29 December 2011
02 December 2011
Dies Irae - Lonely Roads and Cars
Just an interesting note.
One would probably not normally associate The Shining, Stanley Kubrick's 1980 big screen adaptation of a Stephen King novel, with The Car, a low-budget 1977 film about a possessed Lincoln Continental Mark III.
However, there are some weird coincidences or very similar inspirations in the openings of each movie.
For one, both films use the final movement of Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique as the spine of their respective opening music. Berlioz patterned some of the music on the famous Dies Irae.
Kubrick's The Shining starts with a bold opening sequence. The helicopter mounted camera follows a small yellow car, driven by the protagonist through a winding mountainous road. For a first-time viewer, it may seem disorienting that this particular film, about a family snowed-in and succumbing to cabin fever, would have such an expansive visual canvas.
But coupled with the ominous music, the sequence grows more and more unsettling, as we follow that little car, hopelessly surrounded, towered-over, by nature.
As I stated above, 1977's The Car starts with pretty much the same musical passage as the credit sequence of The Shining. (Clip below has the score.)
And, surprisingly, the first minutes of The Car also feature shots of a road winding through California desert foothills.
In both opening sequences, a tunnel makes an appearance as well.
The Shining:
The Car:
Both films were made in roughly the same time period as well.
06 October 2011
07 September 2011
18 July 2011
06 July 2011
05 July 2011
Super 8 - Review
When 14 year-old Joe Lamb, the make-up artist for a motley crew of schoolboy filmmakers, gently applies foundation to face of Alice, the attractive new star of the their adolescent zombie film, all cynicism fades away. In this moment, the awkward, exciting and wonderful time on the cusp of young adulthood is captured perfectly by J. J. Abrams, the director and writer of Super 8.
The scene is masterful, original, and acted superbly by the young Joel Courtney and the impressive Elle Fanning -she plays the steel town ingenue the boys have recruited to add emotion to their no budget scare picture. And there are more pleasures to come during this clandestine night shoot at an abandoned railway platform in the rolling Ohio hills. Alice shows herself to be a natural at this acting thing as the boys, (along with us,) are rendered speechless by just her rehearsal of the cliched, B-movie dialogue.
But this is not a coming-of-age piece, it is a summer blockbuster, and so the beat needs to change fast. Rather than a drama in the mold of Rob Reiner's Stand By Me, we are in for a 2011 action adventure in the spirit of Transformers or Unstoppable.
It is probably not giving away too much to write that it is at this moment on the train platform - at the pinnacle of the film's pop cinema artistry - that the whole story comes literally and figuratively off the rails. More the pity that it is still pretty early in the film when this happens.
The kids are excited to get "production value" from a real train that materializes on the horizon, but their delight soon turns to terror as the passing freight cars derail. Suddenly, our young heroes are caught in a maelstrom of destruction that hasn't been seen since Hollywood's last disaster picture. As Joe and his friends zig-zag between twisted metal wreckage and exploding tanker cars, the sound level amps up and the effects become a little silly. We know that these likable kids aren't going to die, and this awareness renders the sequence as harmless as the plastic-eyed zombies in the Super 8 movie the kids are making. If this is supposed to be an homage to the early films of Spielberg, I must have missed something in the oeuvre of the famous director of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Jaws and E.T.:The Extra-Terrestrial.
After the crash, the kids are given a warning by a survivor. Then, right on cue, scary government forces arrive on the scene, complete with flashlights bobbing in the darkness. If you have seen the trailer for Super 8, I don't have to tell you that mysterious things begin to happen in the town. Miles of telephone wires vanish, as do appliances, dogs and people.
The idea of the kids using this strange and dangerous occurrence as a backdrop to their film is fun and inventive. For instance, when the military tanks roll into the neighborhood, the youngsters hastily set up their cameras for a scene in which their police detective hero questions a friend from Vietnam. It is simultaneously humorous and suspenseful - the Air Force police will no doubt see this any minute!
However, instead of the mystery gradually building, as it did in say, Close Encounters, every mystery is annoyingly answered in very short order.
You see, rather than watching the kids poking their noses around, we are treated to Joe's dad, a deputy sheriff, doing a high level investigation, including butting heads with a no-nonsense Air Force Colonel who assures the townsfolk that nothing dangerous was on that train!
In the land of E.T., The Goonies, or even the non-Speilberg-ian 80's film The Lost Boys, the excitement came from the kids finding the resources within themselves to figure things out. If those conventions could be construed as appealing to the kids of divorce culture, I could probably make a case for Super 8 being the reinforcement of helicopter parenting. Every odd happening we witness is countered by the local police force closing in on the truth behind the military maneuvers.
Further exacerbating this issue is the fact that the Joe's dad is one of the more intriguing characters in the entire movie, that is, aside from another father figure. Alice's dad is a shaggy rough, working class type who is strangely insecure. The movie's efficient prologue sets up that the two fathers have some type of animosity towards one another revolving around the accidental death of Joe's mom, who worked at the steel mill. Both the men seem haunted, alienated and overly protective of their children. By contrast, the kids seem extremely well-adjusted.
Abrams is smart enough to sense this, and even tries to force a moment between the two men near the end of the film.
Alas, it is too late at that point. Between government plots, themes of loss, cheap monster movie thrills and set pieces clumsily staged in reverence to Speilberg, the director of the complexly plotted television hit Lost, finds himself rushing to tie everything together in a third act that sends the town into a kind of military- run refugee camp and sends the kids back into the abandoned town, which has become a chaotic war zone. If you think the train derailment is a bit over the top, wait until you see the mayhem going on later in the film.
