 |
|
st_swithin
|
|
10069
Nov 2002
time: 05:32
|
|
Jennifer Connelly is a very, very lucky woman - she's married to Paul Bettany.
Crowe did a great job. I'm beginning to think he might've really deserved that Oscar.
And the best-ever performance by the Galapagos marine iguanas - they'd get my nomination for best supporting species.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Boris Godunov
|
 |
Portland, OR
Aug 2001
time: 00:32
|
|
Baaaack.
Ok, I give it a 7.5/10.
It's pretty entertaining at some points, drags a little aimlessly in others. Of course, of particular interest to me was the use of Vaughan Williams "Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis" during the real emotional moments...heh!
The script ranges from acceptable to really bad, and the amount of cliches is really astounding. I mean, there's only so many salty dogs muttering about curses I can take in modern cinema. The rather obvious references to the Odyssey didn't help, either. The ludicrous notion that a single French frigate operating in the Pacific would be enough to tip the balance of the war was also a laughable stretch.
Crowe was typical, but the other performances were pretty good, especially the kid who plays the young officer. Most child actors make me wretch, but he was genuinely good. Unfortunately, the film doesn't really make you care about anyone except the doctor (very well played), so the emotional impact of the casualties isn't what it should be.
Note to DPs: Until peripheral vision in movie theaters is utilized, the technique of wildly swinging the camera around in battle sequences is not only ineffective, it just makes the scenes unwatchable. Please stop.
The chief thing about this evening is that it has solidified my dislike of going to theaters. The past four theater experiences I've had were frought with one terrible aspect--the audience members. People are just incomprehensibly rude. For ****'s sake, I was at a concert at Carnegie Hall last week, and some idiots had brought their little kids along to kick the seats, whine and rifle through bags of candy. Tonight some guy was commenting loudly on everything in the movie, even repeating lines after they were spoken! Do these people have no manners or consideration for others at all? Grrr!
|
|
| |
|
|
|
JohnT
|
 |
Capitalist
Mar 1999
time: 00:32
|
|
quote:
Originally posted by monolith94
"It's why I went to go see Luther about a month ago - I never dreamed that I'd see a biopic on his life, not in this secular age, not on the big screen."
I heard that that was a terrible film - it looked pretty bad. Was it? |
Eh, it was OK. The timeline was correct, they didn't add people who didn't exist, Peter Ustinov was enjoyable as Frederick the Great, they quoted Luther accurately in words if not tone... as a recounting of the events of the Reformation, it is surprisingly true, with a few exceptions (below).
I wrote a review of Luther (and how historically accurate it was) on the Straight Dope. In short: The got the events correct, they just did a horrible job on Luther himself.
quote:
Alright, to answer the question.
In a general sense the history in Luther is pretty much accurate - the liberties taken with history were few, but there were a number of errors which include:
1. The use of a couple of terms and concepts that were not fully developed/in use in Luther's times or not accepted by Luther. Frederick the Great used the word inertia, which, iirc, was an invention of Newtons (or Galileos). Luther also mentioned "fixed stars" which do not exist in the geocentric universe that he accepted.
2. Johann Tetzel never made it to Wittenberg, much less Saxony, as Frederick the Great banned him from his territories. But Tetzel, not to be outsmarted, went to towns close to the border thereby still drawing Saxony coin, which drew the ire of both Luther and Frederick.
3. Ulrich von Hutton is a lot calmer in the movie than the accounts I've read of him. IIRC, he was banned even before Luther was in Worms.
A number of things were also understated or completely omitted:
1. Luther's influence in creating a German identity was understated (except for the translation plot.)
2. It is never revealed that the main reason the German princes supported Luther was because they were tired of their gold going to Rome.
3. Luther's anti-semitism and the reasons for it? Not touched on at all.
4. Luther had rather psychotic and abusive parents who constantly beat him and treated him in ways that would get them arrested today. His treatment at their hands had profound effects on his psyche, effects that were completely ignored.
Odds and ends that they included but didn't have to:
1. Luther's scatalogical obsessions.
2. His spells where he saw and spoke to the Devil. He even claims to have beaten back the Devil with Luther's own fecal matter.
Now about the movie...
While Joseph Fiennes did a good job expressing how deeply Luther believed in his God, overall he did a pretty poor job of portraying Martin Luther. Luther was not a timid man - he was forged of anger and rage, passion and fire. Except for a period immediately following the publishing of the Theses he wasn't a person given to self doubt and quiet talk. Luther hated, and hated well.
Luther was also more worldly than the script gave him credit for. He knew what he was doing when he crouched his arguments in the terms of German nationalism and the Volk. One of the biggest weaknesses of the movie was the complete lack of Latin and German - in the real world, when Luther was at Worms the entire trial had been conducted in Latin, until the very last pronouncement by Luther, which he made in German. That would've helped driven home the point that Luther succeeded not because of theology and faith, but because of politics and economics. And the "real" Luther knew this.
