Host Haste

Arcane Azmadi

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Hate to be the one to point it out, Bob, but you didn't review all 5 Twilight movies for The Escapist. You reviewed the first one (which included the immortal line "Having to watch this movie is the most pain I've experienced at the hands of something beloved by preteen girls since I got kicked in the nuts by a pony") when you were still independant.
 

Chaos999

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valium said:
Chaos999 said:
This is why I mostly hate critics. If someone makes millions with books and movies there has to be something about them that people like.
The first movie I liked the second was not that good, but still better than a lot of movies I?ve seen and I saw many. And by many I?m probably in your category. Anyway, the third I haven?t seen it yet. My critic isn?t only about Twilight but about movies which make many million, but critics still hate them.
But let?s get to the point. No matter what anyone says if that many people were paying for a third movie. Then they had to like the others and no matter how you turn it, this is art. Even if it goes against everything that defines art and even if every critic in the world hates it. In the end that?s their problem because it has to do something right or so many people wouldn?t watch it.
I understand that critics should present a deeper knowledge about the material, the acting and the presentation of movies. But like all art rules don?t apply to it. And most critics judge by predetermined rules. But art cannot be judged.
I don?t say you have to like it but as a critic you have to accept it as art even if you don?t understand it or like it.
(The last sentence made me laugh. I hope you understand why :) )
And by your statements I am happy that you slowly get to understand this.

If there are many big errors in my text let them be. My written English is still bad:)
That argument does not hold up, millions saw the second and third Transformer movies and they are objectively god awful.

Actually it does. If the first movie was that bad I wouldn´t watch the second and if the second was that bad I wouldn´t watch the third. I don´t know about you but I think most people wouldn´t watch it as well. Besides being a "good movie" isn´t the point. I am just saying they have to do something right or people wouldn´t come back.
 

sweetylnumb

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I liked the host. i was surprised as, after all, look who wrote it. Haven't seen the movie yet, ill probably hate it afterwards.
 

Oly J

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I have never seen, or read Twilight, nor do I intend to, so I do not feel qualified to talk on the subject of Stephanie Meyer's work but to be honest when reading this I got the impression that, she was so inept that Bob couldn't help but point it out, yet so sincere that he felt guilty for picking on her
 

Epic Fail 1977

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MovieBob said:
Epic Fail 1977 said:
MovieBob said:
Are you familiar with the term Outsider Art?
Nope.

MovieBob said:
It more or less means what it sounds like it means; an art world term for artwork made by people who are not themselves part of said world, i.e. they don't have formal art education, training or even don't self-identify as artists.
OH MY GOD are you serious? Am I reading this right? Formally educated "art people" have an actual named category into which they put all art that is created by plebs who lack a formal education in art? Oh my god. Oh my god. I think I need to sit and think about this fact for a while. And then read about it.
More or less, though in fairness it at least started out with mostly noble intentions. The animating idea was that, by the mid-20th Century, the art world and art-academia world had gotten much too intertwined; so you basically had multiple generations where most of the artists were people who went to art school (and thus had overly similar backgrounds and frames of reference) and too much of the art getting made and shown was reacting/decontructing/commenting on or about OTHER art more than anything else - and that this wasn't healthy, because you were missing out on art being made as honest creative expression of the self. So, applying "art world" exposure and critical-analysis to things like "amateur" paintings or roadside wood-carvings or "junk sculptures" that might possibly be brilliant but otherwise wouldn't be noted.

Unfortunately, it got commodified on the upscale/trendy "collectors scene" VERY quickly and it became more about the "characters" making the art than the art itself (i.e. "this is interesting, but it'd be worth MORE if the 'artist' was a one-eyed hillbilly frog-catcher who'd never seen a TV before!") which is where the condescending angle crept in.
Sounds like it would've been more accurate to label their own work as "insider art" and leave everyone else's just named "art". In any case it's just bizarre to me. Doesn't such a categorisation undermine the whole concept of art itself? Or maybe it's just the wording. Information on the web regarding the origins of the term "outsider art" was easy to find and very consistent (though my googling turned up little on the current use and meaning). It seems it was originally called 'Art Brut' (French) which is a much more accurate and less condescending term, and does not translate into anything like "outsider art". I think it says something about the English-speaking world that we took an honest, even flattering term for pure art and translated into something that reeks of snobbery.
 

nerdwerds

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Interesting points about outsider art but they don't apply to Stephanie Meyer because she got her book deal through nepotism.
 

Remus

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Outsider art or not, the fact that the aliens are called "souls" sets off my preacher sense. I don't enjoy being preached to in movies no matter what clever trope is used to disguise it. The Invasion had a similar plot - aliens invade Earth, possess everyone, bring world peace, but a few people revolt etc etc. However it didn't have any religious subtext or weird love parallelograms. There's a number of reasons why I never watched Twilight or for that matter any of the Narnia flicks. But many of them were eerily similar, Twilight with its clever vampire morality and Narnia with Jesus as a lion, both founded upon the belief structures of the authors. This is just another teen flick that I'll now actively avoid watching since it's guaranteed to tie up a daily slot on FX as soon as it hits DVD.
 

Artemis923

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bearlotz said:
One can only imagine what these same projectionists will make of The Host, which is yet another instance of an impressively novel, creative reworking of the alien invasion template
The "Soul" aliens are basically the Yeerks from the Animorphs series. I'm pretty sure there was even a book in that series where one of the main characters gets possessed, learns to cooperate with her parasite, and eventually parts with it on reasonable terms. I'm not sure "novel" is what I'd go with to describe the story of The Host, maybe "an underutilized trope" or something similar.
Yeerks were freakin' awesome.
I think I need to go to Bookmans and buy as many Animorph books as I can find.
 

