And now something NOT Inception-related!

Xposting here and Other Media: Casting sides come out for Runaways movie. Show early signs of fail. [link]

Opinion please. Would the use of the word "cheesy" offend Escape from New York fans in the following?

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I think that x can best be understood through analogy to a cheesy 1981 John Carpenter film.

Escape from New York was set in a future New York City (in distant 1988!) which had been turned into a giant maximum security prison. Reactions to its cartoon violence, cynicism, B-movie sensibility and badly concealed idealism vary from love to hate to mockery.

I don't know if John Carpenter's films are considered cheesy.

Yes he did genre movies and some b-movies, but he's most often been compared to Howard Hawks as a guy who mastered many genres and did it exceedingly well.

I mean, hell, Wm. Gibson cites Escape From New York as one of his influences on Neuromancer.

Escape From New York is cheesy in the best way. I adore that movie, and Snake Plissken, and the whole gutted, decayed Manhattan-as-prison thing. We own it, actually.

Yeah I meant cheesy in the way Amy said. But I'm not sure cheesy is the right word. Now that I think about it EFNY is authentically B-movie. Can something authentic be cheesy? It seems like inauthenticy is part of the definition of cheesy not only in denotation but connotation.

There are a lot of cheesy b-movies, authentic or not.

I'm trying to think of what defines cheesiness to me.

It has something to with pandering within the genre. Sometimes that can be good cheese. Melodrama that's way over the top. Gratuitous violence and sex.

But I think Carpenter has more restraint than that.

Escape from LA is much more cheesy than Escape from New York. I didn't know there was a community of people who mocked New York as a thing inherently deserving of mockery. Bits are over the top, of course, but it took itself seriously. There's a lot of dystopianism that is repeated in several other movies.

Anyway, I'm a fan of New York, and I'm taken aback by the use of "cheesy."

Yeah I decided it was a bad word choice. Should have known when I doubted it. I sometimes forget that if I wonder whether a word is the right choice, it is not.

As to mocking. I love the movie. But I'm using it as a metaphor. And specifically I am using a reaction to the movie to be a metaphor. So I was trying to cover the spectrum of reactions my readers are likely to have. I suspect there are people out there who mock all genre movies. But maybe "mock" is also a bad choice, and the spectrum should just be love or hate. (The reaction I am going to use as a metaphor is "aspire to the way NY is run in EFNY as the idea way to run a society". So I'm not trying to diss the movie, but just contrast that reaction to the spectrum of reasonable reactions, while not just assuming "love" is the only reaction everyone will have. )

Ahhh, I love Janet McTeer. Thanks to Kathy finding Precious Bane on YouTube (it's been infamously unavailable on DVD), I've reacquainted myself with Janet McTeer's awesomeness.

Here I present for all the girls who like film of girls kissing girls scenes from Scenes From a Marriage featuring Janet as Vita Sackville-West making the quite amorous, delectable kissing with her lover Violet Trefusis. Romantic girl kissing here.

Here's a section from the middle of Precious Bane if you're curious where you can see Janet as Prue Sarn (who suffers from a hare-lip). You get to see her play off the young Clive Owen (who plays her cruel brother) and off the man she loves, Kester. Rural romance here. It is a very affecting performance in one of the most romantic stories ever.