Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
If you use an @yahoo.com email or any related Yahoo services, they have blocked us also due to "user complaints"
-UE
Confused Matthew
Confused Matthew is a web critic. He delivers his reviews in a slide show format. This minimalistic format may be boring, but it is practical as it not only ties into the "Talk is cheap, art is priceless" motto all reviewers should take to heart, but his anti masturbatory fluff motif with his vendetta against movies that get greenlit when they should not have.
Confession time.
I thought The Matrix trilogy as a whole was deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep. Matthew, who is an actual Philosophy major, gave a crash course in "obscurantism."
I thought Saw was scary and deep. I thought Jigsaw as a well intentioned extremist type anti villain. I even bought into the "he's not technically a killer" statement. Matthew gave me a crash course in law.
I'm an anime fan. Being a fan of classic 16 bit-32 bit era video games, I'm all over those over the top tropes. I was also led to believe that Miyazaki was an animation god. Matthew deconstructed Spirited Away as obscurantist trash with zero plot and weak characters with stilted dialogue in a world not well defined. "Like all other anime ever made." Matthew gives a simple reason for his detesting of anime. "It's stupid, it's stupid. I hate it I hate it." Which is not far off. Most anime is misogynistic in its unrealistic portrayals of women. And Giant robots can be brought down with Square Cube Law. There is only one anime Matthew likes... Ironically, it's Lucky Star. Either it is the shining beacon of world building and deep characterization in an obscurantist, fan pandering cesspool... Or girlfriend(I'll explain in the comments.)
I thought Minority Report was an intelligent film. Matthew made Ebert and Speilberg his bitches.
Confused Matthew isn't perfect. He's not the best comedian, and sometimes his logic falters... *Avatar* *Cough* He is also slow on updates, but he is always insightful and knows his tropes.
If you want to laugh at bad movies that you are already pre-conditioned into hating, watch the TGWTG circle jerk. If you want to be challenged with critical thinking, watch Confused Matthew. Definately check out earlier youtube reviews. Those are the best and are very short and to the point. He is not egotistical as these other tropers are painting him. He is very humble, and shy. His beef is with the movies, not the fans.
Comments
@Icalasari
That's exactly my point. As Penn & Teller would usually point out, the things these Hollywood producers, writers, and directors do is the common magician's trick of misdirection. To be able to properly criticize movies we need to have an analytical mind, which uses logic, and of course, logic conflicts with emotion. Because of that, movies can emotionally manipulate people into accepting things that should have broken our willing suspension of disbelief.
"It's not bad... Not as long as you don't think about it too hard." That, is the usual excuse to not analyze and deconstruct a movie for what it is, and there by, letting these movies pass.
I have found this misdirection very harmful to me and other audiences over the years. It turns audiences into "Deer" and movies into "headlights." Twenty minutes into the future, and our next Oscar winner will be, "A Sparkly Crystal That We Are Going To Put in Front of Your Face For an Hour In 3D."
And even worse, sometimes movies will claim to offering you philosophical conundrums when they really aren't. Enter Matthew's crash course in obscurantism: "To ask what this means, is to miss the point. The point is to hit you over the head with useless jargon until you accept that you are in the presence of a deep and intellectual mind."
In other words, movies like The Matrix sequels will act like they know philosophy when they really don't, but dangerously, they'll make audiences think they do. Other movies like this are "Waking Life" (which Matthew has reviewed) and "What the Bleep Do We Know?" (which Matthew hasn't reviewed... yet).
And this is also why I'm upset that certain requester demanded Matthew not to review "Ghost in the Shell." Now, I liked Ghost in the Shell, likewise, I thought it looked cool and the soundtrack was euphoric. However, I never really understood the plot from what I remember from it, and surprise, surprise! None of the other people I talked to got it either. Same with Akira. I suspect it was one of those obscurantist movies. Yet, it was and still is being heralded as the pinnacle of Japanese animation along with Akira. If it was obscurantist, than indeed, it was another one of those movies that did not deserve the endless praise it got. It would have been another lesson to us anime fans that we need to get priorities straight and not just believe a movie to be intelligent just because it didn't make sense to us.
Like you said, I don't trust writers anymore, I don't trust producers anymore, I don't mainstream critics anymore, and I definitely don't trust the Oscars anymore.
That is also why I defend Matthew's "cheap production values/slide show project format."
In the same way Maddox's plain, black, web 1.0 page is a take that against all the glossed up bullshit in the world. Matthew's stylistic suck is a deliberate attack against movies that hide their weak writing with all star casts, mesmerizing soundtracks, quality animation, and/or special fx. It is blunt, honest, and "pure" criticism.
