226

(85 replies, posted in Episodes)

Doctor Submarine wrote:
Zarban wrote:

No film critic regularly writes the kind of things the WAYDM panel says.

If you're a good critic, sure you can.

Here's a randomly selected example: A.O. Scott's review of Closed Curtain.

That's a good review. Here is the sum total of analysis in it (that is, the author's interpretation of the film rather than facts from the press kit or recounting of the plot):

  • This could be the start of a mystery.

  • Some of that mixture of defiance and whimsy is present ... but it is also edged with melancholy and fatigue.

  • “Closed Curtain,” as its title suggests, draws on theater as well as film for inspiration.

  • The outside world intrudes...

  • Then again: She might be a figment of his imagination, unless both of them are figments of the directors’. These things might both be true...

  • “Closed Curtain” [unfolds] in an intriguing limbo of deniability, subverting both its own existence and its officially mandated nonexistence. (This actually makes sense in context; I'm not suggesting Scott is a bad writer.)

  • For the viewer, this conundrum is both troubling and amusing. On one level, the film ... is a mischievous, Pirandellian entertainment. It is also an allegory, dark but not despairing, of the creative spirit under political pressure, and of the ways the imagination can be both a refuge and a place of confinement.

Notice how Scott does not actually answer any of the questions he raises. Is this film a mystery? Are some of the characters just figments of another's imagination? Scott doesn't hazard a guess, not that analysis MUST provide a definitive answer to any questions the film raises, but it usually suggests one.

EDIT: On second thought, some of that probably IS from the press kit.

227

(85 replies, posted in Episodes)

Doctor Submarine wrote:

I completely disagree. You're creating a distinction where I don't think there necessarily is one. Plenty of film critics (I'd argue the majority of them) engage in film analysis.

No film critic regularly writes the kind of things the WAYDM panel says. You can't really analyze a film when you're worried about giving away the plot. Their review may say there are problems in the third act, but they can't go much further than that.

Just look at the way this forum wrote about "that scene" in Gravity. You can't say much about why it doesn't work and the degree to which it weakens the film and why without giving away a major twist.

Again, I'll certainly allow that there are good film critics and bad. But there's no real-world distinction between the job of "critic" and "reviewer".

228

(85 replies, posted in Episodes)

AND ANOTHER THING as long as I'm in a bad mood for no reason....

I can hardly stand to read Film Crit Hulk. It's not just the silly persona or the fact that that persona doesn't actually write the way the comic book Hulk talked. It's also stuff like this, said about Django Unchained:

Film Crit Hulk wrote:

Tarantino makes a lot of films about uneasy power, the humor in wickedness, and the subjective perspective. And these are all to great import, the clashing of a history’s worth of cinematic amalgamations to create the new myth. Put simply, having Django doing Gene Autry’s horse tricks is not a mere reference, its codified language that's meant to usurp traditional roles and blow the doors off convention.

His bad guys are funny, and he shows you things from a particular point of view. You hear that? That's the clashing of a history's worth of cinematic amalgamations! New myths being created here, people! Django is now a figure of legend! Dress up like him for Halloween!

But let me put this "simply": blah blah blah codified language of some kind blah blah blah usurp unspecified traditional roles blah blah blah. Is he trying to say that Django is a black guy instead of a white guy?

I'll tell you what clashes in Django Unchained: that third act resolution that turns into a fucking Bugs Bunny cartoon.

229

(85 replies, posted in Episodes)

Meh. Those are both something that would be written by a "food critic". One food critic would just be better paid.

I still think you're trying to make a distinction where there is none in the real world.
Gene Shalit's byline says "film critic" just like Pete Travers'.

Again, film ANALYSIS is a thing that exists, and that seems to be what you're really describing, but that's not generally done by film critics. They don't even indulge in spoilers, let alone analyze the structure of a film in depth like you guys do.

Nevertheless, your point is taken that there is thoughtful critique of films and casual critique or review, and that one is better than the other.

230

(85 replies, posted in Episodes)

Doctor Submarine wrote:
Zarban wrote:

I don't get your definitions of "film criticism" and "film reviewing". Virtually no one does analysis without recommendation or recommendation without analysis. Telling you whether a movie is worth watching or not is every film critic's job. Any other musing they do is a sideline.

I think that's an unfortunate reduction. Not all film critics are Gene Shalit, nor should they be. The job of a critic is to illuminate films to their readers, to explain what a film is and what it does and whether or not it does it well. That "sideline musing" is exactly how a good film critic tells you whether or not a film is good.

That's not what film critics, or theater critics, or food critics do for a living. They review their thing and tell you if it's good and you should seek it out; yes, good ones go more in-depth than JUST that, but so what? They're ALL "film critics". You're trying to redefine people's jobs to suit your notion of what those words mean.

