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A boy's best friend is his [Film Thread]
Astaereth
In the belly of the beastRegistered User regular
In the belly of the beastRegistered User regular
Ah, spring, when a young man's heart turns to romance, and the major releases turn to a pile of shit. You could take this opportunity to catch up on the Oscar nominations in preparation for a ceremony and decisions you'll complain about forever... OR you could watch some amazing classics, the best output of 130-odd years of cinema:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBiewQrpBBA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VP5jEAP3K4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bukPGph2ec
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlwdpNw1FW8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOC2jxn0re0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJOtfYSqqsA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52sMApBFfqQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOUJXRVh1ss
You are privileged to live in a time with more access to great movies than ever before. If you want to see Romero's "Night of the Living Dead", it is literally right here, a click away. If at 4 in the morning you get an urge to watch a dozen irate males debate someone's guilt or innocence, the internet has you covered. The onus is on YOU to determine how you will use these infinite riches. Expand your horizons, ladies and gentlemen. Or argue for another 100 pages about the motherfucking Fright Night remake. The choice... is yours, for this is your MOVIE THREAD!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsqJFIJ5lLs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBiewQrpBBAhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VP5jEAP3K4http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bukPGph2echttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlwdpNw1FW8http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOC2jxn0re0http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJOtfYSqqsAhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52sMApBFfqQhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOUJXRVh1ssYou are privileged to live in a time with more access to great movies than ever before. If you want to see Romero's "Night of the Living Dead", it is literally right here, a click away. If at 4 in the morning you get an urge to watch a dozen irate males debate someone's guilt or innocence, the internet has you covered. The onus is on YOU to determine how you will use these infinite riches. Expand your horizons, ladies and gentlemen. Or argue for another 100 pages about the motherfucking Fright Night remake. The choice... is yours, for this is your MOVIE THREAD!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsqJFIJ5lLs 
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Island. Being on fire.
In general color sort of killed the quality of cinematography for a while when things were first changing over. Everyone was so obsessed over mastering the technologies and techniques for color shooting in color that a lot of the basics were sort of neglected for years.
It's basically second verse, same as the first, for digital film and CGI these days.
People like Lucas and Zemeckis got lost in a chase of expanding the toolbox, forgetting what the tools were actually supposed to be in service of.
Pretty much the same thing that happened with 3d tech recently, and is almost surely going to happen with the whole 48FPS tech used on The Hobbit. I'd imagine the same thing happened when they introduced sound, but it's hard to tell.
Both utterly fantastic movies. I'm pretty sure The raid had the most intimidating man under 5 feet in the history of Cinema.
But Dredd, oh my god I cannot get over how fantastic Dredd was. Stone cold drop into the movie with all the backstory you need told to you in one minute. Urban KILLED THE SHIT out of the role, not only by not ever showing his face, but seriously emoting with only the lower part of his face and nailing actually complicated emotional ranges.
Also, the female lead was fantastic. They could have copped out and had her be an audience substitute, but nope. They play it straight, with her reactions being contained within the framework of the movie.
The only negative was the lead villian. And it wasn't the character itself. The actress was woefully out of her depth, however, she does manage to hold it together, and come out as truly terrifying in a few bits.
Overall, it was easily one of my favorite 2012 movies beside Cabin in the Woods and The Avengers.
As a viewer, I felt the movie respected me. Which was nice.
Gonna watch that.
I really hope they do more of this...
The exact same thing did happen when they introduced sound--cameras at the time were extremely fucking noisy, and for a while you had movies that were shot with the camera permanently incased in a soundproofed room. When they wanted to change the angle, they had to move the room, which was expensive and time consuming as balls, so we went from the fluid, expressive cinematography of, say, Sunrise (please ignore the shitty music):
...back to the origins of cinema when it was still thought of in the same way as theater, a fixed perspective mimicking the stage's proscenium arch. For example, the follow-up to The Jazz Singer, the Singing Fool. You can see in this clip (please ignore the blackface) that not only are all of the shots fixed in place (no way to put to soundproof booth on a dolly), but there are very few angles represented--mostly the different size shots of Jolson, the reverse on the audience, and a few cutaways that at least establish the spatial relationships. (Somewhat; we get the shot from behind Jolson looking out at the audience, but a less constrained film would probably have also included a shot over the backstage couple's shoulders as they watch Jolson. As is, the scene skates by on the set production and Kuleshoving.) The film resorts to other techniques in order to get the emotion of the scene across, like the superimposition of the child's face, but mostly relies on Jolson's heartfelt performance. The one interesting shot cinematographically comes at the end, when the camera places us in the midst of the standing ovation, a nice use of depth... but still along that straight-forward angle that they're using the whole time.
