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euphronius posted:Why is "The Unforgiven" considered a "revisionist" Western?
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Apr 30, 2010 20:32
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Yeah, "Unforgiven" by Eastwood. Sorry. So it is revisionist for revising the revisionist films, heh.
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Apr 30, 2010 20:35
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euphronius posted:Yeah, "Unforgiven" by Eastwood. Sorry.
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Apr 30, 2010 20:44
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The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance was 1962.
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Apr 30, 2010 20:50
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What? now I am confused. So was it revisionist or not? VVV Thank you, I understand now. euphronius fucked around with this message at 20:59 on Apr 30, 2010 |
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Apr 30, 2010 20:51
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euphronius posted:What? now I am confused. So was it revisionist or not?
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Apr 30, 2010 20:58
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High Noon was released in 1952. When someone says that a Western is revisionist, that generally means that it presents a version of the American West that is at odds with the version typically presented in the Hollywood Western of the classic studio era. So the `conventional' Western is something like most of John Ford's Westerns (although some would argue that The Searchers (1956) is a revisionist Western), or Howard Hawks'. These films typically feature clearly delineated good and evil, with the good almost invariably being represented by hardworking, salt-of-the-earth American settlers, lawmen, and so forth. The evil usually appears in the form of either stereotypically villainous bandits that bear more than a passing resemblance to Wile E. Coyote, or equally stereotypically rapacious redski...er, India...er, Native Americans. If there is any moral ambiguity, it's usually in the form of the rakish rogue who decides to fight for The Establishment in the end (Victor Mature as Doc Holliday in My Darling Clementine (1946), for example), the outlaw with the heart of gold and who never engages in untoward behaviour on screen (John Wayne as the Ringo Kid in Stagecoach (1936)), or occasionally the hidebound bureaucrat who makes mistakes out of a misplaced sense of duty (Henry Fonda as Lt. Col. Thursday in Fort Apache (1948)). Underneath all this is a fairly utopian vision of the American West as an embodiment of the Puritan work ethic, the golden rule, and other traditional American ethical nostrums. Revisionist Westerns are generally considered to be any that present a more nuanced version of history than the rather idealised version seen in the studio era films. Some of this may be done by portraying the American West as a largely amoral and violent purgatory (e.g. Leone's films). Some may do this by questioning the utopian version of the American West as presented in the studio era films (as in High Noon). Some may do it by attempting to present greater historical verisimilitude---and therefore the racism and smallmindedness that characterised much of America in the mid 19th Century---like, I dunno, the television series Deadwood. And so on. It's not a case where it's a clear-cut set of definitions, and people argue about what is and is not revisionist as much as people talk about the subject at all. But under it all, it's more or less just a comparison between one kind of Westerns (the Westerns of the classic Hollywood studio era) and every other Western.
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Apr 30, 2010 21:16
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Why is The Searchers described as a right-wing response to High Noon exactly? I get that High Noon was a metaphor for McCarthyism, blacklisting, etc., but where does The Searchers fit in as being a right-wing response? I've read that description multiple times and I guess I just don't understand it.
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Apr 30, 2010 21:22
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I'm not really sure where to ask this but it's something I was always curious about. I watched Beavers IMAX today, and wondered how these crews can get so close and intimate with animals with what I'm assuming is quite a bit of filming equipment and crew members. For instance, there is one scene where the river surface has frozen and we see the beaver's taking refuge in this little cavern type thing that's only accessible from going underwater.
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Apr 30, 2010 21:33
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Butthole Prince posted:Why is The Searchers described as a right-wing response to High Noon exactly?
