Movie Music Memories March 15, 2008
Posted by ghostof82 in : Film General , add a commentPerhaps the most intense cinema experience of my life was back when I was about nine or ten years old, when my Aunt (sadly gone, now, bless her) and Uncle took me to see JAWS. That was the wildest, scariest film… it shook me to the core. I had bad dreams for weeks. No small part of that experience was the music, the main theme of which became an icon of sorts at the time… still is, I guess, like the PSYCHO theme before it. In JAWS you hardly ever actually saw the shark, really the tension was from the unseen threat lurking under the water, and my imagination of what lurked out of sight, and the music was a major part of that. John Williams really was the shark.
What really got me into movie music though, like many of my generation, was the score for STAR WARS. Back then, films took a long time to reach our shores. Although released in May of 1977, it would be Christmas before it premiered in London, and early 1978 before it finally left the city to cinemas out in the country proper. This was the biggest film of all time, remember, so it might be hard to believe to contemporary cinemagoers that we used to have to wait so long, even for the biggest movies. So anyway, it was February of 1978 that I finally got to see STAR WARS, long after having devoured the comics. Naturaly I loved the film, havng being a space-geek all my then-short life and a devout STAR TREK fan.
Of course one of the big things about STAR WARS is the incredibly evocative score by John Williams. It was my birthday in February, and my parents bought me the soundtrack album on cassette as my present. Sobering thought, really- remember cassette tapes? I really am getting old. Actually I still own that cassette, a piece of my childhood that I can hold in my hands- anybody who also owned that cassette (moulded in green plastic, how weird was that?) will remember the inlay-card that folded out for what seemed forever with extensive colour photos from the film. Back then, any television airing seemed impossible, if not several years away (some films took over ten years to drop onto tv back then- at that point GONE WITH THE WIND had never been aired on tv), and VHS, and owning a film, as fantasy as STAR WARS itself. So young movie-fans like myself back then would remember a prized movie by listening to the music and looking at photos and re-reading the comics, over and over. Nowadays you just wait 3 months for the DVD. Thinking about those old days makes me feel postively prehistoric.
STAR WARS has an incredible score, romantic and full of energy and adventure, it takes the film to another level. Old buggers like me often remark about movies saying “they don’t make ‘em like they used to”, and the same is true about movie-scores… as movies have changed, so has their music. One thing I hate about many modern films (SPIDERMAN etc I’m looking at you) is that the film ends and we are assaulted by a rock song rather than an overture of the music score… it takes me right out of the movie. But back then the music itself was different, even STAR WARS has a slower pace than films now, and that pace gave composers an opportunity to write genuinely memorable music. Nowadays films are edited so tight there is little room for music to breathe or, it seems, for themes to develop, and STAR WARS has such wonderful themes. The Force theme, Princess Leia’s theme, I used to sit down listening to it fueling my own daydreams as well as images from the film.
So anyway, from STAR WARS, I was hooked on movie music. It helped that those times were great for movie music. On my next birthday my parents bought me the SUPERMAN:THE MOVIE album, this time a gatefold double-lp. Many feel that this is John Williams’ masterpiece, although I feel that title is deserved for a score that came out a few years later. SUPERMAN though certainly had amazing music- a memorable main theme that was so good it was used in SUPERMAN RETURNS decades later, and tracks like ’The Flying Sequence’ and ‘Leaving Home’, poignant, emotional music that lived beyond the movie. I used to love listening to ‘The Fortress of Solitude’, bewitched by its magical peace and then thrilled to ‘Chasing Rockets’ whilst daydreaming of super-feats.
It was, as I have said, a remarkable period for movie music- scores like CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE, ALIEN, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, and my own favourite, the in-my-eyes-unequalled THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. My God, when I hear the Imperial March… I swear that film’s music is pure opera, full of William’s finest music. ‘The Battle in The Snow’, ‘The Asteroid Field’, ‘Hyperspace’… just incredible music. It’s probably no mere concidence that that the finest STAR WARS film also had the finest score. Listening to it today only confirms my belief that it is the finest score by John Williams, and probably the finest movie score ever. I love that music.
