![]() ![]() It's as if the show's editor was a spam bot. ![]() When celebrities appear on the show, they flub and stutter like robot hologram versions of themselves. They spout nonsense where platitudes and corporate messages usually go. It's just that they put unattractive, demented-seeming people in front of the green screen instead of the usual telegenic emoters. Their collages of chopped-and-screwed sounds with spastic motion graphics and sloppy green screen don't seem much different (in effect, if not production values) from what's on cable any given Sunday. The duo's work seems to flow directly from three sources: Bad corporate promotional and instructional videos, absurd local TV programming and assaultive blockbuster films. But it's likely that actor-writer-directors Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim took inspiration from none of these freaks. In them you can see DNA from Ernie Kovacs, John Waters, the Kuchar brothers, Robert Downey, Sr., Tom Rubnitz, early Beck music videos, Damon Packard, Aqua Teen Hunger Force (and every other Adult Swim psychotic episode) and Harmony Korine, to name just a random few. "Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie" is a lot like "Tim and Eric's Awesome Show, Great Job!." They're both experimental video art posing as sketch comedy. "Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie" is available for streaming/download on iTunes, Amazon Instant, Vudu and YouTube. Of course there are so many (in the conversation and in the list on Wikipedia) that I may have mislabeled some, in which case please let me know. To help pin down my own thoughts (following up on years of writing about this very subject, including a series of recent posts and comment threads - "Avenge me! AVENGE ME!," "The Avengers & the Amazing 'Critic-Proof' Movie," "Continuing to argue for the irrelevance of my own opinions," "Cannes and Cannes-not: On being a movie geek"), I've tried to label the various formal and informal fallacies of logic at play here, and link to Wikipedia definitions of them. Scott, as you know if you read him regularly, is quite eloquent and calls bullshit on some of Carr's more outrageous fabrications. Carr plays the clown, but I'm not sure how much of it is intentional because most of what he says is so ignorant, and he doesn't even attempt to support it or invest thought in the conversation. I urge you to follow that link, watch the seven-and-a-half-minute conversation and let me know what you make of it. Scott on the subject of movie criticism in a "Sweet Spot" video posted on the New York Times' ArtsBeat blog last Friday. ![]()
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