publicist
-
Posts
17,837 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
42
Posts posted by publicist
-
-
It was the second Enola Holmes movie.
-
6 hours ago, GerateWohl said:
I remember some article years ago, that stated that Cameron was aiming for a 3D technology that works without glasses for the sequels.
Maybe someone at Fox marketing just forgot to put in the tagline 'See the Miracle now without Glasses!' at the end, y'know...
-
I remember you even liked that score....
-
7 minutes ago, Thor said:
That remains to be seen. Probably less than it did in 2009. Perhaps more of the same, which people have longed for. But you seem to make the suggestion that James Cameron is interchangeable with any odd journeyman director doing any odd Hollywood spectacle. And that's where we depart.
Not at all! I just watched the trailer, saw the smurfs people don't dig too much and a lot of visual stimulation that for whatever perfection it may offer didn't wow me at all (CGI wonders, what's new?).
And the truly *great* Cameron premieres (Abyss certainly not among them) didn't have that question mark: i knew what i was excited for, and i got it.
To note: i have no financial interest in this movie or otherwise, i probably would just miss it because Covid effectively killed cinema here and there's just too much other social activity to get back into it, but Dune brought me back one time and i would make the effort to watch Dune 2. My only interest in Avatar 2 is: could it prove me wrong despite massive evidence to the contrary? I remain curious.
-
41 minutes ago, Thor said:
So when you have visionaries like Cameron (or Scott, or Spielberg, or other directors that make full use of the audiovisual tools not only for storytelling, but for mood and other things) that makes use of these technical marvels to create engrossing, visceral experiences, that's a valid form of pleasure. For all their spectacle, none of the Marvel films have accomplished this. Cameron, on the other hand, has managed this herculean task with THE ABYSS, ALIENS, TITANIC and the first AVATAR, in particular, and I have great confidence he will do it again with this sequel.
Everyone and their grandmother agree that the Pocahontas story of AVATAR is completely unoriginal, but that's not really the point of the film, the way I see it. It's just a mechanism by which to absorb you into the universe of Pandora.
But what pleasure you expect when you watch Pocahontas in 2022 and it lacks the 3D gimmick of 2009?
3D was the big selling point of 'Avatar' - we can all talk about empty terms like visionary or making use of state-of-the-art tools, trust me, in my line of work i get stuff like this every second week in pitch presentations, but it's also a 500 million $ investment at least for 2 movies and without a gimmick that you can sell - which the trailers so far have kept secret from us - it remains a big question mark what the big hooplah is (and most people didn't seem too fond of the smurf vibe).
-
2 hours ago, Thor said:
I've never understood the proposition that intellectual films are somehow "better" than more visceral, experience-oriented films. They're both two equally valid forms of cinema experience, and when they're made by capable, visionary hands, they create different forms of pleasure. None necessarily better than the other. I mean, one day I can enjoy a disparate, politically charged play with film tools in a Godard movie, the other I can enjoy being swept away into a different universe by a straightforward narrative, but with a profound sense of 'being there'. Cameron is a master of this, in all of his movies. I don't go to his films to be intellectually challenged, but to experience a time and place; a state-of-mind, almost.
But Thor, you again make a point without really getting it: Cameron's pitch is a movie that sells you a technical marvel and puts (out of necessity) a story on top that - i think we can all agree - is nothing you are supposed to feverishly anticipate without the spectacle gimmick.
Now Marvel & Co. have made a cotton industry out of what you describe above as visceral, experience-oriented films and the simple question is: what is Avatar 2 & 3's reason for being? Because it doesn't seem to have that special feature, and since 2009 there around 50-80 visceral, experience-oriented films per year full of eye candy and narratives that are *very* straightforward fighting for an audience.
Forget Godard, what's the appeal of this trailer based on the fact above? It doesn't even has 'beloved IP characters' like those comic things.
-
On 03/11/2022 at 10:44 PM, Thor said:
So the foundation is laid for a new kind of spectacle which visionaries like Cameron can provide. You see it murmuring in the shadows already, with films like DUNE. Long story short, I have 100% faith in one of my favourite directors of all time, I think the trailer looks wonderful and can't wait until the film is here.
Forgetting for a moment the personal attachment to certain things, which are of course fair game, i think you hit the nail on the head, even if unintended.
'Spectacle' and dizzling entertainment is Cameron's game and he's been awfully good at it (not always, but more often than others). Like Cecil B. DeMille before him, he makes awful movies that can be great entertainment but his 'artistic' contributions are merely on a technical level. There is nothing beyond to guide his stories, which is why he selects material for suitability to showcase his technical innovations and his movies are remembered for technical marvels, not for any great stimulation on a intellectual level - maybe they inspire you to become a special effect wizard.
