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George Lucas' love affair with CGI

#16 User is offline   Vesuvius Icon

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Posted 23 January 2009 - 07:32 PM

QUOTE (azerty @ Jan 23 2009, 10:06 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
I could continue, scene by scene ripping the hell out of this pointless muck, and maybe one day I will, but I am occupied at the moment.


laugh.gif When you're not occupied, I would love it if you do continue to rip films up. I loved how you pointed these things out! I didn't care for ET and it's been years since I've seen it, but what you had typed out made my night!
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#17 User is offline   civilian_number_two Icon

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Posted 24 January 2009 - 12:28 AM

QUOTE (Hoth @ Jan 23 2009, 05:20 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
That's kind of my point. If you hold one film accountable for these elements, you have to hold all of them accountable. I think the beginning scene in Raiders is quite silly myself, outrunning a big boulder, then outrunning 100+ natives all simultaneously firing arrows and he magically never gets hit??? Please...but hey no one insults the original...must be some unwritten rule.

I'm pretty sure you read more in than I wrote. I said "we'll let that be," and that was for real. ALL of these movies have questionable physics (notice how many movies have a guy get hit with a bullet and the impact sends him flying? That doesn't happen, and a brief consideration of Newton't Second Law is enough to explain why). I wasn't holding TOD accountable for the impossibility of its silly final fight; in fact I started out by saying that was the best sequence of the film. The problen with TOD is that the action scenes aren't really motivated by the narrative; the narrative is motivated by the action sequences. It is a silly silly movie.

TOD is also the film responsible for the PG-13 rating in the US. So apart from being silly it is also a very mean-spirited and unnecessarily graphic film for the series it is a part of. None of the other films have such graphic violence, or as much of it. The mine cart scene is obviously the worst, but the room with the crushing walls and the girly girl afraid of the bugs is a close second. That scene on its own might have been fine, but the various bits of nonsense add up.
"I had a lot of different ideas. At one point, Luke, Leia and Ben were all going to be little people, and we did screen tests to see if we could do that." -George Lucas, in STAR WARS: the Annotated Screenplays (p197).
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#18 User is offline   azerty Icon

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Posted 24 January 2009 - 10:26 AM

QUOTE
The fact that you say that "Saving Private Ryan" & Jurassic Park are "crap" pretty much speaks for itself to anyone else who may read this, so I don't even to respond

Don't wimp out on us now!


All right, lets talk about Spielberg, Saving Private Ryan, and crappyness.

The film is utterly conventional in every way. It consists of 2 distict sections and styles; the "Oh, so graphic" war scenes and the sappy, diverse group of stereotypical soldiers we are supposed to come to know and like as they traipse through the film waiting to be killed off.

Lets examine the first section. The graphic war scenes are massive budget enterprises. "Spend a lot of cash on a mock battle" says Spielberg, "and I will film it as though I was really there as a documentary newsman. It'll be so cool!"

It makes me think of the film "The Great Waldo Pepper", in which barnstorming pilot Robert Redford tells everyone he meets about his famous dogfight with Ernst Kessler in World War I, until he meets a guy who was actually in the dogfight, and who calls Redford on his lie.

"Well, it should have been me..." is Redford's lame excuse. He feels he was as good as those pilots, it's just bad luck he wasn't there to prove it at the time.

Spielberg managed to avoid service in his country's wars, but had he been called up, he shows us what a fine combat cameraman he would have been.

"Look at my jittery hand-held camerawork. Look at the blood on the camera lense. Look at my washed out colours! I'm a cinematic genius! And the blood! I bet you've never been so horrified by the grittiness and reality of war! Aren't I great?"

However, there is something a little unscrupulous about Spielberg faking the handicaps and hiccups in the work of the front-line documentarists of WWII. These authentic cinematographers weren't developing a deliberate "style" that people like Spielberg could study and mimic - actually, they were doing the most professional job they could, under enemy fire, with their lives on the line. To study this combat footage and then attempt to copy it for "simulated realism" is somehow slightly distasteful.

And what is Spieberg's point with all this effort? He wants gritty realism, but he simultaneously wants to distance us from the war. It's supposedly "real" but it's also not immediate; it's old news footage. The colours are muted, but not quite black and white (too unmarketable), so you are always aware you are just watching a film. Spielberg is a wimp. He has made the gore of war exciting rather than repellent, he has sanitized it and made a reproduction of what war is supposed to look like and he has made it watchable, rather than truly horrifying or sad. In short - he has Spielbergized it.

