You are not logged in. Please login or register.
Friends In Your Head | Forums → Posts by Dorkman
I know it defeats the purpose of the thread a little, but I'll go ahead and answer the second question now:
No dude. And if I'd ever felt inclined to, I wouldn't now because I wouldn't want to reinforce this kind of behavior. It was sort of funny if bemusing the first time you said it months ago but now it's getting old and edging into disturbing. Stop being a fucking creep already. Thanks in advance.
Yeah, I remember him saying something similar about the first one when ROTF was on the horizon. "Oh, yeah, we totally fucked that up. This NEW one will be SO much better." He also made sure to let us know that Spielberg thought it was awesome.
Let's also not forget that he told Megan Fox she could go ahead and shut her whore mouth when she dared to say the film was anything but pure genius.
Being a hack, Bay has no silly concerns like "art" or "integrity" as long as the check clears and he's got a big opening weekend. If that means shitting all over himself and his previous movie, he will do so with a smile.
Having not seen the movie you couldn't say? Didn't you chew out maul2 in the video game thread for this kind of argument?
I didn't chew out maul2 at all. When I chew someone out you'll know.
I did sarcastically voice an objection to weighing in with an opinion on the artistic merits of an entire genre of entertainment with which one is unfamiliar, and dismissing the input of those who are familiar, which did in part apply to him. I was perhaps more acerbic than necessary, and to be fair to maul2/Teague my real ire was raised by Ebert and they got in the line of fire.
If I had not only not watched the YouTube video above but also never seen Reservoir Dogs or any Tarantino movie in my life, yet chose to opine on whether or not Tarantino movies are usually rip-offs -- and also to ignore your input as someone who HAS seen both films -- then there might be some similarity and I may be summarily taken to task.
Being that you've seen both films, your view on them trumps mine. If you're confirming that they are in fact similar and not merely presented that way in the linked YouTube video, then without having seen the HK film I have to defer to your experience.
Way back when this was made, not many Westerners had ever seen a Hong Kong movie, let alone City on Fire, so it didn't much sense for Tarantino to talk about the influence. Nowadays it's a lot different. He can say Kill Bill follows Lady Snowblood and folk can just look it up on the internet to see what he's talking about. They can also get a hold of that movie much more easily now than back in the 90s. Not sure what it was like in the US, but I remember having a hell of a time getting Hong Kong movies on VHS in the UK. Jackie Chan and John Woo? Some, but Ringo Lam?
This is probably true. Also nowadays it's become a common thing for movies to be remade for the Western audience, whereas back then it was effectively unheard of and the HK filmmakers, who had already come to the conclusion that they weren't going to make any money in this market, likely paid little attention to what we were up to over here.
Though I will say that it still surprises me that Tarantino would deny having seen it when confronted -- his response was "I look forward to checking out the Hong Kong original!" He strikes me as a guy who'd grin and cop to it, pleased that someone else had seen City on Fire. Then again it's not like I actually know the guy personally, and he IS happy to take full credit for PULP FICTION and sweep Roger Avary's involvement under the rug (something I have just realized we did not address in our commentary for PF).
The great mark of a Star Trek episode was a thinly-veiled moral, some sign of deep thought as a commentary on the current social scene. The episode Let That Be Your Last Battlefield (the halfblack, half-white faced dudes) was all about a relavent cultural issue. Star Trek VI (which DiF has already covered) is about the fall of Soviet Russia and racism.
Star Trek IV is about... not pushing humpback whales to extinction, or else an alien probe will punish us?
Environmental conservation? Appreciating that we're not the only living things on the planet? Realizing that the damage we're doing to the planet could have long-term unforeseeable consequences?
Environmental conservation was an extremely significant aspect of the contemporary social scene, and one of its big slogans was, in fact, "Save the Whales." To make that the plot of the movie was doing exactly what Star Trek -- and science fiction in general -- does best.
Is it a little silly and on the nose? Sure. But if you're going to condemn it on those charges, while using as a counterexample the episode that made a racial allegory by literally painting actors' faces black-and-white, I'm going to be forced to call shenanigans.
Could be option D: this guy re-edited "City on Fire" to bolster his thesis and make it look like they're more similar than they are. Having not seen the film I couldn't necessarily say, but I bet I could edit THE DEPARTED to make it look like it ripped of City on Fire, too (and we know that was an actual remake of a different Hong Kong film).
Also there's option E: this is genuinely unintentional coincidence. I mean it seems like a lot of similarities, but really, what is there that's unique about any given aspect of either plot? Undercover cop, jewel thieves, robbery gone wrong, chase with police...even elements such as carjacking some bystander, crashing the car, and a Mexican stand-off seem pretty standard fare for this kind of caper movie.
