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Hm, I don't recall if it was brought up recently in the thread, but did anyone see Loving Vincent? I saw it last weekend, and I was wondering what the general consensus was, because as a visual spectacle, it is really cool, and not as disorienting as you would think, at least not for me. For those who aren't aware, it's a painted movie: it was created over seven years by a team of over 100 painters, to create a final product of 853 shots, entirely of oil and charcoal- about the only things that aren't are the photographs of the actors over the credits. I saw it at the AFI cinema, and I definitely see why they would take an interest; it's a stunning achievement and a cinematic first. The script is, um... well, it's well acted, but if you've seen the trailers, you might come into the movie thinking there's some big mystery to be solved, or some new insight into Van Gogh as an artist or man, and... there isn't. They present the details of his death (the film takes place one year after) and the impressions some people might have gotten from them, and they don't really say anything that you haven't heard before: that he was troubled, that he was difficult with, that he loved his brother very much, and that he died. And as you can imagine, a lot of reviewers are let down by this: some find it boring or hollow, some find it essentially a "spot the painting" of Van Gogh's work (all the characters in the story are based on subjects of Van Gogh's paisome don't see the point of it being a feature length production, et cetera. I personally don't have these complaints but I do understand them: film is an audio-visual medium, after all, and while I might lean toward the latter aspect rather than the former in judging movies (unless the former is a real stinker I can't ignore), you cant discount both of these aspects totally and be honest about reviewing a movie. But I thought the script was fine- nothing great, but serviceable for the purposes of the movie- and I thought the score was fine- Clint Mansell, though admittedly not his best work. And I'm mentioning it here, because it is animation- and lo and behold, not intended for kids or families. So yeah- I recommend, if you can see it. If you're near a theater showing it, or if it comes to your art museum later, it's worth a look.
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Nov 14, 2017 17:34
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Get ready to have Toads ruined
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Nov 14, 2017 17:40
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A Wizard of Goatse posted:it's okay to enjoy things that aren't officially sanctioned high culture or whatever, I'm posting in a thread about cartoons here, but if you need to defend your tastes by claiming they're "ironic" and insisting you actually think they're terrible you're just a lazier version of the same idiot as those teenagers doing backyard recreations of the poo poo they saw on Jackass. No, that is nonsense. People don't like the room because they think it's actually a secretly very well made movie but just have to pretend it's bad because the rich elites in new york told them it was uncool to like it. People like the room because it fails the traditional pillars of storytelling to the point it creates humor where none was intended.
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Nov 14, 2017 17:42
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resurgam40 posted:Hm, I don't recall if it was brought up recently in the thread, but did anyone see Loving Vincent? I saw it last weekend, and I was wondering what the general consensus was, because as a visual spectacle, it is really cool, and not as disorienting as you would think, at least not for me. For those who aren't aware, it's a painted movie: it was created over seven years by a team of over 100 painters, to create a final product of 853 shots, entirely of oil and charcoal- about the only things that aren't are the photographs of the actors over the credits. I saw it at the AFI cinema, and I definitely see why they would take an interest; it's a stunning achievement and a cinematic first. The script is, um... well, it's well acted, but if you've seen the trailers, you might come into the movie thinking there's some big mystery to be solved, or some new insight into Van Gogh as an artist or man, and... there isn't. They present the details of his death (the film takes place one year after) and the impressions some people might have gotten from them, and they don't really say anything that you haven't heard before: that he was troubled, that he was difficult with, that he loved his brother very much, and that he died. And as you can imagine, a lot of reviewers are let down by this: some find it boring or hollow, some find it essentially a "spot the painting" of Van Gogh's work (all the characters in the story are based on subjects of Van Gogh's paisome don't see the point of it being a feature length production, et cetera. I personally don't have these complaints but I do understand them: film is an audio-visual medium, after all, and while I might lean toward the latter aspect rather than the former in judging movies (unless the former is a real stinker I can't ignore), you cant discount both of these aspects totally and be honest about reviewing a movie. But I thought the script was fine- nothing great, but serviceable for the purposes of the movie- and I thought the score was fine- Clint Mansell, though admittedly not his best work. And I'm mentioning it here, because it is animation- and lo and behold, not intended for kids or families. I saw it. The part I could not get over was that it felt like a 90s multimedia CD-Rom game. With the very detailed static backgrounds with a few looping animations to give the setting motion with rotoscoped actors moving on top of it and the way each person existed on a certain screen and he progressed the story by talking to one guy in his area then going to another guy in their area and back to the first guy at his area being the style of that sort of game. Like once that idea entered my mind it was all I could see.