And as intense as the war scenes are supposed to be, they never achieve the intensity of, say, "Platoon", or "Gallipoli", or even "Aliens" for that matter. It's an authentic It's empty of anything real.

Spielberg has nothing interesting to say about the war either. He is just another flag waving, patriot. The theme of the movie? The US government is good and kind, and has it's citizens best interests at heart. Even the title of the film is nauseating propoganda. The Government want to remove Private Ryan from the battlefield after his three brothers have been killed in action. Why? Not because they care about Ryan as an individual, (much as they might like to belive this is the case,) they just don't want to be in the same situation that faced Lincoln (remember Lincoln, the great American President?) when he informed a mother that all of her sons had been killed in Civil War fighting. How decent of them! Of all the reasons and stories you could find to make a movie about World War II and Spielberg selects THAT? Jesus, how war mongeringly manipulative... how uttely robotic. How could anyone be so easily manipulated it?


* * * *

Let's examine the other section of the film - the diverse group of steroptypical characters that become involved in this story. Bland everyman Tom Hanks, the faithful sergeant, the militant Jew, the cynical New Yorker, the gruff Italian, the sensitive medic, the wimpy new guy, the Christian. These characters are all (except the Christian guy perhaps) unmemorable in every way. They don't stand out as say characters from "Platoon" stood out, or were individuals in the way the characters from "Do the Right Thing" were individuals. And who do they encounter?

They encounter the sniper, the German prisoner, the cute little kid, and so on. (Strangely missing from this Spielberg film is the usually obligatory goofy fat kid. I wonder why?) Our boys decently let the German prisoner go, and of course he kills one of them at the end. The foreign bastard! Our boys are decent, and the enemy are villains. If you don't get it, there will hokey dramatic music to help with your emotions, if you still don't get it, there will be a voice over at the end telling you what to think about it all.

The fact that people have to say "Oh but its so well done," means in effect that "Sure, you know its fake and you are constantly aware you're in a cinema watching a film, but it's still well done, don't you think?"

Can't agree.


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#19 User is offline   Hoth Icon

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Posted 24 January 2009 - 12:39 PM

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I'm pretty sure you read more in than I wrote. I said "we'll let that be," and that was for real. ALL of these movies have questionable physics (notice how many movies have a guy get hit with a bullet and the impact sends him flying? That doesn't happen, and a brief consideration of Newton't Second Law is enough to explain why). I wasn't holding TOD accountable for the impossibility of its silly final fight; in fact I started out by saying that was the best sequence of the film. The problen with TOD is that the action scenes aren't really motivated by the narrative; the narrative is motivated by the action sequences. It is a silly silly movie.


I don't know I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on this. I can respect your opinion, and I can certainly see the points you are trying to make...it's not that what you are saying isn't true or that those problems don't exist. I just don't see them as being as big of an issue as you see them being. I don't mind alot of action scenes as long as they don't take away from a story or ending. In TOD I don't think they do, and I think they are smartly (if not realistically as previously mentioned) put together. Was it just the story and dialogue that made the original Star Wars such a success??? Heck no, some of it also had to do with action sequences that were exciting, had never been seen before and didn't (at least in my opinion) take away from the story being told...they added to it. What's wrong with action sequences? It's like they are taboo if you want to make a good movie. Anyways I don't think this is any different in TOD. I think it tells a neat story, along with some (albeit cheesy at points) action sequences that are just exciting. I'm sorry I just don't see what the problem is with this and don't see much of a difference between TOD and the Raiders or Crusade.

This post has been edited by Hoth: 24 January 2009 - 12:39 PM

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#20 User is offline   Hoth Icon

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Posted 24 January 2009 - 12:54 PM

QUOTE
And as intense as the war scenes are supposed to be, they never achieve the intensity of, say, "Platoon", or "Gallipoli", or even "Aliens" for that matter. It's an authentic It's empty of anything real.

Spielberg has nothing interesting to say about the war either. He is just another flag waving, patriot. The theme of the movie? The US government is good and kind, and has it's citizens best interests at heart. Even the title of the film is nauseating propoganda. The Government want to remove Private Ryan from the battlefield after his three brothers have been killed in action. Why? Not because they care about Ryan as an individual, (much as they might like to belive this is the case,) they just don't want to be in the same situation that faced Lincoln (remember Lincoln, the great American President?) when he informed a mother that all of her sons had been killed in Civil War fighting. How decent of them! Of all the reasons and stories you could find to make a movie about World War II and Spielberg selects THAT? Jesus, how war mongeringly manipulative... how uttely robotic. How could anyone be so easily manipulated it?


