Let's talk about maybe cinema's most overlooked master director, Peter Weir. Weir is the most-nominated director you've never heard of, holding 5 nominations from the Academy, 4 Golden Globes, and 7 BAFTAs (winning 3). His painterly, sweeping style is lush and classical and epic, the deeply-saturated cinematic equivalent of baroque composition. Wide vistas, Malick-esque natural lighting, and a flair for organic environments mark his technique as a master of traditional cinematography, made all the more interesting with his complex heroes and stories detailing the lives of the morally compromised. Let's look at some of his compositions:
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such classic
much motivated light
wow
Weir doesn't work much these days, sadly, and he's getting a little age on him (he's 71). It's shame to think we may be at the end of his production cycle (he hasn't attached himself to a project in the last 5 years), but I'd be remiss if I didn't at least extol the virtues of this naturalist to an audience of cinephiles that may not be familiar with his CV. Some of his titles are available for streaming on Netflix and Hulu, the rest are available for rent on services like iTunes, YouTube, and GooglePlay. I'd recommend these as most seminal works:
- Witness
- The Mosquito Coast
- Dead Poets Society
- Master & Commander
- Gallipoli
- The Way Back
- The Year of Living Dangerously
I hope you all enjoy these as much as I did.
Master & Commander is just about my favorite movie. Pretty much everything about it hits a checkmark in my This Is Awesome column.
I know I've seen The Mosquito Coast because I remember the scene where Harrison Ford wraps up some ice in a bunch of leaves to take to a distant tribe, and by the time he get there it's melted. But otherwise I don't remember anything about it. I may have to seek it out again.
Pulp Fiction is still good what's the problem with it?
Fight Club is okay, its largest negative is the following of people who think a commercial product made by a major movie studio is an anti commercial masterpiece, or that Tyler Durden is a good guy
Donnie Darko definitely wins the award for "best movie in the world when you're a teen but really isn't good at all"
Pulp Fiction is still good what's the problem with it?
Fight Club is okay, its largest negative is the following of people who think a commercial product made by a major movie studio is an anti commercial masterpiece, or that Tyler Durden is a good guy
Donnie Darko definitely wins the award for "best movie in the world when you're a teen but really isn't good at all"
Fight Club and Pulp Fiction are both beloved by maladjusted teens for all the wrong reasons. They actually empathize with Tyler Durden's insane ideas and notions on consumerism, and love to bro out with the fight scenes. They also dig the way Jules intimidates people and the scene where Butch and Marcellus get their revenge.
People who like Donnie Darko tend to be the quintessential Hot Topic kid, finding untold depths in its dimestore philosophy.
Fight club is perfectly fine if you realize that Tyler Durden is full of shit
Tyler Durden is dangerous because he's the Alpha model for a cult leader: handsome, charismatic, driven, energetic, and utterly magnetic. He finds followers (in both the movie and real life) because he can take truthful observations of problems from reality and come up with a solution that appeals to people without the intelligence or concern that those ideas are ridiculous and dangerous and impossible.
I thought it was interesting, but I don't really like having to read a companion piece to a movie to really follow the plot. I haven't seen it in a long, long time, but my impression at the time was that most of the metaphysical stuff was in the book Donnie finds, and we're only privy to small bits of it on screen. I recall playing an arg right after watching it that explained it all, which is an odd way to deliver information in a movie.
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ElJeffeRoaming the streets, waving his mod gun around.Moderator, ClubPAMod Emeritus
I watched shortly after it came out and loved it. Bought it on bluray a couple years back and rewatched it, fearing it may be one of those films that ages terribly, but i still really enjoyed it.
It's not super deep or poignant, but it's a neat little sci-fi flick with an interesting mystery and a bunch of fun performances. It's definitely a film that gets a lot of backlash based on stupid teens thinking it's the deepest film ever, and it also is hurt by having a director who basically made a good film completely on accident, but it's still pretty fun.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
Fight Club is a fine movie, anyone who believes the self destructive Durden's philosophy must not pay attention to the end of the movie. You can't hate on a movie because idiots took the wrong message from it.