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Nov 14, 2017 17:45
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resurgam40 posted:Hm, I don't recall if it was brought up recently in the thread, but did anyone see Loving Vincent? I did, and I wrote a review. Loving Vincent is a movie which sweats with desperation from every pore. It is filled with nervous movement, it rushes from one scene to another, it moves frantically through van Gogh’s oeuvre without pause, it pleads its audiences to pity poor Vincent, it grows overbearing with the string movements of its soundtrack, and it struggles to capture the scope of the artist’s life in just one and a half hour of runtime. It seems that writer-directors Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman wish to impress upon the audiences that van Gogh really did die only a year ago, as in the movie, and that this loss is still an open wound on the cultural conscience of Europe. Perhaps the panicked pacing speaks more of their own need to justify this animated boondoggle. Armand Roulin, a member of the Arlesian family portrayed by van Gogh, is tasked by his father to deliver a letter from the deceased painter to his brother, Theo van Gogh. The movie develops into a half-baked detective story concerning van Gogh’s last days, where Roulin plays the part of disenchanted film noir hero. He makes accusations, questions alibis, investigates crime scenes, is enchanted by mysterious women, and even gets into a punch-up with local lowlifes. The mystery itself can only be anti-climactic, as it amounts nothing but petty historical speculation. Beyond this inept detective story, Loving Vincent is structured like a documentary or true crime show, where the interviews of eyewitnesses and experts are supplemented by dramatic re-enactments from van Gogh’s life. This simply makes the movie insufferably didactic when it is not just dull. At the end of the movie, van Gogh’s published letters are mentioned, like a “Further Reading” section that finishes a textbook chapter. The great innovation of Loving Vincent is that is animated entirely through oil-paintings that imitates the style van Gogh, and which very often are directly copied from his works ─ the entire movie is a game of “spot the original”. The actors are shot and their movements replicated in Post-Impressionist paints, which results in a pseudo-Rotoscoped effect, as characters who have stepped out of van Gogh’s portraits move restlessly across familiar scenes and landscapes. A principal problem of the movie is that this technique is rarely used to portray anything interesting: the directors are content to simply unambitiously “remix” van Gogh, and there are too many utterly conventional dialogue scenes. One of van Gogh’s paintings was used to prop up a chicken coop, and this seems a fitting metaphor for the movie. The movie hardly ever stops to linger on any of van Gogh’s originals, and thus it trivializes these masterpieces by making them mere storyboard panels. One recalls how François Ozon, in Frantz only used one of Manet’s paintings with great results – quality over quantity. The few interesting sequences occur when the animation breaks loose from dialogues and flashbacks: the perspective is allowed to roam free and forms change and mutate, creating a world of colours and shapes charged with uncontainable energy. Three scenes in particular highlight what the movie could have been: a dream in which Armand becomes van Gogh, his subsequent night-time chase of the Young Man with Cornflower, and his meeting with a doctor who claims that van Gogh’s death was a homicide (which begins with a trivializing homage to At Eternity’s Gates). These are all scenes in where the painters could fully embrace the strengths of animation. Here the movie’s nervous energy works to its advantage, and each of these scenes grabs the viewer with their mesmerising quality, particularly the shifting nature of the dream and Dr. Mazery’s comic gesticulations. These are times that the movie feels like van Gogh paintings come to life. But the film’s creators evidently had no faith in paintings, for in an act of mystifying self-sabotage they chose to tell the story through the unceasing exposition that blares over them. It’s a basic problem of telling instead of just showing, and it turns catastrophic because the cast’s vocal performances are uniformly grating: every line of dialogue is almost squawked. Only a few members of the cast can work through their banal lines in a respectable manners, let alone improve on them. John Sessions’s turn as pontificating art supplier Père Tanguy might represent the nadir of the movie, if Douglas Booth’s squeaking Armand Roulin did not have the advantage of being unbearable throughout the whole thing. Jerome Flynn as Dr. Gachet represents the more tolerable performances. Blame may be laid on what seems to be amateurish voice direction. Loving Vincent features several black-and-white flashbacks narrated by subjects of van Gogh’s portraits: almost all treat him with utmost sympathy and reverence, yet the loud fawning obscures the man himself. But this is not a story about these people who knew van Gogh either, as they are non-entities who exist to speak of the painter in shrill testimonials, while ultimately saying very little. Theo van Gogh’s close bond with his brother, for example, is reduced to exposition. Armand Roulin claims to not care for the painter, but his aimless anger and frustration very obviously stem from sympathy for van Gogh and guilt over his fate, and the climax of his journey consists of reading aloud one of the his letters in voiceover. Roulin’s emotional life revolves entirely around the man. Two van Goghs are present in the movie. The first is the poor persecuted innocent whose trials friends and acquaintances recall, treated cruelly by his