Truth be told, when I consider my favourite films, or at least, the films I enjoy, the common thread that runs through them is great music. Some people like films by certain directors or starring certain actors, for me though it seems to be films with great music. Even if a film is flawed in other ways, if it has great score, I tend to really connect with the film on an emotional level and enjoy the film. Films like CONAN THE BARBARIAN, John Carpenter’s THE THING, THE THIN RED LINE, BRAINSTORM, GLORY, GATTACA; some of my fave films are guilty pleasures but I really find they have extra resonance thanks to their superior scores. For me, music is as important an element in films as the actors or the visual effects. Do I owe that to listening to that STAR WARS cassette back when I was twelve years old? Yes, I guess I probably do.
I AM LEGEND March 2, 2008
Posted by ghostof82 in : Film General , 1 comment so farFunny thing about hype and movies- very often moviegoers are suckered in on opening weekend, fooled by millions of dollars of marketing hype into paying money to watch a turkey. We’ve all been there. But very often the opposite can also prove true- negative word about a film can lower your expectations to such a degree that you end up pleasantly surprised.
This is what has happened to me with I AM LEGEND; after being turned off by the casting of Will Smith (I like Will, he’s a good actor but his rep has been sullied by too many Holllywood ‘blockbusters’ for my liking) early word was negative and reviews poor. I thought I’d put it off to a DVD rental in the Spring but recently watched it anyway, as I’d started to hear word that it wasn’t all that bad.
Well I have to say I was really impressed by it- I thought it was a superior ‘blockbuster’, with an intimate and effective first act with the kind of CGI effects that do all the right things… flawless cityscapes that boggle the mind and really fool you. Of course the film performs a Jekyll and Hyde with the second half with the CGI Vampires demonstrating all that can be bad about CGI in movies, but I’d been warned about the CGI creatures and found them less annoying than I had feared. I was thinking, in the film’s first half, though, just how powerful CGI effects can be when it serves the film without resorting to being too flashy and distracting.
In truth though I thought the most impressive thing about the film was Will Smith- the scene where he breaks down in a video rental store, pleading for a shop mannequin to talk to him, was so at odds with what you would expect from a Hollywood action hero. I was also impressed in the early scene where he follows his dog into a darkened apartment store building, and is decidedly terrified as he plunges deeper into the darkness- hardly your typical action hero. It’s a pity the second half of the film couldn’t live up to what the first half promised. It is certainly unusual to see such a big brash genre blockbuster turn out to be such a quiet, studied film about isolation at the End Of The World.. at least until it mutates into typical big brash genre fare at the end. It’s as if the films producers panicked at spending $150 million on a study of despair and isolation and needed a get-out-of-jail-free card (and bought it from the guy who did THE MUMMY movies).
There is an alterantive ending for the film that will be featured on the DVD release. The ending is described in an issue of Cinefex but I won’t reveal it here, suffice to say though I don’t think its really any better than what the film’s final version was. Will be fascinating to see it though to be sure- the wonders of DVD! Perhaps the day will come when two versions of the same film will be shown in cinemas- you get to choose which screen you go to depending on what kind of endings you like on your films, happy/sad/conclusive/open-ended.
I must make comment on the fantastic soundtrack by James Newton Howard, it is a beautiful, sorrowful score that has a very restrained use in the film but is all the more effective for it. Howard is increasingly busy in Hollywood. His music is certainly a fresh change from hearing Hans Zimmer muzak all the time- I have no dislike for Zimmer but his music has, for me, reached saturation-point for me in movies. It’s as if movie producers only temp-track films in progress with his music to the exclusion of all else. Has the lack of imagination and the safe option in modern film-making resulted in ’safe music’ these days?
At anyrate, for at least half of it’s running-time, I AM LEGEND doesn’t play it safe, and should, for all its failings in it’s latter half, be commended for that. I’d recommend it.
CGI killed the Movie? February 15, 2008
Posted by ghostof82 in : Film General , 2 commentsThanks again to those that commented on my previous post, they were all well-thought out arguments. I thought I’d post my reflections on those comments as a separate post.
