I've been banging that drum for years.

Genre: Action/Adventure, Horror, Drama, Comedy, Mystery, etc...
Settings: Super-Hero, Sci-Fi, Western, Period, Noir, etc...

While it's true that the setting helps shape the plot and can give each genre it's own flair, fundamentally the storytelling genre stands separate.

As for the 2nd episode of the new Who...I thought it was ok, and definitely a step in the right direction.

The opening segment felt like a Eccelston/Tennant episode in all the right ways. It wasn't perfect, but it was enjoyable. The "smaller on the outside" gag literally made me laugh out loud...something I'm not sure I did once in the entire Smith run (I'm not counting Tennant's jokes in the special).

The rest of the episode was ok. Tone was good, Capaldi was good, resolution was a bit nonsensical but less so than most of the last few seasons.

The Doctor undid a bolt with the sonic screwdriver, which was a little annoying...but I guess that ship sailed long ago.

Clara was a bit better in spurts here, though the aforementioned "bang on things" solution was dumb and her little "what did we learn" lecture to the Doctor grated me to no end. I think they are actually headed to making her an actual person, which would be nice if it weren't for the fact that she's not been that for so long and leaving soon. I really think they should have just written her off somehow and started with a fresh companion. It's thinking way to low of the audience to believe that you need the companion there to bridge the gap and make them understand it's the same Doctor (which I don't think they've done especially well with anyways).

I'm starting to dig the "Missy" mystery, and I'm going to toss out the theory that it's future Clara who's turned evil and obsessed with the Doctor, attempting to work some plan where they (her and the Smith version) can end up together forever. That has the potential to be a lot of fun...though admittedly I don't actually think that's the answer.

I have more thoughts...but lunch is over and I have a meeting to get to.

Giving a listen now...and we just came up on the whole "you can't go from hubble orbit to ISS orbit" issue.

I read an interview with Cuaron in which he stated that after the first draft was complete, he sent it to a bunch of physicists for technical support and that was one of the biggest issues they found. They did provide him with a way to explain how to make it work, and he did write a segment which would have addressed it to make it more realistic (he didn't state how in that interview).

Ultimately it took a 10-15 min segment to make it fit and he felt it messed up the pacing and other elements. So in the end it was one of those moments where he said "We could make it work, but it would have compromised the storytelling too much."

Part 2 of this Hitchens' best of (part 1 was posted early in this thread) seems to touch on several subjects brought up in the last few pages of this thread...

REAL SEASON SIX ENDING AHOY:

Welp...might as well copy/paste my FB comment on the Xmas special:

I'd label my reaction more than disappointing -- rather up there around "tiresome". Even ignoring the in-episode things that made me go "wait, what? That's dumb." it was a kitchen-sink style story to try and tie up the vast amount of convoluted plot turns of the last several years. To me it felt more like they were desperately trying explain away all the nonsense before Capaldi arrived rather than the culmination of some sort of master story arc for Smith.

On that note, I second the assessment that Smith's run has been a hot mess of macguffin after macguffin. I like Matt Smith, but I loathe the silly/immature/selfish/bumbling/whiny/fool of a Doctor he was forced to play. Smith's run had a handful of amazing episodes, and they were almost always when the show decided to treat the Doctor like an actual character, rather than a walking gag-machine.

I'm intrigued by Capaldi and like the idea of him as the Doctor. The thing is, it's not on him at all, I feel. It's on whether the writers/producers of Who decide to take the show back to it's roots as a sci-fi adventure show (well, technically it's roots are an educational kids show, but you know what I mean) instead of the contrived spaceman fairytale they attempted -- and failed, in my opinion -- to pull off with Smith's run.

Quick bump mention to summarize Gravity's commercial success, which appears to virtually tapped out at the box offices...

http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=gravity.htm

Gravity has made a little more than $250 million in the US, and a shade over $650 million worldwide ($70 mil in China alone). It's production budget was approximately $100 million.

This places Gravity 3rd all time in the "disaster" movie category, only trailing Titanic & Independence Day.

It broke the top 100 of All Time Domestic (75) and could slide up a couple of spots when it finally gets pulled completely out of theaters. It's up to 69 All-Time Worldwide in large part to it's strong showing in China.

It absolutely crushed all other Original Science Fiction this year, making 150% more than 2nd place (Pacific Rim) while costing less than any of the other options out there - which also included Oblivion, After Earth, and Elysium.

I'm hoping for a re-release in IMAX once we get closer to award season...

Have you seen The Fountain?

I haven't seen Prisoners, but that's currently my "best Jackman performance" leader.

[EDIT] Ok, avatar...that's hilarious.

I'm again torn by a fanfic. It starts off so well, but then ends so weak.

Even while I recognized the clips of Sherlock because I've watched the series at least a half-dozen times, for the first couple minutes I honestly wasn't sure if it was fan-made or not. Great job setting it up and editing to make it feel legit and build tension.

