|
Nudity seems to squeak by via the "nonsexual" aspect. So in Titanic the nudity is during a painting scene (not the sex scene) and, from what I gather, there are a lot of butts in Yes Man which are played for laughs. If it was a Requiem for a Dream rear end to rear end scene, no PG-13. Benny Hill style butts, good to go. Stuff in the 80s pre-PG-13 are the wild west and you can find all kinds of randomness like Sheena and Airplane or even Andromeda Strain which had (dead) boobs in a G rated film They've got rules regarding language in a PG-13 and best I can recall they can get by with a couple "fucks" as long as they're not sexual (for the former). Of course, it is subjective so there are films that they won't let by with a gently caress so you get some bad ADR covering it and other that get a lot more fucks for whatever reason or bargaining done on the part of the producers. It's still quite a gamble to make a film with language and nudity in it so I'd say they had some balls filming Yes Man the way they did and probably covered it with butt-less scenes. But a Jim Carrey movie has some clout so they skated by. Ape Agitator fucked around with this message at 22:48 on Jan 1, 2009 |
#
¿
Jan 1, 2009 22:42
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 16, 2024 02:49 |
|
|
Saint of Killers posted:Also, the end of Cube: what the gently caress? he just walks out? seriously? This is, demonstrably, the best possible ending. The entire movie is ambiguous and the goal is a macguffin so there's no ending that wouldn't have been as good. See all of the sequels to understand why knowing anything more than pure white is a bad idea.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 4, 2009 17:27
|
|
|
Magic Hate Ball posted:"Mancup: Man who turns into a cup. If I were in charge.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 7, 2009 01:36
|
|
|
Elijya posted:I got Elizabeth: The Golden Age in from Netflix before the first Elizabeth by accident. I've never seen either of these films. Is it necessary, or worth it, to see them in order? I won't be able to get Elizabeth for another week or so. Friday, maybe, if I send one of my films out tomorrow. It's somewhat arguable considering they chose a rather specific and logical point to end the first story, so anyone should be able to watch the sequel and be okay. That said, there are still very shorthanded comments and references to relationships established in the first film and characterization of several people will be pretty low because they'd already been established. And the first film is also the better one, in my opinion, so I'd say you're much better off to wait and watch Elizabeth and hold on to TGA until afterwards.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 12, 2009 07:32
|
|
|
jjack229 posted:Maybe not a movie question, but close enough. Bear in mind that we'd come out of a war, a bad economy, and were fueling rather incredible economic success driven in part by unprecedented deficit spending and a stock market explosion. Blockbusters were becoming the new mainstay of movie studios and television marketing was going into overdrive to siphon the new wealth (with kids shows tied inextricably to toy lines). And the best thing ever? Credit Cards.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 13, 2009 02:48
|
|
|
muscles like this? posted:What happened to Charlie Sheen anyway? He went from movies to television sitcoms which is a step down no matter what the show is. Was it simply the hooker stuff or what? Cocaine abuse, hookers from Heidi Fleiss, and a shitload of bad tabloid-worthy marriages. He's a rare success story in the sense that the came back and landed on his feet on Spin City. There's more than a few good movie actors who take TV roles (Toni Collette is doing an HBO series now, Fishburne on CSI) so it isn't quite the stigma it used to be. We benefit from better talent on camera, they benefit from being able to buy a house in LA and keep a marriage going. And producers have gotten adept at building around schedules to allow them to still get movies done.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 17, 2009 02:12
|
|
|
Don't forget Wall Street and 80s staples like Major League and Young Guns. But what really kept his career alive was swooping in on Michael J. Fox's shadow on Spin City.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 1, 2009 04:44
|
|
|
tendrilsfor20 posted:Those are called "codas" (singular: coda) I wouldn't agree with that. In my mind, a coda is a kind of epilogue for books and movies that acts as commentary. What I think you're after is a Stinger. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-credits_scene
|
|
#
¿
Apr 24, 2009 15:47
|
|
|
tickle monster posted:I swear we used to have a recommendation thread, but I couldn't find it. I've been on a stylized sci-fi fantasy film kick, and every place I've searched has told me to just rewatch Star Wars. Can someone recommend me a sciifi film like Barbarella, Forbidden Planet, or Flash Gordon? As long as the visual style holds and it's watchable, quality doesn't really matter. Depending on your cheese and seriousness, here are a few to consider. (No particular order) Accion Mutante - batshit insane spacefaring dystopia black comedy. Circuitry Man - post Apoc road movie about sex robots, bounty hunters, and Commando's Bennet as the titular character. It's not a space movie though. Battle Beyond the Stars - 80s classic space war/Seven Samurai with a fun cast Edit: I guess it goes without saying that The Fifth Element is the best response. If you've got the Roger Corman sensibility, you might like stuff such as Spacehunter. Ape Agitator fucked around with this message at 01:44 on Apr 25, 2009 |