And people don't like Pulp Fiction? We're not supposed to Empathize with Jules or feel gratifiction that Butch and Marcellus Wallce get revenge? What?
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
I can't fault Fight Club because idiots think Tyler Durden is awesome. That's a terrible reason to deem a film no longer "good". People think Gordon Gecko is an awesome dude. I'm sure there are people that think Jordon Belfort is something to aspire to. That doesn't somehow make those films retroactively bad.
Fight Club is a really good movie. Just because dopes wear Tyler Durden t-shirts doesn't make that not true.
Just a fascinating work in a lot of ways. The deliberate, low-key professionalism of the crew is still something that's rare in movies. Maybe Heat, The Score, and Heist are ones that come close. The way Sean Bean is paid for his time and dismissed from the crew for his bravado and inexperience, when a lesser movie would've killed him. The civilian casualties during the operation and the collateral damage during the car chases when other movies have everything take place in a kind of pocket universe without bystanders or crossfire.
Mojo_JojoWe are only now beginning to understand the full power and ramifications of sexual intercourseRegistered Userregular
Finally got around to watching interstellar. I quite liked it, although my girlfriend really hated it.
The bad: the audio is really poor. I didn't go to the cinema to see it because of how badly mixed it was and that was the right choice. I know Christopher Nolan said he made the speech hard to hear on purpose, but that was a poor choice
The end missed the obvious satisfying conclusion and decided to spin out nothing for ten minutes in a way that sort of undermines things
Rust sacrifices himself into the black hole, becomes Murphy's ghost and should have stayed there, trapped in a world without time. Cut to bad scientist sitting by her dead boyfriend's grave as the first colony landings start. The end.
The good: The robots. It was a real joy to have some 80's sci fi robots in an otherwise quite serious setting
The people. Astronauts are people too and everybody ends up doing everything they can to live for a few more years/days/hours
I'd keep banging on but I'm on my phone.
Homogeneous distribution of your varieties of amuse-gueule
Donnie Darko annoyed me more for the fact everything was a net wash in the end and it didn't explain anything worth a damn. It's like the (lower end of the spectrum) CW Primer.
Finally got around to watching interstellar. I quite liked it, although my girlfriend really hated it.
The bad: the audio is really poor. I didn't go to the cinema to see it because of how badly mixed it was and that was the right choice. I know Christopher Nolan said he made the speech hard to hear on purpose, but that was a poor choice
The end missed the obvious satisfying conclusion and decided to spin out nothing for ten minutes in a way that sort of undermines things
Rust sacrifices himself into the black hole, becomes Murphy's ghost and should have stayed there, trapped in a world without time. Cut to bad scientist sitting by her dead boyfriend's grave as the first colony landings start. The end.
The good: The robots. It was a real joy to have some 80's sci fi robots in an otherwise quite serious setting
The people. Astronauts are people too and everybody ends up doing everything they can to live for a few more years/days/hours
I'd keep banging on but I'm on my phone.
I watched it yesterday and enjoyed it for the most part. The audio was a bit of a pain, but being able to rewind allowed me to work with it.
I think that the movie stayed so small scale is both its greatest strength and its greatest weakness. I loved that there were very few wide shots of anything having to do with technology or space action. Nice and intimate. There were also no shots that didn't involve the characters in some way--this is not Roland Emmerich. We get to see how bad Earth is by experiencing the fallout with the characters, not by watching the Washington Monument covered in dirt.
But at the same time, it undermined the science part of the sci-fi for me, and took away the grandness. The end of the world, of human life, and all we get are a half dozen characters (some of whom are barely sketches, like the son). It then makes the plot annoyingly hammy and self-centred, like a mediocre short story. Except at least then the focus would have been on the ideas, where in Interstellar those were pretty much background.
It leaned too heavily on the human element, but there wasn't enough there to hold things up by the end.
Plus, I'm just generally tired of that sort of looping plot. I had watched Predestination the night before, and that was more than enough.
