oqvist
Headphoneus Supremus
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- Oct 28, 2004
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Sign of good movie direction though that all is not black and white and it can be interpreted in numerous ways
Read the last paragraph, put in almost as an afterthought to see how ZDT really got torpedoed at the Oscars by Aspiks lobbyists. And yes as a Canadian I have a particularly large axe to grind over Argo.
If the CIA willingly aided ZDT they must think every American is a brainless redneck. I found the portrayal of the incompetence of the American Intelligence community to be scathing in the film. Pro Torture? That I must have missed out on as well. I took from her treatment of the torture used , that America is now in the process of building better psychopaths out of her own citizens. You can read that film either way depending on the lens you choose to view it through. Mine is the awesome waste and ignorance of a power that while sliding further and further into the Homeland Security era, actually moved further away from the goals it had set itself.
That's not exactly what the article says though - it contends that Bigelow made a straw man argument out of whether or not the depiction of torture makes a film pro torture. Unless I'm missing something, the point being made was that the film legitimates the idea that torture was a vital step on route to eventually and belatedly tracking down OBL. I don't have a dog in this fight by the way, just playing devil's advocate
Bigelow's short The Set-Up is a 20-minute deconstruction of violence in film. The film portrays "two men fighting each other as the semioticians Sylvère Lotringer and Marshall Blonsky deconstruct the images in voice-over."[size=10.8333px] [/size]Bigelow asked her actors to actually beat and bludgeon each other throughout the film's all-night shoot.
Bigelow is a dubious director.
That's not exactly what the article says though - it contends that Bigelow made a straw man argument out of whether or not the depiction of torture makes a film pro torture. Unless I'm missing something, the point being made was that the film legitimates the idea that torture was a vital step on route to eventually and belatedly tracking down OBL. I don't have a dog in this fight by the way, just playing devil's advocate
I just cannot come to see this film as pro establishment in any way and really am perplexed by the presses claims.
On Thursday, a minor shock wave went through social media as Bustle published a short piece quoting director Tim Burton in conjunction with his new film, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. Associate entertainment editor Rachel Simon apparently asked Burton why his films — 36 of them to date — focus almost exclusively on white characters. His dismissive response, weirdly enough, had nothing to do with the specifics of casting or conceiving his own films: he flashed back to his childhood annoyance over The Brady Bunch adding "an Asian child and a black," and praised himself for not demanding that blaxploitation films should include more white people. "Things either call for things, or they don't," he said. That's such a broad and indeterminate statement that it could mean almost anything, but in context, it seems to translate to "My movies don't have any specific call for non-white people."
Burton is certainly under no obligation to cast non-white actors in his films. But his comments to Bustle aren't startling because he's defending his casting, they're startling because they show such a profound disconnect from both the issue of diversity and the modern world as a whole.
Adding more non-white characters wouldn't fix the problems with Burton's films. He needs to make some sort of meaningful connection with the world — preferably the modern one, where actual diverse people live even if they aren't "called for" — to make his arguments sound valid, and to make his fantasies feel real again.
Inherent Vice [8/10]
This one has the feeling of a book turned into a movie. There’s a certain madness that one can get away with in a creating a world with the written word. This works because it’s a joint effort between the writer and the reader. It’s a collaborative medium. When turned into a film, that working balance is removed. What we’re left with is the need to accept what we see. This is where I feel we’d see discrepancy of opinion given the characters we meet and the goings-on.
It was interesting and that’s pretty much the best I can do here. Joaquin Pheonix and Josh Brolin are fun to watch. The rest of the cast is pretty solid without anyone dragging the whole thing down. There’s a quality throughout that’s a little hard to define. In most scenes, there’s effectively not much happening, but there’s almost always an aura of the impending next with a waft of intrigue and uncertainty. And the scenes which do feature action are fun.
Visually, the film delivers with interesting camera angles, cut lengths and cinematography.
It kind of reminds me of the Coen Brothers in that the “mystery” and the “investigation” aren’t really the point. And that’s absolutely okay.
A friend of mine described it as "The Big Lebowski 2", so that ties up. Really must catch this at some point.
RE: the natural light shooting you mention in The Witch, that's also a key criterion of Dogme 95 - to enhance realism by shunning the use of artificial lighting.
And you're right about The Departed not bettering Infernal Affairs - it's a still a damn good film in its own right though.
Yea, if i see The Departed available to watch, I plan to, but don't think i'll be going out of my way for it.
I don't know if i would go so far as saying its "The Big Lebowski 2", in order to stop any disappointment from the comparison, but its of that ilk.
Some say it takes more than one watch to understand whats going on, and at first i thought that would be the case, but after seeing it through, i'm no longer of that mind.
Its interesting that they had to go so far as to make a manifesto through a collective of sorts in order to promulgate a purer filmmaking. Not using artificial lighting is pretty damn pure, because even films from way back used artificial lighting. A BTS still from Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt (1942):