There’s a problem with the preview footage shown recently of Peter Jackson’s upcoming film The Hobbit, which is due out this December… but it’s not a new problem, in fact it’s a problem that’s been growing for quite a few years.
It’s to do with the 48 frames per second that the film’s been shot in (which is twice as many as normal) and the look that it’s given it. Some people are saying that it’s a method that spoils the feel of what they’re watching; it takes away the stylistic sheen that we’re used to with movies and makes it look cheap, no matter how expensive and glamorous the production is.
Here’s a quote dated 24 April 2012 from the Ain’t It Cool News website about the “controversial” The Hobbit footage:
“…the big issue people walked out of the room this morning feeling is that the look of THE HOBBIT is not what they associate with filmic, or movie-like, or at all traditionally cinematic. The effect of watching 1970’s BBC television dramas as compared to US TV from the same era was mentioned by various people around me.”
Too much like a dated television show, you say?
Here’s my 19 December 2010 thoughts about Michael Mann’s film Public Enemies that addresses a very similar problem:
“I just can’t get to grips with Michael Mann’s choice and use of tv style digital film stock that makes you feel like you’re watching the behind the scenes documentary on the production.
I know he uses it for stylistic effect and to give his post The Insider output a grittier patina… but it just feels cheap and spoils the vast effort put into every other area of his recent films.
Plus the fly-on-the-wall documentary feel that his work now has doesn’t sit well with dramatic acting and the two art forms really do clash badly, making even the most earnest of performance seem strangely out of place and silly.
I tried watching Public Enemies, more than once, really I did, but I found the cinematography too detached, uninvolved and distracting.”
I hate to say “I told you so”, but… well.
This new digital 48fps filmmaking is taking away what people seem to love and cherish about cinema. It’s flattening out the illusion and taking away the magic.
I only hope that this new controversy will reminded people that just because you can do a thing it doesn’t always mean that you should do a thing.
The BBC also reports on the issue: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-17836380
Thursday, 26 April 2012
Monday, 23 April 2012
We Need To Talk About Kevin - film review
Perhaps unfairly I watched We Need To Talk About Kevin a month ago, absorbed it’s artistic darkness and obscurities, took it back to the video library and forgot about it. Yesterday I flipped open my laptop and started writing a review. I’m not sure whether taking that amount of time to come to a decision about a movie is wise, but it seems to have taken that long for my thoughts on the matter to finally become clear.
We Need To Talk About Kevin is a film about a mother trawling through her own biased and subjective memory to find an answer to why her first born child has grown up to be a mass murderer. We only see her side of the story and her take on events, therefore it seems that the film isn’t here to give it’s audience a balanced opinion, it’s here to be un-diplomatic, narrow minded and short sighted, just like many of it’s characters.
As a drama about an American high school shooting (this time with arrows instead of bullets… as if teenagers being brutally gunned down has become some sort of cinematic cliché) it’s not as haunting, mature or disturbing as Gus Van Sant’s 2003 film Elephant – which left me numb for days – and struggles to get to grips with what story it’s actually trying to tell. If it’s about a psychotic child/young man growing up to commit an unforgivable atrocity then it’s portrayal of the titular Kevin as an Omen style demon child, complete with high-angle shots of his dark and evil gazes, is ill conceived and borders on comical; if it’s about a woman being victimised by the tragedy’s survivors for bringing the perpetrator into the world then, once you see the key series of events from start to finish and realise that she’s just as much of a victim as the rest, you start to question why she’s so hated by the community; if it’s about a mother trying to work out where she went wrong with bringing up her offspring then there are great gaps in the film’s narrative that can only be described as plot holes which fail to explain important issues that desperately need explaining.
In the end We Need To Talk About Kevin is surprisingly mundane and, dare I say it, rather boring. We know what the film is inevitably building up to and what our thoughts/feelings are on the subject already, but in carefully structuring a narrative around these known quantities the filmmakers have steered clear of providing any answers, clear or otherwise, on the reasoning behind Kevin’s actions; it also refuses to find a satisfying emotional denouement which we mistakenly think this is all leading us to. In the end the film remains a nicely shot, elegantly arranged but slightly exploitative bore that tries to be deeper and more challenging than it actually is.
I recommend watching the aforementioned Elephant instead, or maybe even the more popcorn friendly The Omen, you’ll have a similar but more truthful and complete experience than if you try labouring through the tedium of We Need To Talk About Kevin, which simply has nothing to say.