I think there are directors that understand how and when to hold on a shot and let a moment hang or breathe, and there are some who just do it because it seems meaningful or dramatic in and of itself. I wouldn't have taken this guy for one of those - the director, David Michod, also directed Animal Kingdom, which was pretty great - but there are so many scenes where it's just Guy Pearce staring at nothing, intensely. Or Robert Pattinson fidgeting. (Pattinson's southern accent is occasionally unintelligible, and while his character is supposed to be sympathetic, all the twitching and garbled speech just makes you want him to go away.)
There just isn't enough going on under the surface for an audience to project meaning into the still, quiet moments of the movie in which we're treated to Pearce's disapproving glare.
Finally got around to watching interstellar. I quite liked it, although my girlfriend really hated it.
The bad: the audio is really poor. I didn't go to the cinema to see it because of how badly mixed it was and that was the right choice. I know Christopher Nolan said he made the speech hard to hear on purpose, but that was a poor choice
The end missed the obvious satisfying conclusion and decided to spin out nothing for ten minutes in a way that sort of undermines things
Rust sacrifices himself into the black hole, becomes Murphy's ghost and should have stayed there, trapped in a world without time. Cut to bad scientist sitting by her dead boyfriend's grave as the first colony landings start. The end.
The good: The robots. It was a real joy to have some 80's sci fi robots in an otherwise quite serious setting
The people. Astronauts are people too and everybody ends up doing everything they can to live for a few more years/days/hours
I'd keep banging on but I'm on my phone.
I watched it yesterday and enjoyed it for the most part. The audio was a bit of a pain, but being able to rewind allowed me to work with it.
I think that the movie stayed so small scale is both its greatest strength and its greatest weakness. I loved that there were very few wide shots of anything having to do with technology or space action. Nice and intimate. There were also no shots that didn't involve the characters in some way--this is not Roland Emmerich. We get to see how bad Earth is by experiencing the fallout with the characters, not by watching the Washington Monument covered in dirt.
But at the same time, it undermined the science part of the sci-fi for me, and took away the grandness. The end of the world, of human life, and all we get are a half dozen characters (some of whom are barely sketches, like the son). It then makes the plot annoyingly hammy and self-centred, like a mediocre short story. Except at least then the focus would have been on the ideas, where in Interstellar those were pretty much background.
It leaned too heavily on the human element, but there wasn't enough there to hold things up by the end.
Plus, I'm just generally tired of that sort of looping plot. I had watched Predestination the night before, and that was more than enough.
The robots were great.
But it doesn't stay small scale. It just stays small scale on Earth because all Earth is really there for is to motivate the characters. And because Earth being small and not worth it is part of the point of the movie.
The rest of the film is full of huge wide sci-fi porn shots to show off grandness and the insignificance of the crew in relation to the universe.
Haven't seen Interstellar yet, but I hope it doesn't really rely on that "the insignificance of the crew in relation to the universe.". Personally I find that an ass backwards viewpoint as without us the universe is just one giant light show with no one to see it. We bring the significance to the universe.
At least until the Gh'lotha finally show up. Maybe they do in Interstellar...
Haven't seen Interstellar yet, but I hope it doesn't really rely on that "the insignificance of the crew in relation to the universe.". Personally I find that an ass backwards viewpoint as without us the universe is just one giant light show with no one to see it. We bring the significance to the universe.
At least until the Gh'lotha finally show up. Maybe they do in Interstellar...
"the crew (or the human race) is insignificant in relation to the universe" is almost the exact opposite of the message of Interstellar
While I would have adored an entire movie made of Interstellar's space exploration, the human story is very central to the first and third acts of the film
I like Donnie Darko for its John Hughes mood; I think it depicts a certain kind of teenager and teenage mood really well, without becoming too beholden to it. The depiction of Donnie's family is beautifully cast and well performed. IMO it gets these parts really right. The more it vanishes up its sci-fi, time-travel, paradoxes-and-existentialism arse, the less it works, but at least in the theatrical version it's easy enough to see much of the latter as the kind of stuff that goes on in Donnie's I'm-a-teen-existentialist mind.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
Interstellar was pretty much total crap. :[
I'll agree on that the robots were quite enjoyable characters though, without being too far-fetched or strange to the setting.
