As one writer has noted, the Honda ad is a slicker version of artists Fischli & Weiss' 1987 film The Way Things Go. Nothing wrong with that; just think it should be mentioned.
- tom moody 4-18-2003 11:33 pm [add a comment]

then i guess frank wont like it.
- dave 4-19-2003 12:15 am [add a comment]

Also, it was done with no computer graphics, and took 606 takes. (Well, OK, there's one second of CG)
- jim 4-19-2003 12:21 am [add a comment]

• my favorite comment regarding the cgi "cheat."
  
  "There is only one cheat. And he lives with strongbad."
  - dave 4-19-2003 12:38 am [add a comment]




• by the third time someone makes the joke, i think its lame. reminds me of the first time i saw one of those wisconsin cheesehead hats. maybe frank was on to something, or is knowledge just a curse? good thing i am well on my way to know-nothing.
  - dave 4-19-2003 12:47 am [add a comment]




• The Cheat doesn't live with Strongbad. The Cheat lives in the King of Town's grill.
  - tom moody 4-21-2003 5:49 pm [add a comment]




• This thread is beginning to resemble the Fuscilli & Weiss film itself which I saw at the New Museum a couple of years ago. I admit to having been transfixed but was mostly nonplused, so they added flames to Mousetrap, a game I loved as a kid despite knowing it was a swipe from Rube Goldberg.
  - steve 4-20-2003 7:49 pm [add a comment]




• The quote below is from the Arthur Danto essay I linked to. It's bombastic but does a good job of explaining how the Fischli/Weiss differs from Goldberg (and Mousetrap):

  As is often observed, the film has the deflected ingenuity of a cracked inventor such as Rube Goldberg, who drew such contraptions for his readers' amusement a generation or so ago. But there is this difference: Goldberg's contrivances were madly complex devices, requiring an improbable assemblage of components for achieving tasks capable of being done by anyone simply and directly - like lighting cigars or rocking a baby or pouring coffee. They were caricatures of so-called Yankee ingenuity, expressing itself in "labor-saving devices" that "no home should be without"; but, rickety and crazy, these devices interposed so much mediating gear between agent and task that one always feared they would not be up to the homely demands made of them. The causal chain in The Way Things Go, on the other hand, has no function and no goal. But in concatenating slides, roils, tumbles, spills, booms, bangs, and spins, it vividly illustrates what Kant offers by way of characterization of the work of art: it seems purposive while lacking any specific purpose. It does nothing, but it seems to embody, for viewers to whom I have shown it, meanings that touch on waste, violence, pollution, exhaustion, and despair, all somehow reinforced by the overwhelming sense of suspense generated by the fact that it is a film: the individual episodes seem to happen one after another smoothly and without interruption - the danger being that something will go wrong and break the chain. It is, for all the triviality of its individual episodes, an epic of some kind, vastly transcending the connotations of play while retaining the spirit of innocent mischief in which boys at play egg one another on to high and higher efforts which, taken collectively, seem to imply the pointless horror of unending war.

  
  - tom moody 4-21-2003 5:55 pm [add a comment]




• Fair enough.
  - steve 4-21-2003 8:33 pm [add a comment]

I recall reading that the Fischli/Weiss version has several cuts and isn't truly continuous. But, hey, it's art. (They couldn't afford 606 takes.) It's also better because it has a "cooked up in the garage" quality and a lot of cool gloppy explosions--a true entropic symphony. Also, it has no point.
- tom moody 4-19-2003 12:59 am [add a comment]

• I watched an old batman movie earlier tonight. The set design, costumes, and the car; everything was home made.
  - sarah 4-20-2003 8:42 am [add a comment]




• I saw part of that too. Batman & Robin vs. all the bad guys (penguin, joker, riddler, cat woman) on some sort of submarine.
  
  I remember watching the TV show after school when I was in the 3rd grade in Michigan. I thought it was great. No hint of irony. I think I was sort of a simple kid.
  - jim 4-20-2003 6:35 pm [add a comment]




• Was ?
  - frank 4-20-2003 6:44 pm [add a comment]




• Yeah, OK, fair enough.
  - jim 4-20-2003 6:46 pm [add a comment]




• I loved the submarine designed to look like a penguin, with flapping webbed feet instead of propellers.
  - steve 4-20-2003 7:23 pm [add a comment]




• The batmobile was super cool too.
  - sarah 4-20-2003 7:45 pm [add a comment]

The 1943 serial is choice. Everything's very low budget. I saw it when I was a kid.

Or maybe you saw the 1949 film? Here's a list of screen batmen.
- tom moody 4-20-2003 10:17 am [add a comment]

• Oh, you were talking about the 1966 film!
  - tom moody 4-21-2003 5:50 pm [add a comment]