You really should be a professional movie critic (if you aren't already) because your senseless gibberish is about as pointless. This is why I love Chefelf's "reasons" for hating the prequels...it's basically in essance the first movie review I have ever read based on common sense, and not some "professionals" over-inflated desire to share the rest of the world his higher-than-thou point of view that no one really cares about but he thinks does. How dare we simpletons question your greatness and knowledge oh exalted one!

Anyways your post is so long I can't paste all of it here, although it all definately applies to my response. Platoon, that was a piece of crap that cared nothing about accuracy or realism of what the vietnam war was really about. Good movie? All in the eyes of the beholder I guess...but the true test of any war movie is what those who ACTUALLY IN the war thought of it, and SPR by all acounts was continually deemed the most realistic WW2 movie ever made, by those who actually fought in the war and saw it. If you want an unrealistic view of war, then yeah, Platoon...that's your movie. To say that SPR was never as intense as Platoon or Aliens is just plain dumb. And again, I'm pretty sure I'm not in the minority in that opinion.

And according to your post I guess all of us "flag waving patriots" are just "easily manipulated" right? If that's the case I have nothing left to say to you. I served 11 years in our country's military, I think I have a right to be "easily manipulated" if I so choose.
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#21 User is offline   azerty Icon

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Posted 24 January 2009 - 01:59 PM

I didn't think you would REALLY end up crying in the corner, it was a hyperbolic exp​ression.

Sorry, I shouldn't use words like "Hyperbolic", should I?

Anyway, you don't really need to copy and paste all of my response, since it is only one post up the page.

I'm glad that people who actually fought in the war thought it was the most realistic World War II movie ever made. That means that it must be good . At least you are in the majority in in your opinions, and that's everything, isn't it?

I don't know if all flag waving patriots are easily manipulated, but since you are part of the majority and have the right to be easily manipulated if you choose, I can see you are the kind of guy who stands alone for what he believes in, and who am I to argue?

I just think that Spielberg's style of camera work is a jarring element in the film since he uses this technique only during battle scenes, and discards it for the other parts of the film.

I'm cynical about his historical accuracy too. Of all the stories Spielberg could have chosen for his massive World War II epic, he chose the moralistic tale of how the US Government's top priority was to risk a bunch of men to rescue a lowly private because his mummy would be sad if he died like his brothers. What a great bunch of guys those American Generals are. Spielberg is probably right, we should have more confidence in our leaders. They really do have our best interests at heart.



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#22 User is offline   civilian_number_two Icon

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Posted 24 January 2009 - 04:00 PM

Azerty, most of your review is just personal reflection and has nothing to do with the movie.

Spielberg used replica WWII-era cameras to achieve a look and a style that might have been achieved by an embedded reporter on the scene. Of course we have nothing like what he got, because anyone on that scene, the hardest of the beach battles on D Day, would have been running for his life and not trying to film things. The muted colours you lament are caused by overexposure, which is in turn caused by stripping the protective coating from the camera lenses, causing the light to be more diffuse. This wasn't a gimmick but an attempt at historical realism. Of course, if you are trying to make the point that you don't like something, anything positive or thought-out will be manipulative or gimmicky. Folks who liked the film praised it for the very elements you lament. However I have to give the ground to them, not because I am in their camp, but because you don't actually say that you are unmoved aesthetically by the "gimmick." Your reaction against it derives from some projection of Spielberg's politics or emotional state, rather than any failure as a filmmaker. Say what you will about Spielberg's frequently bad choices ass a filmmaker, but I don't think you can make the claim that he was trying cynically to capitalize on WWII. Spielberg quite clearly likes this period of American history and very much respects the soldiers and civilians who died in defense of his country. Your efforts to belittle or to subvert this patriotism are groundless.