First, my last post may have suggested that I wish CGI would be discarded to the cinematic bin. I don’t hate CGI- hell, I loved TRON back in 1982 and have followed the advances in CGI with great interest over the years since. CGI has many positive benefits- for one thing there are a number of movies that would be simply impossible without CGI, including the LOTR trilogy. When used properly, CGI can greatly enrich a movie experience. I think Ridley Scott has an excellent eye for it, and that KINGDOM OF HEAVEN features some of the finest CGI in any movie… the visual effects are spectacular but don’t distract from the viewing experience. Likewise I think the CGI in BLACK HAWK DOWN is very effective.
However it has to be said that CGI has been responsible for some of the worst decisions in movie-making; there is a tendency with CGI in that just because something can be done you go ahead and do it. So you can have armies of 20,000 battling it out onscreen… big deal, there’s nothing as involving and dramatic as just two combatants head to head in a duel, eye to eye. The duel between Eowyn and the Morgul Lord is far more involving than watching those thousands of CGI puppets battling on the Pelennor Fields in ROTK. It makes me wonder about the law of diminishing returns- whats most effective, twenty riders of Rohan? Ninety? Two hundred? Five hundred? When does it become a spectacular-looking but emotionally redundant CGI cartoon? No matter how spectacular the space battles are in the STAR WARS prequels, they just don’t match those of the original trilogy.
There’s just something bewitching about watching the Millenium Falcon in STAR WARS. Its a model, sure, but it’s shot so well and moves so convincingly across the frame. Back in the photochemical days and optical printing, shots had to be worked out months in advance so that all the elements shot separately could be placed together convincingly. It’s all a matter of eye, and of craft. Or rather it was- now it’s just a click of the mouse.
And herein is the problem with CGI; just plain awful film-making. It encourages all the worse excesses. I hate those impossible sweeping camera moves in many new films, they just pull me out of the movie. It’s like I’m suddenly in a videogame. It’s a weird thing with movies, we watch passively, involved in the plot, and accept our ‘camera-eye’. It’s something that we learn as we grow up watching the medium. But then suddenly that ‘eye’ is spinning around in circles or flying thousands of feet up a precipice or over a vast vista. Ugh. And just because Gollum works so well in the LOTR trilogy, everyone forgets the lessons of Jar Jar Binks and shoves all manner of annoying CGI characters onto the screen. CGI artists may be great CGI artists but they aren’t necessarily great film-makers with a good eye, or an ability to act, to emote.
Hollywood is clearly aware of this - many of the big summer blockbusters are nothing more than amusement rides that depend on the wow-factor of the CGI visuals rather than involving scripts and believable characters. I think thats the root of my problem with CGI these days- it is increasingly being used as a crutch to support the failures in so many other areas of modern films. Whatever happened to decent scripts, quality direction? There seems so little genuine life in modern blockbusters, they seem as synthetic as the CGI that dominates them. Look at SPIDERMAN 3- who actually cares what happens at the end of that film? Mary-Jane’s vertiginous plight is just so much greenscreen, the Sandman a cartoon baddie, and Venom and Spidey just cgi puppets… there’s nothing real anymore.
I guess those of us who marvelled at TRON back in 1982 should have seen it coming. All the faults of that pioneering film have been revisted upon Hollywood many times over. In the real world the characters are involving, their plights genuine, but once transferred into the gameworld, it’s just that, an arcade game. Most modern films are soul-less, movies inwhich major decisions are made by marketing committee, directed by young turks who think they know how to make movies because they have a great big collection of DVDs of post-70s era Hollywood. And that bigger has to be better. This is why I am so suspicious of 3D movies- whats the point, how is it going to improve movies?
I’m not wholly blaming CGI for this but clearly its a guilty culprit. And if Hollywood doesn’t change, CGI really will kill the movies we used to love.
2019=Nice February 14, 2008
Posted by ghostof82 in : Film General , 6 commentsMy friend Andy, who has shared a love for BLADE RUNNER ever since we first saw it back in the golden summer of 1982, lent someone his copy of the recent BLADE RUNNER:FINAL CUT dvd a few days ago. This friend of his is in her early 30s, and had never seen BR before, no doubt often bemused by Andy’s frequent adulatory comments about it. Anyway, Andy reported to me the other day her comment having finally seen the film- she had said the film was “nice”.