Within a few short years, though, cameras could be housed in bulky but moveable sound-proof cases, and things started to open up again. Take a look at this clip from 1931's The Public Enemy. You can see the difference throughout. Not only is there are a welcome variation in angles (including a nice low-angle showing the gangsters' intimidating power) but the camera moves (specifically following Cagney in either short, violent jerks or that smooth, controlled push in as he walks behind the bar, hitting all the spigots) and, more importantly, feels placed inside the action (once even peering over the bar), as opposed to the theatrical, detached observation of The Singing Fool.
Finding ways to work around the logistical limitations of new tools isn't the only thing artists have to do; they also have to figure out how to best use those tools for creative expression. Artistic expression is the difference between any Ted Turner-colorized piece of shit and, say, Vertigo, with its expressive use of color to create and enhance emotional relationships. Hitchcock, the consummate technical genius (along with Kubrick, perhaps the two most accomplished craftsmen in the history of film), did this with multiple new technologies, from the large film magazines that allowed him to make an apparently one-take film, Rope; to his work at the advent of sound with the film Blackmail:
Perhaps the most famous example, along with Fritz Lang's M (which excelled at using off-screen sound to evoke dread, in particular the unseen killer whistling "In the Halls of the Mountain King"), that clip from Blackmail shows one of the first distinguished uses of sound to express subjectivity rather than the "if you see it, you hear it" objectivity of sound up to that point. The woman, who IIRC has committed the murder they're talking about, starts to hear the word "knife" and "knives" to the exclusion of all other dialogue, because that's all she can think about.
Hitchcock also had a chance to find creative expression through the use of 3D with his Dial M for Murder (1954). If you're at all interested in that, this article by the brilliant film writers Bordwell and Thompson goes into it with much more depth (pun intended) and skill than I can.
But personally I feel that while today's modern filmmakers have solved any gross issues with 3D in terms of the technical ability to integrate the process with traditional filmmaking techniques, we have yet to really take advantage of 3D's possibilities for creative expression--either in the Wizard of Oz sense (why hasn't there been a fantasy film yet whose "Kansas" is in 2D and whose "Oz" is in 3D?) or in the subtle way that Hitchcock used it back in the 50s, highlighting objects, building connections, and playing with variable depths. Until today's filmmakers learn to use 3D in way that enhances the story, rather than merely not detracting from it, the technique is doomed to fade back into obscurity, alongside Smell-o-Vision, Sensurround, and William Castle's Tinglers.
Does the TRON sequel count? I mean, it wasn't exactly Oz, but everything in the real world parts of the movie was in 2D, it only turned 3D after Flynn got sucked into the system.
The problem with relying on 3D as a story telling device is that you can't make people see it in 3D, so inevitably some of the audience isn't going to get the full story. It'd be like watching Wizard of Oz on a black and white TV screen. Without color, the first steps into Oz aren't nearly as magical and the entire presentation kind of falls apart, it's still a good story but the visual impact that Oz is a different world gets lost in the translation.
Also, via Grantland, this movie sounds awesome. And fucking horrible. At the same time. It's quite the write-up, anyway.
True, and that is exactly what happened with me. I didn't watch Tron: Legacy in 3D, but it worked anyway because they remembered to use more than just 3D to effect that transition.
(Which I would argue Oz does as well--in addition to the Technicolor, the cinematography "opens up" into longer, wider, denser shots, the production design changes, and the music kicks in. Oz doesn't work as well in black and white and I'm sure Tron would have been better in 3D, but both movies still work either way.)
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Michael Cera actually has two movies at Sundance right now where he plays a terrible, terrible person. Good on him for pushing his range.
It should be a cult hit on dvd/blu-ray IMO.
http://investors.lionsgate.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=62796&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1776610&highlight
seems like it
I finally caught up with Being John Malkovich tonight. That was the most wholly creative film I've seen in ages.
This post here; all of it, is right out of my own damn brain! I saw Dredd last weekend and honestly it's my joint-favourite movie out of 2012 with Cabin.
I'm watching the Raid this weekend, and I've heard alot of good things about it; now I'm even more pumped!
ParaNorman is still fun and moving and gosh is it gorgeous. I found myself walking up to the TV to take in the detail as if the movie was a painting in a gallery.
Pirates! is pretty fun. Evil Queen Victoria is a pretty great villain. I like how, unlike the heroes in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, the heroes in this movie do piratey things, like raiding ships and making someone walk the plank. In a world where half of the people in the U.S. don't believe in evolution I don't know if I would have chosen to make Darwin into a sniveling jerk, on the other hand a more respectful treatment probably would've resulted in a less interesting character. The title of the book - "The Pirates! in an Adventure with Scientists" - is much better than the title of the movie - "The Pirates! Band of Misfits".
I didn't dislike Frankenweenie but I wanted to like it more than I did, because I really like the concept and also I'm impressed that a black-and-white movie done in an outmoded animation style got made.