Here's a neat, 3 episode podcast by the BBC that discusses film development, financing, and distribution with people working in the industry today, including folk like Matthew Vaughn and Cassian Elwes. Each episode is 28-29 minutes long, and they're all pretty interesting, for those who want to know more about the business side of filmmaking.
Just a fascinating work in a lot of ways. The deliberate, low-key professionalism of the crew is still something that's rare in movies. Maybe Heat, The Score, and Heist are ones that come close. The way Sean Bean is paid for his time and dismissed from the crew for his bravado and inexperience, when a lesser movie would've killed him. The civilian casualties during the operation and the collateral damage during the car chases when other movies have everything take place in a kind of pocket universe without bystanders or crossfire.
So. Damned. Cool.
Wait. Sean Bean isn't killed?
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TexiKenDammit!That fish really got me!Registered Userregular
I see people talking about movies that aren't Song of the Sea and I'm confused. It's the opposite of Donnie Darko!
Just a fascinating work in a lot of ways. The deliberate, low-key professionalism of the crew is still something that's rare in movies. Maybe Heat, The Score, and Heist are ones that come close. The way Sean Bean is paid for his time and dismissed from the crew for his bravado and inexperience, when a lesser movie would've killed him. The civilian casualties during the operation and the collateral damage during the car chases when other movies have everything take place in a kind of pocket universe without bystanders or crossfire.
So. Damned. Cool.
Wait. Sean Bean isn't killed?
Movie was released in like 1998/1999 or so. It was before he found his niche.
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It's not good. I tried rewatching it a few years ago and it's horribly cliche and full of armchair philosophy.
Not to mention the liquid multi-dimensional sternum penis.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
:bro:
Master & Commander is just about my favorite movie. Pretty much everything about it hits a checkmark in my This Is Awesome column.
I know I've seen The Mosquito Coast because I remember the scene where Harrison Ford wraps up some ice in a bunch of leaves to take to a distant tribe, and by the time he get there it's melted. But otherwise I don't remember anything about it. I may have to seek it out again.
Fight Club is okay, its largest negative is the following of people who think a commercial product made by a major movie studio is an anti commercial masterpiece, or that Tyler Durden is a good guy
Donnie Darko definitely wins the award for "best movie in the world when you're a teen but really isn't good at all"
Now do Irreversible.
Anyone want to beta read a paranormal mystery novella? Here's your chance.
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Who was it who took someone on a date to that movie?
That was everyone's favourite superhero, the Spectacular Perpetually Single Man.
It's also a rare movie where a funny trailer pales in comparison to the actual thing.
I thought the werewolves stole every scene they were in
Fight Club and Pulp Fiction are both beloved by maladjusted teens for all the wrong reasons. They actually empathize with Tyler Durden's insane ideas and notions on consumerism, and love to bro out with the fight scenes. They also dig the way Jules intimidates people and the scene where Butch and Marcellus get their revenge.
People who like Donnie Darko tend to be the quintessential Hot Topic kid, finding untold depths in its dimestore philosophy.
Tyler Durden is dangerous because he's the Alpha model for a cult leader: handsome, charismatic, driven, energetic, and utterly magnetic. He finds followers (in both the movie and real life) because he can take truthful observations of problems from reality and come up with a solution that appeals to people without the intelligence or concern that those ideas are ridiculous and dangerous and impossible.
is fight club good though
No.
That's an ugly, stupid fucking movie.
Or don't, that movie is filthy.
I make no apologies
I thought it was interesting, but I don't really like having to read a companion piece to a movie to really follow the plot. I haven't seen it in a long, long time, but my impression at the time was that most of the metaphysical stuff was in the book Donnie finds, and we're only privy to small bits of it on screen. I recall playing an arg right after watching it that explained it all, which is an odd way to deliver information in a movie.
I watched shortly after it came out and loved it. Bought it on bluray a couple years back and rewatched it, fearing it may be one of those films that ages terribly, but i still really enjoyed it.
It's not super deep or poignant, but it's a neat little sci-fi flick with an interesting mystery and a bunch of fun performances. It's definitely a film that gets a lot of backlash based on stupid teens thinking it's the deepest film ever, and it also is hurt by having a director who basically made a good film completely on accident, but it's still pretty fun.
