The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.
I love the scene where his late wife delivers the vital clue ("You need to earn your wings!") while being run over by a lawnmower, driven by a ghost. And playing the lawnmower surely is Shyamalan's best cameo yet.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
0
Linespider5ALL HAIL KING KILLMONGERRegistered Userregular
Watched Monsters last night, which gets the curious award for being one of the more beautifully shot movies I've seen while also giving me Plot And Characters I Was Never Compelled In Any Way To Give A Damn About.
Also, stupidest fucking line in a movie, where the rich guy's daughter moralizes to the photojournalist that it's wrong to make money from reporting on disasters. Because being a photojournalist is such a fucking cushy life bereft of risk or job security, and doesn't do anything of value for society, and doesn't involve personal endangerment or long periods away from one's loved ones in pursuit of, you know, truth and evidence. It's just a cash train, especially when it's just one grimy guy in broke-ass shoes doing it. I kept expecting the guy to go "You know what, Lady? Fuck you. This is my job. You think it's easy making money doing this? You think anyone can do this? Do you have any idea what the odds are of making money as a professional photographer are these days? Do you even know what a career is? I don't even know you or have any reason to like you and now you're giving me grief when I'm the only person here who's trying to help you and not rip you off or rob you."
Seriously though. The Guy With The Camera Who I Will Not Name doesn't seem particularly invested in anything. He's taking pictures, but we're never given to care if the footage will actually be important in some way or if he needs the money or anything. The only reason he is a photojournalist is so that he's got something to do and he can lose his camera, and then get it back.
Not saying he's any better than the Blonde Lady, who seems to be important because her dad's a rich guy that Camera Guy works for. What is she doing in Mexico? We are never given a real reason, beyond maybe hiding from getting married by wrapping her engagement ring in gauze.
No one is ever in any real danger, nothing is risked, and the characters don't come to any conclusions or convictions about what they've seen. They keep seeming to forget that giant landstriding octopi are out wrecking shit and seem astounded whenever they find a dilapidated building, again. And then they kiss, because they watch two octopi extend feelers and decide they have to too.
Monsters: Just turn off the sound and you'll imagine a much more compelling plot as you glance up from whatever else you happen to be doing.
I love the scene where his late wife delivers the vital clue ("You need to earn your wings!") while being run over by a lawnmower, driven by a ghost. And playing the lawnmower surely is Shyamalan's best cameo yet.
And when it all turned out to be a bunch of killer trees trapped on a farm full of LARPers who thought it was the early 1800s?
I cried like a baby. Who had seen a mermaid in a hot tub.
You didn't really cry, Ross. You were narrated - "... and then Atomic Ross cried, like a baby, who had seen a mermaid in a hot tub..." - by Paul Giamatti, who's really the devil stuck in an elevator trying to pass the time. I'm sorry, but you're fictional. And badly written.
Hell of a thing to find out just after Christmas.
Thirith on
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
0
AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
Like The Haunting of Emily Rose, I'm heavily embellished.
Edit: And this is where I may want to go back on topic before the mods thwack me over the head. In terms of movies, Christmas got me the following:
- The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus
- Un Prophete
- Silent Running
- Cavern of Forgotten Dreams (my first Herzog ever)
Thirith on
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
I got a copy of Super 8 and The Great Dictator for Christmas. After watching Super 8, I found myself wishing I had gone to the theatre to see it. It was actually pretty good and touched all the right E.T., Stand By Me, and The Goonies nostalgia buttons.
I haven't watched The Great Dictator yet. I perfer to watch classics alone for first viewings and I've been stuck with family for the last five days. Still, I'm excited to watch it.
Mikey CTS on
// PSN: wyrd_warrior // MHW Name: Josei //
0
RhalloTonnyOf the BrownlandsRegistered Userregular
edited December 2011
I both liked and didn't like Super 8. It was an okay sci-fi alien movie, but I just ended up feeling dirty for falling for the nostalgia more than anything else. It's exactly what they wanted, and I fell right into it.
I was really happy with it, and it's interesting how much of a mashup it was of two distinct original Tintin stories. Had a good Indiana Jones type vibe.
Question to anybody who has seen both the Swedish Dragon Tattoo film and the Fincher remake:
Which film is better if you take into account that you have to read the entirety of the foreign one and thus lose a big chunk of the quality of acting?
Which is better if you can get past that aspect of it?
I would probably have seen the original by now if I hadn't heard Fincher was doing a remake, but the idea of being able to watch the film rather than read it is appealing.
Is this really a problem? Every single person I ever try to take to a subtitled movie says this. Is it really that hard to read from your peripheral vision? I'm NOT fucking with you, real question here put before the crowd.
If so, do you think there might be a way of titling a movie that would mitigate it?
