Let's not talk about the Oscars...
Please, no... let's not talk about them...
(But let's just make ourselves feel a little bit better, shall we?...)

Click on the picture below to watch the scene. (7 MB, Windows Media Player required)

Million Dollar Baby and Finding Neverland

I just wrote huge reviews of both of these films to post here, but my fucking computer just crashed and I lost all of it, so here's some simple star reviews of them, followed by an audio review of each, because I don't feel like re-writing all of it.

Million Dollar Baby * (one star)
Click here to hear an audio review
(10 Minutes long, Windows Media Player required)


Finding Neverland *** (three stars)
Click here to hear an audio review
(5 Minutes long, Windows Media Player required)

I just want to let everybody know, that if you're writing a comment, and you choose "other" instead of "anonymous" in the comment field, there's a place to type your name there. It's a new addition to Blogger.com, just so you guys know...

Nice shot, part 9: Michael Penn's "Try" music video (Plus: 2 bonuses)

Michael Penn - "Try"
This is a pretty amazing video. Paul Thomas Anderson (Boogie Nights, Magnolia) directed this, and they shot it in the longest hallway in North America (like 1/2 mile or something). It's all one shot, and it took them about a dozen takes to get it all right. It's pretty cool, check it out. (And yes, that is Philip Seymour Hoffman making a cameo...)
Click on the picture below to watch the scene. (12 MB, Windows Media Player required)


A couple other cool things:

Fiona Apple - "Across The Universe"
Another Paul Thomas Anderson music video. This one is AWESOME... so many complicated shots in this one. (Notice how everyone's walking around in slow motion, but Fiona's singing and moving in real time? This was accomplished by having everyone else around her move at normal speed, but having Fiona sing and move much faster than normal. When the film was slowed down, it appeared as if she was moving normal speed and everyone else was in slow motion.)
(And the guy at the end of the video who steals the records out of the jukebox? John C. Reilly!)
Click on the picture below to watch the scene. (23 MB, Windows Media Player required)


Weezer - "Buddy Holly"
I can't talk about music videos without leaving this one out... Whoever hasn't seen this, you should get a real kick out of this. Director Spike Jonze, back when he was only doing music videos, had this great idea to insert the band Weezer into a "Happy Days" episode for their next music video. Some clever cutting and great use of clips from the real show create the illusion that they are actually on "Happy Days".
Click on the picture below to watch the scene. (21 MB, Windows Media Player required)

The Aviator

The Aviator is many things: It's a film with some great performances, stellar direction, and a compelling story to boot. It has some wonderfully staged effects sequences, gorgeous cinematography, meticulous production design, and an overwhelming sense, throughout the film, that you are in great hands for the next 2 1/2 hours of the story. The Aviator is many things... but it is definitely not the Best Picture of the year. It's not even Scorsese's best picture he's ever done.
I guess the best thing to do is to point out the good things and the bad things about the picture:

GOOD:

• #1: Scorsese. He's brilliant here. It's a picture (because it's so bold and big) in which you would think that time and time again you'd have these moments one after the other where the film would almost scream "Look at me...I'm Scorsese!" The movie hardly has any of those moments. But this is also part of its downfall...
• #2: DiCaprio. Leo is great in this. I seriously remember the first second he came on screen, and seeing him in this role, and thinking to myself, if this is how he's gonna play it the whole movie, then this is going to be great. Needless to say, he does. The best performance he's given since What's Eating Gilbert Grape, and it probably rivals it, which says something about how great it is. I truly believe that if this wasn't Jamie Foxx Year, DiCaprio would have an Oscar in his hands.
• #3: I got "lost" in the movie during periods of the film... Hardly ever happens to me. I truly forgot I was in a movie theater, or that I was watching a Scorsese directed piece, or who the actors were... I just really wanted to know what was going to happen next. When the movie hit its stride, you're right there along for the ride.
• #4: John C. Reilly kicks ass.

