Escape to the Movies: Life of Pi

Lionsfan

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Markunator said:
Stabby Joe said:
Pretty cynical episode but I'm intrigued by some of the earlier points you made (literal monster island?). Granted while this Pi character sounds annoying at least it's refreshing to have an Indian lead in a film billed as highly as it is.

As for the pre-review films, I would rather see a full Lincoln review now. Still having to wait in the UK since Oscar season films are released DURING the awards for even greater marketing.

As for Silver Linings Playbook, come on Bob, granted it's not all that originals or mind blowing but the characters are interesting and well played and it's not only great to see De Niro actually ACTING for once in the last couple of years but Chris Tucker (yes THAT one) isn't annoying, actually likeable. You may not care for it but a "piece of shit"? Far from it.
That's what I believe it probably is. I haven't seen it yet, though - it doesn't come out in Sweden until late February. :p

What really sold me on the film was the Spill Crew's review of the film. I trust their opinion far more than I trust Bob's, to be perfectly honest:
http://my.spill.com/profiles/blogs/silver-linings-playbook-audio-review

EDIT: Also ... "conventionally attractive"? Are you kidding me, Bob? Jennifer Lawrence is fucking gorgeous![/b[


That's the biggest thing I took away from the movie. I thought it was a great film (well mostly the characters and acting, not the story), but I'm still like "Hot damn Jennifer Lawrence is fine as hell!" and I saw it a week ago
 

Wesley Brannock

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Lieju said:
Wesley Brannock said:
I don't watch movies telling me to be religious due to my own religious views. I won't say what they are on this site for the reason that I feel this isn't the place for it but I will say I won't change my views for some type of " entertainment ".
It can be worth exposing yourself to different views, if just to test your own convictions or to understand the opposition, so you can fight it. (Which is why I sometimes read racist/anti-gay/religious stuff.)

It's not very entertaining, though, if it's smug or just preaching.

But even if a character holds some views, it doesn't mean the work is trying to push those views. More I think about this, the more its message seem anti-religious to me.
At the very least, it's the observation that people prefer a comfortable lie to a gruel truth, which I can agree with.

pearcinator said:
Also, Atheists are going to go to town on this...they get more riled up on this stuff than they should. Atheists take the bible more literally than Christians do (well definitely more than I do and I am a Christian). To me the Bible is just a collection of stories about morals (good and bad and all that shit).
But the problem is that a lot of Christians do take their holy book literally. Or claim to. Usually they kinda cherrypick things to support their views and haven't even read the whole book.

I try not to assume all Christians are the same, though.
Without going into what my views are in all honesty no one I know shares my views. Not my family , friends or just the people that I know for other reasons. So in all honesty I don't have to go far if I want to look at other views that aren't mine. While I'm always open to different views the one thing I use ENTERTAINMENT for is a way to escape those views if only for a short time. Everyone uses entertainment for different things I'm not against this. However since I know what I use it for ( without judging what other people use it for ) I can't say that my way of viewing it incorrect. Nor is your way incorrect for you thats your opinion. To end this all I will say is to each is own and leave it at that.
 

Lieju

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Wesley Brannock said:
Without going into what my views are in all honesty no one I know shares my views. Not my family , friends or just the people that I know for other reasons. So in all honesty I don't have to go far if I want to look at other views that aren't mine. While I'm always open to different views the one thing I use ENTERTAINMENT for is a way to escape those views if only for a short time. Everyone uses entertainment for different things I'm not against this. However since I know what I use it for ( without judging what other people use it for ) I can't say that my way of viewing it incorrect. Nor is your way incorrect for you thats your opinion. To end this all I will say is to each is own and leave it at that.
I get that, and it's not like I don't sometimes look for pure fluff or explosions just to entertain, not challenge me in any way. But my point was that I'm not all that sure the book is particularly preachy, but I don't know how the movie handles it.
 

Balkan

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"That friend" is actually bob .Most of the work he does is pointing out something unknown unimportant and then explaining it .
 

eniac0

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I'm really disappointed in you MovieBob. I've forgiven your harsh words in previous reviews because they arguably were less than stellar movies aimed at woo'ing the average american teenage out there. So hearing you lengthily discuss how empty the movie was just something to be expected.

Then you arrive and review a genuinely good movie like Life of Pi, which is a perfect (read faithful) adaption from the book itself and you do everything but piss on it and ... oddly enough, your most positive comments is about the visuals, which, usually is more or less what you complain about.