Yes. With subtitles on, I read the subtitles instead of watching the actors. You don't read from your peripheral vision. Even if the words are at the edge of where you are looking, you are concentrating on them.
this is weird
I had zero problems watching the movie with subtitles and being able to watch the actors
It's not that I can't do it. It's that I prefer not to have to. I've watched a shit-ton of foreign films and I've loved a fair amount of them. But if you implanted me with the ability to speak Chinese or whatever, I would happily turn the subtitles off and pay more attention to the action. Because no, I do not possess the superhuman ability to directly focus my eyes in two places at once.
Same reason I watched Let Me In before I watched Let the Right One In. Two films that are basically the same, I heard the American version was roughly as good, and hey, I don't have to read it! If the Fincher remake was shit, I would happily watch the Swedish version. But it's not, so I think I'll see the remake first.
I don't have the ability to focus on two places at once either, but unless you're a slow reader or really just not used to it subtitles are no problem. I turn subtitles of nowadays because it messes with my hearing, not with my seeing. You focus continually from all points of the screen, someone who is used to subtitles glances enough times between the subtitles and the faces and the background to completely see the movie like the subtitles weren't even there.
I can imagine that if you have to focus to read it would be distracting, in fact I've experienced that with french and german films where I can sort of understand what is said but always check the subtitles to see if I'm correct. That's probably more distracting than films in a language I don't understand at all since then I don't have to involve my hearing.
0
GreasyKidsStuffMOMMM!ROAST BEEF WANTS TO KISS GIRLS ON THE TITTIES!Registered Userregular
Hey @Linespider5, totally agree on the Monsters critique. Did not stick with me in any way after I watched it, completely bland and I never quite understood what it was trying to really convey. I remember having a hard time paying attention to it when watching it.
I don't have the ability to focus on two places at once either, but unless you're a slow reader or really just not used to it subtitles are no problem. I turn subtitles of nowadays because it messes with my hearing, not with my seeing. You focus continually from all points of the screen, someone who is used to subtitles glances enough times between the subtitles and the faces and the background to completely see the movie like the subtitles weren't even there.
I can imagine that if you have to focus to read it would be distracting, in fact I've experienced that with french and german films where I can sort of understand what is said but always check the subtitles to see if I'm correct. That's probably more distracting than films in a language I don't understand at all since then I don't have to involve my hearing.
I wonder whether there's also an issue here of big screen vs TV. I don't have any problems with subtitles, since they're the standard in Switzerland, but I know that when it comes to shaky-cam action (e.g. the second and third Bourne movie) I greatly enjoyed them on my television (pretty big but no comparison to a cinema screen) but found them dizzying at the cinema. Being able to see the entire image at once made a world of a difference to me. Perhaps subtitles are also much easier to take in at the same time as the acting if you don't have to keep moving your eyes to the same extent.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
0
AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
I saw The Adventures of Tintin last night, and was thoroughly underwhelmed.
First and from a purely technical aspect, Spielberg seems to be stretching his legs with mo-cap and seeking its limitation, but much like his frequent cohorts George Lucas and Robert Zemeckis, he seems to be reveling in the cinematic potential of the technology and largely eschewing old-fashioned narrative techniques. The camera (since it doesn't actually exist) is constantly moving this way and that, and you never really feel stable in any scene or get a sense of orientation. The blocking really suffers due to this, as everything ends up feeling like one big dolly pan. I often found myself wondering if I would have had such a problem with this if it was hand-drawn, I don't think that I would, as I think it's the intense photorealism that continually kept bringing me out of the film when impossible camerawork kept barreling at me. The one time I felt that all of this worked in the film's advantage was an action piece towards the end of the film that is basically a 10-minute escape from a Rube Goldberg-esque deathtrap that contains ZERO cuts. The rest of the time it was needless, jarring, and (I felt) pointlessly masturbatory, though all of those could aptly sum up my feelings on the mo-cap genre of films in totality; I've never, ever, understood the desire of seeing photorealistic animated human characters performing in films that could just as easily (or easier) been filmed with actual people on actual sets. To say something nice, however, this is easily the best mo-cap work I've seen to date, and many of the mattes and sets could have passed for the real thing.
Among other things, the tone never really found its footing. It's a film where just about everyone carries a gun and has little problem with shooting people (including Tintin), but it's also filled with broad slapstick and anthropomorphic dogs. I think part of the tone issue is that Tintin appears to be about 15 years old (it's never established just how old he is or what his background is), but owns his own apartment, routinely carries firearms, and is served alcohol at least once in the film.
Another problem is how the film postures itself as starting en media res in the beginning, but it's really not. At the film's start Tintin is already a famous journalist and recognized by people on the street, but it's never explained what he did that made him so recognizably famous (especially in an age where visual news media is very limited) or even what newspaper he works for. We never see him at work or talking with any staff from his alleged job, so he may as well be the town's local psychopath who tells fanciful lies to everyone he meets about his dashing adventures in the service of "the paper." The exact extent of character development and motivation for Tintin in the first act is when an old man says aloud, "Oh, you're Tintin! The boy reporter!" I know what Spielberg is trying to do here by setting the stage as a world where we don't need much explanation before our adventure starts, but by immediately just handing us a group of characters and sending them caroming off on mad-dashes through exotic locals, we never engage with those characters and thus no one cares about their adventures.