Which is a long way of saying that 'Dune' had its problems, but was made by a guy who is a thinker and i look forward to part 2 because i expect certain ideas that form and emerge. What's Cameron's pitch? Has he found 5D? Can he make people levitate via his movie screen now? Because this trailer certainly does not pitch deep newfound insights about environment issues or ancient civilizations (and who would've expected that). It looks pathetic, to be honest, because it so transparently has nothing to offer on a technical level and that old adage seems awfully creaky in an age where big movies hardly are anything but sfx shows.
Never mind the box office (who's counting beyond Fox and Cameron?), but when i saw 'Avatar' i knew it was crap but i thoroughly enjoyed the experience. 3D is anachronistic by now, so what *is* it that Cameron is trying to sell me here?
-
On 05/11/2022 at 12:49 AM, karelm said:
Don't be. He's very solid, talented, and a longtime collaborator (more than just synth) of Horner. Think Bill Ross to JW. He's very familiar with Horner the man and the composer and up to the job.
Knowing the old Horner score and Franglen's own outings (which may be competent modern scoring but completely irrelevant as contributions to the art of film music), i will slyly add you could read that as a fairly realistic prediction: don't waste any time over this.
And i saw the recent trailer, which of course added to that impression.
-
On 05/11/2022 at 6:50 AM, Naïve Old Fart said:
Some films are so bad they're good. Some films are so bad they're just bad. Most bad firms that I have seen have at least one thing good, about them.
You forgot the films that are what they are but get lots of dubious flak because the people that went to see them seem to be from Mars - going by their outlandish expectations. What *did* anyone expect from a Roland Emmerich disaster movie about the end of times? I expected watchable crap with a few breathtaking vistas and action scenes to kill a few minutes and i got exactly that. The only minus point would be sometimes horrible CGI (afair) and the bad score.
-
Fluffy Pemberton pop, estalblished from part 1. His strengths are as always evident, the instrumentation is lively and catchy (Powell light), but the weaknesses too: it is rather a charming numbers revue without any dramaturgical weight or musical depth. This is certainly due to the film at hand, unfortunately, the last real proof that the guy is really good was "Motherless Brooklyn" which is now three years old.
-
Though Sand Storm should have been included. Another puzzling omission.
-
1 hour ago, GerateWohl said:
With this I was especially referring to Goldsmith. I remember how disappointed I was with the OST of L.A. Confidential as it felt to me just like an uneven glimpse through the keyhole onto this score.
That would actually the last release i would accuse of depriving us of great music (there wasn't much music in the movie and it was more of the sneaking-around variety). I remember sitting in the cinema between 1994 and 1997 crying when i heard the outstanding set pieces that were left off 'Chain Reaction', 'First Knight', 'The Shadow' (the list goes on) that practically begged from the screen 'Release me!'. Instead he bestowed us at least 15-20 minutes of non-descript suspense and atmospherical stuff (hands up who would've chosen 'Assassins' over 'Be Safe' or 'Who am I' over 'Fight Like a Man' or 'The Mirrors').
It was like a curse. There was a big promo campaign for 'Mulan' showcasing the 'Huns Attack' sequence, me and some friends who were also into the hobby back then had practically wet trousers in anticipation of this brilliant two-minute cue, but what did JG do? He called a cue 'The Huns Attack' and joined a lighter separate cue from long before that scene and added the second part of the ensuing avalanche sequence. We were convinced that this practice was fully intended, Goldsmith giving us personally the finger saying 'You really wanted that cue, eh? Though luck!'
In retrospect i really think he was choosing a selection of cues that reflected the narrative of the movie, it never seemed to occur to him that there were probably not more than 5 people in total wanting stripped-down background music for a scene of Keanu Reeves trying to retrieve a fax.
-
I may offend fans of this movie/score (which seems to affect especially americans, i found the movie rather hard to sit through), but when push comes to shove, 'The Place where Dreams come true' is the only cue i need from that and it also has a satisfying narrative throughline which the rest lacks. Apart from that it's Horner in his wishy-washy new age mode and here and there the mellow main theme pops up, but it's really a much overrated score, imho.
-
It's such a non-issue, only the 2% with dog hearing seem to pick it up and the - as Roger rightly says - source is something put together outside the proper Goldsmith recording (i don't even want to know how much paperwork and extra tape stuff all of this entails).