It was just the comment of you saying that he thought Anime was all trash with one exception. That put me on edge, just like saying that, say, all romance is trash would. The dismissal was the problem
However, if he's applying that dismissal to everything in a case of, "It has to prove itself to me first", then ok
^ Not sure where Myr's thoughts end and the copy/paste begins.
Then again, I'm kinda skimming it, knowing that some of it is copy/paste from a contemptible critic.
Personally. I love him. He reminds of Maddox a bit, and I love troll opinions. And by "troll opinions", I mean well written contrarian arguments that go against the norm. In fact, he sort of retreads Maddox a bit given his reviews of Titanic, The Matrix, and the Star Wars prequels. Of course, he does a better job on reviewing them in my opinion, because Maddox was never big on "depth" and usually just complained about things because there wasn't any "Lesbians" or "children getting murdered" or "hippies getting their shit ruined." Ironically, Maddox loved Spirited Away. Must have been because it was anime. Funny how some anime fans are as biased as the people they claim to be biased.
I've been following Matthew ever since he started with his early youtube reviews.
Here's a couple of my early favorites as I consider them his best:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bw7uLyAzSXs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCJEMZREqxI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfkQ8ZaHrsY
I will admit though, he is not very funny, but he is extremely insightful. The problem with his comedy is his lack of timing. Even he admits that he's tried making every frame of his reviews funny. However I do find humor in his confused "poor little me" logo, because I imagine some angry galoot wanting to punch it when looking at it and hearing about how his favorite summer masturbatory slug fest was bad.
One thing I especially admire is his honesty and "anti-fluff" motif that he shares with Maddox. This motif I'm talking about ties into their use of minimalistic formats, namely the reason why Maddox's page is all plain, and Matthew uses a slide-show format and only expresses himself as single frame. You see, Matthew desires a movie's "content" over anything else, namely the story and the characters. If the characters aren't well defined, and the world isn't well defined, and the plot of events amounted to nothing, than can you honestly say that your piece was good?
A lot of movies these days tend to hide their terrible writing by "fluffing" them up with either fantastic special FX, beautiful sound tracks, fluid animation, great acting, and other forms of audience pandering. The whole process is akin to polishing a turd. You can strip away all these elements that are just bought with money and you would be left with a shitty script. A turd.
I loved his Minority Report review, especially considering that I bought into the hype, and enjoyed Minority report. Matthew's criticisms were spot on all about; all the movie really was, was a spruced up chase sequence of a guy running into each problem stupidly, and the movie lies to you saying that it is a profound piece of Sci-fi that makes you think. He also made a good point about Steven Spielberg and Roger Ebert, saying that we shouldn't blame the writers of this film, nor the director, but the producer, who allows movies like this to exist, and the film critics, who endorse this shit. He also made a humorous Godwin's law joke, comparing Speilberg and Ebert to Paul Von Hindenberg, who actually allowed the Nazi party to take administration. And he was self aware of that joke, saying "...And yes, I'm comparing this movie to Hitler."
Sometimes, I actually look up at him as a super critic, a critic who has surpassed all other critics like Roger Ebert in regards to reviews.
Sometimes I feel Roger Ebert, is indeed, actually a sell out with biases himself.
I mean compare his review of Team America: World Police, a film with an actual, important message that speaks true about the world, and society and people:http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041014/REVIEWS/40921007/1023
...To his review of Ponyo, a typical Miyazaki film with beautiful animation, but lacking in regards to story, to characters, to message. The important things.http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090812/REVIEWS/908129989
And before you say, "but Myrmidon The movie doesn't really have much of a political statement to make at all, aside from showing the many ways in which Americans can be arrogant idiots. Mostly, though, I think it's just that movie that parodies American action movies so well that it's physically painful to watch."
Well, there is a somewhat political statement, and yes it amounts mostly to making fun of everyone, but it is a very true statement about every person in the world and it is more important and insightful than any message Ponyo was trying to deliver, if it had any that is.
Let me remind you guys that I did not write the rules to the world, that is just the way things are. I am very sad about it, but there is nothing we can do. I'll admit that there are unfortunate implications in that the message does seem to have a misogynistic slant to it. Especially considering how South Park has been pro-life before, and I think one of them had an ex girlfriend so that might have been fuel... But it holds strong for being true nontheless.
I think it's entirely a copy/paste.
There's a reason this is in Wonderful Posts and not IJAM.
Confused Matthew is a point-missing piece of shit, and I would not use the word "obscurantist"
I like how you imply that I haven't read his entire archives of his article. Let me give you a run down on Matthew's and Maddox's criteria.