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Apr 30, 2010 21:44
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Is there a worthwhile Netflix available documentary movie about miniature set design (history, evolution, best examples, etc)? I just rented Logan's Run, and man, those miniatures just looked terrible. Is that just what people put up with? Were there ever any miniature based special effects that did not require a huge degree of willing suspension of disbelief to work? Are modern day special effects just going to look this bad in 30 years? (Actually all of Logan's Run was bad in so many ways, but the special effects stand out.) kapalama fucked around with this message at 22:33 on Apr 30, 2010 |
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Apr 30, 2010 22:18
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EVERYTHING I SAY ABOUT JAPAN OR LIVING IN JAPAN IS COMPLETELY WRONG, BUT YOU BETTER BELIEVE I'LL 
ABOUT IT.
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the Bunt posted:I'm not really sure where to ask this but it's something I was always curious about. I watched Beavers IMAX today, and wondered how these crews can get so close and intimate with animals with what I'm assuming is quite a bit of filming equipment and crew members. For instance, there is one scene where the river surface has frozen and we see the beaver's taking refuge in this little cavern type thing that's only accessible from going underwater. I haven't seen the Beavers movie, but the Planet Earth series has a small making of feature at the end of every episode and a lot of the time it seems like it's just one guy hiding in a camouflage tent for weeks at a time with an incredibly nice camera, hoping to get a five second shot of some tropical bird's mating dance. Also, giant zoom lenses and remote cameras.
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Apr 30, 2010 22:22
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kapalama posted:Is there a worthwhile Netflix available documentary movie about miniature set design (history, evolution, best examples, etc)? In recent memory, I believe the scene in The Dark Knight where the Batmobile wrecks a truck by driving head-on under its wheels is a miniature effect that a lot of people swore was done with full-size vehicles. Some miniature effects hold up better than others, basically the same as CGI effects. There are some major movies that came out in the last couple of years that have less convincing effects than 2001: A Space Odyssey, it's just really variable by how much time and money they sink into the effects.
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Apr 30, 2010 22:30
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Kentucky Shark posted:In recent memory, I believe the scene in The Dark Knight where the Batmobile wrecks a truck by driving head-on under its wheels is a miniature effect that a lot of people swore was done with full-size vehicles. Some miniature effects hold up better than others, basically the same as CGI effects. There are some major movies that came out in the last couple of years that have less convincing effects than 2001: A Space Odyssey, it's just really variable by how much time and money they sink into the effects. The only CG in the entire underground chase sequence is the bat-cycle unfurling as it leaves the wreckage; everything else was done with full-size vehicles or practical effects.
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Apr 30, 2010 22:35
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It blew my mind when I opened up a behind the scenes book for the movie and saw the miniatures used in that scene, I would've sworn up and down it was all full sized poo poo.
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Apr 30, 2010 22:37
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haveblue posted:The only CG in the entire underground chase sequence is the bat-cycle unfurling as it leaves the wreckage; everything else was done with full-size vehicles or practical effects. I'm fairly certain the Tumbler killing the garbage truck was done with miniatures. Granted the 'miniatures' were still relatively large, but they definitely weren't full-sized vehicles. Schlitzkrieg Bop fucked around with this message at 22:47 on Apr 30, 2010 |
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Apr 30, 2010 22:44
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Kentucky Shark posted:I'm fairly certain the Tumbler killing the garbage truck was done with miniatures. Granted the 'miniatures' were still relatively large, but they definitely weren't full-sized vehicles. That would be in the "practical effects" category. There's a whole special feature on the Blu-Ray specifically about that one scene. Pretty much every moment that doesn't involve something being destroyed uses full-size vehicles, the ones that do use models, and the sole CG shot is singled out.
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Apr 30, 2010 22:50
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It probably helps that they were really well-lit. Logan's Run wasn't exactly stuffed with money so not only were they badly-made miniatures but they were badly-lit. Of course, it's also hard to photograph a miniature without making it look like a miniature; the famous space waltz from 2001 was done frame by frame to ensure not only the best possible lighting and clarity but depth of field, which is why it still looks so goddamn real.