-
4 hours ago, karelm said:
Most would credit that to the performance of Tim Morrison, BSO trumpeter. He was selected for his tone. What JW didn't want was a military trumpet or a bold, triumphant trumpet nor mellow jazzy/noir style.
I get the basics, for sure, but since Morrison was featured on many JW scores, not least in the BotF concert pieces, i don't think that's what i'm confusing for sound (the BPO suite does sound rather impersonal). Somehow they got a perfectly rich, resonant one for the OST, which i'm sure only users of good headphone equipment really get (it gets lost on speakers). It's a kind of deep, middle-centered sound of the instrument that just seems to fill or take up more space than usual, for the lack of a better expression.
-
1 minute ago, Naïve Old Fart said:
JW, and Jerry were, probably, Anglophiles, as well: they liked England.
I don't think it had to do with recording facilities (they were living there and for *just* recording music once in a while you could hop on a plane). I think both spent at least 1 or 2 years of their life there, which makes the Anglophile angle the more logical conclusion.
Probably had also something to do with the studio system in Hollywood dying around that time, which opened schedules quite a bit, i imagine (Fox even closed down, more or less, for a year or so).
-
4 minutes ago, Naïve Old Fart said:
3hrs., and 10mins?!
What with trailers and adverts, that'll be about 3 3/4 hours. I could watch BEN-HUR, or LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, in that time (both of which I guarantee I'd enjoy more).
I'm not sure about Ben-Hur these days. It is an awfully long slog.
-
8 hours ago, GerateWohl said:
30 minute OST is so 90s.
But many were not bad in retrospect, after listening to the 90 minute versions, that is. Except you were Goldsmith and insisted on cutting lots of exciting cues for meager sneaking around stuff, just to balance the cd exactly like the movie (why?).
-
On 23/09/2022 at 3:53 PM, karelm said:
For instance, Don Williams said he can tell if the engineer knows what they're doing by how close they have the timpani mic to the drum. Sometimes it will be just a few feet from the drum but some of the overtones are around twelve feet, so the sound of the drum won't be what you hear in the room because if the mic is three feet above the drum, it's not getting all the low frequencies! The resulting sound will be tight and emphasize higher overtones.
I will say, i have no idea how it was done, but regarding recording the trumpet, to this day i never heard a more perfect trumpet sound than on the original recording of 'Born on the Fourth of July'. It sounds so full and rich, i don't know why no one could quite catch that sound again (it stuck with me even as a youngster, when i was into SW and stuff, that it was more exceptional).
-
Use Audition. The pupil and teacher edition is cloud-based and comes cheap...and if you order it via the US website, it doesn't require proof you are either.
-
Just now, Richard Penna said:
Hence if you still liked the music over the credits, and either didn't know it was an edit, or didn't have the means to make it, then releases like this are a nice bonus for those people.
So I can't fathom why someone would be so actively against their inclusion on an album, other than just a stubborn refusal to ignore tracks that they don't want in their personal playlist.
I could imagine that the beefed-up running time pushing it to 2 or even 3 cd's - for a price - could attract some naysayers. But since the attraction of these releases is exactly that kind of bloat, it's also a futile argument. And i understand the labels totally: 90% of your customers crave the bloat and it gives you a slight edge in profits (which are slim), who's going to argue? But going by a purely musical perspective, i'd rather invest in the software. I bet there's no one on this board who couldn't put together a better 8-minute suite from AFO, the Mummy or Hollow Man.
-
At least the speed many Deluxe release show up on Spotify these days allows for a good inspection beyond tinny samples. Shipping costs have soared beyond the reasonable, it's now costing as much as the cd. I'm not starving, i just find it obscene to pay upwards 35€ two cds.
-
Just now, Richard Penna said:
This concern for the environment does tend to take a back seat when an indexing error is made on a Williams CD. Just saying.
We all have our vices.
Though i'm speaking from the lone perspective of someone who would never get another physical release if i wasn't forced to do so. I'd gladly pay the price (minus the horrendous shipping costs) for a digital download, since even loading the cd in my external drive seems a chore - it happens so rarely the thing sometimes seems to give up just by the lack of practice.
-
6 hours ago, Naïve Old Fart said:
It's an utterly beautiful score, and it was definitely, his finest, up to that point in his career. It fully deserved its Emmy.
Interestingly, between the late 60's and early 70's Williams (and Goldsmith too) spent longer periods of their life in the UK. There is little known about the Why's, but it must have been the place to be for musicians back then.
The End of The Superman March As We Know It
in General Discussion
Posted
Probably 90% of this board just don't get that they are part of the problem, not the solution. Pitching more Superman movies, yeah, the silver lining for cinema. Just sayin...