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^^
Well, I might have to revisit it now too.
I think the story gets a little too harsh of criticism at times as well, but Sam's performance does not always sell me as well as Bridges and Wilde's does, so that might be part of it.
Tron's return and Flynn's sacrifice are definitely among my favorite moments in the film. Good times 
but Sam's performance does not always sell me as well as Bridges and Wilde's does, so that might be part of it.
Sam is definitely the weak point of the cast. He has some really good moments, and a fair number more not so great ones. But like I said, I'm not sure if that's Garrett's fault or the fact that ~%60 of his lines are cheesy over-the-top acting lines.
fireproof78 wrote:but Sam's performance does not always sell me as well as Bridges and Wilde's does, so that might be part of it.
Sam is definitely the weak point of the cast. He has some really good moments, and a fair number more not so great ones. But like I said, I'm not sure if that's Garrett's fault or the fact that ~%60 of his lines are cheesy over-the-top acting lines.
This may be true.
The Underwater Realm. (Spoilers Ahead)
http://theunderwaterrealm.com/
I debated not even talking about this, but I think there's at least a little bit of something to discuss here.
The underwater realm is a series of 5 short films set in various time periods going back in time, from Modern Day back to 149BC, all with the same general structure, someone falls in ocean, they meet "mermaids", end of short.
From what I hear this was shot on a shoestring budget ($200 thousand something like that) and all the underwater stuff is practically done, apparently the bts stuff is pretty cool. I'm going to go watch it after I finish writing this, namely because I don't really think a film should get a pass on anything simply because it was hard to make. So on to the actual films.
Are they good?
Simply put... no.
They are intensely ambitious in their technical aspects, but from a story standpoint it feels like something I would have written in high school. They very clearly have an entire world built up that they know and understand as far as the culture and society of these "Mermaids" (<more on the quotations in a sec) but almost none of that is actually translated to the screen, and what is there is bogged down in it's own obtuseness. It very much feels like the filmmakers forgot the audience hasn't read the world building bible.
So what we end up with are these very short films (With nearly no dialogue I should add because....water, you know) that have almost no substance to them. The first one, the modern day one, is set up as a found footage thing, that is nearly 3 and a half minutes of this couple freediving about 6 frames of a mermaid, and another minute of the camera being put on a shelf. That's it.
And it really doesn't go anywhere from there. As you move through the films you begin to see more and more of the Mermaids, and they start to interact with the humans that have drowned, but it's all superficial or so bogged down in it's own world building that it either means nothing, or is so confusing as to be effectively a coffee and bagels moment (Of which there were many).
Now about the "Mermaids", when I first heard of this project years ago, I had hoped they were going to do some sort of really cool thing with the Mermaids, maybe make them dark and terrifying (Which thankfully it seems, that slot is still open for me, HAHA!) or at least do something different. But alas, as far as I tell, their "Mermaids" are essentially Ocean Vampires. They are simply tribalish humans that live underwater, and they can turn humans into mermaids by... cutting them and then...uh... making out with them...really really hard... and maybe there has to be a ring of other Mermaids singing Kumbaya around them...like I said, they very clearly have a whole lot of world building done... that makes zero fucking sense or is useful in any way in these films. So the so-called Mermaids... are really just not... I don't even fucking know man, just not a good thing.
Apparently, if the countless youtube comments proclaiming so are to be trusted, they already have several feature length scripts in this world that they are trying to get funded, which doesn't surprise me.
And to which I say... hell yes, you guys. I probably won't watch them unless you show me some serious improvement in the story department, but god dammit you guys go make your super ambitious indie movies.
I will say though, for being an indie project on a super tight budget being this ambitious, they are rather pretty for the most part. You can definitely feel the tight budget in the lighting and camera work (*cough*acting*cough*) but on the whole they are very pretty.
In conclusion, I would say give these a pass if it weren't for the obvious technical achievement of making nearly 25mins of movie, most of which is shot practically underwater. If that is of no interest to you, you can pretty much just move along content in the knowledge you haven't missed much.
Last edited by BigDamnArtist (2014-01-18 07:31:20)
I was a kickstarter on these actually and I have to disagree that they lack substance. You'll notice that the further back in time we go, the more human and civilised the underwater people were. The repetition of the ritual that transforms the human that falls into the water is a demonstration of the decline of their power, their civilisation and the widening of the chasm between the races, primarily in terms of technology. As we go through the ages even greater parts of the ritual are lost, to the extent that in the 'end', in our modern day, the underwater people are just scary and savage animals dressed in rags.