PLATOON is a good movie and we all liked it a lot. But come on, the moralizing college boy writing home to his grandmother about how he is the child of two fathers, Sgts Elias and Barnes, the former a Christ-like supersoldier, compassionate while a ruthless killer, the latter a Kurtz-like villain who kills the former for supremacy over the platoon? (Two other sergeants in the platoon include the coward and the drug addict, rounding out the circle). All of the action touched by loving strings and much of it shot in slow motion?. Barber's Adagio for Strings will forever be associated with this movie, much like Wagner will be associated with APOCALYPSE NOW, another intensely manipulative film about the Vietnam experience. PLATOON is no more realistic than any average war movie, especially in that it does not make any effort to ground itself in any specific time or place (it's 1968, somewhere near Cambodia, sure, but that's a setting rather than any actual historical reference). I prefer FULL METAL JACKET almost for this reason alone; apart from the timeless final action sequence, we have a sense all along of which Vietnam war we're watching. The complaint that SPR is jingoistic while PLATOON has a more ambiguous approach to its history is weak: WWII is a popular war and the Vietnam War is unpopular. BOTH films portrayed their wars in a manner popularly acknowledged by the mainstream. Vietnam was bad, m'kay? Make a movie that says that and you will be nominated for an Academy Award. At least, you will be in 1986, when anti-Vietnam War sentiment was reaching a crescendo.

The closing battle sequence in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN is certainly weaker than the first, taking many historical liberties and putting sound tactics second to a good movie action scene. In fact, it is only the beach landing that signifies the film at all. I agree that SPR is not very good (BoB is excellent), but not for the reasons that you list. You say that it was jingoistic? You must have missed the execution of German soldiers while they surrendered. You say that the characters exhibited various stereotypes, and then cite ALIENS as a counterexample? PLEASE revisit your criteria; everyone in ALIENS, from the false-brave coward Hudson to the everyman Hicks to experienced Sergeant Apone and callow Lieutenant Gorman, and even to the tough Latina Vasquez, more a cop movie stereotype, but cribbed here from the novel Starship Troopers (ALIENS's chief inspiration), is an action movie staple. PLATOON too had numerous archetypes. This is a weakness of war movies that do not attempt to base themselves on real people. Again this is why BoB is superior. You say too that the message is America is simple flag-waving patriotism? Maybe you missed the fact that the arrival of air support at the end of the film made the entire closing battle unnecessary, thereby questioning the judgment of the commanding officers. You may also have missed the fading American flag at the end, controversial at the time of the film's release in that it seemed to question the values of a war that historians still defend as inevitable and honourably fought.

I agree that with all of the stories one could tell about WWII, this narrative of a small unit looking for a guy so they could send him home was a pretty lame story. It was however based on an actual guy whose story is referenced in Stephen Ambrose's Band of Brothers, which Spielberg had read before SPR. This guy lost three brothers all on D-Day. However no rescue effort was made to retrieve him and to ship him out. Contrary to what the film portrays, the D-Day chaos lasted only a few days, and after that any unreported soldiers were officially MIA. The idea that a group of guys could be working on defending a bridge somewhere and their actual presence was unknown is just idiotic. A road movie about finding a guy who should have been found with a phone call is crazy silly. So yeah, silly film, but not for the reasons you suggest. And the action is in fact quite compelling, especially the opening bit that you hate so much because it is grounded in actual history. Also, and this is a minor point to some, but despite the chaos and the camera movement and all that, you can actually tell what's going on in that battle, something missing from a lot of contemporary war films (I'm looking at you, PEARL HARBOR), and definitely missing from PLATOON.


Hoth, you missed the point AGAIN. The phrase was NOT "Action scenes," which you defend (and I don't disagree). The phrase was "stupidly-motivated action scenes," ie scenes that were likely created before the story was written, and which have nothing to do with the movie apart from distracting the kiddies with blinky lights. An example from another film would the pod race in TPM. Unlike say, the silly but motivated battle on the planet Hoth in ESB, the pod race in TPM did not need to happen, had nothing to do with the story, and was just a bunch of eye-candy for people less easily bored by bullshit action than I.

So... again: I don't dislike action films. I like action films. I didn't like ToD because none of the action was compelling. It was not compelling because it was too silly and too unmotivated by the story. It was action of the sort that challenges your suspension of disbelief. The guys who like to defend that nonsense by saying "yeah but you knew it was just a silly movie going in" won't earn my sympathy., Yeah I knew that, but that doesn't mean you have to flaunt it. "Suspension of disbelief" as Coleridge defined it is a quid pro quo relationship. I will accept what you throw at me in exchange for entertainment, yes, but there are limits. Tandem mine cart tracks that roll up and down roller-coaster hills and make leaps across fiery pits is way beyond too much to bear. It is more impossible to accept than an angel of death that emerges from an artifact and that kills all who dare to know God. "Why? The mine carts are arguably physically possible, while the angel of death thing is supernatural!" Well, glad you asked. It is harder to accept the mine carts because they come from nowhere, have no relevance to the story, and are just a silly action scene with Indiana Jones and a little kid. The angel of death at the end of RAIDERS is supported by the story, and is set up in the exposition at the outset. It is therefore relevant to ask me to suspend my disbelief about the angel of death, while the mine carts are just stupid.