Well I have to say that word has bugged me ever since. I might have expected her not to have liked it, to have thought it was dated, slow, boring, or on the other hand thought it a revelation, to finally understand why it’s been such a big deal for Andy. But nice? What’s all that about? Of all the things I have heard said of BR, the word nice has never been one of them. Perhaps it was her conciliatory attempt to say something positive about a film that she hated, if only to not upset Andy’s feelings.
Andy and I spoke about it the other day, both of us bemused at what his freind actually meant. We finally decided that it was simply that his freind is watching it for the first time in 2008, and that in the years between 1982 and 2008, there has been a lot of celluloid under the bridge since then, so to speak. Does BR look dated now, seen through fresh modern eyes? Has its thunder been stolen by all the pretenders that have stolen ideas/images/styles in the years since? I’ll be the first to admit, that whenever I watch BR, it’s always with nostalgic eyes from 1982, recalling its impact, how new it was back then. We simply can’t imagine what BR looks like now to someone watching it for the first time.
The same must be true of other films. What does a 10-year old lad think of the original STAR WARS watching it now? Is it horribly dated, even with Lucas’ ill-judged cgi special edition tinkering? Can cinema-goers of today possibly understand the impact of that film back in 1977? How astonished everyone was when that Imperial Star Destroyer endlessly crawled into the screen from overhead in that startling first shot? Cgi has made everything so easy, hardly anything impresses in the same way anymore. I remember the cgi dinosaurs in JURASSIC PARK, how everyone marvelled at them. Well, the quality may not be exactly the same, but how many times have we seen such cgi creatures on tv programmes now that it leaves us bored and jaded?
Perhaps this is the conundrum for Hollywood today- is cgi a Pandora’s Box? A revelation and spectacle at first, has it done more damage in the long-term? Films like THE LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy would not have been possible without cgi, but look at all the films ruined by it. Hollywood, for the last ten years, has seemed hell-bent every year to produce bigger films with bigger stunts, explosions, effects, and they have become emptier, shallower experiences every year. What’s the shelf-life for these new films? Do any of us actualy have any interest in going back and re-watching them years later, like we do the old 70s and 80s classics? I have no interest in ever watching TWISTER again (cgi Tornadoes) or PERFECT STORM (cgi storms) or any other of the films whose prime reason for being seemed to be a new and novel use of cgi. Even a film like TERMINATOR 2 seems dated now due to its cgi effects, and yet I would love to see the original 1977 version of STAR WARS, and still enjoy CLOSE ENCOUNTERS.
I would like to see cgi have its day, that Hollywood would cease its pre-occupation with all this cgi spectacle and go back to old-fashioned storytelling. BLADE RUNNER has a lesson in this, in that for a film so visual and famous for its visual effects, there are actually very few effects shots in the film. Due to budget restrictions, the film-makers had to be prudent with the effects, spending money on shots they only really needed. They total less than 100 shots, whereas in so many contemporary films effects shots number in the thousands. Are films any better for this blitzkrieg of cgi spectacle? X-MEN 3 just bored me senseless, and SPIDERMAN 3 hurt my eyes, there was just too much too fast. Compare the space battle finale of RETURN OF THE JEDI to the cgi opening space battle in REVENGE OF THE SITH. SITH is woefully inferior, in my opinion, to the more restrained battle of JEDI (limited by the optical printing processes of its day). But why could Lucas not see that? Why couldn’t any of the guys putting that sequence together for SITH not see it, and say hold on, guys, we’re missing something here? The asteroid sequence in THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK is far more thrilling than that of ATTACK OF THE CLONES. What’s going on? Is it just me?
Alas the cgi bandwagon seems to be unstoppable, even to the extent of cgi actors and a progressive pre-occupation with going 3-D. 3-D for goodness sake. Would 3-D make any previously-made traditionally 2-D movie any better? It’s just a gimick, like cgi dinosaurs were a decade or so ago. 3-D doesn’t improve the storytelling, the scripts or the actors performance.
Perhaps movies are paying the price of decades of increasingly sophisticated commercials on tv, and mtv, and increasingly frenzied cutting on avid editing machines. Perhaps its just a generation thing, I’m getting too old. But consider this- if genuine bona-fide classics like THE GODFATHER and JAWS were being put together now, would they be any better for the way films are made now? How would someone like Stanley Kubrick or Alfred Hitchcock fit in now, were they still alive and trying to make their movies? Would Hitchcock only get the funds for PSYCHO now if he agreed to shoot it in 3D and cast it with horny teenagers?