It's a fairly thinly-plotted affair. We're introduced to the villain mere moments into the film, and his motivation is pretty shallow. As well, the plot device that demands the inclusion of the drunken sea captain as Tintin's tagalong is patently absurd. And what really kills the film is that it's fairly humorless, and I guess that leads me to the thesis statement of this rant: I don't know who this film is for.
It's a cartoon about a boy adventurer and his dog, but it also takes strangely mature turns with gun play, drowning deaths, and alcoholism. It's light and peppy, but also bland and humorless. It's expansive and broad, but also thin and weightless. All in all, it's a curious affair.
0
MalReynoldsThe Hunter S Thompson of incredibly mild medicinesRegistered Userregular
I'd say fans of Tintin. My dad grew up reading the comics, saw the movie, and would not shut up about it for days. All the cool this and the flying thats, the whatzits and the whodangs. He even saw it in 3D, which he never does because he thinks it's gimmicky, but loved the 3D in Tintin.
"A new take on the epic fantasy genre... Darkly comic, relatable characters... twisted storyline."
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
Edit: And this is where I may want to go back on topic before the mods thwack me over the head. In terms of movies, Christmas got me the following:
- The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus
- Un Prophete
- Silent Running
- Cavern of Forgotten Dreams (my first Herzog ever)
I loved Un Prophete. My girlfriend dragged me to some french cinema evening locally, hoping that the film would be something lovey dovey. Instead they showed Un Prophete. Amazing film. GF felt somewhat ill after however (not a fan of blood).
Another problem is how the film postures itself as starting en media res in the beginning, but it's really not. At the film's start Tintin is already a famous journalist and recognized by people on the street, but it's never explained what he did that made him so recognizably famous (especially in an age where visual news media is very limited) or even what newspaper he works for. We never see him at work or talking with any staff from his alleged job, so he may as well be the town's local psychopath who tells fanciful lies to everyone he meets about his dashing adventures in the service of "the paper." The exact extent of character development and motivation for Tintin in the first act is when an old man says aloud, "Oh, you're Tintin! The boy reporter!" I know what Spielberg is trying to do here by setting the stage as a world where we don't need much explanation before our adventure starts, but by immediately just handing us a group of characters and sending them caroming off on mad-dashes through exotic locals, we never engage with those characters and thus no one cares about their adventures.
This was covered by the numerous framed articles hanging on the walls of Tintin's apartment. They showed what paper he worked for (though damned if I remember what), and implied a variety of previous adventures undertaken as an investigative reporter. They also were of sufficient scope and interest that anybody that reads that paper would know who Tintin was.
My wife is a huge Tintin fan. She read all of them growing up, and we have newer editions of all of them on a shelf not far from where I'm sitting. She enjoyed the movie a great deal, despite the apparent bastardization of various characters and plots. I don't regret the time spent watching it, but can't say I particularly enjoyed it either. It was decent for what it was, and looked great for mo-cap, but isn't anything I'll be sending friends to go see.
Ketar on
0
JohnnyCacheStarting DefensePlace at the tableRegistered Userregular
Is there a dedicated film-making thread around here someplace or in Artist's corner?
It's a cartoon about a boy adventurer and his dog, but it also takes strangely mature turns with gun play, drowning deaths, and alcoholism.
I'm not sure it does. I think it's a reflection of our cultural climate, that we are so keen on labelling certain entertainment content "mature" simply because it deals with death.
But I agree somewhat that the film is too light to be remembered for anything but its technical aspects, and I can see how it might quickly feel bland and disposable because of that.
But I agree somewhat that the film is too light to be remembered for anything but its technical aspects, and I can see how it might quickly feel bland and disposable because of that.
I often find myself wondering if that little group of wunderkinder in Lucas, Spielberg, and Zemeckis (and the others) have really lost the fundamental understanding of what made their earlier work widely popular and that gives them the clout to work on the projects they're doing now.
Zemeckis' last few films have been just god-awful, and there is little more that can be said about the failures of Lucas. Spielberg, on the other hand, seems to be keeping his ratio of "amazing and/or profound"/"confoundingly not-good" as intact as it's ever been. Warhorse is apparently spectacular, and the Lincoln project coming up has all the right ingredients in place; then again, he also made Tintin and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull around that same time, though the former is far superior to the latter.
Still, with all three of those guys it seems that they've become smitten with the technological potentials of new tools at their disposal and are only making films that are treated as FX reels. No one is sitting down and saying, "Hey, I've got a great idea for a Tintin movie," they're saying, "Hey, this Star WarsBeowulfTintin movie has enough front-loaded appeal that we can use it to test out this new equipment and still make money."
And still, the most confusing part of all is why all these guys are so in love with motion capture anyway. It's not the future of film, and judging by returns no one really wants to see it.
Watched Monsters last night, which gets the curious award for being one of the more beautifully shot movies I've seen while also giving me Plot And Characters I Was Never Compelled In Any Way To Give A Damn About.