Anyhow, somehow i have to wonder why you bother criticizing/reviewing hollywood-style movies, if you know the first things about these movies is that they are not where "good" movies are made. You want a good movie, with content and compelling story, you look at an independent movie. You want a good entertainment, a place to put your brain off, you go to the theatre, spend 15$ on a ticket, 40$ on popcorn and pop and you watch the latest hollywood blockbuster.

Your biggest statement in pointing out how you do not understand is seeing how you constantly use the word "Quirky" to define Pi. You clearly haven't read the book. If you had, you would understand Pi a lot more. So please, let me give you a primer...

If that wasn't obvious enough from the movie, Pi is a deeply spiritual person, is he fascinated by the origins and evolutions of the religions. He believes in all the gods. In the book, the author spends nearly half the book on india, just establishing the settings of Pi's spirituality. Once in the sea, this spirituality is what drives Pi, or rather, what we see from him.

The end, the spoiler, which you apparently didn't quite get is the reflection of that spirituality that has driven him and ultimately, saved him.

Now what I'm going to say is still a hotly debated things amongst the fans of the book and it is on how to interpret that ending, but here's my take:

The version with the animals, is the spiritual version of the story, its how Pi "lived and felt" it.
The version with the humans is what really happened.

The link between the two relies on your understanding that Pi IS the tiger. During his entire trip he's been fighting himself, fighting to eat, fighting to keep sane, fighting to stay alive. At first, in the early months, Pi is rather himself and self-aware, thus the constant "fighting" with the tiger, his rationality struggling. Then, as his drift continues, he starts relying more and more on his spirituality as its guide to survival, thus him befriending the tiger, they become one, even though barely surviving. The island at the end is really just that, some delirium, he may be unconcsious and drifting, the author just doesn't say.

At the end, on the beach, the tiger leaves, Pi cries. Pi's rationality is clawing his way back up. He survived! he made it! There is hope, his spirituality saved him (The tiger saved him, he says so in the movie), but now he's back on solid ground, he is saved and needs to become again the rational being he's always been.
 

Siege_TF

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So it's like that episode of Futurama where Bender gets reprogrammed to like the X-9. "I guess Reality is what you make of it" and all that.
 

CaptainOctopus

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More "fun"... yeah well ain't that just swell. Meanwhile not so long ago when people thought it was more "fun" to believe diseases were caused by demons instead of material things...
Religious people are just silly, unfortunately that silliness has directly and indirectly led to hundreds of millions of people needlessly suffering and dying because it was more "fun" to believe in stupid bullshit instead of the truth.
 

leviadragon99

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AxelxGabriel said:
It's not cynical to know that some people are just bad, but it is cynical to say that we are all inherently bad and there's nothing we can do about it. Just because the horrible version is more likely, doesn't mean the fantastic version of the story was impossible.
Keep in mind I was trying to meet halfway here, I never said the fantastic version was impossible, just highly improbable, and I also similarly doubt the grim and gritty for grimness's sake version, as I am of the mind that the truth is between what two people tell you, when those two stories come from the same person it's all the more likely.

So maybe miraculous things do happen, but maybe they seem more miraculous because we're missing some crucial piece of information, because there's something ultimately mundane but hard to identify at play we're not aware of, and perhaps someday, when we know enough, all miracles will seem very small indeed...
 

Dalisclock

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I was hoping it would be a magical realism...something, kind of like 100 years of solitude. If it's a quirky, "this is why you should believe in god" story, yeah......

I'll probably watch it on DVD.
 

Scrythe

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That whole rant about the main character reminds me of Tarsem Singh so much, that if I watched "Life of Pi", I wouldn't stop picturing the main character actually being Tarsem Singh himself.

And that would ruin the entire experience for me.

Fuck Tarsem Singh.
 

carlh267

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I don't think Bob really got the ending, or that this was based on a famous book.

The whole movie is practically a note-to-note adaptation of the book, modeled around the premise that the writer of the book is visiting the actual Pi, who narrates his terrifying story. It was an interesting way to handle the movie imo. The quirkiness was in the book too, so I don't really have too much of a problem with it as its decently done (I did, however, hate it in the book, as barely anything interesting happens in the first hundred pages or so).

But the movie doesn't advocate religion in any way, shape, or form. I saw it, and its not half as bad as Bob makes it out to be.