Fiennes (or the script) didn't portray any of this at all - Fiennes' Luther was the sort of man who'd get his ass kicked up and down the Elbe and would've been of even lesser import than Jan Hus. Fiennes' Luther just kinda floated along in the world, largely propped up by the machinations of others...
until, in one bizarre scene before the Augsburg meeting, Luther is sitting at the head of the table issuing the Princes their marching orders for when they meet the Emperor.
But what the hell - I've been waiting for a big-screen biopic of Luther's life and am pleased that I actually got one. I'll give it an 8.5 on a scale of 10, but I will say that you probably won't miss much if you wait until it comes out on DVD. |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
JohnT
|
|
Capitalist
Mar 1999
time: 00:32
|
|
"The script ranges from acceptable to really bad, and the amount of cliches is really astounding. I mean, there's only so many salty dogs muttering about curses I can take in modern cinema(a). The rather obvious references to the Odyssey didn't help, either(b). The ludicrous notion that a single French frigate operating in the Pacific would be enough to tip the balance of the war was also a laughable stretch(c)."
A: But salty sea dogs are superstitious, and were even more so in 1805. Just because every script about long voyages at sea have this "cliche" in it, doesn't make them any less so (and I remember no talk about curses in Titanic, btw). Hell, even the officer halfway believed that he was cursed, else he wouldn't have taken the action that he took while saying what he said.
B. Granted, but being an uncultured lout, all but two went over my head. Were there more?
C. The ship "tipping the balance of war" was a lie that Lucky Jack told the crew to get them to accede to continue fighting the Phantom w/o mutinous talk. Jack as much admitted so when he
spoiler(highlight to read):
told Malkovich that he exceeded his orders from the Admirality the moment they left Brazilian waters.
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
JohnT
|
|
Capitalist
Mar 1999
time: 00:32
|
|
"Crowe was typical, but the other performances were pretty good, especially the kid who plays the young officer. Most child actors make me wretch, but he was genuinely good. Unfortunately, the film doesn't really make you care about anyone except the doctor (very well played), so the emotional impact of the casualties isn't what it should be."
Well, the story is Jacks and the doctors story, not the crews, and since Jack and the doctor lived, the casualties weren't supposed to be jarring other than how they effected Jack.
I thought Crowe was excellent in this movie, doing a lot of acting with his face and not his mouth. 
"Note to DPs: Until peripheral vision in movie theaters is utilized, the technique of wildly swinging the camera around in battle sequences is not only ineffective, it just makes the scenes unwatchable. Please stop."
Ah, yes, the Saving Private Ryan effect. Just wait 'til they combine the Matrix's "bullet time" with SPR's staccato chaos. 
"The chief thing about this evening is that it has solidified my dislike of going to theaters. The past four theater experiences I've had were frought with one terrible aspect--the audience members. People are just incomprehensibly rude. For ****'s sake, I was at a concert at Carnegie Hall last week, and some idiots had brought their little kids along to kick the seats, whine and rifle through bags of candy. Tonight some guy was commenting loudly on everything in the movie, even repeating lines after they were spoken! Do these people have no manners or consideration for others at all? Grrr!"
There was an actual 4 year old in the theater I went to, who stayed and complained the entire time.
But you know something Boris? We failed too as an audience because not a single person complained. To anybody. 
|
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
|
|
MichaeltheGreat
|
|
Apolyton Grand Executioner
|
 |
mooning the house that Ruth built.
Oct 1999
time: 21:32
|
|
quote:
Originally posted by Ned
I saw the movie yesterday. Crowe does a wonderful job. The ships cannon duels are very realistic, but the action scenes where people are firing cannons or getting blown up or fighting hand to hand are so short and chaotic as to be unitelligible. I don't know what the director was trying to portray other than chaos. If that was his intent, he succeeded.
Also, one gets a very good flavor of what it was like abort a British warship in that era.
I'd rate the film 4 out of 5 stars -- about twice as good as Matrix Rev. |
Boarding actions were short, sharp, and confused in the extreme. Lots of powder smoke in the eyes, hard to distinguish friends and foes moving seemingly randomly, Marines in the tops shooting down (and hopefully in the delay between the trigger pull, and the actual arrival of that little lead ball, you won't have moved where your enemies' head had just been.  )
The warship flavoring was actually understated. No slop buckets, no towed laundry (dead astern, so when you empty the slop buckets, you get **** and piss in your "clean" clothes" and they had the luxury of fresh food most of the time, not the common long distance ration of a pound of salt tripe, a pound of onions and a quart of beer a day. The incident with the sailor drunk on grog was also a little off - grog was (at least in the US Navy, which I'm sure learned from the Royal Navy) poisoned with tobacco and turpentine, so that if any man snuck in too many extra rations, the sweating, puking, dizzy dog would be obvious, and could be promptly flogged back into shape. Of course, you have to be a grognard to want those kind of details in the movie. 
|
|
| |
|
|
|
DinoDoc
|
 |
AECCP loves Democracy
Sep 1999
time: 23:32
|
|
quote:
Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
The whaler bit was cute, but totally implausible - any warship crew would have spotted the running rigging differences between a commercial vessel and a ship of war. |
IIRC, they had smoke coming from the ship to disguise that. Damn it! I'll have to see the movie again now to find out if I'm right. I'm probably wrong though.