|
#
¿
Apr 25, 2009 01:33
|
|
|
therochester posted:Why are so many Italian films dubbed? Do you mean dubbing in other languages or ADR work? In the former, Italians financed a lot of international productions and featured a hodge podge of cast nationalities. Because they did so much international work, it didn't matter what language everyone spoke because they'd just dub them for whatever nation it was going to be in. So you get Spaghetti Westerns where one actor doesn't know a bit of english being opposite someone who doesn't know Italian and they both come out smelling like roses at the end. Dub I think, based on my experience with Italian genre films, that very few of their films used location sound at all (probably to keep costs down avoiding controlling the environment) so almost all of their audio is extensively done in studio as ADR so the filmgoers are well used to it. I don't think that's the case with contemporary Italian cinema though, most just stuff from the 60s to the 80s.
|
|
#
¿
May 27, 2009 17:37
|
|
|
Tender Bender posted:In Gladiator, are we meant to think that Maximus is going to escape and lead his army against Commodus? Obviously that's the plan, but is it a surprise/twist when his plan is foiled, or just the progression of the story? I can't remember the first time I saw the movie so I don't recall what my reaction was. Well, it's sort of like Flight 93 (which I don't think needs to be spoiler protected). In both films, people make plans to deal with the horrible scenario they are in and follow that to as far a conclusion as possible. In both cases, I think the filmmakers do a good job of making you get anxious because the plan might change things. Of course, more people know the result of the Flight 93 story than would know about a fictional character so I think you're generally meant to feel like the plot might lead to him getting the upper hand. Whether you consider it a twist, surprise, or merely a turn of fate, it is a progression of the plot. I really don't think that "surprise" or "twist" really applies in this sense. It's not exactly a "gotcha" just a course of events, really. But people might get invested in the idea of leading up to a big battle so they may find themselves surprised.
|
|
#
¿
May 28, 2009 02:16
|
|
|
Kentucky Shark posted:..Or United 93, the much superior movie made out of that event Damnit. 
|
|
#
¿
May 28, 2009 19:02
|
|
|
Ignoring the horrible second movie suggestion, I figured that immortals should continue to pop up infrequently until such time as one of them wins the prize, thus ending the game (forever?). So there might be a hundred dudes or a dozen but as long as the prize was unclaimed some more might pop up. I'll readily admit ignorance of the series and I assume they had a mechanism to extend things that didn't involve aliens. But this was kind of how I took the concept of the first movie.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 11, 2009 11:58
|
|
|
Ortsacras posted:Sure, that makes sense, but it'd also basically make it pretty much impossible for someone to ever win once the planet's population reaches the point where thousands of people are being born every second. The guy who gets rid of all the adult immortals is going to have to jet around the globe constantly killing babies, and until teleportation is invented, while he's on the plane to get one of them another will be born somewhere. Sucks for him. I definitely got the impression that immortals know each other innately enough to be able to find a fight when they need it. Kurgan appeared to know McCloud was one before McCloud even did and was able to find him afterwards. I figure it's kind of a "soul mate" thing where they're drawn together so that they can find the fight they need. No need to lay waste to the "normal" population unless that's a hobby.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 11, 2009 19:46
|
|
|
Todd Flanders posted:I'm re-watching "The Dark Knight"... I kind of assume that there was a cover story of some kind: "I watched him walk up his front steps, honest". And if the police are as corrupt as they say, I don't think anyone would be leaning hard on him or just chalked it up to incompetence. Of course, the unhinged Dent wouldn't be held back and went right to them.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 13, 2009 18:26
|
|
|
I think there's more to the casting process than you give credit for. A movie can have a few to dozens of speaking roles, some extremely brief and some headlining. A director's job may or may not be involved in the casting process. Certainly for the primary stars and several of the primary supporting actors they might get really hands on but for a lot of the rest it's quite a process. There's finding the right person for a role out of the thousands of potential actors, there's dealing with schedules, there's the auditioning process where they whittle down the pool to the most promising people (from the initial cattle call), and then there's getting people signed on. A lot of this is stuff that would bog down a director much of the time and the casting director should bring some insight to the table to help the director find the character they're after. Also, it stands for Casting Society of America. http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-casting-director.htm The CSA calls themselves "in a sense, human resource departments for actors" which is pretty apt. You wouldn't expect the president of the company to interview every applicant, would you?