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Apr 30, 2010 22:50
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haveblue posted:That would be in the "practical effects" category. There's a whole special feature on the Blu-Ray specifically about that one scene. Pretty much every moment that doesn't involve something being destroyed uses full-size vehicles, the ones that do use models, and the sole CG shot is singled out. Guess my terminology is messed up because I thought practical effects referred only to things created live on-set, while miniatures still fell under the term of special effects.
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Apr 30, 2010 22:52
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It's probably my terminology (I thought practical was everything that wasn't created in the editing bay), but either way, it's an impressive sequence. To make up for this tangent, the best SFX trick I've seen recently was in Fellowship of the Ring. When the camera flies past the Argonath (the huge statues), you can see a small flock of birds flying out of one of the ears. The statue was a miniature, but Jackson had the CG team add artificial birds afterwards. His logic was that the audience would see the birds and reflexively assume that they had been disturbed by the helicopter the camera was mounted on flying too close to the real gigantic statue they were nesting in. By playing on the audience's behind-the-scenes knowledge of moviemaking, and making them think they had caught a glimpse of the method used to suspend the camera hundreds of feet off the ground, he added verisimilitude to the larger illusion he was really presenting- that the monumental carving existed and wasn't just six feet of styrofoam carved and painted gray. That's always struck me as amazing. haveblue fucked around with this message at 23:05 on Apr 30, 2010 |
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Apr 30, 2010 22:54
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Magic Hate Ball posted:It probably helps that they were really well-lit. Logan's Run wasn't exactly stuffed with money so not only were they badly-made miniatures but they were badly-lit. Of course, it's also hard to photograph a miniature without making it look like a miniature; the famous space waltz from 2001 was done frame by frame to ensure not only the best possible lighting and clarity but depth of field, which is why it still looks so goddamn real. I watched 2001 somewhat recently (I needed to show a Japanese person the film to explain the constant cultural references that have come from a now 40 years old film.) It seemed hardly dated. But Logan's Run was just bad: cheesy effects, terrible !ACTING!, intrusive music, bad green-screening, etc.. I was going to NetFlix my way through a bunch of old Sci-Fi films that I feel I should see, but watching Logan's Run has kind of put me off the project. Who is the guy that developed his own infinite depth of field lenses? He shot some nature films that showed a grasshopper and mountains in the far background in perfect focus.
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Apr 30, 2010 23:08
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Yeah, Logan's Run has terrible effects work. I don't know why it's regarded as anything other than a B movie.
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May 1, 2010 00:31
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Egbert Souse posted:Yeah, Logan's Run has terrible effects work. I don't know why it's regarded as anything other than a B movie.
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May 1, 2010 00:44
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the Bunt posted:I'm not really sure where to ask this but it's something I was always curious about. I watched Beavers IMAX today, and wondered how these crews can get so close and intimate with animals with what I'm assuming is quite a bit of filming equipment and crew members. For instance, there is one scene where the river surface has frozen and we see the beaver's taking refuge in this little cavern type thing that's only accessible from going underwater. Photographers and researchers typically shadow their subject for weeks at a time, and the footage you see is pieced together from many different days into one traditional narrative. It's more evident in the PLANET EARTH and LIFE series on Discovery, but editing makes up a large portion of it. For the shot inside the cavern, the researcher likely waited for either the family to be distracted or leave the area to place a tiny camouflaged camera inside like those cameras in THE COVE, and gathered it later when they were done filming the animals. And the crew on these gigs is usually small. A few different cameramen/cameras, a researcher/producer, and maybe a medic if they are in a dangerous location. 5 guys, tops.
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May 1, 2010 00:57
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Egbert Souse posted:Yeah, Logan's Run has terrible effects work. I don't know why it's regarded as anything other than a B movie. I just saw this a few weeks ago with the authors of the novel in attendance. They absolutely HATE the film, and listening to them rant about how the story makes no sense was priceless.