Tarantino's not above lifting things wholesale from other movies, but he also wears his influences proudly on his sleeve. If he'd "paid homage" to City on Fire, I'm inclined to think he would have happily told everyone as much.
What do you think it would take to fix this movie?
Going only off the trailer:
-More subtlety in the writing. Any half-competent writer can find a way to demonstrate that our "beast" is good-looking and arrogant without him literally saying aloud "I am so good-looking and arrogant." Having him be so self-aware also undermines his character arc, since a large part of it ought to involve him actually coming to understand what he's been doing wrong. If he knows what he's doing and revels in it from the beginning, where do you have to go from there?
-Wrong protagonist for the presumptive theme of finding inner beauty. Beauty and the Beast is traditionally told from Beauty's perspective. There's a reason for that. As I've said before on the show, if you're going to tell a love story you have to make the audience fall in love or they won't care if the characters do. But if we're following the Beast, the story is crippled because we've already learned all we need to know about him.
There is a modernized story to be had from the Beast's perspective. As cast, he's blond, blue eyed, athletic, lives in a giant New York apartment -- he's the personification of American privilege. He was born into a perfect life and he thinks that means he deserves it. So you take it all away. Take away his looks, his wealth, everything. Make him have to get by on his own merits...and he'll find that he has none. When he can't get whatever he wants with a sexy smile, how does he get it? Make him confront the fact that just because he wants something doesn't mean he'll get it -- he has to earn it. And he comes across this girl, living near the poverty line, who deserves the life he had way more than he ever did, and his arc becomes trying to find a way to lift her up, when he's spent his whole life doing what he could to keep other people down and himself on top.
-Corollary to that, as it is now, the entire plot centers around his own self-interest. He has to convince someone to love him in order to break the spell. Everything that happens is necessarily tainted by the fact that he's doing it to help himself. The girl just becomes a pawn to be manipulated. The real breaking of the spell should require him to love her, or better yet both of them to love each other (so you get your magical restorative fairy tale kiss), because there's nothing he could do to fake that in his own heart.
I couldn't comment more specifically without seeing it, which I rather doubt I'm gonna do.
That would be tomorrow.
At least here in the states.
The trailer is pretty lame, but you should check out the clips they have on Apple.com. It's goddamn unwatchable. You want to talk about a movie with no subtext? My god. Although Mary-Kate Olsen, of all people, looks turning in a pretty solid performance considering the material.
I do find it pretty funny that the movie is cynically expecting the audience to be the type of shallow, superficial people it's pretending to condemn. "And then she makes him ugly! But not, you know, too ugly." Just ugly enough that girls can get T-shirts with his scarred face on it and delude themselves into thinking this shows a depth of character and a focus on "inner beauty." That they, too, would be pure and good enough to make the sacrifice of loving a guy with tattoos and a perfect physique.
It's totally going to work, BTW.
I'll just add a recommendation to Teague's advice, which is good. What he calls a "retarded pass" is more commonly referred to as an RGB pass, for the reasons that the only colors present are pure red, green, or blue. Obviously you're likely to have more than three regions of a model you want to be able to isolate, which is why in Teague's case he opts to embrace the full spectrum of color and have yellow and pink and purple etc. From my own experience, however, I would strongly advise against this and instead, render multiple passes of three regions at a time in R, G, and B only.
The reason being that any color other than pure R, G, or B necessarily entails a mixing of the colors and therefore a contamination of the color channels, which makes it more difficult to do exactly what you're trying to do: isolate a given region of the model. If you're dealing only with pure R, G, and B, all you have to do is isolate a given channel and bam, you've got your matte. Anything else and you're dealing with keys and levels and garbage matting to get the matte. It may seem like you're taking a lot of time doing repeated renders of only 3 things each time, but it will almost certainly save much more time that you won't have to spend doing the manual work of garbage matting etc. Let the machine do the heavy frame-by-frame lifting. And render the mattes to PNG to save disk space.
So: the people here who do not play video games feel that they are the best suited to espouse on the storytelling capability and value of the video games we've just established they don't play, and to tell the people who do play video games that they are incorrect in their direct observations of the video games which, as mentioned, they actually play.
...oh, I get it. You guys are joking. You had me going for a second there.
Synopsis of the first God of War
Synopsis of the first Metal Gear Solid
Synopsis of Ghostbusters: the Video Game
A game can involve as much storytelling as a movie -- more, even, since it isn't restricted to ~2 hours. It will generally be a certain kind of story, since there needs to be action for the players to control -- you're probably not going to find an apples-to-apples example for A Few Good Men -- but it's still as much an art form as any other storytelling endeavor.