|
|
#
¿
Jun 23, 2009 16:35
|
|
|
Ape Agitator q.!=.e.
Ape Agitator fucked around with this message at 23:25 on Jun 23, 2009 |
|
#
¿
Jun 23, 2009 23:04
|
|
|
Ken Levine Fan Club posted:What city was at the end of the first Transformers? I was thinking Phoenix or something but there wasn't enough sprawl I believe they even called it Mission City so it's basically Anywheresville, USA as long as that's close to a big dam. JD Brickmeister posted:Also, why are they generally listed alone in the credits, instead of with all the assistants to the producers, because essentially this is what they are, right? I don't think you give enough credit to the casting process. The hordes of people onscreen that aren't given billing on the poster were probably the work of the casting director. In many cases, even those given billing were the product of the casting director's process. It's an important role and they can breathe life into a movie just like a costume director can. There are way too many potential actors and the source material is pretty non-specific about what each character in the film is exactly like. Being able to translate the role to an actor and recognize the potential to meet the needs of the film is a tough choice. Many, many actors started out auditioning like everyone else before they got onto director and producer's mental wishlists. Of course, they aren't infallible either and there are lots of stories of bad decisions on their part. I believe Natalie Portman was initially cut from Leon's audition lists for being too young. Ape Agitator fucked around with this message at 23:24 on Jun 23, 2009 |
|
#
¿
Jun 23, 2009 23:16
|
|
|
VorpalBunny posted:Apologies if this has been asked before, 20 pages is a lot to sift through. It might help to think of it akin to the movie Species where the underlying DNA is very malleable. The DNA in the movie is a massive information store so when the ship is lawn darted the DNA is basically the cargo and all of the aliens were carriers. When they drop the glove in the regeneration machine, it creates the "cargo" which was intended to be a human analogue. Maybe the aliens can or do look human within their giant armors. I don't think the glove itself disappears per-se just she removes her hand from within it. On your final point, I think you're on target that she needs to be in love to activate herself as the fifth element. Had she not fallen in love, then the world would be lost. That is also why her lowest point, where she doubts the good in mankind, is such a crucial moment because it basically would have been the end of things. Which is also why the twists of fate ("Of all the cabs in all the universe...") are fun in perspective as the world guides them together.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 8, 2009 16:38
|
|
|
Biff Rockgroin posted:I think that's the ultimate question. I think it's basically a funding issue. For someone to make a change to this, someone has to write up why it has to be done. Someone has to set aside money for that and justify the reason for it. Someone's got to draft it up and it has to go through legal. For all I know there's a subcommittee in the House that has to approve of it. It's not like a studio logo where they've got a black hole of petty cash to toss around making new logos to keep current and hip. Basically, the old one wasn't broken enough for someone to go hat in hand looking for money to make and distribute a new one. I'm guessing either something changed in the legal wording or some new antipiracy push had a line item for it.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 10, 2009 17:46
|
|
|
Taking note that I speak from no authority... I would take a deconstruction as meaning it explicitly and deliberately uses what are now commonly held features of the genre or style of film it represents. In other films of this type, those features might figure in organically or simply find their way in as a matter of course. For example, killer bee movies almost always feature someone doing a fire walk. They don't build the film around it but if you were deconstructing the ultimate killer bee movie, you'd be quite conscious of the fire walk and would put it in for that reason. The meet-cute, nudity, The other feature I would associate with a deconstruction of a movie genre is to apply commentary on those features. That can be by putting an ironic spin on them, turning them on their heads, or just applying a new perspective to it. I think this is the key element that separates the deconstruction from your "extremely well-done version". To give a current example, Sorority Row is an 80s slasher movie and contains all the elements you'd expect from it (reviving killer, boobs, whittling down the cast, going off alone) but doesn't really apply any spin or commentary on it. Scream, as you noted, does many of these things but gives it perspective so that you can appreciate the elements themselves in a different light. So Gale waits for the killer to spring back up because she knows and understands what's going to happen. To the movie that spawned the question, in thinking about it I guess it is a pretty valid deconstruction. Where most of the films like it are of the exploitation revenge structure, this one strips away a lot of that motivation and instead wraps it in a populist message. So instead of it being spurred by a murdered family or rape it's just based on innocuous things that the audience responds to like a stand up comedy act. Hate seemingly pointless road work? Don't like inflation and convenience store gouging? Shittty quality control in fast food? So instead of him being against the bad gang or criminal syndicate, he's basically lashing out at society which is quite a spin and involves the audience in something far less sensational than responding to violence. It also breaks down those exploitation elements when he wanders into the supremacist's store as it hits a lot of those buttons and tries to provide the link to those old "normal guy pushed to the edge" movies.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 15, 2009 05:23