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May 1, 2010 00:59
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VorpalBunny posted:I just saw this a few weeks ago with the authors of the novel in attendance. What was the occasion for watching this movie a few weeks ago?
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May 1, 2010 02:43
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kapalama posted:What was the occasion for watching this movie a few weeks ago? A screening at the Egyptian Theater through the American Cinematheque here in Los Angeles. http://www.americancinematheque.com/ They have an amazing selection of films shown on the big screen, usually with Q&A panels after the screenings. We're going to an IRON MAN 2 preview screening next week, and tonight is the BACK TO THE FUTURE marathon. It was a MAD MAX marathon a few weeks ago. They also had a screening of the original NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET a few weeks ago, where Wes Craven did a live commentary as the film played on the big screen. They also show TV marathons. We went to the TWILIGHT ZONE 50th anniversary panel with Richard Matheson on the panel, among others, and they screened like 8 episodes.
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May 1, 2010 03:00
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Oh man, I have to make a huge effort to go see a huge blockbuster. Take 3 buses and it takes me an hour, because they relocated all the theaters far outside the town I live in. So jealous. Anyways, Speaking of Leon and westerns, but when does Duck You Sucker/Fist Full of Dynamite take place? It seems like it's the 30s, but there's a lot of stuff that looks from the 19th century, and when they ambush the convoy, one of the guns they have is an MG42, which wasn't in use by the Germans until 1942. It's very confusing. One of my favorite miniature effects is from Lynch's Dune. When the Atredies arrive on Arrakis, the scene where they leave their frigate, it looks like a massive set, but it's a very clever use of perspective and miniatures. The ship is a miniature that's very close to the camera, while the actors and airfield is very far away. They are lined up perfectly so it looks like one shot.
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May 1, 2010 05:39
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twistedmentat posted:Anyways, Speaking of Leon and westerns, but when does Duck You Sucker/Fist Full of Dynamite take place? It seems like it's the 30s, but there's a lot of stuff that looks from the 19th century, and when they ambush the convoy, one of the guns they have is an MG42, which wasn't in use by the Germans until 1942. It's very confusing. The Mexican Revolution lasted from 1910 to 1920. Wikipedia says the movie takes place in 1913.
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May 1, 2010 08:53
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twistedmentat posted:Anyways, Speaking of Leon and westerns, but when does Duck You Sucker/Fist Full of Dynamite take place? It seems like it's the 30s, but there's a lot of stuff that looks from the 19th century, and when they ambush the convoy, one of the guns they have is an MG42, which wasn't in use by the Germans until 1942. It's very confusing.
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May 1, 2010 10:39
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Is there a region 2 equivalent to Criterion releases? Colour me jealous, I want such a comprehensive package with excellent picture quality and piles of extras!
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May 1, 2010 20:24
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spe posted:Is there a region 2 equivalent to Criterion releases? Colour me jealous, I want such a comprehensive package with excellent picture quality and piles of extras! Masters of Cinema/Eureka, Optimum, and BFI.
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May 1, 2010 21:39
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FitFortDanga posted:Masters of Cinema/Eureka, Optimum, and BFI. Cool! I didn't realise Optimum were in that particular racket. Just thought they released weird/indie/obscure films. I once recall my tutor showing an Optimum film that was split into four smaller panels showing different narratively linked images for the entirety. Excellent in theory.
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May 1, 2010 22:33
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Optimum distributes Studio Canal stuff in the UK. They've got some pretty nice Blu-Ray packages.
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May 2, 2010 00:03
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Hedenius posted:That's all very intentional. Leone based a lot of the film on WWII and never meant it as a real period piece. That makes a lot more sense. It works a lot better just being sort of in it's own world.
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May 2, 2010 01:21
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I don't mean to open up the debate on this movie again, but why exactly is The Hurt Locker still in theaters? Looking up showtimes just now, I see that my local indie theater is still showing it. The Oscars was months ago, and it's been out on DVD since January. Who the gently caress is still seeing this movie in theaters? Furthermore, how long after the Oscars was Slumdog in theaters last year (or was it)?