CE3K killed my PS3 December 13, 2007
Posted by ghostof82 in : Film General , add a commentIn a bizarre example of technology voicing dubious critical opinion of a cinematic milestone, my PS3 committed suicide rather than play my CE3K bluray disc.
While I’ve never been the greatest fan of CE3K (the old Spielberg trademark of slow crawl-ins to actors’ reaction shots grows tired very quickly) it’s always seemed superior to some of the whizz-bang action sci-fi flicks that followed it (and in the case of STAR WARS, preceded it). Although it betrays a youthful naivitey on the part of Spielberg (would a loving husband/father really just leave his wife and kids so easily, jumping onto an alien spaceship and leaving them behind?), it’s a film of it’s time, boasting fine performances and down-to earth protaganists. Roy Neary genuinely seems an everyman, a working-class joe whose life falls apart after experiencing his Close Encounter. No aliens blasting the White House in this movie.
Not that my PS3 was impressed by it. The fact that my PS3 played PIRATES AT WIT’S END with no problem at all casts some doubt at the critical faculties of Sony bluray drives. Young Barry ran out into the woods, and as his mother walked amongst the nighted trees calling out for him, and I noted how similar the scene looked to something from E.T., the picture froze and my PS3 decided it wasn’t going to play any more of my films, not ever. Perhaps it’s got an anti-Spielberg chip.
So now I’m waiting for a courier to bring a replacement PS3 (he got lost today, it seems, so I’m having to wait longer than I should) and hoping this one appreciates better movies. It’s a strange development in the HD format wars. My XBOX 360 HD-DVD drive is fine, so continues to entertain me. Sure, it’s played some rental turkeys before, but it’s never crashed during a really good movie. Well, touchwood anyway- in a really odd coincidence the HD-DVD 5-disc set of BLADE RUNNER has arrived. Time to put HD-DVD to the test and forget my bluray blues…
Greetings from 2019 December 6, 2007
Posted by ghostof82 in : Film General , add a commentWell, it’s been months since my last post. Too many Nic Cage movies.
No, really- this year I’ve seen too many bad movies and Nic Cage is, I swear, doing more to promote the demolition of Hollywood than any other actor. After the shocking debacle that was the remake of THE WICKER MAN, I thought I’d seen his worst, but I hadn’t reckoned on just how ill-judged GHOST RIDER would be. Really, I nearly choked on my popcorn on that one. Not that I ever understood the point of making a movie of some obscure ’70s comic anyhow. Can’t Hollywood write an original script without resorting to bastardising a novel/comic/tv show? I’m surprised that the script writers over there had the nerve to go on strike, scripts are generally so average these days I’d say they are overpaid as it is. No doubt I’ll get flamed for that comment but films are worse now than they have ever been, just look at the summer ‘blockbusters’ we had this year. Everyone goes on about the reliance on overblown cgi and spectacle but they should point the finger at the scripts. I finally caught up with SPIDERMAN 3 (worse than I feared, a $350 million trainwreck- did they bother with a shooting script, and if they did, was it so bad they burned it?) and the less said about PIRATES AT WITS END the better, never have actors been paid so much to speak such drivel. My point is that if the scripts were any good in the first place the films wouldn’t turn out to be such shiny turds.
Not that I’m finished with my old freind Nic Cage (who has, miraculously, got six more films in the pipeline -please, dear God, no more) because I also finally managed to see NEXT. Yes Nic does for Philip K Dick what he did for Wicker furniture, I mean what on earth was going on with that disaster of a movie? Not only did it have one of the daftest premises with the shakiest ‘twist’ ending ever, it also featured what in my book is one of the worst screen ‘romances’ in Hollywood history. I thought Nic Cage’s character was going to get arrested for stalking. There was zero chemistry between him and Jessica Biel, who looked, frankly, lost throughout the movie. Perhaps she hoped she would be in the next BLADE RUNNER only to find herself in the PKD equiivalent of THE BLACK HOLE. And really, surely Julliane Moore doesn’t need money that badly that she has to turn up in such tosh. When Columbo turned up as a crooked mechanic ‘fixing’ bent motors I howled with laughter and settled down for one of the worst movies I have ever had the misfortune to see in a year in which I have seen more bad movies than it is fair to have to see.