|
|
|
jjack229 posted:What is up with the recurring theme of humans are good but flawed (or more specifically those qualities that make us good also make us flawed, but it is worth it because we are so good)? I'm pretty sure self rationalization has been a part of human philosophical and spiritual culture for a long time as well. The bible says we're all sinners but we're also like the greatest thing ever. Free will is said to be a virtue worth celebrating even though that free will is used for crime. Robots are evil because they can't make a painting so it doesn't matter that they don't rape (although this isn't the case if the movie is about rape robots, which is a very efficient method of maximizing your rape potential). I think because we have advanced consciousness and nothing else around us seems to share that we feel we must be special. That's reflected in our arts and anything that challenges that is usually shown to be inferior in some way. So we're always aware of the lovely things we do every day and so we elevate the good things really high as a counterbalance. Similarly, when we run into a more advanced species, they'll be handicapped so as to not overshadow us entirely. So no matter what, the human capacity to love is the final part of the Captain Planet cadre and it won't worth without it.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 29, 2009 15:55
|
|
|
i am not so sure posted:so in sunshine, how does pinbacker manage to get from icarus 1 to icarus 2, and how is it not noticed by the rest of the crew? Pinbacker is chilling in his isolated and derelict spaceship. When Icarus 2 docks, he is able to gain access to the second Icarus. The ships themselves aren't exactly tiny and they all break off to determine the status of the ship and what might be salvageable in different sections of I2. That entire period of time is the span he can cross over to Icarus 1 unnoticed. The only people on Icarus 2 at the time are on the bridge (or Trey in sickback) so it's unlikely anyone would stumble onto him. He busies himself up sabotaging the coupling between I1 and I2 but again nobody is likely to be anywhere near him at the time.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 6, 2009 09:01
|
|
|
Creature posted:I was watching Aliens on the weekend and was wondering about why it looks the way it does. The way it's filmed and lit, it looked more like a low-budget TV movie than an actual film released in cinemas. Especially an early scene where that armoured tank thing is revealed, it looked more like a prop than an actual functional vehicle. You're not going to get much of a response with hyperbole (seriously, I've seen everything Sci-Fi throws out on Saturday evenings and they don't aspire to reach that bar). Low budget TV movie, seriously? More to the point, the film is a mix of practical miniatures and life size mockups. I know the lifesize stuff of the APC was built on an aircraft carrier utility vehicle. For a lot of the rest you're looking at the old school bigatures and optical compositing. It's got rough edges like most special effects but many consider it to be quite convincing even by modern standards. It doesn't change them being special effects though so they might not be totally convincing to more modern eyes. I make it a point to appreciate different levels of appreciation but you've honestly got the only severely negative opinion of special effects in Aliens I've ever come across.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 26, 2010 05:59
|
|
|
I don't know if I agree with this. I recall a great deal of praise for the practical effects of Davy Jones in the first Pirates sequel when in fact it was almost all CG. I think people enjoy both practical effects and there's also aims to make them seamless and integrated. District 9 also got some praise for how the prawns were integrated into the backgrounds even if they were clearly animated figures. And of course there are the legions of unsung special effects that don't go noticed at all which make period films seem appropriately period without people realizing it. There are clearly CG epics which revel in big amoebas or dragons and don't put as much effort but they're not so different from the creature features of the 80s which didn't have the same aims as Cameron did to weather and make his special effects more mundane and realistic. I don't think it's cut and dried with some change in the special effects community wholesale losing the interest in making seamless special effects or modern audiences appreciating said effects. Just like with all things there are some that do and some that don't.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 27, 2010 05:45
|
|
|
