>>Correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't there plenty of "message" movies >>that came out before 1963??? >>While they were aimed mainly towards a broad >>audience and did emphasize "story", their messages still came through >>quite dramatically and were definitely intrinsic to the film's appeal. This was an answer that kind of synthesizes moral and visual arguments against James Tichenor's MEME of Oiver Stone's aesthetic stupidity. What do people have against stories? Different stories are told in many different ways, the same stories are built differently, and different stories are repeated over and over again in a pretended "new" way. Every movie carry a story of some sort. Every movie is made out of a representation of reality filtered by production and post-production work. The final result of this work depends upon the relationship between the power of creation, from the part of some of the artists involved in the project, and the power of finance. The final result of this dynamic is a product that is aimed toward markets. The financial success of the product that has entertainment as the main engine to affect and communicate an audience depends sometimes on strict marketing and cartel-like domination by the distributors, that are also main producers of FILMS/MOVIES (I like FILM better, is more universal languagewise.) Other times, without much of the "propaganda massiva", the sole magic of CINEMA - the bold essence of the medium as material fact and intelectual concept - breaks through to success for its special style on enunciating values and ideas through a story, any story (documentaries included.) CINEMA is art and business tied together in an industrial mode of production, but it is also magic. What does that mean? That the production and distribution process to making films obbeys the same bare logic as the making of a car, a nail, or a computer. Although, being part of the creative-artistic realm, CINEMA is a product that enchants. I mean, its technique is based on creating illusions that seduces our heart and mind. As art It doesn't matter when a film was made as much as the technological aspect. There's nothing much else one need to do to make a film technically and aesthetically brilliant that wasn't already sedimented by the "film pioneers" - those weren't all necessarilly Americans, in fact the Russians, Germans, and Surrealists were light-years ahead of the theatre slaved American cinema of the first decades. Quentin Tarantino is successful in "Pulp Fiction" for many already posted moral issues, but he's is also essentially successful for the way he handled the cinematographic language to pass visions and build illusions. He definetely has many inffluences throughout CINEMA history. Somebody asked for a tip on something Novelle Vague in Pulp Fiction: the death of Vincent (Travolta) is unthinkable before Goddard's "A Bout de Souffle". I don't even care if Tarantino saw or not Goddard's film (which I tend to beleive he did), but the decisions made by the Swiss-French replicated throughout many other films and later TV programs. If you, that decided to abolish the knowledge of film history as an important quality of a film Director, instead of seeing Goddard's film watched many non-melodramatic sudden death of a protagonist on TV, probably wouldn't come up with the brilliant idea of the non-linear narrative to bring the extremely likable Vincent back to the screen. You probably wouldn't understand either why we are introduced to Butch in a long static sequence. For a long time we hear Marcellus watching Butch hearing Marcellus. Would that ever be attempted in the "MTV/quick cuts" age if the Director didn't know about Kuleshov's experience? Again, I don't care if he saw it or not, though I'm sure he at least knows about it. I disagree with the film/movie formula as much as I do with the story/non-story bullony. Every film has one or many stories ("while Bunuel made many films using many dreams," Goddard said he "could make a whole film centered on one dream"). Furthermore every film has its subliminal communicative component. I think that lies there the enduring value of a film. As we know the establishment sucks the avant gard juices to produce tasty and tasteless films latter. Of course, taste we don't argue about right? - Claudio Fernandes - [log in to unmask] - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - "So many films, so little time." I don't consume "Stargate".