2/5
We Need To Talk About Kevin is a film about a mother trawling through her own biased and subjective memory to find an answer to why her first born child has grown up to be a mass murderer. We only see her side of the story and her take on events, therefore it seems that the film isn’t here to give it’s audience a balanced opinion, it’s here to be un-diplomatic, narrow minded and short sighted, just like many of it’s characters.
As a drama about an American high school shooting (this time with arrows instead of bullets… as if teenagers being brutally gunned down has become some sort of cinematic cliché) it’s not as haunting, mature or disturbing as Gus Van Sant’s 2003 film Elephant – which left me numb for days – and struggles to get to grips with what story it’s actually trying to tell. If it’s about a psychotic child/young man growing up to commit an unforgivable atrocity then it’s portrayal of the titular Kevin as an Omen style demon child, complete with high-angle shots of his dark and evil gazes, is ill conceived and borders on comical; if it’s about a woman being victimised by the tragedy’s survivors for bringing the perpetrator into the world then, once you see the key series of events from start to finish and realise that she’s just as much of a victim as the rest, you start to question why she’s so hated by the community; if it’s about a mother trying to work out where she went wrong with bringing up her offspring then there are great gaps in the film’s narrative that can only be described as plot holes which fail to explain important issues that desperately need explaining.
In the end We Need To Talk About Kevin is surprisingly mundane and, dare I say it, rather boring. We know what the film is inevitably building up to and what our thoughts/feelings are on the subject already, but in carefully structuring a narrative around these known quantities the filmmakers have steered clear of providing any answers, clear or otherwise, on the reasoning behind Kevin’s actions; it also refuses to find a satisfying emotional denouement which we mistakenly think this is all leading us to. In the end the film remains a nicely shot, elegantly arranged but slightly exploitative bore that tries to be deeper and more challenging than it actually is.
I recommend watching the aforementioned Elephant instead, or maybe even the more popcorn friendly The Omen, you’ll have a similar but more truthful and complete experience than if you try labouring through the tedium of We Need To Talk About Kevin, which simply has nothing to say.
2/5
Sunday, 15 April 2012
Canoeing trip
Not a media review, but I thought that this write-up of mine about a sporting activity might be of some interest:
The most important lesson I learnt yesterday whilst canoeing was: get fit beforehand because you’ll look like a twat if you can’t zip up your wetsuit and you really do notice your weight when you’re trying to clamber around inside a little boat that’s rocking about unsteadily on the waves.
Oh and your muscles will f***king hurt the next day, so stock up on ibuprofen!!!
I went for this water-based adventure with my girlfriend’s female doctor friend (who I’m also fairly good friends with) and two 17 year olds who this doctor friend is acquainted with, I think through one of their parents. The teens wanted to do the canoeing for their DoE award, whereas I was there mainly for fun and the experience of being there (and research for writing, I think I have a story with some canoeing in it). They were a nice pair of kids and not too “teenager-ish”; although the girl got a bit squeaky in the afternoon. We all got on though and seemed to bond under the physical duress of the whole day, which was good.
Oh and I found out that a canoe (the long thin ones you slide into and row about in using a Darth Maul style double-ended paddle) isn’t a canoe, it’s a kayak. I also found out that my claustrophobia doesn’t like kayaks so I had to bail out of mine before I even went out onto the water. Fortunately for me the other type of boat we were there to try out was a larger and more open Canadian canoe (which I’ve used briefly before many years ago) which you manoeuvre about in using just a single-ended paddle. These are apparently harder to use and was meant to constitute the latter part of the day, but the instructor was impressed at how much of an affinity I seemed to have with it and recommended I seriously consider taking it up in the future. Maybe it’s my Canadian heritage that enabled me to master the canoe better: it’s in my blood, baby!!
Stupidly I didn’t pack any snacks as I was so worried about everything else that I had to take it just didn’t seem like a priority. I was relieved, therefore, that Pringles were in abundance and I accepted a few generous potato-based donations from the rest of the group. So there’s another lesson: pack loads of junk food!!
The weather for the day was a mixed bag. I was warm enough with the clothing I’d taken but I had to borrow some gloves from the instructor as when the rain and hail came my hands started to freeze up and I just didn’t feel safe paddling until they’d warmed up. The wind came and went in random bursts which really affected the ease of paddling on the lake. The canoe I was in was more prone to being pushed about and dominated by gales than the smaller, more compact and sleeker kayaks and so at one point when we were far out on the other side of the lake the instructor had to guide me back to shore with his kayak as I just couldn’t navigate the canoe effectively under such extreme weather conditions. It was nice when the sun came out intermittently and warmed us all up; I think it’ll be a nicer experience later on in the year when the weather is more consistent.