SubG posted:I think the models used for the xenomorphs in the Alien franchise are actually a great example of this. I don't think that's a particularly good example as every film in the Alien and Alien v P franchise has introduced radical modifications to the Xenomorph, often without narrative support and happening both before and after the CG revolution. Cameron's are substantially different from Scott's, owing to them being commoditized rather than being a singular star in the film so it's half practical and half aesthetic. Fincher's is also different, but with a narrative reason for it as it comes from a dog/ox rather than a human. Jeunet's are very different, often both CG and practical and that's a stylistic choice. And then they change up in the AvP 1 and again in AvP 2, being closer to Camerons but still quite different. In all of those cases, the changes aren't lending themselves to CG but rather just to the director putting their stamp on it. You may also want to check out the changes in dinosaurs between Jurassic Park 1/2 and Jurassic Park 3, where in the latter most of the dinosaurs have acquired stripes and colorations of some kind. Most of these differences aren't so much exploiting CG as they are the director and/or special effects houses trying to carve out some individualizing stamp on the look of the creature feature. The "show me something new" desire in sequels often drives this. Also, as my own entry to the hilariously wrong-headed prerelease posts about a movie, I remarked how big a trainwreck the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie was going to be when the teaser was almost 100% terrible stock footage. A movie based on a ride and they aren't brave enough to show anything, this is going to be lovely! 
|
|
#
¿
Jan 27, 2010 06:40
|
|
|
I must be looking at this from totally different eyes but I can't see how Alien Resurrection's aliens are supposed to be identical to FIncher's. I can't see it at all.SubG posted:Bringing it back to the original point, would anyone actually argue that the difference between these two versions of a UFO are that one is more `realistic' than the other? Again, this is an aesthetic choice. A saucer is a valid aesthetic choice for a serious sci-fi in the 50s but it wouldn't be now. An orb matches an aesthetic choice we'd be able to take with the same level of seriousness. Similarly, GORT can fly as a big metal man but you couldn't do that now because it would be regarded as humorous. Now is there one-upsmanship in effects going on? Sure, all the time. Everyone wants to make their stamp and wants to wow them. But you seem to discount that conceptual design choices step in before the effects houses work to match modern audience effects expectations. They want to give their film a unique look and from a concept standpoint they do that. Cameron had a design aesthetic in mind and applied it to his spaceships. Fincher did as well. There's no special effects reason that Fincher would have made the escape pod look decidedly unaerodynamic (despite most of the craft in the previous two films being quasi-conventional) other than to reinforce his design and narrative choices. Practical effects still get play today and aren't an albatross that sinks a film's special effects. There's no reason Aliens wouldn't be regarded by a modern viewer. It's not like a Harryhausen film where the special effects technique has been functionally retired. Miniatures and full size mockups still get a lot of play in a wide range of movies, from the LOTRish epics to all kinds of horror films. To illustrate my point, can you point me to even a handful of posts that echo what kicked off this whole debate: that Aliens looks like a low budget TV movie? If what you say is correct, such a sentiment should reverb in the younger elements of the internet echoed by all the young'uns who don't appreciate that our Xenomorphs had to walk around in 100lb suits uphill, both ways. As I remarked, he's the only person I've come across to say such a thing. The most negative response I've ever heard is just a "whatever" as the film is deemed average in someone's eyes. Arwox posted:Trying to identify a movie for my coworkers who will not shut up about it. Dedicated thread with practiced eyes. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2177344 Ape Agitator fucked around with this message at 04:43 on Jan 28, 2010 |
|
#
¿
Jan 28, 2010 04:40
|
|
|
SubG posted:I agree; that's my point. I'm just saying that one of the main things which is driving aesthetic choices in visual effects these days is the prevalence of CGI. Sure there are some special effects which aim to be unreal, like making everyone a realdoll in Surrogates, but by and large I'm hard pressed to think of a movie that approaches special effects in a way substantially different from the 80s, which was how do I put what's on the page or storyboard on a film (or film equivalent) in a cohesive and seamless way as possible. quote:And because popular films end up being stylemakers and trendsetters, you find later films adopting elements of the looks of the visual effects of popular films. I'm not saying that anyone would sit down and say, `we need something that looks more like high-end CGI'. On the other hand I do think people might look at films like District 9 or Avatar and decide that they want something that looks like that, or is as good or better than that, and so the elements of visual style that they use will get incorporated into the visual lexicon of contemporary filmmaking. quote:
lizardman posted:Actually before the guy complaining about Aliens mentioned the special effects I thought he was talking about the film quality. Honestly if not for the fashion I would have guessed the original Alien to be a newer movie just looking at it. At least specific to Cameron, this is related to his love affair with Super35 film. It was grainy but he liked that gritty look because, I believe, he felt it was evocative of vietnam-era footage which aided the military feel he had. Film stock, shooting methods, lensing, and post production processes seem, at least to me, to be very generational so you'll often have a look that is representative of the technology and general thrust of the cinema movement of the time. It's also segmented so even though they're of the same period, 70s US films look markedly different from european films of the 70s and not just for technological reasons. I'm certainly not well versed enough to say what happened in the late 80s to suggest the change you're seeing but it's as likely related to cameras, film, and budget. There are some geniuses here that likely can educate us on that.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 28, 2010 09:57
