How soon will Cloverfield be released.....?
- Thread starter gastrof
- Start date
I dunno, Dale. Its certainly a different angle to take for a monster movie. I don't think anyone will be disappointed by the amount of screen time the monster gets. As for shaky-cam footage - it sucks if you're one of the people who get bothered by it. I'm happy not to be one of them. 
I think the production values are irrelevant. They're shooting on digital, which vastly reduced the cost of the movie. You probably won't be able to tell the difference, effects-wise, between Cloverfield and a $150 million show.
I think the production values are irrelevant. They're shooting on digital, which vastly reduced the cost of the movie. You probably won't be able to tell the difference, effects-wise, between Cloverfield and a $150 million show.
Well, it's all a matter of how OVER-THE-TOP they get by the use of "shakeycam" work.JuanBolio said:
I dunno, Dale. Its certainly a different angle to take for a monster movie. I don't think anyone will be disappointed by the amount of screen time the monster gets. As for shaky-cam footage - its sucks of you're one of the people who get bothered by it. I'm happy not to be one of them.
I think the production values are irrelevant. They're shooting on digital, which vastly reduced the cost of the movie. You probably won't be able to tell the difference, effects-wise, between Cloverfield and a $150 million show.
When I went to see "The Bourne Supremacy," six people in the theater actually threw up, and at least half of us (myself included) left the theater with headaches.
I saw the flick again on DVD on my TV at home, and the relative amount of motion was less (smaller screen, so each "jerk" required less eye motion to track) so it didn't give me a headache. But it still was difficult to watch. Remember, the camera was moving SO MUCH in that film that a guy's head might be at the top of the screen, then at the bottom of the screen, in less than half a second, then back up again. It was AWFUL.
"Shakey-cam" work is best when it's used subtly. The idea should be that the user is either trying to hold the camera still but is unable to (ie, because the building is shaking?) or isn't really paying attention (as we saw during the recent assassination of Bhutto in Pakistan, for instance).
If OVERDONE, it just reflects really, really bad filmmaking. It's a TOOL... and it should be used only in ways that actually enhance the narrative. If it doesn't... if it DISTRACTS... or even worse, if it makes the audience physically ILL... then the person responsible for that shouldn't ever have the opportunity to work again. IMHO, of course.
Not the first film (The Bourne Identity), or the most recent one (The Bourne Ultimatum). I'm talking about the second film. And if you can't remember the shakeycam work... you need to go back and watch the film again. It's pretty much impossible to miss. Pay particular attention during the driving sequences and the hand-to-hand-combat sequences.
I know which one you mean, and I remember seeing it in theaters. I just probably didn't notice because it has never been any harder for me to follow shaky-cam shots. Must simply be a matter of personal wiring; I can follow action done in hand-held shaky-cam as easily as I can shot done by a gyro-stabilized camera.
The only thing that bugs me (mildly) is quick-cutting action scenes, resulting in shots that last only a split second. Transformers did this, as did Gladiator and even LOTR a bit. They say they do it to capture the chaotic nature of battle.... I find it most unsatisfactory.
The only thing that bugs me (mildly) is quick-cutting action scenes, resulting in shots that last only a split second. Transformers did this, as did Gladiator and even LOTR a bit. They say they do it to capture the chaotic nature of battle.... I find it most unsatisfactory.
I never have any trouble with shaky cam - or with any other editing or shooting technique that I can remember.
Bad popcorn?
Honestly, I heard similar comments about "The Blair Witch Project" - that people were projectile vomiting into the aisles - and I feared the worst, but I saw none of that when I went to see it. Fairly full cinema, too.
I saw a trailer for "Spider-man 3" at an IMAX cinema and it was really hard to know where to look, but I saw the actual film there, too, a few weeks later, and my brain did adjust to the fast movements on a huge screen.
Lots of unusual cinema experiences (Sensurround in "Earthquake", 3D movies, IMAX films, shaky cam, etc) take some adjustments, but this very motion-sickness-prone guy has never been nauseous due to watching a movie.
Well, some people faint at the sight of blood. Sime people start crying in fear when they see a mouse. Is this really so hard to believe?
I've never gotten sick with shakey cam, but I do find it very distracting, pointless, and often leaves me feeling I've been jipped out of the 'visual' part of the experience if it's used too much.
A shaky fly-by? Fine.
A shaky kung-fu action scene? Fine.
A shaky conference room scene?
FAIL.Shaky Cam is the f&cking Antichrist tm! 
Sorry Cary, I'm with ancient - Bourne Supremecy's shaky cam couldn't be too bad, because I don't even remember it being shot that way. I never got physically ill in a movie theater, shaky cam or otherwise.