Also, stupidest fucking line in a movie, where the rich guy's daughter moralizes to the photojournalist that it's wrong to make money from reporting on disasters. Because being a photojournalist is such a fucking cushy life bereft of risk or job security, and doesn't do anything of value for society, and doesn't involve personal endangerment or long periods away from one's loved ones in pursuit of, you know, truth and evidence. It's just a cash train, especially when it's just one grimy guy in broke-ass shoes doing it. I kept expecting the guy to go "You know what, Lady? Fuck you. This is my job. You think it's easy making money doing this? You think anyone can do this? Do you have any idea what the odds are of making money as a professional photographer are these days? Do you even know what a career is? I don't even know you or have any reason to like you and now you're giving me grief when I'm the only person here who's trying to help you and not rip you off or rob you."
Seriously though. The Guy With The Camera Who I Will Not Name doesn't seem particularly invested in anything. He's taking pictures, but we're never given to care if the footage will actually be important in some way or if he needs the money or anything. The only reason he is a photojournalist is so that he's got something to do and he can lose his camera, and then get it back.
Not saying he's any better than the Blonde Lady, who seems to be important because her dad's a rich guy that Camera Guy works for. What is she doing in Mexico? We are never given a real reason, beyond maybe hiding from getting married by wrapping her engagement ring in gauze.
No one is ever in any real danger, nothing is risked, and the characters don't come to any conclusions or convictions about what they've seen. They keep seeming to forget that giant landstriding octopi are out wrecking shit and seem astounded whenever they find a dilapidated building, again. And then they kiss, because they watch two octopi extend feelers and decide they have to too.
Monsters: Just turn off the sound and you'll imagine a much more compelling plot as you glance up from whatever else you happen to be doing.
I can agree with this.
I thought the characters weren't written or acted well, but the movie had some cool ideas and great shots.
Saw Fincher's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo earlier in the week and the criticism that springs to mind is that it was too soon. I had a very difficult time separating it from the Swedish version. It wasn't shot for shot - Fincher's looked different enough, and in my opinion his was the better looking film. Rooney Mara was a better Lisbeth than Noomi Rapace, but that wasn't just her performance, a good part of it was her appearance. I remember reading somewhere that part of her appeal to Fincher was that she's young and frail looking, despite the punk rock toughness they applied to her in wardrobe and make-up. Rapace is older, and looks older, and her aesthetic doesn't complement the role as well. Contrasting Mara's dedication to the part, Craig seemed to coast through the film. His accent was lazy, and there were points where one had to strain to tell the difference between his voice in-character and his natural accent.
It's difficult to gauge which film did the mystery plot more justice because you can never enjoy a mystery the same way twice. It's still possible to enjoy a mystery plot after multiple viewings, and they can still be appreciated, but that initial suspense, the mystery solving aspect of watching, is gone. Right now I would say that the Swedish film handled it better because I remember not having figured it out until around the end. It felt a little sloppy that only at the end of Fincher's do we get a deluge of evidence confirming suspicions, but I'm foggy on whether or not this happened in the Swedish version too. The mystery in Fincher's film seemed easier to piece together, but again, this could just be me knowing exactly what to look for. I would like to say that I am capable of objectively separating the two, but I'm not sure that's the case, at least not entirely.
I'm disappointed by Fincher. I would have expected him to have put more into his adaptation to create enough distance between it and the Swedish version because I think he's capable of that. Perhaps he should have waited a few more years.
0
AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
And still, the most confusing part of all is why all these guys are so in love with motion capture anyway. It's not the future of film, and judging by returns no one really wants to see it.
Motion capture is all the fun of directing an animated picture (where you get to create the entire world from the ground up without worrying about reality) without all the hassle of directing animators (a different skill from what they're used to, directing actors). As someone who has only done a little filmmaking, even I can see the appeal of skipping some of the boring or frustrating aspects of actually putting something in front of a camera, and they've been doing that for decades.
I don't know if it's especially proven that nobody wants to see mo-cap movies--there haven't really been enough of them to say for sure. At any rate, the technology is well-liked when it's put to use in live action movies (Gollum, King Kong, etc).
0
AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
I'm disappointed by Fincher. I would have expected him to have put more into his adaptation to create enough distance between it and the Swedish version because I think he's capable of that. Perhaps he should have waited a few more years.
I'm not entirely sure David Fincher is a director with a strong understanding of character development or narrative focus. His films always look great, but they're also very sterile and detached from the subject matter, and I've heard similar complaints for Dragon Tattoo.
I acknowledge his skill in the aesthetic, but he's not a director I think has a lot of tricks in his wheelhouse.
0
AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
And still, the most confusing part of all is why all these guys are so in love with motion capture anyway. It's not the future of film, and judging by returns no one really wants to see it.
Motion capture is all the fun of directing an animated picture (where you get to create the entire world from the ground up without worrying about reality) without all the hassle of directing animators (a different skill from what they're used to, directing actors). As someone who has only done a little filmmaking, even I can see the appeal of skipping some of the boring or frustrating aspects of actually putting something in front of a camera, and they've been doing that for decades.
