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CelticPredator posted:I disagree. Film is basically a magic trick where you wow the audience by basically tricking them into feeling something. Even if you believe this, magic tricks aren't "magic".
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Dec 17, 2017 20:00
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:Even if you believe this, magic tricks aren't "magic". Exactly. They are a skill which takes years of practice to develop.
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Dec 17, 2017 20:02
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Neo Rasa posted:I'm surprised how many fans of the Alien movies in particular share this sentiment when each of the four Alien film has had a completely different director's sensibilities behind it. Plus even if Ridley Scott wanted to make something almost identical to Alien and somehow literally every single person who worked on Alien was available/alive to also work on Prometheus, it still would be absolutely nothing like Alien beyond "folks on a ship run into some weird poo poo" and that's hardly a failure on the part of anyone involved. It's because fans are not actually talking about the films. As Covok expresses it, they are talking about "the magic." "The magic" has nothing to do with Alien, the writing, the cinematography, the score. It refers to the unique popular phenomenon of the film within a specific historical context. Prometheus and Covenant are seen as failures because, 38 years later, they have not had a proportional effect. CelticPredator posted:I disagree. Film is basically a magic trick where you wow the audience by basically tricking them into feeling something. That's not how Covok is using "magic." They are not talking about cinematic illusions, they are talking about the abstract feeling that something is significant because it is popular. There is, of course, illusion and trickery in film. Many of the oldest films are more or less magic shows taken off the streets and out of the theater, and transposed onto a new medium. But in neither the magic show or the cinema is the goal to 'trick the spectator into feeling something.' The goal of the trick is to trick, to manipulate the cognition of the spectator into perceiving something that is not objectively true. The emotional reaction is the spontaneous, genuine reaction to this cognition, the spectator's honest emotions to perceiving something they consciously know can't be real.
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Dec 17, 2017 20:11
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Snak posted:Exactly. They are a skill which takes years of practice to develop. There's a lot of things that aren't descriptive enough but craft comes closest for me.
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Dec 17, 2017 20:17
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Prometheus is going to be recognized for having its own magic in another decade. "The movie that everyone thought was stupid because it wasn't what they wanted". I don't even like Prometheus, but my beef is certainly not with the concept, which is awesome.
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Dec 17, 2017 20:28
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Snak posted:Prometheus is going to be recognized for having its own magic in another decade. On Rifttrax.
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Dec 17, 2017 21:10
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K. Waste posted:Good filmmaking is not magic. Not really. Movies are subjective, but Prometheus was way too up its own rear end and Covenant just felt like a really high budget slasher flick with very little effort put into it. It felt like a movie being pushed into two different directions: the artsy-fartsy direction of Prometheus and the safe, corporate-backed, clearly what fox wanted slasher film. This made both of them feel really unsatisfied to me.
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Dec 17, 2017 21:20
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Prometheus has a very nice rear end.
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Dec 17, 2017 21:21
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MajorB posted:Prometheus has a very nice rear end. 
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Dec 17, 2017 21:23
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Covok posted:Not really. Movies are subjective, but Prometheus was way too up its own rear end and Covenant just felt like a really high budget slasher flick with very little effort put into it. It felt like a movie being pushed into two different directions: the artsy-fartsy direction of Prometheus and the safe, corporate-backed, clearly what fox wanted slasher film. Subjectivity is not magic, and there are plenty of ways to deal with film objectively, which begins with describing the form of the text, as opposed to constant digression to abstract feelings about how much "effort" was put into it, or speculating about the intent or pretensions of the filmmakers. Films are incredibly difficult to make and require a tremendous amount of effort. This is not subjective. Your basic "subjective" language is not describing the film. It is describing your feelings. To what extent you do refer to the film, you criticize it for being like "a really high budget slasher flick," and that it's "artsy-fartsy," and that it's produced by a major studio. This does not clarify anything about what you object to in either the narrative or aesthetics. If Covenant is like a slasher, or artsy, what is wrong with this? How is Prometheus up its own rear end? What does that even mean?
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Dec 17, 2017 21:52
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Also, slashers are good. So a spooky wizard castle slasher with plenty of effort put into it turned out to be a good movie.
