Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Useless Clatter...Another New Category: What on Earth?

Every once in a while, you will come across a movie who’s explanation goes far beyond the use of words. Our English language contains tens of thousands of adjectives that could certainly fit the description of just about any possible scenario one could think up, so it surely it must be done.  But in the case of movies,  there always that feeling of something missing when dissolving a moving pictures into words.  Describing Ingmar Bergman’s Persona as “a lucid, fever dream of a masterpiece”[1] gives viewers an appropriate emotional context, but still does not match all that lies within the film.  Other movies like  The Tree of Life or Triumph of the Will leave me without words after each viewing.  Then again, this task of describing what we see should not necessarily come easily. I see it as a testament to any filmmaker who can create worlds so inexplicable that it leaves viewers speechless.

But above all, I must say this holds most applicable to the genre of B-movies.  As I pretend to be going off on some philosophical tangent about the vast possibilities contained in the cinema, I am really here for reasons much less technical but equally as appreciative.  I am introducing the newest category here at FILMclatter titled 'What on Earth?'.  Working twosome with my other addition, The Killer B’s, this will serve as bona fide proof that not everything can and should be described in words.  From each horrible B-movie reviewed in The Killer B’s, What on Earth? will feature an array of screenshots from the movie that best displays schlock cinema’s tremendous ability for crafting images where words have no place.  The images will be chosen based on the merits of unfathomed absurdity, ridiculousness, and the occasional illogic.  But that's a description right there.  I know, this is all a bit of an oxymoron and I continue to contradict myself the more I type.

The point of this category is not to try and stump the dictionary.  It serves no greater purpose than sheer entertainment and  an appreciation for the most unimaginable things movies have to offer.   Even better, this gives me a chance to be lazy and throw up a legitimate post consisting of five pictures and ten words.  I'll take that any day.


[1] Credit where credit is due! Persona description from Alex Winthrow at And So It Begins... (http://www.andsoitbeginsfilms.com/2012/03/15-great-movies-under-85-minutes.html).

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