I was a kickstarter on these actually and I have to disagree that they lack substance. You'll notice that the further back in time we go, the more human and civilised the underwater people were. The repetition of the ritual that transforms the human that falls into the water is a demonstration of the decline of their power, their civilisation and the widening of the chasm between the races, primarily in terms of technology. As we go through the ages even greater parts of the ritual are lost, to the extent that in the 'end', in our modern day, the underwater people are just scary and savage animals dressed in rags.
Well that's great, and I'm sure whoever wrote the world building bible for this project had a hell of a lot of fun. But like I said before, I got exactly 0% of that from actually sitting down and watching the shorts. And trust me it's not like I wasn't trying, I spent the entirety of my time watching going w.t.f. is happening and trying to at least parse some logic from it. but in the end I spent half of it wondering how they shot it, and the other half in a confused state of wtfuckery. They weren't films, they were thought experiments on trying to understand the mind of the filmmaker.
So I'll grant you that might all be in there after you do a thesis paper on these films and have followed development for 2 years, but as films, things you sit down and watch and can understand (on at least a base layer) they don't work...at all. The thing is, it's great if all that stuff is under there, great, but even The Fountain is still an enjoyable movie to just sit down and watch for the first time. You don't NEED to read everything into everything to understand what's happening. Obviously once you do sit down and start looking deeper you can see all the stuff hidden in it, but having the deeper stuff doesn't preclude it from being enjoyable to watch. ( I know the Fountain isn't a perfect comparison, but it's the only thing I can think of atm)
The Underwater Realm doesn't do that, it only has the buried world building, and everything that happens is based on that.
In the end these things kinda define coffee and bagels movies for me, there wasn't a moment where I was actually in the world, or even enjoying watching them frankly, because they were more frustrating than anything.
I feel like that's a very common thing in short films these days. It's possible to do amazing things with effects, which leads nerds to create sci-fi and fantasy worlds for their film but with no time to explain anything about them.
Not even a lack of time, a lack of understanding about storytelling. You see it all the time with sci-fi shorts, they'll have some cool FX and wrap it around the most cliche, jumbled shit imaginable, and all the sci-fi/movie websites eat it up and talk about how "visionary" it is.
Not even a lack of time, a lack of understanding about storytelling. You see it all the time with sci-fi shorts, they'll have some cool FX and wrap it around the most cliche, jumbled shit imaginable, and all the sci-fi/movie websites eat it up and talk about how "visionary" it is.
This.
Eh? I know those guys,
Well, that's your fault, isn't it? KNOW MORE TALENTED PEOPLE!!!!!!
The best short film about mermaids, naturally, is this music video by Sirenia
If you liked the doc, you really seriously stop fucking around need to hop on Amazon and buy his coffee table book.
Buy two, actually. One just to cut up and frame half the pages of. Seriously, there's a shit ton of full-page prints of his final posters, and they're all the same size. You could do a really nice "framed set" thing for the price of the book and a few cheap frames.
Well that's great, and I'm sure whoever wrote the world building bible for this project had a hell of a lot of fun. But like I said before, I got exactly 0% of that from actually sitting down and watching the shorts. And trust me it's not like I wasn't trying, I spent the entirety of my time watching going w.t.f. is happening and trying to at least parse some logic from it. but in the end I spent half of it wondering how they shot it, and the other half in a confused state of wtfuckery. They weren't films, they were thought experiments on trying to understand the mind of the filmmaker.
To clarify, my funding their kickstarter had little to do with my understanding of the story being told (I was mainly interested in the lighting techniques they were talking about and got the lighting tutorial and plans as rewards). The interpretation I outlined previously was born out of watching all of the shorts and looking at the overall picture and themes. It seems like you were intent on trying to comprehend each short as an isolated story rather than a collection and that's maybe where you went wrong? Indeed, if you watch all the parts in order, things become clearer as you travel back in time.
Which I guess is a politer way of saying 'try harder'. 
I saw Kickass 2 at last. Wild tonal shifts (deadly dark to cartoon) made for a weird viewing experience, but it was fun.
It seems like you were intent on trying to comprehend each short as an isolated story rather than a collection and that's maybe where you went wrong? Indeed, if you watch all the parts in order, things become clearer as you travel back in time.
Well yes. Because you watch each short film one by one. It's kinda hard to look at the overall picture when you've only seen 3/5 films.
And my point is, that if they wanted to have some overarching scheme that when you see all 5 films and step back and go, "Oookay, so that's what they were doing, cool." that's good, that's what they should have done. The problem is that having that doesn't mean you don't have to have each individual film make sense and be enjoyable to watch as you go through them (For the first time). Which none of them were.
