[oqvist]

Sign of good movie direction though that all is not black and white and it can be interpreted in numerous ways

 

[WraithApe]

 
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 

 

 

[mutabor]

   
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 

 

 
If we go into Bigelow's past:
 

 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 likes to depict torture and violence in all her movies. As violence ( especially violence in state institutions) is one of the main concerns in French post-modern theory.
 
In this case there is a misunderstanding of Bigelow's motives. She depicts torture for different reasons than how British journalists has interpreted. She wanted to show the flawed system. British journalists say that she glorifies CIA and justify its deeds ( like torture).

 

[mutabor]

   
Bigelow is a dubious director. 

 
I confused a word ambiguous with dubious. I wanted to say that Bigelow is an ambiguous director.

 

[Hutnicks]

   
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 

 

No dogs for anyone here methinks. Unless their is some pro Bush supporters lurking
 
I find this to be one of the most unnerving things I have read in print.
 
"The film falsely depicted torture as instrumental in the finding of Osama bin Laden ("what is so unsettling about 'Zero Dark Thirty' is not that it tells this difficult history but, rather, that it distorts it", said the New Yorker's Jane Mayer)."
 
 So of all the people tortured and documented, they did not use it to find OBL?  That has simply got to be the most naive and misguided piece of pseudo journalism ever written. Is it speculative in the film? Sure, no one would admit to it as that is a fast trip to the Hague and a holding cell. Did it happen, odds are it did but when practicing Justice Americano, no proof no crime is the rule. To think that in the 11 years they spent tracking him down no one was waterboarded in the process simply flies in the face of what all the reported incidents lead us to believe.
 Why then would Bigelow put it in the film?  If it is pro CIA, how on earth would they have let that one through? It certainly does not show them in a good light and as far as the "Product Placement" quote goes it flies in the face of the hypothesis of bolstering CIA credibility.
 
 I just cannot come to see this film as pro establishment in any way and really am perplexed by the presses claims. The depiction I got was of a bloodthirsty out of control organization attempting anything anywhere to give the impression of progress in a war of terror they did not then and certainly do not now comprehend. The torture, the car bombing at the camp, the stonewalling of the analyst culminating in the botched assassination of OBL as the helo pilot dumps a tailrotor into the compound wall simply in my mind demonstrate the ineffectiveness of the entire process of combating terrorism and it's architects.
 
  I cannot think any rational mind would watch ZDT and think. "Gee I want to work for the CIA when I graduate." It makes them look like the Blackberry of Intelligence.

 

[mutabor]

   I just cannot come to see this film as pro establishment in any way and really am perplexed by the presses claims. 

 
Both films ZDT and The Hurt Locker are anti-establishment. Individual vs System
 
Especially sensitive liberal American media looks at every military Hollywood film with great suspicion and tries to find any loophole to attack military American establishment. It's like American or British journalists were a collective Noam Chomsky.

 

[tdockweiler]

Deep Water Horizon - 6.5/10
 
Could barely hear the dialogue in this one. The camera work was also awful and kept moving around too much and way too many close-up shots.
Seems less about the characters and more like just a generic disaster flick directed by Michael Bay.
I also hated how they made the last 20 minutes. Felt like I was watching these parts while drunk or hit on the head with a hammer. I kind of understand why they did this..
I did like how they portrayed the BP guys. John Malkovich did well in this. Mark Wahlberg seemed like...Mark Wahlberg.
 
Half the time I couldn't tell what the heck was going on and was very confused. I expect that's what it would be like if I was really there after the explosion.
Reminded me a lot of an old disaster flick called "The Towering Inferno".
 
I'd suggest skipping this and renting it. Maybe there is a very good documentary on the subject? I bet the book this might be based on is worth a read.
 
BTW I do wonder what parts are accurate and how it really happened. I'll have to look that up.

 

[oqvist]

The Shallows. Very entertaining watching in scuba gear really feels like you are there. (Oculus Rift). Maybe not the absolute best in the survivor genre but good still. 3,5/5. 
The shark was actually very well done. Didn´t feel that CGI as you would expect.

 

[mutabor]

Tim Burton's latest film doesn't just lack diversity, it lacks personality

 

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.

 
On the contrary director Fukua showed "connection" with the world when in a remake of The Magnificent Seven his main protagonists were a black guy, a Mexican, a Chinese, A Native American and several white people.

 

[vwinter]

Some lively conversation of late =)
 
Just going to drop a few of these in here.
 
 
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.
 
 
The Witch [7.3/10]
 
Some critics aren’t wrong, at least in my case, when they say this isn’t “scary” in the classic sense. It’s certainly stylish.
 
Found it interesting that it was shot in 25 days using mostly natural light. I think it actually added a lot to the visual design. And in that way, “natural” became a style.
 
There was a lot of talk about a key to the film being tension building and building. I actually disagree. It really ebbed and flowed quite a bit. The issue here is that I think the timing of it is a bit off. By the time it gets to the climax, the tension has had so many undulations that it’s not solid enough to really push the climax through for me.
 
But past the climax, I actually am a fan of the ending. It reminds me of a quote from Firefly:

Spoiler: Warning: Spoiler!

“They made him watch. He probably tried to turn away, and they wouldn't let him. You call him a survivor? He's not. A man comes up against that kind of will, the only way to deal with it, I suspect, is to become it.”

 
 
Infernal Affairs [9+/10]
 
Now if we’re talking tension. This is it. I don’t think I’ve seen a film with more palpable tension than this one. You can literally reach out and touch it. And it doesn’t let up. Even scenes that have no overt tension, because of the setup of the film you are always wondering if there’s something more, something underneath.
 
Actors did a good job mostly but Eric Tsang as the triad boss Hon Sam really laid it down. Sitting on my couch, I felt I wanted to be nowhere near that guy.
 
This is really a silver nugget. An engrossing film from beginning to end. Edge of your seat stuff. Smart. Tight. Camerawork is of note, apparently very classic in Hong Kong style filmmaking, but novel to me =)
 
After the film got going, I decided that I even liked the pretty cheesy opening setup, it kind of just worked.
 
I haven’t yet watched The Departed, but I don’t have expectations of it bettering this. 

 

[WraithApe]

 
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.

 

[Hutnicks]

Big shout out for Infernal Affairs. It did for Asian Crime drama what Sergio Leone did for the western with For a Few Dollars more.

 

[vwinter]

   
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):
 

 

[62ohm]

-edited-
 
wrong thread -_- my bad

 

[WraithApe]

 
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):
 

 
Oh I'm under no illusion there'll ever really be a Lebowski 2, or anything close. The dude abides. 

 
Great photo of the set there! I think it's testament to how radical Dogme 95 was at the time. Festen really blew me away, though sorry to say it's the only one of the 31 official Dogme films I've seen. I'm sure there're plenty more worth seeing - The Idiots has been on my watch list forever...