parents, by his neighbours, by women, by children, teenagers, fellow artists, police, and even by his doctor. This pseudo-historical van Gogh exists only to suffer most pitiably, and most of the movie consists of discussing him. This figures provides no insight or credible narrative, only a series of vignettes which say nothing about the man or his art save for what everyone already knows: that he suffered. The movie presents too many tragedies too quickly for us to comprehend any of them, just as it rushes through van Gogh’s oeuvre. At the end, the two Roulin men ponder on how difficult it is for humans to understand one another, especially to see through van Gogh's eyes. In reality it’s Kobiela and Welchman themselves who have made van Gogh incomprehensible. The second van Gogh in the movie is the man we know from his self-portraits: a pained, haunting figure of immense but frustrated power. This is who we might call the “true” van Gogh as such a figure might exist, and he is the really interesting one. It is this van Gogh that Kirk Douglas and Jacques Dutronc portrayed, and whom a painter of reproductions recalls meeting in a dream in China’s van Goghs. Armand Roulin, too, sees him in a dream. Appropriately, this powerful figure appears in Loving Vincent only for a matter of seconds, and has little resemblance to the pseudo-historical puppet that occupies the movie’s imagination. In the very end the image of this “true” van Gogh dominates the screen, as if to say that everything before this moment was irrelevant. And the song playing over the credits is reeeeeeally on the nose: quote:Look out on a summer's day Remember: tell, don’t show, and keep telling and telling until the movie’s over and the credits are already rolling. I was surprised what an accurate impression the trailer gave of the movie, but I expected it to be just middling instead of terrible. BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 20:24 on Oct 28, 2018 |
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Nov 14, 2017 17:54
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:And the song playing over the credits is reeeeeeally on the nose: to be fair it's a song about Van Gogh that existed prior to the film, so it's not like the filmmakers wrote the song themselves. Interesting analysis overall
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Nov 14, 2017 19:18
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Sinners Sandwich posted:Get ready to have Toads ruined You say that like Nintendo isn't going to have a loving iron vice-grip on every aspect of the production of this movie. I don't think they want a repeat of the old Mario movie.
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Nov 14, 2017 20:08
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I do wonder how they'll deal with Mario potentially needing more of a speaking role to carry a movie, but maybe they'll pull an Odyssey and give him a companion that does most of the talking.
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Nov 14, 2017 20:34
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Sinners Sandwich posted:Get ready to have Toads ruined .../ 
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Nov 14, 2017 20:46
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Considering it's Illumination Entertainment, I'm guessing it'll be a rather average film that's avertised to hell and back to the point of annoyance. Also it will end with Mario throwing a dance party to the pop music du jour. Wonder if this rules out any Mario cameos in Ralph Wrecks The Internet... Not that I'm sure how many video game cameos they'd put into that one anyway.
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Nov 14, 2017 20:46
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Shadow Hog posted:Considering it's Illumination Entertainment, I'm guessing it'll be a rather average film that's avertised to hell and back to the point of annoyance. Also it will end with Mario throwing a dance party to the pop music du jour. LORD OF BOOTY posted:You say that like Nintendo isn't going to have a loving iron vice-grip on every aspect of the production of this movie. I don't think they want a repeat of the old Mario movie. Seriously, I'd be surprised if Illumination has any creative control and isn't just being used as a glorified render farm.
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Nov 14, 2017 20:59
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LORD OF BOOTY posted:You say that like Nintendo isn't going to have a loving iron vice-grip on every aspect of the production of this movie. I don't think they want a repeat of the old Mario movie. If only we could be so lucky as to get a spiritual sequel to the Super Mario Bros. movie. That movie is awesome.
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Nov 14, 2017 21:47
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It's an odd duck of a movie. I don't hate it. Nintendo, however, very openly does hate it, and saw it as disrespectful to the IP.
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Nov 14, 2017 21:55
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Please don't turn the dear sweet Toads into Minions 
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Nov 14, 2017 22:22
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LORD OF BOOTY posted:It's an odd duck of a movie. I don't hate it. Nintendo, however, very openly does hate it, and saw it as disrespectful to the IP.
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Nov 14, 2017 22:25
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Nintendo managed to make Ubisoft make Rabbids tolerable and actually good this year. And those are the proto-Minions. I'm sure the Toads will be fine. I honestly think Yoshi would probably be more likely to get any Minions treatment.
