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From a film perspective, Hoffman has left his mark in modern cinema with more than a few outstanding characterisations.
Not many actors can have a bit part in a film, like Scent of a Woman, and leave you with an indelible image of his character, that sleazy, spineless, spoilt, snitch. There was another character he played  in his early days,  a lecherous loner who preyed on a female living in his block. I was looking for it the other day and can't find any hint what the name of the film was. Could have been a tv film.

Main Street, I think it was "Happiness", directed by a guy called Todd Solondz. Very depressing and disturbing film, but amazingly enough, for a character whose main deal was as you said above, Hoffman made him into one of the most sympathetic characters in the film. He was a genius.

Got rid of my Facebook account two years ago and do not miss it - when I had it, i used to feel guilty that I never used it. Ridiculous stuff. Although I find Whatsapp and Skpe to be brilliant for keeping in touch with family and friends abroad.

To be fair to these young lads though, I used to drink a fair volume and do fairly stupid things in school/college (like a lot of us). The only difference was I didn't have a camera on my phone or a forum to put the pictures on. I don't know how I didn't do myself more damage than I did. Being young, stupid and drunk wasn't invented by zuckerberg, especially in Ireland.

Posted by: Zulu
« on: Today at 04:31:39 PM


Lads don't mind these fools. It's one thing being anti drugs but to use a thread which simply expresses sympathy for a man's death to preach is beyond pathetic. It's been pointed out repeatedly that these threads are started only because we know these people in some way, not because their lives are more important than anyone else's but any sane person would understand that already.

There is something very disturbing in the attitude of trolls like that - once information is filtered through a screen and keyboard, it becomes a tool to annoy, to wind up, to slag - it's a complete disassociation from the reality that a talented man is dead and his kids are left without their father. Compassion and empathy don't come into it, it is all about winning the next flame war they are going to create. It's a curious way to spend your day and I don't know who they are tyring to amuse beyond themselves.

I've been contributing on and (very!) off since 2001 and it has definitely got more blatant and vicious. Maybe we could set up a seperate forum for trolls only? The Shrek board, anyone?

Yeah that is exactly what I said - well done. Tell me, anymore word on Bieber today? Or Niall Horan?

Midterms coming up soon.

A man is a man, end of, whether famous or not. He deserves as much sympathy as any other person to lose their lives in terrible circumstances. You and your alter ego are the ones suggesting he deserves as little sympathy as a "druggie", whatever that may be.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16715.Men_and_Cartoons

Try "The Dystopianist" - essential reading for WUMs 

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-there-a-link-between-creativity-and-addiction/

Fairly good over view there, and a nice distinction made - it's not creativity and addiction that are linked, it is the characteristics that are prerequisites for creativity that are linked with addiction.

Hope that is clear enough for you. You might need to get someone to read it to you.

What it proves Cold Tea, is that you are a moron that can't read. To define that as a list of "celebs" just proves you should go back to the Daily Mail.com with the rest of the trolls. What is Bieber up to today, I wonder?

As for my original point, creativity and addiction are often intertwined - which they are, as people who are fairly high up the creative genius curve tend to have characteristics that can make them predisposed to addiction - that doesn't mean that they will become addicted, it also doesn't mean that their creative output is enhanced by their addictions.

You're right Milltown, but again that is because of enviromental factors that can leave people exposed/ predisposed to addiction e.g. if you're living in a block of flats where heroin is easily available, you're unemployed, under pressure, these can all be factors - but it doesn't mean you certainly will, and most people don't. What differeniates those who do and those who don't is the nature,soul and personal circumstances of the person, something none of us can fully claim to know. Which is what I was saying in response to people dancing a jig on a man's grave.

George Best, Jimi Hendrix, Rimbaud, Bob dylan (intermittently), John Lennon (listen to Cold Turkey), Syd Barret, Kurt Cobain, Jim Morrison, David Bowie, Lou Reed (listen to Heroin), Dylan Thomas, Brendan Behan, Lord Byron, David Foster Wallace, John Kennedy O'Toole, William Faulkner, F Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway.....

do you want me to go on - or do you want to continue to make bullshit statements?

What a sympathetic bunch we are today - should be proud of ourselves

Hoffman was a gifted man, and unlike a lot of other gifted people, worked hugely hard and left, even at the relativelty young age of 46, a legacy that stands up against any actor working in Hollywood today. He wasn't a Brando or a Pacino - I think he was more of a character actor in the alec Guinness/Olivier mode. He was also an immensely talented theatre director.

The word genius is thrown about too often in obits - but I first thought he was blessed/cursed with it after seeing his immensely empathethic role in "Magnolia".

Of course I didn't know the man, but with his own work, he shed a light on other peoples lives - the essence of great art.

Addiction and creativity are often intertwined - and the most tortured people can be the most illuminative of the human condition. It's a terrible situation for his family and kids, but just as there is no place for crocodile tears from ambulance chasing fans, there is no place for judgement from people who didn't know him. None of us can know what put the junkie on the street or the needle in the arm in any situation. Kindness shouldn't just be reserved for personal acquaintances.