Then Sherlock gets in the TARDIS and it all falls apart. I don't even care about the fact that the VFX made their faces look like the baby in Entrade commercials. It got the point across, even if I felt there were ways to edit around it to minimize that particular effect. As long as the point is across, I'm fine with less than perfect effects.

No, it's just that once Sherlock gets in the TARDIS, the dialog turns into the likes of an Ebaum's world sound board crank call (showing my age on that reference). The dialog was disjointed and spent about a minute and a half saying nothing at all. I know it's tricky because you'd like to use direct lines from each character, but there's so much Cumberbatch and Smith dialog to choose from (you don't even need to limit yourself to Sherlock/Who, either) that I can't imagine that it would be impossible to splice together a minute of genuinely interesting banter between those two characters.

...and now I'm contemplating a potential crossover story.

I don't like the idea of the Doctor, particularly Matt Smith's bumbling immature know-it-all version, leading Sherlock around for an adventure. I think it'd be much more interesting to have a situation like in Human Nature / Family of Blood, where the Doctor has transmitted his Time Lord essence into some macguffin that becomes the subject of one of Sherlock's cases. Smith comes to Sherlock because something of his has been stolen and while he doesn't know why, it's immensely important for him to get it back.

Sherlock takes the case of the missing item (let's go with Pocket Watch), much to the surprise of Watson. Sherlock explains that it's not about the watch, but rather he sees something off with Smith himself.

S: Something off. He moves like a person, speaks like a person, looks like a person...
W: Most people do.
S: ...but there's something off. Something missing. It's like he's merely playing a part.
W: So he's trying to con us?
S: I don't think the con is for us, John.
W: Well who's it for then?
S: I think it might be for him.

They hunt down the watch. Steal it back instead of involving the police, as they aren't sure what to make of Smith or the mysteriously strange people they encounter along the way (aliens, obviously). Those that stole the watch come after Sherlock & Watson. Smith becomes the Doctor again, saves the day and our Baker Street heroes. Sherlock is intruiged, Watson is flabergasted, Smith gives us a little rant about how every deed we do impacts the entire universe (validating Sherlock's work) and Bob's your uncle.

I'll join the tooting my own horn segment by point out that I've been arguing for a while that one of the best ways to imagine "learning" how to do a 3D movie (and particuarly HFR-3D, such as the Hobbit) would be to go back and revisit early filmmaking -- because they are shot more like theater plays. They were done this way more because of technological limitation, but the evolution of editing and camera movements were born from new tech allowing filmmaking to grow from within that 2D medium. Since 3D creates a whole new dynamic, you have to go back to the beginning and start that evolution all over again.

Not to go all film-school junkie on it, but if you go back and watch Citizen Kane -- with it's amazing blocking, slower pacing, and limited camera movements -- you could easily see that film's style being even more pronounced and impactful if it were done in 3D, HFR, or HFR3D. Same goes for a lot of Hitchcock, such as Rear Window or Vertigo. It's easy to imagine those films working very well in 3D. Plus, with 3D's ability to emphasize scale (did you notice how much larger the dinos seemed in Jurassic Park 3D?), imagine something like Metropolis in 3D. The ability to show relative size in 2D is always a bit skewed, where 3D allows the viewer to see the subject really "in" the environment in a better way -- part of why the real scale of space was even more vast in Gravity.

Of course you won't go back and shoot a film exactly like you would have had to in the 40's or 50's -- but they seem like better starting points when thinking about the fundamental design of film than something shot in more modern times.

Technically you could go back even further, looking at films like Metropolis and branching out from there...but I think the first few decades of film making was more about figuring out how to tell a story with moving pictures than it was about the actual art of "film making".

That said, I would actually love it if someone went aaaalllll the way back to scratch. Take and 'on location' set, and just do an entire play in 3D (or HFR3D) allowing the camera to linger around the set during the performance. Cuts would be limited to scene changes. Try to really capture the live, almost voyeuristic, aspect of a theater piece on film...which usually requires all sorts of tricks to convey in a 2D film.

It would require immense planning (blocking, lighting, etc.) and I'm not really sure how the final result would be...but it could be a very interesting experiment.

I enjoy this movie, and I don't know why.

I'm sure that information is somewhere...see DocSub's post.

I've seen it twice on IMAX 3D -- so that's $32 in ticket sales for me. I have standing "want to see it" plans with at least 2 more people, so that's at least one, possibly 2 more showings for me...though those will probably be either 2D or non-IMAX 3D showings.

I also brought 2 friends of mine (who were likely to see it anyways) to an IMAX 3D showing, so there's another $32. They likely would have seen it on a regular 2D screen if I hadn't pushed them, though.

BoxOfficeMojo has it already showing in Hong Kong, currently sitting at about $2 million. Is it intended to go wider in China, and if so...do you have any idea when?

I would love to see it reach up that high. The fact that it looks like it's going to clear $300 million worldwide is just ludicrous. There were already several categories I felt that it would carry when award season rolled around...but the fact that it's now not just a great "achievement" film, but also a surprise commercial success, I can imagine it could really rack up some mantle pieces.