Real Blood, Not Bambi

By Paul Moore posted 3 years ago

When I was six years old I got lost in the grocery store. I went off to look at toys or something and suddenly it felt like I was in that giant military warehouse in the closing shot of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Somewhere down one of the endless number of aisles my dad was obliviously reading a cereal box, I thought. Of course, he was actually looking for me and found me after what in reality was probably ten minutes, but felt like a day.

So I can relate to Dumbo and the intense separation anxiety he must have gone through. Last time I watched that movie I cried as Momma Jumbo cradled little Dumbo with her trunk from behind the bars of the "Mad Elephant" cage. But I do not like Alladin. Not that it’s a bad movie, there just isn’t a personal connection for me. This is where the whole computer generated recommendation starts to lose it.

I’ll tell you what, I’m not really a Bambi fan either. Dumbo is full of undertones about the Great Depression and our country’s struggle through that time. Then at the end, Dumbo literally flies above all of that struggle. Gasp! Maybe I’m a softie but that stuff gets to me. Bambi and Thumper do not.

It seems like every website that has anything to do with movies has some digital predictor guessing what I’ll want to watch next. They are novel, but shallow. The whole idea seems like this giant train promising to take us into the future of how we discover films. So I give Dumbo five stars, what do I get? Bambi. Obviously.

In fact, it is so painfully obvious that only a computer could lack so much nuance. It reminds me of the robotics engineer guy in Errol Morris’ documentary, Fast, Cheap and Out of Control. He describes how for years they’ve been developing a robot that, in the very near future, should be able walk-just walk mind you-like an ant. Who’s paying for that?

You know how I want to find out about movies? Through a real human being with blood and a brain and everything. But not just any human, somebody who’s opinion I actually care about. Somebody I consider to be an expert, if you will. How novel? And wouldn’t it be crazy if instead of building a website where a computer decides I like Bambi, somebody built a website where I can connect to people whose opinions on film I care about?

Oh wait. We’re building that.

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Nat Dykeman said 3 years ago
I thought about this question a lot on Friday, when I had someone bring back CRASH, and said (obviously) that she loved it, and wanted to find more movies like it that were good.

Well, I said, do you want another racial drama, like Do The Right Thing? Or did you like all the interconnecting stories, like Traffic and Short Cuts? Or do you just want something that’s gonna make you cry, like Mystic River, or Million Dollar Baby?

In the end I decided that the problem with most recomendation systems is that they only cover WHAT people like, and don’t ask WHY they like it.

It took a long time for me to pinpoint a trend in some movies. After watching about a dozen Ambient Films from Asia, I decided that I generally like Ambient Films set in remote locations (like Spring, Summer and 3-Iron), but generally dislike Asian Ambient films that take place in city environments (the works of Tsai Ming-liang, and Mysterious Object At Noon).

American films don’t seem to follow the same path for me, I generally liked Gerry and disliked Lost In Translation, but I LOVED Elephant (and what is high-school but a mini-city).

In the end of course, I believe everyone has intangible things that make them like or dislike something. I’ve gotten really good at guessing what films I’m going to like or not, but certainly I get surprised often still.

Good luck, you’ll need it.
george said 3 years ago
that is a really interesting distinction/observation you have made in regards to your preference in asian ‘ambient’ cinema. but what was at all remote about 3-iron? a few of the houses they occupied seemed to be more suburban than others, but i never got much of a sense of the countryside. is it perhaps just a filmmaker/stylistic preference, and not so much setting.