I was right in the end about the timetable for the day being too long. I’d have enjoyed just a morning/afternoon session, but a 9-5 training course was a bit much. I gave up an hour early as my too-small-for-me wetsuit was digging into my shoulders and causing a lot of pain, plus my energy levels had dropped to the point where I just didn’t care anymore. This turned out to be a wise move as I missed the “getting out of the canoe/kayak in the middle of the lake and swimming it back to shore” exercise which created some very unhappy and wet students.
By the end of the day the instructor still gave me a certificate as, even though I refused to get into the kayak (it wasn’t a hissy fit, just a mini panic attack) and missed the dreaded sea-evacuation exercise, he felt I was competent enough to take the award. Yay!!
I’m now looking into local watersports centres which are quite in abundance in Yorkshire. There’s one at the Rother Valley lake (a place I’ve visited before for a walk) and it looks as though a 90 minute Canadian canoe rental is about £12, so maybe I can try and make a fortnightly/monthly excursion out to there.
Who knows…
The most important lesson I learnt yesterday whilst canoeing was: get fit beforehand because you’ll look like a twat if you can’t zip up your wetsuit and you really do notice your weight when you’re trying to clamber around inside a little boat that’s rocking about unsteadily on the waves.
Oh and your muscles will f***king hurt the next day, so stock up on ibuprofen!!!
I went for this water-based adventure with my girlfriend’s female doctor friend (who I’m also fairly good friends with) and two 17 year olds who this doctor friend is acquainted with, I think through one of their parents. The teens wanted to do the canoeing for their DoE award, whereas I was there mainly for fun and the experience of being there (and research for writing, I think I have a story with some canoeing in it). They were a nice pair of kids and not too “teenager-ish”; although the girl got a bit squeaky in the afternoon. We all got on though and seemed to bond under the physical duress of the whole day, which was good.
Oh and I found out that a canoe (the long thin ones you slide into and row about in using a Darth Maul style double-ended paddle) isn’t a canoe, it’s a kayak. I also found out that my claustrophobia doesn’t like kayaks so I had to bail out of mine before I even went out onto the water. Fortunately for me the other type of boat we were there to try out was a larger and more open Canadian canoe (which I’ve used briefly before many years ago) which you manoeuvre about in using just a single-ended paddle. These are apparently harder to use and was meant to constitute the latter part of the day, but the instructor was impressed at how much of an affinity I seemed to have with it and recommended I seriously consider taking it up in the future. Maybe it’s my Canadian heritage that enabled me to master the canoe better: it’s in my blood, baby!!
Stupidly I didn’t pack any snacks as I was so worried about everything else that I had to take it just didn’t seem like a priority. I was relieved, therefore, that Pringles were in abundance and I accepted a few generous potato-based donations from the rest of the group. So there’s another lesson: pack loads of junk food!!
The weather for the day was a mixed bag. I was warm enough with the clothing I’d taken but I had to borrow some gloves from the instructor as when the rain and hail came my hands started to freeze up and I just didn’t feel safe paddling until they’d warmed up. The wind came and went in random bursts which really affected the ease of paddling on the lake. The canoe I was in was more prone to being pushed about and dominated by gales than the smaller, more compact and sleeker kayaks and so at one point when we were far out on the other side of the lake the instructor had to guide me back to shore with his kayak as I just couldn’t navigate the canoe effectively under such extreme weather conditions. It was nice when the sun came out intermittently and warmed us all up; I think it’ll be a nicer experience later on in the year when the weather is more consistent.
I was right in the end about the timetable for the day being too long. I’d have enjoyed just a morning/afternoon session, but a 9-5 training course was a bit much. I gave up an hour early as my too-small-for-me wetsuit was digging into my shoulders and causing a lot of pain, plus my energy levels had dropped to the point where I just didn’t care anymore. This turned out to be a wise move as I missed the “getting out of the canoe/kayak in the middle of the lake and swimming it back to shore” exercise which created some very unhappy and wet students.
By the end of the day the instructor still gave me a certificate as, even though I refused to get into the kayak (it wasn’t a hissy fit, just a mini panic attack) and missed the dreaded sea-evacuation exercise, he felt I was competent enough to take the award. Yay!!