However, I DID fall asleep during that ice-skating/fight scene in 'Batman and Robin'. Yeah - I know that scene was a the beginning of the film, but it was the 10 PM showing, AND that scene was exceptionally dreadful.
However, I DID fall asleep during that ice-skating/fight scene in 'Batman and Robin'. Yeah - I know that scene was a the beginning of the film, but it was the 10 PM showing, AND that scene was exceptionally dreadful.
trevanian
Rear Admiral
I thought the overcutting in the first BOURNE made it unwatchable (except for the Clive Owen parts,) so much so I didn't even see the next two. Shakeycam is like zoom lenses in the 60s ... effective up to a point, and then trendy to the point of unwatchability (sort of like folks in a few years will be looking at how monochromatic a lot of current movies are and wondering where the color went.)
Well, I didn't get physically ill... but I did have a headache after the flick. But it's hard to miss when you hear people puking several rows back...
As I said, I rewatched the movie just a couple of days ago (actually, I watched all three, back-to-back). I did it on a smaller screen... a 30" picture-tube TV in "letterbox" mode... from about ten feet away. And under those conditions I didn't have any problems. But I DID notice the rampant "overshaking" throughout the film. It's all quite fresh in my mind... and I was intentionally looking for it this time around, so it's not a matter of just not noticing it, or of being "sick" from something else and blaming it on the film.
Well, that entire movie, almost without exception, left me feeling sick... I've blanked it out of my mind almost entirely. Somebody bought me the "complete Batman movie series" a couple of years ago and I've never even unwrapped that disk... it's still in celophane.
I never liked ANY of that sequence of "Batman" movies. The first one was the least bad... but it represented a wasted opportunity. That's why I've been so ecstatic about how BEAUTIFULLY "Batman Begins" was done... it was everything that I've always thought of as "Batman" since I started reading the comics back in '72 when Denny O'Neil took the character back to his darker roots. It's no coincidence that this film used Ra's Al Ghul as the main villain (that was Denny O'Neil's first major new character). Of course, I was a LITTLE disappointed that, for political-correctness purposes, they ignored the fact that Ra's Al Ghul is an ARABIC PHRASE and that the character was supposed to be an ARAB man (albeit not a Muslim)... the name means "the Demon's Head" in Arabic. (Side note: He had a daughter, Talia, who fell for Bruce. And, eventually has a grandson, Ibn al Xu'ffasch... translating to "Son of the Bat." Read into that what you want.
)
trevanian
Rear Admiral
That's very interesting. I don't remember ever reading the comics, and while I loved the TV show when I was 5 years old, none of the BATflicks were of too much interest to me either, till BEGINS, which I thought was absolutely fantastic. Pretty good sign to me, that BB can appeal so much to someone like you who knows the stuff as well as somebody like me who just likes seeing a movie that feels like it is about something and has some integrity in its presentation.
Yep... Nolen definitely was a fan of the COMIC BOOK version of the character. In fact, his movie was in very large part a synthesis of three of the most popular Batman comic stories of the past couple of decades:
"Batman: Year One"
"The Man Who Falls"
"The Long Halloween"
"Year One" involved Lieutentant Gordon as the only honest cop in the city of Gotham, introduced us to Commissioner Loeb, to the mob family that ran Gotham, etc... showed Wayne's first outing in disguise (but not yet in a bat-suit) as well as his first in a "ninja" style suit... showed us our first glimpse of "The East End" also known as "The Narrows"... and the list goes on. There were many scenes and sequences in this film lifted right off of the comic page... they even LOOKED the same (right down to the placement of shadows!)
"The Man Who Falls" told the story of young Bruce falling down the well... introduced the line about "Why do we fall? So we can learn to pick ourselves up"... introduced the idea that the adolescent Bruce dropped out of college and travelled the world.. introduced a Frenchman named Henri Ducard who was one of Bruce Wayne's teachers... introduced Bruce Wayne's early involvement training within the League of Shadows (prior to learning of Ra's Al Ghul's role as ultimate leader).
The main "new" element there was making Ducard INTO Ra's... something that was definitely not the case in the comics.
And "The Long Halloween" involved Dr. Crane, his role at Arkham, the flooding of Fear toxin into the water supply, the breaching of Arkham, the birth of The Scarecrow, etc, etc.
This last film was almost ENTIRELY a synthesis of those three stories. It was the most faithful-to-the-comics story ever seen in any other medium... and was the most serious as well. The really SICKENING bit, for years, is that the COMIC BOOKS were so dramatically more adult than the films were. The people making the films had no concern about the source material.
So, when they did "Batman Begins," they tossed out all the previous "non-canon" movies and gave us a movie that, FOR THE FIRST TIME, was consistent with the source material.
