Saturday, July 11, 2009

Antichrist and Art

Negley says: 'Tomorrow in The Sunday Times Bryan trashes Lars von Trier's film Antichrist. He was so angry about the film he narrowly avoided a serious criminal offence. He also interviews the art collector David Khalili. Links later.'

9 comments:

  1. Excellent, I love a really good trashing. (Though they do always make you want to see the film.)

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  2. I'll look forward to Khalili, then - are art collectors to art what record collectors are to music? is it the art, the collecting, or the serious wonga that's so interesting?

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  3. Oh, here we go! No doubt another of those narrow-minded reviews by somebody who doesn’t appreciate that contemporary art requires plenty of genital mutilation, animal cruelty, torture, graphic sex, naked grouse wrestling, giraffe decapitation, mollusc arousal, hen battery, scenes involving voles in blenders, and Mickey Rourke.

    And I thought this blog was supposed to be sophisticated.

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  4. Oddbins! ha, ha. sorry, it's just that I can't imagine a less violent name on our high streets. not like Threshers!

    I will avoid the film.

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  5. They'll start filming the Bible next.

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  6. RE: Antichrist. I particularly enjoyed the relish with which you described the very thing you thought should be banned. Showing bad things (in order to titillate) an atrocity, but describing them (for much the same reason) is okay, I guess.

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  7. Blunt: Bryan didn't write that the film should be banned.

    Very good article, Bryan. I shan't be going to see the film (have not seen any other Trier films either, and don't plan to).

    Cannot stand all this violence in films, video games, tv news etc. It doesn't seem to me to fulfil any useful purpose and does fulfil several useless ones, inducing insensitivity and boredom and acceptance (eg what you write about what the censors now deem acceptable).

    Proabably my views are more extreme than most people's about the depiction of violence and "torture porn" (largely shown against woman, who are tied up or captured, and then have awful things done to them). I see absolutely no point in any of it and despair that many people must find this kind of thing "entertaining".

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  8. Blunt:

    It’s not bad because it con­tains some of the nastiest scenes I have ever seen — though it does. It’s bad because mere self-indulgence is not art. A hopeless ragbag of pointlessly pretty shots, hack metaphors, misogyny, undergraduate portentousness and plagiarised cinematography...

    I guess your twittened attention-span didn't allow you to actually read the piece.

    I saw Dogville. It was quite well-acted boring crap.

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  9. I also dislike the amount of violence shown in the TV news, though I do feel that it’s lacking in the early evening television schedules involving Ant and Dec.

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