Thats three consecutive turkeys for Nic Cage. Hard to believe I used to rate him as an actor. Thought he was okay in MATCHSTICK MEN. In fairness I think he’s a good actor in the right movie but it’s his producers hat that is awry- he just can’t seem to pick a decent project.
I mentioned NEXT because this week I have gotten my 5-disc BLADE RUNNER boxset and am currently enjoying the finest DVD experience of the year. If I can ever get myself away from it I shall write my thoughts on what is surely the definitive DVD release of any movie ever. But I thought I’d just mention that, for all the films faults and troubled production history, it’s such a joy to watch a bona fide classic like BLADE RUNNER after a year of such poor cinema. They just don’t make films like that anymore. I don’t think they could if they tried.
Still, never mind, as long as everyone in Hollywood is making all their millions, then everything is okay and who am I to argue? Me, I’m voting with my wallet, and have only been to the cinema twice this year, and that last time was back in April. I only wish other cinema fans were as particular with their cash/choice of movies as I’ve been- maybe if people refused to pay to see the films then Hollywood would make better movies. Instead Cinema takings in the UK have been bigger this year than ever. Either I’ve got a lousy taste in movies or Cinema patrons just don’t care, which is a shame, ‘cos they are just getting exactly the films they deserve.
Well, I’m going back to 2019. Have a better one.
David Lynch owes me £10.99! August 20, 2007
Posted by ghostof82 in : Film General , 4 commentsI’ll be the first person to cut David Lynch some slack. BLUE VELVET is a classic, I loved TWIN PEAKS, and I believe that DUNE is one of the most frustratingly flawed films that was ever made. MULHOLLAND DRIVE is, I believe, his masterpiece and one of my favourite films. I thought with that last film that Lycnch had finally cracked it- how to make a strange, mysterious Lynchian film but also cross into the mainstream. But last night I sat through his latest film, INLAND EMPIRE… and Mr Lynch, sir, I may have lost three hours that I’ll never see again, but at the very least, I want my money back.
Now defenders of David Lynch -and in the case of TWIN PEAKS, I was one of them- like to stress that the man is a genius, a cinematic daredevil who breaks conventional boundaries, but here I’d like to accuse him of ignoring the basic cardinal rule of moviemaking. Call it plot, story, narrative- a film surely should have one, no matter how convoluted or weird it is?
I dare say fans wll decry my heresy and state that INLAND EMPIRE isn’t a film at all, its a work of art. Well, silly me for buying a DVD expecting to enjoy three hours of storytelling in which, no matter how weird it got, I could have fun attempting to unravel the mystery/plot.
In hindsight, well, yeah, even with my affection for some of his past films, I really should have known better- I guess I’m not the first or last to be burnt by loving MULHOLLAND DRIVE and hoping for more of same. At least MULHOLLAND DRIVE had a genuine plot and mystery that a viewer could attempt to solve. INLAND EMPIRE is, frankly, a sprawling mess, an assault on any goodwill that his previous film may have gained him. Throughout this turd of a movie I could feel Lynch sticking two fingers up at me thoroughout. I just don’t think he cares about his audience. INLAND EMPIRE is a confusing mess, a trainwreck of a film. Fans can cry that his adoption of Digital Video is another of his bold moves but shooting this thing on video doesn’t even work- it just sends Lynch flying off the rails shooting so much footage that it seems he doesn’t know where to stop, and frankly it just looks plain ugly. Perhaps the point of the film is to send movie fans screaming from Hi DEf and DVD back to the sanctuary of good old blurry VHS, because thats what this film cries for.
The film is ugly, noisy, pointless, far too long and good lord I bet my DVD player felt dirty after playing it, hell, I almost apologised to the poor thing. There’s no saving graces for this awful assault on moviemaking. Mr Lynch, sir, I expect the cheque with heartfelt apology in the mail… after MULHOLLAND DRIVE, I could forgive you so much, but INLAND EMPIRE… no, sorry, INLAND EMPIRE is, frankly, unforgivable.