Okay, so Bob basically says that the movie's message is that people should try believing in religion because its fun. That really isn't what the movie conveys at all. It presents the lighter, boy on tiger version, then presents the dark, gritty, PI is Richard Parker version. Pi then asks the writer, who will eventually write the book Life of Pi, which version he believes happened, saying that both versions of the story start and end the same way, with Pi getting shipwrecked and eventually saved.

The author muses it over for a second, and says almost word for word, "I prefer the story with the tiger. Its a better story."

That's it, and that is not an advocacy for religion. Pi even brings up the critiques the reporters make of the tiger story at the same time (such as the fact that the orangutang, which came on the boat floating on a net filled with bananas, could not have happened the way he narrated it because bananas don't float in water). So while you are given the author's opinion that the original story is the better story, you have Pi himself counteracting that by telling you that there are some inconsistencies that need to be taken into account if you decide to believe the religious version. You are never told which story to believe, the author expressed his opinion on the tale, and Pi tells the audience that there are some factual discrepancies in his story. That's it. You are left to believe what you want to believe.

Overall, I liked it. The CGI was mostly great, save for Richard Parker himself and a small instance with an elephant at the beginning (which both display uncanny valley at points, but I can forgive that since placing the actor on a boat with an actual tiger would be ludicrous). My biggest complaint with the film was the same one I had with the book- it drags on a bit too long for my tastes. The religion thing from Bob is way overblown.
 

Badger01

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As an who hates religious/political 'message' books more than most, I think he got it wrong with this one.
Saying: "And so it is with God", he is not giving this as a reason that you SHOULD believe, but rather an observation that this is the case any way. It's not an argument for divinity but an observation of how in every day life people will believe the less believable story because it's 'nicer'.
 

MarsProbe

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Samus Aran but a man said:
Hmm... I adored Silver Lining's Playbook. The screenplay was so damn good. It's in my Top 3 films of the year. I'm shocked that Bob would call it a piece of s*%t.
I'd like to know more about what made Bob hate Silver Linings Playbook so much...was any part of it set in the 90s? Something like that would probably set him off. This is the first time I've heard anything really bad said about it, though since there's no backup given as to why he thinks it's a "piece of s**t, I don't know if we can really count it.
 

drewcifer1984

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Hey Bob -

Normally a huge nod to all your work, but I feel you did yourself and this review a disservice by not mentioning the novel this was based on. Also, I'm not sure the book or movie was ever trying to say that you should believe in god, just that having faith is a source of hope for many people. It's a well illustrated point, and whether you agree with that point or not, I don't think the narrative condescends to its audience - it gives you the choice between the bleakness of reality and the wonder in a fiction, and even illustrates how one informs the other. Myself, I've never been resolved on where I stand about religion, but I don't subscribe to any organized one, and this film didn't offend me. I wonder why it did you?

Keep up your thoughtful work, all the same. This is the first place I come for intelligent takes on film that don't get bogged down in pretension.

All the best.
 

BrotherRool

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So
It's a religious anti-atheist film where the twist is that it's actually anti-religious too? What annoys me even more about the sound of that twist, is it's not at all how humans would behave, we're always going to believe the darker story that disparages us because well, the tiger story is absurd and not something we encounter in day to day life. Humans being dicks is.

drewcifer1984 said:
Myself, I've never been resolved on where I stand about religion, but I don't subscribe to any organized one, and this film didn't offend me. I wonder why it did you?
Hopefully because of it's banality rather than it's message, because religion being a lighter untrue reality that people escape to because they can't bare the stark awful coldness of real life is pretty much the default (and even as a religious person, most sensible from that perspective) way to understand religion. That's not a religious message at all. To be fair the collecting religions thing was driving me that way anyway. Ecumenicalism and pantheism are beliefs that people can have but they aren't as uniting as they sound or particularly pleasing to people of different specific religious belief, because you have to strip away a lot of the stuff people think is important about their God and religion, before it can gell with others. You can believe the Muslim and Christian God are one and the same, but the christian religion affirms strictly that Jesus was God and the Muslim religion as strictly affirms that he wasn't, so it's essentially the same as saying that they're both wrong
 

Florence

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MovieBob said:
Life of Pi

MovieBob takes us on a very special boat trip with Life of Pi.

Watch Video
Nice vedio Bob,

I really appreciate the kind of topics you post here.

Thanks for sharing us a great Vedio.
 

Florence

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MovieBob said:
Life of Pi

MovieBob takes us on a very special boat trip with Life of Pi.

Watch Video
I am very satisfied with your ideas and interesting topics.Like this blog platform to show your excellent writing skills.

Bythe way:Thank you for this great Vedio,



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