I don't know if it's especially proven that nobody wants to see mo-cap movies--there haven't really been enough of them to say for sure. At any rate, the technology is well-liked when it's put to use in live action movies (Gollum, King Kong, etc).
I think motion capture has its uses, just like your examples of Kong and Gollum, and I don't think it's coincidence that both those examples are from Peter Jackson.
What I don't get is doing an entire movie in mo-cap when the subject matter is about human characters in a realistic world.
Avatar? Makes sense. It's about giant blue cat-people.
Beowulf? Makes no sense. They're about humans doing human things on planet Earth.
Zemeckis' movies are the worst, since he takes so much effort to make his mo-cap characters look like the real people who portray them. Why would you spend so much money in hiring Anthony Hopkins to do a mo-cap performance only to end up with a character who looks just like Anthony Hopkins?
0
AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
Alright y'all. Peace out. The cab picks me up in a few minutes and I need to scramble around the house a bit more. I may hit up the boards when I get settled overseas, but I may be gone for as long as a month, so so long and take care.
What I don't get is doing an entire movie in mo-cap when the subject matter is about human characters in a realistic world.
Avatar? Makes sense. It's about giant blue cat-people.
Beowulf? Makes no sense. They're about humans doing human things on planet Earth.
Zemeckis' movies are the worst, since he takes so much effort to make his mo-cap characters look like the real people who portray them. Why would you spend so much money in hiring Anthony Hopkins to do a mo-cap performance only to end up with a character who looks just like Anthony Hopkins?
I think it's largely to make the background visuals not look lame and hokey without having to go hardcore-stylized. Movies like 300 and Sky Captain work well because the things are so stylized that you can forgive the lack of photorealism because it's not supposed to be photorealistic. Something like Phantom Menace looks sterile and artificial and all of the performances are weird-looking because they just don't blend it together. But if you took all the actors in TPM and replaced them with CG models, I think it would look better. The backgrounds wouldn't stick out weirdly because they would look just the same as the digital Ewan McGregors and whatnot.
Now, while I think that's the most logical why, I think it's sort of a dumb idea. If you can make your main character look like literally anything you want, why the fuck would you just make him look like Tom Hanks? (And I know the answer: Because people will go to the movies to see Tom Hanks.) But it's missing the point of good actors to begin with. You shouldn't be looking at a character on-screen and thinking, "Hey, it's Tom Hanks," you should be thinking, "Hey, it's <character>."
So basically, film-makers use mo-cap in these ways because they are lazy and/or trying to cash in on big names, not for any defensible artistic reasons.
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.
Also, I just saw Sherlock Holmes and it was thoroughly fun. I figured I would like it when all the negative reviews boiled down to "This movie is shit, just like the first one was!" Since, you know, I loved the first one.
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.
0
KalTorakOne way or another, they all end up inthe Undercity.Registered Userregular
Also, I just saw Sherlock Holmes and it was thoroughly fun. I figured I would like it when all the negative reviews boiled down to "This movie is shit, just like the first one was!" Since, you know, I loved the first one.
Jared Harris is goddamn delightful as Moriarty.
0
AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
Also, I just saw Sherlock Holmes and it was thoroughly fun. I figured I would like it when all the negative reviews boiled down to "This movie is shit, just like the first one was!" Since, you know, I loved the first one.
It's a valid criticism in something like Hangover 2 when the sequel does little other than just recycle the entire first film. Sherlock 2 does nothing of the sort, and in fact I felt was a better film than the first.
It's not the kind of film you go to for a lot of depth, but instead rather the brilliant aesthetic and sparkling chemistry between the cast. For much the same reasons I couldn't bring myself to hate the fairly staid rom-com, Friends With Benefits, the cast of Sherlock 2 is just a goddamned joy to watch.
Atomika on
0
KalTorakOne way or another, they all end up inthe Undercity.Registered Userregular
For much the same reasons I couldn't bring myself to hate the fairly staid rom-com, Friends With Benefits, the cast of Sherlock 2 is just a goddamned joy to watch.
The trailers for this movie actually suggested a good amount of chemistry between the characters to me, glad that it delivers. It's on my Netflix list.
Speaking of rom-coms, just watched "Crazy, Stupid, Love." Good lord - who would have thought that so much talent in one place could produce such a shitty movie?
0
AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
Speaking of rom-coms, just watched "Crazy, Stupid, Love." Good lord - who would have thought that so much talent in one place could produce such a shitty movie?
The trailer for that one hit all the wrong notes for me.
- suburban middle-age angst
- saccarin-sweet precocious children
- smug pseudo-soulfulness
- attractive and wealthy 20-somethings bitching about how horrible their awesome lives are
- white people problems
EDIT: alright. I'm outty.
