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| Author |
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| 25 new of 304 responses total. |
richard
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response 200 of 304:
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May 25 20:01 UTC 2002 |
INSOMNIA-- I enjoyed this too. Pacino as a burned out cop with issues who
finds himself up in Alaska, where the constant daylight day and night
contributes to his severe insomnia. Hilary Swank is also very good as the
young local cop who has to investigate a scene where Pacino, chasing
Williams, has a major screwup. The movie is about scruples, what actions
would you take in a given situation and could you live with those actions
on your conscious. Could you sleep well at night if deep down you are
always wondering whether you did the right thing or the wrong thing.
The Robin Williams character and the Hilary Swank character are like the
two sides of the argument in
Pacino's head. One side tells you that you can live with a lie, and the
other side says you shouldnt. And Pacino's insomnia, represented as the
movie's title, is the manifestation of that inner conflict. good movie.
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richard
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response 201 of 304:
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May 26 04:29 UTC 2002 |
STAR WARS: EPISODE II-- I saw this for the second time tonight. This
time I saw a digital screening at the big Ziegfeld theater in Manhattan.
As everyone knows this movie was unique in that it was not filmed, it was
shot digitally. The Ziegfeld is one of 87 screens in the world that are
showing it in accordance with the way it was shot, on high definition
digital projectors. So when the previews ended, the big beam from the
regular projection room went dark, and was replaced with the smaller beam
from the digital projector in the next room. What was playing was not a
huge reel of film but a laser disc being projected onto the screen. The
wave of the future. And I must say (having seen this the first time at a
regular theater showing a film print) that there really is a difference.
The pictures, the colors, the whole visual aspect of it was really sharp.
And of course the picture was perfect. With any film, particularly after
its been in theaters for a while, the film print gets worn and you'll
notice it. It also helped that the Ziegfeld is a stand alone theater with
one of the largest screens on the east coast. This movie is a visual
treat regardless of whether you see it on film or on digital. But if you
can see a digital screening (and I think there are a couple of theaters in
Michigan that have it), its highly recommended.
As for the movie, I enjoyed it much more than Phantom Menace. I think
they needed to re-do the dialogue between Anakin and Padme in their
romantic interlude scenes. Their lines came across as corny and got big
laughs in the theater. This guy they have playing Anakin, Hayden
Christensen, I'm not sure was the right guy for the part. It would have
helped to have a more experienced actor to give the character more depth.
But otherwise, Ewan McGregor is great as Obi Wan, and Samuel L. Jackson,
Christopher Lee, Natalie Portman, and the rest are top rate. I think its
a terrific movie and unsurpassed in terms of visuals and special effects.
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slynne
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response 202 of 304:
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May 26 14:52 UTC 2002 |
I went and saw Star Wars last night because there just were no other
movies I wanted to see. It pretty much sucked except for the visuals
and special effects. The dialog was so bad in parts that I found myself
tuning it out. I did like looking at all the pretty colors on the
screen. The reviewers were right, though, that it was better that
Phantom Menace. It also was better than Moulin Rouge and Freddy Got
Fingered.
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oval
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response 203 of 304:
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May 26 19:12 UTC 2002 |
we rented 'deceiver' this weekend with tim roth - i thought it was great.
great acting, interesting story - psycho-thriller..
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aruba
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response 204 of 304:
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May 27 03:15 UTC 2002 |
Saw Episode II. Eh. Where the hell did they get that kid who played
Annakin? His acting blows chunks.
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jaklumen
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response 205 of 304:
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May 27 03:48 UTC 2002 |
I've seen worse.
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slynne
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response 206 of 304:
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May 27 13:27 UTC 2002 |
Yeah, I have seen worse actors but typically not in Hollywood movies.
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aruba
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response 207 of 304:
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May 27 15:08 UTC 2002 |
Sure, I've seen worse actors too, but come on - if you were making a movie
you knew was going to gross a zillion dollars, why wouldn't you spend the
time and the money to get a first-rate actor for the central character? I
don't get it.
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scott
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response 208 of 304:
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May 27 20:34 UTC 2002 |
Saw "Enigma" last night at the Michigan. Pretty decent film; sort of a
mystery-romance-geek movie about the Bletchley Park decoding efforts during
WWII. The code-breaking stuff was fortunately reasonably well done; not
exactly right but not wrong enough to be distracting or insulting.
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gull
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response 209 of 304:
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May 28 14:43 UTC 2002 |
Re #207: Why *would* you? You don't need big names to draw people in, so
why pay for them?
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aruba
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response 210 of 304:
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May 28 14:58 UTC 2002 |
Because the better the movie is, the more people will want to watch it
twice, and the more general buzz it will generate after the release. If
people go to see it and are disappointed, you get negative word-of-mouth,
and reduced DVD sales.