There's a term for what you like, and that's "film analysis". That's done by film professors and fan commentators for the most part, and part-time by film critics in essays they eventually publish as collections in a book.

231

(85 replies, posted in Episodes)

I would call Cinema Sins "entertainment" rather than comedy or criticism. I find them pretty amusing.

I don't get your definitions of "film criticism" and "film reviewing". Virtually no one does analysis without recommendation or recommendation without analysis. Telling you whether a movie is worth watching or not is every film critic's job. Any other musing they do is a sideline.

Also, a plot hole exists independent of when you notice it. The term "Fridge logic" came way after "plot hole" and just refers to plot holes you didn't notice during your viewing of the film. A plot hole is any part of the plot that can't be explained by normal assumptions about how the world works, regardless of whether or not it bothers you.

I think The Big Sleep is probably the film Trey is thinking of. The book makes it a little clearer who shot whom and why, but the movie makes it virtually impenetrable.

This is an odd episode. You just seem to be complaining about an undefined group of people who do an undefined set of things that include pointing out continuity errors and misunderstanding the plot. Is the whole thing just a giant subtweet to Inappropriately Righteously Indignant Matthew?

EDIT: The Big Sleep graph. Who killed chauffeur Owen Taylor?

232

(538 replies, posted in Creations)

By the way, Teague, don't forget the shooting instructions. I want to do a camera test this weekend. That would be a good chance to be sure I'm giving you what you want.

233

(538 replies, posted in Creations)

Teague wrote:

In the meantime, probe droid. We thinkin' full-on "scary spider-ish Imperial Probe Droid," like in the storyboards, or should it be something less... scary? For some reason, the thing that's been in my head this whole time was been Wheatley from Portal 2.

Zarban, thoughts?

I was thinking the same thing. Altho my default was the probe droid from ESB, ours could be much simpler, even funny. It's the Igor of robots.

234

(8 replies, posted in Off Topic)

I'm happy to hold a negative opinion of Fight Club as well as The Usual Suspects (altho I grant that need to revisit that one).

But my most unpopular opinion is probably that I don't think Some Like It Hot is very good. That's revered as one of the great comedy classics of all time, but I don't see how it's much better than Wedding Crashers or even the very similarly themed Nuns on the Run. It has its moments, but it's largely the same joke over and over.

235

(5 replies, posted in Off Topic)

I don't think it has anything to do with Twitter or social media in general. I'm not a social media lover, to be sure, but I find Twitter to have a good proportion of thoughtful commentary and genuine cleverness. Partly, its character limit makes arguments a bit like boxing in a phone booth.

I suspect what happened is that Sam Grady is kind of an asshole and reacted badly to the OP because he was tired of hearing about lady issues. When a professional comedian started paying attention to him, he got giddy and sharpened his repartee, then claimed that he was just messing with the OP to get out of looking like quite the asshole he was being.

On the other hand, GOPTeens really is quite deliberately provoking conservatives' reactions for humorous effect. That would suggest that GOPTeens is more of a genuine troll than Sam Grady, but it feels like the other way around is more accurate, and "trolling" is really just acting like an asshole, whether you mean it or not.

Not that it matters much. I'm reminded of reading engineers vainly trying to define the difference between an "engine" and "motor". Stick to wrenches, boys.

236

(5 replies, posted in Off Topic)

Something odd happened yesterday on my Twitter feed that makes me realize that I don't quite understand the world the way I thought I did. I follow GOPTeens, which I think is a pretty funny account that mocks conservative thinking and inept marketing by ineptly marketing conservative ideas to teens. Part of the genius of it, IMHO, is that you couldn't just mirror it with a DemTeen account and really have same effect. Regardless, I like to imagine that I would also laugh if someone could pull that off.

Now I've always thought of GOPTeens as "trolling" conservatives. Some people take the bait and respond positively to messages that are borderline demented, and that's funny.

But yesterday, comedian Paul F Tompkins stepped in when someone had attacked a female friend joking about how RotPotA fails the Bechdel test. The attack was ugly and unfunny and uncreative. But during the back-and-forth with PFT, the guy showed some humor, including claiming that he'd written a sequel to "Ann Rand's" The Fountainhead. He eventually claimed to just be trolling and didn't really believe all that stuff... but he kind of did. There were indications that he didn't really understand the value of the Bechdel Test or the OP's joke about it. PFT let him off easy and laughed it off. But I came away confused.

Like GOPTeens, the guy clearly didn't believe a lot of what he was saying (his timeline is pretty liberal otherwise), but what he was doing seems 180 degrees different from what GOPTeens does. He was being flippantly, crudely negative (especially at first), whereas GOPTeens is comically upbeat and satirical.