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Nov 14, 2017 22:31
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Macaluso posted:Please don't turn the dear sweet Toads into Minions They already are. They're part of the recurring trope in cartoon and animated media (of which we can consider video games a form) of a largely identical, diminutive hivemind.
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Nov 14, 2017 22:33
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Wouldn't Goombas be the villain lackey counterpart?
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Nov 14, 2017 22:56
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The difference between Toads and Minions is that Toads have been capable of speech for a long time now, so they're expected to actually say words.
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Nov 14, 2017 22:58
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And Toads are charming little things that presumably pay taxes when they're not being terrorized by Bowser.
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Nov 14, 2017 23:03
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If I see a Mario dance party I'll probably die
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Nov 14, 2017 23:05
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Not anymore! Now they're just going to show their butts and scream for bananas.
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Nov 14, 2017 23:06
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Mario Party?
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Nov 14, 2017 23:07
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Raserys posted:If I see a Mario dance party I'll probably die https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4xW9aCg2zY
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Nov 14, 2017 23:09
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You’ve been struck by You’ve been struck by a-smooth-a criminal
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Nov 14, 2017 23:13
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Illumination has the most aggressively generic films I've ever seen. I'm sure it'll be.
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Nov 14, 2017 23:21
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Raserys posted:If I see a Mario dance party I'll probably die https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6xT0Agj1d4
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Nov 14, 2017 23:44
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Klungar posted:Wouldn't Goombas be the villain lackey counterpart? Goombas, Koopas, Bob-ombs, those piranha flower things, literally anyone who isn't royalty (or plumbers???) is just a hive mind in Mario, that's how video games work.
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Nov 15, 2017 00:26
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Shadow Hog posted:Miyamoto seems to think the film was too faithful, somehow, so make of that what you will. He's right. The old Mario Brothers movie is a consequence of taking everything the franchise says about itself absolutely dead seriously and then performing it with live actors. It's what makes it so wonderful.
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Nov 15, 2017 00:48
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LORD OF BOOTY posted:You say that like Nintendo isn't going to have a loving iron vice-grip on every aspect of the production of this movie. I don't think they want a repeat of the old Mario movie. Well it's not like Nintendo has a stellar track record with animated Mario in their games. Mario Sunshine had a bunch of snoozefest tone-deaf cutscenes about Mario being on trial and Bowser Jr thinking that Peach was his mom and then Galaxy had that intro that took forever to get through and the ending that was weird anime bullshit about blowing up the galaxy and then rebirthing it.
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Nov 15, 2017 01:29
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I mean....there's also the first three Paper Mario games and the first and third Mario & Luigi games.
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Nov 15, 2017 01:31
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Waffleman_ posted:I mean....there's also the first three Paper Mario games and the first and third Mario & Luigi games. So it's going to depend heavily and who's writing the scenarios.
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Nov 15, 2017 02:24
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I mean, it'll probably be an outside writer with consultation from Nintendo. They don't really have a lot of screenwriters in the company.
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Nov 15, 2017 02:29
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Get Ian Flynn.
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Nov 15, 2017 02:51
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I know it won't ever happen, but I wish they'd go for a Paper Mario look, I love the aesthetics of the series and some of the gags they pull due to the conceit's everything made out of paper.
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Nov 15, 2017 03:27
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this one is good this one is bad
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Nov 15, 2017 03:58
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Jump Up, Super Star is seriously so good, I'm gonna have it stuck in my head for the rest of the week now
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Nov 15, 2017 05:44
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Mechafunkzilla posted:If only we could be so lucky as to get a spiritual sequel to the Super Mario Bros. movie. The old mario movie is really not GOOD, but it is really, uh, creative in how it interprets the source material. I have a real soft spot for it because of how weird it is.
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Nov 15, 2017 06:32
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I love it so much that I'll never watch it again. Seriously. I watched it over and over as a kid, into my late teens. Now that I'm 30 I hope to cherish actually enjoying a "so bad it's good" movie. Every SBIG movie I've tried to rewatch as been ruined.
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Nov 15, 2017 06:37
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ConfusedUs posted:The old mario movie is really not GOOD, but it is really, uh, creative in how it interprets the source material. my favorite way to describe it is that the live action Mario movie is like if a 50 year old in 1992 listened to their 10 year old nephew describe all of the stuff in the mario games and they went and made a movie entirely based off of that description without looking at a single actual Mario game.
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Nov 15, 2017 06:56
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