Atomika on
0
KalTorakOne way or another, they all end up inthe Undercity.Registered Userregular
Speaking of rom-coms, just watched "Crazy, Stupid, Love." Good lord - who would have thought that so much talent in one place could produce such a shitty movie?
The trailer for that one hit all the wrong notes for me.
- suburban middle-age angst
- saccarin-sweet precocious children
- smug pseudo-soulfulness
- attractive and wealthy 20-somethings bitching about how horrible their awesome lives are
- white people problems
EDIT: alright. I'm outty.
It had all of those things, but for me somehow the trailer made it seem like it would be able to overcome those tropes common to most romcoms. I guess whoever made that trailer should get a promotion, and whoever okayed the script should be fired out of a cannon. There are a few funny or poignent scenes that work solely on the charisma of the actors (Stone/Gosling, Moore/Carrell). The rest of the movie is a complete mess, trying to be 5 different movies at once and failing at all of them. By the end it's just unashamedly wallowing in its clichéd tropes.
Posts
I'm pretty sure you mean The Marrying, starring Mark Wahlberg as the space angel.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Also, stupidest fucking line in a movie, where the rich guy's daughter moralizes to the photojournalist that it's wrong to make money from reporting on disasters. Because being a photojournalist is such a fucking cushy life bereft of risk or job security, and doesn't do anything of value for society, and doesn't involve personal endangerment or long periods away from one's loved ones in pursuit of, you know, truth and evidence. It's just a cash train, especially when it's just one grimy guy in broke-ass shoes doing it. I kept expecting the guy to go "You know what, Lady? Fuck you. This is my job. You think it's easy making money doing this? You think anyone can do this? Do you have any idea what the odds are of making money as a professional photographer are these days? Do you even know what a career is? I don't even know you or have any reason to like you and now you're giving me grief when I'm the only person here who's trying to help you and not rip you off or rob you."
Seriously though. The Guy With The Camera Who I Will Not Name doesn't seem particularly invested in anything. He's taking pictures, but we're never given to care if the footage will actually be important in some way or if he needs the money or anything. The only reason he is a photojournalist is so that he's got something to do and he can lose his camera, and then get it back.
Not saying he's any better than the Blonde Lady, who seems to be important because her dad's a rich guy that Camera Guy works for. What is she doing in Mexico? We are never given a real reason, beyond maybe hiding from getting married by wrapping her engagement ring in gauze.
No one is ever in any real danger, nothing is risked, and the characters don't come to any conclusions or convictions about what they've seen. They keep seeming to forget that giant landstriding octopi are out wrecking shit and seem astounded whenever they find a dilapidated building, again. And then they kiss, because they watch two octopi extend feelers and decide they have to too.
Monsters: Just turn off the sound and you'll imagine a much more compelling plot as you glance up from whatever else you happen to be doing.
And when it all turned out to be a bunch of killer trees trapped on a farm full of LARPers who thought it was the early 1800s?
I cried like a baby. Who had seen a mermaid in a hot tub.
Hell of a thing to find out just after Christmas.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Badly-written stories about fictional characters seems like something right up Christmas' alley.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Like The Haunting of Emily Rose, I'm heavily embellished.
Edit: And this is where I may want to go back on topic before the mods thwack me over the head. In terms of movies, Christmas got me the following:
- The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus
- Un Prophete
- Silent Running
- Cavern of Forgotten Dreams (my first Herzog ever)
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
I haven't watched The Great Dictator yet. I perfer to watch classics alone for first viewings and I've been stuck with family for the last five days. Still, I'm excited to watch it.
I was really happy with it, and it's interesting how much of a mashup it was of two distinct original Tintin stories. Had a good Indiana Jones type vibe.
The Goonies is one of my favorite movies, though, so I guess Super 8 was aimed pretty much right at me.
I don't have the ability to focus on two places at once either, but unless you're a slow reader or really just not used to it subtitles are no problem. I turn subtitles of nowadays because it messes with my hearing, not with my seeing. You focus continually from all points of the screen, someone who is used to subtitles glances enough times between the subtitles and the faces and the background to completely see the movie like the subtitles weren't even there.
I can imagine that if you have to focus to read it would be distracting, in fact I've experienced that with french and german films where I can sort of understand what is said but always check the subtitles to see if I'm correct. That's probably more distracting than films in a language I don't understand at all since then I don't have to involve my hearing.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
First and from a purely technical aspect, Spielberg seems to be stretching his legs with mo-cap and seeking its limitation, but much like his frequent cohorts George Lucas and Robert Zemeckis, he seems to be reveling in the cinematic potential of the technology and largely eschewing old-fashioned narrative techniques. The camera (since it doesn't actually exist) is constantly moving this way and that, and you never really feel stable in any scene or get a sense of orientation. The blocking really suffers due to this, as everything ends up feeling like one big dolly pan. I often found myself wondering if I would have had such a problem with this if it was hand-drawn, I don't think that I would, as I think it's the intense photorealism that continually kept bringing me out of the film when impossible camerawork kept barreling at me. The one time I felt that all of this worked in the film's advantage was an action piece towards the end of the film that is basically a 10-minute escape from a Rube Goldberg-esque deathtrap that contains ZERO cuts. The rest of the time it was needless, jarring, and (I felt) pointlessly masturbatory, though all of those could aptly sum up my feelings on the mo-cap genre of films in totality; I've never, ever, understood the desire of seeing photorealistic animated human characters performing in films that could just as easily (or easier) been filmed with actual people on actual sets. To say something nice, however, this is easily the best mo-cap work I've seen to date, and many of the mattes and sets could have passed for the real thing.