I’m now looking into local watersports centres which are quite in abundance in Yorkshire. There’s one at the Rother Valley lake (a place I’ve visited before for a walk) and it looks as though a 90 minute Canadian canoe rental is about £12, so maybe I can try and make a fortnightly/monthly excursion out to there.
Who knows…
Monday, 2 April 2012
The Adventures Of Tintin: The Secret Of The Unicorn – film review
I wasn’t sure if I needed to be curious or concerned about whether Steven Spielberg’s visual style would successfully translate to an animated feature or whether The Adventures Of Tintin: The Secret Of The Unicorn would turn out to be a flat but pretty looking trailer for a video game. How relieved I was, then, to have it confirmed that Spielberg’s prowess as a director is not only in his placement of the camera and the framing therein, but also in the manipulation of the three-dimensional (and I don’t mean in terms of 3D filmmaking) world before it. He treats his set, be it real or virtual, like a theatre stage and utilises the space he’s been given to maximum effect. To his credit, Spielberg has not let The Secret Of The Unicorn slip away from him into the hands of digital artists; his puppet master’s strings are pulling on every movement and detail throughout, never allowing you to forget who’s show this is.
When I sat down to watch Tintin after a long and tiring day of fruitless travelling I’d planned only to watch the first five minutes to give my excited little mind a taste of what I’d anxiously been waiting months and months for. About forty five minutes later I was still watching, unable to tear myself away from the stream-of-consciousness, runaway train of a storyline that hardly stops for a breath. The narrative mimics the ever calculating and deducing mind of it’s titular character, who’s always trying to find something positive and constructive in the moment, even when a trail goes dead. Tintin, who sometimes seems to be suffering from Attention Deficit Disorder or a condition somewhere along the autism spectrum, needs to report on something, even if he only completes half the adventure; but often that acceptance of “failure” opens up his mind, and the film’s story, to new ideas and possibilities.
In some ways I was startled by the greediness of the plot to utilise every action-adventure mechanism it could without holding back with a profiteering eye for sequels and spin-offs. It guzzles joyous clichés like a big, erm, cliché guzzling machine. But within the non-stop spinning cogs of the plot is a balleticism and poetry to the way each set-piece hands the baton over to the next. It’s not bloated and cold, it’s just eager and full of energy like a young boy playing with his collection of action figures.
The skill apparent in Steven Moffat, Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish’s screenplay is it’s tendency to allow time for character’s (and our feelings for them) to develop amidst the chaos; in fact they write the intimate scenes as if they too were action scenes. We learn about our protagonists’ back stories and lives whilst they’re dangling from boats and biplanes and cranes. It’s all in there, you just don’t notice it half the time until you’re cheering characters on and rooting for them to escape danger.
Elsewhere the strong vocal talents are an essential weapon in the film’s arsenal, although you can hardly recognise Simon Pegg and Nick Frost as the bickering Thompson twins, but I think there’s been a little tweaking going on in the studio to line the two very different sounding actors up. Daniel Craig flexes his vocal range as the dastardly villain and shows us he can do more than just play sombre, monotone secret agents. But at the core of the film is the charmingly destructive trapeze act of a relationship that’s shared between Tintin and Captain Haddock, played by Jamie Bell and Andy Serkis respectively, both of whom turn potentially one-dimension characters into many-faceted eccentrics; both aiding and antagonising the other as external forces constantly threaten to defeat them both.
Amazingly the film manages to make an important point about using or abusing alcohol to forget painful memories or to escape reality; in fact one scene in particular, a confrontation between Tintin and the alcohol dependant Haddock, reminded me of an exchange between me and my father a few years ago when I wasn’t coping with life very well. Yet somehow the tone of this underlining emotional message isn’t preachy or self-righteous (Haddock is endearingly back on the booze by the end once he’s stopped downing it for the wrong reasons), it simply implies that fun, adventure and the answers to a difficult riddle can emerge even when you’re completely sober.
Beyond the serious subtext that intermittently crops up, I found it a good sign that I exclaimed “WOW!!” more than once whilst watching the film. In a period where we’ve seen almost everything that cinema has to offer, Spielberg manages to take a format he himself has perfected in the past (particularly with Indiana Jones) and dazzles us with the novelty of his film’s unrelenting pace, helped greatly by the gravity defying “cartoon logic” that frees up the spirit of the action. And yet beyond the central goings-on there’s always something tinkering away on the periphery; whether it’s a slapstick aside or a layer of background crowd detail, you’ll find the mind-bogglingly complex vistas too much to take in and appreciate on just one viewing, so make sure you have a return visit.
