Again with the pondering...
Aug. 18th, 2004 10:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwynI'm reading con reports and it's been really interesting hearing the wildly different takes on things. Sometimes frustrating, too. And often really fucking funny.
Stuff I've been thinking about in no particular order:
1. People! Stop telling everyone to not rent Equilibrium if they liked the vid in the premier show![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
przed's "No Fear No Hate..." ! Yes, it's a cheese-fest. The cheesiest, in fact. There's not enough cheese in Wisconsin to beat the cheese in this movie. But it doesn't matter! It's fun! Stupid and fun and has a large collection of the pretty: Christian Bale half naked through much of the movie, Sean Bean, William Fichtner, Taye Diggs, Angus Macfadyen, and Sean Pertwee. Plus that guy from John Doe. So, like, who cares that it's not a good movie? It's also really good-looking! It's totally worth a rental, and I wish people would stop discouraging everyone as though fans don't watch and love bad movies. I have rarely had as much fun as I did at this movie. This is what fandom is all about, if you ask me -- if you can't appreciate a good bad movie for the massive quantities of pretty, then what *can* you appreciate? Check your brain at the door, and have fun with the gun katas, the Adorable Puppy of Redemption, and large helpings of calcium-rich cheese.
2. I am starting to understand that I share almost no tastes with other people in fandom, because I like all kinds of music and have no trouble with vids in fandoms I don't care for. One of the things I've noticed consistently in some con reports is that people disliked vids because they can't stand a music style (hip-hop definitely came under fire most, followed by show tunes [see below]) or because they have a history of liking that song chosen for that vid. That latter one flummoxed me -- there've only been a few vids where I felt like my personal devotion to a song made it harder to appreciate the vid, but I have never rejected a vid solely because I loved the song (usually the vid just didn't connect with me enough to make me put aside my personal attachment). So that left me a little bewildered, but it seems prevalent, so clearly I'm the one who's out of step. I'm curious about why it prevents people from enjoying a vid? What makes it so hard to overcome?
3. Related to that, I have always loved everything -- there really isn't a musical style I don't like, though of course there are individual artists or sub-styles that I may not enjoy. But I discovered this weekend that show tunes for songvids will kill me right at the opening note. The Farscape vid made me want to stick chopsticks in my ears, and the Hornblower vid was one of the most agonizingly awful of the con (and I'm glad that many of my friends thought it was howlingly, parodically funny, but I couldn't join in the mocking laughter). I don't know why, but show tunes just do not seem to work with vids, to my ears and eyes, and I have yet to see a vid that uses a show tune and doesn't make me want to kill myself. So if I learned anything this weekend, it was that me and show tune vids are unmixy things. (ETA Okay, there is one vid that uses show tunes that DOES work for me: Razzle Dazzle from Chicago (the movie) for Star Trek, by Killa and T. Jonesy. It's effing brilliant and makes me forget how much I loathed the song by its sheer unadulterated brilliance!)
4. Why would people go to a vidding con if they're not that into vids? I mean, I get seeing your friends, especially if that's the only con they go to. But... if you know it's a con devoted totally to vids, and you're not either a vid fan or a vidder, why take up the membership space? Why spend the money, and then disparage vids in general in a con report afterwards and tell people you're not that into vids and are all now vidded out and never cared that much in the first place? WTF? I think of the people who might not get to go because of a membership cap, and it mystifies me why someone would go to something like this if they either don't like vids, or only want to see vids in one or two narrow fandoms, and everything else earns their disparaging disdain. Do. Not. Get. It.
Stuff I've been thinking about in no particular order:
1. People! Stop telling everyone to not rent Equilibrium if they liked the vid in the premier show
przed's "No Fear No Hate..." ! Yes, it's a cheese-fest. The cheesiest, in fact. There's not enough cheese in Wisconsin to beat the cheese in this movie. But it doesn't matter! It's fun! Stupid and fun and has a large collection of the pretty: Christian Bale half naked through much of the movie, Sean Bean, William Fichtner, Taye Diggs, Angus Macfadyen, and Sean Pertwee. Plus that guy from John Doe. So, like, who cares that it's not a good movie? It's also really good-looking! It's totally worth a rental, and I wish people would stop discouraging everyone as though fans don't watch and love bad movies. I have rarely had as much fun as I did at this movie. This is what fandom is all about, if you ask me -- if you can't appreciate a good bad movie for the massive quantities of pretty, then what *can* you appreciate? Check your brain at the door, and have fun with the gun katas, the Adorable Puppy of Redemption, and large helpings of calcium-rich cheese.2. I am starting to understand that I share almost no tastes with other people in fandom, because I like all kinds of music and have no trouble with vids in fandoms I don't care for. One of the things I've noticed consistently in some con reports is that people disliked vids because they can't stand a music style (hip-hop definitely came under fire most, followed by show tunes [see below]) or because they have a history of liking that song chosen for that vid. That latter one flummoxed me -- there've only been a few vids where I felt like my personal devotion to a song made it harder to appreciate the vid, but I have never rejected a vid solely because I loved the song (usually the vid just didn't connect with me enough to make me put aside my personal attachment). So that left me a little bewildered, but it seems prevalent, so clearly I'm the one who's out of step. I'm curious about why it prevents people from enjoying a vid? What makes it so hard to overcome?
3. Related to that, I have always loved everything -- there really isn't a musical style I don't like, though of course there are individual artists or sub-styles that I may not enjoy. But I discovered this weekend that show tunes for songvids will kill me right at the opening note. The Farscape vid made me want to stick chopsticks in my ears, and the Hornblower vid was one of the most agonizingly awful of the con (and I'm glad that many of my friends thought it was howlingly, parodically funny, but I couldn't join in the mocking laughter). I don't know why, but show tunes just do not seem to work with vids, to my ears and eyes, and I have yet to see a vid that uses a show tune and doesn't make me want to kill myself. So if I learned anything this weekend, it was that me and show tune vids are unmixy things. (ETA Okay, there is one vid that uses show tunes that DOES work for me: Razzle Dazzle from Chicago (the movie) for Star Trek, by Killa and T. Jonesy. It's effing brilliant and makes me forget how much I loathed the song by its sheer unadulterated brilliance!)
4. Why would people go to a vidding con if they're not that into vids? I mean, I get seeing your friends, especially if that's the only con they go to. But... if you know it's a con devoted totally to vids, and you're not either a vid fan or a vidder, why take up the membership space? Why spend the money, and then disparage vids in general in a con report afterwards and tell people you're not that into vids and are all now vidded out and never cared that much in the first place? WTF? I think of the people who might not get to go because of a membership cap, and it mystifies me why someone would go to something like this if they either don't like vids, or only want to see vids in one or two narrow fandoms, and everything else earns their disparaging disdain. Do. Not. Get. It.
