|
Post by sloopjohnc on Mar 31, 2021 13:26:56 GMT
I like his writing, but don't admire the guy. I have a couple degrees of separation as my dad's brother's former father-in-law ran the dude ranch in Idaho where one of the last photos of Hemingway were taken.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Mar 31, 2021 14:43:21 GMT
There's something stuffy and predictable about his approach for me. But, like Adam Curtis, he's devised an approach that seems to give his documentaries an automatic respect and credibility.
|
|
|
Post by sloopjohnc on Mar 31, 2021 16:03:08 GMT
There's something stuffy and predictable about his approach for me. But, like Adam Curtis, he's devised an approach that seems to give his documentaries an automatic respect and credibility. Well, he's approached a lot of American subjects where people have various levels of personal investment and seems to hit the mark more times than not. The Hemingway one is six hours.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Mar 31, 2021 16:08:57 GMT
There's something stuffy and predictable about his approach for me. But, like Adam Curtis, he's devised an approach that seems to give his documentaries an automatic respect and credibility. Well, he's approached a lot of American subjects where people have various levels of personal investment and seems to hit the mark more times than not. The Hemingway one is six hours. He should've have made it using Hemingway's style. "Ernest was born. He tried to live as fully as he could. Then he died. And that's that." Then it would only have lasted a minute.
|
|
|
Post by sloopjohnc on Mar 31, 2021 17:07:15 GMT
Burns and his producer were on a national cable news show this morning talking about Hemingway. I think I would have done a documentary on the big four of that era: Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Dos Passos substituting for Stein. But today, you'd probably have to include Stein even though Dos Passos was more of a stylistic pioneer.
You could have included Frost and William Carlos Williams too if you were really ambitious.
|
|
|
Post by tory on Mar 31, 2021 17:16:19 GMT
There's something stuffy and predictable about his approach for me. But, like Adam Curtis, he's devised an approach that seems to give his documentaries an automatic respect and credibility. Forgive me for going off-topic, but does Adam Curtis have "credibility"? He's a middle-class David Icke.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Mar 31, 2021 17:29:53 GMT
There's something stuffy and predictable about his approach for me. But, like Adam Curtis, he's devised an approach that seems to give his documentaries an automatic respect and credibility. Forgive me for going off-topic, but does Adam Curtis have "credibility"? He's a middle-class David Icke. Well his documentries get a lot of attention and receive critical praise. I have mixed feelings about them myself.
I think comparing him to Icke is a lttle harsh!
|
|
|
Post by tory on Mar 31, 2021 17:31:24 GMT
This sums up my feelings on Adam Curtis
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Mar 31, 2021 17:37:54 GMT
Yeah I've seen that before, it's very well done. I often find his docs frustrating, but they can be very watchable. It helps if you view them like an art project rather than a documentary.
|
|
|
Post by Sneelock on Mar 31, 2021 18:30:44 GMT
I'd watch a six hours Ken Burns documentary on Crotch Rot.
|
|
|
Post by Sneelock on Mar 31, 2021 18:32:46 GMT
since I'm sure Ken could fill six hours of interest about Crotch Rot - Hemingway should be a cinch.
|
|
|
Post by sloopjohnc on Mar 31, 2021 22:11:51 GMT
I'd watch a six hours Ken Burns documentary on Crotch Rot. He's documenting Preludin?
|
|
|
Post by tory on Apr 1, 2021 8:29:17 GMT
I loved the Jazz, Civil War, American West and Vietnam documentaries. They were authoritative and informative.
|
|
|
Post by sloopjohnc on Apr 1, 2021 13:27:40 GMT
I loved the Jazz, Civil War, American West and Vietnam documentaries. They were authoritative and informative. All good. I think my favorites are the baseball and country music ones. The jazz one was great though. The Civil War one is the gold standard for documentaries. A little while ago, I saw a documentary on the documentary which detailed the narrators and why they chose the photos they did.
|
|
rayge
Administrator
Invisible
Posts: 8,776
|
Post by rayge on Apr 1, 2021 14:12:35 GMT
Fond as I am of Ken Burns's work, it's the subject I find problematic here. Of all the accepted heavyweights of American Literature from The Last of the Mohicans to around 1980 or so when I stopped paying particular attention, Hemingway is the one I got on with the least (apart from Saul Bellow, if he can be considered a heavyweight these days, and Henry James – I never read anything they wrote), partly because of his style, which I find too dry, but mainly because of his personality as the sensitive, wounded, alpha male, so I don't know if I would be able to hack six hours about him, but if I were, Mr Burns would be the one to do it. I should add that I know about, and have read more, US lit than English, that almost all my favourite poets and novelists are American, and that I even added to the canon myself : I haven't read everything that Hemingway wrote, either, basically because I didn't much care for what I did read
|
|