I hope that I have cleared up any confusion.
"I had a lot of different ideas. At one point, Luke, Leia and Ben were all going to be little people, and we did screen tests to see if we could do that." -George Lucas, in STAR WARS: the Annotated Screenplays (p197).
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#23 User is offline   Hoth Icon

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Posted 24 January 2009 - 08:28 PM

QUOTE
Azerty, most of your review is just personal reflection and has nothing to do with the movie.


COULD NOT agree more civilian_number_two...I think you sum up SPR & Platoon better than I ever could.

QUOTE
Hoth, you missed the point AGAIN. The phrase was NOT "Action scenes," which you defend (and I don't disagree). The phrase was "stupidly-motivated action scenes," ie scenes that were likely created before the story was written, and which have nothing to do with the movie apart from distracting the kiddies with blinky lights. An example from another film would the pod race in TPM. Unlike say, the silly but motivated battle on the planet Hoth in ESB, the pod race in TPM did not need to happen, had nothing to do with the story, and was just a bunch of eye-candy for people less easily bored by bullshit action than I.


Actually I wasn't really missing the point and I probably should have made what I was trying to say a little clearer. The Indiana Jones series was not meant to be serious dramas, but they are suppose to be light-hearted, fun, adventure movies. I guess what I am trying to say is I don't have a particular problem with what you refer to as "stupidly-motivated action scenes" in that sense...I think they fit TOD well and don't mind them in that context. I don't fault you for not liking them, but I just don't see the hatred for TOD because of them.
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#24 User is offline   Toru-chan Icon

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Posted 24 January 2009 - 08:34 PM

I enjoyed SPR, Platoon and Aliens too. What I look for in movies is things that make a strong impression on you and suck you into them. Basically, you forget you're watching a movie.

Platoon I haven't seen for a while, but I recall being very impressed by it. Actually borrowed it recently and am about to rewatch it.

As for SPR, when I watched it the battle scenes made a strong impact, I guess because we'd never seen stuff like that before. It was graphic, deliberately so. I guess Spielberg was out to shock us. Re: the characters. Yeah. Truth be told they were a pretty bland and stereotypical bunch. I like Tom Hanks, but he's always Tom Hanks. As for the others, can't say I felt sad when any of them died. They never really registered. At the time SPR was described as an anti-war movie, but I don't really see that. The gore makes it anti-war, but the clean-cut characters makes it pro. Spielberg did promote the invasion of Iraq before the fact, on a podium with Cruise. He's no peacenik.

I think azerty raises some interesting political points about SPR. Certainly not knocking your military service Hoth, but I was a flag-waving patriot too but the events of recent years have lead me to question when it is appropriate to wave the flag and when it isn't. In short, I feel used.

Aliens: That was full on. I was truly sucked into that. It's very impressive movie making.

Funnily enough (and people may laugh) but one of the scariest movies I ever saw was Jurassic Park. In hindsight, I'll repeat that Alfred Hitchcock quote: "Suspense isn't a bomb under a table going off. It's a bomb under a table *not* going off."

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#25 User is offline   Vesuvius Icon

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Posted 24 January 2009 - 09:14 PM

QUOTE (Toru-chan @ Jan 24 2009, 08:34 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
Aliens: That was full on. I was truly sucked into that. It's very impressive movie making.

Funnily enough (and people may laugh) but one of the scariest movies I ever saw was Jurassic Park. In hindsight, I'll repeat that Alfred Hitchcock quote: "Suspense isn't a bomb under a table going off. It's a bomb under a table *not* going off."