So are they both trolls? Is one a good troll and one just bad at it? Is the claim of being a troll disingenuous of the Bechdel guy? Was he really just a hater who got called on his BS? Am I wrong to think of GOPTeens as a troll?

If "trolling" is just being provocative, that doesn't seem to warrant a word of its own. Saying "You suck" solely to get a rise out of someone is just being an asshole, for one thing, but any word that covers both of what these accounts do seems unhelpful.

PFT's screen cap summary

The troll in question

GOPTeens account

Trey wrote:
Zarban wrote:

I don't think Cruise cares much about sequels, especially to something like Edge of Tomorrow

Unfortunately I wasn't referring to the reduced chance of sequels to EoT specifically, I meant less chance of a studio risking another mega-budget non-franchise project.    "Hey, Edge of Tomorrow was GREAT and it died.  Fuck it, let's just make a movie about PopTarts or something."

Oh yeah, true. Cruise has the pull to do whatever he wants (altho he's not executive producing for some reason), but other stuff is out of the question for now, especially with Will Smith's faceplant in After Earth and the lukewarm performance of Elysium.

238

(2,068 replies, posted in Off Topic)

I watched the original American Godzilla this afternoon. It's a fascinating case. I hadn't realized that Raymond Burr's scenes were shot after the fact, and the movie was heavily reworked around him. I'd always thought he was always part of the movie and the differences to the Japanese version were minor.

It's a proper monster movie, with Godzilla being all bad wreaking lots of mindless destruction. The key to its success is how it must have resonated with the Japanese audience, who had suffered humiliating defeat at the hands of the US military just a few years earlier. Seen from that perspective (America and its weapons are the monster), it's weird that anyone in the US thought it would work to shoehorn Burr in there and show it to Americans. But he's so sincere, and some of the Japanese actors (including the great Takashi Shimura, who features in several Kurosawa films) are so good, that if you're willing to accept a guy in a suit smashing high-quality miniatures, it's a lot of fun.

But America is the monster....

I don't think Cruise cares much about sequels, especially to something like Edge of Tomorrow, which tells one complete story. He's got all the sequels he wants with the Mission Impossible franchise, after all.

I honestly think Guardians of the Galaxy is going to open small and stay there unless it happens to be stupendous, which I don't think it will. I haven't seen any advertising for it outside of of stuff being passed around the Web, which means that people outside the core audience haven't even heard of it. That core audience is tiny--even I never read GotG comics. It's the nerd girl that will get overlooked while the boys are pining for Avengers 2 with the big boobs and long golden tresses.

240

(538 replies, posted in Creations)

Niken's costume is in, and both cloaks are in.

My Audio-Technica ATR-6550 shotgun mike arrived, but now I find that I can't record from it without an adapter. It would have been a pittance to include one, and their customers would be able to use it with any device, but as it is, it won't work with a combined earphone/microphone 3.5mm jack (three black stripes, which you'll find on most phones, tablets, and many laptops) because it's only stereo (two black stripes). I believe it will also work with a mono jack (one black stripe), but with the combo I can still plug in earphones.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/71MfHMpRBfL._SX522_.jpg

EDIT: NOPE, still doesn't work, at least with iPad/iPhone. Works fine on the Canon Rebel. Hmmm. Have to try mono adapter.

241

(538 replies, posted in Creations)

STORYBOARDS!

(zipped file)

242

(538 replies, posted in Creations)

Looking great, Dave! I'm going to try to avoid getting the driver's seat in the shot for the interior, so we can pretend that the cockpit is in the upper space and the living area is in a lower space, like a motorboat.

My thought is to start tight on Niken seated in meditation on the floor (an excuse to keep things pretty dark) and pull back to follow him into a chair at the table, where he gets the probe report and reports to his master. If all goes well, I'll only get one wall/window with perhaps one cut. So we'll need a window in the side exterior below the cockpit.

243

(538 replies, posted in Creations)

BigDamnArtist wrote:

1) I've made my own glidecam esque rig out of plumbing parts, a couple screws and a free weight. Works great, I can't find the tutorial I used atm, but I can upload a pic of my rig later if you want. Cost me like 20 bucks in total from a home depot run.

That would be great! I've looked at a few tutorials, but it's hard to know which is the best version/easiest to make. I have access to tools and people who know how to use them better than I.

Holden wrote:
Zarban wrote:

so the weekend of the 25th seems likely for principle shoot, with pickups as necessary the following weekend.

BigDamnArtist wrote:

You'll definitely want to have someone there to boom it for you. It's quite remarkable how much of a difference it makes in the sound quality compared to having it strapped to your camera.