Now, Nolen is doing this movie as well... "The Dark Knight" (which was also the title of Frank Moore's seminal "future of Batman" story, wherein the Joker played a very prominent role... though ultimately the most significant adversary to Batman in this book was... Clark Kent). I fully expect them to lift bits from the Joker portion of "The Dark Knight," as well as from "The Killing Joke" (THE best Joker story of all time, as far as I'm concerned... and yes, the one in which he permanently crippled Barbara Gordon, leaving her in a wheelchair.)
This film has Harvey Dent in it... but no mention of him as "Two-face." This is a GOOD thing... for those of us who know the comics (Harvey was considered to be the most likely person in Gotham to be Batman for years, prior to his becoming scarred.) Yes, they had "Two-face" in a prior Bat-flick... but the way that role was played was HORRIFYINGLY BAD. And the sad thing is, I think Tommy Lee Jones COULD have played the character in a "real" way better than most actors in Hollywood might have. They played him "over the top" when in fact, Two-face is almost totally emotionless. He doesn't act in anger or fear or rage... he doesn't make decisions himself at all. He lets the coin make every decision in his life... and he's as likely to be a hero as a villain, depending on the flip of the coin.
I suspect that we'll get a third new-series Batflick, and that Harvey Dent will be the antagonist in that flick.
Oh,a nd I'm THRILLED with what little I've seen of Heath Ledger in the current one. I mean, I really didn't expect to like him in it, but I barely even SEE Ledger... apparently he's a better actor than I thought he was!
trevanian
Rear Admiral
Cary L. Brown said:
Yep... Nolen definitely was a fan of the COMIC BOOK version of the character. In fact, his movie was in very large part a synthesis of three of the most popular Batman comic stories of the past couple of decades:
"Batman: Year One"
"The Man Who Falls"
"The Long Halloween"
"Year One" involved Lieutentant Gordon as the only honest cop in the city of Gotham, introduced us to Commissioner Loeb, to the mob family that ran Gotham, etc... showed Wayne's first outing in disguise (but not yet in a bat-suit) as well as his first in a "ninja" style suit... showed us our first glimpse of "The East End" also known as "The Narrows"... and the list goes on. There were many scenes and sequences in this film lifted right off of the comic page... they even LOOKED the same (right down to the placement of shadows!)
"The Man Who Falls" told the story of young Bruce falling down the well... introduced the line about "Why do we fall? So we can learn to pick ourselves up"... introduced the idea that the adolescent Bruce dropped out of college and travelled the world.. introduced a Frenchman named Henri Ducard who was one of Bruce Wayne's teachers... introduced Bruce Wayne's early involvement training within the League of Shadows (prior to learning of Ra's Al Ghul's role as ultimate leader).
The main "new" element there was making Ducard INTO Ra's... something that was definitely not the case in the comics.
And "The Long Halloween" involved Dr. Crane, his role at Arkham, the flooding of Fear toxin into the water supply, the breaching of Arkham, the birth of The Scarecrow, etc, etc.
This last film was almost ENTIRELY a synthesis of those three stories. It was the most faithful-to-the-comics story ever seen in any other medium... and was the most serious as well. The really SICKENING bit, for years, is that the COMIC BOOKS were so dramatically more adult than the films were. The people making the films had no concern about the source material.
So, when they did "Batman Begins," they tossed out all the previous "non-canon" movies and gave us a movie that, FOR THE FIRST TIME, was consistent with the source material.
Now, Nolen is doing this movie as well... "The Dark Knight" (which was also the title of Frank Moore's seminal "future of Batman" story, wherein the Joker played a very prominent role... though ultimately the most significant adversary to Batman in this book was... Clark Kent). I fully expect them to lift bits from the Joker portion of "The Dark Knight," as well as from "The Killing Joke" (THE best Joker story of all time, as far as I'm concerned... and yes, the one in which he permanently crippled Barbara Gordon, leaving her in a wheelchair.)
This film has Harvey Dent in it... but no mention of him as "Two-face." This is a GOOD thing... for those of us who know the comics (Harvey was considered to be the most likely person in Gotham to be Batman for years, prior to his becoming scarred.) Yes, they had "Two-face" in a prior Bat-flick... but the way that role was played was HORRIFYINGLY BAD. And the sad thing is, I think Tommy Lee Jones COULD have played the character in a "real" way better than most actors in Hollywood might have. They played him "over the top" when in fact, Two-face is almost totally emotionless. He doesn't act in anger or fear or rage... he doesn't make decisions himself at all. He lets the coin make every decision in his life... and he's as likely to be a hero as a villain, depending on the flip of the coin.
I suspect that we'll get a third new-series Batflick, and that Harvey Dent will be the antagonist in that flick.
Oh,a nd I'm THRILLED with what little I've seen of Heath Ledger in the current one. I mean, I really didn't expect to like him in it, but I barely even SEE Ledger... apparently he's a better actor than I thought he was!