Yeah, Aliens was great. I personally think Cameron is a better director that Spielberg. However, I will give Jurassic Park credit as well due to the velociraptors. I didn't like the silly "slip and fall" sound effect though when the fat-man Dennis was doinking around his Jeep though.
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#26 User is offline   civilian_number_two Icon

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Posted 24 January 2009 - 11:03 PM

So as not to be misunderstood, I also liked ALIENS and PLATOON quite a bit. I own multiple copies of both, on laserdisc and DVD, in Special Edition formats as well as mass release. I also bought SPR on DVD but I have yet to watch it all the way through.
"I had a lot of different ideas. At one point, Luke, Leia and Ben were all going to be little people, and we did screen tests to see if we could do that." -George Lucas, in STAR WARS: the Annotated Screenplays (p197).
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#27 User is offline   Hoth Icon

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Posted 25 January 2009 - 12:20 AM

QUOTE
I think azerty raises some interesting political points about SPR. Certainly not knocking your military service Hoth, but I was a flag-waving patriot too but the events of recent years have lead me to question when it is appropriate to wave the flag and when it isn't. In short, I feel used.


The events of recent years has absolutely nothing to do with the sacrifices of many, many men and women who have given their lives so you might have yours. Their are certain turns that our society has taken recently that bother me as well, but it doesn't mean I still don't love my country or appreciate the brave men and women who have died for it, before they got a chance to really live. Regardless of your political affiliation or your views on social issues one thing is certain, Amercia has forgotten what it took to obtain freedom and certainly no longer knows what it takes to keep it. We're fat, happy and only care about convenience. That is why I can appreciate a movie such as SPR (which is in my opinion the greatest war movie ever made, although Band of Brothers is right next to it), because it reminds us a little bit about the sacrifices of previous generations. Americans are always going to question this country's leadership, whether conservative or liberal, that's a given. We don't wave the flag in honor of a president, we wave the flag in honor of those who have died so we can. "In short", in my humble opinion, it's never inappropriate to wave the flag.

Enough before I get too "political"

I too loved Aliens, hated Platoon, and to be quite honest I have never seen Gallipoli.







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#28 User is offline   azerty Icon

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Posted 25 January 2009 - 04:02 AM


Civilian Number 2, you are right about many things, as usual, but unfortunately Spielberg in general irritates me. I looked for fault with him because there is something barely quantifiable in his films I dislike. I'm just trying to clarify it to myself what it is.

The beach landing was quite intense, but the jeky camera was a gimmick, and too self congratulatory - ie, too Spielberg. You know all along that it is NOT real, so why draw attention to yourself by having the direction compete with the subject matter of the film? You might as well have the lights and microphone boom in your shots, if that is going to be your attiude as a director. Why not make the film about war correspondants, if that is your true interest? It would have solved 90% of my criticism. Filming the rest of the film in the same style might have been a help too. Spielberg has some awesome skills, but he needs a "No" man by his side. Like "No , you don't need to colour that girl's dress red in your black and white movie."

My point with Platoon is that the scene where Barnes is going to shoot all the villagers was more intense than any non battle scene in Saving Private Ryan. Also, even though I saw Platoon 12 years before Saving Private Ryan, the characters still stand out in a way that the Ryan Characters never did. Elias, Barnes, Ramucci, Junior, King, I can even remember their names, which is more than I can say about the Ryan characters. And the Aliens characters - Ripley, Hicks, Vasquez, Apone, Frost, Hudson, Gorman, Burke... maybe I just like the film so the characters stay in my head, but they all seemed to be individuals.

Spielberg is very jingoistic, and so is Tom Hanks. Another couple of rich guys who think everything should stay as it is cause they are on top. As President Kennedy said - "Ask not what I can do for you, but ask instead what you can do for me", (or something along those lines.) I think Spielberg did make this film to attempt to bolster flagging faith in our leaders, in the same way Stone made his film to show what a mess Vietnam was. "Saving Private Ryan" is one of the most pro military pro government titles I can think of for a war film. We would spare no effort even to save a lowly Private cause we are great guys, so please like us.

Jurassic Park is similar to Saving Private Ryan in that the dinosaurs/battles are good, the filler is just filler. In Jurassic Park, the filler is absolute crap (and in Jurassic Park there IS the obligatory Spielberg fat kid.)

There is a typical moment in Jurassic Park that to me sums up Spielberg's innability to know when to stop wanking all over his camera. When the fat guy Dennis gets eaten in the jeep, he loses the can full of embryos. Fair enough. But in Spielberg-World, he doesn't just lose the can; it rolls out the car, down the hill, into a waterfall, along the streambed, into a puddle, and is then covered with a dollop of mud. This must have been a very complicated shot to film, and yet it serves absolutely no purpose. You might think that the can will be found later by someone, or will reappear somehow as a significant object. I mean, a normal director who draws attention to a minor object like that is generally saying "I'm drwing attention to this so that you will remember it, cause it will be a factor later..."

