Saw X-Men:First Class today. It was good. The series redeemed itself from X-3 and Wolverine. Some of the dialog was a bit hamfisted, and they didn't even bother trying to give a believable reason whybut the rest of the movie was good enough that it was easy to overlook its flaws.Spoiler:
I loved it. And
Spoiler:
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
X-Men First Class was really good (even with some continuity errors, according to my son).
I watched Demolition Man for the first time the other night. Interesting cast and oh so cheezy.
AMC is really a great movie channel. They're good at picking which movies to air, and when. They program a bunch of seemingly-disparate movies that turn out to have a connecting "theme". Barely noticeable, very subtle. (I wonder if it's a computer program that chooses from a list of tag-lines, or if it's a team of real people...)
Tonight it was Revolutionary Road, followed by A Few Good Men. For Father's Day weekend.
Probably a team of real people, even most radio stations still do it that way.
Keep on keepin' the beat alive!
Minority Report, awesome movie know matter how many times i see it.
Children of Men
For the second time.
Brilliantly despairing, bleak, tense movie.
9/10
~
The seventies version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers is on MGM HD at the mo, with Donald Sutherland and a very young Jeff Goldblum. Haven't seen it in about ten years.
A little dated, but still chilling and spooky. The ending I will never forget.
Not exactly today, but in the past few days I watched Moon, and Let Me In, both good movies The last one is the American remake of a swedish film, so I was slightly scared it would suck like remakes often do, but it was good.
Keep on keepin' the beat alive!
Watching Battle LA tonight, and Transformers tomorrow
The long tracking shots when they are driving in the forest and get attacked by the group with the burning car, and when they are in the camp trying to flee the shooting...that were amazing film making. I never realized how gimmicky movie making has become until I saw those uninterrupted shots.
Its one of my all time favorite movies.
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
Missed Battle LA on HD a week ago, waiting for it to come back on.
Supposed to be thin on plot - but that's not supposed to matter too much as this is intended to be an fx-fest eye-candy movie. The battle-scenes in the trailers look fairly sumptuous.
Indeed. The realism is quite shocking.The long tracking shots when they are driving in the forest and get attacked by the group with the burning car, and when they are in the camp trying to flee the shooting...that were amazing film making. I never realized how gimmicky movie making has become until I saw those uninterrupted shots.
I enjoyed the movie. Yes the plot is thin, but thats expected, if you're making a nonstop action movie, you don't want to waste time on the hows and whys. The characters are cookie cutter, but so are most real life noob and veteran marines
The visuals are amazing, and it had a gritty real life feel to it (yet very little shaky cam), like they recorded in a higher FPS instead of the usual 24fps or whatever movies have been using for far to long.
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
I doubt it was recorded with a higher frame rate, because cinema projectors project at 24. It was probably color grading that made it feel real, combined with the camera being hand held.
Whatever the reason is, more movies need to adopt it. Tired of watching movies through a blurred glaze.
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
Those long continuous shots are probably made with an action-cam. (At least that's what I recall my brother-in-law calling them, but my memory isn't so hot.) It's a camera that moves with the filmer's body, with automatic stabilizers and balancers, so even running looks smooth from the operator's vantage point but picks up the actor's movements up and down in relation to their background. He says it's great for using uninterrupted videography and long sequences without cuts/splices/edits.
Ggt: you mean steadycam. Khen: most cinema's do not have digital projectors, yet, because they are hideously expensive. Prints are a lot cheaper, but those are paid by the distributor, not the cinema.
Personal cameras have been shooting at a higher FPS for a long time now. This has unfortunately created a perception problem amongst the general public. Basically, there's a bunch of data that shows that most people feel that higher FPS footage is actually lower quality, because most Joe Public's exposure to such footage has been through amateur video. This idea probably won't survive too long because of how wrong it is, but it's currently there, and it discourages heavy investment into the area.
Huh?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital...tal_projectionAs of June, 2010, there are close to 16,000 digital cinema screens, with over 5000 of them being stereoscopic setups. Considering an article written by David Hancock (http://www.isuppli.com/media-researc...finalised.aspx) , the total number of d-screens worldwide came in at 36,242, up from 16,339 at end 2009 or a growth rate of 121.8 per cent during the year. There were 10,083 d-screens in Europe as a whole (28.2 per cent of global figure), 16,522 in North America (46.2 per cent of global figure) and 7,703 in Asia (21.6 per cent of global figure). As regards digital 3D screens, there were a total of 21,936 3D screens, which equals 60.5 per cent of all d-screens. This is a rise from the 55 per cent in 2009 but is expected to drop slightly in 2011 to 57.5 per cent.
And "prints are cheaper"? Where did you get that from? Prints are anything but cheap.
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
I don't know about the infiltration rate, but the most popular digital projectors in America right now are Sony's and theaters (and public) are starting to push back at how impossibly hard they are to use and maintain. Its to the point that theaters no longer optimize the projectors for the movie thats showing because they are tired of the DRM built into the machine that will literally shut it down until an authorized service representative can service it.
Its one of the main reasons people complain about digital projections being so dark, and its so bad that Michael Bay had to issue a plea (and very detailed instructions) to the theater chains so that Transformers didn't get screwed over.
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
I didn't get to catch Transformers yet, cheaped out and saw Fast Five at the dollar theater.
Easily tied for best movie out of the series so far. It was like Mission Impossible and Oceans 11 mixed together, but with muscle cars thrown in and exotics making cameos.
But you could really tell they blew their budget on the main race screen, the next two big races in the story weren't filmed, and every exotic that showed up screamed of product placement, not a single one of them was modified.
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
Saw Black Swan yesterday (on BR). Very intensive, but not really much of a story, with an unsexy Portman with only skin and bones (why didn't they took Knightley she wouldn't have to slim down for the role).
"Wer Visionen hat, sollte zum Arzt gehen." - Helmut Schmidt
Centurion
Roman yarn in Britannia fighting woad-painted Picts.
Passable ninety minutes of blood-gushing limb-severing fun.
6.5/10
Adjustment Bureau. Perfect date movie. Occasionally trite, occasional expositional dialogue, but otherwise solid performances, a good script, great direction and editing, and even a good soundtrack. I just can't not like Matt Damon, it seems
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Super 8, wow, almost all the way till the sappy ending. Something is very angry for a good reason, but some kids with a camera save the day.
Congratulations America
Last tango in Paris - a bit weird, and it took me a while to get into it - but I liked it.
Keep on keepin' the beat alive!
Some quick reviews:
Black Swan - liked it, creepy, good performances, 4 stars
Pan's Labarynth - liked it, very violent, creepy in some parts, 4 stars
Appleseed - liked it, great animation, fun story, wonderful action. 4 stars
The Rules
Copper- behave toward others to elicit treatment you would like (the manipulative rule)
Gold- treat others how you would like them to treat you (the self regard rule)
Platinum - treat others the way they would like to be treated (the PC rule)