|
|
|
SubG posted:Does that make more sense? And my point is that although this sort of thing is initially driven by CGI effects (in Lucas' case), even if you were doing something like Jabba via puppetry or whatever now it would exhibit the same stylistic cues---because that's what an effects sequence looks like now. I believe I understand you but in this I don't totally agree. I will say you're dead right that doing those details in CG is popular but I think that has a long lineage. Harryhausen quite often had his creations doing twitchy personalized behavior or fiddling. It gave his creations life and went beyond what was necessary and in turn gave his work a long-term appreciation because it gave them a sense of life and performance. The tremendously detailed animatronic body and faces Stan Winston worked on were the same way. It wasn't just about making a creature roar, which was technically all that was on the page, it was about giving it that living performance that helped audiences buy into it. The CG embellishments you're talking about are part of that lineage but I don't think they represent the barriers to modern appreciation that you mean. I think they're just part of the creative team putting life to their creations to the limits of their technology and creativity. And I don't think the method of the embellishment really changes things just the skill in the execution. A dude in a rubber suit can either look like a rubber suit or a scary living monster. A CG creature can be Christopher Johnson or that retarded bear from Narnia. I just don't think there's a wholesale rejection of old special effects driven movie which would support your premise. Lucas didn't revisit his movies because his movies had been forgotten he did it because, ostensibly, he didn't get as far as he wanted with the technology at the time. CG can technically add fiddly poo poo but you don't see it as prevalently as you'd expect if it represented a barrier to modern appreciation. Everyone noticed and recognized District 9 for those details because they were superlative, not commonplace.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 29, 2010 04:36
|
|
|
See when I hear of dated special effects I see the "haze" caused by double printing, the barely visible masking box (corrected in the Star Wars SEs), lighting problems compositing live action footage to special effects footage, that kind of thing. I don't see it related to technique. I don't recall complaints about Hellboy 2's Troll Market despite not being many steps removed from the technology used to breathe life in the Cantina from SW4. I just can't get past the way you mix aesthetic preferences with special effects, which I don't think is right. Sure audiences expect computers from THE FUTURE to have floaty keyboards and holo displays but we also expect televisions to be 50 inch monstrosities. What dates a film is someone typing in a 14" rounded CRT with green on black text, no the "special effects" needed to make that same computer monitor be flatscreen and 24". Again, Lucas was doing floaty displays back in A New Hope too. I think the expectations modern people have relate more to the design side than the special effects. Del Toro didn't feel the need to make everything CG but instead chose to merge it with animatronics. Lucas opted to go more the full CG route. Are the Star Wars prequels better regarded than the HellBoys? I think it's a tossup when you exclude the internet bias against the Prequels. I just don't perceive the special effects bias towards CG that you do. I mean how can people praise Davy Jones's animatronics when in fact it was CG if such a bias exists? I just don't see an effects house having a sit down meeting discussing how to make their effects look more CG. I can see them discussing how to make them more seamless and realistic, showy and awe inspiring, or ironic and obvious(like I imagine Tron will aim for). When they sat down to discuss making Clash of the Titans do you really think they were so different from 1981 to 2010? I would believe they both said something along the lines of "We can make an incredible creature using stop motion/CG" and some enterprising effects wunderkind said "I can really push the envelope by making an internal structure and making it realistically heave its chest while breathing/model some amazing fluid dynamics so the saliva falls from its maw very realistically". The only thing I think that's changed is their ability to succeed in bringing their vision to reality because their tools have expanded. Audiences have changed to be sure, as they've been exposed to special effects their whole lives and can see the cracks and seams in the attempt to present a convincing and involving world. Audiences now won't be convinced by Hitchcock's The Birds but not because they reject optical printing just that the method limits the execution from being as convincing. Optical printing still gets used in the form of digital compositing but the fundamentals and results are the same, only with fewer flaws. Audiences evolved with regards to plot as well. We're no longer fooled by basic plot twists but we didn't stop using plot twists, just continued to evolve them in intricate ways. A doublecross stays a doublecross, it just can no longer be the only other big name actor in the cast. Red Herrings must abound but they still keep the doublecross because the same goal is to surprise the audience. I should say, this has been a good and productive discussion so thanks thus far.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 30, 2010 03:15