Spielberg just says "I haven't done anything clever in the last 5 minutes. I'm bored... let's set up a pointless tricky shot."



Gallipoli is one of my all time favourite films. Peter Weir's best effort and Mel Gibson's best effort outside of Mad Max.
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#29 User is offline   Mr Pye Icon

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Posted 25 January 2009 - 07:19 AM

My experience of these three movies, SPR, Platoon and Aliens mirrors azerty's in this point at least that I remember most of the characters from Platoon and Aliens while I have forgotten almost everyone save Tom Hanks character (can't even remember the name) in SPR. This is not actually very surprising because there was nothing in SPR that has drawn me back to look at it again and I have seen it only one or two times.

Platoon and Aliens both have their share of flaws, but I like watching Platoon again now and then. Tom Berengers and John McGinleys characters alone makes it an experience worth seeing if nothing else. Aliens too has it's share of characters worth revisting. And they are both at times very tense movies.

That said Spielberg too knows (or at least knew) how to make icredibly tense movies. Long long time ago he made one of those for TV movies called Duel or maybe The duel, about a man in a red car beeing harassed by a big old truck. Sounds a bit silly but the movie is really tense and somehow the truck and its anonymous driver makes a good character and a great menace.



Of the Indiana Jones movies I like the first one, a true classic, and the third one which displays good chemistry between Ford and Connery. Never liked Temple of Doom which felt more like a movie that dragged Indiana Jones along with it than a movie about Indiana Jones. May also have something to do with the fact that I loathe child characters like Short Round in movies of this kind, and without Kate Capshaw and Short Round Indiana Jones probably wouldn't have been involved in Temple of Doom at all, so I guess that makes them what you call plot devices.

Interestingly Spielberg of all people has actually shown a good way to handle child characters in his movie Empire of the Sun, which is a very decent movie if one has the patience for it (It's too long).

Spielberg has had his ups and downs. Much like with Cameron I think some of his best work is the early works, but I don't know if this is only because I was younger and more impressionable back then or if there are other factors at play as well? Neither of them has ever stooped to Lucas prequel levels though. (Or if they have I have somehow been intuitive enough to never watch those movies).

This post has been edited by Mr Pye: 25 January 2009 - 07:25 AM

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#30 User is offline   Toru-chan Icon

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Posted 25 January 2009 - 07:14 PM

QUOTE (Mr Pye @ Jan 25 2009, 10:19 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
Platoon and Aliens both have their share of flaws, but I like watching Platoon again now and then. Tom Berengers and John McGinleys characters alone makes it an experience worth seeing if nothing else. Aliens too has it's share of characters worth revisting. And they are both at times very tense movies.


The actors in Aliens were apparently all told to read Robert Heinlen's 'Starship Troopers' for background. I've been reading the book and it nicely coveys the hell of space combat. The movie is a bit different - far more tongue-in-cheek and the body armour is gone, but it still keeps with the spirit and passes my test as an "immersive" movie. I loved book and film, although the movie got a bad reaction from people who *didn't* realise it was tongue-in-cheek.

QUOTE
Spielberg has had his ups and downs. Much like with Cameron I think some of his best work is the early works, but I don't know if this is only because I was younger and more impressionable back then or if there are other factors at play as well? Neither of them has ever stooped to Lucas prequel levels though. (Or if they have I have somehow been intuitive enough to never watch those movies).


I recall a quote where Spielberg said he couldn't make the sort of movie like he used to. I guess like Lucas et al they've become trapped by their own success. They now have enough money they can do anything, but they're more businessmen that filmmakers now, only working on things 'guaranteed to make money'. Copolla recently did make a "small, private film" and commercially it didn't do very well. Lucas gingerly commented on this, like it was a fate worse than death.

Cinema needs new talent. I've previously posted about DV+3dsmax. I'm waiting for some talented independent developer to do a microbudget sci-fi epic. I'd rather see something new than take yet another visit to the increasingly cliched Star Wars universe.

QUOTE
That's why we were glad to learn last week that Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull will NOT be rife with CGI special effects.

http://www.film.com/...597472/20191514


Wow. That turned out to be a lie, didn't it?

This post has been edited by Toru-chan: 25 January 2009 - 07:16 PM

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