Maddox: I don't like a movie, unless it kicks ass!
Matthew: I don't like a movie, unless it has heart, that heart being a good story, a believable world, and fleshed out characters.
Now if you read Maddox's earlier articles, you'd notice he hates Animaniacs, Tiny Toons, and the entire Disney Afternoon, especially Darkwing Duck (He's biased against Disney). I can say, that those cartoons all had great animation that harkens back to the golden age. I also note that they had great characterization, Darkwing Duck and Gargoyles especially, but as Maddox would say, "it's DISNEY!" Kinda funny because Maddox loved every single 80's action figure cartoon out there like Transformers and GI Joe. He even loved the Rambo cartoon. The Rambo cartoon! Yet he dared call Animaniacs "sugar coated." Now Maddox also loved anime, his name actually is derived from an anime called "Madox-01". I've seen that anime, and personally, its just a typical shoot em up mecha anime. It lacks characterization and motivations for anything happening in the plot, but hey! ACTION! Detailed and crisp animation! Masturbatory. (Personally, I enjoyed it, but I'm a glutton for fluff.)
Check out these "classic reviews" here from his 13 best movies list:
"It has this war between good guys and bad guys." Pfffft, so what else? Every other movie usually has that! Braveheart had that and so did Star Wars, and you hated those! Why do you love this—"It's really cool." Oh! I know! Because it's anime! And it has action and detailed scenery! It has some girl getting her shit ruined by a penis monster! The logic here is "it's anime, therefore it kicks ass."
Number. Freaking. 2. Because it's anime, and that there's some dude going around killing demons. Note this movie is akin to a "slice & dice" slaughter house action film like Kill Bill. Masturbatory. Personally I enjoyed it, but I also enjoyed Kill Bill, and that film is on Matthew's "To Do" list, and as usual, he will make a very good point to me on why the film is bad. Personally, I think it's going to be because it is masturbatory in the way it is devoted to pure action rather than "characters and story". The heart of film making. Besides, "meaningful conflict" is the soul of storytelling. So some Bride wants revenge on the people who tried to kill her, big deal. Two wrongs don't make a right.
Once again. It's anime. With people getting their shit ruined. Rendered in breathtaking animation. But that's fluff. That's what you use to polish a turd. They, the filmakers, polish the turd with special Fx and music, and we the public eat it all up. Soon, all movie makers have to do, is put a little jewel in front of our eyes, and we'd stare at it for hours. Pure cinematic masturbation... On our faces.
But the kicker is, is his reason for liking Akira, is:
"Some weird Japanese cartoon about.. er.. some guy.. I forgot. It's a good movie, trust me. I just can't remember what happened in it."
That is the reason of every person I know, including me, had for enjoying Akira. Somehow, the media paints this movie as a Science Fiction classic, but nobody can tell you what it is about! How is that possible? True Art is Incomprehensible. "It's confusing, therefore it's good!" True Art is Foreign. "It's anime. Fuck american kiddie kartoonz! Anime is teh hardcore!!!!11"
Here is a review from Spoony that blows Maddox's review out of the water:
http://spoonyexperiment.com/akira/
Crushing.
Btw, someone requested Matthew to do "Ghost in the Shell"... Then made him pull it back at the last moment, right before it was going to reviewed, which was right after his positive review of "Batman: Mask of the Phantasm." Looks like someone didn't want their "critically acclaimed anime" insulted. Truth hurts. Funny being that Ghost in the Shell is another one of those movies that people herald as a science fiction classic... Yet can't remember what it was about.![[lol]](http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/lol2v12_4863.png "[lol]")
Are you implying that if a movie wins Oscar, it's automatically good? Pffffft. Lion King won an Oscar. Titanic won an Oscar. Bowling for Columbine won an Oscar. Spirited Away just won an Oscar for wowing audiences, including me, with breathtaking, celluloid animation they hadn't seen in ages. It won audiences by emotionally manipulating people with its tearful soundtrack. No thought into plot. No devotion to character development. No world building. Just pure, masturbatory escapist fantasy. Like Avatar. Oooooooooo Ahhhhhhh. Look at that animation! Hayao Miyazaki sure pulled the rug under you, you baka gaijin you!
Point is, I don't believe in Oscars, not anymore. I will admit the idea of a bunch of film buffish intellectuals all voting on films so that the winner can gain more attention by unaware Joe Q. Average was a well intentioned idea, but like communism, and capitalism, and every other "ism"
, it just didn't work out because people can be bought, sold, and manipulated. If you want a good movie, you are going to have to look for it yourself. You also have to read books, thousands and thousands of books in order to get smart. You can't just rely on what people tell you. Authority is merely an illusion made real by the people who believe in it.