|
|
|
In a deleted scene Statler and Waldorf criticize the beating as taking too long and not having enough variety.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 7, 2010 13:09
|
|
|
dorkasaurus_rex posted:Is there some sort of "must see" movie list out there that isn't the IMDb top 250 out there? Like, not necessarily good movies, but just movies that are generally considered must-sees for cultural references. The various AFI lists are a solid start when you get past quibbles about individual numbering. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AFI_100_Years..._series
|
|
#
¿
Feb 9, 2010 02:48
|
|
|
2xSlick posted:We were supposed to root for the kids. The point being that rooting for the family is definitively the path of destruction throughout the entire film. They inadvertently wreck everything under the guise of being the most humane characters in the movie.
|
|
#
¿
May 19, 2010 15:38
|
|
|
Ninja Gamer posted:That's all well and good but what about extinguishing the fire with pure oxygen? I figure for a fire you either remove the fuel or the oxygen. If they couldn't vent out the oxygen and nobody in the pod to manually use an extinguisher the only other solution was to remove the fuel. Is a sustained burn worse than a short high temp flare? I guess it depends but a long fire would add lots of smoke which might be a problem for a closed system like that. I figure it's one of those things that sound insane at first but make sense in context, like using explosives to put out fires. At first you go "wait, what" and then the reasoning makes sense.
|
|
#
¿
May 20, 2010 18:50
|
|
|
SubG posted:[About Sunshine] The Icarus and Icarus 2 were built as disaster response. It was literally that clutch scientific moment: someone notices that they're being rapidly cooled and the sun is the cause, now go! It's like the original space race amped up by putting your hair on fire (or more appropriately dipping your balls in ice water). They launch with an unproven "best guess" payload. The second time they even launch with a crew that clearly never worked together before and include the scientist who built the bomb because they have no idea if the problem was with the bomb or something else. Think of how many failures and even deaths occurred during the space race. Or catastrophic failures in "late to the game" proto-space nations right now? How about during near-production on huge-lifecycle military systems that should be nearly perfect after decades of development and billions of dollars in R&D and prototypes and simulations. How about if there's a disaster epic of an oil spill launching millions of gallons into a key source of environmental stability? You'd think their solution would work, right? That there should be a catastrophic failure when the ship is moved outside of the protective shield and exposed to the sun and radiation directly shouldn't be a surprise. Failsafes against off-mission crew actions aren't going to be there. Robust software that does anything but do exactly what the mission requires would be a miracle, most likely it would require constant crew tampering to overcome any bugs or erratic behavior. It's like people compaining that there aren't security systems preventing unauthorized access. That's got to be so far down the development team's list that it didn't even get added on. Stuff is going to fail. It's why they built two ships. Ape Agitator fucked around with this message at 01:14 on May 21, 2010 |
|
#
¿
May 21, 2010 01:09
|
|
|
SubG posted:So I guess the analogy I'd make with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill would be if all of the Coast Guard vessels in the area suddenly started sinking because none of them had working bilge pumps and none of them were designed with bulkheads. Even if we had to design new, special-purpose ships to deal with the spill those aren't the sorts of problems we'd expect to have on them. If the special purpose coast guard vessels encountered a catastrophic explosion which affected key systems would you really be so totally incredulous that their bilge pump systems added to these custom built ships might encounter a failure? Let's not forget, the entire reason for the failure was damage to critical modules. This wasn't a forgotten cigarette on an oily rag that failed to engage the sprinklers. quote:And leaving that aside, any habitat that remains in space for an extended period would be expected to have more than one source of oxygen. Also, for what it's worth, the value of the indefinite life support scheme is somewhat justified by way of the Icarus I remaining stable seven years after mission "failure". That possibility doesn't even exist with finite life support. If what it takes to save the entire human race is letting the smarty physics major orbit the sun for a decade figuring something out that's probably worth it. Edit: quote:And here's a shot of it in action, to give a more intuitive idea of the scale: Ape Agitator fucked around with this message at 06:40 on May 21, 2010 |
|
#
¿
May 21, 2010 06:22
|
|
|
muscles like this? posted:Yeah that part bothered me when I first saw the movie too. It doesn't help that he doesn't remove it from it's frame either. They just kind of handwave it away as a necessary evil to get the movie finished. I think they just do it because it looks slick. Like if the desired painting was as small as a briefcase and he just drops it in it doesn't seem mastermind-y enough. But if he strips the frame and does this strange thing it seems like a cool thing so he comes off as looking really slick and skilled.