Very interesting, I had no idea he was relying so thoroughly on pre-existing source material, I figured it was only serving as a point of departure (though I would like to see what Aronofsky was going to do with BATS -- even if it was not the right path, it would have been interesting to see.)
Nolan is supposed to be doing THE PRISONER soon, and I gotta say, he is one of the only creative forces I would trust with that (by way of comparison, the fact that Simon West was going to do it several years ago gave me a stomachache.) The fact Nolan has the TWELVE MONKEYS writers doing the script also suggests he is on the right track there, IMO.
Well, there's nothing in Batman "canon" that states that the suit is made out of spandex. There is PLENTY in Batman canon that states that the suit has thermal maintenance capabilities built in and is capable of blocking knife slashes and small-caliber handgun shots.
So, what exactly are you asking me?
Ideally, I'd prefer it to not be completely monochromatic. The suit itself, if I were doing it, would be a dark grey with the cowl and cape being midnight blue (still, both would be NEARLY black). The belt would not be yellow, it would be a yellow-zinc-chromate finish... which it actually WAS in the film.
And the original batsuit (in the comics) had a black bat-symbol on the chest. Certain variants had the yellow "target" on them... but those were supposed to be the ones that were more heavily armored (it's easier to armor your chest than the rest of the body, after all).
The thing to remember is that the suit is not "just one suit" but is a series of costumes worn by this guy. There may be a cold-weather variant, a warm-weather variant... whatever. And I have NO PROBLEM with that. It's well-established in comic-lore.
Same with the Batmobile. As long as the vehicle he's driving is a reasonable design (from a technical/engineering standpoint... an area where the BB batmobile EXCELLED, by the way!), I'm fine with it. He's had multiple cars, and had multiple cars DESTROYED or replaced, throughout the run of the comic books. No big deal at all. Still, I LOVE the "tumbler" (I want one of those myself!). And the fact that the real vehicle apparently did virtually everything that the fictional version was supposed to be able to do (the one exception was that they didn't drive a real car over real rooftops!)... that's all the more argument.
Your question is based upon a TOTALLY BOGUS CONCEPT, I think. You're associating the "changes from the last movies" in this one to some form of "reboot." But I don't see it that way at all. I see this last movie as being just the opposite. I see the comics as being the "canon" part of Batman. And this was the first movie which actually WAS CONSISTENT WITH CANON.
Get it? In Star Trek terms... this would be like having a Trek movie series making Spock a woman, Kirk a transvestite, and McCoy a child-molester... then dumping all of that and going back to the Star Trek we all know. It would be those few really bad movies that would be "outside of canon" and the new movie would be a RETURN TO CANON.
Make sense?
trevanian said:
"The Village" is the name of the psychologically-oriented prison camp our hero (officially known only as #6, though strongly implied to be the hero from McGoohan's prior series, "Danger Man"... known in the USA as "Secret Agent" and the source of one of the best-known "spy series" themesongs ever) is kidnapped and sent to, just in case any of you are really confused.
I LOVE that series. One of my three all-time favorites.
If Nolan, who's demonstrated that he cares about fidelity to the original concepts and intentions, is doing a "Prisoner remake" (though I'd really prefer a "Prisoner continuation" set in the same world as the original, with a new character)... I'm hopeful he'll get it right. Like you, I've been disgusted with most of the bad takes I've seen on that in past years. The only DECENT post-McGoohan story I ever saw was the graphic novel continuation... which was really pretty VERY good. And for the same reasons that I THINK Nolan can get this property right, too.
I wonder... is Leo McKern still alive and working?
I hadn't heard that. I LOVE "The Prisoner" (as a former Military Intelligence guy myself, and someone who still spends an inordinate amount of my time analyzing what's going on in the world... I still love the only recurring #2's comment about his "dream" of "all the world as a Global Village"
"The Village" is the name of the psychologically-oriented prison camp our hero (officially known only as #6, though strongly implied to be the hero from McGoohan's prior series, "Danger Man"... known in the USA as "Secret Agent" and the source of one of the best-known "spy series" themesongs ever) is kidnapped and sent to, just in case any of you are really confused.
I LOVE that series. One of my three all-time favorites.
If Nolan, who's demonstrated that he cares about fidelity to the original concepts and intentions, is doing a "Prisoner remake" (though I'd really prefer a "Prisoner continuation" set in the same world as the original, with a new character)... I'm hopeful he'll get it right. Like you, I've been disgusted with most of the bad takes I've seen on that in past years. The only DECENT post-McGoohan story I ever saw was the graphic novel continuation... which was really pretty VERY good. And for the same reasons that I THINK Nolan can get this property right, too.
I wonder... is Leo McKern still alive and working?
Similar threads