The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret Of The Unicorn has the naïve, impatient and tempestuous drive of a child experiencing the world for the first time, and yet it’s harnessed with the experience and love for the motion of pictures that Spielberg has only gotten better at demonstrating over the years. The treasure for us isn’t the secret of the Unicorn, but that the film exists in the first place and the fact that Spielberg remains one of the few director’s of his generation still with the desire and ability to quench our thirst for cinematic spectacle, be it large or small.
5/5
When I sat down to watch Tintin after a long and tiring day of fruitless travelling I’d planned only to watch the first five minutes to give my excited little mind a taste of what I’d anxiously been waiting months and months for. About forty five minutes later I was still watching, unable to tear myself away from the stream-of-consciousness, runaway train of a storyline that hardly stops for a breath. The narrative mimics the ever calculating and deducing mind of it’s titular character, who’s always trying to find something positive and constructive in the moment, even when a trail goes dead. Tintin, who sometimes seems to be suffering from Attention Deficit Disorder or a condition somewhere along the autism spectrum, needs to report on something, even if he only completes half the adventure; but often that acceptance of “failure” opens up his mind, and the film’s story, to new ideas and possibilities.
In some ways I was startled by the greediness of the plot to utilise every action-adventure mechanism it could without holding back with a profiteering eye for sequels and spin-offs. It guzzles joyous clichés like a big, erm, cliché guzzling machine. But within the non-stop spinning cogs of the plot is a balleticism and poetry to the way each set-piece hands the baton over to the next. It’s not bloated and cold, it’s just eager and full of energy like a young boy playing with his collection of action figures.
The skill apparent in Steven Moffat, Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish’s screenplay is it’s tendency to allow time for character’s (and our feelings for them) to develop amidst the chaos; in fact they write the intimate scenes as if they too were action scenes. We learn about our protagonists’ back stories and lives whilst they’re dangling from boats and biplanes and cranes. It’s all in there, you just don’t notice it half the time until you’re cheering characters on and rooting for them to escape danger.
Elsewhere the strong vocal talents are an essential weapon in the film’s arsenal, although you can hardly recognise Simon Pegg and Nick Frost as the bickering Thompson twins, but I think there’s been a little tweaking going on in the studio to line the two very different sounding actors up. Daniel Craig flexes his vocal range as the dastardly villain and shows us he can do more than just play sombre, monotone secret agents. But at the core of the film is the charmingly destructive trapeze act of a relationship that’s shared between Tintin and Captain Haddock, played by Jamie Bell and Andy Serkis respectively, both of whom turn potentially one-dimension characters into many-faceted eccentrics; both aiding and antagonising the other as external forces constantly threaten to defeat them both.
Amazingly the film manages to make an important point about using or abusing alcohol to forget painful memories or to escape reality; in fact one scene in particular, a confrontation between Tintin and the alcohol dependant Haddock, reminded me of an exchange between me and my father a few years ago when I wasn’t coping with life very well. Yet somehow the tone of this underlining emotional message isn’t preachy or self-righteous (Haddock is endearingly back on the booze by the end once he’s stopped downing it for the wrong reasons), it simply implies that fun, adventure and the answers to a difficult riddle can emerge even when you’re completely sober.
Beyond the serious subtext that intermittently crops up, I found it a good sign that I exclaimed “WOW!!” more than once whilst watching the film. In a period where we’ve seen almost everything that cinema has to offer, Spielberg manages to take a format he himself has perfected in the past (particularly with Indiana Jones) and dazzles us with the novelty of his film’s unrelenting pace, helped greatly by the gravity defying “cartoon logic” that frees up the spirit of the action. And yet beyond the central goings-on there’s always something tinkering away on the periphery; whether it’s a slapstick aside or a layer of background crowd detail, you’ll find the mind-bogglingly complex vistas too much to take in and appreciate on just one viewing, so make sure you have a return visit.
The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret Of The Unicorn has the naïve, impatient and tempestuous drive of a child experiencing the world for the first time, and yet it’s harnessed with the experience and love for the motion of pictures that Spielberg has only gotten better at demonstrating over the years. The treasure for us isn’t the secret of the Unicorn, but that the film exists in the first place and the fact that Spielberg remains one of the few director’s of his generation still with the desire and ability to quench our thirst for cinematic spectacle, be it large or small.
5/5
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