I can do both of these things, should you want the company.

That would be awesome!

244

(538 replies, posted in Creations)

Dave wrote:

Can we clarify a couple of positions so I can keep clear track of where people are at, deliverables, and timelines? Let me know if this needs revision, and I know, alright. It's just a thing I do because, well, order.

  • Script. Zarban, Bathilda, and Fireproof - is the script locked at v.3?

  • Storyboards. Zarban do you want to do something rough and we can refine? Invid are you assisting? Can we get some rough boards for this weekend so everyone can begin looking at what we're going for?

  • Shooting. Jim are you heading over to chateau Zarban to shoot on the weekend of the 25th?

  • Edit. I'm happy to put my hand up for rough cut duties if the Doty is busy, but he's the Doty. And the Doty edits (this just in - if you say Doty 3 times he appears and critiques your home-made lasagne).

  • VFX Sup. Teague, I assume you're putting this hat on, are you good to assemble troops and assign work / timelines? Happy to help here where I can.

  • Sound. Holden, it appears you're the gent waving your hairy beast above some lucky people's heads on the 25th, Alex how's your availability early next month once there's a rough cut together?

The script is locked.

I've been thinking about storyboards. I think I can do some this week.

245

(538 replies, posted in Creations)

The lightsabers are built; the costumes are under way; but family is coming for a visit the weekend of the 19th, so the weekend of the 25th seems likely for principle shoot, with pickups as necessary the following weekend.

I should have Darth Niken's costume ready by next weekend, so we'll do another camera test then.

I need to cobble together some kind of steadying rig. Simple homemade ones seem pretty effective at producing MUCH smoother moves. So maybe I'll try to create one of those first.

Also, I've ordered a shotgun mike. That seemed to be a better choice than lav mikes, at least in the reviews I could find, especially given that I know nothing about hiding mikes on actors, and my actors are children.

It will be trivial to black out the windows on the RV, by the way. They cover them when they paint, of course.

246

(538 replies, posted in Creations)

I've added photos of the spaceship interior. I think with a little lighting tweaking, change of chair for black leather office chair, and covering up of things like the sink and faucet, it will work great.

http://images51.fotki.com/v102/photos/8/1022498/13107056/023-vi.jpg

http://youtu.be/3diYW1mXbU4

Let me know how we'll need to cover the TV or mark the corners to do a screen replacement. The windows all have shades, so we can have those down, or let me know if you'd rather they be up and do a window replacement for star field. There's only one brief scene here, where Niken gets the alert, listens to it, and calls his master.

PS
The RV we will actually use will be similar, but just whichever one is the best of those currently in for exterior paint, preferably not a new one but rather one in for a re-paint, so there isn't plastic on the furniture.

247

(538 replies, posted in Creations)

Location video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDFUILaAMhw

I figure this is basically the opening shot, following Butterfly thru the woods to the broken tree, where she'll notice the shadow of the drone.

Nighttime kitchen test, per Teague.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArdPZDgZ-GQ

Nighttime car interior test to simulate the spaceship interior a little better.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LREvzJu … e=youtu.be

Reverse angle at the location and alternative fight area
http://public.fotki.com/Tysto/showdown- … h/005.html

248

(538 replies, posted in Creations)

Awesome! Niken says he wants a red saber because that's what Sith have. Butterfly (she's sticking with that name) wants green.

249

(538 replies, posted in Creations)

Location photos and tests of the kids and lightsaber components.

http://public.fotki.com/Tysto/showdown- … ?view=roll

My thought is that Butterfly will come thru the overgrown part, and we track her up to the fallen tree. Niken lands in the clearing and goes after her. (I might try to find another location that is clear but less manicured. I didn't realize my brother-in-law had neatened up the area so much.) They fight either right by the fallen tree or on the stone path next to the pond. The stone wall there is great, but the reverse angle is a broken-down boat house.

As for the lightsabers, my plan is to paint the grips black and the add-on pieces silver for the Sith and copper for the Jedi. I'll use the tape on the blades. Since the pieces will come apart (they're PVC compression fittings), we can take them off the blade and put them on a scrap piece so there's just the handle for the activation and deactivation shots. We'll probably stiffen the PVC blades with a dowel rod or something.

How long should the blades be? The kids are about 5 feet tall.

EDIT: The things next to the tape are LED flashlights. They come apart and might be added to the grips for more bling, or just hung from the belts for show.

Trey wrote:

It is no surprise at all that movies like Ted and Ghost Rider and The Watch fail the test.  Because of course they do.

Well, we can't expect every movie to live up to the high bar set by Where Eagles Dare....