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May 2, 2010 02:39
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quote:Optimum distributes Studio Canal stuff in the UK. They've got some pretty nice Blu-Ray packages. I might just stop buying DVDs and wait until I get my PS3 then start from scratch in lovely HD. However this post leads me on to my most recent SD purchase: Please tell me to gently caress off with the spoilers if they aren't necessary. Am I supposed to feel so soul crushingly empty, down and mechanised after watching Koyaanisqatsi? I found a lot of it to be quite grim and pessimistic, but the magical spark seen in the opening moments being shot down with an almighty explosion, tracked for painful minutes at a time during the finale to be soul crushing in the context of what I saw. I don't think I've seen a film that powerful in a long time. Is it weird that its instantly one of my all time favourites and I wanna watch it another 20 times? Misc Koyaanisqatsi questions: What exactly was that exploding craft? During the natural world sequence before seeing the landscape dominated by pylons, where was that wonderful river that cut itself into the landscape over the years and snaked deeply through the mountain like some sort of soggy hairline crack? That place looked amazing. Hell, I'm a cinema shitehawk who hasn't geeked about film for years but the old K-Qat is tempting me to post a blow-by-blow thread in here because god drat, what a movie. I've got the sequel here but I'm gonna give it a week or so before watching. Philip is Iron and Strong, we are Glass. e: Forgot the big general question: Is it strange at all that Koyaanisqatsi scared me more than any horror film? spe fucked around with this message at 02:51 on May 2, 2010 |
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May 2, 2010 02:45
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Yes, you are (and no, it's not). It's a horrifying, ugly, dirty masterpiece and if you don't anything other than revulsion, terror, pain, and misery during the final rocket sequence then you're probably broken or something. Also, the rocket that we see exploding at the end is the Atlas-Centaur, while the taking-off footage is of Saturn V.
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May 2, 2010 02:59
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While its fresh in my mind I'd like to elaborate on a few thoughts I had about the film I found particularly powerful. During the opening sequences we saw the clouds, turbulent gasses acting like turbulent liquids on a grand scale, dwarfing the mountains. Then almost immediately we cut to shots of the ocean, sometimes acting violently and sometimes still. I found this particularly powerful during the majority of the shots of skyscrapers and city skylines. The majority of skyscraper shots reflected the clouds in the sky and the majority (if not all) of the city skylines were dwarfed by time-lapsed clouds. To me this reminded me of the water eroding into the cliffs, ever present and always wearing away at everything (like that wonderful panorama I enquired about in a previous post), the fact it brings life and the fact that we can be seen as so minuscule compared to the epic power of nature. Even if we ignore the vast majority of ant-farm-esque shots of people scuttling around like insects, a lot of the close-ups of city life had the camera tilted downward, looking at something deeper or if you wanna get grim, something darker and further down inside people as a whole, it reminded me of the establishing shots of Blue Velvet. These images of people scuttling and people acting exactly like the machines we operate helps to separate us even more from the gigantic forces of nature seen at other points in the film. Hell, one of the first shots of technology is a truck being consumed entirely by smoke, we're not only out of our element, we're being overtaken by forces of nature beyond our control completely. The time-lapse city skyline shots reinforced this with me further because it simply evoked thoughts that no matter what we do, we're gonna get washed away by the awesome power of the planet. An early montage of structures being destroyed by us hit me later in the film and reinforced this feeling. Am I talking sense or are these just dumb ramblings? This movie really struck a chord with me. e: Sorry if this is unreadable, 4am combined with generally shady writing ability is gonna create a cacophony. spe fucked around with this message at 03:42 on May 2, 2010 |
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May 2, 2010 03:38
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spe posted:
Have you seen Baraka? You'd probably dig it.
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May 2, 2010 03:44
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about Koyaanisqatsi