BAD:

• #1: The script. I know, it's not exactly the best thing to have this on the bad list, but it just has to be there. Luckily DiCaprio was there to give insight into the character, because the script sure doesn't...we get almost no information about his past or his family, or his childhood, or where his manic personality came from. After a great half hour, the narrative takes a huge nose dive in the middle act, going way too slow for the wee bit that is going on in the story at that point. A good 20 mins could have been cut from this picture. The good news though: the film comes roaring back in the last half hour.
• Scorsese forgets he's himself, where it counts. Granted, he did something a little different in this picture: he hardly moved the camera at all, using a static frame a lot, and overall just doing things quite different from how we know him. The problem is, during points in the film in which the movie needs some sort of burst of energy, in the form of some crazy camera move or a tracking shot, we don't get it. One thing I did notice was that instead of using a big camera move, in some scenes, particularly dialogue scenes, he used some quick cutting to build up momentum.
• This is quite rare: Instead of the film not being focused enough, it was almost too focused. I kept thinking of Kundun over and over again while watching this film. Kundun was this big Scorsese film from a few years ago that failed in what it tried to do because it was too focused, and wasn't quite sure what it wanted to do. The Aviator is the complete opposite. It knows exactly what it's trying to do and say and convey. And that is eventually its undoing. Ray, another film about a person who discovers new things and breaks new boundaries, in every scene, surges with this energy that something is about to be discovered, something is about to be changed, etc. The Aviator doesn't create that feeling. It doesn't feel as if the person in the film has really created anything that's fresh, revolutionary, etc. It's like the filmmakers are so focused on how to convey the outcome of Howard Hughes, they've forgotten to convey the excitement of the new ideas that was present along the way.

So, it's not a bad film. It's not a great film. It even scoots past "good" on occasion, riding that line between "You'll remember it next year" and "You'll remember it in 10 years."

(Jim, just so you know: All the files on the site have been re-encoded and are now compatible with your computer...)

For Jim

Hey Jim,
I don't know when I'm gonna be able to get the Sideways screener to you, but in the meantime, here's a quick clip: This is probably one of my favorite scenes from the movie...it's a great monologue relating wine to life, delivered with just the right amount of sadness by Virginia Madsen (this little speech is basically the big reason why she has an Oscar nomination).
So yeah, enjoy...

Click on the picture below to watch the scene. (7.6 MB, Windows Media Player required)

For Katherine

Click on the picture below to watch the scene. (3.5 MB, Windows Media Player required)

Anti-military sentiment in film

Wow, it's been a long time since updates. Hopefully this makes up for it:

I was thinking about this the other day: It's always been pretty funny to me that people don't realize the anti-military overtones of Forrest Gump... it's subtle, but most people don't pick up on it. What it basically boils down to is the fact that the reason why Forrest excels in the Army is because he's stupid, and isn't smart enough to think for himself.

If you wanted to go back and look at some more of these examples, you would probably start with Stanley Kubrick's Paths Of Glory, a movie that was shocking in its time for its satirizing and condemning of the military. It was banned in France for a long time (it's based on a French military incident), but it's clear that the film is aimed at all nations and all men. Kubrick was also taking a stab at the entire military establishment in general with his satirical look at the kind of mindset required by a person to make such easy choices of life and death.

The most famous scene of the film comes at the end, where a young captive German woman (played by Susanne Christian, who would later become Kubrick's wife, Christiane Kubrick) is brought out on stage to sing to the French Army. What follows is an extremely moving metaphor for people putting aside differences (language barrier, war status) and living in peace.

Years later, in 1987, Kubrick returned to make a completely different kind of war film. Full Metal Jacket examined not the utter senselessness that is war, but instead the emotional destruction that comes with being in the military. The wonderful opening sequence, edited in-synch with the music, shows the soldiers, one by one, getting their heads shaved. The sequence is brilliantly conceived. These are not men, these are not soldiers - these are cattle, brought in and systematically readied for the fight.

This idea is further explored later on, as we see that Pyle, a screw-up from the first day and a person that couldn't do anything right, only really succeeds as a soldier after he starts to lose everything that makes him a human being.
It's amazing to me that more people don't realize what's really going on in the film. Full Metal Jacket is a popular war film, and isn't viewed as anti-war or anti-military usually. Because it's entertaining and even humorous in parts, people just take it at face value. It's quite easy to do that in a time that gives us films like Tears of the Sun or We Were Soldiers, not much more than glorified action pictures that don't really say anything.
In the first half of the film, in the boot camp sequence, Kubrick shows us visually in the film, over and over again, the claustrophobia that is the military: All sequences that show soldiers are static shots, and are composed in the complete center of the frame. The emotional claustrophobia is presented visually in these sequences. The "order" and "discipline" are manifested in visually uncomfortable compositions (it's quite subtly strange to watch film compositions that are completely centered in the middle of the frame for that amount of time). The only time that the camera actually moves from these static, centered frames is when the drill instructor comes into a scene. In these cases, the camera tracks with him, stirring up the visual concept. Then, when he leaves, the camera becomes static once again, reflecting the blank slate that has become the soldiers' minds. It's quite remarkable.