When the kids are in control, Abrams seems more in control. At these times his shots and techniques, while not quite innovative, approach a kind of mastery. However, when the menace is growing, the film seems unsure, hurried and a bit aimless. The picture grows louder and more frenetic, as if to compensate for its fraying narrative and growing incoherence.
Joe's dad is played by Kyle Chandler, from television's Friday Night Lights, and his presence only increased my hunch that this whole endeavor might have been played out better as a one-season premium cable series on HBO, Showtime or TNT.
However, there is no denying that the kids are great, and the faux late '70's feel is just right for the multiplex - not detailed enough to alienate younger viewers, but nostalgic enough to keep the interest of older ones. And Abrams appears to be playing on several meta-levels, but it is hard to pin down where his irony ends and the commercialism begins.
The dichotomy of the visceral thrills of horror and the stunning wonder of science fiction actually represents a missed opportunity. The late 1970's were not only Spielberg's dominant years, but other forces were prevalent on the genre scene as well. George A Romero's Dawn of the Dead had recently stormed into theaters about a year before Super 8 is set, but rather than taking from Romero's style, Abrams only humorously references him as the inspiration of the kid's zombie movie. John Carpenter's Halloween had just blown the box office doors off in 1978 and it was soon to be followed by Ridley Scott's outer space monster movie masterpiece Alien. While there is obviously an H.R. Giger nod in the concept of the menace terrorizing the small town in Abram's film, I wish it also had included some of Scott's techniques and artistry as well.
03 July 2011
How Did They Get Here?
In the first part of a series of posts on IndieWire, Brendan Fletcher talks about the journey of his first feature, Mad Bastards.
Take a read to learn how he got from here:
Back in 2002, producing partner David Jowsey and I had decided to shoot the movie cheaply on HD with a micro-crew and a semi-improvised script. At the heart of this decision was our concept to use real people to play characters based on their own life stories. The men we’d found had great natural screen presences, and we felt that this was the key to a memorable and unique first film package.
To here:
By 2008, we had our finance package, a script that was getting thumbs up, and nearly 70 scenes shot with our unusual “cast as co-writers” process.
It was only then, when we got “greenlit”, that I marveled at what we’d become. Our “micro-crew” was now about 20 people, our format was 35mm and our schedule was not 3 months but 6 tight weeks and our budget was in the low millions.
01 July 2011
20 June 2011
Movie Shot of the Week (Summer Blockbuster Edition) The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
Vanity Fair released some rare, behind-the-scenes, still photos from the filming of The Empire Strikes Back.
Here is a photo of this iconic scene being filmed:
13 June 2011
08 June 2011
14 April 2011
24 March 2011
15 March 2011
12 March 2011
09 February 2011
03 February 2011
24 January 2011
06 January 2011
Nolan Versus Polanski in Shot Economy
Jim Emerson elaborates with screenshots on part of a post by AD Jameson about all the ways Inception could be criticized.
Jameson takes, as one example, the first scene of the movie:
Now, contrast that with the final scene of The Ghost Writer, Roman Polanski's slightly underrated thriller from this past year.
Matt Zoeller Seitz over at Salon chose this scene as one of his top ten scenes of the year and praises it for its economy:
This video that Seitz provides,demonstrates what Polanski accomplishes with only 4 shots. (WARNING HEAVY SPOILER ALERT! THIS IS THE LAST SCENE OF THE FILM)
Jameson takes, as one example, the first scene of the movie:
1. slow motion pan of waves crashing against a rock
2. slow motion shot of waves
3. close-up of Cobb's face as he lies on the shore
4. point-of-view shot of a boy on the beach making a sandcastle
5. reverse shot of Cobb's face
6. pov shot of the boy and a girl making a sandcastle
7. reverse shot of Cobb's face
8. pov shot of the kids running out of frame
9. shot of a gun being pointed at Cobb's back
10. reverse shot of a guard standing over him, holding the gun
11. reverse shot of the gun pulling Cobb's shirt up, revealing his own gun
12. reverse shot of the guard calling to another guard
13. long shot of that other guard
...And then we cut inside. (Note the three shots of the kids. Again, Nolan's concern is that we not miss a thing.)
(...)
Thirteen shots is a lot of busyness in a scene that doesn't really need it. All Nolan needs to establish at the start of the film is that:
1. Cobb has washed up on a beach.
2. He thinks he sees his kids.
3. An armed guard discovers him.
4. The guard is going to take Cobb to a Japanese mansion also on the beach.
Now, contrast that with the final scene of The Ghost Writer, Roman Polanski's slightly underrated thriller from this past year.
Matt Zoeller Seitz over at Salon chose this scene as one of his top ten scenes of the year and praises it for its economy:
The subject matter of his (Polanski's) movies is often disturbing -- jealousy, insanity, conspiracy, the triumphs of chaos and evil -- but his style is usually conservative, with a touch of elegance. He doesn't cover action with two or three or 10 cameras to produce enough usable footage to create the illusion of comprehensiveness. Polanski more often tries to plan and shoot action from one, maybe two angles, and he doesn't cut to a new angle unless he can get a better result than by staying where he is.
This video that Seitz provides,demonstrates what Polanski accomplishes with only 4 shots. (WARNING HEAVY SPOILER ALERT! THIS IS THE LAST SCENE OF THE FILM)
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