And people don't like Pulp Fiction? We're not supposed to Empathize with Jules or feel gratifiction that Butch and Marcellus Wallce get revenge? What?
pleasepaypreacher.net
Fight Club is a really good movie. Just because dopes wear Tyler Durden t-shirts doesn't make that not true.
Just a fascinating work in a lot of ways. The deliberate, low-key professionalism of the crew is still something that's rare in movies. Maybe Heat, The Score, and Heist are ones that come close. The way Sean Bean is paid for his time and dismissed from the crew for his bravado and inexperience, when a lesser movie would've killed him. The civilian casualties during the operation and the collateral damage during the car chases when other movies have everything take place in a kind of pocket universe without bystanders or crossfire.
So. Damned. Cool.
twitch.tv/Taramoor
@TaramoorPlays
Taramoor on Youtube
The bad: the audio is really poor. I didn't go to the cinema to see it because of how badly mixed it was and that was the right choice. I know Christopher Nolan said he made the speech hard to hear on purpose, but that was a poor choice
The end missed the obvious satisfying conclusion and decided to spin out nothing for ten minutes in a way that sort of undermines things
The good: The robots. It was a real joy to have some 80's sci fi robots in an otherwise quite serious setting
The people. Astronauts are people too and everybody ends up doing everything they can to live for a few more years/days/hours
I'd keep banging on but I'm on my phone.
I watched it yesterday and enjoyed it for the most part. The audio was a bit of a pain, but being able to rewind allowed me to work with it.
I think that the movie stayed so small scale is both its greatest strength and its greatest weakness. I loved that there were very few wide shots of anything having to do with technology or space action. Nice and intimate. There were also no shots that didn't involve the characters in some way--this is not Roland Emmerich. We get to see how bad Earth is by experiencing the fallout with the characters, not by watching the Washington Monument covered in dirt.
But at the same time, it undermined the science part of the sci-fi for me, and took away the grandness. The end of the world, of human life, and all we get are a half dozen characters (some of whom are barely sketches, like the son). It then makes the plot annoyingly hammy and self-centred, like a mediocre short story. Except at least then the focus would have been on the ideas, where in Interstellar those were pretty much background.
It leaned too heavily on the human element, but there wasn't enough there to hold things up by the end.
Plus, I'm just generally tired of that sort of looping plot. I had watched Predestination the night before, and that was more than enough.
The robots were great.
Anyone want to beta read a paranormal mystery novella? Here's your chance.
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I think there are directors that understand how and when to hold on a shot and let a moment hang or breathe, and there are some who just do it because it seems meaningful or dramatic in and of itself. I wouldn't have taken this guy for one of those - the director, David Michod, also directed Animal Kingdom, which was pretty great - but there are so many scenes where it's just Guy Pearce staring at nothing, intensely. Or Robert Pattinson fidgeting. (Pattinson's southern accent is occasionally unintelligible, and while his character is supposed to be sympathetic, all the twitching and garbled speech just makes you want him to go away.)
There just isn't enough going on under the surface for an audience to project meaning into the still, quiet moments of the movie in which we're treated to Pearce's disapproving glare.
But it doesn't stay small scale. It just stays small scale on Earth because all Earth is really there for is to motivate the characters. And because Earth being small and not worth it is part of the point of the movie.
The rest of the film is full of huge wide sci-fi porn shots to show off grandness and the insignificance of the crew in relation to the universe.
At least until the Gh'lotha finally show up. Maybe they do in Interstellar...
"the crew (or the human race) is insignificant in relation to the universe" is almost the exact opposite of the message of Interstellar
While I would have adored an entire movie made of Interstellar's space exploration, the human story is very central to the first and third acts of the film
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
I felt it to be schlocky and relying on shock value more than being a good movie. Oh look a fire hydrant wooo
I like Fight Club. Of course, I knew Tyler Durden was full of shit, so I may be in the minority in that regard.
Shitty Tumblr:lighthouse1138.tumblr.com
I'll agree on that the robots were quite enjoyable characters though, without being too far-fetched or strange to the setting.
Wait. Sean Bean isn't killed?
Movie was released in like 1998/1999 or so. It was before he found his niche.