Back to BABYLON 5 August 7, 2007
Posted by ghostof82 in : Film General , 1 comment so farIt was with some trepidation last night that I watched BABYLON 5: THE LOST TALES, a direct-to-DVD ‘movie’ that is a trial of sorts for a continuation of the B5 saga. The word ‘trial’ is perhaps the most important here, as, depending on sales of the DVD, there may or may not be future installments of Lost Tales. Ironically this is a bit of a problem as it serves as a millstone over the production- basically the whole exercise screams ‘trial exercise/proof of concept’ throughout, as if the viewer is watching a workprint. I could imagine this show being an extra on a major film DVD rather than a feature in its own right. The show has only a handful of sets (partial at that) and a cast that hardly reaches double-figures (and that includes the extras!), and is so basic it was likely filmed in less time than a single episode of B5 used to over a decade ago. Indeed, I doubt the budget ran much more than what B5 had in it’s original run.
That said, this is B5, and it’s great to see some of the old faces again, and the station herself has never looked so good. Old fans will get a tingle in the spine as the pre-credits sequence kicks in with Christopher Frankes’ marvelous music and G’Kars narration. The story is so limited by the budget and filming constraints that it is woefully inferior to the B5 we remember at it’s height, but again the words trial and proof-of-concept ring throughout. What we are watching here is not a proper continuation of B5, it’s really a work-in-progress, a glimpse of bigger and bolder adventures that we may get to see if this project proves commercially successful. I only wish that Warner Bros had showed more faith in the project by injecting more money and resources but hopefully all that will follow next year.
It’s frustrating, illuminating, it’s new B5 folks, and fans will get a kick out of it, regardless of the limitations. If this DVD doesn’t perform as well as hoped and this becomes the shows swansong, then hell, it was a nice final treat for the fans. I really enjoyed it, and recommend it to fans of the show. Besides which, the extras include two memorials for Andrea Katsulas and Richard Briggs which fans simply have to see. Any new B5 is less for missing them, and its nice to see them represented on this DVD as a mark of respect for what they gave and meant to the show.
Merry Christmas July 31, 2007
Posted by ghostof82 in : Film General , add a commentWell the internet has been in meltdown over the past weekend as Blade Runner-related sites and forums, as well as those more devoted to DVD and film in general, as Warner Bros has confirmed that Blade Runner is going to finally get the treatment it deserves with several editions of a DVD release a week before Christmas. For a fan like me who first saw the film in September 1982 and immediately fell under it’s spell, this is fantastic, somewhat unbelievable news. We’ve been teased like this before of course- back in 1992 when the workprint was unearthed at a theatrical airing by accident we were promised a ‘directors cut’ that never really happened (although it was great to see the film at the cinema again). After that fiasco I didn’t believe we would ever see a ‘proper’ cut for the film, but here we are, with a ‘final cut’ (really, the machinations of modern Hollywood boggles the mind, when are films actually ‘finished’ these days?) that really looks like it might be the real deal.
In some ways the new cut is almost incidental- the big news, for me, is the 3 hour doc, the 45 mins of deleted scenes that are said to be extraordinary, the remastered release of the flawed 1982 edition and of course the fabled workprint. I mean really, I’ve been pinching myself everytime I read all this stuff on the ‘net.
How on earth am I going to have time for family and freinds over Christmas with that lot to devour? Well here’s the sting in the tail, kids; Warner UK better issue a press release announcing the UK R2 sets for that same week, ‘cos if the release over here gets bumped to 2008 and we have to rely on imports so late in the Christmas season… there will be riots, I swear. The next problem is going to be which boxset to go for- the DVD briefcase or do I go the hi-def route? I mean, this is Blade Runner for goodness sake, remastered in hi-def? Crikey! In which case, do I go HD-DVD (I have the Xbox 360 drive) or do I finally take the plunge for a shiny Blu-Ray player? And as the release is so late into the Christmas season, can we really risk the postal service at it’s busiest, slowest period, while saving money online? Do we camp out at the shops paying extra but being certain of our sweaty hands getting a copy on release day? Oh man, I may need therapy before all this is over. Either that or my wife will- ever since the Comic-con annoncements last week she’s felt like a Blade Runner-widow.