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Dec 17, 2017 22:03
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Very little effort:          Also, here's some nice parallel imagery for ya:   *whispering*They're turning against you, captain. They lack faith.*whispering*
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Dec 17, 2017 23:27
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CelticPredator posted:I disagree. Film is basically a magic trick where you wow the audience by basically tricking them into feeling something. And I disagree with that to a degree. Feeling is just one aspect but not necessarily the goal. Film is a window into man's mind where a person can convey their vision to people and the world. This can be done with instrument like pencil or pen and paper, paint and canvas, etc. but film allows motion and performance. It's a communication tool and can be used for art and expression and that requires skill, knowledge, and training to excel in it. We have the technology to now put our imaginations onto the canvas in movement. From Star Trek showing us technology like computerized pads and Starships to Superman fighting Zod to exploring the universe with national geographic and telling a story that follows animals in their lives in habitats we can't easily visit to interviews with mass murdering despots and news, it's a whole experience. EDIT: That an artist can construct a narrative that resonates emotionally with you, that's magic. But he's using his skill to craft something that conveys that and it's dependent on your state on if and how you connect with it. Gatts fucked around with this message at 01:23 on Dec 18, 2017 |
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Dec 18, 2017 01:18
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K. Waste posted:Also, here's some nice parallel imagery for ya: This is fantastic.
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Dec 18, 2017 01:23
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Neo Rasa posted:Plus even if Ridley Scott wanted to make something almost identical to Alien and somehow literally every single person who worked on Alien was available/alive to also work on Prometheus, it still would be absolutely nothing like Alien beyond "folks on a ship run into some weird poo poo" and that's hardly a failure on the part of anyone involved. I'd think if Ridley Scott and co had wanted to recreate 'Alien' that they totally could have done it.
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Dec 18, 2017 01:47
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IMB posted:This is fantastic. Covenant isn't nearly as good as Prometheus for my money, but it's a drat fine piece of work.
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Dec 18, 2017 01:54
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K. Waste posted:Covenant isn't nearly as good as Prometheus for my money, but it's a drat fine piece of work. I kind of want to see the timeline where the stories of Prometheus and Covenant were still meant to all happen in one film.
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Dec 18, 2017 02:06
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This cracked me up so loving much. Do you think Disney would put medieval homunculi in their Alien movies? I seriously doubt that. HUNDU THE BEAST GOD fucked around with this message at 02:21 on Dec 18, 2017 |
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Dec 18, 2017 02:17
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I thought it was beautiful.
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Dec 18, 2017 02:19
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It's both a beautiful moment and a brilliant encapsulation of how the film works as a black comedy. This is why it's so wrong-headed to claim that the film depreciates the mystique of the xenomorph. Why cling to pretenses of mystique when you can go in the radical opposite direction, and make the xenomorph a cute wittle baby? And, as with Weyland being analogous to Walt Disney in Prometheus, it's another Jurassic Park-connection: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFEVRYJ_QH0
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Dec 18, 2017 02:44
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K. Waste posted:This is why it's so wrong-headed to claim that the film depreciates the mystique of the xenomorph. Why cling to pretenses of mystique when you can go in the radical opposite direction, and make the xenomorph a cute wittle baby? This dovetails nicely with Ridley's insistence that the alien isn't scary anymore. When you're not worrying about the creature being frightening, it turns out you can do a whole lot of interesting things with it.
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Dec 18, 2017 03:12
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MajorB posted:This dovetails nicely with Ridley's insistence that the alien isn't scary anymore. When you're not worrying about the creature being frightening, it turns out you can do a whole lot of interesting things with it. Which is to say that Ridley is actually the biggest alien fan of all, in that he still considers it fundamentally a product of the imagination of H. R. Giger. Giger was never inventing abhorrent, unfathomable outsiders who are only good for being destroyed. His portrayal of the xenomorph was an act of love, a depiction of humanity that is both horrifically liberated in its sexuality while remaining infantile and presexual, in a perpetual state of death and rebirth, its being indistinguishable from the systems of industrial capitalism that both spawn and oppress it.         There were two major Lovecraftian influences on Alien - the first was Dan O'Bannon, and the second was H. R. Giger (who named one of his art books after a fictional book from Lovecraft's mythos). Whereas O'Bannon exploited the apparent 'fear of the unknown' in Lovecraft's literature, Giger's art lent to the visual narrative of the film something with much more potent clarity, which is not fear of the unknown, but fear of that which is known about the vulgar nature and inevitable fate of humanity, but which is too horrifying to confront. K. Waste fucked around with this message at 03:36 on Dec 18, 2017 |
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Dec 18, 2017 03:33
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Giger liked them perky!