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edina
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response 211 of 304:
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May 28 16:04 UTC 2002 |
Quite frankly, I would have been happier with two things from Star Wars: if
Ewan MacGregor would have spanked Hayden Christenson for his yet again
wondrous pouting session - and if Samuel L. had gone "Shaft" on Yoda - even
I got a little sick of the Yoda speak.
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tpryan
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response 212 of 304:
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May 28 16:10 UTC 2002 |
sick you where, Of course.
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brighn
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response 213 of 304:
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May 28 17:22 UTC 2002 |
Actually, I thought that both Yoda and Jar Jar dropped out of their accents
too much. A few things that Yoda said were actually grammatically correct.
On scientific errors in Star Wars: Was that a serious question? The movies
are rife with errors. The asteroids are too close together. Things burn too
well in deep space. In the recent installment, the two main Jedi fall
incredible distances in the Coruscant chase and are only mildly injured (while
smaller falls elsewhere cause greater damage). Apparently *all* of C3POs
thought circuits are present inboth his body and his head (not an inaccuracy,
but a redundancy), while the same is true of those dumb little droids.
Much has been made of Yoda fighting, but the other coolio bit: R2D2 flies!
Rock on, junior!
I enjoyed Attack of the clones quite a bit. While I like Phantom Menace, I
do admit I tend to fall asleep during the Boonta Eve podrace. No yawns here,
and while I thought Anakin did need a good spanking a few places, I don't
think Christiansen did a bad job with the role. Portman is a wooden as ever.
The little CGI details -- reflections on the ship, for instance -- were well
done. Anyone going to a Star wars movie for scientific accuracy or stellar
accuracy is going to be disappointed. You go for the cool aliens, the bits
of camp, the light saber duels, and the special FX. On all of those except
the camp, Attack of the Clones is the best of the five (then again, I thought
the close-up battle between Christiansen and Lee in the dark was cool, not
disappointing).
"Stellar accuracy" should have read "stellar acting."
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brighn
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response 214 of 304:
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May 28 18:51 UTC 2002 |
One side comment about Attack of the Clones: We got back in the country late
Sunday. We unpacked Monday, and went through the mail, which included the
Newsweek "What Bush Knew" issue, then later in the day went to see Ep 2 (we
could have seen it abroad, but as much fun as it might have been to watch it
in Italian, that's something to save for the tenth time seeing it >=} ). If
I hadn't known that the script was in the can two years ago (and the basic
story treatment much older than that), I'd've sworn that Palpatine was meant
as a satire of Bush (not in general, just in this movie).
We had tighter security leaving the US to go to Germany than we did leaving
Germany to go to the US. Both Athens and Frankfort let me keep the novelty
corkscrew I'd inadvertantly put in the carry-on (I put all of our souvenirs
in a carry-on bag because many of them were breakable, and didn't realize
until Athens started questioning me that one of the items was technically
verboten... they ultimately decided it was too much work to try to check it,
and since it was mummified in bubble wrap in a bag full of bubble-wrapped
mummified souvenirs, it had been an honest mistake).
Not that that last paragraph has much to do with the movies, but... I'm
rambling.
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rcurl
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response 215 of 304:
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May 28 18:54 UTC 2002 |
I think "scientific accuracy" is a *legitimate* dicussion subject for
science fiction. After all, some attempt is made to make the science
reasonable, even preferably compatible with what we know AND with
*what we don't know* about the universe. After all, there is some
real"funny stuff" going on in those 11 (or so) dimensions of string
theory and other representations of the deepest workings of the
universe, and no guarantee we won't get to do some amazing things
with them some day. I'm not too uncomfortable with violations of
Maxwell's Laws, which after all are themselves pretty counter
intuitive (they contained special relativety, although no one noticed
for a long time, except for the Lorenz Constraction anomoly), since
some quantum effects already violate them (there being no particle - wave
duality in Maxwell's Laws).
What does bother me, though, is that all the ships in fleets and battles
tend to confront each other "right side up", with absolutely no real
or pretended justification for that, except to not make the audience
dizzy.
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brighn
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response 216 of 304:
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May 28 19:18 UTC 2002 |
A discussion on the scientific accuracy of Star Wars and Star Trek:
they aren't, and don't pretend to be.
Otherwise, knock yourself out, Rane. ;}
(FWIW, I really consider them to be science fantasy, at least when I'm being
rigorous and defining "science fiction" as "fiction based on scientific
possibilities.")
Rane's next exploratory inquest: Why did the people on Gilligan's Isle have
so much clothing when they'd just gone for a three our tour?