The function of the video game story is very different to those of other mediums. A video game doesn't tell you a story, it provides the framework for you to create your own. Aliens attack and you need to get to your ship. That's the generic framing, and you write the specifics yourself
How, precisely, is this not "telling you a story"? Sure, you have to decide how to get to your ship, but how is the bullet point "Aliens attack and Master Chief must get to his ship" somehow less of a story in a game summary than it would be in a movie summary?
The specifics are not really that important -- give two different directors that same line and you'll get two very different scenes telling the same story. How is it fundamentally different when you're "directing" as a game player than when watching what someone else has directed?
Those stories that are considered to be the best are simply ones that have been able to make you care about the other characters - either the hapless scientist dragged away through a vent or the teammate that's just been shot by your double-crossing commander.
And again, how is that not fundamentally what makes a story good in any medium?
Also, I want to note that "art" and "story" are not necessarily synonymous (not that we've established a clear definition of "art" in the first place). Some puzzle games like Portal and Braid are works of art, IMO, based more on the craftsmanship involved in creating puzzles that can challenge your perception as much as an M.C. Escher drawing can, than on their stories (although Portal's story, while simple, is entertaining and effective).
If we're after college students, I would have made "Free Booze" larger than "Live". But that's just me.
I also would recommend the exact address rather than an intersection.
Looking back, I'm willing to admit that I may have gone full Finifter on this one. I just hate it SO MUCH. I think it's the fact that Jake loved it that set me off, which I acknowledge is totally irrational and completely subject to taste but, you know, agh.
Still, next time I'll try to be cool like Fonzie and actually stick to an analysis rather than getting lost in the rage-fog, since it's probably not all that fun to listen to in retrospect.
I saw the movie before reading the book. I prefer (and love) the movie, actually. I had the same experience with KICK-ASS. I seem to like what Matthew Vaughn brings to the table.
Not that I hate the book, Gaiman's prose is always literary comfort food and plot-wise it feels very much like an old fairy tale which is exactly the point. But Vaughn diverged in precisely the right way, IMO, to make the story cinematically satisfying.
Why do I get the feeling that <smile> looks like this:
For future reference, it's generally preferable to say which movie you're spoiling at the outset, rather than making us read the spoiler in order to find out.
David clarified his statement. It wasn't personal, Tudyk just wanted to bow out of the franchise (assuming it would become one), so his character was killed off.
As I said on the recording, Wash was probably my least favorite character. He reminded me of that kid in middle school who's convinced that he's really funny so he's always saying "funny" things but it's really just obnoxious and a little sad. Meanwhile he's surrounded by so many actually funny and witty people that it just becomes more apparent. Maybe it was just Tudyk more than the character -- he pulled the humor to its knees in his KNOCKED UP cameo, too.
I love NETWORK hardcore.
One of the panelists (I think Trey) suggested precisely that as an alternative ending. I love the fact that it's a really twisted and unsettling "happily ever after." That ending would have been genius.
Heh, re-watching Empire (in the form of Building Empire) and I just caught something I never did before. After escaping Hoth, Luke changes the travel coordinates for Dagobah, and Artoo is less than pleased. Artoo says something that comes up in text on the screen, and Luke laughs and says "That's alright, I'd prefer to keep it on manual for a while."
I just understood that Artoo was basically going "Oh, yeah, totally. Dagobah. That sounds like a great and not at all crazy plan. Golly, that's a long way off, and you've had a long day. Why don't you let me fly and just take a nap or something?" With the full intention of basically commandeering the X-Wing, going to the rendezvous, and maybe getting 2-1B to check Luke's brain again.
Even the droid that can't talk has subtext in this movie. Goddammit Hollywood, this is how you do it.
Just ignore the part where he admits to liking SPIDER-MAN 3.
I hope I'm not the only one who sees that Death Proof is far superior to Planet Terror.
DEATH PROOF is a boring pile of shit with an awesome car chase at the end. PLANET TERROR is an entertaining pile of shit that's about the same level of mediocrity the whole way through. If we're going by their respective high points, DP wins. But, between the two, I'd be far more likely to watch the entirety of PLANET TERROR than the entirety of DEATH PROOF, which I would argue makes PT a superior movie.
Without having a bunch of friends over to razz on it with you, and/or for the purposes of a podcast? Nah.
Birth of a Nation 2: The Rebirthening
(I'm done now.)
Friends In Your Head | Forums → Posts by Dorkman
Powered by PunBB, supported by Informer Technologies, Inc.
Currently installed 9 official extensions. Copyright © 2003–2009 PunBB.