I still find all this hard to believe. Maybe I’ve slipped into some kind of alternate, Dick-ian universe. Yeah, PKD saw all this kind of weird stuff coming, anybody who read his book Valis will know what I mean. I’ll wake up one morning back in the ‘real’ world, but crikey, it’s great while all this lasts…
Spidey, third times’s NOT the charm… May 27, 2007
Posted by ghostof82 in : Film General , 1 comment so farAm I one of the only people on the planet yet to see SPIDERMAN 3? Looking at the film’s box-office, it would seem so. Strange thing is I have little interest in seeing the film, a bizarre thing really, considering my childhood love for the character.
Back in the early 70s, when ghostof82 was so young that even ‘82 seemed a lifetime away, I read comics with a passion. Marvel Comics printed UK reprints of its ‘biggest’ US superheroes in weekly two-colour format, and our friendly neighbourhood web-spinner was my favourite. I absolutely adored Spidey- it was unlike the other comics, Peter Parker was the star most of the time, his alter-ego of Spiderman seemed almost incidental to the soap-opera of his nerdish life as he struggled on, an outsider at school, awkward with girls, problems with money. His one escape was donning the Spidey costume and taking on the criminals, but even as a superhero he struggled- while Johnny Storm had his fan club and the adoration of the public, Spidey himself was treated with suspicion and as a menace. I loved the comic so much, I waited for every Saturday morning with eager anticipation of the comic being put through the letterbox. I remember lying awake in bed early on Saturday mornings, waiting for the clang of the letterbox, and then sneaking quietly downstairs to the hall to feast my eyes on the latest spectacular cover and to read his latest adventure.
So here we are some thirty+ years (ahem)later, and Spidey is one of the biggest film franchises on the planet, with three films now and no doubt a fourth inevitable. The films are big-budget, quality productions with some of the finest cast and crew talent in Hollywood. So why am I so disinterested in seeing the latest cinematic adventure of my childhood hero?
Part of it is no doubt my distaste for much of modern Hollywood’s output- basically the budgets have reached the point that it all just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Modern films just seem so safe, so obviously produced by some marketing committee as hellbent on selling toys and merchandise as much as putting bums on cinema seats. It leaves us with many films that are too calculated, leaving me feeling more manipulated by the films than actually involved in them. Maybe I’m just getting old, but does nobody else think its a disgrace that a Studio can sink near $300 million into a Spiderman film? They should be able to film an entire trilogy of Spiderman films for that kind of money. Would a $100 million Spiderman film be any worse than a $300 million dollar one? Sure, maybe the action scenes wouldn’t be quite so spectacular but would the film really be much worse for that? Why spend all that money?
There is also the element of diminishing returns. Third films in a series often suffer from the curse of the threequel. I have a theory about that. Film-makers make the first film with some success, and having learned from the experience of making the first, can make a second film that improves on the original. FX guys have ironed out the new techniques, the cast are familiar with the characters, the director and producers have learned what works and what doesn’t. But by the time the third feature comes around, it is a victim of its own success. In order to surpass the second film, Hollywood tends to equate bigger with being better, and throw more money at the film in order to make bigger set-pieces, bolder stunts, more eye-popping fx. But it doesn’t necessarily make the film any better than what preceded it. Indeed, very often the charm of the original is lost. Look at STAR WARS films; EMPIRE was much better than STAR WARS, as the filmakers had learned so much from making STAR WARS, but by the time RETURN OF THE JEDI came around, it was spoilt by trying to squeeze too much in -it was really two films in one. And no, the attempt at marketing teddy-bear toys, sorry, Ewoks, didn’t help either…
So I haven’t seen SPIDERMAN 3 yet and I’m afraid I may wait for a dvd rental, which seems a shame really, but the reviews seem to validate my reservations. Maybe SPIDERMAN 3 isn’t all that bad a film afterall, but I don’t mind taking my time catching up with it.
As for Spidey, well, I recently bought a dvd-rom of his complete adventures. Every issue of the American original, from 1963 through to summer of 2006, complete even with the ads and the original letters pages from all those years ago. So now I am able to load up the old adventures from my childhood and marvel again at the original, real Spidey (Steve Ditko era, obviously), undiluted by Hollywood. Bliss.