And of course, everything is summed up in the end when Kubrick makes a final statement, this time not just on war or the military, but a statement on mankind itself.

Nice shot, part 8: First use of the Steadicam

For those of you not familiar with this, a Steadicam is a camera rig that straps to you, using a vest-like harness, and enables you to walk with the camera and achieve almost no camera-shake whatsoever in the shot. This is accomplished by using a complicated set of weights and measures, which basically makes the camera entirely independent of your body and body movement. It was revolutionary in part because you could film smooth tracking shots in places you never could before, like stairs, where you would not be able to place dolly tracks.

Rocky
Well, this is the first Steadicam shot ever committed to film... The creator of the Steadicam, Garrett Brown, was operating the camera in this shot. Brown had just built the first Steadicam prototype prior to this film (the prototype was in such an early state that it ran on a car battery (!). Obviously it doesn't appear too spectacular now, but that shot was amazing back in 1976... no one had ever done a shot that smooth without using a dolly.
Click on the picture below to watch the scene. (2 MB, Windows Media Player required)


The Shining
By 1980, the Steadicam system had been improved upon many times. Just witness the clips below to see how much smoother the camera really is. The Shining is famous for being one of the first movies that really utilized the Steadicam for what it could do: Kubrick was fascinated by this new invention and used it dozens of times in the film for different shots.
Click on the picture below to watch the scene. (3 MB, Windows Media Player required)

Click on the picture below to watch the scene. (2 MB, Windows Media Player required)

Ray on DVD

I have a little warning I'd like to give out concerning the new DVD of Ray...
The disc gives you the chance of watching the theatrical cut of the film (2 hours, 30 minutes), or the new "extended version" which beefs up the running time to 3 hours. While I was excited to see this version, hoping it would add material to where the film left off (it ends quite abruptly), it instead adds material here and there all the way through the film. That's perfectly fine with me... but there are a few problems with this: First of all, almost everything that was cut out of the film deserved to be left on the cutting room floor. The pacing is completely ruined by the inclusion of the extra material. What once was fast, fun, exciting and fresh now feels bogged down with unnecessary material and overlong scenes.
Second, and probably even more important than the first from a common-sense standpoint, no work went into trying to smoothly integrate the scenes back into the film. I REPEAT: THE NEW SCENES LOOK TERRIBLE! The first new scene appears to be from a VHS source (totally unforgivable for such a recent film), and the rest, while they appear to be alright at first glance, have major problems: None of the scenes are color-corrected(!) and they don't match the rest of the film whatsoever (this is only really apparent in scenes in which an extended piece has been added to the end of the scene). [View examples of this below]. To top this off, one of the scenes is not even a deleted scene, but an outtake, branched in by mistake... so in the middle of the film, you suddenly have this same line being played over and over again, and hear the director say "cut" over and over again, and then you go back into the movie... And because the editor and the director did no additional work to integrate the scenes back into the movie, the sound suddenly becomes mono in the deleted scenes (music sequences aside), and in another added scene, we see the entire scene play out the way the director intended it (in a different place in the film), but then a few minutes later, we see the SAME SCENE AGAIN, trimmed down, because this is the way (and the place) it appeared in the theatrical cut. So once again, the scenes have just been spliced in with no sort of additional editing done (scenes that are extended that take place within music sequences are quite awkward - the music is playing in the scene, and then the extended piece comes in, with no music, and then it goes back into the theatrical cut, playing the rest of the song).
Here's the real kicker, however: Universal, in an effort to save money (nobody really wanted this project...Universal didn't fund it, only bought it for distribution) has decided against putting the extended version on a separate disc, and has instead put both the theatrical and extended cuts on one disc, accomplishing this with "seamless branching"...the only problem is, unlike The Abyss DVD, which used the branching with a truly "seamless" effect, the Ray DVD is the victim of shitty authoring at the DVD production house, resulting in HUGE, very apparent pauses in playback when a new scene starts playing at the end of an old one. It would have been much more preferable to do what the studio did with Almost Famous, putting each version of the film on a separate disc, and spreading the extra features across both discs. As it stands, now the only real way you should watch the film is the theatrical version, which is still a great movie. If you want to watch the deleted scenes, then turn the disc over and watch them separately...you probably won't be as annoyed that way.
Example 1:

Example 2:

Ossie Davis 1917-2005

Sad news today... Ossie Davis died at the age of 87. A great actor and a great man, he was a crusader for equal rights for minorities, and he personally knew both Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, and spoke at their funerals. I guess I'll always remember him from Do The Right Thing, which was the first thing I saw him in, all those years ago...

Click on the picture below to watch the scene. (3 MB, Windows Media Player required)

2 Clips

Something inspiring
This is one of those things you watch and it makes you feel good inside every time... On the first episode of Michael Moore's TV show The Awful Truth, a man had come to them seeking help: his HMO, Humana, had denied his claim for a pancreas transplant, despite stating in their rules that they would cover all diabetes-related problems. In response, they went to Humana headquarters...
(Here's a warning: the movie below is pretty long, almost 11 minutes. So when you click, just be prepared to watch something that long).
Click on the picture below to watch the scene. (33 MB, Windows Media Player required)


Something funny
This always cracked me up: Filmmaker Kevin Smith talks to a group of college students during his college tour; in this clip, he talks to them about his experiences in Hollywood, and what it's really like to work with producers and studios. It's pretty funny.
(A warning: the movie file below is VERY long - about 20 minutes. So just be prepared for watching something that long when you click on it).
Click on the picture below to watch the scene. (60 MB, Windows Media Player required)

Nice shot, part 7: Motion-control camera

A motion-control shot is a shot that basically combines the elements of a time-lapse shot and a dolly move. To explain: Let's say you wanted to have a time-lapse shot, to show the passing of time. To accomplish this, you'd put the camera in one spot for a good amount of time, and then you'd speed up the film really fast to show what happened in that space of time. But let's say you also want the camera to move in the shot also. To accomplish this, the filmmaker uses a device called a "motion-control" camera. This is a camera placed on a special robotic dolly that moves the camera at a fraction of an inch every few minutes. When the film is sped up, you should have the illusion of time-lapse, with the camera also moving very smoothly in one direction.

Requiem for a Dream
An amazing shot. 30 minutes to film this shot, for only 25 seconds of footage. There's so many things going on in this one too: Ellen Burstyn has to frantically clean the "apartment" set, and hit every one of her marks so that she keeps up with the camera moving; the lighting is amazing - it was set up so that as the camera moves from right to left, and more and more time passes by, the lights are shifted so it appears as if day has become night outside, and we can see that through the window - so all of the lighting technicians have to hit their marks perfectly; not to mention the fact that on a low-budget film such as this you only have a few takes to get it right (they got it on the 2nd).
Click on the picture below to watch the scene. (3 MB, Windows Media Player required)


Garden State
Another nice one. The highlight of this shot is the fact that the camera travels over all of the airplane seats and the people in them. (An additional note: at the end of the shot, there's a speed change from time-lapse all the way down to normal speed, in addition to the motion-control aspects of the shot...quite difficult).
Click on the picture below to watch the scene. (2 MB, Windows Media Player required)

Why Widescreen?

For anybody that's ever wondered why Widescreen is the better option than full screen for the presentation of a movie, or if you've heard that Widescreen shows more picture but you weren't quite sure how much of a difference it makes, here's a great little visual aid for you. From the Die Hard DVD, this little video clip shows you how much picture information (about half) is lost in the transfer from Widescreen to pan-and-scan.

Click on the picture below to watch the scene. (13 MB, Windows Media Player required)

Nice shot, part 6

Harold and Maude
This great opening shot from Harold and Maude is one of the best openings to a movie I've ever seen... It perfectly reflects the mood of the film, this strange sort of melancholy happiness... The movie is also a great example of critics having no idea what they're talking about: the film was horribly received by the critics, was panned by almost all of them, and ended up being a box-office flop. Now, however, it's viewed as one of the best films of the 70's, and a classic in its own right. Funny how opinions change...

Click on the picture below to watch the scene. (15 MB, Windows Media Player required)