Among other things, the tone never really found its footing. It's a film where just about everyone carries a gun and has little problem with shooting people (including Tintin), but it's also filled with broad slapstick and anthropomorphic dogs. I think part of the tone issue is that Tintin appears to be about 15 years old (it's never established just how old he is or what his background is), but owns his own apartment, routinely carries firearms, and is served alcohol at least once in the film.
Another problem is how the film postures itself as starting en media res in the beginning, but it's really not. At the film's start Tintin is already a famous journalist and recognized by people on the street, but it's never explained what he did that made him so recognizably famous (especially in an age where visual news media is very limited) or even what newspaper he works for. We never see him at work or talking with any staff from his alleged job, so he may as well be the town's local psychopath who tells fanciful lies to everyone he meets about his dashing adventures in the service of "the paper." The exact extent of character development and motivation for Tintin in the first act is when an old man says aloud, "Oh, you're Tintin! The boy reporter!" I know what Spielberg is trying to do here by setting the stage as a world where we don't need much explanation before our adventure starts, but by immediately just handing us a group of characters and sending them caroming off on mad-dashes through exotic locals, we never engage with those characters and thus no one cares about their adventures.
It's a fairly thinly-plotted affair. We're introduced to the villain mere moments into the film, and his motivation is pretty shallow. As well, the plot device that demands the inclusion of the drunken sea captain as Tintin's tagalong is patently absurd. And what really kills the film is that it's fairly humorless, and I guess that leads me to the thesis statement of this rant: I don't know who this film is for.
It's a cartoon about a boy adventurer and his dog, but it also takes strangely mature turns with gun play, drowning deaths, and alcoholism. It's light and peppy, but also bland and humorless. It's expansive and broad, but also thin and weightless. All in all, it's a curious affair.
I'd say fans of Tintin. My dad grew up reading the comics, saw the movie, and would not shut up about it for days. All the cool this and the flying thats, the whatzits and the whodangs. He even saw it in 3D, which he never does because he thinks it's gimmicky, but loved the 3D in Tintin.
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor
My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
I loved Un Prophete. My girlfriend dragged me to some french cinema evening locally, hoping that the film would be something lovey dovey. Instead they showed Un Prophete. Amazing film. GF felt somewhat ill after however (not a fan of blood).
This was covered by the numerous framed articles hanging on the walls of Tintin's apartment. They showed what paper he worked for (though damned if I remember what), and implied a variety of previous adventures undertaken as an investigative reporter. They also were of sufficient scope and interest that anybody that reads that paper would know who Tintin was.
My wife is a huge Tintin fan. She read all of them growing up, and we have newer editions of all of them on a shelf not far from where I'm sitting. She enjoyed the movie a great deal, despite the apparent bastardization of various characters and plots. I don't regret the time spent watching it, but can't say I particularly enjoyed it either. It was decent for what it was, and looked great for mo-cap, but isn't anything I'll be sending friends to go see.
I host a podcast about movies.
I'm not sure it does. I think it's a reflection of our cultural climate, that we are so keen on labelling certain entertainment content "mature" simply because it deals with death.
But I agree somewhat that the film is too light to be remembered for anything but its technical aspects, and I can see how it might quickly feel bland and disposable because of that.
Somewhat unexpectedly, there's an SE++ one
edit: actually, I wouldn't call it dedicated per se. It's not posted in often enough.
I often find myself wondering if that little group of wunderkinder in Lucas, Spielberg, and Zemeckis (and the others) have really lost the fundamental understanding of what made their earlier work widely popular and that gives them the clout to work on the projects they're doing now.
Zemeckis' last few films have been just god-awful, and there is little more that can be said about the failures of Lucas. Spielberg, on the other hand, seems to be keeping his ratio of "amazing and/or profound"/"confoundingly not-good" as intact as it's ever been. Warhorse is apparently spectacular, and the Lincoln project coming up has all the right ingredients in place; then again, he also made Tintin and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull around that same time, though the former is far superior to the latter.
Still, with all three of those guys it seems that they've become smitten with the technological potentials of new tools at their disposal and are only making films that are treated as FX reels. No one is sitting down and saying, "Hey, I've got a great idea for a Tintin movie," they're saying, "Hey, this Star Wars Beowulf Tintin movie has enough front-loaded appeal that we can use it to test out this new equipment and still make money."
And still, the most confusing part of all is why all these guys are so in love with motion capture anyway. It's not the future of film, and judging by returns no one really wants to see it.