I can appreciate the fact that there is a larger picture when you step back and look at all 5 five films, but nothing about watching the individual films ever made me want to do that, because there was never any big mystery I felt I needed to solve, it was just random things happening on screen that were confusing and made me think about how hard these must have been to make.
So congratulations, I guess you're smarter than me.
Woah, woah. Stop the bike. You've only seen 3 of the 5? If so, that's a big part of problem right there.
Are these shorts great? No. I think some of the parts are a little dull and long, and can also understand how they may be difficult to consume and process since they can be frustatingly elusive. That's ultimately the journey, however, like it is with many films. You can opt to go on this journey and explore what's going on and to see the interaction between two species develop over the millenia, or you can choose to distract yourself with impatience. But I don't think it's fair to refuse to engage and then claim they're just thought experiments.
And really, 'getting it' has very little to do with how smart you are. It's simply observation and paying attention to what you're seeing each time a human falls into the water, even the costumes tell a story. It was far from random things happening. It's comments like this that hint that you didn't really try with it as you claim. Same goes for the "I spent half the time wondering what the fuck was going on" vs. "there was never any big mystery".
At this point, I'm curious what you thought of Trey's Ark miniseries.
Woah, woah. Stop the bike. You've only seen 3 of the 5? If so, that's a big part of problem right there.
-facepalm-
No, I watched all of them. But I'm just saying when you're part way through the series, you literally can't step back and see the whole story to understand that specific films place in the overall arc, which is the only way it will make sense on a first viewing. And yes, I realize what I just said is a paradox, which is the point.
But I don't think it's fair to refuse to engage and then claim they're just thought experiments.
You just assume I refused to engage? I went into this desperately hoping I would love them, I tried, I wanted them to be awesome. But what they gave me was so obtuse and impenetrable I couldn't. There was nothing there to engage with.
Now, and here's where I think we might be missing each other. I'm not saying all that stuff ISN'T there. When you watch all five, then step back and think about it for a while and actively try to deduce what was going on, sure you could probably parse something similar to what you said earlier. But my point is, that the actual films, that 25 minutes of actual movie they gave us, had almost nothing inside of it that actively engaged me or made me want to invest my time to figure out what was going on. There was nothing I could actually hook onto to make me interested. So when all was said and done I had 5 short tableau's that made no sense, no characters I could be interested in, and nothing to make me care about anything that happened.
It's simply observation and paying attention to what you're seeing each time a human falls into the water, even the costumes tell a story.
Honestly the more I'm thinking about this, the more these feel like an improv game we used to play in high school. You would quickly come up with a story and then have 4-5 stationary tableau's to tell the story. The problem is the story this is trying to tell is way to complicated, with way to much unexplained backstory, that each individual tablaeu just becomes this mess of bodies flung over top of each other. And sure if you go into it expecting a Sherlockian mystery that you are going to have to sit down and parse apart each individual persons costume, movement and facial expression in order to understand whats going on, then I'm sure you had a great time. But I didn't, I don't think you should HAVE to put in that much work to understand even be mildly engaged with whats happening.
Granted, that probably puts me in a lower class of film goer (In some peoples minds. I had a friend in high school who would absolutely be calling me a simpleton and a mindless splosion movie lover for what I just wrote), but I guess it's just personal taste and what you happen to believe a movie is supposed to give you vs. what you should be expected to read into a movie.
As far as Ark, well... it has actual characters that we meet and can be interested in, so that alone puts it ahead of this (for me )
I really liked that Drew Struzan doc, altho it didn't have much to say beyond "This guy is pretty awesome."
I watched The Professionals yesterday, the 1966 cowboys-across-the-border adventure with Lee Marvin and a bunch of other old dudes rescuing a girl (so basically The Expendables before The Expendables). Good fun with some stand out work by Marvin and Burt Lancaster and stand out body parts by Claudia Cardinale. (Joking aside, the two female characters had way more to do than in most action movies.)
Got around to watching Gravity. Loved it. I suppose that 1080p on a 50" isn't giving it the justice it deserves(Cinema, 3D), but still a really good movie.
I don't believe you have to see all parts for the theme to emerge. Watching each part one at a time in order, your knowledge of what's happening grows. For instance, in the first, the water person is virtually an apparition, it looks wispy and takes a rather menacing approach to the diver (it's Blair Witch underwater). Then 50 years before, we see a dressed up but passive girl who simply watches the pilot get out of his cockpit. Immediately, the contrast between the experiences is telling us something. This isn't a maths class. It's not an effort on your part, you simply have to observe. And a fair amount of these are subconsciously registered. I'm sure you don't actively think 'that person looks troubled by that event' when watching TV or movies. And the observations lead you to think that things are different no? Repeat for each part, each encounter is different and the differences are telling us something. We don't necessarily know what this is always, and we're left with only vague notions about who these people are and their culture, but the mystery and unrevealed backstory is ultimately more interesting, and different viewers will come away with different thoughts - Were the encounters with mankind destroying them? Was their civilisation stagnating when compared to on the surface? And isn't that the purpose of most shorts, to make us think about something?