This is surreal. Someone actually looking at Team America: World Police and getting the exactly wrong message about it while simultaneously being correct. Not to mention that "obscuratist" means, to whoever Myrmidon appears to be quoting here, "it is too complicated for me to properly understand," like that one asshole I met that told me how Ulysses was worthless because it didn't mean anything. Though it's pretty sad to think that somebody might be missing out on great, challenging movies because he/she finds them too confusing.
Either way, I'll probably have to watch these reviews now
Edit: Aaaaand Ninja'd
This is all copypasta from (I think) TVTropes. Myrm disagrees with the person he's copying from, because the person he's copying from is an idiot.
Oh, he liked the first Bayformers movie, he just reviewed it as bad movie, because it had the makings of a bad movie. (Which if you have been following my posts, those "makings" are poor plot, poor characters, poor world building, overall badwriting covered with audience pandering fluff in the form of explosions, robots, and Megan Fox boobies. Masturbatory fluff all over your face, and you lap it up.)
So like me, he liked this bad movie, but he admitted to falling for the fluff. Does that make it good? "No, " he says. And it must be given the criticism it deserved, and he gave it.
You see, you are a dealing with a rare kind of critic. One that isn't bought and sold by advertisers. One who is intelligent, and good at winning arguments (philosophy major, bitch).
That is, until Beth pulls something. Like BALEETING his site. Or financially ruining him with a marriage divorce. Typical "relationship."
He's clearly copy/pasting, because you can see the places in the text with broken images, and the formatting is kind of wonky. This part in particular is pretty bizzare:
Are you implying that if a movie wins Oscar, it's automatically good? Pffffft. Lion King won an Oscar. Titanic won an Oscar. Bowling for Columbine won an Oscar. Spirited Away just won an Oscar for wowing audiences, including me, with breathtaking, celluloid animation they hadn't seen in ages. It won audiences by emotionally manipulating people with its tearful soundtrack. No thought into plot. No devotion to character development. No world building. Just pure, masturbatory escapist fantasy. Like Avatar. Oooooooooo Ahhhhhhh. Look at that animation! Hayao Miyazaki sure pulled the rug under you, you baka gaijin you!
Yeah, Spirited Away is just like Avatar in that it's masturbatory escapist fantasy with no character development. Uh-huh.
Still, yeah, Myrm always fucks my brain up with his threads >.<
Once I take care of some other stuff, I'll probably read through it again.
TGWTG and his spin-offs bore me to tears. Not. Gonna. Watch em.
So long as we're talking about things that confuse us, here's something that confuses me: out of any aspect of Confused Matthew's reviews or reviewing style that one could potentially comment on, all anybody ever talks about is, a) how his reviews piss people off, or b), that his points of view go against the norm of film opinions, as if either of those are the reason his reviews are good or worth watching.
News flash: they aren't. If either of those were the case, then you could rightfully say that the Irate Gamer is the greatest unsung game reviewer of our time. Also, you've probably got a gnarly persecution complex going.
But I digress. Whether or not you think he's a good reviewer beyond that point is entirely up to you. Personally, I enjoy his stuff; among other things, I like his methodicalness, I like his demand for events in a movie to happen in a logical progression, and I like his straight-to-business presentation. You may not like him, but that's your prerogative.
But he's not good solely for the fact that he riles people up or goes against the norm. That's ludicrous.
But it's not a TGWTG spin-off. There standards are too high!
Yes I'm aware they hired the Blockbuster Buster. Still better than Confused the-incredibles-is-a-bad-movie-because-it-has-conflict Matthew.
Oh yeah, he was the dude that said that kid's movies can't have conflict lest they challenge or confuse their viewers, which of course are made up of five-year-olds who have never seen a movie before in their life. He also thinks that 2001: A Space Odyssey is a worse movie than 2010 because he was confused by the former. Ugh.
Well you see, NOTHING HAPPENS in 2001! It's so BORING!
O.o
Please tell me you're joking and nobody actually thinks that.
I've seen his Incredibles review, and it's not exactly like that. His problem was that he thought the movie was too dark and unpleasant and, in his words, cynical, in particular the scene with the airplane and the missiles; at regular intervals when explaining the plot, he punctuates it with "Are you having fun yet, kids?".
Every actual kid I've talked to loved it, his argument is invalid.
I'm not entirely sure what's going on here, but either Myrm or someone he's quoting from seems much too worked up about masturbatory fantasy. Paging Dr Freud!