I thought the characters weren't written or acted well, but the movie had some cool ideas and great shots.
I would still recommend it.
It's difficult to gauge which film did the mystery plot more justice because you can never enjoy a mystery the same way twice. It's still possible to enjoy a mystery plot after multiple viewings, and they can still be appreciated, but that initial suspense, the mystery solving aspect of watching, is gone. Right now I would say that the Swedish film handled it better because I remember not having figured it out until around the end. It felt a little sloppy that only at the end of Fincher's do we get a deluge of evidence confirming suspicions, but I'm foggy on whether or not this happened in the Swedish version too. The mystery in Fincher's film seemed easier to piece together, but again, this could just be me knowing exactly what to look for. I would like to say that I am capable of objectively separating the two, but I'm not sure that's the case, at least not entirely.
I'm disappointed by Fincher. I would have expected him to have put more into his adaptation to create enough distance between it and the Swedish version because I think he's capable of that. Perhaps he should have waited a few more years.
Motion capture is all the fun of directing an animated picture (where you get to create the entire world from the ground up without worrying about reality) without all the hassle of directing animators (a different skill from what they're used to, directing actors). As someone who has only done a little filmmaking, even I can see the appeal of skipping some of the boring or frustrating aspects of actually putting something in front of a camera, and they've been doing that for decades.
I don't know if it's especially proven that nobody wants to see mo-cap movies--there haven't really been enough of them to say for sure. At any rate, the technology is well-liked when it's put to use in live action movies (Gollum, King Kong, etc).
I'm not entirely sure David Fincher is a director with a strong understanding of character development or narrative focus. His films always look great, but they're also very sterile and detached from the subject matter, and I've heard similar complaints for Dragon Tattoo.
I acknowledge his skill in the aesthetic, but he's not a director I think has a lot of tricks in his wheelhouse.
I think motion capture has its uses, just like your examples of Kong and Gollum, and I don't think it's coincidence that both those examples are from Peter Jackson.
What I don't get is doing an entire movie in mo-cap when the subject matter is about human characters in a realistic world.
Avatar? Makes sense. It's about giant blue cat-people.
Beowulf? Makes no sense. They're about humans doing human things on planet Earth.
Zemeckis' movies are the worst, since he takes so much effort to make his mo-cap characters look like the real people who portray them. Why would you spend so much money in hiring Anthony Hopkins to do a mo-cap performance only to end up with a character who looks just like Anthony Hopkins?
I think it's largely to make the background visuals not look lame and hokey without having to go hardcore-stylized. Movies like 300 and Sky Captain work well because the things are so stylized that you can forgive the lack of photorealism because it's not supposed to be photorealistic. Something like Phantom Menace looks sterile and artificial and all of the performances are weird-looking because they just don't blend it together. But if you took all the actors in TPM and replaced them with CG models, I think it would look better. The backgrounds wouldn't stick out weirdly because they would look just the same as the digital Ewan McGregors and whatnot.
Now, while I think that's the most logical why, I think it's sort of a dumb idea. If you can make your main character look like literally anything you want, why the fuck would you just make him look like Tom Hanks? (And I know the answer: Because people will go to the movies to see Tom Hanks.) But it's missing the point of good actors to begin with. You shouldn't be looking at a character on-screen and thinking, "Hey, it's Tom Hanks," you should be thinking, "Hey, it's <character>."
So basically, film-makers use mo-cap in these ways because they are lazy and/or trying to cash in on big names, not for any defensible artistic reasons.
Jared Harris is goddamn delightful as Moriarty.
It's a valid criticism in something like Hangover 2 when the sequel does little other than just recycle the entire first film. Sherlock 2 does nothing of the sort, and in fact I felt was a better film than the first.
It's not the kind of film you go to for a lot of depth, but instead rather the brilliant aesthetic and sparkling chemistry between the cast. For much the same reasons I couldn't bring myself to hate the fairly staid rom-com, Friends With Benefits, the cast of Sherlock 2 is just a goddamned joy to watch.
The trailers for this movie actually suggested a good amount of chemistry between the characters to me, glad that it delivers. It's on my Netflix list.
Speaking of rom-coms, just watched "Crazy, Stupid, Love." Good lord - who would have thought that so much talent in one place could produce such a shitty movie?
The trailer for that one hit all the wrong notes for me.
- suburban middle-age angst
- saccarin-sweet precocious children
- smug pseudo-soulfulness
- attractive and wealthy 20-somethings bitching about how horrible their awesome lives are
- white people problems
EDIT: alright. I'm outty.
It had all of those things, but for me somehow the trailer made it seem like it would be able to overcome those tropes common to most romcoms. I guess whoever made that trailer should get a promotion, and whoever okayed the script should be fired out of a cannon. There are a few funny or poignent scenes that work solely on the charisma of the actors (Stone/Gosling, Moore/Carrell). The rest of the movie is a complete mess, trying to be 5 different movies at once and failing at all of them. By the end it's just unashamedly wallowing in its clichéd tropes.