BTW, was I the only one impressed by the opening engagement between the two ships. It amazed me to no end.
Last edited by DinoDoc on 23-11-2003 at 00:05
|
|
| |
|
|
|
MichaeltheGreat
|
|
Apolyton Grand Executioner
|
|
mooning the house that Ruth built.
Oct 1999
time: 21:32
|
|
quote:
Originally posted by Boris Godunov
The script ranges from acceptable to really bad, and the amount of cliches is really astounding. I mean, there's only so many salty dogs muttering about curses I can take in modern cinema.
|
It may be modern cinema, but it's portraying a ship of war in 1805. Common sailors of the era were scum (they still are, but now they can take showers occasionally ) - petty criminals trying to escape the law, dregs of port towns pressed into service, debtors and other desperate sorts. I don't know if you've ever crewed any form of tall ship, but it's hard work - and I've done it for fairly short periods under relatively luxurious conditions, with no possiblity of being lashed, and with real food and toilets. In those days, it was stinking, brutish work in close quarters, among the most ignorant of peasants. So one wouldn't expect them to hold forth on the latest in philosophy and politics.
quote:
The ludicrous notion that a single French frigate operating in the Pacific would be enough to tip the balance of the war was also a laughable stretch.
|
For one thing, the movie didn't quite say that. The dialog was "could tip the balance" not "would" and the notion is far from absurd. This was months before Trafalgar and the breaking of the will, if not the theoretical seapower, of the combined French-Spanish fleet. England had precious little foreign commerce with most of Europe under Napoleon, and the former colonies still somewhat hostile. A large and growing amount of English commerce was in the Pacific with the British East India Company and otherwise. A warship of 44 guns on the loose, unopposed, with all those known ports to raid and no reliable communication between them, would have been devastating to future English commerce in the following year or two at a minimum. At the least, that would be a valid assumption while the French and Spanish fleets were in being, and the English perception that Napoleon was preparing to invade England was dominant in English strategic planning.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
MichaeltheGreat
|
|
Apolyton Grand Executioner
|
|
mooning the house that Ruth built.
Oct 1999
time: 21:32
|
|
quote:
Originally posted by DinoDoc
IIRC, they had smoke coming from the ship to disguise that. Damn it! I'll have to see the movie again now to find out if I'm right. I'm probably wrong though.
|
The smoke was to look like the ship was rendering blubber. All whalers smoked like that once they'd caught a whale, but the rigging is undisguisable - standing rigging as well, but the running rigging differences are more apparent at a distance. They did change the sail plan to some extent to more closely resemble a whaler, but the rigging was still there. In theory, you could have an arrogant and greedy captain and officers (and nobody would question them), but I'd expect a bit more professionalism - the cost of failure at sea in those days was to become sharkshit. I know I'm weird, but I spotted the sail plan and hull form and ID'd it as a United States class frigate (the Constitution's type) in an instant at the beginning, against a background of cloud and fog. I'm an amateur hobbyist two centuries later - those guys were professionals who did it for a living, and misidentification could be fatal.
quote:
BTW, was I the only one impressed by the opening engagement between the two ships. It amazed me to no end. |
It was very well done overall - the bit about the boats and kedge anchors (I think) was a subtle tribute to the Constitution's "Great Pursuit" "victory" in evading a five ship British squadron with the weather gage. The sense of the enemy guns coming in and clearing the decks was very well done cinematically - but a bit off technically. Even the best gunner's mates of the era couldn't be that consistently accurate at the initial engagement range shown in the movie, which I made to be about 1000 meters. You really had to close to about 400 meters before highly accurate gunnery was possible, and once you laid off to a beam reach to get your battery on the other ship, roll was pretty tremendous and the range opened up over time, so repeatable accuracy with the gun battery would mean each gun firing virtually simultaneously, or timed on the waves to reach the same relative roll position adjusted for range. The actual rate of fire was in between those two. That was the only technical issue I had with it, but from a filming perspective it wouldn't have had the same effect to have some wild variance in the level at which the shells came in.
|
|
| |
|
| |
All times are GMT. The time now is 05:32.
Apolyton Time is 00:32. |
top of page
|
| archivepost |
|
Forum Rules:
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts
|
HTML code is ON
vB code is ON
Smilies are ON
[IMG] code is ON
|
|
|
|
|
|
16-11-2003 00:16
Or is it just me being too sensitive and not very tolerant? 
|