I'm glad people are still making stop motion movies and pushing the medium forward with new technology like 3d printing - there's magic to taking real actual objects and making them move impossibly.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
People forget that 35mm has been used for a long time.
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"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
And now that we have the ability to convert mod directives into iron forum law,
Geth, the word pretentious is forbidden.
Thanks!
There are a couple times where I feel like Peter Jackson's background in comedy horror movies doesn't serve him well. Lots of Dutch-angle shots of dwarves getting food and liquid all over themselves that kind of got off-putting after a while. Also the bit with
was just like come on. And I have a general issue with these movies and their weird thing about having people fall for apparently miles and bounce off sharp rocks like cartoon characters and arrive fine at the end.
But those are all quibbles. I actually thought it was pretty fantastically paced, and I liked the way the side-stories and flashbacks were used to break up the travel sequences.
On the writing front, I was deeply worried that the new material would be stupid. A lot of the worst bits in the LotR movies were the made-up parts. Right up until filming they were going to have Return of the King end with a big swordfight between Aragorn and Sauron, for instance, which is just...what? But they pulled the new stuff off really well here, and got a part for my favorite Doctor Who in the process. And more importantly, they really distinguished and characterized the Dwarves so I could tell at least most of them apart. Even the book only kinda sorta does that.
Not that that makes it a good idea.
(It also took me a long time to realize why Luke Skywalker's original name was "Starkiller".)
Some of the new writing I liked. The scene where Gandalf talks to Bilbo in front of the fireplace, with the story about his ancestor, borrowed some information from the book and put it together in a good new scene.
Other stuff just felt kind of fanfic-ish, especially when they had to improvise. Parts of the White Council meeting, some of the Radagast scenes, the played up "Dwarves hate Elves" stuff, and especially the Azog vs Thorin subplot. I could see where they were drawing inspiration from, but I felt they missed the tone.
They did an amazing job on the Godzilla bluray. I've seen that movie too many times, and was still blown away with the time and effort they put into the transfer.
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One thing that Jackson has shown in the past that gives me a little hope is his ability to keep his ego in check when it comes to killing his darlings.
Both The Two Towers and The Return of the King could have been very different movies; the former originally had a subplot about Arwen rallying elves of Rivendell to join up with Haldir's Lothlorien elves at the Battle of Helm's Deep, while the latter had a subplot about the Sauron returning to full power by the time the Gondor/Rohan forces reached the Black Gate.
Jackson has cited the internet uproar over leaked details to be one of the deciding factors in this, but I think he ultimately realized that these things changed the dynamics of the film for the poorer.
In Jackson's defense, he always hated the plot device where the disgraced Army of the Dead wins the day at Pellenor Fields. He felt it cheap and undercutting of the gravitas for the fight for Gondor, and was long a champion of the omitted storyline where Aragon quietly rebuilds the alliances of the northern Dunedain and they rally to him at Pellenor.
Personally, I think that would have been much more satisfying of Aragorn's arc than the Dimholt army's assistance, but the powers that be felt that the Dead looked a lot cooler and would be a bigger crowdpleaser.
I heard a rumor that the swordfighting Sauron was going to look like Kate Winslet?
Anyway, I'm glad that (a) they came to their senses, and (b) they shot the fight before that, so they had footage of Aragorn fighting that they could use to have him fight that troll.
And yeah, "An Adventure with Scientists" is a more interesting title than "Band of Misfits"; it was released with that title in the UK, it's too bad we didn't get that on this side of the pond.
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Horror movies always work so much better when there's a point to them. Otherwise, it's yet another "maniacs want to turn people into zombies" story that the Japanese so dearly love for some inexplicable reason.
Same, when I saw it the first time it just looked silly and ruined any tension. There could of been a million orcs and it wouldn't have mattered. Either make it so the ghosts could be vanquished somehow, and it actually became a fight, or not have so many of them so the battle wasn't over in seconds. It made the whole battle kind of pointless.
It also raises the never-answered question of why Aragorn didn't just suck up his pride and call the army to his side before it ever got that far.
Much of LOTR, plotwise, is predicated on Aragorn being kind of a coward in regards to his ancestry and duties as High King. If he would have just taken Anduril to the Dimholt, gotten their support, gone around to Rohan and Gondor and given them a, "Hey, I'm king now, so let's go clear out all of Mordor until nothing is left except greasy brown patches in the grass," speech years ago, shit wouldn't have had to come to all the walking and ring bearing.
I've never really played the games (other than a brief time spent with Dead Space 2), but somehow I think we all know that if they tried to adapt Dead Space to film it would be nigh indistinguishable from Event Horizon with liberal attempts at reproducing scenes from the The Thing (only IN SPACE). This is not to say that Dead Space's story content and context isn't obviously derivative of the many Sci-Fi/Horror films of the late 20th century, but that it would stand little chance of not being reduced to only its most derivative and easily marketed content.
pleasepaypreacher.net