I keep hearing in some bios mentioned in the news that "So-and-so graduated from Eton", which comes across to me that they didn't go to college afterwards.
(pardon my americanism)
or is it just "I went to Eton and then went to a shit school (= not Oxbridge) afterwards so I'm only mentioning Eton"
You're only put there if you do really poorly at school and your parents pay a lot of money to have people babysit you (which is the primary function of those schools).
@Cerberus okay I think I have thought of a good way to explain it.
A simple analogy. Might take a while to explain, though, because I fear you won't be familiar with anything involved in it.
There's that really bad movie. Universally regarded as bad. Battlefield Earth. Very poorly written, very poorly acted, very poorly filmed, very poorly cut, very poorly scored. All of that very obviously so, there's no two ways about it, you won't find anyone who disagrees.
Like, you know there's those really bad movies that are so bad they gain a cult following. The Room being one famous example. People watch it ironically. And have great fun. They genuinely enjoy how bad it is. But Battlefield Earth isn't even that. Nobody wants to watch it even to just laugh at it. It's not so bad it's good again. It's just all bad all the time, and that's the end of it.
And then there was that one rather famous film critic who recently passed away, Roger Ebert. Won the Pulitzer prize for his work, and all that. He went to watch Battlefield Earth. Couldn't stand it, of course. Started off his review saying the movie was "like taking a bus trip with someone who has needed a bath for a long time: not merely bad, but unpleasant in a hostile way". Things like that. And it only went downhill from there, you can imagine.
So anyway. That's my preamble. The following is what I'm actually getting at.
In that review, Ebert wrote something else rather poignant and to the point. "The director has learned from better films that directors sometimes tilt their cameras, but he has not learned why."
Actually it's one of his most famous quotes.
And that is exactly how I felt reading J. K. Rowling. Every little thing — what she wrote about, how she wrote it, everything —, it was very obvious that she had read lots of really good books that did just that, but it was clear she had no understanding of when and why they did it.
She mimicks good writers, but not even for the purpose of coming across as a good writer. Like, that alone would actually make her a better writer, slowly but steadily.
But no, she just mimicks for the mimicking's sake. She has no goal in mind.
It's not that she is trying too hard, it's that she's not trying at all. She has no ambitions to come across as something she is not: a writer.
As I said earlier, Ebert is really a fun guy to talk with about movies. His knowledge is encyclopedic, but he is never pedantic on the one side or a fanboi on the other.
He used to hang out at O'Rourke's pub on North Avenue in the '70s/'80s. He would talk to anyone at the bar, especially if you bought him a beer.
@RegDwigнt Cool. If the OP of the deleted answer doesn't want to own it, I happily would – either on that question or on the one it was merged to! Or we can request it be anonymized. I still can't guess what the motivation for deleting it was, but it was so helpful I actually tried (without success) finding it in archive.org!
@Cerberus oh and you go watch that video from the 2:08 mark. Ebert explains the thing with the cartoonishly big eyes, and where it originated from. Because Japan it was not.
Damn, that's such a fine interview. Eight minutes of your time well spent.
@Cerberus The best horror movie (not ghosts) is Wrong Turn 1--6 (cannibalism) or Halloween 1--11 (slasher).
And yes, I actually watched all those, except Halloween 2, because it is not really part of the series on Michael Myers but something else altogether, a one time thing.
Oh and I have not watched Halloween 11 yet, which I believe is still showing in the theatres!
@RegDwigнt Yep, perfectly expressed — as was usual with him.
Now I want to watch that.
@MattE.Эллен They're not really scary. Jacob's Ladder — now that's a scary movie. Psychological frights are way worse than bloodbaths, which are just stupid.
@RegDwigнt: Although since it's Japanese, and serious, I'm going to really hate it when one of the characters dies.