]

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I try and watch any movie nominated for Best Picture Oscar. But I can't bring myself to even try to watch Master and Commander (the Russell Crowe movie) or Dances With Wolves, which won for the 1990 season.

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Master and COmmander is definetly worth a watch all the way through, if anything for the fact that Paul Bettany kicks ass.

I don't disagree with Dances with Wolves, once all the way through is more then enough for me. Kevin Costner has a real problem doing obscenely long and boring films

[Hamish McBagpipe]

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has to be one of the most intense scenes I have ever seen. It is a very hard scene to sit through, its that uncomfortable

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Yeah, sure. Good scene. Too bad the rest can't be as good as this. Like I say, acting's great, themes explored are good, technically proficient, surely a masterpiece, but gimme my four hours back for every time I've sat through some of this boring twaddle after the first viewing.

[imported_CaseClosed326]

Gullivers Travels.

[Blarg]

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That is all we really see in most critical work, from meaningless forum discussions to "authoritative" analysis in academic journals. In 2+2 I rarely post in poker related forums. You guys are the experts. Me asking how to play QQ, UTG, in a MTT small-stacked, is ridiculous. The answers are already there analyzed to the minutest detail. I defer to the experts.

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It's as natural for opinions to be strong as it is for them to be unexamined, and without feeling a sense of irony or circumspection. It's also fairly natural to be resistant to changing one's opinions easily, and to be reluctant to examine them or broach in one's own mind the subject of their real worth, even if one intends to put them up before the world for public scrutiny. Then when one's ideas or opinions are perhaps justifiably found wanting or even merely brought into question, an unfortunate natural first impulse is not abashed self-examination but anger, dismissal, a sense of betrayal, and sometimes to launch personal attacks. The very difficulty of not screwing up should make us listen better and think more before venturing judgments too casually and expressing them too definitively and rigidly. Most of us could use a bit of a reality check and need to loosen up a bit and not declaim too thunderingly.

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But as we've agreed on, the craving for a greater understanding of the works is very rewarding.

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Definitely. I've really enjoyed going back to things I've read earlier every so often to check if my opinion on them and understanding of them have changed much over time, especially with an eye toward what my reevaluation is saying about me, as well as the work. In particular, if I'm capable of honestly making a new evaluation, or if my personal flaws or emotional or intellectual investments in certain lines of thinking are making me dishonestly characterize a work to negate its challenges to me. I want to find and maintain the "through line" of honesty in myself as I read, so that if my evaluation of a work has changed, I can be sure how much of that changed evaluation is driven by a broader knowledge and understanding of myself and the world -- and the book itself! -- and how much by newly acquired prejudices, evasions, and rationalizations. Sometimes different parts of a work appeal to me much more than at other times, and sometimes I think it better or worse, and determining what I really think of it and understand about it, honestly, can be a way to refine my own integrity and understanding generally. Forming opinions and revisiting them is as much about the perceiver and judge as the perceived and judged.

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I frequently use this as a basic example of what I think you are saying here. I went to go see Pitch Black at the theatre when it came out and enjoyed it even though a lot of people didn't. Well, I knew what I was getting into. I didn't expect goddamn Lawrence of Arabia, I expected a mediocre sci-fi flick that turned out to exceed expectations and have many of the qualities of a far better film. It's still not that great but merit can be found in many a dog's breakfast I believe.

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I love horror films, even bad ones. I'll forgive an awful lot for a few good moments, even just a few perfect atmospheric notes. I'm under no illusion that the bad horror flicks aren't bad, and that horror is not the be-all and end-all of genres. But I give what I feel is proper credit where it is due, and am willing to sit through a lot of crap to get there. I can easily understand if others won't. On the other hand, I think a broad dismissal of the entire genre as inferior out of hand, as has often been fashionable, is a mistake, and will say so. As for me, I'm happy to take my magic where I find it.

[Blarg]

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has to be one of the most intense scenes I have ever seen. It is a very hard scene to sit through, its that uncomfortable

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Yeah, sure. Good scene. Too bad the rest can't be as good as this. Like I say, acting's great, themes explored are good, technically proficient, surely a masterpiece, but gimme my four hours back for every time I've sat through some of this boring twaddle after the first viewing.

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I found it both very intense and brilliant in places ... AND very boring.

There's a certain Meryl Streep effect that can spread out and drain the energy of a whole film.

[rusellmj]

Books:
Moby Dick
The Gulag Archipelago

Movies:
All I could do to make it through Dr. Zhivago
Never made it through The English Patient.

[britspin]

For me.. The man without qualities by Robert Musil.. a classic apparently, but 800 pages of in depth musing on the state of pre first world war Austro-Hungary? I gave up 400 pages in and it still bugs me.

[ChipWrecked]

Books:

Moby Dick
Catch-22

Movie:

Lawrence of Arabia
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Here's another 'Citizen Kane' film class nugget: 'Rosebud' was Wm. Hearst's nickname for Marion Davies' (delores). So, when you see the closeup of Kane's lips saying the word, that's actually some huge cunnilingus action.

The Bible: I've only read the goyim part. It starts near the back.

[turnipmonster]

gravity's rainbow, and closing time. both classics I just can't get through.