RIP

Good stuff BBB 

Nice article from last month - excuse my wishy-washy liberal bias

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/dec/27/net-migration-cap-damages-britain

the facts are that 1. net migration to the UK is falling year on year (a trend that began before the Tories started cracking down).

2. The Uk (and a lot of other Western democracies with low birth rate) need a bigger flow of immigrants than currently exists just to sustain, let alone improve their GDP figures.

3. Most studies suggest that far from being welfare tourists, that migrants are far less likely to access welfare benefits than native born citizens.

4. Quite apart from their value to the labour force, again studies show that migrants are far more likely to add to GDP growth by setting up SMEs and that areas with large migrant communites show a benefit to the local economy above and beyond comparable areas (i.e working class enclaves) with little or no immigrants.

5. The scariest thing of all is the ignorance of this subject, demonstrated by the figures in the closing paragraphs of that article detailing the public perception of the problem. When asked what is the percentage of immigrants in the Uk population, most people thought the figure was 31% - real answer 13%. When asked what percentage of those are asylum seekers, people answered 21% - real answer 4%.

It would be like a bad epsiode of Family fortunes (as if there is any other kind!) where it not for the incredibly serious implications for the UK and by extension for ourselves. The New right agenda is a combination of selfish capitalism (disdain for EU regulations and social charters) wilful ignorance (the figures above) and wolfish political cynicism and stunts ( loudspeaker vans telling immigrants to go home, whilst trying to out UKIP UKIP) and media opportunism (Daily Mail, murdoch etc). The electoral maths makes it pretty certain that the Tories will have to become even more extreme to get back into government and whilst they may not have the numbers to force a European referendum, their own domestic needs could see Europe telling them to do one, rather than the other way round.

And if that happens, we are goosed economically - any recovery will be strangled by our largest partner being outside the EU. And dem foreigners? Pawns in a much larger game. I pity the poor immigrant....

read Morgy's guide and even as a dub was cracking up laughing at it - hopefully I'll be able to show him some puppies the next time I'm in sligo 

nteresting stuff Tiger, but can I ask, why would you want a Tarantino film to be 'like' the Dirty Dozen, or to 'stay true to itself' (whatever the f**k that means). Can you not just let it be a Tarantino film - for Christ sake it is all over pitched over exaggerated, comical when it should be serious, but is that not Tarantino?
And I am sorry I don't know my most 'satisfying' Tarantino film (wtf?!!) And pastiche? Is that not a kind of nut? 

BBB, I didn't say I wanted Basterds to be like the Dirty Dozen, I said the Dirty Dozen was the biggest influence on the film, and then drew a comparison between how Robert Aldrich made us care about the characters in that film, and how QT, failed to do so in Basterds, in my opinion.

As for letting a Tarantino film be a Tarantino film, one of my points was that themes like slavery and the holocaust deserve a more serious treatment than the typical QT movie, in my opinion.

As for you not knowing your most satisfying QT film (WTF??!!), I do, and it's Jackie Brown , in my opinion.

And a pastiche is a nut, and very tasty it is too, in my opinion.

So was my original post deserving of your reply? The clue is in italics.

 

No internal logic to his films at all - everyone who says he is paying homage to grindhouse films etc fails to notice that these B movies though cheap and full of gimmicks still had a semblance of narrative coherence. the thing was after Pulp Fiction (which I loved) where he played with the timeline to great effect, he then thought he could do that and more in each film - hence the garish unreality of Kill bill, the killing of Hitler in "inglorious Basterds", the ridiculous escape and shoot out at the end of Django Unchained. Imagine the film "Basterds" could have been if he had played it straight instead of going for cheap laughs all the time? It's most obvious influence is "The Dirty Dozen", which is hilarious for the first hour, until it gets deadly serious in the second half - so when they start getting knocked off, it actually packs a punch. QT has lost the knack of making us care for his characters - remember how stange and disconcerting it was to see Vincent Vega killed halfway through Pulp?

In fact check out "Django" with Franco Nero - yes, it may be kitschy now, but in its own time and on its own merit, it is a brilliant spaghetti Western - and there is no one mugging for the camera, no arched eyebrows, no meta references - it stays true to itself. Whereas "Django Unchained" is a modern film pretending to be a spaghetti Western, whilst fetishing the slave trade. It is a film about the 1970s, rather than the 1860s. I don't like to be po faced, but I think the theme of slavery should be more than a convenient prop for a postmodern buddy movie pastiche.

For all the talk of his script writing "dialogue" skills, he can only write "set pieces" instead of scenes - everything always leads to a payoff, which makes you sick or makes you laugh, or both. He doesn't write dialogues anymore like the "Big Mac/Amsterdam" scene in Pulp Fiction. He writes monologues for a series of characters/ciphers who are all QT by proxy.

His most emotionally affecting and heart felt work was the script he wrote for "True Romance" and didn't direct himself - and of his own efforts as a director, I think his most coherent and satisfying film is "Jackie Brown" - and that was based on Elmore Leonard's "Rum Punch."

It is the law of diminishing returns - he became worshipped so early in his career and he has never heard the word "no" - so now it is a spiral of self indulgence. He says that he re-imagines history - I think it is perilously close to an insult of history. I'd be on Spike Lee's side when it comes to QT, but with a touch of regret at such talent being wasted.