|
|
#
¿
May 22, 2010 03:30
|
|
|
twistedmentat posted:Halloween 3 was on last night, and It made me wonder, was there any plans for the other Halloween movies that were never made? The non Michael Meyers films that were from when it was simply a Horror anthology series that would have an annual movie. I used to imagine that the Die Hard series would be amazing if they gave us a different cop with each movie but I've realized that everyone wants to see the same people come back and the filmmakers don't want to risk reinventing the magic that worked the first time. Basically, the cachet that a film's title has probably reflects the characters involved in it. What you're describing would probably be more appropriately done as a "Wes Craven Presents" to link a bunch of horror movies that otherwise have no connection.
|
|
#
¿
May 23, 2010 04:28
|
|
|
twistedmentat posted:So I watched Legion last night, and I am confused. Though from the general reaction to the film, I'm not alone. It really feels like "some reason" what written into the script. There's never explanation why the baby is special, or why God wants to kill everyone. Seriously, the trailer gave you pretty much all the plot that there was. What I intuited was that the events are supposed to be the end times so the rapture has happened. But for some reason the baby is going to provide some hope for the people left behind or something. Of course the interesting idea would be that the angels are all doing the right thing and the baby is some kind of antichrist or something and the angel who comes down is basically engineering a hell on earth but who knows if that was their plan. Even badly performing movies get DTV sequels these days it seems so maybe we'll find out. Bear in mind, all the above is not stated in the movie at all. Just conjecture I have.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 3, 2010 02:05
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 16, 2024 02:49 |
|
|
Brown Moses posted:Can someone explain the ending of the Japanese version of One Missed Call (2004) to me? I had very, very vague memory of this. I get it mixed up with Pulse all the time. It's up on youtube so I gave it another view. So everyone gets a call from themselves with a date time stamp of their future death. And then at the time they get maimed and make the call to themselves before they expire. But it turns out the calls were magically being placed by the burnt corpse of a mother so they think she was the one behind it. And they think the history was that she was Muchausen-ing her kids for attention and one of them died and so she's hurting other people (to death) for attention. They come to find out the mom was normal but her eldest daughter was hurting her little sister in some twisted "I hurt you - here's a gumdrop" torture reward cycle. Flash forward to the ending where the lead girl thinks she has survived because she passed the date time on her phone and "released the evil" by embracing the mom's corpse/ghost. But then the evil kid rewinds the clock to the death time and somehow possesses her. So now the lead girl is "dead" but the evil kid is walking around in her body. So the lead guy gets inside and can see that she's possessed because of the mirror. The possessed lead girl/evil kid stabs him non-fatally but doesn't kill him. I think the evil kid has some positive association of him (some kind of thinking like he would have given her asthma spray instead of letting her die like her mother did). So he wakes up in a hospital room and the possessed lead girl/evil kid gives him a treat while holding a knife behind her back. So I think that's an indication that she's going to repeat the "hurt-reward" cycle with him like she did with her younger sister. I realize on watching it again that it's far more unfocused than I remember. The final third has almost nothing to do with the first 2/3rds of the movie.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 11, 2010 03:30
|
|