He's quoting a guy named Chickenzhit who did a series of posts on Tv Tropes that basically boiled down to "a reviewer I worship said this sucks, therefore no is allowed to like it anymore".
By the way, did you guys know ED is back after it got turned into Oh internet
Encyclopediadramatica.org is now:
Ohinternet.com
When I saw that it was deleted for a SFW Know Your Meme ripoff when we already have Know Your Meme as a lighter side of Internet culture for those not willing to subject their eyes to the many horrors of life and the internet, I freaked, down right I MAD! And I'm shocked that no one else was upset as I was. It was like that night on November 14, when John Solomon's webcomics review blog was BALEETED. I felt like Rorschach when the Comedian was murdered! No one was caring despite the fact that valuable internet culture was being swept away under the rug!
Let me recap to you what exactly the world is like without ED:
Gone is the epic Offended page. No longer can I test my endurance and sensibilities to see how American I am anymore.
Gone is the library cataloging the biggest assholes and losers the internet has seen. Losers like Chris Chan, Alex Wuori, Snapesnogger, and Zeriara are all going to get away scott free and are now able to rape women, children, and torture animals as they please, because no one will be there harass them and document everything they do and scare them back into their wretched hives anymore. No brave soul will be there to troll them to death in an orderly fashion and there would be no article to explain this news report: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkAngvkWVkk
(Hint: That shadowy Lulzkiller that Fox News is defending, is not a good person.)
Gone is constructive criticism! Now, tartlets are free to swipe art and ORIGINAL CHARACTER DO NOT STEAL, as well as draw lopsided boobs and do other visual atrocities because no one will speak up to tell them how much their shit stinks. Once again, the same with John Solomon's death. No one will give satirical reviews of bad artists to shame and deflate their unwarrented self importance of their inflated egos while feeding the masses with fresh, unadulterated LULZ in the process.
Gone are the copypasta and creepypastas. Now, I can no longer read myself some funny/scary stories to bed anymore.
Gone is the insightful documents of successful raids on places like Gamestop and Habbo and organizations like the Patriotic Nigras and the GNAA. Important troll history is lost!
Gone is "The Comprehensive Guide To Life". Not only is that amazing article gone, but so is the many tidbits of helpful info. ED may have been dedicated to making fun of us and everyone else, but between the lines there was important cautionary tips we could take so that we don't end up like most of the assholes documented on it. We could take such advice on how to live our lives so that we adjust ourselves to society like any evolutionary organism. Our document on Chris Chan alone helps people lose weight, get a job, read books, and become independent. One step at a time, we could improve the outlook of humanity, if only we have some shame, and humility, the ability to recognize our flaws.
Gone is the fight for the LULZ. LULZ, the only thing in this world worth fighting for! A huge swarm of faggoty FRUNZ is upon us! They say "there's no humor in heaven" but who's to say that heaven is actually a state of denial in regards to society's problems.
Gone. Gone. Gone
To see one the greatest websites and purveyors of free speech, be deleted and replaced with some corporate sell out like Embaumsworld, catering to the lowest common denominator by showcasing material they didn't create and inputting nothing of their own. At least ED would tell you about the places the where content came from, rather than just being a circus. It makes me sick to my stomach!
But it's okay now, because we now have...
Encyclopediadramatica.ch (NSFW, but you guys already should know that by now.)
We Trolls, are the lifeblood of the internet, whether you like it or not! Our society and our way of life may be frowned upon, but we are that "necessary evil" that holds the bridges of society together. We have been always lurking in the shadows, watching over all of you. Think of us as the Dark Templars in your Protoss society. Without our blades, you cannot hope to destroy the cerebrates of swarming ANTI-LULZ Zergs.
BTW, help us out if you can. When Lulzkilling, femiNAZI, Anti-lulz terrorist turncoat, Girlvynl aka Sherrod De HIPPO betrayed us, and deleted all our archives, we lost a lot of pictures documenting valuable history of LULZ. The text was retrieved alright though. So help a fellow wiki out, we need you! If you have some of the pictures that were deleted, please upload them. Much lulz.
BTW, help us out if you can. When Lulzkilling, femiNAZI, Anti-lulz terrorist turncoat, Girlvynl aka Sherrod De HIPPO betrayed us, and deleted all our archives, we lost a lot of pictures documenting valuable history of LULZ. The text was retrieved alright though. So help a fellow wiki out, we need you! If you have some of the pictures that were deleted, please upload them. Much lulz.
He sounds like a reasonable and intelligent person.
It was kind of a dick move to nuke the archives. Many of the best articles on ED had screencaps with the subjects making an ass of themselves in posts instead of tiresome pr0n shoops of the topic's face.