tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10506214.post8745246263435176146..comments2024-01-23T13:41:41.463-05:00Comments on The Forager Blog: I mean, it's practically begging you...Jon Hastingshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01030406521787423155noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10506214.post-1461320325411963862008-04-16T01:47:00.000-04:002008-04-16T01:47:00.000-04:00I agree completely about Shyamalan's style as a fi...I agree completely about Shyamalan's style as a filmmaker. His willingness to use long takes; to include the margins of the frame in his compositions; to use off-screen space to create suspense, tension, and surprise; to reject the frantic camera work and editing that characterizes modern "popular" filmmaking. And to do it all while making "crowd pleasers" and summer popcorn movies is one reason why I can't really get down on the guy.<BR/><BR/>I wasn't really that annoyed by Annoying Things Two and Three because I felt like the character of the Critic was enough of a real character that I could look past the meta-commentary to see the fictional human being underneath (I think a lot of credit goes to Balaban's performance), and because arrogance in artists never bothers me, and Shyamalan's "arrogance" in this respect is so over-the-top, it's hilarious, as you pointed out.<BR/><BR/>First Annoying Thing, however, is even more annoying than you describe, because according to the fairy world MNS has created, the narfs and scrunts are part of some Korean mythology, and I may be wrong, though I don't think I am, but I doubt anywhere in the Korean language current or past were there ever such words as "narf" or "scrunt". The words are so obviously English/Anglo/Germanic in their phonetics that it's hard to imagine such creatures as belonging to any folk lore or mythology other than a European one. It's, like, the very first rule in creating a fantasy world: Make it believable. That doesn't mean the world has to be "realistic" -- it would hardly be fantasy without fantastical creatures and magic and such -- but it still has to feel "real" or else it all turns silly (and not in a good way). <BR/><BR/>I bet if MNS had made his fairy tale an English fairy tale, instead of a Korean one, those words wouldn't seem as ridiculous. Sure they would still sound funny, but funny in the same way that the German Rumpelstiltskin sounds funny, even as he awes us with the power and menace of his magic. The spell was broken completely when I found out these names were supposed to be from a Korean(!) folk story. There's too much incongruity there. Even if the average audience member doesn't necessarily know the linguistic reasons for this, he will still sense, on some level, that the sound of the word and the supposed origin of the word don't match up, and thus the spell of the fairy tale being "real" is broken.<BR/><BR/>MNS needed to read up on his Tolkien before attempting to make up his fantasy names. Bad names have ruined many a made-up fantasy world, and unfortunately, they ruined this one.The Derelicthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01977480282511477411noreply@blogger.com