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rcurl
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response 217 of 304:
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May 28 19:22 UTC 2002 |
But they DO pretend to be. Most of the actions are scientifically credible.
It would be very difficult to be mostly incredible.
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brighn
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response 218 of 304:
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May 28 19:26 UTC 2002 |
("hour," not "our." I'm blaming jet lag. That's my excuse this week. That and
ethanol fumes from Delphi.)
(In all seriousness, I see nothing wrong with discussing what is plausible
about so-called "science fiction" [i.e., "science fantasy"], I just find it
odd to go on about it when implausibilities and impossibilities are found.
Most big blockbuster flicks don't pretend to be anything other than
entertainment, regardless of genre. OTOH, I agree with Rane in re: the start
of this thread, that it seems odd to define this lightsaber behavior or that
as more natural than another. We might as well argue about how it is that Star
Trek phasers know to stop destroying objects exactly at the psychologically
salient edges of that object, regardless of whether it's touching other
objects (why does clothing get destroyed, for instance, but not the table the
person's leaning on?)... TNG may have had a more reasoned approach than TOS
[or maybe not... I didn't really pay attention], but phasers aren't "natural,"
so the description is moot.)
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brighn
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response 219 of 304:
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May 28 19:41 UTC 2002 |
#217> Hm. Ask Lucas or the ghost of Roddenberry if they meant to make a
universe that was plausible to the average scientist, and I'd wager they'd
both laugh and say no. Ask them if they'd meant to make a universe that was
credible to the average entertainment-seeking viewer, and I'd wager they'd
say yes. What's important is that all the characters have to be subject to
the same basic physical laws *as each other*, not that they have to be subject
to scientifically plausible laws. Go on a Star Wars chat, for instance, and
ask these two questions:
(1) Why are there snake-like creatures that live in the caves of asteroids
and seem to take up the entire body of the cave, with no discernable mating
or reproduction technique? (Empire Strikes Back)
(2) Why did Obi-Wan Kenobi dematerialize when he died (A New Hope), while
Qui-Gon Jinn didn't (The Phantom Menace)?
I've spoken to Star Wars fans, and (2) seems to plague them much much more
than (1), and the problem that dead people just dematerialize doesn't even
really rear its head very much -- that concept is ok, it's that Kenobi and
Jinn didn't follow the same "rules" (Vader didn't dematerialize, but that's
ok, because he's Sith, like Maul... different chracter set, different rules)
that's the "problem." (There are some who also obsess on inconsistencies, such
as Kenobi's comment in "Empire" that Yoda trained him, while in "The Phantom
Menace," it's clear that most of the training was done by Jinn, and Yoda's
insistence that Anakin is too old to train in "Menace," while Luke, who's
significanly older in "Empire," is on the cusp of being too old.)
In other words, "science fantasy" tends to live in a realm of "Is it possible
that a universe could exist with a set of laws such that this story could
actually take place?", not a realm of, "Could this story take place in the
current universe, if we only had more knowledge?". There's a significant
difference ("Star Trek" also lives in the former, even though it's putatively
in our own future).
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gull
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response 220 of 304:
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May 28 19:44 UTC 2002 |
I think it's fine to criticise the science of "hard sci-fi" that's *trying*
to be accurate. A lot of Niven's stuff falls in that category, as does
Heinlein's. I think criticizing the science of Star Wars makes about as
much sense as criticizing a Disney movie because animals can't really talk,
though.
The fleets of ships in Star Wars aren't supposed to be realistic depictions
of space combat. They're supposed to create an exciting scene, and play off
our familiarity with naval battles and aerial dogfights.
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slynne
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response 221 of 304:
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May 28 20:01 UTC 2002 |
Ok, Paul. You just got back from EUROPE and all you want to talk about
is Star Wars???
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brighn
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response 222 of 304:
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May 28 20:20 UTC 2002 |
I've got too much to say about Europe, and that would involve a different item
anyway. ;}
Star Wars is easy.
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void
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response 223 of 304:
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May 28 20:33 UTC 2002 |
re #215: Rane, you seem to be talking about what I have commonly heard
called speculative fiction, in which authors take current science and
make mostly reasonable extrapolations about where that science might
lead. It is the branch of science fiction pioneered and popularized
most notably by Clarke, Asimov, and Heinlein. Science fiction movies
still tend to be mostly space opera of the Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers,
and Gray Lensman variety, which are sometimes fun to watch but don't
really hold up to close scientific scrutiny.
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aruba
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response 224 of 304:
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May 29 00:13 UTC 2002 |
The sad truth is that the market seems to have decided that flashy stuff
sells better than scientific accuracy (or even internal consistency). Like
Rane I wish someone would have the guts (and make the effort) to create a
consistent and also entertaining movie.
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