Comments on Letter of the Day

Charles - you going to take that from a guy who's STARmeter is 8% down since last week?

I don't think so.

Mudede was spot, on as a lover of both mudede and Kubrick it was awesome to read. Keep it up, don't let the douchebags ruin the philosophical spirit of the paper

rubyred, my STARmeter is 6% down since last week. i'm in bad shape, too.

Kabbalah teaches that in order to create the physical universe, God "withdrew" His light. Humans, especially the goi are creatures of this darkness, this muck, this primal stench. It is good and right to hate this darkness.

As Jews "nitzutz" or "holy sparks" illuminate us and raise us above the muck of the goi. Of course the goi hate to be reminded of their muck, the darkness of their urges. Charles is a holy spark illuminating Seattle's goi, that's why people hate him. Charles and Kubrick are on the same plane philosophically. I look forward to seeing the great films Charle's writes in the future. Mazel tov!

Jim Emerson, of Roger Ebert dot com, posts his own response to Charles here:
Stanley Kubrick Hates You

Has Avary actually seen any of Kubrick's films? If Kubrick understood people, then understanding must inevitably lead to hate.

Mudede got nothing on "Return to Castle Wolfenstein"!

Man, I want to get hate mail from the guy who wrote Silent Hill.

Damn, my STARmeter is down 19%. Does anyone know what this actually means or how it's figured? Is it like the Q rating?

Well Charles, you're still up 2 points on Avary. Here's a response to him. All you got to do is sign it:

Mr. Avary: Tough titty my good fellow.

aw man, i hated Killing Zoe.

And who is Roger Avary. How many Sundance films does he have under his belt?

I bet Return to Castle Wolfenstein isn't going to be at Sundance next year.

Fear leads to hate and hate leads to *suffering.*

Uh... lar... Roger Avary is an Academy Award winning screenwriter. Literally. I thought Mudede's horsefucking movie was pretty good, but if I had to choose between that and Pulp Fiction I think I know what I'm choosing.

(I also liked Silent Hill better. Sorry. Horsefucking was good though, don't get me wrong.)

I disagreed with Mudede's Kubrick piece too, but I don't think I read it as being as negative as everybody else did. At the end when he says that "we" love Kubrick anyway I thought he was including himself as a lover of Kubrick, rather than a more typical Mudedian "we" where it would mean we as a society are stupid and don't know what Mudede knows so we incorrectly love Kubrick. Was it a twist ending where he reveals that what has until this point come across as an attack on Kubrick is actually intended as an appreciation? That's how I took it.

(sorry, my post was directed at Sha, not lar. I always forget if the name is at the top or the bottom of the comment.)

Don't listen to Roger Avary. Egotistical screenwriters are a dime a dozen.
And anyone who doesn't know that Mudede's writing is by in large personal, subjective opinion doesn't have the right to comment on it.

Vern, my understanding was that Avary only cowrote one of the story lines in Pulp Fiction, the rest was all Tarantino. I could be wrong but it might explain why Avary hasn't exactly set the movie world on fire since.

Holy shit Roger Avary SUCKS!!!! Together with Tarantino he wrote dialog that ruled the cinematic universe and would be remembered forever. Then Tarantino shat away his skills with drink and Avary with weed, until we are left with dialog that makes me wanna pull my head off and throw it at the screen. Death-Proof and Silent Hill both had merits, but the dialog was the worst shit I have ever heard since Emmerich's Godzilla. FUCK those guys.
Mudede tends to make sweeping assertions which don't hold up to close scrutiny, mostly, I think, for dramatic effect. Maybe he was sort-of right, maybe not, but Avary is a fucking human wasteland who isn't fit to criticize the funny papers.
Any fun I had at Silent Hill was the work of Christophe Gans. Any time I spent saying "Holy shit!!! Did they REALLY just say that shitty-ass quote about motherhood that I last saw in the motherfucking Crow for the SECOND TIME???!!!" was Avary's fault.

BTW, Did I say Roger Avary sucks? I think I just need to clarify that point. Roger Avary utterly annihilated his credibility as a filmmaker with Silent Hill. Roger Avary sucks giant metaphorical dicks. His opinion means less than shit.
Jim Emerson's critique seemed sensible enough though. 2001 is one of the few movies I own on DVD and it does seem really absurd to label it as pure misanthropy just to squeeze it into a flimsy thesis about its director.
And Roger Avary sucks.
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(a little late on this one, but...)

I'm not gonna defend Avary. I actually think he's pretty talented (Rules of Attraction is his best on his own, I think) but that was not really my point. I just thought it was hilarious that Sha was using the old "oh yeah well I bet YOU don't have a film in Sundance" routine on a guy whose first movie won the Palm d'Or and got him an Oscar. That is some funny shit.

Emerson's critique was much better though.