Adfest

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Feb 23, 2009
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Mostly unrelated... I would like to point out that being a conservative Mormon doesn't mean you can't be a good writer.
See Brandon Sanderson [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandon_Sanderson]
Yes... I know nobody here said Mormons can't write, but there you go anyway.
 

TakerFoxx

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Jan 27, 2011
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Artemis923 said:
Yeerks were freakin' awesome.
I think I need to go to Bookmans and buy as many Animorph books as I can find.
Just do what I did, and hunt around on Amazon or eBay until you come across someone selling the whole series, side-books included, for a decent price.

Ah, that was a glorious marathon.
 

Daaaah Whoosh

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I'm sort of confused about what this article is addressing. If there is someone who is really bad at an art form, and they can't tell that they're really bad at it, are we supposed to feel wrong for assuming that they don't notice OTHER things about their work? The way I see it, people make things for two reasons: for themselves, and fr others. If they're in it for others, then they should be prepared to accept the fact that some people are going to make them feel stupid. Especially if they ARE stupid, in which case they should probably stick to that first reason.

Also, to address the comments, I also enjoyed the Yeerks. It was like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, with a little bit of Halo, too, with the various alien races that had already been controlled.
 

Senare

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Uratoh said:
Side note, does 'naive' feel like it should be 'naieve' to anyone else?
I spell it naïve and imagine the special i takes care of the "ie".

On topic: This "Outsider Art" sounds like its ripe for a documentary trolling the educated art people making such belittling statements.
 

Farther than stars

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Jun 19, 2011
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This is just another reason why I advocate an adequate separation between artist and art. But if you insist on publishing a bio alongside your novel, I suppose this is what you can expect. Also, I think this is probably why successful, yet controversial writers like Salinger prefer to stand by the sidelines. But then again, Rowling is quite elusive and she got exactly the same treatment of conjecture when the press examined her 'The Casual Vacancy'.

ccdohl said:
It seems incredibly pretentious to call the woman's work clumsy, or to say that she is untalented despite the fact that her books are adored by many people around the world. The thought is that she is untalented, and her readers are just idiots.

Sure, I am not really a fan (saw most of the movies, never read the books), but it seems like everyone's starting point is that Meyer is an untalented hack. Maybe we should take a step back and reconsider that premise.
To be honest, most of gaming culture hates on Meyer's novels not because they think she's a bad writer, but because she took something that was theirs, namely vicious Victorian monsters, and made them cute and cuddly (or at least sparkling - and with this I have to agree: vampires do not sparkle).
But more legitimate criticism still stands, specifically that Meyer through her novels perpetuates traditional stereotypes about gender roles. Now, however you feel about that is irrelevant. After all, there has always been propaganda on both sides of the sociopolitical aisle. But when Twilight fans dogmatically refuse to acknowledge the existence of such undertones in a bid to legitimize their tastes in literature, that's when they come off as naive.

Uratoh said:
Side note, does 'naive' feel like it should be 'naieve' to anyone else?
No. Never.
 

Woodsey

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To be fair, the whole vampirism = sexuality angle is not exactly exclusive to Meyer, and so the leap from that to all the weird abstinence stuff in Twilight is hardly the greatest logical leap - even if you knew nothing about Meyer herself.
 

Diddy_Mao

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Callate said:
I don't know... When an author has a body of work that all seems to incorporate similar themes, how can one not start wondering about the author's issues? I mean, yeah, the whole "armchair psychiatrist" thing gets old, and people are perhaps more than a little glib and flippant when it comes to presuming to make deep, piercing insights about the people behind works of different media. But the whole thing kind of circles in on itself in ways that are pretty disturbing on their own: are the observers making assumptions about Meyer's issues with violence and sexuality and gender roles because of their own deep-seated antagonisms with certain traditional assumptions that come from their own upbringing, etc., etc. And are people uncomfortable with that because of various characteristics of the target of the examination- Meyer is a woman, Meyer is a Mormon, Meyer is a stay-at home mom- while they're all too comfortable assuming things about issues like racism, classism, or misogyny in the work of targets that aren't afforded a degree of protection by similar characteristics?
While I'm sure there is a certain amount of projection that is done by some readers or critics I think it's more than fair to address these recurring themes because they do sometimes cast a poor reflection on their author and not on the reader for observing them.

For example I would take great personal offense to the implication that my observation of Piers Anthony's disturbing fixation on pedophilia in any way reflected a similar desire in myself.
 

conflictofinterests

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Now I know that I ought to author the book I'm writing under a pseudonym. If people think there are hidden meanings I'm unaware of based on my personal experiences, have fun figuring them out without knowing who I am.
 

conflictofinterests

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Daaaah Whoosh said:
I'm sort of confused about what this article is addressing. If there is someone who is really bad at an art form, and they can't tell that they're really bad at it, are we supposed to feel wrong for assuming that they don't notice OTHER things about their work? The way I see it, people make things for two reasons: for themselves, and fr others. If they're in it for others, then they should be prepared to accept the fact that some people are going to make them feel stupid. Especially if they ARE stupid, in which case they should probably stick to that first reason.

Also, to address the comments, I also enjoyed the Yeerks. It was like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, with a little bit of Halo, too, with the various alien races that had already been controlled.
It's not about the "really bad" part. It's about the "this person doesn't have formal training in this form of artwork" You can be really bad at art with or without formal training, but if you have formal training, then it's assumed you have more intent concerning any concepts that come across when you present your work. On the other hand, if you don't have formal training, you are often considered to imbue your work with concepts you are facing without necessarily realizing it yourself, even when you didn't necessarily even consider those concepts in the creation of this work. It's a very patronizing mindset, and I understand why Bob shies away from it.
 

Littaly

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That was actually a fairly interesting perspective on the whole deal. Good article!