And this is why I question whether you chose to engage with it. You appear to have walked away having made no observations about what was going on, so instead of an approach of 'I wonder just what the hell those people were doing?' and coming up with some ideas, it's a comment that it's just a bunch of random things happening and it makes no sense. I just can't see how you could walk away with so little whilst emphatically trying to enjoy it. Can you see where I'm coming from on this?
In any case, I can see that you're sort of not denying that there is substance, but that the story just isn't that interesting or engaging. And that's really a different matter. I agree, they could have worked more on characterisations and generally made each part a bit more of a complete and enjoyable experience, but then I imagine that would somewhat change the scope of the fairly basic story. To be honest, it is probably more of a theme than a story.
Anyway, we've probably laboured far too long over this. In other news, I've just finally seen two collections of webisodes for popular sci-fi franchises - Blood and Chrome for BSG and Forward Unto Dawn for Halo 4. I enjoyed both quite a bit, and was impressed by the effects in both (given their nature).
Forward Unto Dawn starts off, worryingly, like a high school Full Metal Jacket, children playing at soldiers with guns in the woods, but it mercifully shifts into a different gear and features some unexpected moments and some fantastic action that very likely will make you pine for that lost in development hell Halo movie.
Blood and Chrome starts off superbly and then devolves a bit as it crumples under the weight of its twists and turns, and then it sort of fizzles out at the end because either the money's all been spent or they've written themselves into a corner.
I just can't see how you could walk away with so little whilst emphatically trying to enjoy it. Can you see where I'm coming from on this?
I agree we've probably been on this too much, but I'll address this.
I think the main difference between us and why we're having such a hard time (Just going from what you've said so far), is that you go into a movie expecting to have to dig a bit to find whatever is going on underneath the surface...on your first viewing. But I honestly don't, I think the first time you sit down in a theater, in front of your computer, wherever, with this thing you've never seen before, you should be able to sit back and just enjoy the film as a thing being presented in front of your face. And if the filmmaker is doing their job, you'll become engaged and interested, and by the end of it, be leaning forward thinking about whats going on, trying to figure it out. And sure, there might be glimpses of some deeper thing going on under the surface, but that's a second viewing thing, that's when the movie/short film has already proved itself to you as something worth your time, so you can go back and watch it again and look for those details, examine the minutae, find the bigger picture.
But the Underwater Realm never proved that it was worth my time. It was showing me that it wasn't interested in being interesting to me for my first viewing. It said look as this massive and interesting world we made, isn't it cool? But I don't care about that, I wanted you to tell me a cool story, something that will engage me, and MAKE me interested in this massive world you've created. But it never did. So why would I bother? (This is obviously anthropomorphising the movie waaay to much, and isn't entirely accurate.... but it feels arrogant. "Obviously this thing we have made is so amazing everyone will desperately want to learn everything about it, so I can just throw it on the screen and they will come flocking to me singing my praises." And my answer is no, it's your job to you MAKE me interested, there's a big ol' world out there of content I can watch, why should I care about yours?)
Anyways, I'm sure like most things this sets me apart from a lot of people here. (for better or worse) But there it is.
Anyways, like you said, moving on.
I watched AI for the first (real) time last night. It was...uh...yeah, wow. It's gonna take some time to process.
It's weird when you finally sit down and watch something you know so much about and has seeped into the social consciousness, there's a lot that I was expecting, and a lot I wasn't.
Short version review: I liked all 3 movies that this movie was, just wish they had figured out which one they wanted to make.
EDIT: I've actually been wanting to check out both Forward Unto Dawn and Blood and Chrome for a while now.
Last edited by BigDamnArtist (2014-01-20 01:25:52)
Laurence Anyways
Loved the way this movie felt.
First feature I've seen from Xavier Dolan, his first two are on Netflix, very excited to see.
EDIT: I've actually been wanting to check out both Forward Unto Dawn and Blood and Chrome for a while now.
I had put it off for ages as well, they're worth a viewing.
Agreed of Forward Unto Dawn, and I enjoyed the BTS features on the disc more than many studio releases.
The level of work that they put in to Forward Unto Dawn was pretty amazing, given the whole thing was a giant promo for Halo 4.
However, I thought the project was well done and makes me wonder what is holding up the Halo movie.
Seriously, go watch it.
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