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Dec 18, 2017 04:33
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K. Waste posted:Which is to say that Ridley is actually the biggest alien fan of all, in that he still considers it fundamentally a product of the imagination of H. R. Giger. Giger was never inventing abhorrent, unfathomable outsiders who are only good for being destroyed. His portrayal of the xenomorph was an act of love, a depiction of humanity that is both horrifically liberated in its sexuality while remaining infantile and presexual, in a perpetual state of death and rebirth, its being indistinguishable from the systems of industrial capitalism that both spawn and oppress it. It disturbs me when something vaguely erotic is registered by my brain and I'm briefly titillated before my brain remembers how hosed up the entire image is. It makes me feel wrong.
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Dec 18, 2017 04:40
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Tenzarin posted:Giger liked them perky!   Covok posted:It disturbs me when something vaguely erotic is registered by my brain and I'm briefly titillated before my brain remembers how hosed up the entire image is. It makes me feel wrong. Do not feel wrong about your erotophilia, comrade. Fear only the invisible order of fascism disguised as pride, tradition, and destiny.    quote:Imbecile! How could you believe I'd kill you? Don't you know we'd want to kill you a thousand times, to the limits of eternity, if eternity has any.
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Dec 18, 2017 04:56
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K. Waste do you do movie stuff for a living, cause I can't get enough of your posts.
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Dec 18, 2017 05:22
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Barbie is that you?
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Dec 18, 2017 05:45
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SHISHKABOB posted:K. Waste do you do movie stuff for a living, cause I can't get enough of your posts. I wish. I do spend an inordinate amount of time making video essays, of which I'm making two this month. Semi-related: How to Read Alien Without Really Trying - Chapter V: "Baby Wants to gently caress"       quote:From what perspective should we observe this scene? K. Waste fucked around with this message at 05:53 on Dec 18, 2017 |
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Dec 18, 2017 05:51
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MajorB posted:Is it possible that Fox and Ridley can get Alien Awakening into production quickly enough that Disney can't kill it? I know Ridley is about to film another movie, but he was able to jump right from The Martian into Covenant. I certainly hope Ridley postpones The Cartel in favor of the Covenant sequel for this very reason. It's a shame the Academy will most likely overlook best visual effects and cinematography nominations for this film.
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Dec 18, 2017 06:36
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viral spiral posted:I certainly hope Ridley postpones The Cartel in favor of the Covenant sequel for this very reason. I'd say it deserves a nomination just for the recognition, sure, but Blade Runner 2049 absolutely deserves the win for both of those categories.
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Dec 18, 2017 13:07
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Covok posted:At least they might take it away from Ridley Scott, a man who is just not able to recapture the magic of the original films and his psychological and philosophical drivel is not being well received and mostly made me and my friends laugh. Oh no, a movie made you and your friends enjoy yourselves in allegedly unexpected ways! Save us Disney, save us from Ridley Scott!!
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Dec 18, 2017 17:59
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edit: whoops
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Dec 18, 2017 18:06
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Ridley Scott is a fantastic film maker and one of my absolute favorites. His best work however is Kingdom of Heaven, his cut.
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Dec 18, 2017 19:03
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The director's cut of Kingdom of Heaven is really, really good.
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Dec 18, 2017 19:09
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Last night I watched Alien Covenant in black and white.            It, uh, owned.
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Dec 19, 2017 04:08
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Huh. Black and White suits it.
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Dec 19, 2017 04:09
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CelticPredator posted:Huh. Black and White suits it. Yeah, seriously. I wish Ridley had thought of it now.      The chestburster scene is transcendent... and even more reminiscent of an ejaculation.         
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Dec 19, 2017 04:27
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gently caress yeah. edit: I would really like it to start being a thing for people to watch contemporary movies shot for color in black-and-white.
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Dec 19, 2017 04:59
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Dracula, Dead and Loving It in black & white.
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Dec 19, 2017 05:29
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ruddiger posted:Dracula, Dead and Loving It in black & white. ... It will be done. I HAVEN'T EVEN SEEN IT IN COLOR!!!
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Dec 19, 2017 05:42
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